A Victory For The Practical -- Not The Ideological

Yesterday, Ventura’s voters proved once again that they’re practical, not ideological, and they’re more interested in constructive solutions than angry rants.

The solid winners in yesterday’s election were my longtime council colleagues Christy Weir and Carl Morehouse and newcomer Cheryl Heitmann, whom I was proud to endorse. Ken Cozzens finished a strong fourth.

Sometimes there seemed to be a fair amount of shrill rhetoric in this campaign -- reflecting the polarization nationally. The Tea Party and others on the right tried to paint the incumbents and Cheryl as free-spending liberals who are in the pockets of the unions, whereas some Democrats and others on the left pounded on the idea that electing Carla Bonney and Bill Knox would mean the Tea Party would take over the City Council.

A lot of this was exaggerated. In fact, Christy and Carl have taken a very hard line with the unions in the last two years, and Bill Knox – although he is very fiscally conservative – is not quite a Tea Party guy. But in the end it didn’t matter. Christy, Carl, and Cheryl all ran positive campaigns that resonated with the voters. As VenturaTalk.com pointed out, the VCStar's online comments may be vitriolic, but clearly the commenters are not in the majority.

Though they often disagree with each other, Christy and Carl both presented themselves as experienced folks who know and care about our community but nevertheless have experience making hard-nosed decisions. Cheryl drew upon her community college board experience and her experience as executive director of the Ventura Music Festival to emphasize her skill at bringing people together and creating innovative partnerships.

The next few years will be tough ones for the city and these are the skills we will need on the City Council to face up to the challenges.

One of the big lessons from this election – a lesson that has been proven over and over again here in Ventura – is that if you are on the far right or the far left, you can’t win just with your political base. You have to have crossover appeal to those practical, moderate voters – Republicans, Democrats, and independents – who are not zealously ideological. These are the folks who hold the balance of power here in Ventura.

It’s telling, for example, that Tea Party favorite Carla Bonney and union favorite Danny Carrillo got almost exactly the same number of votes. They each got about 3,500 votes, which means about 23% of the voters who cast ballots voted for them. In other words, each one carried their base – on the political right for Carla and on the political left for Danny – but they couldn’t cross over.

As I say, these are not new lessons. The Bonney campaign discovered – as the Camille Harris campaign learned in 2009 – that there is a difference between standing in front of Lowe’s getting people to sign a petition and getting people to cast their ballot for you. The Carrillo campaign learned – as Jerry Martin’s union-based campaign learned in 2007 and 2009 – that you can’t get elected in this town with union backing alone.

Knox, who finished fifth, also fell into this "no-crossover" trap. Bill is an extreme fiscal conservative – too extreme for me – but he’s also an genuine community-oriented guy. Unfortunately for him, the community-oriented aspect of Bill did not come across in the campaign and he wasn’t really the serious contender that many people thought he would be. Cozzens, on the other hand, is well known in town and had broad appeal -- more from the right than from the left, but still -- and that's why he did well.

The bottom line was that most voters ruled out the extremes on the left or right and were left to choose among the four who had crossover appeal – Heitmann, Morehouse, Weir, and Cozzens. The first three were bunched together at the top, with Cozzens doing well in the fourth spot. Which just goes to show you once again: Here in Ventura, if you leave it up to the voters, they’ll usually make the right decision.

Five Things to Think About When Voting on Tuesday -- and Three Candidates To Support

Tuesday is Election Day in Ventura. Your vote is really important in this election. Because we have off-year elections, turnout is low – about half what it is in other elections. That means your vote counts twice as much. Don't let somebody else decide who will sit on your City Council.

There are 11 candidates running for three seats on the city council. I am endorsing my council colleagues Christy Weir and Carl Morehouse for re-election and Cheryl Heitman for the seat I am vacating. The other 8 candidates are, in alphabetical order, Ed Alamillo, Marty Armstong, Melody Joy Baker, Carla Bonney, Danny Carrillo, Ken Cozzens, Bill Knox, and Brian Lee Rencher. (They appear in a different order on the ballot.) Most of these folks are probably familiar to you by now.

