All Aboard For East Ventura

The other day, I boarded Metrolink Train 119 to return home from Downtown Los Angeles. The train was bound for a place called “East Ventura”.

Ever since Metrolink first came to Ventura a decade ago, the trains have stopped at a station in the Montalvo neighborhood, off of Victoria Avenue just north of Highway 101. This isn’t necessarily the best location in town for a Metrolink station. though it is an easy drive for 50,000 residents who live east of Victoria. But the truth of the matter is that the Montalvo rail siding was where the trains were stored overnight after they finished their run in Oxnard. So it made sense to take place where they were stored and turn it into a formal station. It’s also the starting point for a possible rail line through Santa Paula and Fillmore all the way to Santa Clarita.

The station has always been called “Montalvo”. Montalvo is a venerated neighborhood in Ventura; some of it is inside the Ventura city limits and some is not. I’ve spent a lot of time in Montalvo over the years. I’ve thrown out the first pitch in the Montalvo Little League two years in a row, and I’ve had lots of friends who live in Ventura and/or teach at Montalvo Elementary School.

So, while Montalvo is a very important neighborhood, the name really doesn’t convey a true sense of where the Ventura County Metrolink line goes. When you’re standing at Union Station in Downtown L.A. looking at the board, you see the names of the bigger cities that define Southern California: Riverside, San Bernardino, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Burbank, Glendale, Santa Clarita, Oxnard. You can take an Amtrak train to Ventura (the stop is at the Fairgrounds) but traditionally there was no way to decipher that if you got on the Montalvo train you were going anywhere near Ventura. Unless you knew where Montalvo was.

A couple of months ago, in my capacity as Chair of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, I asked Metrolink to change the name of the station from “Montalvo” to “East Ventura”. That way, riders in Downtown L.A. know that they’re going to Ventura – but they also know they are not going to the “Ventura” stop on Amtrak, which of course is in a different location. Metrolink made this earlier this month. Right now, to avoid confusion, the boards at Union Station say: “East Ventura/Montalvo”.

Things still aren’t perfect, of course. Ventura is still the only City in the entire Metrolink system – 130 stops – where Amtrak and Metrolink stop in different places. I’d love to see Metrolink come downtown to the Fairgrounds, but there are quite a number of logistical difficulties. For one thing, the East Ventura stop is essentially on different rail line, so Metrolink can’t just start at the Fairgrounds, stop at East Ventura, and move on to Oxnard. In addition, the rail line is single track throughout Ventura, meaning Metrolink would have to get to the Fairgrounds and back without running into conflicts with Amtrak or freight trains run by Union Pacific (which owns the tracks).

Still, I’m hopeful. The City is just starting on a new phase of our study looking at the possibility of capping the 101 Freeway at California (the study is being paid for by the Southern California Association of Governments). We’re hopeful that if the freeway were ever capped, we could create double-tracking or a siding that would form the basis for a multi-modal transit center, where trains and buses come together in one location.

For now, I’ll take whatever small victories I can get. And taking the train to East Ventura is definitely a win.

Trains, Surfing, Baptisms, Soccer -- Spring Has Arrived in Ventura

Spring always makes you feel better. And here in Ventura – where the winter can be wet and chilly, and the summer can be foggy – spring usually means great weather. It’s warm and sunny, and if we’ve had some late rain, the hills are still green.

Because spring also means rebirth, it’s usually a time when people are out and about – doing things that enrich our community and remind us that we life in a great place. And that was certainly the case this Saturday – from morning till night.

My day began at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, where I picked up the 9:35 a.m. Amtrak train to Santa Barbara for our regional National Train Day celebration. I was joined by a number of other public transit advocates, including K.K. Holland of ASERT, our local public transit advocacy group, Claudia Armann of the McCune Foundation and her son, my colleague Christy Weir and two of her grandchildren, and City Manager Rick Cole and his kids. We were met up in Carpinteria by a large contingent from Santa Barbara and Goleta and then went on to the Santa Barbara train depot, where a celebration of rail transit had been put together by the Coalition for Sustainable Transportatio.

It was a beautiful morning, and of course there is no more beautiful commute in the world than Ventura to Santa Barbara. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are several thousand commuters on that corridor every weekday morning from here to there.

Most of them are in their cars on the jammed Highway 101. A few hundred of them take the Coastal Express bus, which provides 20-minute headways in beautiful coaches at rush hour.

