How Do We Avoid Becoming a Commuter town?

Last week my friend Camille Harris delivered another negative broadside in the Star, attacking the City on a wide range of issues. I thought the article was both inaccurate and unfair, and so I have submitted this letter to the editor to the Star.


To the Editor,

Once again, Camille Harris has written an op/ed piece that relies mostly on hyperbole -- and, in some cases, erroneous information -- to make a case against the City of Ventura's economic development and planning policies. ("New urbanists trying to wall city in gray," April 18).

That's too bad, because the goals Camille seeks to promote in her article -- especially her goal of a town with fewer commuters -- are goals shared by the City Council. And the very policies she harshly criticizes are, in fact, designed to promote the goal she professes to support. I hope that Camille and everyone else in Ventura can unite around these common goals and work together to achieve them, rather than focusing on negative rhetoric.

First, a little fact-checking is in order.

Camille claims that Ventura is mostly a commuter town and the end result of our planning efforts will be to build more housing for commuters. These statements are not true.

By any standard, Ventura is job rich, with more than 50,000 jobs -- including many good-paying jobs at the County Government center and elsewhere.

Also, about 50% of the people who work in Ventura also live in Ventura. This is a far better situation than in any other city in Ventura County. In most of the other cities, only about 25% of workers live in town and 75% commute. So we are far more in balance -- and have fewer commuters relative to the size of our city -- than Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Santa Paula, or any other city nearby.

To me, this is the single most wonderful and precious aspect of living in Ventura. Because so many people who live in town don't have to commute somewhere else, they have more time, energy, and money to devote to life in our community -- as neighborhood activists, soccer coaches, PTO presidents, and so forth.

But this wonderful balance of living and working in Ventura is also fragile. The percentage of people who both live here and work here is going down. This is especially true in the western part of our city, such as the Midtown neighborhood where Camille lives, because Santa Barbara folks can afford to outbid local residents for beautiful old houses. That is why I believe that all of us in Ventura -- the city government, businesess, environmentalists, and neighborhood activists -- must work together to ensure that our beautiful city remains a city where people can both live and work.

In fact, both of the city policies that Camille criticized so harshly in her op/ed piece -- our infill development policy and our economic development policy -- have been put in place for the purpose of maintaining the fragile jobs-housing balance that all of us, including both Camille and myself, value so highly.

If we had continued our housing sprawl policy of past years, the result would be the construction of many more large single-family homes on large lots, which would be affordable only to Santa Barbara commuters and L.A. refugees with lots of home equity. In addition to discouraging that type of development, the City Council has also strongly resisted attempts by developers to take land reserved for jobs and convert it to housing. We've been heavily criticized by the business community for being anti-business in these situations -- especially when we refused to allow this switcheroo to happen with the Star's former headquarters on Ralston. But for most of us on the council, it wasn't clear to us why being "pro-business" required us to create more housing for commuters -- and take needed land away from office and industrial developments to do it.

By contrast, our infill development policy instead encourages developers to build a greater variety of housing -- including two- and three-bedroom townhomes and condominiums -- that will be less attractive to commuters and more affordable to the hard-working people who already live and work here in town. These folks will then have the time and energy to serve as soccer coaches and PTO presidents.

On economic development, Camille is quite right that we have not done a very good job over the last decade of fostering positive economic growth -- and especially bringing good jobs to town. That is why we partnered with a venture capital firm to encourage the creation and expansion of high-tech and biotech companies here in Ventura. These companies are well established in both Santa Barbara and the Camarillo-Thousand Oaks area -- but many of the people who work at those companies commute out to those locations. With the help of our venture capital partners, we will be able to nurture companies here in town where these folks will be able to work. This will allow them to stop commuting, work in town, and -- again -- allow them to conserve their time and energy to benefit our community.

It is always tempting to believe, as Camille often suggests, that we on the City Council have the power to stop the world from changing or to protect our beautiful town from anything bad that might happen. I wish we had this power, but of course we don't. The world -- and our community -- will change whether we like it or not. I believe our job on the City Council is to work hard to make sure that we can manage the change so that it makes our community better rather than worse.

I agree with Camille that our goal should be a community where as many people as possible can both live and work in town. But this won't happen if all we do is pine for bygone days. To succeed, we all have to work together to recognize what is going on in the world around us and find ways to work aggressively to achieve the goals we all share.

Why We Adopted the 911 Fee

As everybody in the world knows by now, last night Ventura became the first city in Southern California to adopt an access fee on telephones to help pay for our 911 call center.

It’s been splashed all over the newspapers and featured on the 11 o’clock news. Driving through Midtown on my way home from last night’s City Council meeting, I saw Patrick Healy of Channel 4 setting up his “live shot” in front of Pizza Chief on Main Street. Why there? He needed a pay phone as a prop – and how many pay phones are there anymore?

