Measure J Was Illegal -- And Too Extreme For Ventura

By now, everyone in town has heard that last Monday Judge Mark Borrell removed the parking initiative from Ventura’s local ballot in November.

The right to vote on public issues is important to us here in Ventura. Our city has a long history of citizen-driven ballot measures, including SOAR in 1995. Sometimes these initiatives have won, as SOAR did, and sometimes they have lost, as did the convoluted “view protection” initiative on the ballot in 2009. So it’s understandable that some people are mad that Measure J will not be on the ballot and will try to make the Judge’s ruling an issue in the City Council campaign this fall. At the same time a lot of people are relieved -- and look forward to a City Council campaign that focuses on more important issues than parking meters.

But before things heat up in the City Council race, I think it’s important to step back and understand two important points.

First, whether you like it or not, the right to vote on local issues is defined by state law. And in this case, Measure J clearly violated state law.

Second, no matter how you feel about the downtown parking meters, Measure J was a very extreme measure. In addition to removing the downtown meters, Measure J would have required 2/3 voter approval for any future attempt to charge for parking on city streets and any city-owned property.

LEGAL VALIDITY OF THE INITIATIVE

Let’s begin with the first question: Why did Judge Borrell removed Measure J from the ballot?

We in California revere the right to initiative (where citizens place legislation on the ballot) and referendum (where citizens seek to overturn a City Council action via the ballot). Yet the California Constitution doesn’t permit us to vote on everything. For example, we can vote on legislative changes (like changing zoning ordinance to prohibit liquor stores in certain parts of town) but we can’t vote on how a law is applied to individual situations (like whether or not to grant a conditional use permit to a particular liquor store). That’s not me talking. That’s what the California Constitution says and how the courts have interpreted it.

More to the point, Ventura’s voters do not have the right to adopt an ordinance that conflicts with state law, any more than the City Council does.

While it’s very unusual for a ballot initiative to be removed from the ballot before it is voted on, courts have consistently confirmed that if an initiative is obviously unlawful there is no point in holding an election.

Which is what happened with Measure J. Measure J was a ballot initiative that would have removed parking meters and required future on-street and off-street parking decisions to be decided by the voters, not the City Council. That directly contradicts California Vehicle Code Section 22508 which states that parking meter actions are only subject to referendum – the right to veto City Council actions. California law does not allow voters to make parking laws of their own by an initiative, because doing so would make it difficult for a city to respond to traffic problems in a timely fashion. The exclusion of parking meters from the initiative process was tested in court and has been settled law since the Sixties.

In short: Carla Bonney, the local Tea Party leader who has been Measure J’s main proponent, could have gathered signatures to challenge the City Council’s action to install the paking meters at the time the decision was made (via referendum). But she was prohibited by state law from writing her own initiative law to govern local parking regulations.

All this seemed very clear to our City Attorney and to a majority of the City Council, which concluded it had no other option than to test Measure J’s validity in court. The proponents, of course, claimed that the lawsuit was seeking to “thwart the will of the people”. Yet they never really addressed the fatal defect: that their initiative ran afoul of the law.

In her statements before the City Council, Bonney did not seem to know the difference between a referendum and an initiative. In her interpretation, any ballot measure was a referendum until it was placed on the ballot, at which time the measure would become an initiative. She also repeatedly dismissed the long-standing California case law that forbids parking initiatives simply because the cases were old.

In court, the proponents argument was that the Vehicle Code didn’t apply to parking meters since they claimed the parking meters were not intended to control traffic. Instead, she argued that the City was really trying to create a “fee monopoly” with the paid parking system downtown. (I’m not sure how you create a monopoly by charging for 300 spaces when there are 2,000 nearby spaces that are free, but anyway, that was the argument.) It was a convoluted argument and Judge Borrell didn’t buy it. Instead, he followed the clear precedents of long-settled law.

That’s why Measure J was removed from the ballot,

TOO EXTREME FOR VENTURA

It seems to me that the legal defects in the initiative itself were related to the way the whole anti-meter movement morphed over time. The movement began with concern by some downtown merchants that their business would be hurt by the meters. By the time it reached the ballot, it had changed into an effort driven mostly by members of the local Tea Party who claimed that American freedoms were at risk.

When the paid parking first went in, I attended a couple of meetings of local merchants who were understandably fearful that their business would be hurt. These meetings were attended by about 15 merchants (out of the approximately 160 merchants downtown.) In response, the city made significant changes: removing some of the meters, reducing the hours that the paid parking was in effect, and providing thousands of one-hour-free coupons during the Christmas season. Although we discussed other possible changes, even the concerned merchants could not agree on which to implement.

Meanwhile, the City used the money from the meters to heavily beef up the police presence downtown – with impressive results. Since last fall, downtown crime is down 40%. Retail sales actually increased – by about 3% over the prior year, despite an ailing economy. When downtown merchants had a strong Christmas season, most of them stopped complaining about the meters.

From the beginning, however, members of the local Tea Party championed the parking meters as their political issue. Led by Carla Bonney and Gary Parker, who owned American Flag & Cutlery on Main Street, they claimed the parking meters constituted an illegal tax. As it became clear that downtown had not become “a ghost town” (as some claimed) but in fact was doing well, the entire argument against the meters shifted away from the impact on downtown merchants and toward a Tea Party crusade.

