Talk City

The other day, Ross Olney – who is, shall we say, a frequent commentator on local affairs – complimented my colleagues and I on making the tough budget decisions. At least I think it was a compliment. In a letter to the editor in the Star , Ross wrote that he was glad to see that, after months of hand-wringing, we had finally figured out that the best way to eliminate a budget deficit is to cut costs.

“Wow! A spending cut!” Ross wrote. “Why didn’t the rest of us think of that? … Although some of us wonder why they didn’t do these things months ago, it is good to see how smart we were to have elected our current council

The truth of the matter is that we haven’t actually done most of the budget-cutting yet. We’ve been talking about it for a couple of months now, and we’ve trimmed a few things around the edges. But we’re going headlong into the serious budget-cutting discussion tonight and it’s likely to slop over until a week from Monday, March 30th (a fifth Monday, which would typically have off).

So what has taken us so long? Partly, the answer is that we do a lot more hand-wringing than we have to. But partly the answer is that Ventura really is Talk City. Not only do we do a lot of talking before we act on anything, but so does everybody else – our city manager, our department heads, the Chamber of Commerce, neighborhood leaders, gadflies, cranky constituents, supportive constituents, and everybody who gets money or some other benefit from the City treasury, including the police union, the fire union, SEIU (the union that represents all other city workers), library advocates, arts advocates, developers, bloggers, prospective council candidates, and even, for example, our city’s graphics department employees, who have come up with a number of creative ways to save money so they don’t get laid off.

And that’s one of the things that I love about being on the City Council in Ventura. Everybody’s got an opinion. Nobody’s afraid to express that opinion. We talk about things forever. And in the process of doing so, we gradually reach a consensus about what to do – a consensus that will be much more likely to “stick” because of all the talking.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that we’ve tried to be up-front about our budget problems from the beginning – and, since no deed goes unpunished, the result is that we often get hammered for being fiscally irresponsible. Back around New Year’s, for example, the Star wrote a story about each city’s budget situation. We were pretty honest about how things stood, and, frankly, the other cities underplayed the problem. Now everybody else is finally acknowledging that they are in the same boat. Oxnard’s going to have a budget deficit the same size as ours – even though they passed a sales tax last fall. I’m glad we’re honest about what’s up. I’ll take Talk City over the alternative any day.

Just to set the record straight, I think it’s worth noting that the city is in much better fiscal shape now than it was when I was elected in 2003 – and we’re having a high-profile discussion about how to cut the budget because we’re trying to maintain solvency, not dig ourselves out of a hole.

As long ago as 2001, the city acknowledged a “structural” deficit – meaning, basically, that the city was running in the red every year and plugging holes with reserves and other money. When we hired Rick Cole as city manager in 2004, he set a goal of eliminating the structural deficit in three years. Partly due to strong growth in property tax revenues, we did it in two.

And last year, when we first faced budget problems because of the slumping economy, we cut $4 million off the budget in the middle of the year to maintain a balanced budget. We have so far resisted the temptation of dipping into reserves to run the city – something that government agencies are usually all too quick to do in bad times.

A number of folks have recently suggested that we have gone begging to the public with the P6 sales tax in 2006 and the failed 911 fee in 2008 because we’re broke and we don’t know how to manage our money. In fact, we’re not broke. We have sought these new sources of revenue so that we can expand our public safety force – something we hadn’t done since 1990 (at least until last year).

So tonight and next week, when you watch a lot of people ask us to protect their programs –arts grants, graphics employees, public art, the roving fire engine -- hold us accountable by paying attention not just to what the public speakers say, but to what we actually do and how much we actually cut. It’s going to hurt, but it will keep us solvent.

In the long run, I think this will be a good conversation for Talk City – because it will force us to think about what the City really can pay for, and what ought to be funded other ways. There’s always been a bias in this town – the City should initiate everything, drive everything, and fund everything. But that’s not sustainable.

A decade ago, when I was involved in the city’s visioning effort, we recommended that a wide-ranging group of community leaders and organizations work together to create a broader-based and more sustainable effort at funding all of our community programs. That way, we all work together and take responsibility for keeping things going, instead of having everybody come on Monday night and complain that the City’s not paying for everything.

