Talking To The Folks About Making Tough Choices

If you've lived in Ventura long enough, you know that we love to talk about things forever. In some towns, the City Council just moves forward and does things with little interaction with or involvement from the community. But don't ever try that in Ventura. You won't get community buy-in for whatever you're doing, and you'll get pasted by the people.

That's why, as the City Council tries to figure out our budget priorities for next year, we tried something a little different on Saturday -- a kind of round-robin, small-group discussion between councilmembers and the people. It's the first of several public events we're going to have in order to take the public's temperature as we enter another tough budget period. Consider it a community version of a family kitchen-table conversation about how to trim things back to balance the household budget.

Put this on your calendar: We'll have another event, a kind of a "drop-in and talk" thing, at ArtWalk on April 17th.

Next year's budget is going to involve a bunch of tough choices. We had to cut $11 mlilion out of this year's budget -- going from $96 million for a "business as usual" budget to $85 million -- and next year it's going to be more like $15 million, going down to $81 million. So there's no getting around those tough choices.

And the message I'm getting from our folks -- if Saturday is any indication -- is pretty simple: Make the tough choices.

If you've been following our approach to this, you know we've been looking at how to prioritize four different approaches in order to balance the budgetL

1. Eliminate low-priority services.
2. Continue reductions in employee compensation.
3. Reinvent city services so that we can deliver the same services more efficiently.
4. "Muddle through," by continuing to provide services in a way that is probably unsustainable in the long run and wait for the economy to get better.

To this list we recently added the approach of generating new revenue through economic development -- always a priority, but one that is unlikely to yield real results in time to build next year's budget.

On Saturday, we tried to take the community's temperature in an informal way. We set up a round-robin discussion where the folks sat in small groups and the councilmembers -- each of whom took a different approach on the list above -- moved from table to table for 15-minute conversations.

The truth is, we had no idea how this was going to turn out. The whole thing was put together in less than two weeks and weren't sure how many people would show up.

We wound up getting close to 200 people at Poinsettia Pavilion -- so many that we had to vastly expand the number of tables and draft quite a few city staff members to augment the councilmembers as facilitators. Wow! I love the way Venturans get involved.

Early in the week, the city staff will post the notes and themes that emerged from the workshop. But here's a little about what I experienced in the five tables I facilitated.

The approach I drew was "muddling through" -- the idea of trimming a little here, cutting a little there, postponing this or that, and hoping for the best till the economy comes back and revenue goes up. Frankly, muddling through is what most government agencies do in hard times (my joke was that we were discussing the one approach our City Council is good at) -- and both the pro and the con for this approach have to do with the fact that it allows you to avoid hard choices.

On the plus side, if you muddle through you can try to hang on to your institutions and infrastructure at a reduced level until things go back to normal.

On the minus side is the fact that things never go back to normal, and so it's almost impossible to simply go on doing business as usual when the economy comes back.

Not surprisingly, then, the conclusion of most of the folks I spoke with was that we shouldn't muddle through. Instead, we should do what we got elected to do: Make the tough choices in consultation with our community. Given the budget situation, we probably don't have much choice.

But along the way, the folks I talked to threw out some terrific ideas about how we can stretch our dollars farther. There were two that I heard over and over again:

-- Use more volunteers and use them more effectively. The volunteer power we have in Ventura is amazing, and we ought to be able to make tremendous strides by using them as well as we can. Volunteers clean up the beaches, help out the police, assist even in refilling the dog bags in the parks. I agree: Let's keep going in this direction.

-- Crosstrain city employees. Our city employees do a great job. But to stretch our resources in this economy, we ought crosstrain them more so that they are capable of doing more different jobs and working more flexibly. Obviously there are limits to this (you might not want an office worker working as a police officer -- or vice versa!) but it's still a great idea for "reinventing government" that's worth exploring.

It's always hard to get everybody involved, and it's never easy to reach consensus, especially when we have to make tough choices. But Saturday's event was a great start to this year's budget discussion. Thanks to everybody who came.

A Saturday in Ventura: History and Community

In addition to the round-robin budget workshop, I attended three other community events on Saturday. They ranged the gamut from delightful to sad, but all were reminders of what a wonderful city Ventura is – and how lucky we are to have such a rich history.