Indeed, when Carla, Gary, and Randall Richman (who's not a Tea Party guy) unveiled their initiative last spring, it went far beyond removal of the meters downtown. It would have required 2/3 voter approval anytime the City wished to charge for parking on any city street or city-owned property. This extreme provision had wide-reaching implications. It would make it nearly impossible for the City to build another parking garage downtown. It would make it very difficult for the City to partner with Community Memorial Hospital in building parking for the expanded hospital. Neighborhoods that hoped to use parking revenue to improve their parks, as at Marina Park, would be out of luck. Even neighborhoods that wanted residential permit parking, as around the hospital, would have to win a 2/3 citywide vote because the City charges $10 per year for the permits.

Carla and her team worked hard and collected over 10,000 signatures. Most of those were undoubtedly local residents concerned about downtown parking meters. But in order to secure the signatures, the signature-gatherers frequently used arguments that were just plain untrue (such as the idea that the City Council wanted to charge astronomical parking fees for everyone in town to park in front of their own house.) But the signature-gatherers rarely mentioned the 2/3 provision to voters.

Tea Party representatives began appearing before the City Council to claim that parking meters were just the beginning of a comprehensive plan to implement the United Nations’ Agenda 21 effort to promote on sustainable development, which they believe is a worldwide plot to undermine private property and threaten other freedoms. (Tea Partiers around the nation have attacked local planning policies by using Agenda 21 as well.)

Once the initiative qualified for the ballot, it became quite clear that the whole effort had turned into e campaign by Tea Party activists to galvanize support for their political agenda.

MY BOTTOM LINE

Much as I admire Carla’s tenaciousness and her impressive signature-gathering effort, I just never believed she and her supporters were really in touch with Ventura’s voters. Sure, people are skeptical of government – and rightfully so. But do folks around town really think that the City Council is planning to charge people astronomical prices to park in front of their own house? Or that we are part of a vast United Nations conspiracy to rob us of our freedoms because we charge for 300 parking spaces Downtown? I think voters are far more concerned about maintaining our vital public services so that Ventura will be safe, clean city that’s a great place to live.

This is a small town, and I can tell you from personal experience that Ventura’s voters – while cautious – are nevertheless practical. They like their elected officials to be local folks in touch with what’s really going on in town, not with some imagined, extreme threat. Venturans may be receptive to the fiscal conservatism of Tea Party folks – and with good reason -- but they don’t usually fall for hyperbole, half-truths, or overheated conspiracy theories.

I’m not running for re-election this fall, but it seems to me that the 11 people who are in the City Council race would do well to remember the lessons of the whole Measure J episode. Instead of focusing on the few issues we disagree on, let’s debate who can best move us forward on the 95% of things that we do agree on. Let’s bear in mind that, while we live in a democracy, we are a nation, and a state, and a city of laws and we must respect those laws even when we don’t particularly like them. And in trying to make our community better, let’s focus on the practical steps that will move us forward – things that will, for example, reduce crime downtown – rather than getting sidetracked by the idea that parking meters in downtown Ventura are part of a United Nations plot to take over our community.

State of the City 2010: Prosperity and Sustainability

Mayor Bill Fulton

Ventura State of the City Address

Feb. 1, 2010



Mayor Fulton:

On behalf of the City Council, I’d like to welcome all of you to San Buenaventura City Hall.



There is no question that in this economic climate, the state of our city government is challenged. As is the state of our school district, our county government, our Chamber of Commerce, and any number of other agencies and organizations around town. Money is short; businesses and institutions we depend on and cherish are at risk, and we are often at the mercy of events and circumstances beyond our control.



But the state of our community – the state of Ventura as a living, breathing, thriving place of 100,000 people – is stronger than ever.



The people of Ventura bring an enormous amount of passion and energy every day to task of sustaining our community as a terrific town: soccer leagues, little leagues, community organizations, arts and cultural activities, education, music, and businesses that are born and grow and prosper. It is all of you who make our community strong and give us the passion and the energy to deal with hard times.



And these are indeed hard times. But if you think back over the last decade, it’s remarkable what Ventura, as a community, has accomplished:



* We have paved almost every street in town. This may not be the most headline-grabbing accomplishment in history, but it’s one that affects everyone’s life every day and we should be proud of it. It shows we can focus on the basics and get them done.



* We have built a world-class aquatics center at the Community Park and a nationally recognized links golf course at Olivas. These new facilities enhance the quality of life for our local residents. But they also bring in many tourists and visitors, adding to our emerging “brand” as a center of outdoor recreation that also includes the Channel Islands, boating, surfing and kayaking, bicycling and hiking.



* We established downtown as a regional attraction that benefits local residents and again, brings visitors and their money into our town. There is nothing like our downtown scene, our art, culture, music, and restaurant scene anywhere along the coast between Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. And people are discovering it. How many other retail “draws” anywhere in the country can say they have increased their business in the last two years?



* Up here on this dais, we eliminated a structural deficit and have maintained a balanced budget every single year. This has involved making tough choices, and you may not like the way we’ve done it, but we have faced these hard issues head-on.



* As a community, we created a community Vision; and as a city we have translated that Vision into a new General Plan, new development codes that are much more understandable, and a more predictable development process.



