Oxnard City Council Divided Over Card Club : Gambling: The panel Tuesday will discuss divergent views on the proposed casino.

As the City Council prepares for a decisive vote on bringing a large card club to Oxnard, the five council members are all leaning in different directions, waiting to hear from their constituents.

After a public hearing Tuesday night, the council is expected to either reject gambling clubs outright, invite promoters to submit casino applications or place the issue on the Nov. 2 ballot for voters to decide.

So far, a council majority does not appear to favor any of those options. And councilmen said last week that the strength of public comment at Tuesday’s 7 p.m. hearing could be decisive.

Two councilmen say they tend to favor a casino. Two others either oppose a club or are leaning toward a ballot referendum. The fifth says he definitely favors a November vote by the people.

The council splits this way:

* Mayor Manuel Lopez opposes a club as a corrupting influence and has encouraged residents to show up Tuesday “to stop this threat to the quality of life in Oxnard.”

* Councilman Michael Plisky supports a club for its job and tax benefits if the city can limit approval to a single casino and ensure it is cleanly run. “In and of itself, I don’t see a card club as being a threat,” he has said.

* Councilman Andres Herrera is leaning in favor of a club for tax advantages, but says that could change depending on what he hears Tuesday. “I’m undecided, quite frankly,” he said.

* Councilman Thomas Holden also declares his neutrality, but says “I’d be willing to look at putting it on the ballot if there was a significant split among the public.”

* Councilman Bedford Pinkard says he has no philosophical problem with a casino, but wants the issue on the ballot. “I would like to see the voters make this choice,” he said.

With such a divergence of views, Lopez said the only course likely to receive backing by a council majority Tuesday is a ballot referendum.

“To me the best of all worlds is to kill it,” the mayor said. “But failing that, I’d say let’s just go to an election. I’m certain it would lose.”

There is, in fact, some question about whether the city can legally approve a card club without a referendum.

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, a casino opponent, has said he thinks that Oxnard would violate the legislative intent of state gaming laws if the City Council approves large-scale gambling unilaterally--and he has asked for a state attorney general’s opinion on that point.

City Atty. Gary Gillig has told council members that a referendum is not required and that they can endorse a casino by amending an existing ordinance that allows charitable gambling.

However, the overriding issue before the council remains whether Oxnard should welcome Ventura County’s first large card club. As now proposed, it would be one of the largest in California with 50 tables and 50,000 square feet of casino space.

Promoters say a club would lure 1,000 customers a day, produce 300 to 600 jobs and provide $500,000 to $1.2 million in gambling taxes for the city. Another $500,000 could go to charities, they say.

Opponents say a casino would lure criminals, tarnish the city’s reputation, encourage chronic gamblers and take money away from the group most likely to gamble--poor residents trying to get rich quick.

An overflow crowd is expected for the Tuesday evening debate in the City Council chambers.

“We expect a very large crowd,” Gillig said. “I understand there’s lots of petitioning going on in the community.”

After months of little discussion, opponents have been active since the council set the June 22 public hearing two weeks ago, recruiting churches and neighborhood organizations to block a casino.

The city clerk’s office received 287 cards and letters of opposition to a card club last week, about 90% on uniform postcards apparently distributed by opponents.

The Chamber of Commerce--a potential center of support for a casino--also weighed in last week, citing the potential economic benefits of a club and asking the City Council to fully evaluate casino proposals before making a final decision.

And former Councilman Dorothy Maron--a casino opponent--has added a new issue to the card club debate, saying in an interview that she thinks Plisky should abstain from voting Tuesday because of his relationship with an Oxnard political consultant who has worked for a casino promoter.

Maron said Plisky has a conflict of interest because the manager of his mayoral campaign last fall, Donald Gunn, became an employee of a casino promoter after that race and may still represent a card club promoter.

“Because Mr. Plisky has an on-going relationship with Mr. Gunn, and Mr. Gunn became a representative of the club, there is a conflict just on its face,” Maron said.

However, the former councilwoman--who sometimes battled with Plisky before she lost a reelection bid in November--said she does not believe that a Plisky vote on the casino issue would be illegal, because Plisky apparently would not gain financially from the vote.

“I don’t really care if the city attorney will say, ‘No, it’s not a legal conflict,’ ” she said. “It’s still a conflict, and (Plisky) should not vote.”

Plisky did not return telephone calls last week and could not be reached for comment. But in a May interview, he said that he and Gunn are not financially tied and that Gunn’s involvement in the casino issue is not important to him.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Plisky said. “I’m not interested in that aspect of this. I’m interested in who’s going to come in with the best proposal if we decide to do one.”

Gunn, 38, a consultant who has run numerous Oxnard political campaigns and lobbied for several developers since the 1970s, ran the campaigns of both Plisky and former Councilwoman Geraldine Furr last fall.

He signed on with casino promoter Timothy M. Carey early this year and worked for him until Carey abandoned his casino plan after his felony lewd conduct record was publicized in May. The promoter taking over Carey’s casino site said last week that he may retain Gunn as his local consultant.

Gunn could not be reached for comment last week.

Council members Herrera and Lopez said they would not consider a Plisky vote Tuesday as a conflict of interest.

“In terms of perception, (Maron) may have a point,” Herrera said. “But just because they’re friends doesn’t mean he should be precluded from this. The issue is, does he stand to gain financially?”

Herrera said that Maron--like Plisky, Lopez and Furr--accepted large campaign contributions from casino backers last fall, but she apparently did not see that as a conflict of interest.

“This is a red herring to draw attention away from her situation,” Herrera said.

Maron said she is speaking out because she has changed her mind on card clubs and now opposes them. She cited a pattern of corruption in several other Southern California cities that have casinos.

“It makes the city dirty,” she said.

Joining Maron against casinos is another former councilwoman, Jane McCormick Tolmach, who was mayor in the mid-1970s.

Tolmach has spent the last two weeks talking with ministers, neighborhood leaders and newspaper editors, mounting a campaign against a gambling club.

“I’ve found an overwhelming hostility toward the project,” Tolmach said. “People are just up in arms. . . . There is this attitude that people always want to dump something they don’t want in Oxnard. People are really resentful of that.”

James Bain, pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Oxnard, is working with Tolmach. He said the ministers of about 10 churches in the city have come out against a casino because of gambling’s potential harm to families.

“I preached on it last Sunday,” Bain said. “I told the story of Jacob and Esau, where Esau trades in his future inheritance for short-term pleasure. . . . Oxnard is being tempted to trade in its future image for a short-term hope for a few dollars.”

But casino supporters say such arguments ignore the reality that gambling is already prevalent in society--through off-track betting, the lottery and church bingo. But Oxnard gains little from it.

“I don’t think we’re talking about morality here,” said Pat Plew, owner of a copying business and member of the Chamber of Commerce’s executive board.

“I don’t think we’re talking about vice or religion,” he said. “I think we’re talking about a business that creates jobs and revenue, period. . . . As long as it’s going to take place, let’s take a share of it and put it to good use in the community.”

The chamber itself has not come out in favor of a card club. But its board of directors voted 13 to 5 last week to encourage the City Council to carefully analyze casino projects to see if their economic benefits outweigh their drawbacks.

“I personally feel that the City Council needs to look at the projects, and who’s proposing them, before making a decision,” Chamber president John Waters said. “Looking at only the public comment is not a good idea.”