Thank You, Ventura

Saturday was a fabulous day here in Ventura. First of all, it was a gorgeous day, and I had a wonderful run along the beach in the afternoon. Then there was the Holiday Street Fair – a longtime tradition we at the city have successfully turned over to the Downtown Ventura Partnership and other private sponsors. Just after sundown, I joined Santa Claus, Father Tom from the Mission – and a huge throng of people – in lighting up the Mission’s two Christmas trees, which by the way are the tallest Christmas trees in the United States. Then we all adjourned to the intersection of Main and California, where fake snow fell while we all danced and City Hall flashed with revolving, dramatic colors.

In other words, it was a great day to be the Mayor of this town. And all through it I kept thinking to myself something I have thought so many times over the years: This town can do things that other towns just can’t do!

It’s been easy to forget this during our recent hard times, when a lot of people have been focused on what we can’t do or aren’t doing or can’t afford to do. But as I stepped down as Mayor and a member of the City Council on Monday night, I wasn’t thinking about what we can’t do. I was thinking about all the things we can do – and all the things we do successfully on a regular basis.

I guess I could say a lot of the usual things that politicians say when they leave office – thanks for the privilege of serving, I am proud of what we accomplished, I’m humbled by all of this. (Actually, I did say all these things Monday night.) But what I really want to say is this: I’m the luckiest guy in the world because I got to be on the Ventura City Council for eight years and I got to be Mayor of Ventura for two years.

Things have been really tough in the last couple of years, so I think it’s important to understand what the situation was back in 2003, when I first ran for the City Council. We were in the middle of a divisive public debate over what to do about the Serra Cross, located on what was then city property in Grant Park. We had just lived through a divisive election over a very large proposed development project in the hillsides. Indeed, we had just been through three bruising decades of divisive growth battles, which had led to numerous ballot initiatives, wild swings back and forth in our political leadership, and the premature retirement or defeat of any number of councilmembers over the previous decade. Oh, yes, and by the way the City budget had been running in the red for the previous three years.

In those days, City Hall had a reputation for being opaque, not transparent, and not very responsive. In fact, one of the reasons I ran was because at that time it seemed to me that the only way to have true influence over the City’s direction was to be one of the seven members of the City Council. Paradoxically, I wanted to become one of those seven people in order to change that situation.We’ve tackled all those problems pretty successfully. And we’ve done it by staying focused on the fact that, at City Hall, everything we do is related to one of three overarching goals:

-- Enduring prosperity

-- A high quality of life

-- A strong sense of community

It’s been very hard to keep focused on those three things with the economic downturn and the resulting budget difficulties in the last two or three years. But I think that we have accomplished two important things in the last two to four years.

First, we’ve laid the foundation for future prosperity. As I have said many times, to be successful in the long run, all cities must constantly evolve economically. Ventura is no exception. Our traditional reliance on oil, agriculture, government, and a few other sectors will continue to provide a base of employment but will not carry us through to another generation of true prosperity. So we must constantly work at helping our businesses grow and encourage new high-growth businesses to locate in Ventura. We’ve laid a very good foundation for that – not just with out tech effort and our incubator, but by becoming more business-friendly without compromising our quality of life. We have restored positive relations with our Chamber of Commerce. We helped push through the $350 million expansion of Community Memorial Hospital. We’ve cleaned up our permitting processes. And, perhaps most important, we’ve just about eradicated the decades-old idea that Ventura is anti-business. This foundation will help us tremendously in the years ahead.

And second, we’ve learned how to work together as a community to get things done. In the old days, if you wanted to get something done in Ventura, the path to success was simple: You lobbied the City Council until you got four votes committing the City to take the lead on the project and pay for the whole thing. But that’s not a sustainable model for the future – not financially, certainly, but also not in community-building terms. Communities succeed not because the city government takes everything on and pays for it, but because a broad coalition of people, organizations, and institutions work together to get things done in a timely, high-quality, and cost-efficient manner. That’s what’s happening in the partnership between the City and the Ventura Botanical Gardens to improve Grant Park. It’s also what’s happening in the partnership between the City and Ventura Unified to open up school land on the Westside for parks and recreational use. This will have to be the model for getting things done in the future – and we’ve laid the foundation for it in the last two years.

Shortly after he was seated on Monday night, Mayor Tracy said that the city’s highest priority right now is to make sure that the public has confidence in the city’s ability to deliver basic services – police, fire, parks, street maintenance, and so forth. He’s right. We’ve balanced the budget and laid the foundation for the future, but the quality of our services has taken a hit in the process and now it’s time to show the people that we can still deliver the basics in a high-quality way. It’ll be a challenge, but I think Mike’s exactly the right Mayor for this moment, because he knows how to focus on the basics and make sure these things get done well. He’ll do a great job.

I’m comfortable with my decision to step down, because a successful community is not the result of one person’s actions, or even seven people’s actions. It’s the result of thousands of people waking up every day and committing themselves to make a town great – not just politicians and government employees, but volunteers and people who work for nonprofit organizations and PTO presidents and even all the people who go to work in private businesses every, generating the revenue and the profits that give us the prosperity we need to continue to be successful. Indeed, a successful community is a multi-generational effort, as stewardship of the community is handed down over time. As the word "stewardship" implies, no one truly owns a community’s success; we are all merely stewards of that success. We must learn how to create success every day and then hand it down to the next generation of leaders. It is important know how to pass the baton knowledgeably, gracefully – and before you wear out you welcome.

From my new vantage point in our nation’s capital, I will do the best I can – in any way I can -- to help Ventura move forward with enduring prosperity, a high quality of life, and a stronger sense of community. I always loved doing this in my travels around the country before I was elected, and proudly do so in the future. In other words, wherever I am, I will continue to be one of those thousand of people who wakes up every day and works to make Ventura a better place.

And no matter who is Mayor, I still think I’m the luckiest guy in the world because this town and my colleagues on the City Council had enough confidence in me to allow me to serve as Mayor for the last two years. I love this town. Thank you, Ventura.

Artists, Don't Ever Sell Yourselves Short

Here's an adapted version of the speech I gave at the Mayor's Arts Awards last Thursday night:

It’s been my privilege twice to present these awards to outstanding contributors to the arts here in Ventura. You’d think by now we would be past calling ourselves “California’s New Art City,” though I have to admit I’m a bit hesitant to call ourselves “California’s Old Art City”.

After all these years, we’ve begun to make a real impact in the arts – and the arts have begun to make a real impact on Ventura in more ways than I can count. As I prepare to leave office, my message to the artists and their supporters in this town is pretty simple:

Don’t ever sell yourself short.

I know that’s a funny thing to say, but artists have a tendency to sell themselves short – and then get mad because other people also sell them short. But don’t forget all the different ways that the arts help us.

In the business of running our city, we try to do three things. We try to create prosperity for our community. We try to improve the quality of life for people in Ventura. And we try to improve our sense of community and our sense of place. Everything we do is about one (or more) of these three goals; and the arts are vital in accomplishing all three.

We tend to speak generally about how the arts are good for residents of Ventura because the arts have the power to inspire and fulfill us; and we speak even more sweepingly about how the arts helps the economy because of the number of paintings and tickets so, and the spinoff effect, and so forth. But I want to take a moment to make these things more real.

Everytime somebody comes into contact with the arts, you are touching them – and you are changing and improving our community.

Every time a child creates something in school, and realizes that they can create, and gains confidence as a result, that’s you at work.

Every time somebody is moved and gains new insight into themselves and the world by experiencing art, that’s you at work.

Every time somebody is inspired by a piece of public art to renew their commitment to our community, that’s you at work. It doesn't matter whether commitment is a commitment to the arts -- it can be any renewed commitment to our community.

Every time somebody comes up with an idea for a business or a product, and uses creative thinking skills to figure out how to make that business or product a success, that’s you at work.

Every time somebody decides to move their business to Ventura – or keep it here – or expand it here – because the quality of life and the things Ventura has to offer are important, that’s you at work.

All these are examples of you at working helping us to achieve our three basic goals: prosperity, quality of life, and sense of community. So don’t ever sell yourself short. Don’t ever stop reminding yourselves – and reminding us – that the arts work every day, in every venue, to help us achieve our most basic goals as a community.

Thanks to all of you for what you have done. It has been my privilege to serve this community for the last eight years on the City Council and for the last two as Mayor. I hope I can continue to work with you in enhancing the arts – and leveraging the power of the arts to achieve our other community goals – for many years to come.

