As a cost-cutting measure, the Board of Supervisors is considering closing the East County Courthouse and the jail and booking facility at the East Valley Sheriff’s Station. Are such cuts advisable and, should they occur, what would be the impact on eastern Ventura County?

Greg Stratton, Mayor, Simi Valley Obviously I don’t think that the cuts are advisable. Once again, this shows that the county would prefer to service the Ventura area and not the east county. My position is that all of the residents of the county deserve the same level of services and if there are going to be cutbacks there should be cutbacks across the board, across the county, and not in any one particular area. (Closing) the sheriff’s station would have an impact by forcing the Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Moorpark officers to drive all the way to Ventura to book their prisoners and, again, it doesn’t impact the police departments in Oxnard and Ventura as much. Historically, every time services have needed to be cut, they have withdrawn from the east county and consolidated back to Ventura. In fact the east county contributes about 50% of the county’s property taxes. A few years ago there was talk that (east county cities) should secede from the county and form our own county, and it was based on the rationale that we are not getting our fair share of services.

Paul Lawrason, Mayor, Moorpark I object to both of those suggestions, or recommendations. It has not been very long since the East County Courthouse was established and people are just beginning to realize that those services are available to us. I understand the budgetary reasons for it, but this is an essential service that is provided in that courthouse and I think it’s necessary that it stay in place. Our citizens in the east county, particularly those living in the extreme end of the east county, have a long haul to Ventura to get those services, so I think that it’s absolutely essential that they be retained here. As far as the East Valley Sheriff’s Station, that’s a concern of mine as well, because I think closing that would lead to either more cost to our city or less time for our police to be on the street. If they have a booking they’d have to go downtown (to Ventura) and that would take them out of service for two hours or more, which would result in less service for us. We’re talking about what I call essential services here, core services that have to do with justice and law and order.

Vicky Howard, Supervisor, Ventura County Number one, as one of the East County representatives, I am going to be fighting not only to maintain the services that we have, but to expand those services. It’s going to be a tough job. We get nothing but bad news from Sacramento about the funds that will be available. But both of these facilities are connected with law enforcement, which is a high priority in all of Ventura County. We need to keep the courthouse open, we need the probation services that are there. In order to support the cost of the building, we will be moving Public Social Services Agency into the building shortly and we already have expanded (the) building and safety (department) there. I don’t feel it would be cost effective to close this building down. The East County Jail, I feel, is very important to maintain because every time we have to send an officer with a prisoner to the county jail we take an officer off the street. It’s very important to keep as many of those officers as possible on the street doing their job.

John Flynn, Supervisor, Ventura County We should not close these facilities, we should not stop these services to the eastern part of Ventura County. It’s been the policy of the Board of Supervisors for some time now to equalize services as much as possible, that is to say to make the services in the east end of the county equal to those in the west end. As a matter of practicality, however, the county seat is located in the city of Ventura. And since the county seat is located here, most of the business is conducted here at the Government Center. However, I see in the long term that someday there will be an additional county center located in the eastern part of Ventura County which will provide services equally to the people in the east and the people in the west. The two proposed cuts seem to me to be essential services that should remain. If you close the courthouse in the east end, people will still have to receive those services and so the public will be inconvenienced. There’s still going to be a cost, regardless of who pays it. There are certain things that you just don’t do away with, and these are two of them.

Paul Miller, Police chief, Simi Valley It may be a cost-cutting move for the county, but it would be a cost-increasing move for the city of Simi Valley. It will cause us to spend more time with our officers out of the city transporting prisoners to Ventura. The biggest concern to me is that the time spent in transporting prisoners will take away from time spent patrolling Simi Valley. Each trip to Ventura will take an additional two hours over what it does now to go to the East Valley station. So, what it will do is deprive the citizens of Simi Valley two hours of patrol each time we have to transport a prisoner to Ventura. In 1992, we booked 926 prisoners at East Valley. If we assume that we book the same number in 1993, and we have to go to Ventura, then we have determined that will cause the community to lose 1,852 hours of officer patrol time, which equates to the services of one full-time police officer for a year. The county may be saving money, but they’re not going to be saving Simi Valley any money. What it represents is the ability of one governmental agency to shift expenses to another governmental agency.