Before I explain why I have endorsed Christy, Carl, and Cheryl, let me talk a little about the things I think all of us as voters should take into account when we fill out our ballots. So here are my five commandments about voting.

First, don’t throw your vote away on somebody who isn’t going to win because you want to register a protest. People often do this because they are mad or because they want to send a message. This impulse is understandable, but what you’re really doing is letting somebody else decide who is going to be on the City Council.

Second, don’t vote for somebody because you know their name or they’re a nice guy or a familiar face. These are qualifications for a good neighbor, but they are not qualifications for a good city Council member. Vote for people you think are capable of understanding the issues and making good decisions.

Third, don’t vote for candidates who have a narrow or extreme agenda. Particularly in Ventura, which is a politically diverse city, good governance involves balancing lots of different interests to create an enduring consensus. Somebody with a narrow or extreme agenda may make a lot of noise, but he or she is likely to be ineffective at best.

Fourth, don’t vote for candidates who tell you that everything will be fine and you don’t have to sacrifice anything. It’s always tempting for politicians to say this, but it’s never true. Especially in this prolonged economic downturn, we have all had to sacrifice something – and these sacrifices will likely have to continue. Better to have councilmembers who understand this than councilmembers who deny it in order to be popular.

And fifth, please vote for candidates who can make tough decisions and stick with them. This economic downturn has lasted far longer and has had a much more lasting impact than any of us could have imagined three or four years ago. No matter what we do, it will be many years before we have as much revenue as we had in 2007 or 2008. This means we have to keep making tough decisions about what public services are most important, how to pay for them, and how to change things around so we can deliver them more cost-effectively. We cannot afford to have politicians looking for the easy way out on our City Council.

I support Christy, Carl, and Cheryl because I believe they are all committed to Ventura; they all understand our community well; and they are willing to make the tough decisions.

I’ve known and worked with all three of them for many years. Christy is tough-minded and community-oriented. Carl is hardworking and conscientious. Cheryl knows our community very well and understands how to bring people together. All are independent thinkers – exactly what we need in Ventura – and all will be able to make the tough decisions that will help us survive in the short term and improve our community in the long run.

Please vote on Tuesday. I hope you vote for Christy, Carl, and Cheryl, as I am doing. Please email me if you want to know more.

The Realities of Ventura's Compensation

A couple of weeks ago in a letter to the VC Reporter, Ventura resident Meryl Wamhoff lambasted the City for a variety of supposed fiscal sins, including overcompensating executives, saddling Ventura taxpayers with the cost of Bell's egregious fiscal shenanigans, and not looking at ways to cut compensation in order to balance the budget. Unfortunately, Mr. Wamhoff's letter was incorrect on many counts. Here's the letter I wrote to the VCeporter (published this week) in response:

To The Editor:

Meryl Wamhoff’s letter lambasting reporter Shane Cohn for his perspective on government and taxes (“Just another liberal reporter…,” Letters, Sept. 1) certainly brought a provocative viewpoint to your pages. Unfortunately, Wamhoff was inaccurate in the claims he made about the city of Ventura. (“Tale of two taxes,” News, 8/11)

First, Wamhoff claims the taxpayers in Ventura will be footing part of the bill for the outrageous pensions of two top city of Bell employees, each of whom worked in Ventura early in their careers. This is not true, partly because of a proactive approach by the city of Ventura.

Ventura, along with other cities the pair subsequently worked for, supported a bill in the Legislature — almost certain to be signed by the governor in the next few weeks — that will force Bell, not Ventura or other cities, to foot the bill for their inflated pensions.

As it turns out, CalPERS, the state retirement agency, has already taken action to slash the pensions that were estimated in early press accounts. Instead of getting $411,000 a year, former Bell Police Chief Randy Adams will receive $268,000 — admitted, still a huge number but far less than it otherwise would be. Former Bell Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, who worked for Ventura in the 1980s, had her pension reduced from an estimated $250,000 per year to $43,000 per year.