These are remarkable achievements for any community in any decade, and we should be proud of them. They remind us not only that Ventura is a great town, but that even in hard times, we remain a community capable of pulling together and getting things done.



Now is the time to rely on that passion and energy to lay the foundation for the future that is both more prosperous and more sustainable. In working with the City Council since the swearing-in back in December, it has become evident that achieving long-term goals requires us to focus on three things:



n Creating and sustaining an enduring prosperity;



n Sustaining the environment that supports us; and



n Reinventing the way we provide our public services so that we can sustain those services at a high level in the long run.



Our most important job is to do everything we can to restore prosperity to Ventura.



Here at City Hall, we tend to think of prosperity in terms of the tax revenue that supports vital city services.



But to the community at large, prosperity means far more. It means creating jobs that give all of us a sense of security and stability. It means creating business opportunities that allow the entrepreneurs among us to innovate and thrive, and creating wealth for our community so as to create an endowment for generations to come just as we continue to benefit even today from the endowments bestowed upon us generations ago by the Bards, the Fosters, and other pioneers of our community.



Over the past few years, we’ve raised our development standards, and this is beginning to pay off with high-quality projects such as the new beachfront Embassy Suites Hotel approved last year. But we’ve also made adopted many new plans and codes – literally from Downtown out to Saticoy – that will make it easier for us to keep our promises to both neighborhoods and developers. New projects can and will protect the quality of life in our neighborhoods; and new projects that follow our codes and plans can and will be processed more quickly.



These reforms in the development process are very important. But all by themselves they will not get us where we want to go. Just as important as high-quality developments that will be built are the businesses that will occupy them.



Enduring prosperity comes from a robust entrepreneurial climate for businesses to thrive. This requires us to do three things:



First, encourage business sectors that are growing rapidly and will enhance Ventura’s wealth rather than deplete it.



Second, encourage the growth of business opportunities that will provide our community with high-wage jobs.



And third, encourage retail and visitor opportunities that are unique – that you can only find in Ventura – instead of those you can find anywhere.



I am proud to say that we are doing all of these things, and they are beginning to pay off.



We are fortunate to be located close to two major economic engines – institutions that constantly spin off startup businesses in the high-tech and biotech centers: UC Santa Barbara to our north and Amgen to our south.



In the past two years, Ventura has made a major effort – unlike any other city in this region – to connect with these institutions, with startup entrepreneurs, and with venture capitalists, to encourage spin-off businesses to locate and grow here in Ventura. And it’s working. Today - for the first time - we are part of the high-tech/biotech business ecosystem.



Just last Thursday, more than 200 people gathered for a launch party for our Ventura Ventures Technology Center (V2TC) business incubator, located only a few steps away from where we are standing right now.



The incubator was designed to foster a creative environment where high-tech companies and entrepreneurs can network with each other, brainstorm their ideas, and grow their businesses. At that’s exactly what the 10 firms now located in our incubator are doing right now here in Ventura today. Here are a couple of examples:



* The Trade Desk is an exchange for online ad networks. It was founded by Jeff Green, whose last startup was sold to Microsoft after two years of operation and now employs 50 people in Carpinteria.



* Lottay.com is a web site that allows you to donate money through PayPal as a meaningful and fun gift. With the assistance of our venture capital partner DFJ Frontier the City participated in Lottay’s financing out of the City’s Jobs Investment Fund (JIF).



* In addition to bringing Lottay to town, our Jobs Investment Fund and DFJ partnership also helped to attract Ventura’s first venture capital firm to Ventura.



Peate Ventures manages the BuenaVentura Fund and their offices are headquartered in Downtown. It’s said that venture capitalists have a tendency to “invest in their back yard” and already the BuenaVentura Fund has invested in Lottay and one other Ventura company.



Acknowledgments

Jeff Green, CEO, The Trade Desk

Harry Lin, CEO, Lottay.com

Frank Foster, Managing Partner, DFJ Frontier

John and Dan Peate, Principals, Peate Ventures



All of the companies I mentioned are raising capital creating new jobs and stimulating the local economy. Those that succeed will grow rapidly, creating many new high-quality jobs for people who live in Ventura - exactly what our General Plan and our long-term economic development strategy call for.



We’re also working closely with Community Memorial Hospital to help facilitate their $300 million expansion, which should break ground in 2011.



The new Community Memorial will be a tremendous asset to all of us in Ventura by ensuring that we will have access to very high-quality health care for decades to come.



Acknowledgment:

Gary Wilde, CEO, Community Memorial Health System



But the expansion of Community Memorial is also a crucial part of our ability to nurture and grow biotech companies here in Ventura.



Part of the expansion, we hope, will be to create the all-important “wet lab” space that biotech startups require in order to do their work – space that is currently lacking in Ventura, which is one of the reasons why biotech startups are going to neighboring cities.



The expanded Community Memorial can also help give biomedical entrepreneurs a real-world partner where they can learn more about what patients and doctors need, making Ventura even more attractive to biotech companies.



All of these efforts will bring high-quality paying jobs for our residents and with the path-breaking assistance of Ventura College, which is a real innovator in technical training.

I am sure that as these companies grow, we can provide them with a highly trained “green collar” workforce. In fact, Ventura College has just received a grant from Southern California Edison to pursue a Green Jobs Education Initiative.