But hardly any of them take the train – the one form of transportation that can get commuters out of the traffic congestion on Highway 101. That’s because there are only five Pacific Surfliner trains a day between Ventura and Santa Barbara – and they’re not timed for commuters. In fact, that 9:35 a.m. train is the very first one of the day. As a member of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, I’ve been working with my colleagues to try to change the Amtrak schedule, but it’s not easy.

After a pleasant Coastal Express bus trip southbound along Highway 101, I was back in Ventura by 12:30. But it was such a beautiful day I couldn’t imagine going home. So I changed into my gym clothes and went for a run along the Promenade. Frankly, I’ve been afraid to go running since I have developed eye problems – especially because I now have blind spots along the bottom of my vision and often trip over things. But the day was so beautiful, I couldn’t resist. And everything went fine. I stayed upright the entire time.

But it was still so beautiful I couldn’t go home. So I bought a hot dog and a soda from the vendor on the beach in front of the craft fair and the Crowne Plaza. Not exactly one of my “locavore” meals, nor a particularly healthy one, but on such a beautiful day it was certainly one of the most enjoyable lunches I’ve had in some time.

Wandering around downtown, I couldn’t believe all the people and things I ran into that clearly indicated spring had arrived.

At Surfers Point, they were just giving away the awards for the surf competition in our Corporate Games , which annually attracts hundreds of companies to compete.

Strolling past Rocket Fizz, on the corner of Santa Clara and Oak, I ran into Marcos Vargas, the head of our local social equity group, CAUSE (and my UCLA urban planning classmate), taking his girls for a visit to the store – but they said they were just going to look at all the candy and sodas. Yeah, right.

In a parking lot at the corner of California and Thompson, I ran into a huge throng of kids – with a few adults thrown in – congregating to head out for the beach. Most of the kids had blue shirts on, but a few had red shirts on. It turned out that this was a group from Eastminster Presbyterian Church on Telephone Road. The red-shirted kids were getting baptized and the blue-shirted kids were part of the “river” in which they would be dunked at the ocean. Eastminster may be in East Ventura, but Downtown and the beach is important to them, as it is to everybody in town.

At the Museum of Ventura County’s temporary exhibit space on California Street, I checked out a juried exhibit of quilts. By the way, if you haven’t stopped by their Main Street location, you should take a look at how their expansion – the first in nearly 40 years – is coming along. It’s going to be a terrific addition to our community when it’s done. And thank goodness they’re keeping construction workers busy during this real estate bust!




Strolling down Main Street, I found the sidewalks crowded and all the restaurants busy. Since I still didn’t feel like going home, I stopped off at Palermo, where my gelato was lovingly scooped out by owner Rick Stewart’s father, Dick.

And although I spent a lot of my day using trains and buses and my feet, I couldn't help but enjoy the fact that a lot of folks have gotten their classic cars out now that it's spring, and are driving them around.

But the best part of the day was yet to come – and that was the home opener of our national champion Ventura County Fusion soccer team.

A lot of smaller cities have minor-league baseball teams. But we are lucky to have the Fusion -- which belongs to Premiere Development League, a kind of “minor league” for soccer players ages 18-23, many of whom go on to play for the L.A. Galaxy and other major teams. Last August, the Fusion won the league title at Buena High by defeating the Chicago Fire before 3,500 people – and a national television audience on Fox Soccer Channel.

Soccer is a great sport to watch in person, and the Fusion players are really good. They're from all over the world, but a lot of them are also local. For example, former Ventura High star Mike Enfield -- who played two years with the Galaxy and then in Australia -- is making a comeback with the team.

In case you missed it, the Star did a big story on the Fusion Saturday. And the Fusion is having a big impact on our community -- more than just a soccer game every once in a while. There's a women's team, and more than 20 youth teams associated with the Fusion. And the energetic general manager, Ranbir Shergill, is aggressively bringing over teams from Europe and elsewhere to train here. The result? Some 1,200 room nights per year sold at the Crowne Plaza. The Fusion is clearly part of our economic development strategy.

Before the game against the Ogden Outlaws began, I had the privilege of presenting a game ball from the championship game to Graham Smith , who coached the Fusion for the last three years. Then I was both humbled and surprised to be presented with another championship game ball -- signed by all the Fusion players. It's in the Mayor's Office now if you want to come and take a look at it.