The 911 access fee would place a charge of $1.49 per month -- $17.88 per year – on every telephone line in Ventura, including landlines and cell phones. Individual telephone users will have the option to instead pay a fee of $50 every time they call 911. This, of course, is the controversial part – but it’s important to note that no telephone user will be charged $50 for a call unless they have selected that option in writing in advance.

I voted in favor of the 911 access fee because I think it will help us accomplish two goals.

First, it will help the City pay for a very important but expensive operation, the 911 call center. The 911 service is required by state law. Many years ago the state promised to help local governments find a way to pay for this service, but this has not happened. One of the reasons we did not add police officers or firefighters between 1990 and 2006 was because of the added cost of the 911 center. In fact, it has taken cops off the street to supervise the call center.

And second, it will – with other steps we are taking – free up money to hire more police officers and firefighters. In 2006, we asked the voters to approve Measure P6, a one-quarter-percent increase in local sales tax to add 14 police officers and 11 firefighters. The measure got 62% -- but it required two-thirds. What we kept hearing was, find another way to do this without raising our taxes. Thanks to the 911 fee and other steps, we should be able to hire 12 new police officers and 6 new firefighters within a year or two – about two-thirds of the way toward the goal we set in 2006.


Expanding Public Safety Staff

It’s quite true that discussion of the 911 fee emerged after P6 was defeated.

We spend about half of our general fund budget for police and fire. (Most of the rest goes to public works.) As I said above, the message we got from P6 was, increasing police and fire staff was really important – but find another way to do it. We knew we had to do something. Our public safety force is stretched so thin we are not making our goal of 5-minute response times. It doesn’t do much good to have a great 911 call center if we don’t have enough people to actually go out and respond to the calls.

So the first thing we did, in the 2007-08 budget, was earmark all the additional money we had available for more police officers and firefighters – six officers and three firefighters, to be exact. To do this, we squeezed all the other departments and told them to hold the line. For the first time since 1990, we are going to have a bigger police department and a bigger fire department. We now spend 54% of our General Fund on police and fire, rather than 50%, as we used to.

I was hoping we could do this again for one more year, but our revenues are lagging behind projections. The real estate boom is over, and increases in property tax revenue have been cut in half, to about 5% per year. Within a year or two they’ll be at zero until the real estate bust is over. Meanwhile, sales tax revenue is flat. This situation is not unique to Ventura. Every city in the county – indeed, in the state – is facing almost exactly the same trend on both property tax and sales tax.

But we also knew that, in the long run, we would probably need more revenue to bring police and fire staffing up to the levels where we needed them. So last year, we on the City Council asked the staff to come up with some alternatives. Back in December, we looked at a variety of choices, including another run at the sales tax, imposing additional taxes on new development, and other things. We decided that a 911 fee would be the fairest way to increase revenue.


Paying for the 911 Call Center

We get over 50,000 911 calls per year. That’s an increase of more than 250% since 1990.

The 911 system is very expensive. It involves a lot of capital cost, because you have to have really great, reliable equipment, and it involves a lot of labor cost, because you have to have lots of dispatchers and supervisors on hand all the time. Our call center currently costs a little more than $3 million a year to run. That’s not including the capital cost. Most of the money goes to the salaries of the 12 dispatchers, 4 police corporals, and 1 police sergant who work there full-time. Two to four dispatchers are on duty at all times, and one corporal is one duty from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., seven days a week.

It’s important to have our own dispatchers because it’s really, really important for them to know our local geography intimately. (And, of course, you have to have a surprlus on hand so you don't get a busy signal.) You can’t do this remotely; it slows things down, and even a few seconds is vital on a 911 call. It’s also important to have the police corporal on duty because that you have to have somebody capable of making decisions instantaneously about how to respond to the call. Responding with too few people can put a police officer at risk; responding with too many can mean there aren’t enough people left for the next call

As I said above, the 911 system was mandated by the state under a state law passed in 1986. At that time, the state promised to work with the local governments to come up with a funding source to help pay for a system that everybody knew would be very, very expensive to operate.

And, in fact, the state does levy a 911 fee on each phone line – as a number of our constituents have pointed out. This fee is tiny – only a few cents a month – and it is devoted to the capital cost of the telecommunications equipment, not operations.

But the state never followed through in its promise to work with the local governments in finding a way to pay for the 911 system. (In fact, not long after the 911 law was passed, the state shifted the allocation property tax in a way that is unfavorable to the city – we get several million dollars a year less than we otherwise would.)

I’m pretty confident that if the state had followed through on its promise to work with the local governments to create a funding source, it would have looked a lot like the 911 access fee we passed last night. But since the state never did anything, we had to do something.


