Voters May Decide Casino Plan

The day before a vote on an Indian casino project, most Oxnard City Council members said Monday that they may temporarily block the Nevada-style gambling house, but put the issue on the ballot so city voters can make the final decision.

Three of five council members--Bedford Pinkard, Dean Maulhardt and John Zaragosa--said they favor giving Oxnard residents final say on a Las Vegas corporation’s controversial plan to operate a hotel-casino along the Ventura Freeway for a landless Indian tribe.

Mayor Manuel Lopez flatly opposes the proposal. Councilman Tom Holden voted for a city study of the project, but has maintained his neutrality otherwise.

“I want to let the silent majority decide,” Pinkard said. “I think that’s going to be my recommendation.”

Maulhardt said he tends to agree with two national gambling studies that say the jury is still out on whether casinos are good or bad for surrounding communities.

“This is a bigger issue than one City Council on one night with one report should reject out of hand,” Maulhardt said. “But am I leaning toward approving it? No. Maybe it should be put on hold for a while and [we can] see what the facts are. Maybe it needs a referendum. I think the people should decide.”

Zaragosa, who opposes the casino, said he nonetheless might leave the final decision to city voters if casino backers agree to pay the $90,000 cost of a special election in November or the $15,000 cost for a regularly scheduled election in March.

“I would rather just stop it right now,” he said. “The comments I’ve heard are 20-1 against it. But if the majority of the people want it, this is a democracy.”

Holden was ill and declined comment.

Lopez said the council would be abdicating its leadership responsibility if it refused to decide the casino issue. Developers could try to gather signatures from 10% of voters and put the proposal on the ballot themselves, the mayor said.

“We would be allowing them to circumvent the political process, and I don’t think that would be right,” Lopez said. “We would be assisting them. And I can’t imagine why we would do that.”

County Supervisor John Flynn, whose district is primarily Oxnard, said the City Council would be evading a tough issue if it refused to vote on the casino project.

“It’s a simple way to dodge an issue the council ought to deal with,” Flynn said. “I don’t want to say the voters wouldn’t understand it. But it would be an unfair election. It would be like taking on Las Vegas and all of that money. There’s no way opponents could compete with that.”

Mary Rose, spokeswoman for Paragon and the 163-member Greenville Rancheria of Maidu Indians, said the developers favor a ballot initiative. And she said they would pay for it.

“I think that’s fine,” Rose said. “We’re prepared to go there. There’s a lot of growing support, and a lot of misinformation out there.”

Paragon Gaming, which was rebuffed by Ventura County supervisors in an earlier attempt to build an Indian casino at Channel Islands Harbor, now proposes a casino and 250-room hotel on 25 acres spanning the struggling Oxnard Factory Outlets and an adjacent field. It says the casino alone would bring 688 full-time jobs and $14 million a year to the city once the second of two phases is open in about three years.

The 21,600-square-foot first phase would open six months after the project was approved, the company says. The gambling operation would include 349 slot machines, 50 tables and a 15-seat snack bar. After two years, a 50,500-square-foot expansion would add 349 slot machines, 100 gambling tables, a restaurant, an office building and a storage area.

The Oxnard plan is an outgrowth of Proposition 1A, the ballot measure that amended the state Constitution to allow Indian tribes to operate slot machines and blackjack tables at casinos. A handful of proposals have surfaced across the state to build casinos in urban areas.

About 62% of Ventura County voters favored Proposition 1A in March 2000, while nearly 71% of Oxnard voters supported it. But only 46% of the city’s registered voters cast a ballot.

An Oxnard special election in November would cost $90,000, but the costs could be cut to about $15,000 if the city put the casino issue on its March 2002 statewide primary ballot, said county elections chief Bruce Bradley.

Even if the City Council voted down the project after the 7 p.m. hearing at City Hall, Paragon could put the casino measure before voters next March by gathering signatures from 10% of the city’s 61,000 registered voters, Bradley said. Or developers could force a special election in November by gathering signatures from 15% of voters.

Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, who last week declared Nevada-style gambling “fool’s gold” and a threat to Oxnard’s moral fiber, said through a spokesman Monday that the City Council should decide the casino issue now.

“On its face, a ballot measure sounds attractive, but it would only amount to a very expensive public opinion poll,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Totten said. “It would delay the ultimate decision for many months. And the cloud of potential casino gambling would continue to overlay Oxnard decision-making.”

The casino proposal is one of the most controversial to face a local city in years.

The county’s top two law enforcement officials--Bradbury and Sheriff Bob Brooks--have joined the Camarillo City Council and Oxnard community and religious groups in condemning it.

They say the casino would foster crime, break up families, change Oxnard’s character and mar its reputation.

Supporters, however, say the only sure thing about the Indian casino is that it would give the Oxnard economy an invigorating jolt through jobs and fees that no other recent proposal can match.

Bradbury acknowledged that studies about gambling’s effect on society and crime are contradictory. The General Accounting Office and the National Gambling Impact Study Commission have said that no definitive conclusions can be reached about the link between casinos and crime because of a lack of quality research.

But Bradbury cited as “definitive” a subsequent report that studied FBI data between 1977 and 1996 that found crime not only increased in cities where casinos were located, but also in surrounding communities.

Meanwhile, an Oxnard city staff report said it was impossible to say whether a local casino would increase crime or cause social problems in the surrounding area.

“The city report is not conclusive, but it leads you to reach the conclusion that crime is not the problem that people believe it to be,” Maulhardt said.

Indeed, casino opponents have criticized the city for allowing Paragon to pay about $40,000 to underwrite the city study. But City Manager Ed Sotelo said that such advance payments are routine when a developer’s proposal prompts extraordinary costs. About 20 city employees worked sporadically for a month on the report, he said.

“But at no time did the developer get involved in preparing our report,” Sotelo said.

The hearing is set for 7 p.m. in Oxnard City Hall at 305 W. 3rd St.