Before the budget workshop, I was honored to throw out the first ball at opening day for the Montalvo Little League As with the Tri-Valley Girls Softball League, it was great to see more than 300 boys and their parents all excited about opening day. But this opening day was special – because it was the 50th anniversary of the Montalvo Little League, and some of the folks who were there at the beginning were present on Saturday.

Montalvo Little League began in 1960 when Montalvo resident Mickey McLean got it going and worked to construct a field on Bristol Road next to the packing plant. On Saturday, not only were 300+ Little Leaguers present – so was Mickey’s widow Pat and their two boys, Mike and Mark. The boys are now in their fifties, but Mike was the first Little Leaguer in Montalvo.

I warned the 10-year-old catcher that I’m a lefty and he did a great job. The ump generously called a strike, giving me far more benefit of the doubt than most of my constituents usually do.

After the budget workshop, I traveled – along with most of the other councilmembers – to Community Presbyterian Church for a memorial service for the beloved Hank Brokaw, who with his wife Ellen founded Brokaw Nursery at just about the same time as the Montalvo Little League was founded.

Around City Hall, Hank was best known as the father of our community services director, Elena Brokaw. So it’s a little easy for us to forget that Hank – who grew up in Whittier, went to Harvard, and studied cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago – was one of the true pioneers in the Southern California avocado business. Among other things, Brokaw Nursery revolutionized the avocado rootstock business in the 1970s, helping the industry to grow. Hank and Ellen have truly been mainstays in the agricultural community here in Ventura County, and Ellen continues to have more dedication and energy to agriculture and its people than anyone I know.

My heart goes out to Ellen and her children and grandchildren, but this sad event was also a kind of a celebration of one man’s wonderful life and also the industry that is so deeply rooted, one might say, in our community.

Finally I stopped by Barnes & Noble to pick up Glenda Jackson’s new book, Ventura Then and Now, which has just come up from Arcadia Publishing.

I’m sure many of you have purchased some of Glenda’s previous books about the history of Ventura. This one’s got terrific photographs comparing historic and current buildings and locations throughout Ventura. I really like flipping through the book to see not only the contrast between then and now, but also the change and growth in our community over the decades. Thanks to Glenda for continuing to care about our history.

All in all, a pretty wonderful Saturday afternoon in Ventura.

KCET Checks Out Ventura

Check out this KCET web site story on what's going on in Ventura.

Help Us Live Within Our Means

It's February going on March, and for better or worse that means it's beginning to be budget season here in Ventura. For the psat three years, budget season hasn't been much fun. As our revenues have declined, often far below our conservative projections, we have spent most of the spring figuring out how to cut -- how to cut services, how to cut compensation for our employees, how to cut the cost of our contracts. This year is going to be no exception. We're $15 million down from our projected revenue only two years ago, we're going to have to make some tough decisions.

In many cities, the City doesn't really begin to deal with budget problems until May or June -- shortly before the June 30th deadline for budget adoption. (You saw this last spring, when many of our neighboring cities panicked in June.) But here in Ventura, we like to talk. And talk. And talk. And generally speaking, this approach has served us well. Last year, we had a lengthy public discussion about the budget in January and February, and as a result we had made the tough decisions and resolved the tough issues by the time the City Manager submitted his proposed budget to the Council, as is required by our City Charter.

Now we on the City Council are undertaking a process -- admittedly, a quick one -- of reaching out to our constituents so that we can listen to what you have to say as the budget is crafted for the 2010-11 fiscal year. Last night, the Council authorized moving forward with a public outreach plan in March and April that, we hope, will help us reach consensus about what to do.

There will be two big events -- a town hall workshop on Saturday, March 6th, to get your thoughts, and another workshop on Saturday, April 17th, to let you know what we heard. These are not formal meetings of the City Council; they are community workshops.

But this is only part of the process. The councilmembers will also be going out into the community asking questions and listening and all kinds of events in the next few weeks. In addition, there will be all kinds of other ways to participate, including an online survey.

These details have not all been worked out yet, but I'll keep you posted when they are. I know it's quick, but we need to know what you think ... now!

This year, we're also going to ask for your opinion in a slightly different way. For the past two years, we've asked you what to cut. Over that time, we've gotten a pretty consistent set of answers. We're still interested in knowing whether that list of priorities is valid, but this year we'd also like to know how we should cut.

At our council goals-setting workshop back in January, we laid out four different possible ways we can cut. These were:

1. Eliminate low-priority services.
2. Continue reductions in employee compensation.
3. Reinvent city services so that we can deliver the same services more efficiently.
4. "Muddle through," by continuing to provide services in a way that is probably unsustainable in the long run and wait for the economy to get better.

