What It's Like To Run For Office

In the next week or so, the City Council campaign will begin in earnest. On Saturday, I’ll be in the Fair Parade. On Sunday, I’m having a kickoff campaign event at Architexture (25 S. Ventura Ave.). The filing deadline is next Friday, so within a week we’ll know who’s running and who’s not.

There are three incumbents up for re-election – Carl Morehouse, Christy Weir, and me – and we’re all running. There are quite a few other folks running as well; I won’t list them here because the group isn’t set yet.

Fortunately, Ventura’s campaigns are not big-money affairs. Generally speaking, there are no campaign consultants and (with at least one exception, which I’ll mention below) no polls. There are no television ads and usually few radio and newspaper ads. We spend most of our time talking in people’s living rooms, seeking endorsements from local constituent groups, and debating each other in candidate forums. It’s pretty grass-rootsy, and I like that.

It costs somewhere around $20,000 to run a good City Council campaign. The vast majority of this money goes to design, print, and mail those four-color mailers you get right before the election.

But raising the money requires a lot of effort. Some years ago, Ventura’s voters passed a ballot measure on campaign finance. This ordinance places strict limits on how much money people can give to our campaigns, and in some cases it limits how much money we can spend. The idea is to limit the role of money in the council campaign – and, in particular, to ensure that one business or wealthy individual can’t bankroll a candidate, as often happened in the past.

The ordinance gives candidates a choice: We can either limit our contributions to $275 per person and limit our overall spending to $26,000; or we can limit our contribution to $175 per person and raise as much money as we want. (The City Clerk sets the amounts before each election according to a formula contained in the ordinance.)

Almost everybody chooses the first option, and you can see why: If you know 40 or 50 couples who are fairly affluent and strongly support you, you just get each one to give you $550 ($275 for each spouse) and you’re done with fundraising. But, in my opinion, even this isn’t really a grassroots effort. So I do it differently.

I choose the other option – a $175 limit on contributions, no limit on expenditures. I do this for a couple of reasons. For one thing, some candidate have gotten into trouble in the past because they’ve run up against the expenditure limit, and I’d just as soon have one less compliance issue to worry about. More important, though, is the fact that it forces me to run a grassroots campaign.

Last time out, the average donor gave me about $75 – that’s way lower than any other candidate. Lots of people wrote me a check for $25. Some people sent $5 or $10 bills to me as contributions. But I also raised more money than anybody else -- $30,000 – which I spent mostly on doing extra campaign mailings right before the election. (I was a challenger then so I was trying to get known, and it was right after the gubernatorial recall so it was hard to get voters interested in the race.) This also means I had more donors than anyone else, about 400.

I like this approach because it requires real grassroots campaigning – buttonholing people I know, going around to people’s living rooms to talk to neighbors, and having “addressing parties,” where my campaign volunteers and I address envelopes and lick stamps. (I sign every one of my fundraising letters myself, and I try to write a personal note if I can.) This year, almost 100 people have already donated to my campaign, and the average donation is once again well under $100.

What’s great about this level is that there’s really no difference between fundraising and campaigning. You’re looking people in the eye and asking them both for a check and for their vote.

That’s one of the many reasons that I like running for the Ventura City Council. It’s so much more satisfying than running for, say, the Assembly or Congress – or even for County Supervisor – where there’s a lot more fundraising and a lot less direct contact with voters.

Let me know if you’d like to contribute to my campaign – even if it’s only $5 or $10. Campaigning in Ventura is so grassroots that I’m not even set up to accept online donations! So I’ll send you a contribution envelope, either via email or snailmail.

And also please let me know if you would like to host a house party. This is usually a neighborhood event where you invite your friends and neighbors, provide a few refreshments, and we chat in your living room or backyard about the issues that really matter to you. It’s my favorite part of campaigning.

Unblending The Retirees

Last night, the Council decided to provide one more transition year to the City’s 140 retirees who purchase medical insurance from the City. It’ll cost us $220,000 – but it will provide a softer landing for the retirees who have traditionally counted on favorable City medical insurance rates, and it will save us a lot of money in the long run.

