Moving Oxnard Forward

Imagine if City Hall hosted a voter forum and invited only one side to the debate. You'd think something so corrupt could never happen …

… but we’re talking about Oxnard City Hall.

On Wednesday, February 5 the Inter-Neighborhood Council Organization (INCO) –– an organization chartered by the Oxnard City Council –– hosted in City Council chambers what was advertised on printed flyers as an “Oxnard Voters’ Forum.”

Measure B, the so called “Government Accountability and Ethics Act”, is a defective incumbent protection scheme written at the direction of City Manager Alexander Nguyen, and placed on the March 2020 primary ballot by the Oxnard City Council. 

It is designed to extend city council terms, handcuff the council’s political challengers and kneecap several citizen-sponsored initiatives qualified for the November 2020 ballot.

To lure you into voting for it, Measure B includes false promises of reform on topics that the City’s taxpayer-funded polling said the voters would like to hear. And the City Manager is also using your tax money for a marketing campaign that includes glossy mail pieces.

What Oxnard City Hall attempted in court yesterday was sad, though not surprising.

Believing they'd have a better chance to defend a pattern of illegal utility revenue transfers if the opposing side wasn't allowed to present evidence, they asked a judge to disallow the evidence we have collected.

During its January 21, 2020 meeting, the City Council did something dastardly -- they adopted strict term limits not because they want them to be the law, but they did it as a political tactic to kill strict term limits.

Yes, you read that correctly! Let me explain...

A Hollywood script writer couldn’t make this stuff up.

Last Wednesday the Oxnard City Council REFUSED to perform their legal obligation to place three initiatives on the ballot that were signed by over 12,000 Oxnard residents. Oh, and they’re suing Moving Oxnard Forward President Aaron Starr ... again!

As we noted in our previous article:

In an attempt to circumvent public disclosure requirements under the Public Records Act, Oxnard city management is claiming that the results of a taxpayer-funded public opinion poll are a “trade secret,” and are refusing to disclose the full information to the public. 

Though the city denied most of our requests to see this information, they did begrudgingly provide us with a few selected documents.

Here's some of what we learned.

In an attempt to circumvent public disclosure requirements under the Public Records Act, Oxnard city management is claiming that the results of a taxpayer-funded public opinion poll are a “trade secret,” and are refusing to disclose that information to the public.

Our five government reform measures are destined for the November 2020 ballot.

Their path to the ballot necessarily involves a trip through a city council meeting. At its December 17 meeting, the City Council did not adopt our measures, nor did they vote to put them on the November 2020 ballot. Instead, they voted to delay their decision for 30 days until after they conduct an internal study on all five of our measures.

We received some great news last week.  Four out of five of our ballot measures have already qualified for the November 2020 ballot, and the fifth one is on track to qualify but will take until January to complete.

Over the summer and early fall we worked diligently to gather 8,401 valid signatures for each of five different reform measures to be placed on the Oxnard ballot in November 2020.

On Monday, October 28, we submitted over 62,000 signatures, more than 12,000 signatures on each of the 5 petitions!

If we’re right, Oxnard is about to become the first city in California – and perhaps the country – to have its citizens qualify five ballot measures at the same time.