Things haven’t quite worked out the way we envisioned at the time. But we’ve made good progress. Many of our nonprofits are much more successful and in better financial shape than they were in those days. Many more have been successfully “hatched,” sometimes with City seed money. I’m hopeful that the current budget crisis will move us farther down this road – so the entire community can pitch in and figure out how to get things done, rather than simply coming to us on Monday nights and begging.

Budget Cutting: City Council, Public Art

Writing in today's Ventura County Star, Kevin Clerici focuses on both public art and the City Council's own budget, playing out the theme that these may be mostly symbolic cuts given the magnitude of our budget problem. On public art, he paraphrased my comments to him by saying: "He (Fulton) likened the move to the council’s decision to slash its travel budget, which amounted to a few hundred dollars in the city’s $85 million operational budget."

Actually, what I told Kevin Clerici in our telephone conversation on Friday was hat cutting the City Council's entire budget, not just the travel budget, was important to show we are serious about balancing the budget.

The City Council budget is about $300,000 out of a total General Fund of $85-90 million. At my suggestion, a few weeks ago the council directed Mayor Weir to cut this budget 15-20%. The reduced budget -- to about $250,000, a cut of around 16-17% -- is on the agenda tonight.

The council budget includes our salaries (which are $600 per month and, because they are in the charter, cannot be changed except by a vote of the people); the $200 a month in local travel allowance we get; memberships to a variety of organizations (this is a good deal of the expense -- for example, belonging to the League of California Cities costs around $25,000 per year); and our own travel and training budget. Travel and training is about $28,000 per year, or about $4,000 per councilmember. The support provided to the council, and especially the mayor, by the City Manager's administrative staff is not included in the budget.

Although it's easy to hammer us for going on junkets, we're trying hard to spend our travel and training money wisely.

For example, later this week I'm going to attend the League of Cities Planners Institute in Anaheim, the most important training event of the year on planning targeted at elected City Councilmembers and appointed Planning Commissioners. In the past, I would have stayed at the conference hotel, attended the entire thing wire-to-wire, and put in for full reimbursement. That would have cost $1200-1500, including the conference fee, which is around $500.

This year, I'm only going to part of it, I'm staying at a cheaper hotel, and I'll only seek partial reimbursement from the city. It'll cost the council budget $300-400 instead of $1200-1500.

As for the public art budget, Kevin is quite right that we can't easily reprogram the money for operations. We have long since stopped funding the public art program out of the General Fund. But in so doing, we have shifted the cost of public art to a narrow base. Public art is funded with 2% of the cost of capital projects, and most of our capital projects are paid for either by your water/sewer payments (these are kept in a completely separate fund) or by the gas tax money we receive from the state for transportation projects. This is why so much of our public art winds up being on bridges or at the wastewater plant. Whether or not we can recapture some of the money currently committed for public art, and use it to stretch our capital dollars a little further on water, sewer, and transportation projects, I don't know.

It has long concerned me that the public art program is not more broadly funded. Most cities fund their public art programs with a 1% fee on all construction projects -- not just public projects but also private development projects. Now's not the time to impose that requirement, but when we come out of the recession I think it's something we should discuss. That, however, is the topic for another blog.

Going Interactive ... But How?

Yesterday, I received this email:

"Your blog is worthless without comments. The entire point of this technology movement is for a read/write communication to open up and allow more transparency. By removing the ability to comment on your blog kills any dialogue that could have taken place. I encourage you to open up a dialog with the people you are representing so that you can properly represent us."

Since my rule is that my constituents have the right to be as rude as they want and I have to be nice in return, I decided not to fire an email right back. (Starting off with "Dear Mr. Deputy Mayor" or even "Hey Bill" would have been nice.) And it's kind of disconcerting to think that providing my constituents with detailed information about what I'm thinking and how I'm approaching issues is useless ... unless I provide an open line for constituents to rag on me in return.

Nevertheless, I've been wanting to allow comments for a long time. The technologically irony is ... I can't figure out how to open up this blog for comments. I've tried to figure it out repeatedly without success. So if anybody out there knows how to do this on Blogspot, please ... send me an email, the old-fashioned way, at fulton4ventura@gmail.com.

I can't guarantee I'll post all comments. I'll probably moderate them to screen out the extreme and the obscene. Nevertheless, this blog can provide a lot more interactivity than it currently does, and I'd be happy to move in that direction. Help!

