Advisory Ballot Dodges Responsibility, Solves Nothing

For more than 20 years I served as chairman of the Las Posas Citizens Committee and, except for the last year of its life, it worked in harmony and made recommendations to the Board of Supervisors that were unanimously adopted. Support was strong for maintaining the agricultural integrity of the valley.

About six years ago that began to change. First, Knightsbridge, which had been rejected many times, was allowed to go into screening for urban development, something that would have been unthinkable previously.

Then something happened to the California 118 safety committee. A number of fixes were recommended to improve the safety of the highway but almost none of them have been followed through by Caltrans. The only thing that emerged was the fix for the intersection of California 118 and Somis Road, which has nothing to do with safety but is being pushed by some under that guise. The community has rightly been upset by these changing policies.

The countywide advisory ballot measure proposed by Supervisor Judy Mikels and endorsed last week by a majority of the board would almost be a nonissue except for its prostitution of the process. It has no policy objective and will not affect the outcome. It is simply an attempt to belittle a community of people who have reasonable concerns about a project and have been frustrated in their attempts to be heard.

No one in the community wants to leave the intersection alone. Many attempts have been made to engage Caltrans in a discussion of a more moderate solution. Plans for a scaled-down version were drawn up and reviewed by a respected traffic engineer, but they have not been considered by Caltrans as a reasonable alternative. The reason may be that this design would work almost as well but would not fit into the larger plan of four-laning California 118 and Lewis Road.

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Two years ago, we heard that four lanes would not be built in our lifetime, and now the Ventura County Transportation Commission is talking about beginning the process.

Four-laning has been in the works for some time. With the intersection planned at the Ventura Freeway and Lewis Road, the widening of Santa Clara Avenue to four lanes and the massive intersection at California 1 and Rice Avenue, we expect the next project to be the widening of California 118. The community has said that a full environmental impact report should be prepared if the intersection proposed by Caltrans is going to be built. If not, then build a scaled-down version that will fix the problem but is more compatible with the two-lane highway.

If the issue is only an intersection at Somis, is it appropriate that a county referendum occur? It seems to confirm that the much larger plan is at stake. A good follow-up would be to put up referendums on all the other major congested highways. Thoughtful debate and innovative solutions are called for to free up our congested highways.

How would Ojai feel if the county voted on a plan to widen Highway 33? Or the residents of Santa Paula if the county were asked about the Toland Road landfill?

It’s an insult to the citizenry to simplify complicated issues like this and put them on the ballot. Typically it is the citizenry, frustrated by political inaction, that produces an initiative. Now we have the supervisors considering the same method--the same board that wrung its hands over the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative and the same board that is declaring the tobacco funds initiative illegal because it is special-interest driven.

This advisory vote is intended to relieve a bottleneck in the process that is causing a bottleneck on the highway. I suggest that the obstruction is not coming from the community but from those unwilling to listen or engage. We expect our elected representatives to help us work toward solutions that benefit everyone, including the local area.

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The larger issue here, which Supervisors Mikels, Susan Lacey and Kathy Long failed to grasp, is their abdication of responsibility of leadership in solving these complex problems. Ballot measures tend to be oversimplified or special-interest oriented. We elect individuals to represent us in working out solutions that take into account local as well as regional concerns. Their votes to put this advisory measure on the ballot should be a wake-up call to other communities with local concerns that might be put to a countywide referendum.

Supervisor John Flynn, who returned for the day from a trip to Mexico to weigh in on this important issue, was heroic in defending the democratic process. The argument was framed in the context of opening up input to the wider electorate who may or may not use the highway and who may or may not know the issues involved. Supervisors Flynn and Frank Schillo voted against the ballot measure not because they don’t want to see the intersection fixed but because they understand the long-term effect of this method of governance, or lack thereof.

Passage of this measure would mean that special interests have found a way to obliterate the legitimate voice and procedural rights of concerned, responsible local communities everywhere.