$1.49 per month and $50 per call

The fee will work like this:

* It’ll be $1.49 per month for every phone line billed to a Ventura address, cell phone or land line.
* Low-income lifeline customers will be exempt.
* Businesses with “trunk lines” (one phone line that leads to a switching system) will be charged for three phone lines.

This is designed to generate about $2 million to $2.5 million per year – or, in any event, no more than 85% of the cost of the 911 call center. The money will not be in the General Fund. Because it’s a fee, it will be in a separate fund that can only be used to pay for the 911 call center.

There’s a provision that says that that the city must continue to spend the same amount of General Fund money on public safety. In other words, we can’t reduce public safety spending because we’re now getting money from the 911 fee.

The controversial part was the option of paying $50 per call. Here’s how that works:

* If you don’t want to pay $1.49 per month, you don’t have to. You can fill out a form instead informing the city that you want to pay $50 per call instead. Nobody will be charged $50 unless they have notified the city in advance that they have chosen this option.

* There’s a “Good Samaritan” clause that gives the Police Department discretion to waive the fee if you’re helping out a neighbor or calling in a very serious crime.

* People can switch back to the $1.49 per month fee at any time.

Why $50? It’s 85% of the cost of processing each 911 call.

The fee-per-call idea emerged for two reasons.

The first was to help strengthen the legality of the fee. These fees have been challenged in court by telephone companies in Northern California. Most of the time they are winning. Our City Attorney, Ariel Calonne, believes that by giving telephone customers two options, the fee is less vulnerable in court.

But there’s another, very practical reason: Not everybody uses all their telephone lines for voice communication. Many uses their lines for faxes, computers, and other things like that. By choosing the fee-per-call, you can ensure that you won’t be whacked for access to a service you’re not going to use.

We could simply exempt fax or phone lines, but that would require a cumbersome administrative procedure. People would have to declare that they don’t use their phone line for voice communications; and then we’d have to check and enforce that. This would cost a lot of time and money. By charging a per-call fee, we can ensure that people don’t “game the system” by claiming that their phones are used for fax service. Everybody pays their fair share.


Conclusion

There you go – my rationale for voting in favor of the fee, even the per-call option. Given all the considerations, I think it’s the best option on the table right now. Many people have, as usual, asked why we can’t simply generate more tax revenue by allowing more big retail stores in town. (We heard the same argument on P6.) The answer is: We must do both. We have a number of important locations where we must make sure that there is good, high-quality retail that serves our community and also generates tax revenue – downtown, the north end of the mall site, the Kmart site, the auto center. Each of these locations has potential. But it takes a long time to attract good retailers and put them in place.

We waited 16 years to hire additional police officers and firefighters. I don’t want to wait any longer.

At Last, A New Midtown Corridors Code

I’m sorry for the delay on this, but I fell ill after Monday’s meeting and am only now recovering.

Last Monday (11-26), the Council approved the Midtown Corridors code, including a large number of changes from the draft that was prepared by the staff. This action took place at the end of our second very long joint meeting with the Planning Commission.

Technically, both bodies discussed the code; then the Planning Commission made recommendations, then we approved the code with changes. Thanks to the Planning Commission for their hard work. The code will return to us for a second reading, probably on the consent calendar, in a couple of weeks – on December 17th, I think.

Overall, as I’ve said before, I think the Midtown Corridors code is a great improvement over the current code, and it’s an important step forward in implementing the General Plan. Gradually, we are knocking off these codes and plans called for in the General Plan. The Downtown Specific Plan is approved; now the Midtown code. In January we will hopefully knock off the Victoria Corridor plan and then wrap up the Saticoy & Wells Community Plan. Then we can move on to the North Avenue, Westside, and Midtown community plans. You can read more detail about this in the article I wrote in the Star on Sunday 12/2.

The big issue, of course, was views. I’m proud to say that we took what I think is the first action ever in a city code to protect views.. Here’s what we did:

-- We retained the suggested five-foot side-yard setback for corridor properties that are located at intersections with north-south streets.

-- We decided to require a 10-foot-wide sidewalk on the side-yard portion of all the corridor properties – that is, a 10-foot sidewalk will wrap around to the side street.

-- In order to maintain viewsheds along the hillside-to-ocean corridors (through streets), we will now require the upper floors of buildings on the through streets to be set back even further. That is, a building at Main and Seaward would be required to have a 10-foot sidewalk, a five-foot setback, and a further setback on the second and third stories.

-- To protect the terminating vistas looking northward, we required that the third stories of three-story buildings at a terminating vista be set back such that the ridgeline is visible from 200 feet to the south at a height of five feet.