Secondly, Wamhoff asserts that Ventura “overcompensates its public employees.” In fact, however, Ventura’s pay scales are much lower than surrounding jurisdictions, such as the cities of Oxnard and Thousand Oaks and Santa Barbara County. City Manager Rick Cole makes $172,000 a year in base salary, which is about $60,000 less than his counterparts in Camarillo, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, and $100,000 less than the city manager of Oxnard. City Attorney Ariel Calonne makes about $190,000 a year, which his $30,000-$40,000 less than most of his counterparts around the county. Both recently took a 7 percent pay cut to contribute to their pension costs. So Wamhoff is wrong in asserting that we “never once considered that the compensation packages for these bureaucrats are too generous.” It was the first thing we considered and we acted on it.

This same pay difference is true up and down the organization. I really appreciate the loyalty and dedication of our city employees, but we frequently lose them to Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and Santa Barbara County, all of which pay 10-20 percent more than Ventura does. Over time, this could cause Ventura to become a “farm team” for these other jurisdictions — something that will surely harm our city government’s ability to get the job done, and something I believe no one in Ventura wants.

Wamhoff is right to be concerned about the compensation and retirement obligations of government agencies these days. It is a major concern to all of us in public life. And I understand that if Wamhoff believes the compensation of all government employees generally is too high, then he’s likely to think that Ventura pays too much no matter what the pay scale is.

It is wrong, however, to single out Ventura as an example of government’s financial problems, when we have worked much harder than other jurisdictions to be both moderate and fair in our approach to compensation and retirement.

City Council Candidate Forums Coming Up!

Here's information about all the City Council candidate forums:

1.Thursday, September 22: Social Services Task Force, 6:30 pm, Ventura Church of Christ, 5401 Bryn Mawr.

2. Wednesday, September 28: Mobile Homeowners, 2 pm. Marina Mobile Home Park, 1215 Anchors Way Clubhouse

3. Wednesday, September 28: Westside Community Council, 7 pm. EP Foster School, 20 Pleasant Place.

4. Tuesday, October 4: VCCOOL, 6 pm., WAV Gallery, 175 S. Ventura Ave.

5. Wednesday, October 5: San Buenaventura Foundation for the Arts, 6:30 pm., Museum of Ventura County, 100 E. Main St.

6. Tuesday, October 11: League of Women Voters, 7 pm, Poinsettia Pavilion, 3451 Foothill Road

7. Thursday, October 13: Midtown Community Council, 7 pm, Grace Church (Cooper Hall) 65 s. Macmillan Ave.

The New CMH: Key To Our Quality of Life -- And Our Prosperity

A few weeks ago I came into the mayor’s office on a Monday morning and found a huge stack of pretty intimidating documents to sign. They were, of course, the papers authorizing the city to work with Community Memorial Hospital to sell $350 million in bonds – to be paid back by CMH’s revenues, not by the city’s taxpayers -- in order to finance the enormous expansion and upgrade now underway at the hospital’s site in Midtown.

If you’ve ever bought a house or a car, you know that nothing focuses the mind like signing your name to a bunch of documents. But when the bonds went on the market, they were sold in a matter of minutes and – as the mounds of dirt near the hospital attest – construction has begun. Last Wednesday night, I was proud to participate in a moving groundbreaking featuring 14 speakers – patients, doctors, nurses, volunteers, construction workers – whose lives have been changed by their association with CMH. The whole experience has reinforced for me the notion that CMH is a cornerstone of our community – not only our qualify of life but our prosperity as well.

The CMH expansion is probably the biggest construction project we will ever see in Ventura. (By contrast, the Pacific View Mall expansion back in 2000 was about $100 million.) It may also be the most important. Although the expansion was driven by state law requiring hospitals to retrofit their buildings for seismic safety, CMH has gone far beyond that goal. The expansion will actually allow CMH to serve as one of the most important drivers of our community’s prosperity and well-being for decades to come, in three different ways.

1. High-quality medical care

Between CMH and Ventura County Medical Center, we in Ventura already have extraordinarily high-quality medical care already. These two institutions have strong connections to great medical schools at UCLA and USC, and each specializes in different aspects of medical care. But the new CMH will be a huge leap beyond the status quo – private rooms, a 35-bed emergency room, a serene garden in which to walk and heal, and a state-of-the-art medical facility that will be as good as any of its size in the United States. Thanks to this expansion, all of us in Ventura can be assured of great medical care for the rest of our lives.

2. High-quality jobs

Obviously, CMH currently provides hundreds of good-paying jobs for people who live and work in Ventura – doctors, nurses, technicians of all kinds, and on and on. But the new CMH creates a whole net set of opportunities that hold the potential to create spinoff businesses and great jobs for decades to come. Over the past few years in Ventura, we have put a great deal of effort into pinpointing and focusing on growth sectors of the economy – most of which have an important technology components. For example, our Ventura Ventures Technology Center has focused on emerging web-oriented businesses spilling out of Santa Barbara. Another sector we must focus on is biotechnology, and the new CMH can help us become more competitive. The biotech sector in Ventura County is strong – after all, Amgen is the largest private company in the county and one of the largest biotech companies in the world – and we in Ventura are currently missing out on important spinoff opportunities there. By using part of the old hospital building to create wet lab space and other facilities for startups, CMH can help Ventura kickstart our biotech sector. CMH can also serve as a testbed for clinical trials – thus combining the best of research and clinical work, which are both required to develop and test new products, build companies, and create good jobs. This opportunity is often overlooked in talking about the CMH expansion, but I can’t emphasize how important it is to our community’s long-term prosperity.

3. Midtown revitalization

CMH has long been an anchor in Midtown’s “Five Points” neighborhood, as the hospital’s employees and visitors have patronized businesses and thus helped the neighborhood economy. In planning for the new hospital, CMH has done an amazing job of collaborating with the city and the neighborhood to create an expansion that is sensitive to the neighborhood (there was no neighborhood opposition) and will strengthen Midtown’s business base. A new parking garage will be created collaboratively by the hospital to serve both CMH and businesses on Main Street. Most important, CMH will now serve not just as the economic anchor. . The new hospital will be oriented toward Main Street with a lovely plaza. CMH will surrender its Brent Street address and replace it with a Main Street address. A plaza and new pedestrian connections will link the hospital to Main Street. CMH has worked hard to help make Five Points in Ventura’s “Second Downtown” – a well-planned and pleasant employment district that will have strong retail businesses benefiting everyone in town.

I have to admit that when I was first elected to the City Council eight years ago, I didn’t think much about the importance of Community Memorial Hospital. Like most people, I thought about the effect it has had on my lives – the many emergency room visits, the times my mother was treated there (and eventually she passed away there), and so forth. But in world where competition for prosperity is tough, every community has to identify its greatest assets and learn how to make the most of them. CMH is one of our greatest assets – and I am very grateful to CEO Gary Wilde and everyone else for all the hard work they have put in. I wouldn’t have missed the groundbreaking for the world. And I hope to be there for the grand opening in a couple of years – so we can see just how much a better CMH means a better Ventura.

How to Make Sure We Keep Our Young Families in Ventura

A few weeks ago, I went out to Temple Beth Torah to observe a service honoring eight 16-year-olds who were finishing the Temple’s confirmation class. It was an emotional evening for me, because these kids are the last of the cohort I have known at the Temple for many years – the younger brothers and sisters of the kids who grew up with my college-age daughter.

It is also, sadly, the kind of event that doesn’t occur nearly as much as it used here in Ventura. The truth is that, as much as we love Ventura as a family, the number of children – and young people generally – is on the decline. And as a community we are getting older. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2000 and 2010:

-- The number of children age 0-9 in Ventura declined by 11%.

