15% Fee Hike Backed to Fund Anti-Smog Programs

The Ventura County Air Pollution Control District approved a controversial proposal Tuesday to increase fees paid by companies to fund the district and its anti-smog programs.

The 10-member board voted unanimously to increase fees 15% during the next fiscal year and begin planning for additional increases that could be imposed as early as the following year.

The new fees will not be formally adopted until the board’s next meeting June 22 to give the public time to comment on the decision.

The district, running out of money as it tries to clean one of the nation’s smoggiest regions, said it needed to raise fees on about 1,200 companies so it could maintain services and fund new pollution-control programs.

“We would have gone broke” without the fee hike, said Dick Baldwin, district director. “We haven’t increased our fees since 1990 and, since then, we’ve watched our revenue decline.”

The fee increase is estimated to generate as much as $500,000 more annually. That’s enough, officials said, to give the district adequate operating reserves and will continue to pay for pollution-control programs through 2004.

District officials had originally recommended that the board approve a much larger fee increase, totaling 25% over the next two fiscal years.

Wary of levying such an extreme increase, board members decided to endorse a 15% increase, but left the door open to future fee hikes.

“I don’t like any 15% increase,” said board member Judy Mikels, who is also a member of the county Board of Supervisors. “But it seems to me that the people being regulated see the need and understand the problem.”

However, some business owners who will have to pay substantially more in pollution-mitigation fees believed that the increase will dig far too deep into their pockets.

Peter Faxon, owner of Coastal Multichrome in Oxnard, already pays more than $6,000 a year for the 0.16 of a pound of chromium that his company releases into the air each year.

Over the past several years, he has phased out some chemical processes in an effort to comply with district regulations, a move he said has cost him customers.

“I give them credit because they’ve done a really good job, but I’ve quit doing something and am going to get an even bigger bill next year, and that doesn’t seem right,” he said. “The proportionality of this whole plan isn’t right, and I think it’s time they take a look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.”

Mike Saliba, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., agreed that the fee hike is flawed and added that it is time for the district to redefine the way it implements its pollution-control programs.

“They’ve done about as much as they can do to regulate stationary sources,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because this is really impacting small businesses that are doing about all they can to comply.”