Let's Make Ventura "One Big Accelerator"

In eight years on the City Council, the one phrase I have heard more than any other is “economic development”. This means a different things to different people – jobs, tax revenue, easier permitting for businesses --but to me it has always meant creating a prosperity that can endure and benefit us all.

I spent Friday and Saturday participating in the economic development discussions at the National League of Cities annual conference in Phoenix. I focused on the sessions dealing with growing small businesses and helping entrepreneurs. I talked about Ventura’s experience in trying to nurture high-tech businesses, but I heard a lot from other cities and experts about what’s working and what’s not

There were a lot of people there telling their stories – people from Boston and Scottsdale and New York and all over the country. They mostly told stories about how cities can work with universities and others to foster the expansion of what are sometimes called “high-potential” businesses in their communities using incubators and “accelerators” (business centers designed to accelerate the growth of businesses once they are incubated). And the lessons were pretty clear: know what you’re trying to accomplish; make strong connections with your local universities; build an “ecosystem” of necessary services around the business sector you’re trying to grow; and, perhaps most important, be persistent and patient, because it takes a long time.

In Ventura, we have placed a lot of chips on nurturing tech businesses in the incubator we have created beyond City Hall. We targeted Internet startups for the incubator – companies that build things like online advertising auctions, geographical locators, and the like – because we knew that’s a business sector with very high growth potential that had a presence in neighboring cities, especially Carpinteria and Santa Barbara. We targeted ‘Net-based companies because they can raise large amounts of Ventura capital (many of the companies in the incubator have raised millions) and because each one has the potential to grow very, very fast. So far, we’re successful. There are currently 14 companies in the incubator with about 50 jobs altogether. But if even one of these companies because a big success, that will mean hundreds of jobs and lots of opportunities for vendors and suppliers in Ventura.

So what I learned in Phoenix is that we have a long way to go. Yet I was encouraged by what I learned.

From Boston – where Mayor Ray Mennino is setting up an “innovation district” – I learned that connections not just to science-based colleges but colleges focused on entrepreneurship are important. Babson College, a leading entrepreneurship college based in the suburbs, is setting up an operation in Boston at Mennino’s innovation center. There’s a lesson here. We already have a strong relationship with UCSB, where the engineering school spins off a lot of startups. But we need to strengthen our relationship with Pepperdine, which has a great entrepreneurship program. Hey, Pepperdine, want to set up a branch here in Ventura?

From Arizona – where the City of Scottsdale decided to collaborate with Arizona State on an incubator/accelerator called SkySong ] -- I learned that you have to be patient even in the face of political criticism. SkySong’s been criticized for creating “only” 700-some-odd jobs so far, rather than the 10,000 promised. But as one of Skysong’s leaders said on Saturday, this is a long-term play. It takes 10 or 20 years to pay off – but if you do it right, it pays off for decades. (By the way, there's a really good urban revitalization story with SkySong. It's located on Scottsdale's old "auto row," and after flirting with both a Wal-Mart and an arena, Scottsdale did a deal with ASU.

Everywhere at the conference I learned that social media is important. The entrepreneurs in these growth sectors are mostly young, and they know how to use the Internet. After all, most of the startups in Ventura are Internet-based companies. I’m very proud of the fact that NetProspex recently ranked Ventura as the 4^th most social-media-savvy business city in America – behind only New York, San Jose, and San Francisco. This means we ranked ahead of places like Seattle, San Diego and Austin. I can’t exactly explain why this is – my theory is that it has something to do with surf-town folks who seem mellow but are really pretty intensely interconnected – but it shows you that this is one really important part of the strategy that we are really on top of.

So going forward, what do you we need to do? There’s so much, but here are a few things:

Keep strengthening our university partnerships, so that UCSB, Pepperdine, Cal State Channel Islands, Ventura College, and others all play a role in our effort – and recognize that what we’re doing helps them too.

Keep building the ecosystem of services that these entrepreneurs need. That means making sure that angel investors, venture capitalists, intellectual property lawyers, and others know Ventura and want to do business here. It also means connecting these growing companies to local vendors, so that the economic benefits of their expansion stay local; and with local real estate brokers and landlords, so the companies themselves will stay in town.

Make sure these companies have the infrastructure they need. Right now our biggest problem is that our fiberoptic telecommunications network is spotty and doesn’t even reach the incubator. Ironic for an Internet-based economic development strategy! We must keep working with the telecom companies to bring good fiber to the places we need it.

In other words, we need to make all of Ventura into an accelerator.

So often, economic development is about the short-term win – luring in the big plant that will immediately provide jobs, grabbing the big retail store that will immediately throw off sales tax revenue. These short-term wins are important, but having worked in economic development for almost 25 years I have to say they often don’t last. The plant closes, the store moves – all for reasons the community has no control over.

But our high-growth tech effort is different. In Ventura, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create an enduring prosperity that will last us many decades. We can nurture locally based businesses that have vast growth potential. We can create hundreds – maybe thousands – of great jobs for people who live here. We can create a huge amount of new activity for local businesses who will serve the tech companies. We will create the consumer demand that will drive retail sales – and sales tax revenuf or our city. We can generate the wealth we need to endow our community and our civic life for many years to come.

We can do all this. But it takes patience, persistence, and focus – day after day, month after month, year after year. But I am convinced that the payoff is worth all the effort required to make this effort work. So let’s make all of Ventura an accelerator for our tech businesses. It’ll help every business, ever household, and every civic institution in town.

The New CMH: Key To Our Quality of Life -- And Our Prosperity

A few weeks ago I came into the mayor’s office on a Monday morning and found a huge stack of pretty intimidating documents to sign. They were, of course, the papers authorizing the city to work with Community Memorial Hospital to sell $350 million in bonds – to be paid back by CMH’s revenues, not by the city’s taxpayers -- in order to finance the enormous expansion and upgrade now underway at the hospital’s site in Midtown.

If you’ve ever bought a house or a car, you know that nothing focuses the mind like signing your name to a bunch of documents. But when the bonds went on the market, they were sold in a matter of minutes and – as the mounds of dirt near the hospital attest – construction has begun. Last Wednesday night, I was proud to participate in a moving groundbreaking featuring 14 speakers – patients, doctors, nurses, volunteers, construction workers – whose lives have been changed by their association with CMH. The whole experience has reinforced for me the notion that CMH is a cornerstone of our community – not only our qualify of life but our prosperity as well.

The CMH expansion is probably the biggest construction project we will ever see in Ventura. (By contrast, the Pacific View Mall expansion back in 2000 was about $100 million.) It may also be the most important. Although the expansion was driven by state law requiring hospitals to retrofit their buildings for seismic safety, CMH has gone far beyond that goal. The expansion will actually allow CMH to serve as one of the most important drivers of our community’s prosperity and well-being for decades to come, in three different ways.

1. High-quality medical care

Between CMH and Ventura County Medical Center, we in Ventura already have extraordinarily high-quality medical care already. These two institutions have strong connections to great medical schools at UCLA and USC, and each specializes in different aspects of medical care. But the new CMH will be a huge leap beyond the status quo – private rooms, a 35-bed emergency room, a serene garden in which to walk and heal, and a state-of-the-art medical facility that will be as good as any of its size in the United States. Thanks to this expansion, all of us in Ventura can be assured of great medical care for the rest of our lives.

2. High-quality jobs

Obviously, CMH currently provides hundreds of good-paying jobs for people who live and work in Ventura – doctors, nurses, technicians of all kinds, and on and on. But the new CMH creates a whole net set of opportunities that hold the potential to create spinoff businesses and great jobs for decades to come. Over the past few years in Ventura, we have put a great deal of effort into pinpointing and focusing on growth sectors of the economy – most of which have an important technology components. For example, our Ventura Ventures Technology Center has focused on emerging web-oriented businesses spilling out of Santa Barbara. Another sector we must focus on is biotechnology, and the new CMH can help us become more competitive. The biotech sector in Ventura County is strong – after all, Amgen is the largest private company in the county and one of the largest biotech companies in the world – and we in Ventura are currently missing out on important spinoff opportunities there. By using part of the old hospital building to create wet lab space and other facilities for startups, CMH can help Ventura kickstart our biotech sector. CMH can also serve as a testbed for clinical trials – thus combining the best of research and clinical work, which are both required to develop and test new products, build companies, and create good jobs. This opportunity is often overlooked in talking about the CMH expansion, but I can’t emphasize how important it is to our community’s long-term prosperity.

