After 16 years of planning, negotiations and compromise, Ventura County is finally getting its veterans’ home on Dec. 4.

At 60 beds, the $26.5 million facility near Saticoy is much smaller than the originally proposed 400 beds, but the California Department of Veterans’ Affairs is just glad the project came to fruition at all.

The facility’s funding and construction were linked to a similar project in Lancaster that was behind schedule, and it “got held up in appropriations due to political wrangling,” said project spokesperson Dawn Dyer. “The Ventura and Lancaster homes were both scaled back, with the balance of the beds and funding going to West Los Angeles.”

Voters passed a measure on the 2000 state ballot that authorized a $50 million bond for construction of veterans’ homes — funding that specifies the Saticoy and Lancaster facilities in the text but requires them to open simultaneously.

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