Here’s a rundown of the other changes we made:

-- We clarified that all building heights must be expressed in the code in terms of both stories and feet.

-- We knocked down the height limits for buildings south of Thompson on either side of Borchard (the Vons and Big Lots shopping centers). Height limit will now be 45 feet (three stories) except on the areas immediately adjacent to residential areas, where height limit will now be 35 feet (two stories).

-- While retaining the “arcade” and “gallery” building types, we clarified that the arcades and galleries could not encroach on the public right-of-way (i.e., can’t be built over the public sidewalk).

== In deference to Community Memorial Hospital, which is required by state law to under a major renovation, we clarified that CMH’s future plans are probably best addressed by a specific plan rather than simply following the terms of the new code.

-- We decided to permit four-story buildings on the south side of Thompson at Seaward.

-- We allowed a few more uses in the main zone along Main and Thompson to permit business support services, as well as art studios and bars and taverns with a use permit.

-- We required landscape screening in the rear of the corridor properties where they abut residential properties.

-- We specified that the code should come back to us in a year for review.

Several other ideas didn’t fly. They included the following:

-- Picking up on an idea from Planning Commissioner Scott Boydstun, I suggested that we require all third stories be set back 10 feet from the street, to maintain the two-story feel of Main and Thompson. This didn't pass.

-- Councilmember Jim Monahan moved that we cut the parking requirements to match those downtown – essentially, from 2 spaces per unit to 1-1.5, Nobody seconded the motion.

-- Mr. Monahan also moved to limit heights to 26 feet to match the VCORD initiative. No one seconded this motion either.

The Midtown Corridors Code

On Monday, at long last, the City Council – together in a workshop with the Planning Commission – will consider the proposed Midtown Corridors Development Code.

The Midtown code is one of many steps our community is taking to implement the 2005 General Plan. As I have said before, our General Plan is very general, and especially in those parts of town that we have designated for infill development, we must draft very specific codes and policies to implement the General Plan.

I believe that the code can still be improved, and on Monday night I will work with my fellow councilmembers to make it better, especially in the dealing with views and the relationship between the projects on the corridors and the existing neighborhoods adjacent to them. But it is important to adopt this code very soon – if not Monday night, then as soon as the staff can return to us with the final changes. That’s because this code is a vast improvement over the code that is currently in place, for two reasons.

First, despite the rhetoric we have heard from some residents, this code represents a very significant downzoning along most of the Main and Thompson corridors from what is currently allowed. The current code permits six-story (75-foot) buildings in significant portions of the Midtown corridors now. The proposed code reduces the maximum height to two or three stories (between 35 and 45 feet) everywhere except at the Five Points area. Enacting this downzoning is long overdue.

Second, the code provides much more detailed direction to developers on setbacks, the mass and scale of buildings, and general design (as opposed to architectural style). This is a vast improvement over the current code, which is either too vague or too permissive on most of these points. This lack of specificity is part of the reason why recent projects have drawn a lot of fire.

For this reason I favor the quick adoption of the code, subject to additional changes we may direct Monday night. It may not be perfect, but it’s way better than what we have now. As the saying goes, we should now allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. We should get this thing as far as long as we possibly can on Monday night and pass it as soon as we can.


Implementing the General Plan

As I said before, there are a number of policies and action steps in the 2005 General Plan that lead the City toward a new code for the Midtown corridors. Chapter 3 of the General Plan calls for an “infill first” approach to development and identifies the Midtown corridors as one of the focus areas for infill development. Specific actions called for in the General Plan include:

* Action 3.9, which directs us to adopt code provisions that designate mixed-use areas.
* Action 3.14, which directs us to utilize infill development to accommodate needed housing as identified in the Housing Element.
* Action 3.15, which directs us to adopt new codes to comply with the Housing Element.

In the Housing Element, which is also part of the General Plan, there is a specific policy (Policy 3.9), which directs the city to “promote higher density housing as part of mixed-use developments along parts of Thompson Boulevard and Main Street in Midtown Ventura.”

In passing the General Plan two years ago, we adopted all these policies and action ste[s and we reaffirmed adoption of the Housing Element, which was originally adopted in 2004.

The General Plan also contains a policy (Policy 3A) that we maintain our “cherished community characteristics,” and there is an action item under that policy (Action 3.3) that we “require preservation of public view sheds and solar access”. I do not believe the code currently implements this policy effectively and I will work with my colleagues Monday night to make changes to address this problem.


Possible Changes to the Code

Over the past few weeks I have read the code in detail and consulted with a wide variety of people on the staff and in the community about the proposed Midtown Code. For example, I met with Camille Harris, Diane Underhill, and Claudia Armann, all of whom are involved in Bungalow Neighbors and VCORD, to discuss the proposed code in detail. I also reviewed Diane’s very detailed suggestions. I met with Scott Boydstun, an architect who is a member of both our Planning Commission and our Design Review Committee. Under the Brown Act I am permitted to speak with two other members of the City Council before the meeting, and I chose to chat with Christy Weir and Ed Summers, hoping to find a lot of common ground – which I did.