3. Midtown revitalization

CMH has long been an anchor in Midtown’s “Five Points” neighborhood, as the hospital’s employees and visitors have patronized businesses and thus helped the neighborhood economy. In planning for the new hospital, CMH has done an amazing job of collaborating with the city and the neighborhood to create an expansion that is sensitive to the neighborhood (there was no neighborhood opposition) and will strengthen Midtown’s business base. A new parking garage will be created collaboratively by the hospital to serve both CMH and businesses on Main Street. Most important, CMH will now serve not just as the economic anchor. . The new hospital will be oriented toward Main Street with a lovely plaza. CMH will surrender its Brent Street address and replace it with a Main Street address. A plaza and new pedestrian connections will link the hospital to Main Street. CMH has worked hard to help make Five Points in Ventura’s “Second Downtown” – a well-planned and pleasant employment district that will have strong retail businesses benefiting everyone in town.

I have to admit that when I was first elected to the City Council eight years ago, I didn’t think much about the importance of Community Memorial Hospital. Like most people, I thought about the effect it has had on my lives – the many emergency room visits, the times my mother was treated there (and eventually she passed away there), and so forth. But in world where competition for prosperity is tough, every community has to identify its greatest assets and learn how to make the most of them. CMH is one of our greatest assets – and I am very grateful to CEO Gary Wilde and everyone else for all the hard work they have put in. I wouldn’t have missed the groundbreaking for the world. And I hope to be there for the grand opening in a couple of years – so we can see just how much a better CMH means a better Ventura.

How to Make Sure We Keep Our Young Families in Ventura

A few weeks ago, I went out to Temple Beth Torah to observe a service honoring eight 16-year-olds who were finishing the Temple’s confirmation class. It was an emotional evening for me, because these kids are the last of the cohort I have known at the Temple for many years – the younger brothers and sisters of the kids who grew up with my college-age daughter.

It is also, sadly, the kind of event that doesn’t occur nearly as much as it used here in Ventura. The truth is that, as much as we love Ventura as a family, the number of children – and young people generally – is on the decline. And as a community we are getting older. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2000 and 2010:

-- The number of children age 0-9 in Ventura declined by 11%.

-- The number of people between 30 and 50 – typically the parents of school-age children – declined by 10%.

-- The number of people over the age of 50 increased by almost 30%

To a certain extent, these statistics reflect a national and statewide trend toward a “graying” population. It’s also reflective of coastal cities throughout California, where the number of families and children is in decline.

More than anything, however, it might simply suggest a lack of turnover in Ventura’s population. Our kids are growing up and moving away and the rest of us are just getting older and staying here. I’m a good example: In the 2000 Census, I was in the 30-50 age category with a child at home. Now I’m an over-50 empty nester. (At least I was until a few weeks ago, when my Boomerang Daughter returned home … but that’s another story.) We don’t move away when we retire, because we already live in a great place to retire; and since we control new development strictly there aren’t many opportunities for new families to move in.

There was one bright spot in the Census: The number of people age 20-29 in Ventura went up 16%, a much higher figure than we saw statewide. This is a wonderful twist on the longstanding trend of kids from Ventura going away to college and never coming back. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess there are two reasons for this bright spot. The first is that kids who grew up in town are sticking around because they can now go to college locally, especially at Cal State Channel Islands. The second is that young people from elsewhere are drawn to Ventura by the lifestyle and the growing opportunity for interesting jobs in our emerging economic sectors such as high-tech.

Like Ventura, mature communities all over the country are struggling because they can’t keep the people they need to fill important jobs and to give the community a family-oriented vitality. But the rise of the twenty-somethings here in town gives us an opportunity to reverse the trend. If we can hang on to these folks over the next 10 years, then they’ll stay here a long time and raise their families here.

But that’s not just going to happen. In order to keep our young families, we need to nurture the things that young families need – schools, jobs, and housing. We’ve already got the schools. Ventura Unified is an excellent school district with many choices – magnet and charter schools. We also have very good Catholic and Christian schools as well.

As for jobs, we’re working hard on creating a whole new sector of jobs in the “new economy” – high-tech, web development, and related companies that can provide stable, long-term employment. That’s why I’m so encouraged about the fact that our twenty-something population is on the rise. I think they’re coming to town – or staying in town after college – to work in these emerging businesses. We must continue our efforts to grow these private-sector businesses so that young families will have stable jobs.

That leaves housing. It’s true that, for the moment, housing in Ventura seems affordable. But it’s still expensive, especially compared with other places where young families might live. The median home price in Ventura in July was $327,000. That’s down 16% from last year, but it’s still way higher than the state average of $252,000 and more than double the cost of housing in the inland locations where young families typically move these days, like Bakersfield, the Inland Empire, and Las Vegas.

In the long run, we will have to be aggressive in making sure that there is enough housing – and the right kind of housing – for our young families to buy. That probably means building more townhomes and large, high-quality condominiums, because the families won’t be able to afford single-family homes as we did. It also means building more move-down housing for seniors – not just assisted living, but smaller units for older folks in places like downtown, where you don’t have to drive much. Because part of the problem, of course, is that we older folks are sitting on our larger houses even though we don’t have families. More move-down housing will encourage longtime Venturans to move out of their houses and stay in town – and also free up single-family housing for young families to buy so that we don’t have to build more sprawl to keep them in town.

In part, we can’t avoid the fact that we are an aging country, an aging state, and an aging city. We’re lucky that our health is better than our parents and we will be able to enjoy life – and also contribute to our community – far longer than they did. But Ventura remains – as it always has been – a great family town. We all need to work together to make sure that lots of people of all ages enjoy living here.

Why I've Decided Not To Run Again

Eight years ago, I stood on the steps of City Hall and announced that I was running for the City Council. Today I am writing to let you know that I have decided to step down and not run for a third term this fall. It’s been a great ride – I love being on the City Council, and I especially love being Mayor. I am very grateful that you have given me the opportunity to serve you.

When I made the decision to run eight years ago, it wasn’t because I wanted to be a career politician, either by “moving up the food chain” to higher office or “being somebody” locally by occupying a seat on the City Council forever. I ran because I wanted to work with the community on some very specific changes that I believed were needed to move Ventura in a positive direction – ensuring long-term prosperity, conserving our open space and improving our downtown and our neighborhoods, maintaining and improving public safety, and most of all opening up City Hall so that our city government could be more transparent and accountable to the people it serves.

After two terms in office – including one stint as mayor and another as deputy mayor –I’m proud of the positive changes we have made. The “growth wars” of the ‘90s and early ‘00s are mostly behind us. We have far more stability in our city’s leadership than we used to. City Hall is, indeed, far more open and transparent than it used to be, and we are engaged in many more partnerships with the community at large.

Most important, we’ve dealt responsibly with a major financial crisis – one that nobody anticipated when I first ran back in 2003. Although we have had to cut services more than I would have liked, we took swift, early action to maintain a balanced budget. That’s why we do not face the deep financial problems currently confronting many of our surrounding cities.

I haven’t accomplished everything I set out to do, but I am proud to have done my share to help move things forward in many positive ways over the past eight years; and anyway no elected office-holder ever accomplishes every goal. It’s important to have experience and stability on the council, and during my time we’ve had both – a big change from the ‘90s and early ‘00s, when there was a lot of turnover. But I never intended to serve more than two terms, and I do sometimes worry that I will get stale in office.

I have to admit that personal considerations play an important role in this decision. I had a rich and fulfilling life before politics – professional, civic, personal -- and I am looking forward to focusing more on all of those activities again. In particular, I believe it is necessary for me to focus far more attention on my personal health, especially the ongoing loss of my eyesight.

As I revealed in a blog more than a year ago, I suffer from a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, a deterioration of the retina that is gradually diminishing my peripheral vision and night vision. There is no way to know how quickly RP will rob anyone of their eyesight; and there is no treatment or cure. Anybody who has spent time with me in the last couple of years knows that this condition is becoming worse and that I am struggling to adjust to it. But the demands on my time as mayor have prevented me from focusing on how to make the transition to living life as a low-vision person. For my own well-being and the well-being of those I love, it is time for me to focus more fully on making this transition successfully.