The Fun Begins

Last night, our City Council took the first steps toward significant the significant budget-cutting that will be required to maintain fiscal solvency over the past couple of years. These steps were tentative -- not as bold as they could have been -- and they won't be enough.

The main step we took last night was to eliminate 11 currently vacant jobs. This will save a lot of money because, even though the jobs are vacant, up to now the city has continued to do the work of those jobs by spending money in other ways -- temporary help, overtime, etc.

But we punted on a lot of tough stuff -- and, in particular, we punted on the question of whether we are going to push for straight pay cuts from our office and maintenance personnel or, instead, will accept the furlough idea put forth by their union, the Service Employees International Union.

We'll probably "have it out" at our meeting of March 23rd, when we will have no choice but to make very serious cuts. This is around the time a lot of other issues will come to a head as well, including the question of what to do about library service and whether to seriously consider placing a sales tax on the ballot.

In the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30, we are running about $6 million short of our budget projections. This is not surprising; everybody's tax revenue is way down. A couple of weeks ago, the staff brought to us a series of measures that would cut $3.6 million in the current fiscal year. These included cutting 33 positions (some vacant), encouraging employees to retire by providing severance benefits to those who choose to retire, and completing labor negotiations so that all city employees take a 5% cut.

At that time we said okay to #2 and #3, but we punted on #1, largely because we were concerned it might undermine the "Budgeting For Outcomes" process -- a series of committees at City Hall working to try to figure out how to cut NEXT year's budget (when the shortfall is estimated to be $10-12 million). We also asked our Finance, Budget, and Audit Committee (Councilmembers Andrews, Summers, and Monahan) to look over other ideas for how we might cut the budget.

Last night we discussed things some more. Some of the bargaining units have agreed in principle to take a 5% cut -- but they do it in different ways, some by giving up holidays, others by giving up overtime, etc. (I don't care how they get there; the end result is the same.) Many city employees are pondering whether to take the early retirement offer. And our Budget Committee suggested that we wait and see how that works out before we actually give the okay to lay people off.

Two things happened last night that gave us pause. The first was that the firefighters point out that even cutting the vacant positions would mean the end of our innovativfe Medic Engine 10, which is not attached to any fire station but roams around the city at peak hours. ME 10 has significantly cut our response times. Also, SEIU again argued that we should agree to furloughs -- cut their wages, but also cut their hours -- rather than simply giving them a pay cut. The tricky part about accepting this idea at this point is that we had previously authorized the City Manager to negotiate a straight pay cut, and we have successfully negotiated such a cut with other unions like police and fire.

So we punted again on a couple of things. First, we punted on eliminating the two vacant firefighter positions. Second, we punted on which way to go on SEIU's proposal.

We have the option of discussing the SEIU proposal in closed session, since it requires an actual contract negotiation. We opted to do this next Monday night on a 5-2 vote (Andrews and Monahan voting no). There are good reasons to discuss this in public. There are also good reasons to discuss this privately, since it almost inevitably involves a discussion of what contract tradeoffs we can live with. I voted, reluctantly, for the closed session; but I will try to keep the public informed as to where we are going on this.

We'll take everything else up on March 23. This is not only the night that we will have to decide whether to lay anybody off; it is also the night we will discuss the "Budgeting For Outcomes" and next year's budget. Stay tuned.

Recession In the Pocketbook, Depression In the Soul

To the extent that a politician ever gets a day off, mine is Saturday. Every week is a tough slog these days; in addition to the bruising council schedule, my day job is also demanding, and I often travel elsewhere in California late in the week.

This week I got back to Ventura at 8:30 Friday night after being gone since 5 o'clock Tuesday morning. I waslooking forward to my typical “day off” on Saturday – a trip to the Farmers Market, the dry cleaners, Target, Trader Joe’s. A day to feel like a typical person.

Here’s what happened:

At the Farmers Market, I ran into a devoted constituent who is very active in the library issue and talked to me for a long time ago different ways to keep Wright Library open. She was, by turns, angry, fearful, concerned, confused, and full of ideas.

On my way to Target I stopped off across the street at Fire Station #5 and chatted with firefighters about how the pending budget cuts might affect them. They were, by turns, angry, fearful, concerned, confused, and full of ideas.

