Development Major Issue in Oxnard Council Race

Handling economic development downtown and coping with growth around the city airport have captured the attention of the six candidates for City Council.

Only two of the council’s four seats are open in this election cycle. Mayor Manuel Lopez, who also serves as the fifth member of the City Council, is running unopposed for a fifth term.

Incumbents Bedford Pinkard and John Zaragoza face challenges from retired businessman Martin Jones, retired code enforcement officer Joe Avelar, social worker Saul Medina and teacher Alex Escobell.

Oxnard Airport is the only airfield in the county with commercial flights and has been targeted by critics because of its noise and proximity to residences. Constructing new schools in the city has also been difficult because of lack of suitable locations; there is open space near the airport, but state rules prohibit building schools within two miles of an airport.

Most of the candidates believe the city should investigate the idea of relocating commercial aviation to the naval facility at Point Mugu.

“We need to sell the military on the benefits of a joint use,” Pinkard said.

Zaragoza believes the city should try to get exemptions to the two-mile radius rule for building schools, while Escobell thinks more study is needed.

“The City Council doesn’t control the airport, so our hands are kind of tied,” Escobell said.

Slow-growth laws have also made it difficult to find school locations, Zaragoza said, but it’s up to the council and school board members to make it work.

Most candidates said improvements for downtown and south Oxnard are among their top priorities.

Jones has criticized the city’s plans for a downtown theater, but Escobell said he would endorse one if it brought more people downtown to support neighboring businesses.

Downtown revitalization is important to the city as a whole, Medina said. The failure to revive central Oxnard is “bad management.”

Pinkard hopes that projects like the proposed RiverPark development will give Oxnard a boost. RiverPark is expected to include 3,000 homes, office buildings, a town square, restaurants and the only major hotel and convention center between Los Angeles and San Jose.

“This is going to be something that people want to come to,” Pinkard said.

South Oxnard has problems, Pinkard added, but there is a limit to what the council can do. It’s up to the residents to “take a little pride in their own neighborhood,” he said.

Zaragoza said some of the work already done by the city has gone unnoticed. “People want to see results overnight, but it’s a gradual thing,” he said.

He cited the upgrading of the medians on Saviers Road as a change people can appreciate, adding there are other infrastructure projects that people are not aware of.

Another challenge for Oxnard is caring for homeless people. The city ends up paying for a variety of social services.

The SOAR restrictions on building on farmland benefit homeowners by making their property more valuable, Jones said. At the same time, the lack of building space discourages affordable housing and further hurts homeless people, he said.

Some candidates favor asking wealthier cities in the east county to help Oxnard, or to at least address the broader scope of the county’s homeless problem.

“Oxnard has carried the burden,” Pinkard said. “It’s a county issue. It’s a regional issue. Other cities should be more supportive.”

A countywide approach would work best, Medina said.

“Everybody is affected by homelessness,” he said. “All 10 cities need to work together to identify this as a need.”

The city must find a balance between compassion and stretching itself too thin regarding the homeless, Escobell said. “It’s a very complicated issue. I would not support doing more than we do.”

Avelar suggests putting homeless people to work doing projects to improve the community, such as clearing trash from alleys.

Avelar said many of his campaign concerns come from the decades he spent as a code enforcement officer for the city. “They called Joe, and Joe got it done,” he said. “I still have something to give back to the city.”

Avelar favors revamping the city’s noise ordinance to one of zero tolerance, and banning street vendors who sell corn. He also supports background checks for drivers of ice cream trucks.

Medina, at 27 the youngest of the candidates, says he would bring youth and a new perspective to the council. He thinks that “developers have put the city on the defensive,” and that more energy should be spent fixing problems in the heart of the city rather than expanding around its edges.

While members of the council are quick to take credit for Oxnard’s successes, no one wants to take the blame for failures like the outlet mall or the Pacific Suns minor league baseball team, Medina said.

Medina wants to use his professional skills to address city problems. “I want to be a social worker for the city as well.”

In 1977, Pinkard helped start the La Colonia boxing program, which has produced several champions, most notably Fernando Vargas and Robert Garcia.

After spending 32 years in the city’s recreation department, Pinkard watched as state funds available to the city fell in the early 1990s. He was first elected to the council in 1992.

“I was determined to try to restore some of those programs,” said Pinkard, who grew up in the La Colonia neighborhood. “We need more things for young people to do that’s positive.”

In addition to his pet projects, Pinkard thinks he works well with his four colleagues on the council. “You can do some things, but the council has to work together to be successful,” he said. “There’s not a lot of animosity among council members.”

Zaragoza, who seeks his second four-year council term, points to the drop in crime, the creation of new jobs and the development of building projects as successes that have occurred during his time on the council.

During that period, the city has rebuilt roads, replaced pipes and reduced landfill waste ahead of state mandates, he said.

Escobell said his decision to run for City Council was not made on the spur of the moment. “I’ve been planning on running for a long time, ever since I was in junior high school.”

In the years since, Escobell said, he has avoided participating in city committees because he thought they would interfere with his education about the governmental process.

“I’m very interested in the concept of self-government and all people to participate in it,” he said. “The current council has not done a good job in providing that avenue of communication.”

Escobell, who freely quotes Lincoln and Socrates, has master’s degrees in history and education, and teaches fifth grade at Driffill Elementary School in Oxnard. He also teaches history at Oxnard College, although he has taken a leave of absence to concentrate on his campaign.