Oxnard to Pay $630,000 for Downtown Site

Despite being sued for failing to set aside redevelopment money to shelter its poor and homeless, the city of Oxnard on Tuesday agreed to spend $630,000 to buy a downtown parcel it plans to resell to developers.

The Oxnard City Council, sitting as the Redevelopment Agency, opted to buy a 21,000-square-foot lot in the 700 block of South A Street with money that critics said should be spent on the needy.

The purchase includes an existing 12,300-square-foot building that now houses the Center for Employment Training, which will be relocated for an additional $75,000. Another $20,000 will be spent to demolish the structure, bringing the total costs to $725,000.

The acquisition adds to the downtown property already purchased by the Redevelopment Agency. City officials want to assemble a series of lots that would attract an investor who would revitalize the impoverished and decaying area.

“There’s a couple of banks that are interested in moving into or expanding downtown,” Councilman Michael Plisky said in an interview before Tuesday’s meeting.

“That brings jobs and economic vitality to downtown for the business community, and we need that,” he said. “But in order to attract this kind of development and growth, we need to clean out all the blight.”

But the purchase angered poverty-law attorney Eileen McCarthy, who in August filed suit against the city for its failure to set aside redevelopment money to help house the poor.

State law requires redevelopment agencies to set aside 20% of their tax increment--the increased tax paid on property within the redevelopment area as its value rises--to fund low- and moderate-income housing projects.

But Oxnard, like many cities, has deferred the set-aside payments until 1996.

“How can this city say it cannot afford to set aside 20% of its redevelopment dollars to house the poor and homeless, and then make a decision to spend $630,000?” asked McCarthy, an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance. “I do not find the acquisition of this parcel among the obligations of those (affordable housing) programs.”

Plisky called McCarthy’s lawsuit “a joke” and said it was a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“There’s no need for a lawsuit,” he said. “The council is on top of that problem, and we are legally in line. But we are going to improve that position even beyond what we’re required to do.”

McCarthy alleged in the suit, which is pending in Ventura County Superior Court, that the Oxnard Redevelopment Agency erred when it decided in June to delay setting aside $539,000 for affordable housing.

Because the city had delayed similar payments for several years, the June decision brought its obligation for low-income housing to nearly $4 million.

According to one city official, the agency can adhere to the low-income housing requirements by offering land to builders of affordable homes.

Richard Maggio, Oxnard’s community development director, told Redevelopment Agency members that the city “does have a considerable amount of land that far exceeds the value of the set-aside requirements.”

Maggio said Oxnard could conceivably offer the land at reduced rates to developers, who then would build the required number of low-income homes and satisfy state redevelopment requirements.

But that proposal was also met with skepticism by McCarthy.

“I’m not at all certain that’s legal,” she said after the meeting. “I don’t know of anywhere that’s been done.”