-- The number of people between 30 and 50 – typically the parents of school-age children – declined by 10%.

-- The number of people over the age of 50 increased by almost 30%

To a certain extent, these statistics reflect a national and statewide trend toward a “graying” population. It’s also reflective of coastal cities throughout California, where the number of families and children is in decline.

More than anything, however, it might simply suggest a lack of turnover in Ventura’s population. Our kids are growing up and moving away and the rest of us are just getting older and staying here. I’m a good example: In the 2000 Census, I was in the 30-50 age category with a child at home. Now I’m an over-50 empty nester. (At least I was until a few weeks ago, when my Boomerang Daughter returned home … but that’s another story.) We don’t move away when we retire, because we already live in a great place to retire; and since we control new development strictly there aren’t many opportunities for new families to move in.

There was one bright spot in the Census: The number of people age 20-29 in Ventura went up 16%, a much higher figure than we saw statewide. This is a wonderful twist on the longstanding trend of kids from Ventura going away to college and never coming back. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess there are two reasons for this bright spot. The first is that kids who grew up in town are sticking around because they can now go to college locally, especially at Cal State Channel Islands. The second is that young people from elsewhere are drawn to Ventura by the lifestyle and the growing opportunity for interesting jobs in our emerging economic sectors such as high-tech.

Like Ventura, mature communities all over the country are struggling because they can’t keep the people they need to fill important jobs and to give the community a family-oriented vitality. But the rise of the twenty-somethings here in town gives us an opportunity to reverse the trend. If we can hang on to these folks over the next 10 years, then they’ll stay here a long time and raise their families here.

But that’s not just going to happen. In order to keep our young families, we need to nurture the things that young families need – schools, jobs, and housing. We’ve already got the schools. Ventura Unified is an excellent school district with many choices – magnet and charter schools. We also have very good Catholic and Christian schools as well.

As for jobs, we’re working hard on creating a whole new sector of jobs in the “new economy” – high-tech, web development, and related companies that can provide stable, long-term employment. That’s why I’m so encouraged about the fact that our twenty-something population is on the rise. I think they’re coming to town – or staying in town after college – to work in these emerging businesses. We must continue our efforts to grow these private-sector businesses so that young families will have stable jobs.

That leaves housing. It’s true that, for the moment, housing in Ventura seems affordable. But it’s still expensive, especially compared with other places where young families might live. The median home price in Ventura in July was $327,000. That’s down 16% from last year, but it’s still way higher than the state average of $252,000 and more than double the cost of housing in the inland locations where young families typically move these days, like Bakersfield, the Inland Empire, and Las Vegas.

In the long run, we will have to be aggressive in making sure that there is enough housing – and the right kind of housing – for our young families to buy. That probably means building more townhomes and large, high-quality condominiums, because the families won’t be able to afford single-family homes as we did. It also means building more move-down housing for seniors – not just assisted living, but smaller units for older folks in places like downtown, where you don’t have to drive much. Because part of the problem, of course, is that we older folks are sitting on our larger houses even though we don’t have families. More move-down housing will encourage longtime Venturans to move out of their houses and stay in town – and also free up single-family housing for young families to buy so that we don’t have to build more sprawl to keep them in town.

In part, we can’t avoid the fact that we are an aging country, an aging state, and an aging city. We’re lucky that our health is better than our parents and we will be able to enjoy life – and also contribute to our community – far longer than they did. But Ventura remains – as it always has been – a great family town. We all need to work together to make sure that lots of people of all ages enjoy living here.

Measure J Was Illegal -- And Too Extreme For Ventura

By now, everyone in town has heard that last Monday Judge Mark Borrell removed the parking initiative from Ventura’s local ballot in November.

The right to vote on public issues is important to us here in Ventura. Our city has a long history of citizen-driven ballot measures, including SOAR in 1995. Sometimes these initiatives have won, as SOAR did, and sometimes they have lost, as did the convoluted “view protection” initiative on the ballot in 2009. So it’s understandable that some people are mad that Measure J will not be on the ballot and will try to make the Judge’s ruling an issue in the City Council campaign this fall. At the same time a lot of people are relieved -- and look forward to a City Council campaign that focuses on more important issues than parking meters.

But before things heat up in the City Council race, I think it’s important to step back and understand two important points.

First, whether you like it or not, the right to vote on local issues is defined by state law. And in this case, Measure J clearly violated state law.

Second, no matter how you feel about the downtown parking meters, Measure J was a very extreme measure. In addition to removing the downtown meters, Measure J would have required 2/3 voter approval for any future attempt to charge for parking on city streets and any city-owned property.

LEGAL VALIDITY OF THE INITIATIVE

Let’s begin with the first question: Why did Judge Borrell removed Measure J from the ballot?

We in California revere the right to initiative (where citizens place legislation on the ballot) and referendum (where citizens seek to overturn a City Council action via the ballot). Yet the California Constitution doesn’t permit us to vote on everything. For example, we can vote on legislative changes (like changing zoning ordinance to prohibit liquor stores in certain parts of town) but we can’t vote on how a law is applied to individual situations (like whether or not to grant a conditional use permit to a particular liquor store). That’s not me talking. That’s what the California Constitution says and how the courts have interpreted it.

More to the point, Ventura’s voters do not have the right to adopt an ordinance that conflicts with state law, any more than the City Council does.

While it’s very unusual for a ballot initiative to be removed from the ballot before it is voted on, courts have consistently confirmed that if an initiative is obviously unlawful there is no point in holding an election.

Which is what happened with Measure J. Measure J was a ballot initiative that would have removed parking meters and required future on-street and off-street parking decisions to be decided by the voters, not the City Council. That directly contradicts California Vehicle Code Section 22508 which states that parking meter actions are only subject to referendum – the right to veto City Council actions. California law does not allow voters to make parking laws of their own by an initiative, because doing so would make it difficult for a city to respond to traffic problems in a timely fashion. The exclusion of parking meters from the initiative process was tested in court and has been settled law since the Sixties.

In short: Carla Bonney, the local Tea Party leader who has been Measure J’s main proponent, could have gathered signatures to challenge the City Council’s action to install the paking meters at the time the decision was made (via referendum). But she was prohibited by state law from writing her own initiative law to govern local parking regulations.

All this seemed very clear to our City Attorney and to a majority of the City Council, which concluded it had no other option than to test Measure J’s validity in court. The proponents, of course, claimed that the lawsuit was seeking to “thwart the will of the people”. Yet they never really addressed the fatal defect: that their initiative ran afoul of the law.

In her statements before the City Council, Bonney did not seem to know the difference between a referendum and an initiative. In her interpretation, any ballot measure was a referendum until it was placed on the ballot, at which time the measure would become an initiative. She also repeatedly dismissed the long-standing California case law that forbids parking initiatives simply because the cases were old.

In court, the proponents argument was that the Vehicle Code didn’t apply to parking meters since they claimed the parking meters were not intended to control traffic. Instead, she argued that the City was really trying to create a “fee monopoly” with the paid parking system downtown. (I’m not sure how you create a monopoly by charging for 300 spaces when there are 2,000 nearby spaces that are free, but anyway, that was the argument.) It was a convoluted argument and Judge Borrell didn’t buy it. Instead, he followed the clear precedents of long-settled law.

That’s why Measure J was removed from the ballot,

TOO EXTREME FOR VENTURA

It seems to me that the legal defects in the initiative itself were related to the way the whole anti-meter movement morphed over time. The movement began with concern by some downtown merchants that their business would be hurt by the meters. By the time it reached the ballot, it had changed into an effort driven mostly by members of the local Tea Party who claimed that American freedoms were at risk.

When the paid parking first went in, I attended a couple of meetings of local merchants who were understandably fearful that their business would be hurt. These meetings were attended by about 15 merchants (out of the approximately 160 merchants downtown.) In response, the city made significant changes: removing some of the meters, reducing the hours that the paid parking was in effect, and providing thousands of one-hour-free coupons during the Christmas season. Although we discussed other possible changes, even the concerned merchants could not agree on which to implement.