By the way, the Fusion dispatched the Outlaws, 3-0.

At the end of my Saturday all over town, I couldn’t help but think that we are nearing the end of the long winter we have been experiencing here in Ventura and around the nation. Business is picking up a little for everybody. People I know who’ve been looking for jobs are beginning to find them; and businesses that have been teetering on the edge are beginning to stabilize. It’ll be a while before things turn around at the City, of course, because we’re highly dependent on the retail and property markets for our tax revenue. We’re going to have to make some very difficult cuts in the coming budget year, and it won’t be pretty. But we will find a way to get through it and move on to better times. After Saturday, I couldn’t help but be optimistic about that.

PS: This is my 100th blog as a member of the City Council, dating back to December 2006, when I wrote about the Wells-Saticoy Community Plan. I originally started blogging just to let you all know why I vote the way I do on Monday nights. But I have a really good time writing about all kinds of things in Ventura and staying in touch with you. Please feel free to comment or email me as much as you want.

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.

My Earth Day

It had been a carbon-intensive couple of weeks – those two weeks leading up to the Earth Day celebration in Ventura. Between Friday, April 3rd, and Wednesday, April 15th, I drove back and forth to San Diego, then took Metrolink to Los Angeles and back, then drove to downtown Los Angeles and then out by LAX and then back, then driven out to Ontario and Upland and back, then out to Riverside and back. So as Earth Day approached, it was pretty clear that I had to turn down the volume on my “carbon footprint” or else I was in big trouble.

There are a lot of factors that affect your carbon footprint, but the biggest one is traveling in vehicles that burn fossil fuels. Driving increases your carbon footprint significantly (buses and trains less so, but that’s still fossil fuel being burned). Our new state regulations for greenhouse gas emissions are promoting the idea that every household in California should only drive about 14,000 miles a year – that’s less than 300 a week, or a little over 40 a day. Yikes. And the experts will tell you that flying in an airplane balloons your footprint more than anything else. Double yikes.

I got serious about this on Thursday, April 16th. I had to go to Los Angeles and back again. This time, I took Metrolink again to Downtown L.A., where I had an appointment. Then I took the Red Line to connect up with a shuttle bus down to the University of Southern California, where I bummed a ride back to Ventura – in a Prius that had a total of five people in it. So far so good.

On Friday the 17th, I drove to work from my house near Ventura High School, met some friends downtown, and drove back to my house. Grand total: 5 miles. In my Prius.

Then I got serious. On Saturday the 18th, I wanted to go to the beach cleanup and the Ecofestival, both down along the Promenade. I managed to ride my bike. I decided not to go to the market – I ate out of my freezer instead – and I was too lazy to drive over to Mavericks Gym to work out, even though I intended to. I did drive back downtown to meet a friend for a drink. Two more miles, for a total of seven in two days.

Sunday the 19th: Again too lazy to go to the gym. Rode my bike over to the Midtown Earth Day event near my house. Drove to the office to catch up on some work, then home. More freezer food. Four miles – and 11 miles total in three days. Though, admittedly, I was chewing up frozen food assets to avoid driving to the market.

Then came Monday the 20th, and it began to get a little trickier. My typical Monday schedule is: go to work, then have lunch with Mayor Christy Weir and a couple of city folks, return to work for a little while. After that, prep for the City Council meeting by going to Mavericks for an intense workout (only way I can sit still on Monday nights), then back home for a nap before heading over to City Hall for the Council meeting, which starts at 6 (or 5 if we have a closed session to discuss litigation or personnel matters).

So I rode my bike to work, then walked to lunch, then walked back to the office, and rode my bike home. I was determined not to drive out to the gym, so I rode my bike around Midtown doing errands – the dry cleaners (dropoff, not pickup), the bike store, the bank, and the shoe repair store. All surprisingly easy. A touch over a half-hour altogether.

This allowed me to persuade myself that I didn’t need to go to the gym. So I took a nap and reviewed the council material, then took good old Gold Coast Transit Route 6 down Main Street, had a brief dinner in the back room at City Hall, and then sat in my chair on the dais for seven hours while the Council dealt with a variety of lengthy issues, including Wal-Mart.

