Ventura County coastal town divided on name: ‘Port’ or ‘Beach’? Voters will now decide whether to keep ‘Port’ or ‘Beach’
A majority of voters here have answered a question that has for years been swirling through the community: should the town of Ventura use one name or the other?
The city chose to continue referring to its harbor as Port of Ventura in the 1970s, long before the city of Newport Beach, the town of Newport Beach, and now even the city of Laguna Beach, in the heart of Orange County, chose to use Beach.
But on Tuesday, Aug. 21, when Ventura residents will cast their ballots in a local referendum concerning the Town Planner’s Report, a second proposal is on the ballot. Voters will also consider Proposition B, which would designate the city’s harbor as “Beach” even though that spelling is not officially used for the harbor by the city, and Proposition E, which would create the same separation between the two names.
The wording of the town planner’s report, which voters will receive in November, says “HARBOR — A short section of the Newport Beach Harborfront District” — though the report also names the city’s other Harbor District as Newport Beach Harbor. Both are separate sections of the city’s harbor, with their own municipal governments.
And while the names of the districts are separated on the map, the lines they show appear to have been drawn based on the locations of the harbor’s other public beaches — the Harbor District’s beaches are a mile to the north and south of the city’s commercial downtown — and not on the town’s own harbor waters.
The question is whether to continue to use “Port” or “Beach” when referring to the city’s harbor.
Voters can vote ”yes”, ”no”, or ”I don’t know”, which would allow the town to keep using either.
Voters who choose ”no”, or “Do Not Know”, would be replaced by their ballot box with another