Monahan, 3 Newcomers Elected in Ventura

Ventura voters Tuesday returned a veteran politician to the City Council and installed a panel of new centrist candidates who won support from both business interests and environmentalists.

With 100% of the ballots counted, voters also approved school bond measures in Camarillo and El Rio. A similar measure in Ojai appeared headed for victory in early returns.

In the City Council race, voters reelected Jim Monahan to a sixth term while also endorsing newcomers Sandy Smith, Brian Brennan and Donna De Paola, according to unofficial returns.

“I’m almost speechless,” said Smith, the top vote-getter in Tuesday’s campaign. “But the real work is ahead. This was never about getting elected; this was about the work we need to get done over the next four years.”

Also in Ventura, three school board incumbents--John Walker, Velma Lomax and Cliff Rodrigues--were leading a pack of eight candidates in late returns. The three had asked for four more years to help carry out a series of educational initiatives, including development of a master plan to guide the expenditure of an $81-million bond measure approved by voters in June.

“I think people are saying we like what they are doing; we’re pleased with the way the school district is going and we want them to continue,” Lomax said of the apparent victory.

In elections for the local school bond measures, the Pleasant Valley School District in Camarillo asked voters for $49 million, while the Rio district sought $20 million and the Ojai district wanted $15 million.

Officials in those districts were hoping that residents would be willing to tax themselves to solve problems created by aging schools, surging enrollment and a statewide push for smaller class sizes.

“We’re just ecstatic,” said Rio School District Supt. Yolanda Benitez, among those who mounted a last-minute push to get out the vote on Election Day. “It’s going to mean a lot to our kids.”

In Ventura, voters went to the polls to decide which of 10 candidates would fill four seats on the City Council.

Although issues of growth and development have long dominated Ventura politics and polarized campaign rhetoric, candidates stumping at local forums this fall said they hoped that Tuesday’s election would mark a transition to a more centrist era.

With downtown development on track and thousands of acres of farmland effectively off-limits because of a 1995 greenbelt initiative, the candidates focused on how to jump-start the city’s lagging economy and plan for regulated growth in coming years.

“This has been kind of a low-key campaign,” said Ken Schmitz, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee. “Because there isn’t really a divisive issue, you don’t have a lot of desire. There’s not a lot of whipping up of emotion.”

Ventura County elections chief Bruce Bradley said only 9% of Ventura’s 63,210 registered voters signed up to cast absentee ballots. The numbers seemed even more dismal at the polls Tuesday. At a polling place on Arcade Street, only 94 people had voted by 1:30 p.m., out of 2,389 registered.

Only Monahan sought reelection to the seven-member council. Incumbents Rosa Lee Measures, Gary Tuttle and Steve Bennett decided not to run again.

In addition to Brennan, Smith and De Paola, vying for council seats were businessman Doug Halter, Ventura County planner Carl Morehouse, motorcycle magazine editor Mike Osborn, researcher Brian Lee Rencher, California Highway Patrol Officer Paul Thompson and engineer Carroll Dean Williams.

Although candidates shied away from growth issues during the campaign, voters still held the curb of suburban sprawl as a top priority.

At Ventura Missionary Church, Art Ross, 58, voted for what he described as an open space preservation ticket.

Ross, who moved from Thousand Oaks just a few months ago, said that although Ventura’s City Council has never feuded as bitterly as the present Thousand Oaks City Council, the issue of open space preservation was just as important in Ventura.

He was so concerned about preservationist Bennett’s departure that he said he called Bennett to get advice on the candidates. He said Bennett’s recommendations, which Ross followed, were Smith, Morehouse, Halter and Brennan.

“What’s on my mind is, who will watch the city the same way Steve Bennett did?” Ross said.

Across town at Community Presbyterian Church on Poli Street, longtime resident Jean Whitman cast her votes for Monahan, Brennan, De Paola and Smith.

“I want to see Ventura be the place it was when I moved here 30 years ago,” said the 56-year-old former art gallery owner. “The streets were safer and people cared about the city.”

Meanwhile, 18-year-old Ventura High School senior Mark Stinson voted in his first election Tuesday afternoon, showing up at the church just after classes got out. His picks: Monahan, Smith, Thompson and De Paola.

“They’re not too focused on the east side,” he said. “There’s already too much stuff out there.”

None of the campaigns in support of the school bonds had any organized opposition. In placing the measures on the ballot, educators in the three districts said they believed that the political climate was right for voters to approve such expenditures.

Since November 1996, half a dozen districts countywide have won multimillion-dollar school bond victories, and many are starting this school year to spend proceeds from the bond sales.

Of the three measures, perhaps no district had more at stake than the Pleasant Valley School District.

Four times since 1991, officials there have asked Camarillo voters for money to help build new schools and shore up existing campuses. And four times, they have been rejected at the polls.

They have come close to victory. Each of the previous measures won clear support from a majority of voters, but each fell just percentage points shy of the two-thirds threshold needed for passage.

With so many bond issues on Tuesday’s ballot, Pleasant Valley officials said they believed that this election could be their last, best chance for generating the money needed to build new schools and solve a range of structural problems.

At polling places Tuesday, some voters seemed to feel that this election was their last, best chance for generating the money needed to build new schools and one could feel the same sense of urgency.

With her 3-year-old son, Kory, tagging along, lifetime Camarillo resident Jean Jacobs cast her ballot in favor of the measure at Dos Caminos School, which would receive a $1.6-million boost if the bond passed.

“I voted yes because our schools really need this money,” said Jacobs, who has a 6-year-old daughter at Los Primeros School. “If you read all the things the measure is going to provide, you can see that every school stands to benefit from this.”

Educators across the county say they have been left with little choice but to appeal to voters for money.

At the Ojai and El Rio districts, officials maintain that without an infusion of cash in this post-Proposition 13 era, they would also have to continue digging into their general funds just to pay for basic upkeep--a move that eats away at educational programs.

Campaign supporters in both districts said the bond money is needed to fix up schools that have fallen deep into disrepair. And they pointed to campuses where ceilings are damaged, paint is peeling and termites are feasting with abandon.

Meanwhile, in the race for three seats on the Ventura school board, all three incumbents battled for months to retain their posts. The challengers were teacher Bill Bateman, facilities director Lou Cunningham, teacher Cynthia Hansen and businessman Dustan Howard.

Like the City Council race, the school board contest was a low-key affair. There was no mudslinging to speak of, and only four of the seven candidates spent any significant cash on the campaign.

But while the campaign has barely stirred the political waters, there is a torrent of issues swirling below the surface and awaiting the winners of Tuesday’s election.

Over the next four years, school board members will face a range of key decisions that will help shape the district’s future and launch it well into the next century.

They must decide how to spend an $81-million bond measure, approved by voters in JuneCQ97 and designed to meet the needs of the next generation of students. There are related issues such as how to absorb a rising tide of youngsters filling schools to capacity.

Board members will also likely have to choose a successor to Supt. Joseph Spirito, who is expected to retire when his contract expires in two years.

Times staff writer Kate Folmar and correspondents Chris Chi, Regina Hong and Richard Warchol contributed to this story.