As of 1 a.m., I had driven zero miles that day, and only 11 for a 4-day period. But I was at City Hall with no ride home. So I bummed a ride with Rick Cole, the City Manager, who lives near me – which reminded me that bumming rides is an essential component of lowering your carbon footprint. (At least he has a hybrid car too, but still, I’m mooching off of his carbon footprint.)

Tuesday the 21st – the day before the official Earth Day – was the day it all began to unravel. I had fretted about this one for a while, because I had a meeting downtown at 7 p.m. Should I take the bus or ride my bike to work and then walk to the meeting and walk home? Should I just drive? I tossed and turned the night before.

I finally decided to ride my bike to work, then walk to a series of two meetings in the late afternoon at City Hall, then walk back to the office – and after that I wasn’t sure, except I didn’t have my car with me. I would get back home somehow.

Everything went fine until I got to City Hall at 4 o’clock, when I realized that the two meetings were not at City Hall, as I had thought, but at the Chamber of Commerce office on Victoria near Telephone. I panicked, but Rick Cole again bailed me out by giving me a ride. I met him down at Ben & Jerry’s, where he was joining his kids on free ice cream cone day. I had a cone, thus regretting my missed trips to the gym, and then we drove out to the Chamber – arriving just in time for me to miss almost all of the first meeting.

Then the second meeting started – a planning meeting for the joint City Council-Chamber of Commerce economic summit scheduled for this upcoming Saturday, May 2nd, at 9 a.m. When it started, we realized that we were planning what was going to happen at an official City Council meeting, and there were four council members in the room (Mayor Weir, Ed Summers ,Jim Monahan, and me) – a majority. This held the potential to violate the Brown Act, the state’s open meetings law, so I stepped out of the meeting.

And had no way to get back downtown until that meeting broke up.

I fiddled around checking email for a few minutes, then went over to the Ventura County Transportation Commission next door, where I informed Darren Kettle, the executive director, that he had little choice but to give me an unscheduled briefing on what was going on. We shot the breeze till around 5:30, when I went back to the Chamber and bummed yet another ride with Rick Cole.

I was still fretting about how to get from my night meeting to home without a car when I realized Rick was getting off the freeway not at California but at Seaward. He was going not to City Hall but home. When he dropped me off at my house, the situation was that although I had driven no miles that day, now my car was at home, my bike was at the office – and I had a meeting elsewhere downtown at 7.

Now I had to make a choice. Do I drive back downtown? Do I leave the bike at the office and ride it home tomorrow? That lead to the second thing I was fretting about – the fact that I had another meeting out on Victoria the next afternoon (a very busy day) and I didn’t think I had the time – or the inclination – to ride my bike out there and back.

In the end, I drove to the office, put the bike in the back of the car (which required taking the front wheel off), drove home, unloaded the bike, drove back downtown for my meeting, and drove home. Seven miles – bringing my four-day total to 18.

The next day – Wednesday, April 22nd, the actual Earth Day – I stopped worrying about things. I drove to work, drove out to my meeting on Victoria, drove back to the office, and drove home. That was 16 miles, almost doubling my total for the week.

Still, 34 miles driven, one bus ride, and three bummed car rides is pretty good for a five-day total. Which was a good things because of what happened the nexy day, Thursday the 23rd. I began by going to the cleaners and the bank (cleaning too bulky to carry on a bike), then driving to a meeting at the Harbor (about seven miles total), then back to the office (about six more miles). Then I drove to USC to teach my urban planning class (about 70 miles, but there was a traffic jam and I outsmarted myself in the traffic jam by trying a workaround which failed, adding five more miles). After that, I drove to LAX (another 12 miles) and flew to Oakland.

At 10:30 that night I was standing outside the Oakland Airport facing the possibility of riding a bus to the BART station, then BART to Berkeley, and then walking a half-mile to my hotel at 11:30 at night in order to keep my carbon footprint down. But I'd already put in a hundred miles of driving and one airplane flight in a single day, so my carbon footprint was already blown.

That was when I decided Earth Day was over and hailed a cab.

The New Coastal Express Bus Stop

A few days ago Councilmember Brian Brennan and I turned up at the new Coastal Express bus stop on Thompson Boulevard at 5:30 in the morning to see how things were going. Being a former restaurateur, Brian naturally set up a card table and dispensed coffee and doughnuts. In general, we found a hardy group of Santa Barbara commuters who were eager to talk to us and understandably concerned about having their bus stop moved.

On the morning of January 12, the city and Coastal Express moved the downtown bus stop from the intersection of Santa Clara and California to mid-block on Thompson between Oak and Palm. As the city’s representative on the Ventura County Transportation Commission, I started getting angry emails at 8 a.m. that day – in other words, as soon as the commuters got to work! Since then, Councilmember Brennan and I have tried to work with Coastal and our own staff to see how to make the situation better.

The bus stop has been at Santa Clara and California since 2001. It is remarkable how many people use the downtown stop – 20 or 30 people line up for each bus, and at rush hour there’s a bus every 20 minutes or so. In other words, Coastal is a huge success.

But there have always been problems with the Santa Clara/California location. Most people park in the downtown garage, which was not intended for commuters. This is why some years ago the city put four-hour parking in the lower levels – so the commuters were park upstairs. With the construction of the office building on California (which will use approximately 60 spaces in the third level of the garage) and the onset of paid parking on Main and California, we expect to see far more pressure on the parking garage.

Of greater concern was the ability of the buses to make the tight turn at Santa Clara and California. Tom Mericle, our city traffic engineer, tells me that in the last few months the Coastal buses (which are charter bus-style, much larger than city buses) have clipped the traffic signal pole at the intersection four times, knocking it down twice.

On top of that, Gold Coast Route 16 was re-routed from Main to Thompson a couple of weeks ago, creating the opportunity for a direct transfer; and the city wanted to put a stop on Main Street over near Patagonia (which has many reverse commuters from Santa Barbara) without slowing the schedule down. That’s why the stop was moved to Thompson.

As I said at the council meeting on the 12th, there is no question that we totally botched the roll-out of this change. We did not inform the riders but a few days in advance, nor did we engage them in a discussion about it.

As we listened to the riders, we heard a number of concerns – mostly about the safety of parking their cars in the surface lots near the stop (including one at the Salvation Army) and the difficulty of crossing Thompson, which is a busy street. Based on our conversations with the riders, we have already been able to make a couple of changes.

First, some of the spaces in the surface lot behind the Valero gas station and the Hong Kong Inn have been converted to all-day parking. This is a well-lit lot close to the stop.

Second, we have increased the police presence in the vicinity of the stop between 5 and 7 a.m.

We are working on other minor improvements that might help.

Also, Supervisor Bennett and I – who represent Ventura on the Coastal Express committee – still have to meet with representatives of the riders to see what else we can do.

Stay tuned ….

The Metrolink Crash

Everyone in Ventura County is feeling grief and a sense of loss from the Metrolink crash along the Ventura County line in Chatsworth on Friday, which killed 26 people. Almost all the victims lived in Ventura County, mostly in Moorpark and Simi Valley. Our hearts go out to all the victims -- and especially to our two devastated neighboring communities.

Our hearts especially go out to the family of Dean Brower of Ventura, who perished in the crash. Dean, his wife Kim, and their three children are a wonderful family with very big hearts. I remember Kim from the years that she organized the annual Girl Scout appearance at the City Council (my daughter sometimes participated). You can read more about Dean's life in yesterday's L.A. Times story. You can also learn more about Dean and his family on the web site of their family business, Pulse Drumming. The story of their family is very heart-rending, which makes Dean's loss even more sad.

I'm feeling this loss in so many ways. Among other things, I ride this line pretty frequently, and I'm also Ventura's representative on the Ventura County Transportation Commission, which is one of Metrolink's member agencies. If you're a Metrolink rider, you might be a little skittish about getting back on the train, and that's understandable. But it's kind of like flying in an airplane -- overall, the odds of an accident are very slim. I plan to get back on the train on Thursday for meetings in downtown L.A.

As of today, Ventura has no train service at all. The Pacific Surfliner is not running north of Los Angeles, and Metrolink is terminating in Chatsworth, with buses to Simi Valley and Moorpark. Service should be restored by Wednesday or perhaps Thursday at the latest. You can keep track of the schedule on the Metrolink web site.

Friday's crash highlighted some of the operational difficulties in running a commuter rail system alongside a busy freight system in a regional where there is lots of single track. If you want to read more about this aspect of the situation, check out the blog I wrote yesterday in my day-job capacity as publisher of California Planning & Development Report.