This story is a good example of the financial pressures the City faces, and the hard decisions that we on the Council have to make as those financial pressures grow. It’s also a good story about collaboration and about innovative solutions within government.

Many city employees retire before the age of 65, meaning they are not yet eligible for Medicare. Faced with the question of what to do about medical insurance in the meantime, about 140 of these younger retirees currently buy it through the City’s program. Traditionally, the retirees and the current employees were put into the same pool and purchased insurance at the same rate – a rate that was lower for the retirees than they otherwise would pay (because their medical costs generally are higher) but higher for the employees than they would otherwise pay (because they were subsidizing the retirees). The City is not required to provide retirees with medical insurance at the same rate as current employees, but it was longstanding practice and most of our younger retirees had come to depend on it.

In the last few years, of course, the price that everyone pays has gone way up. And, more recently, the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) has changed its practices and will soon require that the City (and all other government agencies) calculate the cost of all retiree medical benefits as a liability on our books. A quick calculation by the city’s staff concluded that this figure would currently be $5 million. In the years ahead, as more and more people retire, it would grow to $24 million. This liability would harm the city’s overall balance sheet and could hurt our credit rating. And, of course, it would mean the rates for our current employees would just keep going up and up.

This is kind of like Social Security. The more retirees there are, the harder it for those still working to pay the bill.

So last fall, we voted to “unblend” the rate, meaning current employees paid a rate based on their own actuarial and risk factors and retirees paid a separate rate based on their factors. We did it, frankly, without a whole lot of discussion. The result was a big hit for some of our younger retirees. The typical individual saw his or her rate double, from about $500 to $1,000 per month, under Blue Shield. (Kaiser, which had just taken over Buenaventura Medical Group, had not yet unblended the rates and so their rates were still low.)

Not surprisingly, this caused a backlash. In November, Councilmembers Neal Andrews and Jim Monahan proposed reconsidering this action – and more than 100 out of the 140 retirees packed the council chamber in support. We agreed to subsidize 50% of the increased rates for one year (calendar year 2007) – a hit of about $400,000 on the General Fund. We also agreed to create a task force, including Councilmembers Andrews and Ed Summers, to work out a longer-term solution.

And we did. The proposal that came before us last night was a pretty good solution, and included a tolerable increase for most people. Kaiser has now unblended the rate and so the typical individual will now pay $500 a month, up from $300 a month last year. (It’s more than $1,000 a month for two or more people.)

But the task force also found another solution to the high Blue Shield costs. Riverside County has negotiated low rates with Blue Shield and has now offered this program – known as Exclusive Care Select – to other government agencies as well. Ventura County is likely to join, as are Orange and San Bernardino Counties. By joining this program – essentially, contracting with Riverside County to join their program – it looks like we’ll be able to soften the blow, and bring the retiree premiums to around $530 a month for an individual and $1,000 for a couple.

This is a pretty good application of a theory floating around in public administration circles these days. The theory suggests that government agencies should not try to do everything. Rather, they should specialize in what they are good at, and then contract with each other for the good stuff. For example, if the County’s better at 911 than we are, let’s contract with them. Our deal with Exclusive Care Select is a good example. Riverside County is good at this stuff. So we’re going to contract with them to help provide more affordable health insurance for our younger retirees.

And we’re giving the retirees a bit of a soft landing besides. We agreed to subsidize their transition for one more year – at half the previous level, or $220,000. That works out, on average, to about $130 per month per retiree. (We rejected another alternative, which was to phase the subsidy out over four years, at a cost of almost $1 million.)

Our subsidies are real money, of course; this is money we will have to come up with in the short run from existing sources of funds. And we weren’t contractually obligated to provide this transition period.

But our own employees clearly believed we had a moral obligation to them. We did not want to risk our long-term credit rating. And by working together with the retirees, we found an innovative solution that, we hope, will maintain affordable medical insurance premiums for them in the long run. Who says government can’t be innovative?