Acknowledgment:

Ramiro Sanchez, Executive Vice President, Ventura College

During this deep recession, the success of our downtown and our other unique destinations has been a remarkable story. Business downtown has continued to grow even as retail sales have dropped precipitously elsewhere. Our visitor and convention business has held its own as Channel Islands National Park and other local attractions have continued to draw people from California and throughout the world.



In a world where retail and tourism is changing rapidly, we must work hard to differentiate ourselves and focus on those things that are unique to Ventura – that people can get nowhere else. So we must further promote and develop these unique attractions – not just our downtown and the arts and music scene there, but also our remarkable array of outdoor recreational opportunities, including the islands and the Ventura Harbor, Olivas Links, surfing, and great hiking opportunities nearby.



Indeed, the combination of our terrific downtown and the outdoor recreation opportunities may be the biggest attraction Ventura has. We’ve also got to make sure that the very precious remaining space we have for retail opportunities, such as the Ventura Auto Center, which is close to many of those outdoor opportunities, is strategically used to reinforce the unique experience Ventura offers.



And, by the way, the more we are able to strengthen and promote these unique experiences in Ventura, the more attractive Ventura will become as a place for entrepreneurs and innovators in the high-tech and biotech industries. And create more jobs for people who live here.



Over the next year as we move forward with these efforts we will continue to work with the Chamber of Commerce and our business community to pursue the goals we crafted at the Economic Summit last spring. We’ve already put into place a business ombudsman, whose job it is to help businesses navigate the permit process at City Hall.

Acknowledgments:

Randy Hinton, Outgoing Chair, Chamber of Commerce

Dave Armstrong, chair, Downtown Ventura Organization

Doug Wood, General Manager, Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach



Let me turn now to the underlying foundation of our future prosperity - sustaining this beautiful and fragile location where we live.



As former Mayor Brennan often says, living in Ventura is like living on an island. We are bounded by the ocean, two rivers and a mountain range. It’s easy to forget that this is a very fragile place to live. We are reminded only occasionally when we are inundated … as were last week, or when fire threatens to overwhelm us, or when we are cut off temporarily from the outside world.



Yet people have made this small piece of land their home – living sustainability with the environment – for many thousands of years. It’s been two and a quarter centuries since the Mission was founded and almost a century and a half since the creation of Ventura as a municipality.



Sustaining our lives in this beautiful and fragile place has never been easy, but we have always been able to do it somehow. In order to continue doing so, we’re going to have to find new ways to live sustainably on this small piece of land we have claimed as ours.



For example: Unlike most communities, we have the privilege of actually seeing the entire “life-cycle” of water and how it gets polluted – from the moment rain lands on the ground and runs across our driveways, down through the storm drains, down the barrancas, and out into the ocean, picking up whatever there is along its path. When my daughter Sara was young, we used to try to race the rain to the sea.



Today we face enormous pressure from State and Federal regulations to be even tougher on ourselves in protecting water quality and we are responding with green streets and green landscaping and green stormwater improvements that make our community more inviting and beautiful, while at the same time making water quality better.



Acknowledgment:

Paul Jenkin, Environmental Director, Surfrider Foundation



Similarly, we are engaged in an enormous effort at City Hall and community-wide to green our operations so that we consume less energy and pollute less, which, by the way, means we save money as well. We power much of our city yard through photovoltaic cells on the roof. We use co-generation to produce energy at our Community Pool. We’ve reduced electricity use citywide by more than 25 percent.

Acknowledgment:

Ron Calkins, Director, City of Ventura Public Works Department



And of course Ventura is proudly home to some of the greenest businesses in America, most especially Patagonia, which has been declared by no less than Fortune Magazine as “The Coolest Company on the Planet.” Patagonia has much to teach the rest of us in Ventura about being truly green, and I hope we spend a lot of time learning from them over the next couple of years.



Acknowledgment:

Pedro Lopez-Baldrich, General Counsel, Patagonia



Now, however, our community faces a very real and very grave environmental threat to our long-term survival.



To most people, climate change is an abstraction. To us it is not. No matter what causes climate change, as a result the sea level will rise. As a result, it will rise in this city and it will rise in our lifetimes.



Throughout the state, scientists are forecasting a rise in sea level of somewhere between 16 and 55 inches – that’s somewhere between one and a half and four and a half feet – by 2050. If that seems a long way off, think of it this way. In 2050, Alec Loorz – the Ventura teenage activist who went to Copenhagen to fight for a climate-change accord will be about the age that I am now. For Alec and his generation – including my daughter Sara and so many of our children – climate change will shape the world they live in and the lives they lead.



So we have to start planning now to protect our community from the rising sea level. How will we protect our harbor and our Keys and Pierpont communities? How will we protect our sewer plant?



How will we protect the investments we make along the Promenade and Downtown? How can we work together with our neighboring communities, with the Navy (which is also dealing with this problem), and others who are at risk?



No matter whether we can stop the process of climate change, we must take steps – by reinforcing our traditional infrastructure and creating new, greener infrastructure – to protect our community from inundation.



As I have said before, we can’t prosper if we are drowning. But we can prosper if we take the lead in finding ways to deal with sea-level rise, not just attacking the problem, but nurturing businesses that can lead the way with green solutions.