I also talked to a lot of people in the neighborhood when I walked precincts during the recent campaign. In general, I found the neighbors to be most concerned about what I call “adjacency” – they wanted to make sure that the adjacent neighborhood is not overwhelmed by the size and scale of the new development. Many were concerned about views; and others said that they did not like the current blighted properties near their houses.

All that said, here are some areas of concern and some thoughts about how the City Council might tweak the proposed code on Monday night:

Views

While the code has been pending, there has been a lot of debate over how to protect views of the hillsides from the flats of Midtown as infill development along the corridors takes place. The General Plan calls for preservation of public viewsheds and solar access, but it doesn’t define public viewsheds. (For the record, the pending VCORD initiative calls for the preservation of the ”existing City views of the hillsides and coast”– it doesn’t use the word “public” – but the initiative doesn’t provide a specific definition of viewsheds either.) Clearly, to truly implement the General Plan policy, the Midtown code must provide more specific guidance on public viewsheds in Midtown.

This is a somewhat tricky issue, because the height of the hillsides varies dramatically from block to block in Midtown. In many locations, even existing one-story buildings block hillside views from nearby public vantage points, while in other locations a three- or four-story building would not block the views. So on the question of views, where you stand really does depend on where you sit.

The most important public viewsheds in Midtown are the hillside-to-ocean view corridors that run along the north-south streets. It’s important to keep these view corridors clear, so that you can see the ocean from up on the hill and from the flats you can see the hillsides.

But there are two types of north-south streets in Midtown: through streets and terminating streets. Catalina or Seaward would be a through street, which goes up into the hillsides or ends in a place where there are no buildings. Santa Rosa or Pacific would be a terminating street – a street that terminates at Main Street and would therefore have a building on the north side, potentially blocking views. (The “terminated vistas” are identified with stars on the Regulating Plan between pages 20 and 21 of the code.)

Through Streets: “Daylight Plane”

The code currently proposes a five-foot sideyard setback on properties at the intersection of a north-south street and one of the two corridors. This is a good attempt at maintaining the view corridors catching hillside views to the north, but the setback standard on through streets such as Seaward should be more stringent.

There’s a concept in architectural regulation known as the “daylight plane” – a kind of a geometrical standard that requires buildings to step back, wedding cake style, from the street according to a specific angle – say, 45% -- as they get taller. A building located on the corner of a corridor and a through street should be subject to a daylight plane requirement for the sideyard setback – call it a “sideyard plane”. That way, view corridors will remain open – and the higher up you go on the building, the wider the view corridor will be.

This same rule should be applied to intersection parcels on Thompson, where virtually all the streets in Midtown are “through” streets – that is, they continue north at least to Main.

Terminating Streets: Third-Story Setback

Terminating streets represent a different problem, because a building on the north side of Main Street holds the potential to completely block hillside views from terminating street
that faces the building. However, this potential problem can be solved by adopting one simple rule: If a building on the north side of a terminating street is three stories high, the third story should be set back from the street sufficiently so that the ridgeline of the hillside is visible from 200 feet south on the terminating street at a height of 5 feet. The code should allow thin or narrow architectural features (such as a steeple) to protrude higher so long as the view is not obstructed. This is easily included in the code because there is already a Terminating Vista Overlay District proposed (page 28).

Not all views from every point on Main Street would be protected by this rule – but not all views from every point on Main Street would be protected even if buildings were limited to two stories. A distance of 200 feet is about a third of the way from Main to San Nicholas, meaning that the hillsides would become more prominent as you move farther south. They would be readily visible from San Nicholas and certainly from Thompson. Combined with the application of the “sideyard plane” rule on intersection lots on Thompson, this rule would maintain excellent north-south viewsheds along Thompson.


View From Along the Corridors Themselves

It is impossible to maintain every public view of the hillsides from every vantage point on both corridors. Existing buildings – even one-story buildings -- already obstruct some views completely. However, the combination of the sideyard plane rule (applied at through cross-streets at both Seaward and Thompson) and the third-story setback rule (applied on terminating streets) will maintain varying building heights throughout Midtown. The hillsides will remain visible from most locations along the corridors.


Adjacency

The most frequent concern I have heard from Midtown residents about infill development along the corridors is that new buildings will tower over adjacent residential neighborhoods. The new code represents a significant improvement over the current code but I think a couple of tweaks would make it better.