Why I Backed Off On Reconfiguring Victoria

One of the things I hate about politicians is that when they run into political resistance, they often change course and don’t admit it. They make it look as though the changed course is a perfectly logical result of a thoughtful process, not the result of political pressure. So let me make something very clear: I backed off of the idea of reconfiguring the lanes on Victoria because most everybody in town seemed to think it was a bad idea.

On Monday night, the City Council voted 6-1 to move forward with the a new development code for Victoria Avenue – which requires an environmental impact report and other process considerations – but scrapped the “streetscape” part of the Victoria plan. This was the controversial idea of reconfiguring the traffic lanes in Victoria so that only six would be through-traffic lanes, while the other two would be local traffic and turning lanes. I voted to scrap the reconfiguration.

A politician has to admit when he’s not on the same page as his constituents. I’ve never had so much negative comment on any position that I’ve taken in four years on the council. Though a few people came to our defense, most constituents who expressed an opinion did so in very strong terms – calling us idiots or morons. Frankly, I got tired of defensively explaining that I wasn’t advocating eliminating any lanes, just using them in a different way. And I was waiting to see what our traffic planners told us about how this would affect traffic flow.

But when an idea doesn’t get traction, it’s okay to move on. So we’re moving forward with what we agree on rather than dwell on what we disagree on. And what we agree on is this: Victoria should strengthen its position as an important business district, especially for professional services firms. It will continue to have important retail, restaurant, and residential components, of course – the Victoria corridor really is a truly “mixed use” area, with everything you need in one place. But given its proximity to the Ventura County Government Center, it only makes sense to try to strengthen the office base in the area. By changing the code to encourage more office uses -- without eliminating any existing retail or other businesses – we can make a long-term commitment to prosperity.

Not only have I never gotten so much negative comment on an issue, I’ve never seen an issue that had so many dimensions. They’re endless.

Jim Monahan quite rightly pointed out that part of the traffic problem is the fact that Victoria serves as the southbound connector between 126 and 101. On Monday night, I reiterated my promise to Jim that I would talk with my fellow transportation commissioners and Caltrans about moving the 126-101 connector project up the list (it’s currently last).

All of our planning efforts in East Ventura have led me to believe, even more than before, that we have to do something to move traffic north and south. Mills Road by the mall is very busy, as is Victoria at rush hour. Wells Road south of Highway 126 has gotten very crowded, especially in the morning rush. We could try to push Johnson Drive across the 126 freeway or Kimball Road down across the Santa Clara River. But both these efforts would require building a bridge and winning a SOAR vote. To do Johnson we’d have to widen the street between Ralston and Bristol, where people live in single-family houses close to the right-of-way; and to do Kimball we’d have to work with Oxnard, which may or may not be receptive.

Then there are all the large employers who rely on the Victoria corridor, especially the county, the school district (which has five schools in the vicinity of Victoria and Telegraph), and the college, whose staff and students come up Victoria and turn left on Telegraph. I still hope we can have a dialogue with all these employers and institutions to discuss whether we can alleviate rush-hour congestion by staggering everyone’s schedule.

Finally, of course, there’s Wal-Mart, which is preparing an application to build a store where the Kmart is currently located adjacent to Trader Joe’s. A lot of folks around town want us to keep Wal-Mart out, while a lot of other folks think we’re dragging our feet and foregoing lots of needed sales tax revenue by not falling all over ourselves to welcome them.

The truth is it’s very difficult to keep any individual company from doing business in our city . Constitutionally, our planning policies cannot distinguish between Wal-Mart and, say, Kmart or Target . Wal-Mart has already taken down a 20-year lease on the Kmart site and there would be nothing to prevent them from simply moving into that building (which is about 100,000 square feet).

But that’s not what it appears they are planning to do. In May, when they showed the city staff a new design (which apparently looked good in urban design and “green building” terms), they also hiked the size of the building from what they had previously discussed. It’s now apparently a 150,000-square-foot supercenter, complete with groceries. .

Some of the folks opposed to Wal-Mart have been encouraging us to pass an “anti-big-box” ordinance. But, as our Community Development Director Nelson Hernandez pointed out the other night, we already have mechanisms in place to deal with very large stores. Any retail store over 50,000 feet in the Victoria Corridor now has to go to the Planning Commission for a special permit, and under the proposed Victoria code it would be very, very difficult – if not impossible – to approve a store of more than 90,000 square feet.