While checking out at Trader Joe’s I talked with the cashier and an elderly lady standing in line about how bad the parking was and how much worse it might get if Wal-Mart moves in next door. Though opposed by many people for many reasons – including, apparently, this elderly constituent concerned about parking – Wal-Mart would appear to be one of the few vehicles for the city to obtain more revenue in the short run.

So it was not exactly a relaxing day off. I reconnected with my town and my constituents, but they are all understandably anxious that things are bad and getting worse. The things they cherish about their community – their neighborhood library, easy parking at Trader Joe’s, quick response times from firefighters and police officers – all seem at risk.

And all this is happening at a time when we are all afraid of what is going to happen to us personally. Will we lose our jobs? Will our wages be cut? Our health insurance? Will we ever be able to retire? I am very fortunate – I made a good amount of money, more than most people – but I am scared too. I feel at risk in my personal and business life just like everybody else.

The months ahead will not be easy. Starting tomorrow night (Monday), we on the City Council will start eliminating positions and possibly even laying people off. Over the next couple of months, we will be making even more severe cuts in city services – cuts that people will inevitably feel, even if we try to blunt the impact. We may well ask the voters for an increase in the sales tax. But even if it passes, that won’t generate enough money to restore all the services we have now. So we will be faced with terrible choices. Do we want to lay off police officers in order to keep the libraries open? Shall we close the parks or stop paving the streets? Shut down a fire station or stop servicing our vehicles?

Nobody wants to make these kinds of choices, whether it’s in government, in our private businesses, or in our personal finances. And it’s been very, very hard for all of us to face up to what has to be done. Whenever I’ve talked to people around town about making cuts in their favorite service, they’ve reacted all kinds of ways. Many have simply insisted this can’t be happening. Some have yelled at me. Others have insisted that there must be some other way – cutting back on paper clips, firing the overpaid top managers, cutting somebody else’s favorite program. Others have been combing through government budgets trying to prove that money is wasted. Many have suggested that I cut my own salary as a City Councilmember. (I’d happily do so, but that fat $7,200 per year is set in the City Charter and can’t be changed without a vote. By the way, it’s hasn’t gone up in 35 years.)

The truth is that at this point we could do all these things and probably the budget still wouldn’t be balanced. And, whether we like to admit it or not, next year’s going to get worse. Anything we save this year might only be getting a reprieve.

As I have talked to constituents over the past few weeks, I have been recalling the five stages of grieving laid out in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s famous book On Death and Dying, which I first read in college more than 30 years ago. The five stages were meant to be applied to grieving over the death of a loved one (or one’s own mortality). But as it turns out, they can be applied to the grieving process you go through whenever you suffer any kind of loss. The recent loss of our prosperity – and the consequences for both our personal life and our civic life – means not just a loss of material things but also a loss of confidence and a loss of our sense of well-being. In dealing with constituents – and dealing with my own feelings about the current financial situation – I have come to recognize all five stages of grief, which area:

Denial: "This can't be happening, not to me!"

Anger: "Who is to blame?"

Bargaining: "I'll do anything for a few more years!"

Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"

Acceptance: "It's going to be okay."

In both our personal lives and our civic life, many of us have been in denial. This library can’t be closing! A lot of people have moved on to anger, which is why I get yelled at so much. It’s all the City Council’s fault! Or it's the fault of the stupid library director, who should be fired! Many people are stuck there, but I notice a bunch of constituents moving on to bargaining. Let’s raise enough money just to keep the library open for a year, and then maybe things will improve!

Maybe because our city’s financial woes have been coming on for a while, I guess I feel like I have worked through those first three and right now I’m at depression. Things are awful. Why bother continuing to make them better? That’s how I feel a lot of the time these days.

But I also know that people have faced tough times before. I’m trying my best to move toward acceptance. Acceptance is liberating, because it makes you realize that some things are going to happen that you can’t control. We are less prosperous than we were a year or two ago. We will have less money to make things happen. This means we will have to endure some cutbacks; but it also means we will have to use the money we have more creatively, and come up with solutions nobody has tried before.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hope things will get better – nor does it mean we shouldn’t campaign for a sales tax measure if the Council decides to put it on the ballot this year. But it does mean that, tax or no tax, we will have to pull together as a community, both to accept the loss that we are going to feel and to turn things around so our community is successful again. It’s hard to work through the five stages of grief in a situation like this. But people – and communites like Ventura – are very resilient. And that gives me hope.