Acknowledgment:

Rachel Morris, President, Ventura Climate Care Options Organized Locally (VCCOOL)



Finally, I’d like to speak about the third theme that has emerged as vital to our community: how we can provide our constituents with the quality of life they rightly expect at a time of steep declines in our revenue.



In these hard times, we have had to make difficult decisions to cut services. We have lost some of our most cherished businesses and community institutions, and many more are at risk. This in turn has understandably led to tension over how to live within our means today.



On this question, it often seems as though Ventura is being torn apart by two warring camps.



On the one hand, there are those who zealously believe that we must continue to do things the same way we have always done them… and raise taxes to pay for it.



On the other hand – the polar opposite – there are those who zealously believe that we must continue to do things the same way we have always done them… and cut everybody’s wages to pay for it.



But I’m afraid that if we frame the debate about the future of our community this way, we will never get past the logjam.



No wonder our City Manager often likes to repeat a quotation – often attributed to Winston Churchill – about Great Britain’s dire financial situation in the middle of World War II. To the Cabinet, Churchill supposedly said:



“Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.”



So maybe it’s time to think about more than simply how to pay for continuing business as usual. Maybe it’s time to think about how to do things differently; reinvent things; ask ourselves questions we’ve never asked before; questions such as:



Does every fire truck have to be attached to a fire station?



Does every library book have to be attached to a library building?



Does every person who wants to travel by bus have to be attached to a 40-foot, 20-ton vehicle?



We have always taken these things for granted. But thinking this way is very expensive. It requires us to build separate buildings and create separate systems for everything we do. But we can’t afford to think this way anymore. We must think differently.



We’ve already made some progress on this front – for example, our Fire Department greatly increased response times during the time we had Medic Engine 10, which is essentially a fire and emergency response vehicle not tied to a particular fire station.



Acknowledgment:

Kevin Rennie, Chief, City of Ventura Fire Department



We’ve had to park Medic Engine 10 for the moment because of budget constraints, but I suspect it will be back because it’s exactly the kind of innovation we’ve going to have to focus on in the months and years ahead. Indeed, reinventing public services through this kind of creative thinking was the one unanimous high priority that came out of our City Council goal-setting workshop a couple of weeks ago.



So we’re going to keep asking these kinds of questions: Can we find a way to make sure that everybody has access to library services even if they don’t live near a library?



Is there a way for firefighters and police officers and code enforcement officers to work together as they traverse the streets of our community, keeping an eye out for our well-being? Can’t we work with together with nonprofit organizations like the Serra Cross Conservancy, the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy, and the Ventura Botanical Garden to manage Grant Park and actually make it better than it is now, at less cost?



Similarly, we must think about how to create and strengthen our neighborhood gathering-places no matter what role they might currently play.



Here in Ventura, we have terrific parks and schools and senior centers and recreation centers and libraries. Every neighborhood should have all these things.



But it’s clear that we will never be able to afford to provide every neighborhood with each one of these things.



So how do we find a way to provide every neighborhood with a civic gathering space where they have access to all these things in the same place in a way we can afford?



This kind of transformation obviously requires creative thinking and an open mind, but it also requires a collaborative heart. We here at City Hall can’t do everything by ourselves. To reinvent the way we do things in Ventura, all of us must emerge from our silos and work together: our city, our college, our school district, our county agencies, our nonprofits, our philanthropies, our businesses, and of course, most important of all, the people of Ventura.



The people of Ventura are truly remarkable in their commitment to our community and their passion and their energy and their ability to constantly both reinforce our community and reinvent it so that it can continue to thrive. We do this not just through the political debates that we engage in up here in this dais, but more importantly – every minute of every day – when we volunteer to coach soccer or little league, help with the PTO bake sale, join a service club, or help out at a school, or sit on a committee to plan the future of our libraries, helping our police department, or working on a weekend beach cleanup.



That’s why I am grateful to my predecessor Christy Weir for making sure that Ventura was one of the first cities in the country to sign up for the national “Cities of Service” effort started under New York mayor Bloomberg, which highlights volunteer efforts in communities all over the nation. And Ventura is beginning to get national attention for our commitment to volunteer service. Friends: we need all of your to help us through this time of need in laying the foundation for the future.



This is a time of great change and uncertainty in our society. Old ways of doing things are falling by the wayside quickly and new ways are emerging rapidly. Such times can be frightening, but they are also pregnant with great possibilities. We in Ventura are very determined and well positioned to take advantage of those opportunities in order to reinforce Ventura as a great place to live and work.



Ten years ago this spring, in this very chambers, the Ventura City Council agreed to move forward aggressively to accept a new vision for our community created by the community itself and turn it into a reality. The result has been a decade of remarkable progress toward our commonly held goals.



Now, at a difficult moment in history, is the time for us to look forward to 10 years from now – to 2020 – and once again work collaboratively and aggressively to ensure Ventura’s future prosperity, and for another generation, to sustain the wonderful quality of life that we all enjoy. I look forward to working with each and every one of you over the next year in taking the first steps to making that prosperity and sustainability a reality.

The Message From Last Tuesday

We have to try harder to live within our means. We know it will be painful. We’re trusting you – very cautiously trusting you – to make this work. And we’ll be watching you very closely.