All of which means that Wal-Mart might have to bag the groceries and settle for a smaller store, more the size of Kmart. But remember: Groceries are exempt from sales tax. So there wouldn’t be much hit on the city treasury.

The Not-So-Silent Second

Remember when the rule of thumb was your house should cost three times your annual income? In Ventura today, the average house costs ten times the average household income. If you already own a house, you’re probably okay. But if you’re a young family – or you live somewhere else and you get a job here – it’s almost impossible to buy a house.

This is not only a problem for families – it’s also a problem for businesses. If the people who work for you can’t afford to buy a house in the community where you’re located, they’ll probably leave. At best, they’ll commute long distances, creating traffic congestion and environmental damage.

It’s a problem for small businesses like the one I run, which has seven employees. It’s also a problem for big organizations that employ hundreds of people, like the City of Ventura. The truth of the matter is that our community isn’t going to be competitive – and organizations large and small can’t do their job well – if people can’t afford to live in Ventura.

Last Monday night, the City Council unanimously approved one of the most important new initiatives to come forth since I was elected almost four years ago: the Employee Housing Assistance Program. It’s a simple, low-risk, and inexpensive way for the city to help city employees buy houses here in Ventura – an important element in “recruiting and retaining” good city employees. Just as important, it lays the foundation for a communitywide effort that would allow all employers – large and small – to do the same thing. Already, our city’s Housing Authority and Community Memorial Hospital have expressed interest in joining the program.

The concept is deceptively simple. You might call it a “not so silent” second mortgage. An employee qualifies for a mortgage. The employer puts up the collateral for an interest-only second mortgage and then pays the interest. The bottom line: The homebuyer’s monthly payment on a $450,000 mortgage debt is cut from $3,000 to $2,000 a month.

Too good to be true? Not really. Here are a few more details:

-- The employer isn’t really out the cost of the mortgage. It’s only collateral. The employer pays the interest on the second mortgage, but that cost is defrayed by the fact that the employer can still invest the cash. When the house is sold or refinanced, the employer gets the money back – with the interest.

On Monday night, the City Council approved $2 million for the program. But that’s not tax money the city is spending. That’s money the city already has in its investment portfolio that has simply been pledged against the employee’s mortgage. The $2 million will still be in the city’s investment portfolio, accumulating interest. The net annual cost to an employer like the city is estimated to be $3,000.

The program can provide a lot of help even for people who don’t make a lot of money. Virtually all full-time employees at the city are eligible for a second mortgage of $150,000.

At the city government, the lowest-paid full-time employees make about $13 to $14 an hour. You may think somebody making that kind of money would never be able to afford a house. But if two working adults make that amount, their household income is somewhere around $55,000 – enough to qualify for a mortgage of around $275,000-$300,000. Add the $150,000 second, and even people with modest incomes are back in the housing market.

And best of all: This program doesn’t have to be limited only to city employees. It can be opened up to anybody whose employer is willing to participate in the program. Right now the program will be run by the city, but as more and more employers join, it will probably be spun off into a separate entity.

The city has been in discussions with many large employers about participating – not just Community Memorial and the Housing Authority but also the county, Ventura College (which spoke in favor of the idea Monday night), Patagonia, and the school district. We’ve also been working with the Chamber of Commerce on ways to bring this program to small employers as well.

That’s good news for small business owners, like me. In my day job, I am fortunate to attract some of the most talented and promising young people in the country to work for me. But they almost always leave, usually because of housing price. I’d like to find ways to keep them in Ventura long-term, and as an employer I look forward to working with the Chamber on being a small-business participant in this program.

Thanks to Mayor Morehouse and especially Councilmember Neal Andrews for promoting and crafting the program as members of the Workforce Housing Ad Hoc committee. This is the most important step we’ve ever taken to “recruit and retain” good employees – not just at City Hall, but everywhere in our city.

A Neighborhood For The Future

On Saturday I went to the grand opening of Citrus Walk, the new subdivision located off Henderson Road along Highway 126 in East Ventura. It was a good place to see the future, and how all the Monday-night brawls over real estate development projects can help to shape that future.

This project was built by The Olson Co. on the Hailes Ranch, a 40-acre site formerly owned by the school district. When it’s completed, the project will consist of 232 dwelling units on about 40 acres, ranging from 1,300-square-foot triplexes (on the market at $450,000) to 3,000-square-foot single-family homes (clocking in at around $800,000).

There was a pretty fair brawl over the project itself and the site plan. Olson proposed a mostly single-family project with some multi-family, while many neighbors wanted entirely detachd single-family homes. After Olson and the neighbors reached an agreement, the city staff and eventually the City Council called for a different site plan – one that created more of a mix of dwellings, along with more usable open space including a one-acre park that many of the dwellings overlook. We also created larger one-story ranch-style homes on larger lots along the perimeter of the project adjacent to existing neighborhoods. For all these reasons, Citrus Walk will be one of the few neighborhoods in Ventura where you can “move up” without “moving out”.

On Saturday, I saw the payoff. Ventura is a city that is rapidly aging and we always hear that young families and the middle class are getting priced out. Yet on Saturday I saw all kinds of people. Lots of young families of all races and ethnicities – some couples with children and some where the wives were very pregnant. But also lots of empty nesters.

Not all these folks will buy in Citrus Walk, of course. A lot of the people I talked to are also looking RiverPark in Oxnard. But many of these folks, especially the young families, will buy. And that means many people who work in Ventura, who are raising families, and want to make a life here will have a place to live – some in larger houses they can “move up” to, others in starter dwellings that are a little less expensive. And those in the starter dwellings will be able to move up as their incomes grow while still living in a neighborhood – with a park – that they will probably come to think of as home.

We often kick around what we mean by “smart growth.” Mostly what I mean is building neighborhoods that make sense for families to live in given both the financial and social demands we face today. In Citrus Walk, we’ll see lots of different types of people living in the same neighborhood. We’ll see young families finding a place to live in Ventura with the ability to move up in the same neighborhood. All these things are to the good. And they wouldn’t not be possible if we were still pursuing conventional suburban development.

Score one for smart growth.

I'm Running

• I’m running.
  
  I can’t believe it’s been four years – almost to the day – since I first announced my candidacy for the Ventura City Council. Four years is an eternity in politics. But it’s not a very long time when you’re trying to assist your community to become a better place. That’s why I’ve decided to seek re-election this fall.
  
  We’ve accomplished a lot, but there is a great deal more to do. We have begun to “raise the bar” in every area of life in Ventura – but we are not done.
  
  It’s been my great privilege to serve all of you as a member of the City Council since you first elected me in 2003. I ran because I felt City Hall was out of touch with our community and I thought I could help restore a bond of trust between the community and our city government. I also thought I could help “raise the bar” on a variety of issues, especially planning and development.
  
  I’ve tried very hard to be responsive to every constituent and thoughtful about every issue. This isn’t always easy. As a member of the City Council, I have 106,000 constituents. And my colleagues and I get flooded with different issues concerning our city every Monday night – not just planning but budgeting, litigation, public works projects, union contracts, partnerships with nonprofit organizations, environmental issues, and on and on. I’m amazed at how much there is to do.
  
  I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in the last four years. Our community is a different place today than it was in 2003. Here are some examples:
  
  Four years ago, our city had a $9 million budget deficit. Today our budget is balanced. As the City Council’s liaison to the Ventura Auto Center, I am proud that we have increased dealerships, sales, and tax revenue in the last four years so that we are running even with our counterparts in Oxnard.
  
  Four years ago, our hillsides were still at risk for major development. Today they are designated as open space in our General Plan and we have a robust local organization, the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy, working to protect the hillsides forever.
  
  Four years ago, our community’s trust in City Hall was at an all-time low. Today, more than 80% of Ventura residents say they trust the city government and like what we’re doing.
  
  Four years ago, our community was riven – as it had been for decades – over divisive questions about growth and development. Today, thanks to our all-infill General Plan, we are largely in agreement about how and where to grow.
  