Library Update

By now, everybody in Ventura seems to have recognized that we will have to reduce library service later this year unless we can come up with more money to pay for it. Thankfully, last Thursday (February 5th), we got a two-month reprieve from the Ventura County Library Services Commission.

Now comes the hard part: Figuring out what to do. By April 1, we in Ventura either have to raise enough money to keep both Foster and Wright libraries open full-time; or we have to agree on what service reductions we can live with. There may yet be a way out of this, but the truth is that the library situation is only the beginning. Our economy is so lousy that, this year and next, we will probably have to make hard choices on every single public service we enjoy here in Ventura. Sorry to be gloomy, but that’s the truth.

Our libraries are funded primarily by a small share of the property tax in the Ventura area that goes to the county library system. That’s about $2.1 million this year. In addition, the San Buenaventura Friends of the Library generously raise more than $100,000 a year; the city puts in $90,000 a year in federal funds for which only Avenue Library is eligible; and various other grants and bequests add a little more, so that we put about $2.5 million in. Unfortunately, it takes about $2.8 million to run the libraries at their current level, which includes 55 hours a week at Foster and 40 hours a week at Wright. Traditionally this shortfall has been made up by funds from the state or elsewhere in the county, but the Library Agency has a significant deficit too and can no longer subsidize us.

Most of our neighboring cities put additional money into the kitty to get additional service. Ojai has a parcel tax. Thousand Oaks and Camarillo provide huge contributions from their general fund (meaning millions of dollars). In Port Hueneme, private foundations and a small city contribution have provided steady supplemental funding. Other than the occasional last-minute bailout of $50,000 or $100,000, Ventura has never done this. And with a looming deficit of $10 million or more at City Hall, the city is not likely to start now.

Our wonderful San Buenaventura Friends of the Library have already started a fundraising campaign to try to raise the $300,000 to keep current service available for another year. In addition, the City Council is considering placing a citywide sales tax on the ballot later this year in order to raise funds to maintain vital services, including libraries. At the very least, I am hoping the Friends can raise enough money to keep Foster and Wright open full-time until a sales tax election can take place.

If you’d like to make a donation, write a check to “Save Wright Library – San Buenaventura Friends of the Library” and send it to the Friends at P.O. Box 403, Ventura 93002.

Meanwhile, our city Library Advisory Commission (different from the county commission) will spend the next month or so debate what the best options are for reduced service if the money cannot be raised.

As you all know by now, county library staff has suggested a consolidation plans that would include permanently closing Wright, moving the collection to Foster, opening Foster on Sundays, and possibly adding a children’s library at the Pacific View Mall and a large-print collection at the Ventura College Library.

Closing Wright makes sense in some ways, because Foster is much larger and can accommodate the entire collection, whereas we will lose the land lease on Wright in six years anyway. But Wright is a beloved community asset, which is more centrally located than Foster. And nobody wants to close a library.

So, at the City Council’s direction, the Library Advisory Commission will assess at least two other alternatives. One will almost certainly be to reduce hours at both Wright and Foster. The library staff has initially suggested this would mean Foster would be open three days a week and Wright two. Although this would keep some service at Wright, it would also mean valuable resources at Foster – including the 24 internet computers and the genealogy section – would be unavailable most of the time.

The Library Advisory Commission is planning several meetings to deal with this question. I will keep you posted as to when and where this will occur.

Sometime in March or early April, all these options will come back to the City Council for further discussion. By then we’ll know how much money the Friends have raised; we may know whether a sales tax election will be held and when; and the community will have debated a wide range of alternatives.

The Library Challenge

Tomorrow night, the City Council will hear a report from Jackie Griffin, the Ventura County Library Agency director, about her proposal to consolidate library services in Ventura. This proposal – which would involve closing Wright Library near Ventura College, moving its collection to Foster Library downtown, and expanding Foster’s hours – is obviously very controversial. I don’t think I heard from so many constituents even during the 911 fee controversy.

Let me talk a little about how library decisions get made; why tough decisions about the libraries in Ventura have to be made; and what some of the options are.