As one of your elected representatives, that’s what I’m taking away from last Tuesday’s election results. I’m committed to taking this message from the voters seriously. All of us on the City Council must work hard to earn the trust of the voters every day. This is always true, but it’s even more urgent now. So over the next few months I hope to be out there in the community more than ever – at neighborhood meetings, service club luncheons, church services, and so forth – to listen to what you have to say.

Measure A, the sales tax measure, was soundly defeated – about 56%-44%. Although three of the four incumbents were re-elected, in general incumbent vote totals were down substantially from last time. Even the big winner of the night – former police chief Mike Tracy, who finished first – was not a runaway victor. Clearly, the voters have decided to put us on a short leash. (The county has yet to count several thousand votes, but I don’t see the outcome changing as a result.)

It would be easy for us, your elected representatives on the City Council, to chalk a lot of these things up to some factor beyond our control, and in so doing escape blame. The economy is in terrible shape. People are in a “Vote No” mood. There was a huge field of candidates. Turnout was very low, as it often is in these off-year city elections.

All of these statements are true, and each one of them played a role in how the election turned out. But we on the City Council cannot wish away the most important message from this election: We will have to work hard to re-establish as strong and trusting relationship with the voters who turned out last Tuesday.

The short-term will be painful. There is no magic bullet here.

We have already made a lot of cuts – eliminating 40 positions, cutting 10% of the payroll, reducing the budget by $11 million – but there will be lots more cuts to come. In the campaign for Measure A, the sales tax measure, we tried to be up-front about the fact that if the measure did not pass, we would be forced to close Wright Library immediately, eliminate our innovative roving fire engine Medic Engine 10, cut back on park maintenance, and possibly reduce our staff in both the police and fire departments. Now we will have little choice but make these cuts – and make them within the next couple of weeks.

Nobody will like this, least of all those of us you have elected to the City Council. But the results of the election suggest to me that there is a community consensus that this is how we should proceed in the short run.

In the longer term, hard times do provide us with an opportunity to rethink what we as a city government do and how we do it. We’re already done a lot of this, but we’re going to have to do a lot. And we on the City Council can’t do all this rethinking. We need your help in figuring out what to do.

Again, there is no magic bullet – no one thing that will solve all the problems, restore prosperity, suddenly free up the money we need to pay for all the things we want. There is, instead, more hard work ahead on everybody’s part – yours and ours. It will take a million little steps to get where we need to go. Obviously, we at City Hall must restrain spending as much as we can – and we must pursue responsible business growth as a way of increasing our tax revenue without increasing our tax rates. I’m committed to both those things, as I stated last summer when I wrote a blog laying out five points contained in what I called “The Ventura Covenant” (just scroll down to find it).

Voters shot down both Measure B (the height restriction) and Measure C (the big-box retail restriction) on Tuesday. A lot of this might have been because of the “Just Vote No” mood. But some of it may have been in response to arguments from the “No” side that we in Ventura need to foster business growth and these restrictions would have made it more difficult to do so. I think it’s important to bear in mind that the defeat of these initiatives will not magically solve our problems either.

We need appropriate infill development, as both sides of the Measure B campaign readily acknowledged, but given the state of the real estate business we’re not going to get much of it anytime soon no matter what we do. We need healthy retail growth as well, but the presence or absence of one Wal-Mart is not going to magically give us the money we need to restore our city’s basic services, nor cut the need for those services in a significant way. (Measure A would have raised about 10-15 times as much sales tax revenue per year as the pending Wal-Mart on Victoria will do.) And the retail economy is undergoing fundamental restructuring anyway. All of us are becoming much more cautious about how we spend our money. We are seeing more retail businesses go under, whether they are big chains or small mom-and-pops. Once again, no magic bullet.

So we’ll all have to work together to figure out how to use whatever emerging opportunities are available to us to restore our prosperity and, with it, our tax revenue. And we’ll have to make some hard long-term choices about what our city government can do. In some cases, we may be able to redesign the way we deliver services to the public so that they are both more cost-effective and more responsive to community needs. I think there’s some potential there, and I’m looking forward to working on it. But in other cases, we may simply decide that the city shouldn’t be in the business of doing certain things. Either others in the community will have to keep them going; or we may decide that will have to do without.

So that’s the challenge. It’s a challenge all of us in Ventura must address together. Obviously, without your trust, we can’t do a good job of operating a city government. But without your help, your ideas, your energy, we can’t successfully rebuild, restore, or redesign anything. The 7 of us on the City Council are your elected representatives, and therefore we are the lightning rods for your attention and, often, your discontent. But it will take more than 7 people to move Ventura forward. It will take 108,000 people. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with all of you as we take on the challenge.

One last thing about the City Council race: As I’m sure you know by now, the voters elected Mike Tracy and chose not to re-elect Ed Summers. I’m really looking forward to working with Mike. He’s a terrific guy who knows our community really well, and I think he’ll bring a lot of common-sense leadership to the council. But I’m very sad to lose Ed from the council.

Most of you know that Ed has been a great community leader for many years, and I believe that during his four years on the Council, we accomplished some important things with Ed’s help and leadership. I have especially valued his leadership and advice on business and economic issues. Many of the steps we took on economic development with Ed’s leadership will have a long-term payoff that will help us maintain both prosperity and a great quality of life. We will be thanking Ed for many years to come, but I wanted to take a moment here to say: Thanks, Ed, for all you have done – and, I hope, all you will continue to do – to make Ventura a great place to live.

