Inquiry Into Mall Initiative Is Urged : Council:The proposed ballot measure could halt plans to expand Buenaventura center. The city may ask Monday for a detailed report.

Worried that a proposed ballot measure could scuttle plans for the expansion of Buenaventura Mall, city officials have recommended preparing a detailed report analyzing the initiative’s potential impact.

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The City Council will consider the recommendation Monday night--just two hours after proponents are required to turn in signatures if they want the measure placed on the March ballot.

City officials said they expect the initiative to qualify because supporters have hired professional signature gatherers.

The recommended report would analyze the financial impacts of the initiative and its effect on the city’s long-term planning goals. It would be prepared by the city manager’s office and returned to the council no later than Nov. 27.

“This gives the community a level playing field,” Assistant City Manager Steve Chase said. “This project builds a factual record as to what this measure is all about, who is really behind it, and the consequences.”

The initiative drive was launched by Ventura businessman Lary Reid, although city officials have questioned whether competing mall developers are behind it.

Reid has denied that claim and says the measure is being backed by a grass-roots group of local residents who call themselves Citizens Against the Sales Tax Giveaway.

The group is fighting a proposed tax-sharing plan between the city and the mall’s developers, who want to add another floor and two new anchor stores to the 30-year-old shopping center. The developer would pay $20 million in street improvements, to be reimbursed by the city’s share of increased sales tax revenue after the project is completed.

“All I want to do is have the people have a say in this,” Reid said in an interview Friday. “I just don’t see any reason why we should give them $20 million to develop it.”

But city leaders said the proposal is not a “giveaway.”

“It’s more complicated,” Councilman Jim Monahan said. “What we are doing is deferring sales tax dollars, and we will actually have the money upfront to do the off-site improvements.”

The city now receives about $1 million in sales tax revenue from the mall. Under the proposal being brokered, that $1 million would be secured. Should there be sales tax revenue above and beyond $1 million, it would be reimbursed to the developers to pay back the public improvements, Chase said.

“Many of those improvements have been on the books,” he said. “We simply have not had the revenues to do them.”

With $20 million in public improvements and the future of the city’s top source of sales tax revenue on the line, city leaders and some business owners see the initiative as a threat.

“I think you should take all initiatives seriously, and I think it should be the City Council and the city manager’s responsibility to get all the facts out in the open,” Monahan said.

Reid said his group is focused simply on collecting signatures, and he dismissed the city’s recommended inquiry into the initiative he supports.

“They are going to do what they feel they have to do,” he said.

Initiative supporters are expected to be out in force this weekend to gather as many signatures as they can to make Monday’s deadline, Reid said.

To qualify for the March ballot, the group needs 15% of the city’s 69,844 registered voters, or 10,476 signatures, according to City Clerk Barbara Kam.

The group has about six months from their Sept. 22 filing to collect signatures from 10% of voters if they want the measure on the November, 1997, ballot.

Reid said his group is aiming for the March ballot.

“We have a lot of support,” Reid said. “I hope we can make it.”