First, some details about how decisions get made:

This issue won’t reach resolution tomorrow night. The final decision-maker here is not the City Council, though the City’s views will be given great weight. Through a complicated power-sharing agreement between the county and the six cities that are in the county system, the County Board of Supervisors has the final say, but our county’s Library Services Commission, which includes one elected representative from the county and each of the six cities in the system, also has great influence. The supervisors can overturn the recommendations of this commission only on a four-fifths vote. The County Library Commission will meet on Thuresday, February 5th, at 6:30 p.m. in the Topping Room at Foster Library. (I have served on the County Library Commission for more than five years and I am currently the chair.)

Here in Ventura, we also have a City Library Advisory Commission, whose job it is to advise the Council on library matters, and so far the Council has not sought the advice of these local library experts. The City Library Commission is scheduled to meet next Tuesday night, February 3rd.


Second, let me move on to some of the factors that are forcing this issue now as well as some background on how the library system works.

Part of the crisis is, as advertised, a budget crunch. But it’s not just that the County Library Agency has less money than anticipated. It’s also that there’s a built-in tension in the way the county library system is put together, which has a particular effect on Ventura.

Some of you may remember that during the recession of the early ‘90s, library hours were cut extremely. Wright and Foster were open only 16 hours a week, and they were open on alternate dates. Other cities in the system were similarly affected. This occurred because the state shifted property tax funds away from the library system (and other agencies) to schools. (Our library system is funded primarily a tiny portion of the property tax dedicated to it.)

As a result, the cities in the county system forced a change in the way the county system was run. This “memorandum of understanding” (which established the County Library Services Commission and the 4/5ths vote requirement) was based on two fundamental principals:

First, the property tax collected inside each city’s service area should be spent in that service area. Our service area includes not just the City but also Montalvo, Faria and Solimar beaches, and a few other unincorporated areas. This generates about $2.5 million per year in revenue for Ventura’s libraries.

Second, each library should be open a predictable number of hours, depending on its classification. For large libraries, like Foster, that number was 55 hours hours a week. (For more than 80 years, Foster was the central library for the entire county.) For community libraries, like Wright, that number was 40 hours a week.

Ventura is the only city in the system with both a large library and a community library, and so therefore under the agreement we are guaranteed far more hours of library service per week than any other city. (Avenue Library, a “neighborhood” library, is operated mostly, though not entirely, through federal funds that the City of Ventura must spend in low-income neighborhoods like the Westside.)

To put it bluntly, the money we are guaranteed for libraries is not enough to keep Foster open 55 hours a week and Wright open 40 hours a week. Therefore, to maintain this service, the County has had to subsidize Ventura with money from other sources, including property tax from other unincorporated areas and state funds. As a longtime member of the County Library Commission I can tell you that this creates a great deal of resentment from our neighboring cities.

These funds are now diminishing, and it is virtually impossible to honor both #1 and #2 above, which are required under the memorandum of understanding. We have always known that sooner or later something will have to change.


Here are a couple of other background points about Wright and Foster:

The Wright building is owned by the City but it is on land leased from Ventura College, and the lease is up in 2015. I am sure as I can be that the College will not renew the lease and, in fact, would like to use the Wright building and/or the land sooner than 2015 because of their ongoing expansion. So, sooner or later, we will have to stop using Wright as a library.

At Foster, on the other hand, both the land and the building are owned by the City. The building was owned by the County Library Agency until 1999, when the City took title in exchange for $2 million in renovations and taking over maintenance of the building.

It is important to note that the 1999 Foster renovations were based on a rethinking of the roles of the two libraries. (I remember this because I was Chair of the City Library Advisory Commission at the time.) The idea was this:

-- Wright was intended to be – and is – a busy library where community members come in and check out books.

-- Foster was intended to have a different purpose. The 1999 renovations – paid for in part by private donations on the condition that it remain in use as a library – opened up the second floor, previously used for administrative offices. Though Foster’s longtime role as the central library for the entire county was abandoned at that time, it was intended to remain Ventura’s main library. The second floor housed a children’s library. The collection was not focused on checkouts but rather on reference books. And more than 20 Internet computers were put in for the public’s use.

In the last 10 years, Foster has not been heavily used as a children’s library. However, most of the other ideas in the 1999 plan have worked out. Wright has more checkouts than Foster, but that is partly because of the nature of the collection and the nature of the library. Foster has more reference books and more computer use, and therefore Foster has more patrons (that is, people walking through the door) than Wright.