Victoria Avenue and Wal-Mart

Last Monday night, the City Council adopted the long-awaited new Victoria Corridor Plan and Code. The intent of this code – which covers property along Victoria between the 126 and 101 Freeways – is to encourage a long-term transition along Victoria toward high-quality office uses.

In laying down the rules for this new generation of development, the code also seeks to move Victoria toward better urban design – so that the people who work in these office jobs can walk from one building to another, or to nearby retail, in a pleasant environment. The idea is to encourage high-end office-based businesses to move to – or stay in – the Victoria setting.

All these goals are in our General Plan, which the City Council adopted in 2005. Part of the impetus is to ensure that the Victoria corridor in the future can compete with the towers in Oxnard for high-end office tenants – an enormously important issue, in my opinion. But this larger concern has, of course, have been overshadowed by the Wal-Mart issue.

Wal-Mart has a lease on the old Kmart site by Trader Joe’s and currently has a propose to occupy the old building that housed Kmart and other businesses – 130,000 square feet in all. In the end, the council held the line by limiting individual stores to 100,000 square feet – but also permitted modernization, including new loading docks, for existing buildings.

This means Wal-Mart will be able to move into the old Kmart store if the giant retailer is willing to reduce its store footprint to 100 000 square feet.

Even though most of the discussion about the modernization issues was about Wal-Mart, there’s a larger issue here: how much is the city willing to push the owners of retail land to get them to redevelop their property over the next 10 to 20 years? The answer, thanks to the modernization rules adopted Monday night, is not much.

I voted for the code and against the modernization rules. My rationale for voting against the modernization rules had largely to do with Wal-Mart. In my opinion, if the largest retailer in the world wants to come into Ventura, we should hold them to a very high standard. The modernization rules lowered the bar for Wal-Mart.

In explaining my reasoning on this issue, let me begin by saying that, although I don’t much like Wal-Mart, I like the idea of using land use regulations to keep Wal-Mart out of town even less.

People don’t like Wal-Mart for many reasons, but most of the criticism that we heard Monday night – as we have heard for the last three years – has to do with their labor practices. Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart comes from people who fear that the company’s presence in Ventura will undercut unionized chain supermarkets such as Vons and Ralphs, which pay more than non-unionized Wal-Mart.

Throughout California, these folks have attempted to use land use regulation to keep Wal-Mart out of town. In some cases (like Los Angeles), this has worked. In other cases (like Atascadero) this hasn’t worked. And looming over this whole issue in Ventura is the fact that the anti-Wal-Mart forces have qualified an initiative for the ballot in November. This initiative would not keep Wal-Mart out of town, but it would prohibit any retail business of more than 90,000 square feet from selling groceries. In general, I think it's very difficult to try to use land-use regulations to deal with concerns about a business's labor practices.

My position on the Wal-Mart proposal has been pretty consistent: I’m concerned that a gigantic Wal-Mart Supercenter (these are typically 150,000 to 180,000 square feet) would undermine the Ralphs/Long shopping center across the street and generate too much traffic on Victoria. That’s why I have consistently supported the 100,000 square feet restriction. (Actually, I proposed 90,000 square feet but went along with 100,000).

Back in February, when we were supposed to adopt the code, my colleagues kicked it back to the staff one more time. The concern was that the code would render virtually all buildings along Victoria as “non-conforming” – meaning they could not be expanded or changed much. The council directed the planners to come up with a way of permitting some modernization of nonconforming buildings. I agree that this is a legitimate concern, but I feared that the direction to the staff (proposed by my colleague Neal Andrews) was too broad.

When the code came back to us the other night, it came back with a proposal to allow nonconforming buildings to modernize in a variety of ways – to expand their footprint slightly, to add “greening” (for example, upgrading the HVAC system), to add a new entrance – and, most importantly for the anti-Wal-Mart folks, to add new loading docks. Wal-Mart has asked for new loading docks.

Most of the 30 speakers on Monday night asked us to take the loading dock section out of the code, specifically to block Wal-Mart. A few of the speakers – including the manager of Victoria Village, where the 99 Cent Store is located – said that without the modernization provisions property owners would not be able to upgrade their properties to stay viable in the next decade or so.

As I said Monday night, the modernization provisions presented the Council with a difficult choice:

-- If we accepted the modernization provisions, we would make it easier for many retail businesses up and down Victoria to update their properties and continue their retail uses without redeveloping the property under the code. But we would also be allowing Wal-Mart to move into the Kmart building with minimal changes, assuming they could stay within 100,000 square feet.

-- If we rejected the modernization provisions and adopted the code as originally proposed, we would make it more difficult for the retail businesses to update – but we would “raise the bar” for Wal-Mart, forcing them to go through the entire planning approval process, follow the urban design principles contained in the code, and probably build an extremely “green” building.