In many ways, it is hard to leave office at such a difficult time. Over the past few years, we have had to cut our service levels to a point that most of us on the council are not comfortable with. We have been extremely fiscally responsible – moreso than most of our neighbors – but we must begin the effort to restore and reinvent our services, so that we never again have to face the difficult choices we have had to make in the past few years. As the current chair of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, I am working on organizational and service changes for public transit that should benefit the county greatly, and I wish I could see them through. The same is true for libraries. Our libraries have taken a big hit in recent years, and I believe our current library planning process will yield great results. When the real estate market comes back, I believe we will begin to see fabulous new development projects downtown and elsewhere and it would be great to be on the Council when that finally occurs.

But when you’re an incumbent, you can always come up with an excuse to run for office again. It’s much harder to look beyond the office you hold and envision the many other ways you might be able to help your community. In deciding whether to run again, I have thought long and hard about what role I might play once I leave office. Ventura has a long history of community service on the part of retired mayors and councilmembers and I look forward to joining my predecessors in playing that role. Beyond that, I believe that there are now unprecedented opportunities for everyone in the community – former mayor or not – to participate in moving our community forward.

In the old days, a constituency that wanted something – a park, a transportation program, an arts program, a construction project -- simply lobbied the City Council, putting the City on the hook for organizing, planning, funding, and running the whole thing. We as a community can no longer afford to operate this way, and one of the great accomplishments of the last few years has been to partner with others in the community to move things forward. We have, for example, partnered with community nonprofits to keep the downtown senior center open, to plan the future of Grant Park, and to maintain and renew our beloved ArtWalk. The City and the community will be partnering frequently in the future. I hope to work with you in many of these efforts during my five remaining months as mayor -- and in the years ahead after I leave office.

First and foremost is the effort to use our upcoming 150th anniversary in 2016 as a “target” to improve our community. As I suggested in my State of the City address in February, we are now in the process of creating a community-based committee to discuss what our community’s goals over the next five years should be and how we can achieve those goals.

Beyond the 2016 effort, there are many other ongoing issues in our community that I am really interested in and hope to continue working on. These include our business incubator and Ventura’s “new economy”, transportation and public transit, arts and culture, planning and development, and arts, culture and libraries. And I think it’s a safe bet that I will become more active as and advocate for disabled persons – which, in my mind, is really just a way to advocate to eliminate physical barriers to mobility for all people.

As I said above, no office-holder accomplishes everything he or she sets out to do, and any politician can always come up with an excuse to run again. I view my decision to step down not so much as an end to my involvement in Ventura, but simply as a transition into a different role where I can continue to help make our community better. I love Ventura more than ever, and I will continue to do everything I can to pursue the two goals for Ventura that I have always had – enduring prosperity and a high quality of life. Thanks for the opportunity to serve you on the City Council and as Mayor. I look forward to working with you as mayor between now and December – I promise I will put my foot to the floor to get things done – and I look forward to working with you for many more years to come.

The Tough Slog To Increase Revenue

In tough times, it’s always tempting to think that you can solve all your financial problems by finding some magical way to increase revenue. After all, spending money is always more fun than cutting the budget yet again. But the truth of the matter is that in this economy finding more revenue – especially in a way that doesn’t place an additional burden on our already overburdened taxpayers – is a tough slog.

Last week the City Council held a workshop where we discussed some of the possible ways we might generate more revenue. We talked about everything from “crash taxes” (charging out-of-town people involved in auto accidents) to selling or leasing city property as a way of raising cash to putting another proposed sales tax increase on the ballot. Not surprisingly, none of these ideas got much traction. But we did talk about range of other ideas – and, in the end, we voted to pursue a few things that seem worth a try, including:

1. Hiring an outside firm to help us make sure all businesses in the city pay business license tax.
2. Conducting on audit of our hotel bed tax collections to ensure all hotels and motels (and vacation rentals) are collecting this tax.
3. Renegotiating city leases to increase revenue where possible.
4. Ramping up efforts to obtain private donations, especially for capital projects in parks and other public locations where naming opportunities exist.
5. Continuing to focus on making our Auto Center a stronger retail destination.
6. Increasing our grant-writing capability.

The truth is that all these efforts won’t generate an enormous amount of money – at least not in the short run. Our best hope for an immediate pop is keeping a closer eye on compliance for business license tax and hotel bed tax.

I know first-hand that many businesses don’t get business licenses – about 20 years ago, I was one of those business owners! And I’m confident that with more compliance, we can increase business license tax revenue by 10-20%. However, that would amount to somewhere between $150,000 and $300,000. That’s a good chunk that will help us, but it’s not going to solve all our problems.

Similarly, it’s pretty clear that some smaller motels and vacation rentals don’t pay hotel bed tax. But most of the big hotels already pay, so we’re talking about a pretty small amount here too.

The other efforts are probably longer term – but we can’t lose sight of them just because we’re hurting now. The Auto Center did well during the boom – at our peak, we had 13 dealerships and the same auto sales as Oxnard – but we’re hurting badly now, mostly because there’s no surrounding retail in Ventura as there is in Oxnard. Even so, most retailers are pulling back on expansion plans now, so it’s unlikely we’ll get anything soon.

And you don’t get big philanthropic gifts for parks and public projects overnight. But we have two good examples in the Pier and the Community Park, both of which have raised more than $1 million in private donations. Just think how reassuring it is to know that if a storm damages the Pier, we have more than $1 million in private funds to draw upon and don’t have to take money away from some other City project! These kinds of donations are going to be really important in the next few years, because we are not going to have General Fund money for capital projects in the parks, as we have in the past.

Although this wasn’t in the motion passed by the Council, I’m also a big advocate of promoting Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions as a way of generating more sales tax for the city. Every business in town buys lots of goods subject to sales tax. If they buy those goods in town, then we get more sales tax. If you look at a map of where our sales tax comes from, you’d be amazed to see how much comes out of the Market/McGrath area – supposedly an industrial area, but in reality a place where many businesses buy products from other businesses. That’s why I was so excited recently when the Chamber’s Young Professionals Group had a mixer that brought together the start-up businesses in our incubator with the young small business owners in town.

And what about tax increases? After losing two sales tax measures recently – one in 2006 and one in 2009 – I have to say I think we’re done with that for now. There are a number of small measures that may have a chance of passage if they were combined into one ballot measure, including an entertainment ticket tax, an increase in the hotel bed tax, and maybe an increase in the Lighting and Landscaping District assessments. (Currently, you don’t pay enough in Lighting and Landscaping assessments to cover the cost of the streetlights, so we have to subsidize that with $400,000 from the General Fund.) But even all put together they won't raise that much money, and I don’t think our voters have any appetite for even these tax increases now.

Over the past three years, as we have struggled to reduce costs and increase revenues, we’ve heard literally hundreds of ideas. We’ve looked at them all, and implemented some of them. But, in general, I’ve found that every idea falls into one of four categories:

1. We’re already doing it.
2. It’s impossible to do for some reason (impractical, illegal).
3. It’s a great idea and we should do it right now, but it will only raise or save a little bit of money.
4. It’s a great idea and it will raise or save a lot of money, but it will take a long time to do it and we won’t see much immediate benefit.

The business license and hotel bed tax compliance efforts fall into category #3. Everything else falls into category #4. My bottom line is this: We’ve done a good job of cutting when we’ve needed to cut during the downturn. Our services have taken a huge hit but we are solvent and shouldn’t have to cut much more. So now is the time to start laying the groundwork for more revenue when the economy begins to perk up. We’ll keep looking at small, painless ways to raise revenue – and we’ll keeping working on long-term efforts to stabilize and improve our revenue base by increasing business generally.

Building Ventura's Enduring Prosperity

Adapted from the Chamber of Commerce State of the City address:

Over the past few weeks, I have talked a lot about the need for Ventura to build a new and enduring prosperity that will last a generation or more. Partly because of the current economic conditions, I’ve gotten a strong and positive response from people in Ventura on the need to rebuild prosperity.

But I’ve also come to realize that prosperity means different things to different people. For a resident who’s a homeowner, it probably means a stable job with a stable income and rising home value. For a local retailer, it means more sales in the cash register. For a business owner, it means rising sales and profits. For the city, it means more revenue and therefore more ability to provide Venturans with the high quality of life they want and deserve.

But to all of us, I think it means the process of building an enduring prosperity – a sense of economic well-being in our community that is durable, widely shared, and can help provide a stable income for most people, tax revenue to provide public services, and philanthropic wealth to endow the future. Achieving this kind of prosperity is not as easy as simply luring a retail store into town or subsidizing an auto dealer. It’s a long-term effort that requires both intensity and focus.