  
  Four years ago, we weren’t even addressing the pressing questions concerning public safety in our community. Today, we are about to add police officers and firefighters to our city force for the first time in almost two decades.
  
  These are significant accomplishments. But there is more to do. If you choose to re-elect me to the City Council, I will devote the next four years to finishing the job I’ve started, so that Ventura will continue to be a great place to life in the future.
  
  With that in mind, here are my priorities for the next four years heading into this election:
  
  
  1. Finish the job on prosperity and public safety
  
  When I ran in 2003, I said that prosperity and public safety are intertwined. You can’t have a prosperous community if it is not safe; and you can’t afford the cost of public safety if your community is not prosperous. Over the next four years, I will work to increase our city’s tax revenues by encouraging appropriate new business, and I will work to use those increased tax revenues to further expand our public safety force.
  
  
  2. Finish the job of requiring high-quality new development and historic preservation
  
  We have made great strides in the last four years on the issue of growth and development. We have committed ourselves to land preservation and focusing on infill development. But we still have not completed the job of requiring high-quality development 100% of the time, so that everyone will benefit from the new growth that we do approve. I am committed to “raising the bar” even more on new development. This means not only requiring high-quality new development, but improving our sensitivity to existing neighborhood conditions and historic preservation.
  
  
  3. Finish the job of protecting the hillsides
  
  Our 2005 General Plan removed the Ventura Hillsides from the path of growth by re-designating the hillside area as open space rather than residential. But virtually all of the hillside land is still in the hands of private landowners. Over the next four years I will work with the city, the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy, the Trust for Public Lands, and other conservation organizations to purchase the hillsides so they can be restored ecologically and opened for recreational use.
  
  
  4. Finish the job of “greening” Ventura
  
  Ventura is already one of the most environmentally progressive cities in California. But there is so much more to do to make our community truly “green” – increasing recycling, restoring our barrancas, improving our stormwater runoff so our ocean is always clean, leading the way on conservation so that we simply don’t use as much electricity or gasoline or water as we do today. I am committed to working with my colleagues to make Ventura even greener than it already is.
  
  
  5. Finish the job of providing workforce housing
  
  Housing is so expensive in Ventura that many of the people who work here cannot afford to live here. This leads to commuting, overcrowding, and the loss of a “sense of community”. The city has been working with developers and other large employers to provide more workforce housing – housing available to the people who work in our community rather than commuters. I will continue to work with my colleagues and other organizations in Ventura to expand workforce housing opportunities in Ventura.
  
  
  6. Finish the job of engaging our neighborhoods in our governance
  
  Four years ago I promised that I would work with Ventura’s neighborhoods to find new and important ways for them to be involved in the governance of their communities and our city overall. I am sorry to say that we have not made as much progress on this front as I would like. While the city now does a better job of reaching out to community groups, we still have not found a strong and consistent way to engage our neighborhoods in the governance of our community. Over the next four years, I will work to find innovative and important ways to strengthen the bond between the city government and the neighborhoods so that everyone is involved in governing our town.
  
  
  List of Endorsements
  
  I’m very grateful for the broad and deep support within the community. Here is a list of community leaders who have already agreed to endorse me. We’ll keep adding to this list as the campaign goes on. Titles are for identification purposes only and do not suggest support from the organizations identified.
  