In the end, Brian Brennan and I chose to vote for the latter course – and everybody else went the other way. I understand the concerns about other property owners, but to me we blew the opportunity to use the Wal-Mart project as a way to kick-start the new code. I was quoted, accurately, in the Star as saying, that our decision will “allow one of the richest corporations in the world to move into a crappy building with minimal improvements,”

The larger issue, however, is whether or not we undermined our own code with these modernization provisions. Our stated long-term goal – in the General Plan and in the Victoria Corridor Plan – is to facilitate a transition away from large retail and single-use developments toward a high-end office environment with some mixed use. Now we’ve decided that owners of existing buildings that don’t conform with that vision can modernize anytime in the next 10 years and stay in place for as long as they want after that.

I hope we can go back at some point in the future and tighten up these modernization provisions, so that landowners are not completely hamstrung but are encouraged to redevelop their property in conformance with the code.

The “Anti-Wal-Mart” Initiative

Last Monday, the City Council placed the “anti-Wal-Mart” initiative on the ballot for next November. Dozens of constituents had asked us to simply adopt the measure instead, but no one on the council made the motion to do so. I made the motion to place the measure on the ballot, and that motion passed 7-0..

Under state law, when an initiative’s proponents deliver enough signatures (in our case about 6,000 valid signatures from registered voters), we must either place it on the ballot or adopt it. I am generally not in favor of simply adopting an initiative. There are many reasons for this, but chief among them is the fact that, for us (as for the voters), an initiative is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Even if everyone agrees the measure could be changed or improved, we don’t have that option. If we adopt it, we must adopt it word-for-word as the initiative’s proponents have drafted it.

In the case of this initiative, I think it is important for the voters to have a lively debate over what our community’s goals are and whether this initiative helps us accomplish those goals. As with the VCORD height/view initiative (which will also be on the ballot next November), clarity about the impact of this initiative is very important.

I have not taken a position on this initiative and I have not yet decided whether or not I will take a position on it. However, I do think it’s important that everybody understand what this initiative will and won’t do. Many initiatives have unintended consequences that voters should know about.

This initiative prohibits any retail store of over 100,000 square feet from devoting more than 3% of its merchandise to selling non-taxable merchandise (i.e. groceries). That’s all it does. It does not name Wal-Mart or any other retailer, and it does not call out Victoria Avenue or any other part of town. It does exempt warehouse retailers such as Costco.

So, I think voters will probably want to measure this initiative against what they believe the city’s goal should be. Here are some examples:

If your goal is to prevent Wal-Mart from opening a store in Ventura, this initiative will not accomplish that goal.

We have heard from many people who don’t want Wal-Mart in town. But if this initiative passes, Wal-Mart could still open any store of any size in any location in Ventura. The only thing Wal-Mart could not do would be to open a “Superstore” – a store that’s typically 150,000 to 200,000 square feet and also sells groceries. Even if the initiative passes, Wal-Mart – which apparently has a 20-year lease on the old Kmart site on Victoria – could reoccupy that store or build a new store if it does not sell groceries.


If your goal is to prevent Wal-Mart or any other retailer from building a very large store on the Kmart site on Victoria, this initiative will not accomplish that goal either.

We have also heard from many people who fear more traffic on Victoria Avenue because of large retailers. But as I explained above, this initiative would not prevent a regular Wal-Mart or other retail on the Kmart site. Indeed, because of the warehouse store exemption, the initiative would permit a full-blown Costco on the Kmart site.

The City’s new Victoria Corridor code, scheduled to be adopted by the City Council in early 2009, will provide stronger protection than the initiative in this regard. The code will limit the size of any single store to 100,000 square feet, which the initiative does not do.


If your goal is to prevent very large retail stores from also selling groceries, then this is the initiative for you.

We have also heard from many constituents, including unionized supermarket workers and their supporters, who fear that a Wal-Mart Supercenter would undercut Albertsons, Ralphs, and Vons and cause the grocery workers to lose their jobs (which provide much higher pay and better benefits than Wal-Mart jobs). This initiative will make it impossible for Wal-Mart and other large retailers from building very large stores and also selling groceries.

Bear in mind, however, that if passed the initiative might affect other retailers as well as Wal-Mart. For example, the new Target at Pacific View Mall would not be permitted under this initiative. The Target is about 200,000 square feet and devotes about 6% of its square footage to groceries. If the initiative passed, Target would become a “non-conforming use,” meaning it would not be able to expand or remodel unless it conformed with the initiative – presumably by reducing the amount of square footage devoted to groceries. And no other store like it could be built in town, no matter whether it's a Target or anything else.

Clearly, the initiative’s proponents are hoping not only to prohibit a Wal-Mart Supercenter but also to discourage Wal-Mart. If a Supercenter is not permitted, the reasoning goes, perhaps Wal-Mart will not be interested in building any store in Ventura. It’s hard to know whether this will work, since Wal-Mart tends to get its corporate back up when challenged and has been very aggressive in fighting these ordinances throughout California.

And if Wal-Mart does not build a store in Ventura, it’s very possible that the company will build a Supercenter in Oxnard. This might make us feel good about having kept Wal-Mart outside our boundaries, but it will have other effects as well. Ventura residents are likely to patronize the store (apparently 20% of current Oxnard Wal-Mart shoppers are Venturans). This would mean that Ventura retailers would business to Wal-Mart anyway, even though there's no Wal-Mart in Ventura, and the City would lose all of the resulting sales tax to Oxnard.

As I say, I am not sure what position I will take on this initiative, if any. But I hope you can see that there are lots of issues that should be debated fully by the voters next fall.