County Panel Suggests 5 Potential Sites for Juvenile Justice Center

A county committee Wednesday recommended to the Board of Supervisors five potential sites for Ventura County’s new juvenile justice complex, clearing an important hurdle if the $65-million project is to be completed by a May 2003 deadline.

With no organized opposition from environmentalists, a county review panel approved an environmental impact report that found no insurmountable biological, geological, safety, traffic or noise hazards to preclude construction at sites in Saticoy, El Rio, Oxnard, on Lewis Road just south of Camarillo, or on County Government Center property in Ventura.

Supervisors must now choose from among the sites, a process that could begin in April, according to staff members in the county’s chief administrative office.

Several school officials from the El Rio area north of Oxnard urged members of the county Environmental Report Review Committee to rule out that site, saying they feared the juvenile complex could invite more gang violence to an already troubled area.

But committee members said they believed safety concerns had adequately been addressed in the impact report, and urged the school leaders to instead take their complaints before the supervisors.

Board members have indicated they favor two sites--the 45-acre parcel in El Rio, west of Vineyard Avenue, and a 40-acre parcel in Saticoy, in a flower field along the northern bank of the Santa Clara River. Both sites are considered centrally located, are for sale and zoned for industrial development.

Construction on either site, however, would represent the conversion of agricultural land to urban use, a shift some have argued is at odds with the county’s commitment to preserving open space. The only proposed site that would not force such a shift is an 80-acre portion of the government center’s massive parking lot.

Although environmentalists have not come out en masse against any of the sites, there are opponents.

Samuel Myer, whose family has farmed near the Saticoy site since the 1870s, said he was concerned the site would flood during heavy rains. Committee members said the report, which considered flood maps, concluded that flooding is not a concern at the site.

Some Native American activists also have said building on the Saticoy site could endanger Chumash artifacts buried in the nearby remains of an ancient village.

Rio Elementary School District Supt. Yolanda Benitez said putting the facility in El Rio could send a bad message to youth in an area already plagued by juvenile crime.

“We’ll have youngsters who will see the facility as a badge of courage, a rite of passage,” she said. “We’re trying to get children away from that, but the detention center will just increase that kind of [local] ownership of gang violence.”

And Oxnard Union High School District Supt. Bill Studt said with Rio Mesa High School situated along the main route to the proposed El Rio site, gang members would constantly be tempted to interact with high school students on the way to visiting friends in detention.

“We continually have problems with gangs driving by the campus,” Studt said. “You put a facility like this next to us and the situation may escalate. It may become out of control. If your son or daughter was to attend Rio Mesa High School, would you want to put them in that predicament? I think as a rational adult you’d say, no, you would not.”

But Karen Staples, with the county’s probation agency, told committee members that visitation at the juvenile facility is limited to teens’ parents and grandparents. “So their friends, even their brothers and sisters, are not allowed to just come in and visit. It’s very restricted,” she said.

Pablo Vargas, an El Rio resident of 25 years, told the committee he hopes the El Rio site is ultimately selected. He said El Rio needs a greater police presence. And with a juvenile facility in the neighborhood, “there would be more police, more sheriffs,” he said. “We have to see both sides of the coin.”

Supervisors agreed to build a juvenile facility to replace the overcrowded 35-year-old center in Ventura. Once completed, the new complex would house 540 juveniles and include six juvenile courtrooms. If the center is not up and running by May 2003, the county risks losing $40 million in state and federal funding.