I have spent most of my life trying to understand how cities work, and I can say one thing: whether they grow or increase in population or not, they never stay the same. To prosper – and to maintain a high quality of life – cities have to reinvent themselves economically again and again.

Ventura has already reinvented itself many times -- from mission town to fishing town to agricultural center to oil boomtown to surf town government town – and we remain all these things to some extent today. But we cannot stand still. We must continue to forge ahead, reinvent ourselves – find enduring prosperity in the 21st Century global economy while retaining the small-town feel we all cherish.

When I read over that line – that our little town has to find enduring prosperity in the 21st century global economy – it sounds kind of pompous. After all, we’re just Ventura! But every city, big or small, must find its place in the larger economy, whether that city is in California or Europe or South America or China. That is what we did when we were primarily an oil town, and that is what we did when we were primarily a citrus town. And that is what we must do now.

We must identify our niche and aggressively pursue it, or else we risk the idea of having other people -- from other places -- define who we are.

When most businesses and communities sit down to figure out their future, they chart out different scenarios. They begin what a “business as usual” or “default” scenario, and then they craft a “preferred” scenario. Then they figure out what’s required to get to the future they prefer -- rather than stumble into the future by default.

I think we in Ventura are at a critical moment in understanding what our “default” future might be, and we must take steps collaboratively to counteract that “default” approach and, instead, build a future we really want.

Because the “default” future for us is different from what we have always been. And by working together, we can create a better, more prosperous future that will help pay for our quality of life for many years to come.

Throughout our history, Ventura has always had a proud history of producing things. Oil and citrus are the two most obvious examples, though there are others. The most important point, however, is that we produced things -- we exported them to the world -- and we reaped the benefits of wealth created here locally.

This is not the future that is emerging for Ventura – at least if we do nothing. Our “default” or “business as usual” future does not revolve around producing. It revolves around consuming. Increasingly, the economic base of our community focuses on bringing people into our community – visitors, retirees, and commuters – who bring their money from somewhere else and spend it here.

I want to emphasize that visitors, retirees, and commuters all play an important role here in Ventura. These are robust sectors of our economy. They are important to our local businesses. We value every one of them, and I will talk more in a few minutes about how we can best leverage their presence.

But I want to emphasize that if our future in Ventura consists only of visitors, retirees, and commuters, then we will lose something very precious about Ventura, and we will be giving our future prosperity away on terms that we should not accept.

The single most precious thing about Ventura is that it feels like a small town. This is a ridiculous thing to say, since we are a city of over 100,000 people. Yet we do feel this way, because we all see each other all the time. At work. At school. At the market. And at youth sports activities. Why? Because, far more than the average community, people who live in Ventura also work here. One of my greatest fear is that we will lose this small-town feel as more and more people commute OUT to other places in the morning and more and more people commute IN to Ventura FROM other places in the morning. This is happening more and more. You can feel it.

If we continue with “business as usual,” eventually we will become almost exclusively a community where people who have made their money in other places live and visit. This is good in many ways, I don’t deny that, but it threatens our small-town feel. It will tend to create a two-tier economy with a lot of low-paid service workers, and it will turn Ventura into something we have never been before.

And how do we maintain that small-town feel -- that precious balance? We do it by ensuring that Ventura is still a place where things are produced. A place where the jobs created are filled by people who live here, and a place where the wealth generated here stays here. A community that produces things will spin off related businesses, including suppliers, and will also create better-paying jobs, so there is less risk that a two-tier economy will emerge.

So how do we here in little Ventura do that?

Well, in the 19th Century, we rode the agricultural wave -- and produced food that was exported to the rest of the country and the world.

In the 20th Century, we rode the oil wave -- and produced oil that was exported to the rest of the country and the world.

The 21st Century, on the other hand, will be the century where creativity and innovation drive prosperity, especially here in the United States. We must find our place in this economy, and we must work aggressively and cooperatively to establish ourselves.

Everything we are moving forward with right now on the economic front is focused on exactly this goal – and these efforts are tightly intertwined.

Sometimes, hard-core business people in town criticize us for our commitment to arts and culture. But we’re in that game for a reason: Arts and culture are important as a way to connect to the fast-growing creative and innovation economies regionally and worldwide, which we in Ventura must be a part of in order to prosper in the future.

The creative arts – performance, visual arts, graphic and architectural design, publishing, fashion -- represent one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy. No American city will be able to prosper in the future without nurturing these creative arts. The future of the creative arts in Ventura is virtually unlimited – and essential to our future in so many different ways

Over the last year, we have increased our visibility in Hollywood with the Film Ventura! Initiative – kicked off last fall at our downtown movie complex. This effort has reminded us that we have an enormous supply of local film talent here in Ventura – actors, craftspeople, and even many writers and producers. Location shooting is fun to have, but we want high-value-added parts of the entertainment production process as well.

We’ve also strengthened our connection with our most important local educational institution dealing with the creative arts, Brooks Institute. Hundreds of Brooks film and video students already live and work in Ventura, and I recently met with Brooks’s new president, Susan Kirkland, to reaffirm our mutual commitment to each other. Brooks is a critical component of Ventura’s creative economy – attracting talented young people to Ventura and helping us to attract regional and national attention.

The creative economy is important to our future prosperity, but it will not sustain us all by itself. The creative economy is important to Ventura for a much bigger reason as well: It provides us with an important connection to the worldwide innovation economy. The creating of new products and new services – especially using the the Internet – today serves as the engine of the global economy.

No city can prosper in the 21st Century without strong, local innovators. Innovators are themselves creative and they thrive on a lively and creative local community.

That’s why our Ventura Ventures Technology Center on the 3d Floor of 505 Poli Street has been so successful. V2TC is now home to 19 startup companies and more than 50 employees.
The entrepreneurs located there are changing the way the world uses information – through online advertising, geographic location systems, online marketing, and many other innovative ideas. This is the 21st Century equivalent of citrus or oil production. These companies are inventing high-value-added products that will be used throughout the world and, in the process, creating good-paying jobs and wealth that will stay here in Ventura.

They’re drawn to Ventura not just by this incubator but also by the high quality of life, the recreational opportunities, and the creative buzz in our downtown.

The other day I got a Facebook message from one of our downtown restaurant owners, who said that although he was happy we had these fledgling businesses, he believes we need “real” companies that provide lots of jobs. He still feels the loss of Kinko’s, he said.

I understand that concern. But what we’re trying to do at the incubator is work with these entrepreneurs to create the next business that will create 50, or 100, or 500, or 1,000 jobs – and keep all those jobs and all that wealth here in Ventura. And it will happen.

We also know that businesses cannot succeed without startup capital. And local capital is especially important. If we can finance our innovative companies through local sources, then the resulting wealth will stay in our community, to be recycled into yet more business ventures and also providing the basis for local philanthropy.

I’m grateful to our local banks and financial institutions for their commitment to our community. My business has a long relationship with Santa Barbara Bank & Trust. Just as important, however, is the fact that the angel investors and venture capitalists who help the startups and the fledging businesses that are creating and inventing new products have also discovered Ventura. Tech Coast Angels, an investor group, meets regularly in town now to hear “pitches”. The City has a partnership with DFJ Frontier, a venture capital firm, investing in businesses that could pay off here. And recently Peate Ventures – a venture capital firm from Westlake Village – moved to Downtown Ventura and has funded some of the incubator startups.

I am very hopeful the expansion of Community Memorial Hospital will create new opportunities for entrepreneurial activity in the biomed field here in Ventura, as we are located so close to Amgen and other critical biomed players.

This, then, must be our preferred scenario – for Ventura to continue to be a community that produces products and wealth for the rest of the world, just as we have been for 140 years, rather than a place like Santa Barbara, which – beautiful though it is -- simply consumes products and wealth gathered from elsewhere in the world. This kind of prosperity will bring better-paying jobs to Ventura. It will also ensure that the wealth generated here stays here – thus providing our community with an endowment for quality of life, just as the Bards and the Fosters once endowed our community with institutions and parks that we still enjoy every day.

Now, you may have gotten the idea that I think we shouldn’t focus on visitors and retirees and commuters, and if you’re in the real estate business or the hospitality business that probably scares you. But that’s not really what I meant to convey. My point is not that we shouldn’t pursue those folks, but that we need to leverage their presence in helping to rebuild Ventura as a town that produces things.