  Organizations
  Ventura Citizens for Hillside Preservation
  
  Individuals
  Brian Brennan, former mayor of Ventura
  Greg Carson, former mayor of Ventura
  Ivor Davis, president of the Ventura Music Festival, and Sally Ogle Davis
  Jill Bangser Fioravanti, Midtown resident and Housing Authority Commissioner
  Lauri Flack, founder of the Westside Community Council
  Dan Frederickson, Downtown resident and investor
  Jim Friedman, former mayor of Ventura
  Debbie Golden, Ventura Unified School District Trustee
  Mary Haffner, Ventura Unified School District Trustee
  Erika Harding, musician and small business owner
  Mark Hartley, Pierpont resident and Downtown investor
  Bill and Rose Hayden Smith, Midtown residents
  John Hecht, Ventura Planning Commissioner
  John Keats, M.D.
  Ed and Susan Lacy, community activists
  Marie Lakin, parent and community activist
  Dan Long, Midtown resident
  Carl Morehouse, Mayor of Ventura
  Pedro Nava, California State Assemblymember
  Hugh Oliver, Midtown resident and hillside activist
  M.L. Peterson, Ventura County School Board Member
  Steve Schafer, Midtown resident and historic preservation activist
  Roy Schneider, M.D.
  Mel Sheeler, former chair, Greater V entura chamber of Commerce
  Sandy Smith, former mayor of Ventura
  Ed Summers, Ventura City Councilmember
  Nan Waltman, Livable Ventura
  Chuck Watson, former director, Interface Family Services
  Christy Weir, Deputy Mayor of Ventura
  

Playing the Retail Game

I’m all retailed out.

For the past three days I have spent almost all of my time at on the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center, talking to retailers, brokers, real estate developers, and lots of other folks who are engaged in the business of figuring out where retail stores will be located and how shopping centers will look in the future.

The convention I'm attending on behalf of the city – the 50th annual convention of the International Congress of Shopping Centers (ICSC) -- is huge. Think three or four Pacific View Malls, swarming with half the population of Ventura. It’s so big that the convention center has streets with names – 20th Avenue, D Street – and the biggest retailers and developers have special business cards made up with their Convention Center address on them. Constantly walking from one end of the convention to the other is kind of like – well, kind of like going to the mall.

The main purpose of the convention is for shopping center owners and retail stores to “do deals” with each other on shopping center leases. It’s said that billions of dollars changes hands every year at ICSC. Increasingly, however, cities like Ventura participate too. Last year was the first year we came to ICSC; this year was the first year we had a booth. Deputy Mayor Christy Weir has been here with me, as has Sid White, the city’s Economic Development Manager. City Manager Rick Cole was here on Monday.

Why do we bother? Suffice is to say that as an elected official, you can’t do your job well if you don’t understand retail trends and how they affect your town and your finances.

Sales tax is very important to our city budget, and retail stores are very important to our economic development strategy all over town, from downtown to the auto centers.. Hotels are important to our city and our budget as well – we are a tourist town, after all, and hotel developers and operators also participate in ICSC. This year, Jim Luttjohann, the head of our visitor and convention bureau, came with us and he’s been great at dealing with the hotel people.

In 3½ years in office, I’ve learned that you can’t sit back and wait for retailers to come to you – but by the same token you can’t simply give them everything they ask for, either. You have to know what you want and be aggressive in finding the developers and retailers who can help you meet your goals (and also be aggressive in deciding what retailers and what business deals you don't want). But you also have to know the market and the trends, because your goals have to be realistic. In other words, you have to be very, very savvy about what’s going on. And because retailing is so faddish, you have to work constantly to stay current.

So we’ve spent a lot of time talking to shopping center developers and owners. For example, ICSC is the best time to talk to higher-ups at MaceRich, which owns Pacific View Mall. The convention is a good place to target retailers and hotels that we think we might want in Ventura and understand how they do business. We’ve talked to a lot of people, for example, about the retail opportunities that exist on the vacant land at the Ventura Auto Center. (Representatives of the Auto Center’s landowners, Hofer Enterprises, have also been here this week.)

Most of all, we’ve soaked up knowledge just by being around. There’s a lot of talk about mixed use. It has become a popular topic here at ICSC in the last couple of years, and we’ve had a fair amount of traffic at our booth from people who are interested in it. And even though most of the retailers represented here are national chains, there’s more and more talk about local businesses that can complement the chains in downtowns, at malls, and even at strip shopping centers.

Unlike the retailers and the shopping center owners, we at the city don’t come home with “deals in the bag”. But we do come home with leads, insight, and a stronger sense of the kinds of strategic decisions we have to make to stay competitive and use retailing to create a better community. And retailers and developers all over the country go home with a better sense of what kind of a community Ventura is and how to provide us with the retail and mixed-use developments we want.