Residents Oppose Conservation Corps’ Move to Nearby Site

The planned move of a youth jobs program to a field near Camarillo is facing opposition from homeowners nervous about the young workers and slow-growth supporters demanding more information about the project.

Officials with the California Conservation Corps say they would like to move to a 10-acre complex near Beardsley and Wright roads in mid-2003. The 48,000-square-foot campus would be built adjacent to the California Youth Authority on state land, officials said.

Some opponents of the $10-million project, mostly residents of nearby Sterling Hills Estates, said they will circulate a petition against the development, which is at the start of the public review process.

Janice Alpert, who lives with her husband on Sterling Hills Drive, just north of the proposed site, said she moved to the neighborhood for the serenity of surrounding farmland and orange groves. The thought of that being disturbed is upsetting, she said.

“It’s unbelievable. We have to go around and put fliers out there,� Alpert said. “It’s not the facility; it’s the people that are working there that is a concern.�

California Conservation Corps is a state-run program that hires young men and women to work for one year on a variety of environmental and community projects and to respond to emergencies such as forest fires, floods and earthquakes. Half of the corps members, who live on campus, do not have high school diplomas and learn job skills.

Residents of the facility must be between the ages of 18 and 23 and cannot be on probation or parole or a have a violent felony record, said Paul Magie, who oversees the local office. Each resident is drug-tested, fingerprinted and can be kicked out of the program for violating rules of the corps, he said.

“I don’t know what more you can do than that,� Magie said. “Does that mean they can have a record? Yes, they can have a record, but they cannot have a violent felony.�

A public meeting to go over the project with residents is set Tuesday at the Camarillo Community Center.

Officials say there is no need for homeowners in the area to worry.

The program has operated at the site of the former Camarillo State Hospital since 1977, Magie said. In that time, there have been no major incidents, he said.

“They are not prisoners,� Magie said of the participants. “They can go into the city of Camarillo.�

Others remained unconvinced.

“They are concerned about the quality and the caliber of the people involved in the program,� Lisa Rea, a property manager for the Sterling Hills area, said of homeowners who attended a recent meeting during which Magie explained the proposal.

The jobs program needs to move because its lease will expire in June 2003, and the land’s new tenant, Cal State Channel Islands, wants the space for university programs, Magie said.

Because the project would be built on state-owned property, now a dirt field, a farmland preservation initiative passed by voters in 1998 would not apply, state and county officials said.

That hasn’t stopped slow-growth advocates and county planning officials from asking for more information on the project and warning of legal obstacles that could delay construction.

A state law that went into effect Jan. 1 requires that all service agreements between cities and outside agencies be approved by a county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees land annexations.

The proposed campus, which would house a maximum of 84 residents and 35 staff members, would rely on Camarillo for water hookups and Oxnard for sewer facilities. Ventura County’s LAFCO executive director, Everett Millais, said he has received little information about the project.

Conservation officials may not be aware that LAFCO has some authority to approve or deny the project, Millais said. The growth-control law passed by voters to restrict development of farmland “would be taken into account,� he said.

The commission filed a lawsuit in February to prevent Oxnard from extending water, sewer and public safety services to a proposed elementary school site outside the city limits.

Conservation corps project director Richard Myren said he was unaware of LAFCO’s new oversight role.