Every visitor and every retiree is a potential investor in some new business in Ventura. I’ve seen this time and time again – they come here and they like it, and the next thing you know they are moving their business here or creating a new one. That’s a great thing. And every commuter weary of driving to L.A. or Santa Barbara is a potential entrepreneur – eager to build their dreams here in Ventura and help us build ours.

My point here is that we tend to view bringing these folks into town as an end in itself – a way to generate hotel bed nights or real estate sales. What we really need to do is view these efforts as an economic development tool – to help promote Ventura as a place where entrepreneurs and investors can find the ecosystem they need to thrive.

And if you’re in a business-to-business service business – as so many Chamber members are – you’ll be winners if we’re successful too. Helping startups – and then helping them when their big – is an important task, and we must have all those support services in place to succeed. If our producer companies grow, we all win. Many people have good jobs. Our nonprofit and community organizations have lots of donors. And the city has enough tax revenue to provide the public safety, street paving, and other services everyone needs and wants.

So let’s work together to build Ventura’s prosperity for another generation!

The Way Forward ... To 2016

Mayor's State of the City Address, February 7, 2011

On behalf of the City Council, I would like to welcome you to the City Council Chambers and thank you for attending tonight.

After what all of us have been through in 2010, as your mayor, the message that comes to my mind is, “Whew!”

We made it through a year when money was in short supply for everybody, when the political rhetoric everywhere became much more unforgiving, and, whether we liked it or not, when the choices before us were choices would have never before considered.

But what’s remarkable is that despite all these travails, our spirit as a community has not been dampened. Ventura remains a place where people love to live their lives, run their businesses, and enjoy everyday life.

We have made it through some very difficult times by working together, by making sacrifices by finding new ways to do things and by undertaking efforts that inspire us and lift our spirits.

So I think it is worthwhile to acknowledge people and organizations who have helped us – both our City Government and our community – make it to where we are today.

First, from our perspective here at City Hall, I want to reassure everybody that our city is in good financial shape. Our budget is balanced and has been all through this dark time.

Now, let me hasten to add we don’t like the way we’ve balanced it. We’ve had to cut many important things and we know that our reduced level of services is not sustainable. We must find ways to bring our services back so we can maintain our city’s quality of life.

But it’s important to note that we have not shirked from the tough choices. Other cities have papered over their problems and now they will face severe cuts. We have attacked the issue of declining revenue head-on – meaning that future cuts will not be nearly as painful as other cities will see. I want to thank our City Manager, Rick Cole, for his willingness to tackle the hard issues head-on; and our CFO, Jay Panzica, for leading us through these difficult financial times with clarity, simplicity, and goodwill. I also want to thank our line department heads – Elena Brokaw of Parks & Rec, Rick Raives of Public Works, Jeff Lambert of Community Development, and especially Police Chief Ken Corney and Fire Chief Kevin Rennie – for doing more with less under difficult circumstances.

We also have our employees to thank. They have agreed to changes and reforms that will help make our future city budgets sustainable. One of my greatest concerns is that even when the economy recovers we will not be able to restore necessary services because of increased pension costs. But just this month our employees agreed to contribute to their own pensions, thus covering increased cost of pensions and they agreed to pension reform for future employees, which will save us a great deal in the long run.

These changes require sacrifice on the part of our employees but will help our city to focus – revenues increase – on restoring those services that we desperately need to bring back. I would like to thank the Ventura Police Officers Association and the Service Employees International Union for their help. I also would like to thank the Ventura City Fire Fighters Association for their support and look forward to working with them on a contract Finally, I’d like to thank our Human Resources Director, Jenny Roney, for guiding us through these tough negotiations.
Making these changes has required change in the way we do business. It’s always easy here at City Hall to think that we can solve all problems – and pay for them too. And because we meet in public and on television every week, it’s also easy for others to appear before us and demand the same – solve all problems and pay for them too.

But we up here can’t solve and pay for all problems – not all by ourselves. And one of the most important accomplishments of the last year has been to partner with other organizations in the community to get things done.

Perhaps the most important partnership we have forged in the last year is with the Greater Ventura Chamber of Commerce. We cannot succeed as a city without a strong and involved business community and the Chamber has reinvented itself during tough times with great gusto and energy.

So I want to thank that dynamic duo of Marni Brooke, chair of the Chamber board, and Sandra Burkhart, the chamber’s new CEO, for everything they have done and also thanks to Steve Perlman, vice chair in charge of business development and a representative of, let us say, an older generation of Chamber leaders.

The City has also worked with many, many other community organizations and institutions to help get through these tough times and still provide important services to our community.

For example, in tough times volunteers play an especially important role in making sure essential services and activities move forward. As a member of the national “Cities of Service” organization, we have come to realize the value of volunteers more than ever before

Just the week before last we hosted the first-ever “Volunteer Summit” for all the organizations and agencies here in town that use volunteers.. More than 30 organizations participated, and we have now set a target of recruiting 200 brand-new new volunteers in our community in 2011. I want to thank everyone who participated in the Volunteer Summit and especially the City’s volunteer staff, including Cary Glenn and Rosie Ornelas, for putting it together with great enthusiasm.

Similarly, we are increasingly working with nonprofit organizations to pool resources so that all of us can move forward doing the things we all need to do to maintain a high quality of life in our community. And this cooperation goes both ways – sometimes they help us, sometimes we help them.

Last year we thought we would have to close our Downtown Senior Recreation Center. But thanks to a collaboration with the nonprofit organization Urban Encore, we are able to keep the building open. Urban Encore is leasing the building and providing space to other nonprofits, while maintaining the senior center’s activities. I want to thank Dave Armstrong of Urban Encore – and one of Ventura’s most dedicated volunteers – for his efforts.

We’re also entering into an innovative arrangement with the Ventura Botanical Gardens organization. Everyone loves Grant Park – but we’ve had to postpone our plans to improve it for many years. Now, we have entered into an agreement to possibly lease parts of Grant Park to this new nonprofit group as an alternative way to make Grant Park better! Thanks to Doug Halter, who is representing the Botanical Gardens here tonight.
At the same time, we at City Hall are partnering with other nonprofit organizations to help them through these difficult times as well. By creating the Nonprofit Sustainability Center on the 4th Floor of 505 Poli, the City has helped 10 nonprofit to make it through the recession. By providing these organizations office space at low cost, we at City Hall can help them to maintain the vital services they provide to the community – services that our community otherwise might lose.

Just to give you an example of the diversity of these groups they include Focus on the Masters, Turning Point Foundation and Ventura Film Society. I’d like to thank Donna Granata, Clyde Reynolds, and Lorenzo DeStefano for their leadership and cooperation.

Amazingly enough, we have also seen remarkable progress in constructing and remodeling a wide variety of buildings and facilities downtown – helping to strengthen Downtown Ventura as the very epicenter of our region. Last year the WAV was completed. During this past year, the Kingdom Center has opened. So did Phase 1 of the Museum of Ventura County’s expansion, including the fabulous Smith Event Center. We’ve seen refurbishment and new vitality at the E.P. Foster Library. And we’ve seen the Housing Authority begin construction at Encanto del Mar at Oak and Thompson; and People’s Self-Help Housing begin renovation of the historic and beautiful El Patio Hotel just a block away.

These would be remarkable achievements at any time. But to accomplish them all in 2010 – the worst year in recorded history for construction in the United States – is truly remarkable. I’d like to thank some of the community leaders that have made this possible – including Pastor Sam Gallucci of the Kingdom Center, Tim Schiffer of the Museum of Ventura County, Mary Stewart of Foster Library, and John Polansky, chair of the Housing Authority board for all of your leadership.

We also an excellent holiday shopping season downtown and everywhere else – much to our surprise. I want to thank each and every one of you for your commitment to shopping locally. I also want to thank everyone who took me up on my challenge at the Mayor’s Arts Awards – to buy one piece of local art during this holiday season and another piece during 2011. Personally, I’d like to thank Jennifer Livia of Red Brick Gallery for the wonderful art she created that now belongs to my family. And don’t worry – I’m still on the lookout for that beautiful piece of local art to purchase in 2011. The Mayor’s Local Art Challenge is still going on!

