A forgotten piece of Ventura County history (plus a few reporting updates)
The Sespe Dams that never were, and a new venue for the housing fight.
Greetings, readers! Today I’m going to share updates on a few stories I’m following — and a piece of Ventura County history.
First, if you didn’t see my latest story, an update on homelessness in Ojai and the City’s $12.7 million grant to build permanent supportive housing, check it out! I’ll note that much of this story is behind a paywall (it required about four weeks of work). If you’re interested in a free trial subscription, please send me a note at andra.belknap@gmail.com.
Speaking of our unhoused community — Amy (“Ames”) Weiss, a new member of the camp’s management team, led a community engagement meeting at Kent Hall on July 30th. It was the first time I saw city staff, elected officials, HELP of Ojai staff, law enforcement, City Hall neighbors, and campers come together to openly discuss the goings-on at Ojai’s Tent Town.
During the meeting, we learned that one City Hall camper has moved to Ojai’s Mesa Farm transitional housing project. (Check out this story to learn more about Mesa Farm.)
And while the City of Ojai (with assistance from the Ojai Valley Board of Realtors) continues the search for a property on which to build a state-funded housing project for Ojai’s chronically homeless community members, I’m turning my attention to a different housing story. This one stars the Ojai Unified School District (OUSD).
On July 11th, the five-member OUSD Board of Trustees voted unanimously to pursue a workforce housing development on their 414 E. Ojai Ave property.1 To be clear, the Board is at the very beginning of this process, and there’s no development proposal before them at this point. As readers of my OUSD, Wtf!! series will recall, this is not the first time the School Board has attempted to develop its downtown property.
Notably, the July 11th School Board meeting hosted a crew of City Council regulars, many of whom actively opposed the controversial Becker Group/Ojai Bungalows development agreement.
“I am opposed to the school district taking additional steps in pursuit of development of this site. I ask that you understand that this community just came off of a brutal and protracted fight with local real estate speculators,” said local pilates instructor Tara Jeffrey — she’s the woman who filed a referendum to scuttle the Becker development agreement after it was approved by the Ojai City Council in 2022. “Though our efforts resulted in a better outcome… in the end, greed prevailed over community. Now, here comes our publicly funded school district leadership asserting that they too want to potentially engage in the socially and environmentally destructive gentrification of Ojai… We see where you’re going here, as we’ve been down this road before.”
My friends, it appears that a familiar battle may be picking up again. Within the next few weeks, I’ll issue an update to my OUSD, Wtf?! series, one that focuses on the proposed workforce housing development, OUSD’s finances, and the growth areas in the district (yes, there are growth areas!)
And with that, let’s take a trip into the past.
The Sespe Dams: 32 Votes that Altered the History of Ventura County
Earlier this year, I wrote a story about John Taft — the founder of Taft Gardens and Nature Preserve — for the Ojai Quarterly. The occasion? His 90th birthday.
Taft is quite a character. Born in 1934 in Ventura, he is a 20th-century conservationist with a deep belief in fate. I had the opportunity to interview Taft this spring while we cruised the Gardens in his golf cart.
Taft in the driver’s seat, he recounted the story of the 1966 effort to build two dams in Sespe Creek — which is famously undammed to this day. That story is excerpted below. You can read the full profile here.
While Taft settled in Ojai, Ventura County was developing — rapidly. The area’s natural resources — oil, open land, fertile soil, and water — were highly valuable. As the Ventura County Star-Free Press commented at the time, the area is home to “the best-undammed water source left in Southern California.”
“There was a movement to build two dams in the Sespe Creek,” Taft explained. “They said, ‘We have to have more water to feed our citrus trees in Oxnard,’ basically.” In 1966, the United Water Conservation District sought voter approval of a $90 million “Sespe Dam Project.” Here’s how the Ventura County Star-Free Press covered the project at the time:
“The kind of vote United would like would be what the county’s only other Bureau of Reclamation-built project got back on Nov. 29, 1955. On that day, voters of West Ventura and the Ventura River Valley went to the polls to give a thumping 30 to 1 majority, more than 8,000 votes ‘yes’ and only 271 ‘no,’ to a similar contract to build the Casitas Dam project for the Ventura River Municipal Water District.”
Taft, then the leader of the Ventura Sierra Club, was predictably concerned about the Sespe’s resident bird of prey: the California condor. “The condors nested in the [Sespe],” Taft explained. “As you built the dam, you were going to destroy the condor.”
He also recognized local political realities: at the time, the condor’s plight didn’t necessarily move voters. In alliance with environmentalists like Gene Marshall and local Audubon groups, Taft formed an organization he thought would resonate with the electorate: Taxpayers Against the Sespe Project.
Taxpayers Against the Sespe Project spread their message in the Star-Free Press, arguing in advertisement form that the project was a “taxpayer boondoggle” that wouldn’t bring the prosperity United was promising.
March 15, 1966, the day of the special election, Taft and friends took their message directly to the voters. “[Gene Marshall]2 and I rented a megaphone on a car and drove up and down the streets,” he remembered. Taft and Marshall made announcements like, “You're going to have higher taxes: vote no on this scandalous operation!”
The next day, initial vote totals revealed a narrow defeat of the project. The final count showed a razor-thin margin of 32 votes. A recount later confirmed the proposed dams’ demise: 7,499 votes in favor and 7,531 votes against.
Sespe Creek remains dam-free to this day. As the Star-Free Press observed in 1966, “The California Condor… doesn’t vote, but has friends who do.”
And that’s how thirty-two votes altered the history of Ventura County.
Read the full story here.
The Board aims to utilize its new rights under a new California law which allows school districts to build workforce housing (51% of which must be designated “affordable”) on district property.
Gene Marshall later had the Gene Marshall-Piedra Blanca trail named in his honor.
Thank you for this important information. Can you also relate the contribution made by Alistair Coyne and Keep the Sespe Wild? I appreciate your relating the good side of John Taft. I didn’t know.