As has been reported, the City has always assumed that, eventually, a large citywide library would be built at the Community Park. Wright could then be closed and Foster might be converted, at least partly, to a different use. We have some money set aside for planning and design of such a library, but no such planning and design has been initiated yet, so that’s a long way away.


Third, let me talk about some of the options we have.

County Library Director Jackie Griffin has suggested closing Wright and consolidating virtually all library services at Foster. I admit this does not make geographical sense. But it may make sense operationally. At 35,000 square feet, Foster is the only library building presently available to us that is big enough to serve as the community’s only library. At 12,000 square feet, Wright is not big enough to serve that role.

A number of people have complained that Foster does not have enough parking and that the homeless often linger in or around the building. It is true that Foster does not have a large expanse of dedicated parking immediately adjacent to the building, as Wright does; but there are several thousand parking spaces in downtown Ventura, including hundreds in the parking garage a short walk away. It is also true that Foster, like other downtown locations, does have issues with the homeless; but in the last 10 years block that Foster is on has become one of the busiest places in the city, so there are always lots of people around and many “eyes on the street”.

A second option would be for the city to subsidize library operations to keep both Wright and Foster open. In the past, the city has sometimes provided $100,000 toward this goal. But more is needed this year, and the City Council is in the process of figuring out how to cut $5-8 million from its own budget because of low revenue. City subsidy is not an option.

A third option would be to cut hours at both libraries in order to keep both of them open. This is what the county did back in the early ‘90s, and I can tell you that everybody in town hated it. Nobody could remember which library was open which day, and of course large chunks of the collection were inaccessible to patrons no matter what day of the week it is. Beyond that, this is a kind of “hunkering down” solution that assumes we can return to the current situation when things “go back to normal”. Given what I know about the inherent stresses in the library system, “normal” will not return. We cannot sustain the situation as it currently stands.

A fourth option that a number of people have suggested is to make structural changes at Wright and/or Foster that would increase the amount of library space available at Wright and convert some of Foster to another use. Some people have suggested that we cover the Wright patio to create more space. Others have suggested that we move library offices back into the second floor of Foster or even rent it out to private offices. Both of these ideas have merit, but they would require planning, design, time, and up-front funding that we do not have.

A fifth option would be to leave the county system altogether and try to make this work on our own. This is an understandable reaction, given everybody’s level of frustration. However, every analysis I have ever seen suggests that running our own library system would cost more than being in the county system – so we would simply be faced with the same set of choices. Moorpark pulled out rashly last year and has had nothing but difficulty trying to provide library service. Also, if we pulled out we would lose that part of our funding base located in unincorporated areas – especially the property tax from the Faria and Solimar beach areas, which provide several hundred thousands of dollars per year

A sixth option would be to find ways to ensure that East Ventura retains important library services even if Wright is closed. I personally do not want to close Wright if it leaves East Ventura without a children’s library, without large print books, and possibly without the popular fiction that is so popular among patrons. I think we need to find ways to make those services available in locations other than at Foster. I don’t know what all the options are, but I do believe that we might be able to work with Ventura College to provide some (though not all) of these services at their library. Some people have complained that they do not want to use the college library because parking is so limited; but again I think we could work with the college on that issue.

Also, a number of people have pointed out that the Wright building has certain important cultural assets, including a garden memorializing Johnny Cash’s first wife as well as some of the city’s public art. These are important considerations, but what happens to the Wright building is a different question than whether it is used as a library.


A closing thought

I realize that most library advocates might not agree with me, but I think we might want to view this as a “fortunate problem” to have. Ventura’s libraries have guaranteed funding of approximately $2.5 million. I know of no community service provided by the City that has such ample funding earmarked for it. The issue as I see it is not so much whether to keep a particular library open, but how best to use the resources we have to provide the best library service we can.

For many years I and other library advocates in Ventura have known that we have a difficult choice: We can have two libraries in different parts of town, providing suboptimal service, or we can have one really good library. We have always chosen the first. Other cities, such as Simi Valley, which are of a similar size and have similar financial resources available, have chosen the second. Because of the circumstances I have described above, we have to face this question sooner or later, so I am glad it has come before us now.