Finally, whenever a community endures tough times, there is nothing like a group of inspiring athletes to lift our spirits and keep us going. This year, all of us in Ventura were inspired by the Ventura Deep Six Relay Team and their dramatic four-day swim through cold and choppy ocean waters. These guys didn’t just beat the world record – they killed it. In case you haven’t heard, the previous world record for an open water relay team was 78 miles – by the way, on a lake in New Zealand. Our guys swam over 202 miles in the Pacific Ocean in one of the coldest years on record. Oh, and by the way, these remarkable athletes are all in their 40s and 50s.

Thanks so much to Jim McConica and the other swimmers for keeping our spirits up in a tough year.

I’ve gone on at some length about all these people and organizations and accomplishments because I think it’s important to remember all the positive things that occurred during a difficult year. Thanks to all of you, we have made it through what I called last year “Our Defining Moment”.

Now, we must all work together to channel all of our energies toward charting “The Way Forward” here in Ventura.

And I do mean all of us – everyone in the community, working together – not just the City Council.

The decisions we on the City Council make up here every Monday night about what to fund and what to approve -- yes, these are important. But we can’t do it alone – and, anyway, these days nobody trusts us in the government to do it all by ourselves anyway. But with all of us working together – government agencies, nonprofit organizations, private businesses, individuals – we can do a much better job of figuring out what’s right for our community and a much more effective job of getting it done.

I think I can speak for all seven of us up here when I say that we must focus on two important and inter-related goals.

First, working with all of you to create a sustainable and enduring prosperity for our community.

And second, using that prosperity to maintain and enhance our quality of life.

Let me begin with prosperity, because without prosperity we cannot succeed as a community.

I have spent most of my life trying to understand how cities work, and I can say one thing: whether they grow or increase in population or not they never stay the same. To prosper – and to maintain a high quality of life – cities have to reinvent themselves economically again and again. This is true no matter how big or small they are; and no matter how fast or slowly they are growing.

Ventura has already reinvented itself many times from mission town to fishing town to agricultural center to oil boomtown to surf town to government town – and we remain all these things to some extent today. But we cannot stand still. We must continue to forge ahead, reinvent ourselves – find enduring prosperity in the 21st Century global economy while retaining the small-town feel we all cherish.

Everything we are moving forward with right now is focused on exactly this goal – and these efforts are tightly intertwined.

We talk a lot about creativity and artists galleries and projects like the WAV. Sometimes it seems like we have staked our whole future on art galleries, artist housing, and arts events. Some people love this; others are understandably skeptical that we can base a city’s entire economy on this proposition.

To be sure, arts and culture are important for their own sake. But they’re also important as a way to connect to the fast-growing creative and innovation economies regionally and worldwide which we in Ventura must be a part of in order to prosper in the future.

The creative arts – performance, visual arts, graphic and architectural design, publishing, fashion -- represent one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy. No American city, large or small, will be able to prosper in the future without nurturing these creative arts. The future of the creative arts in Ventura is virtually unlimited – and essential to our future in so many different ways

Over the last year, we have increased our visibility in Hollywood with the Film Ventura! Initiative – kicked off last fall at our downtown movie complex with a screening of the independent film, “Not Fade Away,” by local filmmaker Meredith Markworth Pollack. This effort has reminded us that we have an enormous supply of local film talent here in Ventura – actors, craftspeople, and even many writers and producers.

We’ve also strengthened our connection with our most important local educational institution dealing with the creative arts, Brooks Institute. Hundreds of Brooks film and video students already live and work in Ventura, and I recently met with Brooks’s new president, Susan Kirkland, to reaffirm our mutual commitment to each other. Brooks is a critical component of Ventura’s creative economy – attracting talented young people to Ventura and helping us to attract regional and national attention. Thank you, Susan, for your leadership.

And even in these difficult times, we have seen many other business leaders in the creative arts strengthen their commitment to Ventura – and, in particular, to downtown. Rasmussen Associates moved downtown and transformed the top floor of the Earle Stanley Gardner. Thank you, Larry Rasmussen for this commitment. Ann Deal of Fashion Forms has continued to help build Ventura’s reputation in the apparel industry and recently located her designers in our creative downtown, where she has long lived herself. Thank you, Ann.

The creative economy is important to our future prosperity, but it will not sustain us all by itself. The creative economy is important to Ventura for a much bigger reason as well – it provides us with an important connection to the worldwide innovation economy. The creating of new products and new services – especially using the the Internet – today serves as the engine of the global economy.

No city can prosper in the 21st Century without strong, local innovators. Innovators are themselves creative and they thrive on a lively and creative local community.

That’s why our Ventura Ventures Technology Center on the 3d Floor of 505 Poli Street has been so successful. V2TC is now home to 19 startup companies. The entrepreneurs located there are changing the way the world uses information – through online advertising, geographic location systems, online marketing, and many other innovative ideas. They’re drawn to Ventura not just by this incubator but also by the high quality of life, the recreational opportunities, and the creative buzz in our downtown.

I’d like to acknowledge one of those entrepreneurs right now – Jeff Green, founder of The Trade Desk, an online advertising startup that has been so successful that it’s actually busting out of the incubator and moving to the 5th floor of 505 Poli. Jeff, on behalf of everyone in Ventura, I want to say thanks for your commitment in creating jobs here in town. I’d like to thank all the other entrepreneurs in the incubator as well for their commitment to Ventura. And I’d like to invite everyone here to visit the incubator during the reception at the incubator, on the 3d floor of 505 Poli in a few minutes.

Creative artists, designers, entrepreneurs – all are essential components in creating enduring prosperity. But businesses cannot succeed without startup capital. And local capital is especially important. If we can finance our innovative companies through local sources, then the resulting wealth will stay in our community, to be recycled into yet more business ventures and also providing the basis for local philanthropy.

That’s why I am grateful to people like John and Dan Peate of Peate Ventures, who have decide to locate their venture firm right here downtown. Thanks so much, John and Dan, for being financial pioneers here in Ventura, and thanks to our financiers and entrepreneurs -- we are getting more attention from investors every day.

There is yet another dimension to our future prosperity, one that is also linked to creativity and the global innovation economy – the medical and biotech fields.

Here in Ventura, we have long been blessed with extremely high-quality medical care, thanks largely to our two fine hospitals and all the medical talent they attract to our community. This year, we’ve seen both our hospitals make major, forward-looking investments in Ventura.

Community Memorial Hospital is building a new cancer center and is about to embark on a $300 million expansion that will improve medical care, create new business spinoff opportunities in the medical and biotech fields, and help to revitalize business in the Five Points area. It is inspiring to see such an enormous investment in our community during these tough times. And the new CMH will also be a place where biotech entrepreneurs will be able to create and innovate, bringing even more jobs and wealth to Ventura.

And Ventura County Medical Center is also about to embark on a major hospital expansion, adding even more good-paying jobs – construction jobs and medical jobs – to our community. Together, these institutions make Ventura a center of medical care – and medical innovation.

I would like to express my thanks to Gary Wilde, the CEO of Community Memorial Health Systems, and Mike Powers, the outgoing director of the Ventura County Health Care Agency, for spearheading these large and significant investments in our community. They have truly taught us here in Ventura that working together produces far more wealth, health, and happiness than the alternative!

The purpose of building prosperity, of course, is to provide the funds – public, private, and philanthropic – necessary maintain and improve our quality of life.

Part of The Way Forward here in Ventura must be to refocus on our quality of life – for all citizens. My colleagues and I on the council look forward to renewing our long partnership with the Ventura Unified School District and Superintendent Trudy Arriaga – not only to ensure safe and high-performing schools, but to work together toward major community goals that will benefit everyone in our community. Yes, Trudy, we will build the Westside Pool.

We also have to focus on our neighborhoods. Ventura’s neighborhoods are great places to live. But they’ve taken a beating in the last couple of years, as we at City Hall have been forced to cut back on many basic services that neighborhoods depend on – police and fire service, park and median maintenance, tree-trimming, street paving, libraries.

Again, we on this dais are committed to working in collaboration with our neighborhoods to create stability and improve the quality of life. I’d like to thank the chairs of Ventura’s Community Councils for meeting with me regularly to discuss these issues. And I’m proud to announce that we are all working together to bring about Ventura’s first-ever Neighborhood Summit later this spring.

Lastly, I would like to note that, in approaching the future, we must be inclusive. Ventura is a diverse community, and we must ensure that both our prosperity and our quality of life is shared by all residents. Frankly, we have fallen behind in our efforts to implement the Americans with Disabilities Act and ensuring that every place in our community is welcoming to everyone. I look forward to the City’s rollout in 2011 of new efforts to make our community more accessible to those with disabilities.

