Councilman Seeks to Add Schools to Growth Equation

With school officials rallying behind him, Councilman Steve Bennett has renewed a call to amend the city’s blueprint for development to require sufficient space in school classrooms before opening the city to population-swelling development.

“There is no good reason to postpone this further,” Bennett said Monday in a statement. “We can’t legally consider school capacity unless it is officially in our Comprehensive Plan.”

Bennett first raised the issue in February after the City Council and school board pledged to work together to solve Ventura’s school crowding problems.

At the time, he suggested amending the city’s master plan for future growth to take into account school capacity.

But a majority of council members rejected the idea, saying it could jeopardize any chance of passing an $81-million school bond measure to build two elementary schools, one middle school and a magnet high school to accommodate an additional 3,500 students by 2010.

Now that the bond measure has been approved by voters, Bennett wants to revisit the issue, as the Planning Commission considers 10 new housing developments tonight, ending a three-year pause in issuing permits.

“Until the schools get built, we still have a school capacity problem,” Bennett said. Furthermore, he said, the bond was designed to relieve existing crowding, but it did not take into account the extra population from unforeseen housing developments.

But the City Council is far from unified in supporting the idea. Although Councilman Gary Tuttle supports it and Councilman Jim Friedman wants to “keep an open mind,” Councilmen Jim Monahan and Ray Di Guilio say it would only create more bureaucratic red tape.

“The more rules and regulations that we pile on planners,” Monahan said, “the more it makes it almost impossible for them to do their work.”

Di Guilio and Monahan both said it is hard for the school board to understand the complexity of issues facing council members.

“I don’t think they understand it,” Di Guilio said. “They support the concept. Who wouldn’t support the concept of making sure our schools aren’t overcrowded?”

Meanwhile, Supt. Joseph Spirito and four of five members of the school board support Bennett’s proposal.

“Developers automatically get involved in terms of housing,” said school board member Jim Wells. “But inclusion [of schools in the Comprehensive Plan] will ensure that the schools are in the development loop, rather than an afterthought.”

School Trustee John Walker worries that legislation in Sacramento could end a school district’s role in city planning. The bills, if approved, would make Bennett’s proposal all the more important--and timely, he said.

Three court decisions in the late 1980s required cities to include school districts in city planning, Walker said. They also required developers to pay $1.84 per square foot in fees to help defray the cost of city services, including schools.

The building lobby has been trying to get school districts out of the planning process ever since, Walker said. Now there are three or four bills wending their way through the Legislature that would overturn those court decisions.

Walker, who sits on the California School Board Assn., said the legislation proposes that developers pay higher fees in exchange for having school districts removed from the planning process.

“Developers are happy to do that because school growth and school capacity would not be considered in giving out building permits,” he said.

Walker said one of the bills could pass as early as this fall--and he wants an additional safeguard in place. That could be done by amending the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

“My concern is that while developers’ fees are good, they are not always the solution to everything,” he said. “Even the most skeptical state legislators are starting to consider it. Then the only fallback we have is the Comprehensive Plan.”

School officials also point out that the city takes into consideration sewers, lights and city streets when it hands out developer permits. So why not schools?

“There are some services, like sewers, where, if problems exist then the council can’t give out permits to developers,” Spirito said. “I think kids are more important than sewers.”

Friedman said he is willing to listen to school board members.

“I would like to see a nonbinding recommendation from the school board,” Friedman said. “Since this is their bailiwick, that would certainly make sense.”

Bennett said he intends to formally bring his proposal before the council June 30.