We agreed that we would probably do all 4, but we weren't sure where the emphasis would be.

To this list later on, we added a 5th possibility, which is to increase revenue through economic development and other means (though not raising taxes).

So a major question to you will be, depending on what the priorities are, which of these techniques should we focus on? I hope you can start thinking about that now so you can let us know during this March-April outreach process.

One other thing to think about as we enter into this public outreach period. For the past couple of years, the City Council has functioned under a set of "Budget Operating Principles" -- guidance for our staff and ourselves as we put together the budget. Last night we revised them slightly for the coming here. Here they are:

In the face of continuing national economic crisis, Ventura must continue to ensure fiscal sustainability by living within our means. The City Council rejects the reckless policy of spending money we don’t have. In revising the adopted spending plan for next year, the FY 2011/12 budget will be based on shared contributions for reducing General Fund expenses:

-- Further reductions in lower priority programs and expenses
-- Continuation of employee compensation reductions
-- “Re-inventing” services to reduce costs

The Council seeks to engage the community in understanding and shaping the tough choices that must be made. Rather than compromising the success of high-priority efforts by inadequate funding, the Council recognizes the need to determine what programs could be eliminated, restructured or assigned to others without compromising the core mission and highest priorities of City government.  Although generating additional revenue is not expected to close the projected budget gap for next year, high priority will be given to longer-run efforts to restore prosperity and rebuild revenue to restore desired community services and competitive compensation.


Overall Priority Statements
1. Emphasize economic prosperity to ensure sustainable funding for necessary city programs and to meet critical needs, including maintaining the high priority City Council has placed on public safety, financial stewardship, and streets and public utilities

Revenue Operating Principles
1. Move toward recovering the full cost of any fee-based service except where the Council and the community see a clear public interest in full or partial subsidy
2. Without lowering standards of quality, streamline regulations and processes that impede business investment and economic prosperity
3. Assure sufficient resources to actively pursue Federal and State funding opportunities
4. Programs, and initiatives that produce income rapidly, or save future expenses rapidly should generally be given higher priority than those that simply consume revenue

Expense Operating Principles
1. Reorganize to cut costs and improve effectiveness in order to submit a structurally balanced budget
2. Use the green strategies whenever we can demonstrate a short-term net reduction in operating costs
3. Emphasize pro-active prevention over reactive responses to reduce costs
4. Make strategic use of volunteers, partnerships and collaborations, including with other public agencies, to meet community needs and/or provide services.
5. Do not use “one-time money” for ongoing operations.

Stay tuned, and I hope to hear from you in March and April.

Keeping The Vision Alive

If you look closely at the agenda for tonight's City Council meeting, you'll notice a ceremonial item recognizing that February is Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month.

Retinitis Pigmentosa is an umbrella term for a group of genetic eye conditions that cause the gradual deterioriation of the retina in some people -- impairing the vision of all who have RP and causing complete blindness in some. Representatives of the Foundation Fighting Blindness will be present at tonight's meeting.

There are lots of good causes out there to highlight, and many of us up on the dais do our best to call attention to them and encourage people to help out. So why, tonight, have I placed Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month on the agenda?

Because a few months ago I was diagnosed with having Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Those of you who know me well have surely noticed a deterioration in my vision in recent years. I don't always see you because I have blind spots. (Most embarrassingly, I now have a blind spot right where people stick out their hand for me to shake it!) I often bump into people or trip over things that you can see but I can't. In the council chambers, I frequently look at the TV monitor to watch our public commenters, rather than look straight at them, because I can see them better on TV. (The lighting in the City Council chambers is pretty bad -- and in the Community Meeting Room it's even worse!)

RP runs in my family, so I always knew I was at risk for it. But I didn't really notice symptoms of it until I was in my 40s -- about 12 or 13 years ago. At that time I was tested at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, where the experts acknowledged that I had the symptoms but did not diagnose the condition. About a year ago, I began to notice significant deterioriation, especially in my right eye. So last fall I went back, and this time I was diagnosed.

You can take a few steps to arrest the progress of RP (this is why I usually wear the outsized "solar shield" sunglasses). But it is impossible to predict how rapidly the condition will progress or how much sight I will eventually lose. I can only hope that because I was diagnosed fairly late in life (in contrast to many men in my family), I will retain at least some vision for the rest of my life.