The current code permits a three-story building to back up to a residential neighborhood with a 20-foot setback. As it is currently written, the new code increases this setback to 30 feet, while retaining the 20-foot setback for two-story buildings. I think the practical effect of this change will be that most developers will create “wedding cake” buildings that will step down to two stories toward the rear property line.

However, the proposed code should be changed so that landscaped screening is required at the rear property line between a corridor parcel and an adjacent residential parcel. This can be easily achieved by simply expanding the “Landscape” section associated with each building type.

Having a one-story difference between the corridor building and residential building behind it is good policy. But I am hesitant to require the step-down in all circumstances – that is, create a complete prohibition on three-story buildings adjacent to one-story houses – for one simple reason: Every homeowner backing up to the corridor has the right under our zoning code to add a second story. Therefore, as it currently stands, the theoretical maximum height for a commercial parcel is one story taller than the theoretical maximum height for a residential parcel. If we ever create, for example, an historic district somewhere in Midtown that removes the possibility of homeowners adding a second story, then I would favor eliminating the step-down option and requiring that adjacent buildings on the corridors be only two stories.


Building Height Definitions

The current code defines allowable development mostly in terms of stories, rather than feet; though it does use feet in at least one instance (the T4.5 zone on page 22). The staff report does include a chart translating stories into feet.

The code should include both stories and feet in every reference to avoid confusion.

There has also been some concern that the allowable building heights on the corridor parcels are higher than one might expect – for example, 45 feet, rather than 35 feet, for a three-story building. This is mostly because the ground floor of a commercial building is typically 15 feet high with at least a two-foot space above it for mechanical installations. In fact, as proposed, the code requires a 15-foot minimum ground-floor height. Most of the three-story buildings that have been proposed along the corridors so far have come in at about 40-42 feet high.

Part of the purpose of the code is to encourage retail and live-work on the ground floor with residences above, so therefore I think a height limit in the 42-45-foot range is appropriate. However, we should also define the maximum height of each floor (15 feet for the ground floor, 10-12 feet for the floors above) to ensure that no project can actually have four floors.


Building Types

The list of allowed buildings types include two types – “gallery” (page 46) and “arcade” (page 47) – that permit the buildings to encroach onto the sidewalk space if the sidewalk space is provided beneath the second-floor building (arcade) or balcony (gallery). The intent is to provide a “walkway” effect like The Arcade in Ojai, but with living space jutting out into the public right of way above.

These building types do not currently exist in Midtown – or, so far as I know, anywhere in Ventura. Furthermore, because of noise concerns applicants seem to be pushing upstairs residential units away from the street rather than pulling the building toward the street.

Therefore, these two building types should not be permitted under the code.

Diane Underhill has suggested that two of the larger building types that would be permitted – “stack dwelling” (page 72) and “commercial block” (page 74) – should be prohibited on lots shallower than 150 feet. I frankly think it is unlikely anybody will try to build these building types on shallow lots, but I appreciate the point. It is possible that some developers will assemble two or three fairly shallow lots (say, 100 feet deep) along one of the corridors and seek to build one of these two building types.

Some residents may fear lot assembly because they think it will result in a monolithic project, but I have a different view. I’m more concerned about applicants trying to stuff big projects on narrow lots rather than shallow lots. The worst projects I have seen are the ones on the 50-foot lots. So I think that assembling lots gives the city far more ability to force the applicant to design a good project. And remember that the 20- and 30-foot setbacks would still apply. If we prohibit these building types, I’d suggest we prohibit them on narrow lots rather than shallow lots.


Encroachment

On some portions of Main and Thompson, the residential character of the area remains, and the code respects this character by requiring the buildings to be set back from the street according to the predominant existing setback on the block. A block where buildings currently come all the way to the sidewalk will require no setback; a block where buildings are set back residential style will require a similar setback for new buildings.

However, in both T5.2 and T4.5, a variety of front-yard encroachments are permitted to allow for porches, stoops, and the like. This might make sense in a brand-new development where it is also possible to design streets to be narrow with slow-moving traffic. But it does not make sense along Main and Thompson. These encroachments should be eliminated.


Five Points South of Thompson

The proposed code would designate the Five Points area as T5.2, which is the only place where the current six-story zoning would be retained. Taller buildings make sense at Five Points, especially near Community Memorial Hospital and on the triangle of Five Points, which is not adjacent to any residential areas. However, tall buildings don’t make sense south of Thompson along Borchard, which is adjacent to a residential neighborhood. As it is currently written, the code retains the T5.2 zoning south of Borchard but places an overlay (“Residential Overlay Two”) on the areas adjacent to residential to limit them to three stories. The entire area below Borchard ought to be rezoned to T4.5.



Three-Story Moratorium and the Pending VCORD Initiative

Diane Underhill of VCORD has asked that we include in this code a moratorium on all buildings over 26 feet in the Midtown corridors because of the VCORD initiative, which is currently pending at the county while the signatures are verified. I see why VCORD would be interested is taking this course of action. But I do not believe we should allow the pending initiative to stand in the way of taking steps to protect views in Midtown now.

Essentially, what VCORD is asking is that we place a moratorium on buildings over 26 feet tall along the Midtown corridors while we wait to see whether an initiative has qualified for the ballot which, if it qualifies and if it passes and if it is legally valid, would place an moratorium on buildings over 26 feet fall for up to two years while a committee is appointed to draft an ordinance to protect views.

My opinion is, Hey, let’s take concrete steps Monday night in the Midtown code to protect Midtown views now.

Thank You!

I just wanted to say thanks so much to everybody in Ventura who voted on Tuesday. I'm very privileged to have been re-elected, and I look forward to working with all my colleagues in the future to represent you and move Ventura forward. In the days and weeks ahead, I'll try to write frequently on the issues we are dealing with, in order to keep you informed ... and to continue listening to you!

Thanks again

Bill

Who's Endorsing Who?

When it comes time to vote, people often look to organization they trust and respect for guidance. So during campaign season, we candidates go around and talk to many organizations here in town asking for their support.

So far, I’ve been lucky. Most of the organizations who do endorse candidates have chosen to endorse me. We have yet to hear from a number of important organizations – especially the Ventura County Star, which is viewed as one of the most important endorsements. The Star did endorse me last time around.

When you try to figure out who has endorsed who, I realize that all those different signs and mailers can get confusing. A number of people have asked me how I have managed to forge alliances with all those different candidates – based on the combination of names they’ve seen on different signs and mailers. I wish! Although I have good relations with just about all the candidates, I have endorsed the other two incumbents, Christy Weir and Carl Morehouse.

All those different combinations you see on signs and in your mailers come from all the different groups who endorse candidates, not from the candidates themslelves. We’ve seen all different combinations. I’ve been paired with Christy Weir and Jerry Martin in one instance; with Jerry and Carl Morehouse in another; and with Carl and Doug Halter in yet another. The only exception here is the sign at Victoria and Telegraph. Carl, Christy, and I put that sign up ourselves.

Here are the groups who have endorsed me (that I know of!)

Ventura Citizens for Hillside Preservation
VCHP was the first group to endorse me – both in 2003 and today. I’m always grateful for their support and I am continuing to work to preserve the hillsides.

Ventura Police Officers Association
Ventura City Fire Fighters Association
Both these organizations endorsed me whole-heartedly. They both do a great job. I was proud to campaign with them last year in favor of Measure P6, the public safety funding measure. P6 didn’t get the two-thirds but it did get 62% -- more than any of us are likely to get in this election!

Service Employees International Union Local 721
SEIU represents most city employees as well as those who work for Ventura County, Gold Coast Transit, and other public agencies. I’m very grateful to SEIU because of the way the union cooperated with the City when I was first elected. We had a couple of tough budget years and SEIU agreed to take no raise in exchange for no layoffs. That got us through the hard times.

Ventura County Coastal Board of Realtors Political Action Committee
The Realtors PAC didn’t endorse me last time, but I’m pleased they decided to support me this time. I told them that I am especially proud of the city’s workforce housing program, which will provide a second mortgage for city employees seeking to buy a house. I’m also proud of the fact that we will be expanding this program beyond city employees, working with other large employers such as Community Memorial Hospital to help their employees as well. I believe this program will help both employees and the real estate market.

Stonewall Democrats
The Stonewall Democrats are active on a variety of social justice issues, but they especially focused on gay and lesbian rights.


So far, who hasn’t endorsed me? Two groups.

Tri-Counties Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO): My interview with Tri-Counties focused mostly on Wal-Mart. I stated my position, which is that I believe we should restrict the size of retail stores on Victoria. I believe Tri-Counties wanted a stronger position against Wal-Mart and has not endorsed me.

Greater Ventura Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee: Not only did the Chamber PAC not endorse me (or the other incumbents), they didn’t even interview us. The Chamber PAC has been critical of the incumbents for supposedly being pro-tax (because of P6) and anti-development (partly because of Wal-Mart).

In other words, one group didn’t endorse me because I’m not tough enough on Wal-Mart and the other group didn’t endorse me because I’m not easy enough on Wal-Mart. That's politics for you.

Cleaning Up the Planning Process -- I Think!

On Monday night (Tuesday morning, actually), the City Council voted 4-3 to approve an item brought forth by Councilmembers Brennan and Summers designed to improve the development review process. The votes in favor were Brennan, Summers, Monahan, and Weir. The votes against were Andrews, Morehouse, and myself.

I didn’t vote against the item because I opposed everything in it. In fact, I supported five of the six items contained in the items. I voted against it because I couldn’s support the sixth item as written. I found it confusing and I thought it called for shift in direction that I couldn’t support. We had lengthy discussion, and it was clear that most of us agreed on the first five items but we were split on the sixth.

However, Councilmember Monahan moved to approve all six items at once – admittedly it was midnight and we were all anxious to go home – and so therefore I had to vote against the entire package because I had concerns about the one item. Because of Mr. Monahan’s motion, we did not have the option of voting in favor of the five and then “agreeing to disagree” on the sixth.

I think that Councilmembers Summer and Brennan and I agree on the direction we should take, so I am hopeful we can work this out when the item comes back to us for further discussion.

For the record, here’s what their item called for:

Direct staff to review the goals below and present a plan for implementation including strategies, feasibility, potential impact and timeline.
a. Creation of a 30-day maximum initial application review to determine completeness.
b. A plan and organizational structure to reduce overall time in the application approval process by 20%.
c. Adopt a procedure to allow applicants to outsource the creation and drafting of Specific Plans for projects in excess of 20 acres and provide for the ability to allow higher fees in exchange for retaining contract planners to assist with the overall work force.
d. Create a work plan for the implementation of the recommended application workflow including conceptual design review and Commission/public participation process as identified by the Commission Task Force. This should include the involvement of current staff and applicants to review the recommended process in comparison to other similar agencies. [This item refers to changes to the development review process proposed by a task force appointed by the council a couple of years ago.
e. Consider the use of a portion of the increased fee income for development to support the addition of one or two staff positions to assist in the implementation of the objectives.
f. Complete a City-wide coding and zoning ordinance to be used in conjunction with the Housing Approval Program (HAP), downtown and retail stregies. This should be completed as quickly as possible to provide clear direction for development and reduce the urgency for other "Plans."

Although I had some concerns about Item c, I was more than willing to vote in favor of Items a-e. The staff did state – with some justification – that they are doing many of these items already, but I saw no harm in clarifying that it is a council priority to get them done.

Item f was the subject of most discussion. On its face, it seems to me that Item f calls us to do a citywide code, something we have said in the past is unnecessary. Many constituents also feared that Item f also meant that we would lower the priority of Community Plans on the Westside and in Midtown and just do codes instead. Without clarification I couldn’t support that item.

To back up just for a moment, everything we are talking about here has to do with how we implement the 2005 General Plan. That General Plan called for an all-infill approach to development, and it states that most new growth will accommodated in a few focus areas in town, specifically the North Avenue, the Westside, Downtown, Midtown, and Wells-Saticoy.

But our General Plan is very general, and we all recognized that we had to create more specific policies and rewrite zoning codes for each of these areas. Part of the problem was that, especially in Midtown and on the Westside, we had done many different plans, workshops, and charrettes over the years – but we had never adopted any of them as actual city policy.

At first we directed the staff to create a new zoning code citywide, but then we realized that this was unnecessary because the vast majority of the city – mostly existing single-family neighborhoods – was not going to change anytime soon. So we directed the staff to write codes only for the focus areas.

Since then, here’s what’s happened:

1. We approved our revised Downtown Specific Plan. This contains both policies and codes for downtown.

2. We have been simultaneously crafting the Saticoy & Wells Community Plan (which contains policies) and processing four Specific Plans (which contain codes) for the Wells-Saticoy area. Admittedly, this has taken a lot longer than we thought.

3. We are currently drafting an interim code for Midtown, with the idea that a Community Plan would come later.

4. The staff put out a request for proposals for the North Avenue Community Plan but has not started work on that project yet.

5. We have not yet tackled the Westside.

So, out of the five focus areas, we’ve completed both policy and code in one; we’re working on both policy and code in a second; we’ve put code ahead of policy in a third; and we haven’t tackled the other two yet.

Frankly, I couldn’t figure out what Item f was seeking to accomplish that we weren’t already doing, other than encouraging the staff to move faster. I didn’t sense that anybody on the council, even Councilmember Summers and Brennan, wanted to either write a citywide code or ditch the community plan idea.

The good news is that, even though we split 4-3 on the vote, I think we are mostly in agreement about what to do. Both the council and the staff agreed – as we have before – that future community plan efforts do not have to “reinvent the wheel”. Especially in Midtown and on the Westside, there are many previous planning efforts to draw upon and therefore we can create a more community plan process that is both responsive to the community and yet more time-efficient. I have a feeling that when the staff comes back to us in six weeks with suggestions on how to implement this policy, that’s what they are going to suggest. So I think it will all work out in the end.

Remember what they say about legislation – that, like sausage, you never want to see it made?