Camarillo OKs Sale of Bonds

The Camarillo City Council on Wednesday approved the creation of a tax district and the sale of up to $31 million in bonds to pay for road and sewer improvements, taking a step toward major development on vacant land in the western part of the city.

The council voted 4 to 0, with one member absent, to form the district near Camarillo Airport, clearing the way for developments that city officials have already approved on about 600 acres nearby.

It was Camarillo’s largest planned borrowing for improvements since 1987, when the entire city treasury of $25 million was lost in high-risk trading ventures.

There are only three major property owners in the new district, said City Manager William Little.

A separate vote of the three property owners is required before the agency can be created, and all are expected to approve the move in a mail ballot in the next week.

Daniel Greeley, the city’s director of engineering services, said the three properties that will make up the new district, called the West Camarillo Community Services District No. 1, are:

* A tract north of the Central Avenue-Ventura Freeway interchange owned by Pacific Land & Golf, an Orange County-based company that is planning Spanish Hills, a private country club, golf course and residential project.

* The Kohl-Leonard Camarillo Center, a proposed business and commercial complex south of the freeway between Las Posas Road and Carmen Drive.

* A 41-acre tract just east of the airport owned by Harry Gelles of Santa Barbara.

The $100-million Spanish Hills project will take up 431 acres of the 600 acres involved. The development will be patterned after a recently completed country club in San Juan Capistrano called Marbella, said J. Porter Barton, a vice president for Pacific Land & Golf.

The city plans to sell the bonds in increments, Little said. In the first phase, the city will sell $14.5 million in bonds to be used to expand and rebuild deteriorating sewer mains. In later phases, the city expects to sell more bonds to widen Central Avenue at the Ventura Freeway interchange.

“As further development occurs, there will be a need to issue more bonds for storm drainage improvements and bridges,” Little said.

The city has only recently reached a point where it can consider such capital projects. In 1987, Camarillo put improvements such as road widening on hold after the former treasurer and investments officer lost the city’s entire $25 million treasury through high-risk trading in the bond market.

In January, the city announced that it was back in the black, with $384,067 in the treasury, up from a deficit of more than $3 million in early 1989. The turnaround followed two years of no-frills budgets that omitted capital improvements, cut back on maintenance and did not allow for replacement of city staff members as they quit.

Greeley said the city is ready to begin working on design of the sewers, sewer pump stations and force mains on the improvements approved Wednesday, pending approval by the three property owners. City officials hope to have the sewer improvements completed in 18 to 24 months, he said.

Officials expect construction of the projects to begin in 1991.