Even though the diagnosis was no surprise, I have to admit that it is taking me a while to get my head around what all this means. The mental and emotional adjustment is huge. It is not easy to wake up on the morning and say to yourself, "I am a person with a disability" -- much less understand the consequences. Yesterday I was on the treadmill at the gym (and, of course, the recent Ray Charles biopic was on the TV) and it dawned on me that sooner or later -- maybe even now -- I will have to stop running on the promenade because I won't be able see all the things I need to see. Meaning, I will have to surrender one of the greatest pleasures of my life.

I have already changed my lifestyle some -- for example, I live along Main Street in Midtown and work Downtown partly because it is a very easy bus commute, and I am trying to cut down on driving generally. But it is clear I will have to adapt a great deal more in the future. A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with my friend Michael Levine, a local disability rights activist who suffers from retinoschisis, a different retinal degeneration condition. Mike's persistence in advocating for disability rights can sometimes make life difficult for us in public life (as our City Manager Rick Cole noted in his blog a while ago in writing about the Americans for Disabilities Act and our efforts to implement it here in Ventura). But I appreciate his vigilance (some of my visually impaired relatives are also disability rights activists, like Mike) and his caring and concern for me has been very meaningful to me.

Mike and I met for lunch at Danny's, and we talked a lot about things, like giving up driving and using a white cane -- things I will probably have to confront sooner or later. Then we went for a walk around the neighborhood and over to the Ventura Transit Center. The thing that really strikes you when you are losing your vision is how important the small things are -- sounds that signal something ahead, textures on the ground that serve as warning signs. It's funny -- I've spent a lifetime as an urban planner, devoting my life to creating what we call "the built environment," and there are so many things about the built environment that I never noticed before or I am just beginning to learn about.

I can't tell you whether I'll become an aggressive and vigilant disability rights activist, like Mike or my relatives. I can tell you that I am already more aware, every minute of every day, of how difficult it is to navigate the world if you are a person with a disability; and that awareness will inevitably creep into my thinking as an urban planner and as one of your elected representatives.

One thing that has really struck me in recent weeks is that we are all physically fragile, and as we live longer, most of us face the prospect of some sort of disability -- impaired vision, impaired hearing, impaired mobility. In other words, I can view myself as a person with a disability and you as a person without a disability, or I can view myself as a person with a disability now and you as a person without a disability yet. It seems to me that if I view the world that way, then I can actually be a better City Councilmember -- not necessarily advocating for the rights of those with disabilities in a world sometimes hostile to that cause, but as kind of an advance scout for my constituents, trying to understand what they will need in the future and how to plan for it. Which, come to think of it, is why I went into the field of urban planning in the first place.

Opening Day

Yesterday I had the privilege of throwing out the first ball in the Tri-Valley Girls Softball League opening day ceremonies at Ventura College. Seeing hundreds of girls ages 5 to 14 -- dressed in uniform, lined up together, proudly displaying their team sign -- was a valuable reminder of how vibrant and wonderful our community life here in Ventura is. I have always loved watching kids play on the playing fields of Ventura -- whether at the college, at Cabrillo Middle School, or wherever -- with the beautiful backdrop of the hills behind them.

It also brought back memories for me from the day, almost fifteen years ago, when my daughter (who's now away at college) was a T-ball player in the Tri-Valley League. Then, as now, I was moved by the energy and excitement of the girls. And for my daughter, that Tri-Valley opening back in 1996 was kind of a political eye-opener. She watched then-Mayor Jack Tingstrom, attired in a Bill Cosby-style sweater, throw out the first ball, and she said to me: "Dad, who the heck is that guy, and why is he here?"

And, as it turned out, this year's Tri-Valley opening was fraught with politics as well -- at least, the politics of budget cuts. As City Manager Rick Cole reported in his blog this week, budget shortfalls at Ventura College forced the college to ask Tri-Valley for a big rent increase for using the fields this year. But thanks to the intervention of College President Robin Calote and Athletics Dean Tim Harrison (as well as Rick and our city's recreation supervisor, Judy Devine), Tri-Valley got a one-year extension on the old lease. So now they're playing ball.

And, by the way, I threw a strike -- to everyone's surprise, especially mine.

Photos of Parking Pay Stations

Some folks were wondering what these will look like. Here are a couple of images of the pay stations the city will be installing: