Moving Forward With View Protection

We’re moving forward with view protection.

Monday night the City Council voted 5-2 to accept a proposal by Councilmember Summers and me to give the General Plan policy on “public viewsheds and solar access” a high priority and create a task force to make recommendations on how to implement that policy. The task force is scheduled to come back to us in the spring

The vote was 5-2, with Neal Andrews and Jim Monahan opposed. Neal said he believes the council can deal with these issues individually at the plan and project level, as we did with the Midtown Corridors Code – an approach that has merit, and might be worth considering were it not for the pending VCORD initiative. Jim said he would have supported the idea if we committed ourselves to placing the resulting view protection policies on the ballot – something we still might do in the future, once we have an actual policy in place.

In the course of a discussion that lasted more than two hours, we also made a number of other changes and clarifications:

-- The task force will have 15 members, not 11. This did not change the composition of the task force but, rather, corrected a math error that Ed and I had made.

-- Instead of 3 members drawn from the old Vision Committee and Community Plan Advisory Committee, we will draw 2 from that group and 1 representative nominated by the Building Industry Association.

-- Both citizen and business representatives from different neighborhoods around the city will be appointed by the local Community Councils.

-- The committee will not be charged with specifically making recommendations on viewsheds and solar access for the Wells & Saticoy Community Plan, which is likely to come before the council prior to the task force’s recommendations; but East Ventura Community Council will nevertheless have two representatives on the task force.

-- The two public members and the two Vision/CPAC members will be nominated through the normal council appointments committee process.

The task force will report back to the council no later than March 15, rather than February 15.

One very important point is that we clarified that we are asking this task force not only to make recommendations on how to implement the “public viewshed and solar access” policy but also to suggest what those terms really mean.

There has been considerable discussion as to whether this policy means we intend to protect views (of the ocean, the hills, or whatever) from private property as well as public locations; as well as which public locations we should emphasize – for example, should we focus only on north-south vistas (such as along Seaward or California streets) or should we protect views from east-west locations along Seaward and Thompson, which would obviously require much more restrictive policies?

Neal called the fact that we charged the committee with figuring this out “a punt,” and in a way he’s right. This is a tricky issue that requires a lot of discussion – and in my opinion such a detailed discussion is better conducted by the stakeholder task force than by us. This is often the case on planning issues.

Having said that, I will say that in the Midtown Corridors Code, the council interpreted “public viewsheds” to mean the protection of views along the north-south roadway corridors. We also interpreted “solar access” to required stepped-back development on commercial parcels adjacent to the yards of residential parcels.

On Wells & Saticoy, Nelson Hernandez, our Community Development director, pointed out that if we wanted this committee to make recommendations on how to incorporate view/solar policies into the Wells & Saticoy Community Plan, we might further hold up approval of that plan. That plan has been in process since 2005, and we have already held it up several times to introduce additional issues for discussion. So we removed the Wells & Saticoy plan from the task force’s charge but retained the East Ventura Community Council members on the committee.

EVCC members at the meeting were understandably not happy with us for doing this. We will have to deal with view/solar issues in Wells & Saticoy when the Community Plan and the project-level Specific Plans (for example, for the Hansen Trust and Parkland properties) come before us. Dan Cormode of EVCC pointed out that the City Council may have to come up with our own definition of public viewsheds and solar access in those situations – possibly different from what the task force will come up with.

He’s right about that. As a trained city planner, I have to say that I wish we could stop the world from moving forward while we write our planning policies until they are perfect. As a politician, I know this is not realistic in most cases. Doing a Community Plan at the same time that we are doing Specific Plans in Wells & Saticoy has been an “awkward straddle” from the beginning, and it will continue to be so until we are done.

A lot of the discussion on Monday night revolved not around how the committee would be formed or what its charge would be, but whether the resulting policies should go on the ballot. VCORD’s representatives criticized us for attempting to “end-run” their initiative and for a “bait-and-switch”. Although they weren’t specific about what they meant by this, I assume that they think the end result is that we will place a completing measure on the ballot in November of 2009.

Meanwhile, Councilmember Monahan made it clear that a competing initiative was exactly what he was looking for. He asked two pro-business speakers if they would support putting a competing measure on the ballot; and indicated that he voted against the task force idea because it did not include a provision to place the resulting policies on the ballot.

I think the question of whether we should place our public viewshed/solar access policy on the ballot in November of 2009 is premature. Right now, all we are doing is creating a task force to make recommendations to us about what that policy might be. If all goes according to plan, those recommendations will return to us next spring and we can debate at that time what policies and code changes we should put into place.

If and when we put these new items into place, we can decide whether to place them on the ballot in November 2009 as well. But let’s take this one step at a time.

Oops!

I’m embarrassed. In the middle of the debate Monday night over the second policy onsideration on heights and solar access brought forward by Councilmember Summers and me – one that would slightly shave the building envelope for three-story buildings in certain Midtown location s—the city attorney reminded me that I had a conflict of interest.

The only properties affected by this change would be properties in Midtown with R-3-5 duplex zoning. I co-own a duplex on Anacapa, in the R-3-5 zone. My property would be affected by this change. If it passed, I would have less development potential than I have now.

Frankly, I assumed that because my development potential and hence my property value would be reduced by this change, it wouldn’t be a conflict. I forgot that it’s a conflict if your property is affected by a zone change at all, no matter whether the value is increased or reduced.

We had to take a time-out from the meeting while I declared my conflict and then the council tabled the item, which can be brought back in the future by my co-sponsor, Councilmember Summers, without my name attached to it.

I apologize to everybody, especially my colleagues, for the “rookie mistake”.

Revisiting Heights in Midtown -- and Elsewhere

Next Monday night (7/21), the City Council will embark on a new experiment -- a monthly meeting devoted exclusively to planning matters. Under some revisions we made a couple of months ago, we now deal with general city business on the first and third Mondays of the month and planning matters exclusively on the second Monday. We also meet earlier -- at 6 pm. We are going to try to take the fourth Monday off. Good luck.

In keeping with the spirit of the new planning-only meeting, Councilmember Ed Summers and I have placed two items on next Monday's agenda dealing with building heights.

The first is a further refinement of building heights in the interior residential neighborhoods in Midtown, placing additional conditions on buildings over 30 feet.

The second is an attempt to deal with the overall citywide height and view issues - which have been brought into focus by the VCORD initiative, now schedule for the ballot in November 2009 -- by creating a city task force to make recommendations for the City Council to consider.


Midtown Residential Building Heights

In some parts of Midtown, it is possible to build 40- to 45-foot residential buildings in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Until 2006, these "2 1/2" story buildings could be approved over the counter. We now require planning commission review for such projects.

The first proposal from Councilmember Summers and I for Monday night would place further restrictions on these essentially 3-story buildings. Under our proposal, buildings would be limited to 3o feet high unless the upper stories are set back further than the ground floor.

This doesn't solve all problems associated with tall buildings in Midtown, but at least it should mean that residential buildings in residential neighborhoods are more compatible with their surroundings. The proposal doesn't affect the heights of buildings along the Main and Thompson corridors, which are subject to a new code we passed alst year. Under that code, the upper floords of these buildings already must be set back 30 feet from back property lines.


View Protection Task Force

The second proposal from Councilmember Summers and I would create a "Public Viewshed and Solar Access" task force charged with providing the City Council with a set of recommendations for how to protect viewsheds and solar access.

This proposal was inspired by the VCORD initiative, which has qualified for the ballot for November of 2009. The VCORD initiative would impose a temporary 26-foot height limit in most parts of town and create a "View Resources Board" charged with drafting a view protection ordinance.

I have a hard time supporting the VCORD initiative, for two reasons. First, I don't think a moratorium on buildings over 26 feet is necessary, especially in a real estate downturn. And second, I can't support the manner in which the View Resources Board members are appointed. Under the initiative, these members would be appointed by VCORD -- a civic-minded but nevertheless private organization -- meaning that these appointments would be beyond the reach of the voters.

Nevertheless, VCORD's efforts have highlighted an important public issue -- how do we protect views from public places, and solar access to people's property, as we allow greater densities in certain parts of the city? VCORD's initiative admirably couches its provisions as an effort to implement the 2005 General Plan's provisions that public viewsheds and solar access should be protected. VCORD gathered more than 7,000 valid signatures for its initiative -- enough to qualify for the next municipal election in November of 2009, but not enough to qualify for the general election ballot this fall.

Even though I cannot agree with all the provisions of VCORD's initiative, I believe we should start the process of figuring out how to implement the General Plan's call to protect public viewsheds and solar access sooner rather than later. Therefore, our proposal would create a task force that is similar to the proposed VCORD committee and charge that task force with coming up with recommendations to the City Council no later than next February. Presumably this would permit us to adopt those recommendations next spring, and then voters can decide in fall whether we have done a good enough job or whether they still want to vote in favor of the VCORD initiative.

There are two major differences between our proposal and the VCORD initiative, baesd on the two areas of disagreement between some councilmembers and VCORD. The first is that our proposal does not call for a temporary height limit, as the VCORD initiative does. The second is that the task force would be appointed by the City Council, which is directly accountable to the voters; rather than by VCORD, which is not directly accountable to the voters.

Our proposal calls for an 11-member task force including the following members:

-- 3 representatives who served on either the Seize The Future Citizen Outreach Committee (the “Vision Committee”) or the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee (the CPAC), not to include any current members of the City Council or the Planning Commission.

-- 1 representative nominated by the Chamber of Commerce.

-- 1 representative nominated by the Visitor and Convention Bureau

-- 1 representative nominated by the City’s environmental organizations.

-- 1 representative nominated by the Ventura Citizens Organized for Responsible Development (VCORD)

-- 2 representatives from each of the three neighborhoods scheduled to have Community Plans prepared in the foreseeable future (Saticoy & Wells, Westside, and Midtown), including 1 representative nominated by the local Community Council and 1 business owner.

-- 2 members appointed at large.

Our proposal also specifies that all meetings of this task force will be publicly noticed meetings open to the public.

How We Spent 5 Hours, 40 Minutes

Our City Council is notorious for long meetings. A couple of months ago, we moved the start time for our meetings from 7 pm to 6 pm in hopes of finishing our meetings earlier, so that everybody doesn't have to stay up to the middle of the night.

Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Last night (July 14th), it didn't work. Even with one councilmember (Carl Morehouse) missing, we met until 11:40 p.m.

What did we spend 5 hours and 40 minutes doing? Here's what:

Preliminaries (roll call, pledge, presentations, council communications, regional reports): 30 minutes.

Public Communication: 30 minutes. It was "First Monday," when we take public speakers at the beginning of the meeting and allow them 3 minutes each. We had 9 speakers -- some regulars, some we had never seen before.

City Manager Report: 10 minutes. This wasn't on the agenda originally, but we added it so that we could hear a report on the City's investments in Freddie Mac bonds.

Consent Agenda: 6 minutes. This consists of many smaller items that do not require discussion.

Council Advisory Group Appointments: Less than 5 minutes.

Code Enforcement: 90 minutes. This was a policy discussion about whether to require city inspections on resale homes and rentals. The staff came to us with some ideas but really wanted a discussion. I did not time the staff presentation but I'm guessing 15 minutes at least. We heard from only 5 speakers. In the end, we adopted the staff recommendation with one minor change.

By now it was 10 until 9. We had been meeting for almost three hours.

10-minute break: 15 minutes.

Fair Board presentation: 5 minutes. This was a presentation of the County Fair poster.

Item 12: Sewer and Water Rates. 40 minutes, including a staff presentation of almost 20 minutes. There were no public speakers and we approved the staff recommendation. This too was an important policy discussion about where our water and sewer rates are going and how we can or should reach out to our ratepayers about coming rate increases.

Item 13: Green Streets: 90 minutes. again including a staff report of almost 20 minutes. There were 4 public speakers. We had earlier asked the Public Works staff to come up with a plan to "green" our streets. The discussion involved a demonstration project on South Catalina Street, as well as implications for stomwater runoff, which is a big deal. Probably the most important item on the agenda, and it started up shortly before 10 pm.

By now it was almost 11:30.

Item 14: Fuel conservation: 15 minutes. This was an update by the staff on fuel conservation efforts for the city's operations.

Item 15: Low Impact Development: 7 minutes. This was a request from Councilmember Brennan that we endorse the Ocean Protection Council's "low impact development" stormwater runoff principles.

So there you go. That's how we spent almost 6 hours. My personal opinion is that nothing coherent ever gets done past 10, and we should work harder to end our meetings at about 10 pm. But you can see that, every week, a huge number of issues comes flying at us.

What To Do About North Bank

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 14th), the City Council will hold a special meeting for one specific purpose: to discuss how to interpret the “Commerce” land use designation in the North Bank area around the Century 16 theater near the Johnson Drive offramp. I am unable to attend because of a day-job commitment elsewhere, so I want to use the blog to provide my thoughts.

This meeting grew out of a request to consider a General Plan Amendment to change the designation on their property – the vacant lot across Johnson from Motel 6 – from Commercial to Residential. Casdan Properties is a developer of rental residential properties and they want to build what amounts to a big apartment complex on this site, which is on the corner of Johnson and North Bank. We denied the amendment request 4-3 a few weeks ago – which doesn’t necessarily eliminate the possibility of rental apartments on the site – but agreed to take a look at the general issue again.

First, a bit about the land use designations that we included in the 2005 General Plan. They were deliberately more general than the land use designations in the previous general plan; the idea was to provide flexibility in each neighborhood for a very specific zoning code that would allow mixed-use development. So the “Commerce” designation, which was applied to the parcels that used to be designated as “Commercial,” allows the possibility of building housing.

We’ve created the more specific codes in Downtown and the Midtown Corridors, but the more general designation has created confusion in parts of town where we have not adopted a more specific code. In many cases, developers have sought to interpret the Commerce designation broadly, sometimes to mean a project that is mostly residential with only a small bit of retail associated with it.

This is what Casdan Properties tried to do at the Johnson Drive/North Bank site. When Casdan bought the property in 2003, it was zoned for Commercial. Casdan’s goal was clearly to flip the zoning to residential, thereby increasing the value of the property, and then build apartments. It’s a typical tactic among some developers: Buy property zoned for commercial and industrial use cheaply, then get a zone change to residential, and reap the profits.

After the 2005 General Plan passed, Casdan began working on a proposal for an apartment complex with a bit of retail, which they argued was in conformance with the Commerce land use designation. The staff disagreed and encouraged Casdan to go through the General Plan Amendment pre-screen process – which allows the Council to take an “early look” at a project that would require a General Plan Amendment – to test the waters for switching to a Residential land use designation. Casdan went through the pre-screen but didn’t really want to. When this came to us, they actually asked us to turn down the switch to Residential and instead signal to the staff that a mostly residential project would be okay under the Commerce designation.

We turned down the switch to Residential 4-3, but we couldn’t agree on what other guidance we should givef on how to interpret the Commerce designation. Councilmember Andrews said he thought the site was a good location for tall office buildings that might compete with the towers in Oxnard. Mayor Weir favored a residential project because of the proximity to the nearby bike path, the businesses in the North Bank area, and the Santa Clara River. Some folks argued that residential development would allow commuters to live in Ventura but get right on the freeway to go elsewhere.

Much of the discussion revolved around how much retail should be required as part of the project. The staff pushed for a big chunk – essentially all along Johnson and North Bank, perhaps 25%. Casdan said that was too much and they wouldn’t be able to lease up that much retail.

My own view has always been that this is a lousy site for residential development.

Yes, it’s near the Santa Clara River and the bike path – but it’s also right up against the freeway and it’s very noisy. (There’s also a lot of new research suggesting that living near freeways is very harmful to children.)

Yes, it’s close to other residential neighborhoods – but, except for a pre-existing Montalvo neighborhood nearby, there’s no other residential south of the railroad tracks. And it’s right across Johnson Drive from another vacant lot that has one of the largest freeway frontages in the City – clearly, one of our prime sites for large-scale retail.

Yes, it’s close to the North Bank businesses – but those businesses have always struggled and we are likely to see them struggle even more in the future. Mayor Weir liked the proximity to the movie theater, Toys R Us, and the restaurants. So do I – except that this area is increasingly uncompetitive for retail and is likely to go downhill further when River Park opens just across the bridge in Oxnard unless we rethink it. The theater is likely to close or go to second-run movies. Toys R Us will probably close or move as well. The whole area will undergo major change.

And yes, Casdan probably can’t lease up a project that’s mostly a retail or office project. But that’s not because there’s no market in that area. It’s because Casdan is a residential developer. When I asked Casdan at the last meeting why they wanted to build residential in this location, rather than some other kind of development, their answer was that residential development is the business they’re in. That wasn’t a good enough answer for me, especially since they had originally bought the property with the clear intention of turning a quick profit by flipping the zoning from commercial to residential.

I suggested another meeting for the purpose of discussing not just the Casdan Property but all the properties in the North Bank area, because all the properties are clearly going to change – not just Casdan. So here’s how I think the Commerce designation should be interpreted in that vicinity:

-- We should protect the properties along the freeway on the other side of Johnson – the vacant lot by Motel 6 and the Toys R Us site – for large-scale retail. This means not allowing any residential development on these properties, and also planning the properties across Johnson – the Casdan Parcel and the movie theater site – in a way that doesn’t preclude large-scale retail on the other parcels.

-- We should require that the Casdan and movie theater properties be focused mostly on retail serving the neighborhood and the greater East Ventura area. The North Bank shopping centers were hard-hit by bridge construction and they will be hard-hit again by RiverPark because many businesses dependent on lunchers and shoppers from the towers across the river. But those customers are gone and will never come back. However, Johnson is a major commuter route for our own residents who commute between East Ventura and other cities. These folks don’t have enough neighborhood shopping. To buy almost anything, they either have to go over to Victoria or they cross the river to Oxnard.

-- These retail developments should be designed so they are convenient to driving commuters along Johnson and also to pedestrians and bicyclists for adjacent neighborhoods using the bike trail to get there. There may even be some potential for small second-story offices for businesses whose owners live nearby. Second-story offices above retail are not always successful – witness the struggle of such space in the Ralph’s shopping center on Victoria – but there is second-story office space (above more office) just up the street on Johnson (across the tracks). (I don't think Councilmember Andrews' idea of high-rise office makes sense, since we just redid the Victoria code to promote Class A office space over there.)

All this does not preclude some residential units on the movie theater and Casdan sites, especially on the backside along the river. But I think that mostly residential projects on these sites does not make sense. The Casdan property is too close to the freeway. Johnson is a busy street. It’s too close to the large-scale retail sites across the street. And the people in the residential neighborhoods need upgraded neighborhood shopping opportunities – not just a coffee shop in an apartment building.

If this means that we will not allow the project Casdan wants to build, then maybe Casdan is the wrong developer for the site. Our goal should be to figure out how to best use the North Bank properties to benefit the surrounding neighborhoods and Ventura as a whole – not to accommodate a residential developer that purchased the land with the clearly goal of making money by flipping the zoning.

Cut the Budget and Hold the Fees

This has not been an easy time to be a member of the City Council.

Over the past few months, we have been constantly skewered – by the Ventura County Star and many of our own constituents – on the question of fees, first the 911 fee and more recently the weed abatement fee.

At the same time, we’ve spent almost every Monday night for the last two months debating how to cut the budget – not just next year’s budget, but this year’s budget too.

Well, last Monday night (May 5th) we made some tough decisions on the budget – and we began to address the question of fees as well. And next Monday night (May 12th), we’ll continue our discussion of fees. I’ll get to the fees in a minute, but first let me talk about the budget cuts.

Budget Cuts

As I pointed in my last post (below), we at the City of Ventura – like most other cities in the county and the state – were a bit surprised by the quick drop in both the real estate market and retail sales. Property tax revenues are now growing slowly and may soon drop. Sales tax revenues have leveled off and are beginning to decline too.

All this means we have to start spending less money, not more. Twice in the last two months, the City Council has cut $1 million out of the current year budget, mostly by postponing certain capital projects and making similar changes. On Monday night, we made about $4 million in cuts. We did this by accepting the vast majority of cuts proposed by City Manager Rick Cole and his staff as the result of a months-long debate at the staff level about what we can live without.

We punted on a few things that individual council members wanted to discuss further – reducing downtown police foot patrols and closing police storefronts, cutting arts grants, cutting our subsidy of the Visitor and Convention Bureau, and a couple of other things. But we bit the bullet on a lot of other things.

Make no mistake: These cuts are going to hurt. They are going to anger some of our constituents, who will complain that we have cut the wrong things. For example:

-- We have completely eliminated the neighborhood speed bump program. If your neighborhood wants to ask for speed bumps, unfortunately the City is not going to be able to put them in any more.

-- We are punting on renovations to many of our parks.

-- We’re also cutting back on parking lot cleaning in many of our parks, and also we’ll be maintaining fewer trees in parks and mowing the grass less frequently.

-- We will be cutting curb and gutter repairs by half, so some curbs and gutters that are in bad shape simply won’t be fixed.

-- We’ve also agreed to cut sand cleaning by 50% in the Pierpoint, though we may well put that back in next year’s budget when it actually comes before us.

I’m particularly concerned about some of the cuts in the police department. I fear that we may wind up using fewer civilian folks, forcing our sworn officers to do routine desk tasks. And much as I love the arts, I’m not sure I can support maintaining arts grants at the current level when people can’t even get speed bumps anymore. But as most of us have said, everybody’s ox is going to get gored before we’re done; and we have to bear as fair as possible in doing to the goring.

And I don’t see any way to avoid even more cuts next year. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Rethinking Fees

We got creamed in the press and by constituents all winter and spring over passage of the 911 fee. More recently, we’ve gotten hammered by hillside property owners for the weed abatement fee of $99, which is meant to cover the city’s cost of ensuring that hillside property owners are complying with the State Fire Code.

Most recently, an appellate court in the Bay Area struck down a city’s 911 fee up there; and our City Attorney cautioned us to re-examine the weed fee. Our 911 fee is still in place – the so-called “opt-out” period ended yesterday – but on Monday night we did waive the weed abatement fee for this year while we take a step back. (By the way, only about 10% of people opted out of the 911 fee; and we have still reserved the 911 funds to hire more police officers – we are not using the funds to plug the budget gaps described above.)

Next Monday we will talk about fees some more because the annual “cost of living” fee increases will come to us for approval. But that’s clearly just the beginning of the conversation.

As far as I can tell, overall Ventura’s “fee burden” isn’t all that high. The proposed 2008-09 budget estimates fees at a little over $11 million, or about 12% of our general fund. By contrast, property and sales tax together make up close to $50 million, or more than half our general fund.

I’d say people don’t complain much about fees when they understand what service they’re paying for. If you’re doing a room addition, for example, and we charge a fee to cover the city’s cost of processing the permit, people understand that. If we raise the fee a lot they may gripe, but at least they understand that they are paying for something they are getting.

In the case of both the 911 fee and the weed abatement fee, it’s not as clear to people what they are buying their fee. They’re not paying a fee based on something they are applying for – a room addition, a business license, whatever – but rather based on the fact that they fall into a particular category of resident. For example, everyone who buys telephone service pays the 911 fee (unless you opt-out, in which case you pay by the call); and that, of course, is just about everyone, which is why some people think it’s a tax. The money is earmarked to maintain the state-mandated 911 call center. Similarly, everybody who owns hillside property received a bill for the weed fee, whether or not they maintain their property on their own, simply because they live in a high-fire-hazard area. That money is earmarked to pay for the city’s cost on ensuring compliance with the State Fire Code.

So when people gripe, it’s because they’re being asked to pay a fee when they aren’t applying for or seeking anything in particular. This is a fair point and we’ll debate it over the coming weeks and months. But if we do back off fees like this, then we will have to make much deeper cuts in our city services, at least in the short run. We’ll probably just be trading constituent complaints about high fees for constituent complaints about poor service.

In the case of the weed fee, the action we took on Monday night was stimulated partly by the backlash – but also partly by City Attorney Ariel Calonne’s concern about how we passed the fee in the first place.

What happened was that last year we approved our usual “fee list” (like the one we will consider next Monday night), and it included a variety of new fees and charged from the Fire Department. These were put into place because we had encouraged all the departments – including Fire – to look for new sources of revenue. Last year we approved a $99-per-hour charge for fire inspections. This got translated at the staff level into the $99 weed abatement fee. Thus, Ariel is not sure that we really adopted this fee as we should have. Maybe the Fire Department was too zealous in interpreting the $99-per-hour fee schedule that we approved – but they were definitely operating with our encouragement to increase revenue however possible.

Who Pays?

I know this isn’t a popular statement, but my personal view is that the City has been too reluctant to charge fees in the past, because the good folks who work for the City hate to make our residents pay for things. That’s why our overall fee burden is fairly low.

But I’m more than willing to admit that it’s time to step back and examine where we should “draw the line” between (1) charges for specific services that specific people request and (2) charges for services that we must provide to specific groups of people (often because of state law) whether they ask for those services or not.

So the question becomes, who pays for what?

The tricky part is how we handle a situation where the City is obligated by law to do something that benefits a particular group of people, but charging those people to cover the cost requires either voter approval, if it’s a tax, or public acceptance for the notion that it’s a fee.

The hillside weed thing is a good example. When a wildlife breaks out in the hillsides – as happens frequently in Ventura – hillside residents expect the government to spend enormous amounts of money to fight the fire and protect their neighborhood. (I know this because I used to live in Ondulando, which has been saved several times by a multimillion-dollar firefighting efforts.) So there’s a state law that says the hillside owners have to abate their fire hazards and that the City has to enforce those requirements.

You can probably argue the question of who should pay either way. On the one hand, spending a little tax money to monitor weed abatement in the hillsides might save huge amounts of tax money later – so shouldn’t we all pay? On the other hand, the primary beneficiaries of fire suppression efforts are the hillside homeowners – so shouldn’t they pay? We often face the same kinds of “who pays?” questions down at the beach.

In any event, I think all the public debate over the last few months – including all the criticism of the City Council – has done us a favor. It’s forced a long-overdue conversation about who pays and who benefits and what our priorities should be. So I’m looking forward to talking to all of you about this more and reaching a better community consensus about it.

Rebuilding Community Memorial -- and Five Points Too

If you’re interested in the future of Five Points and the neighborhood around Community Memorial Hospital, I’d strongly suggest you drop by CMH’s design workshop “charrette” sessions this week. There’s a public session Wednesday night at 7 p.m. and another one Friday at 5 p.m., as well as less formal talks every day at lunchtime (12:30 p.m.). All are being held in the old American Legion building (now housing Mai’s Café) at 2809 Main Street. Come in through the back door.

The reason for all the design work is that CMH has to construct a new hospital building for patients and acute care. That’s because a state law requires hospitals to retrofit some of the facilities – or build new facilities – to meet seismic standards by 2013. The design charrette is a semi-private, semi-public week-long event sponsored by CMH (not by the city) to work out some design ideas. Official application and public hearings and so forth will occur later.

I went to an initial public meeting last week and then again to the first public session Tuesday night. Both meetings have been lightly attended by the public. But the design team is kicking around some good ideas. CMH’s current idea is to build a new building to the south of the old building (behind the American Legion Hall) and use the old building for new purposes, including possibly a biotech incubator that would line up with the city’s economic development strategy.

The design team is also talking about reorienting the hospital so that the new building’s “front door” would be on Cabrillo Street behind the American Legion Hall, and create a new what is now the parking lot in between American Legion Hall and the hospital. (Some planning efforts in the past have suggested that the American Legion building, now owned by CMH, should be torn down and replaced with some kind of park.) An additional parking garage next to the park, behind Billy O’s and other businesses on the north side of Main Street, would probably also be part of the project. The effect would be to turn the park into a “square” at the “new front” of the hospital.

CMH’s design team is also working up some ideas about the general Five Points area that won’t be part of the hospital project but could be part of an eventual plan for additional development at Five Points. Among the ideas:

* Updated retail buildings along Main Street, along with angled parking.
* Possible roundabouts along Main Street at both Loma Vista and Five Points.
* Reconfiguring the streets in between Main Street and the CMH so they are better designed for both pedestrians and cars.

I was actually pretty disappointed that so few people have come out to the public portions of the charrette so far. So if you want to know more about the CMH projects or have ideas about what might happen at Five Points, go to one of the charrette sessions. I’d love to know what you think.