Transport Panel Holds Off on New Sales Tax Bid : Initiatives: Members blame the rejection of Measure A last year on a failure to educate voters.

The Ventura County Transportation Commission said Friday it will wait until April to decide whether to resubmit a ballot measure that would raise the county sales tax a half-cent to pay for $500 million in road construction and transit projects.

The commission said it needs time to update its countywide transportation plan and to prepare a congestion-management program, required under a new state law, before it is ready to wrestle with whether to pursue another sales tax initiative.

The commission said the delay on a tax decision will allow the board to assess the economic outlook for next November, one of the target dates for placing the initiative on the ballot.

Commission members said the delay will also provide them enough time to study ways to better educate the public about the county’s transportation needs. They blamed a lack of education for the overwhelming rejection of Measure A in the Nov. 6 election.

“There is a tremendous amount of information that needs to be gotten out,” Commissioner Maggie Erickson said. “The public needs to know that it’s not just us wanting to put our hands in their pockets, but that we are trying to solve the transportation needs of the county.”

One Simi Valley resident called that absurd.

Steve Frank, who heads a local group called the Committee for Better Transportation, told the commission that voters will not support another tax measure.

He told the commission that taxpayers were led to believe that Proposition 111 funds would be adequate to pay for county road construction.

“Every time we approve a tax measure or a bond measure . . . we’re told, ‘There’s only one more to go,’ ” he said. “If you need money, your complaint is not with the taxpayers of Ventura County but with the bureaucracy of the state of California.”

“I can’t believe their arrogance,” Frank said afterward. “Sixty days after voters rejected this, they are going to come back and shove this thing down their throats. They’re saying that we didn’t understand it. They’re insulting the intelligence of voters. We understood it too well.”

During the meeting, Thousand Oaks Mayor Frank Schillo, who is serving on the commission as an alternate for supervisor-elect Vicky Howard, suggested that local officials become more active in lobbying for public support of the transportation measure. He suggested that town meetings be held and fact sheets distributed outlining what projects would be funded with the sales tax money.

Board executive director Ginger Gherardi said the county must come up with matching funds to collect all the money available to it under Proposition 111, which raised the gasoline and diesel tax to help pay for transportation projects statewide.

If a local sales tax measure is approved, it would allow the county to claim an additional $130 million from the state during the next 20 years, while raising $500 million over the same period, Gherardi said.

“We will lose money if we don’t have a local match,” she said. “It will mean that every time you go to the gas pump in Ventura County, you will be contributing money to other counties.”

She said the county desperately needs more funding for freeway improvements and other road projects. She said it also needs operating funds for commuter rail service that would link Simi Valley and Moorpark with Los Angeles by the end of 1992.

The commission also was briefed Friday on the results of a local airport site study conducted by the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Tim Merwin, aviation program manager for SCAG, said the study concluded that there are no sites in Ventura County that are suitable for the construction or operation of a large commercial airport.

Among the sites included in the study were some in the Santa Clara Valley as well as existing general aviation facilities in Oxnard, Camarillo and the Point Mugu Naval Air Station.

“That pretty much settles it,” said Mary Travis, senior planner with the transportation commission. “There just isn’t enough flat terrain in the county for a large airport development.”