Meanwhile, the City used the money from the meters to heavily beef up the police presence downtown – with impressive results. Since last fall, downtown crime is down 40%. Retail sales actually increased – by about 3% over the prior year, despite an ailing economy. When downtown merchants had a strong Christmas season, most of them stopped complaining about the meters.

From the beginning, however, members of the local Tea Party championed the parking meters as their political issue. Led by Carla Bonney and Gary Parker, who owned American Flag & Cutlery on Main Street, they claimed the parking meters constituted an illegal tax. As it became clear that downtown had not become “a ghost town” (as some claimed) but in fact was doing well, the entire argument against the meters shifted away from the impact on downtown merchants and toward a Tea Party crusade.

Indeed, when Carla, Gary, and Randall Richman (who's not a Tea Party guy) unveiled their initiative last spring, it went far beyond removal of the meters downtown. It would have required 2/3 voter approval anytime the City wished to charge for parking on any city street or city-owned property. This extreme provision had wide-reaching implications. It would make it nearly impossible for the City to build another parking garage downtown. It would make it very difficult for the City to partner with Community Memorial Hospital in building parking for the expanded hospital. Neighborhoods that hoped to use parking revenue to improve their parks, as at Marina Park, would be out of luck. Even neighborhoods that wanted residential permit parking, as around the hospital, would have to win a 2/3 citywide vote because the City charges $10 per year for the permits.

Carla and her team worked hard and collected over 10,000 signatures. Most of those were undoubtedly local residents concerned about downtown parking meters. But in order to secure the signatures, the signature-gatherers frequently used arguments that were just plain untrue (such as the idea that the City Council wanted to charge astronomical parking fees for everyone in town to park in front of their own house.) But the signature-gatherers rarely mentioned the 2/3 provision to voters.

Tea Party representatives began appearing before the City Council to claim that parking meters were just the beginning of a comprehensive plan to implement the United Nations’ Agenda 21 effort to promote on sustainable development, which they believe is a worldwide plot to undermine private property and threaten other freedoms. (Tea Partiers around the nation have attacked local planning policies by using Agenda 21 as well.)

Once the initiative qualified for the ballot, it became quite clear that the whole effort had turned into e campaign by Tea Party activists to galvanize support for their political agenda.

MY BOTTOM LINE

Much as I admire Carla’s tenaciousness and her impressive signature-gathering effort, I just never believed she and her supporters were really in touch with Ventura’s voters. Sure, people are skeptical of government – and rightfully so. But do folks around town really think that the City Council is planning to charge people astronomical prices to park in front of their own house? Or that we are part of a vast United Nations conspiracy to rob us of our freedoms because we charge for 300 parking spaces Downtown? I think voters are far more concerned about maintaining our vital public services so that Ventura will be safe, clean city that’s a great place to live.

This is a small town, and I can tell you from personal experience that Ventura’s voters – while cautious – are nevertheless practical. They like their elected officials to be local folks in touch with what’s really going on in town, not with some imagined, extreme threat. Venturans may be receptive to the fiscal conservatism of Tea Party folks – and with good reason -- but they don’t usually fall for hyperbole, half-truths, or overheated conspiracy theories.

I’m not running for re-election this fall, but it seems to me that the 11 people who are in the City Council race would do well to remember the lessons of the whole Measure J episode. Instead of focusing on the few issues we disagree on, let’s debate who can best move us forward on the 95% of things that we do agree on. Let’s bear in mind that, while we live in a democracy, we are a nation, and a state, and a city of laws and we must respect those laws even when we don’t particularly like them. And in trying to make our community better, let’s focus on the practical steps that will move us forward – things that will, for example, reduce crime downtown – rather than getting sidetracked by the idea that parking meters in downtown Ventura are part of a United Nations plot to take over our community.