As a person who is rapidly developing a severe disability, I have learned that while there may be physical disabilities, there is no such thing as a disability of the heart or spirit. We are blessed in Ventura with fabulous people active in promoting the cause of those with disabilities. I’d like to thank Chera Minkler for being a personal inspiration to me – as an advocate for the disabled and as a person with great compassion for all.

Here in Ventura, The Way Forward inevitably involves a look backward toward the past. We are a city of history. Ventura was incorporated as a municipality in 1866; and, indeed, of the 481 cities in California, only 22 are older than we are.

On April 2, 2016, our city will celebrate its 150th anniversary. In case you’re counting, that’s 1,880 days from today.

So here’s a challenge:

Let’s dedicate ourselves to making Ventura’s new prosperity – and much better quality of life – a reality by that date. Let’s make sure that, by then, we are

A city that has successfully combined our creativity our innovation and our opportunities to create a new and lasting prosperity

A city that has fulfilled its commitment great education, high-quality public safety great medical care, great parks and recreation, by the way great and by the way, a great place for all kinds of people to live.

In short, let’s make ourselves the best small city in California.

We have a long list of things we know we must accomplish to achieve renewed prosperity and a better quality of life. So here’s my challenge: I ask you to join me in a concerted effort to get those things done.

Within 90 days, let’s form a group of community leaders to lead this effort.

Within 3 to 6 months, let’s agree on a to-do list – the high priority things we must do to establish long-term prosperity and a better quality of life by 2016. And then let’s spend every day between now and then getting things done, crossing items off the list, until we have made sure Ventura will be a great place to live and work for the next generation.

Remember, when you wake up tomorrow morning, there will be only 1,879 days left.

And on Wednesday, only 1,878.

So let’s get going. Let’s make every day count. Let’s make each one of these days count.

Laying the Foundation for the Future

This has not been an easy year for us here in Ventura. At City Hall, at the school district, elsewhere in town – and also in our personal lives – we’ve had to cut back.

Nobody likes cutting back, especially if it means our community’s quality of life is at risk. Fewer libraries, fewer police officers, fewer fire stations, reduced bus service, reduced park maintenance, less street paving – the list goes on and on, unfortunately. And most of our time and effort at City Hall in 2010 has been spent figuring how to manage these reductions in a way that will maintain the city’s overall solvency without harming the community too much.

This is essential work these days for local government officials and we are right to devote so much attention to it. But even as we manage these reductions, we must also devote ourselves to renewing our community – appreciating what we have here in Ventura, looking ahead, and understanding how we can protect and enhance our city’s unique characteristics.

So let me begin by saying that, despite all the bad news, 2010 was a pretty good year here in Ventura. We have successfully sown the seeds of several efforts that will pay off in years to come, both for our prosperity and our quality of life. Although it went almost unnoticed, perhaps the most important accomplishment was the approval of Community Memorial Hospital’s major expansion in midtown. Starting early next year, CMH will build a new building adjacent to its old one – simultaneously upgrading our medical care, freeing up space in the old building for important economic ventures such as biotech research, and helping to improve an already wonderful, walkable commercial neighborhood around Five Points. We’re lucky to still have a community non-profit hospital, and the fact that there was so little controversy about the CMH expansion is a testimony to the way the hospital and the community understand the value of their relationship.

We also saw the expansion of our V2TC business incubator behind City Hall, with several new businesses opening up and one – The Trade Desk – moving to bigger quarters elsewhere in the building because it is growing so fast. In addition, we saw an increase in all kinds of creative and innovative businesses downtown – everyone from architects to venture capitalists and, yes, brassiere designers moved in.

There’s so much more I could talk about, but let me just sum it up by saying that nothing is more important to me as mayor than laying the foundation for Ventura’s future prosperity and quality of life. It’s sometimes hard to see this progress in such a down economy, but we here at City Hall are working hard – in collaboration with our neighborhoods, our businesses, and many others – to make sure that as we emerge from the recession Ventura will remain a great place to life and work for another generation at least.

The Arts Is An Anchor For Our Entire Creative Economy

Last Thursday, it was my pleasure to preside over the Sixth Annual Mayor’s Arts Awards. It was a great event – an overflow crowd at new Smith Event Pavilion at the Museum of Ventura County. It was a wonderful opportunity to honor people making an important contribution to the arts in Ventura – and also to reflect on the role the arts are playing in building the long-term prosperity of Ventura.

And it was also a great opportunity for me to issue a challenge to you and everybody else in the community:

I am committed to buying at least one piece of local art as a gift during this Holiday season. Will you join me?

And I am committed to buying at least one piece of local art in 2011. Will you join me in that to?

If your answer is yes, email me at bfulton@cityofventura.net. We’re putting together a Facebook page where those who answer the challenge can show images of the art they buy and discuss how they have met this challenge.

First, a nod to the award winners. They were: Helen Yunker, Arts Patron; Jack Halbert, Artist in the Community; Sylvia White, Creative Entrepreneur ; Margaret Travers, Arts Leader; Bob Moskowitz, Arts Educator; Chris Jay, Emerging Artist. Congratulations – you all do a great job, and you were all gracious, caring, and often very funny in accepting your awards!

Just as important to me, in the depths of this persistent recession, is to reflect upon the role the arts have played – and will play – in promoting our two most important goals: enduring prosperity and a high quality of life.

At the Mayor’s Arts Awards, I gave a special shout-out to Greg Carson and Todd Collart, who were mayor and deputy mayor during the depths of the last recession, from 1991 to 1993. It was a time when Ventura was reeling from oil industry cutbacks and, as a community, we were uncertain to where our future would lie. Under Greg’s and Todd’s leadership, the city created the Cultural Affairs Commission, produced the first Cultural Plan, and – despite the bleak times – launched Ventura on the trajectory to become “California’s New Art City”.

Now it’s 20 years later and we are in another bleak time. The city has had to cut deeply into our arts and culture programs in order to balance the budget. And yet, the Mayor’s Arts Awards highlighted the important role that the arts and culture sector is playing – and will play – in laying the foundation for Ventura’s future prosperity.

For the first 10 or so years after the Cultural Plan was adopted, Ventura focused on building ArtWalk, encouraging more local performances and galleries, finding ways for arts patrons to support local art. This led to a lot of discussion about the economic significance of the arts = the direct and indirect spending that arts create here in Ventura.

That’s still important. But in the last few years, the arts have come to play a more wide-ranging role in the emerging “creative economy” all through the United States and here in Ventura as well. I believe we have to focus not so much on the arts as a discrete sector of the economy, but rather as a catalyst for a much broader economy.

The “creative economy” means lots of things, but one thing is for sure: It doesn’t mean just art. It also means fashion and design – and also all creative activities associated with innovation in lots of areas, whether that’s high-tech, biotech, web development, or anything else that involves creative and innovative activity. These businesses like to locate near each other – and near arts and culture activity.

Today, our economic development strategy revolves around our Ventura Ventures Technology Incubator downtown, which currently houses a dozen start-up businesses, most of whom are engaged in creating new types of business activity on the internet. When we talk to these entrepreneurs, they always say that being close to other creative people is important to them. That means not just artists but also restaurateurs, architects and designers, even surfers and others who express themselves in one way or another.

So make no mistake: Our future prosperity depends on our ability to grow these creative jobs and businesses here in Ventura. Plus, we’ll be more successful if we are able to use the creative arts to educate our kids and create a local workforce capable of working in these creative industries, broadly defined.

For generations, we in the United States have rewarded our kids for learning how to perform rote tasks. But that’s now what Ventura’s new economy is going to need. Blue-collar jobs requiring workers to perform routine functions – “left-brain” skills, if you will – have been going overseas for decades. Now white-collar routine jobs – technical support, accounting, even law – are going overseas as well. The American economy in the 21st Century depends on workers who can create, innovate, invent. Even factory managers place a premium on shop workers who are good problem-solvers and critical thinkers – the “right-brain” skills that emerge from training in the creative arts.

So the Mayor’s Arts Awards is not just a place to highlight our wonderful local artists. It’s a place to celebrate the foundation of Ventura’s future prosperity. We may not have a lot of city funds to provide for arts and culture right now, but everyone in Ventura has a lot of energy and know-how to link arts and culture to our emerging creative economy.

And everybody has at least a little money to buy local art. So remember – If you’re willing to take me up on my challenge, send me an email and we'll keep track of who's buying local art!