Builder Instigated Justice Probe, Mayor Says : Latino: He says federal voting-rights investigation in Santa Paula is result of developer’s initial failure to secure funding for project. Company declines comment.

SANTA PAULA —  The mayor of this small agricultural city said Thursday he believes the federal voting-rights investigation that threatens to overturn the local electoral system was spurred by a disgruntled developer who was angry with the City Council for its reluctance to build low-income housing.

Mayor Jim Garfield said he believes the Department of Justice probe did not arise as a result of a grass-roots protest by disenfranchised members of the Latino community.

He said in an interview that he is convinced it is a direct outgrowth of a campaign of division waged by executives of Saticoy-based Cabrillo Economic Development Corp., which in 1996 lost funding for an apartment complex it hoped to build in a blighted area of the city.

“They eventually lost the approvals for the project and since that time we have seen, over and over again, things that appear to be motivated from that issue,” Garfield said in a written statement to The Times.

“It appears to me to be an orchestrated attempt to divide a community and not for the benefit of the community but for the benefit of a few persons,” Garfield said.

In airing his suspicions, Garfield broke the silence that has prevailed among the mostly white City Council since word of the Justice Department probe broke several weeks ago. In a letter to the city, the Justice Department has said the at-large system of voting in Santa Paula prevents Latinos from electing their candidates. The department said it is prepared to sue the city unless the council adopts a district-election process.

Cabrillo’s project manager, Jesse Ornelas, declined to be interviewed and would not say whether he instigated the probe. The corporation’s executive director, Rodney Fernandez, was out of town and did not return a request for an interview.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said the department does not identify complainants in civil-rights investigations.

Nonetheless, Garfield believes the problems started in 1996, when Cabrillo came to the city with a plan to build a low-income project on Garcia Street on the southeast side of the city. The majority-white City Council at first turned down Cabrillo’s request, then later agreed to buy the lot at a reduced price. But that happened only after protracted negotiations that bitterly divided residents over whether more low-income housing was good for the city. Ultimately, a failure to secure state funding killed the project. By then, however, Latino housing activists were convinced the majority of the City Council was against spending redevelopment dollars to build low-income housing.

Tensions escalated last year, when the City Council approved a massive annexation plan that could have quadrupled the size of the city and, activists feared, permanently changed the city’s makeup and atmosphere.

In addition to new industry, the annexation aimed to build expensive homes to attract thousands of new, higher-income residents. Latino activists complained the new residents would be mostly white and rich and would have little connection to a city that is two-thirds Latino, and one in which more than 50% of the residents qualify for low-income housing.

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The annexation plan did not guarantee any new low-income housing. That also angered many Latino leaders, who complained that a lack of affordable housing forces low-wage families to live in crowded conditions or in dilapidated structures.

In January 1998, Ornelas wrote the city planning department a strongly worded 10-page letter criticizing the annexation plans as anti-Latino.

“For over 100 years, the Latino community has had virtually no political say or influence in Santa Paula,” Ornelas wrote.

“We are just now beginning to realize the voting potential to impact positively the needs of the Latino community,” the letter continued.

“It is safe to assume that the new families purchasing the costly homes will be mostly of Anglo-American descent,” he wrote. “The impact . . . could result in setting back the Latino community in Santa Paula, politically and ethnically, for the next 100 years.

“This has Civil Rights implications.”

Within months--the Justice Department will say only that the investigation began in the spring of 1998--Latino activists in Santa Paula were being interviewed and department officials were traveling to the city to inspect voting records.

And in a letter to the city earlier this summer, a top Justice Department lawyer argued as Ornelas did that the controversial annexation would further dilute Latino political power.

Garfield, a real estate broker, said he is not speaking out to discredit Ornelas, or Cabrillo, but to show politics is as much a part of the ongoing controversy as any perceived lack of Latino voting power.

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He said he has been hurt by accusations that he and other council members are racist, and that he doesn’t believe the core group that instigated the probe was truly driven by concerns over voter equality.

“To me this has no merit at all,” he said. “The Hispanic population is spread throughout our community and no one is denying anyone’s voting rights.”

As to whether other members of the council agree with him, Garfield said he is not speaking for anyone but himself. Several other council members have declined to speculate on the record about the controversy, but Laura Flores Espinosa, the only Latino on the council, said she doesn’t think any one person or organization got the probe going.

On one point, Garfield is in agreement with Cabrillo. He said he feels more low-income housing should be made available in the city, but not through upfront city subsidies and not until more high-end housing is built so as to draw more money into city tax coffers.

No one has yet to take credit for contacting the Justice Department. Many Latino leaders say they don’t know how the probe began; others say they won’t give interviews because they don’t want to compromise their ability to testify in court if the city refuses to negotiate a settlement and the Justice Department sues.

Although the city tried to annex the land, the county agency that oversees development has refused to allow the full plan, and the city is appealing.

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In the meantime, the project that Garfield thinks started the probe is going forward after all. Cabrillo has independently secured funding for its apartment project, called Casa Garcia, and could begin work later this month.

Ramon Rodriguez, a Latino activist who supports the probe, said he doesn’t know who first complained to the Justice Department, but whoever it was referred investigators to him early on for an interview.

“The complaint didn’t begin with me,” he said, “but it probably began with friends of mine.”