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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

Living Within Our Means, 2010 Style

Last night, we on the City Council got our first glimpse of what the 2010-2011 city budget is likely to look like. It's pretty grim, and for the first time in this long recession we are likely to see some serious cuts in service no matter what we do. But in a certain way, oddly enough, I'm optimistic.

For one thing, we're beginning to see a lot of hard work pay off. While we're likely to wind up with deep cuts in some areas, in other areas we are beginning to do more with less -- successfully. We really are beginning to reinvent our city government to make it more efficient.

For another, I think it's possible that this is as bad as it's going to get. Our revenue may go down a little more, but it's likely that the worst revenue drops are behind us. What does that mean? It means we will have made it through the hard times more or less intact, and we can begin to build for the future again.

Before I talk about the grim part of this year's budget, let me quickly review what's been doing on and where we are:

-- The City's General Fund revenue has dropped from about $95 million to about $81 million in two years. That's a decrease of around 15%. We're likely to see a levelling off at about $81 million in 2010-11.

-- We've already made some pretty severe cuts. Last year, we were the first city in the state -- so far as I know -- that successfully negotiated a pay cut (not a furlough) from our employee unions.

-- We've eliminated 40 jobs (out of about 650) and we're currently holding about 40 more jobs open to save money.

-- We've had an open and public pension reform dialogue for a year now, and two weeks ago the City Council committed itself unanimously to the philosophy of "sustainable pension reform" by pursuing such ideas as a two-tiered pension system and getting employees to increase their own pension contributions.

-- And I'm most proud of the fact that we've had a very public and straight-up discussion about what to do about the budget. From the beginning, we've laid out our budget issues in public, early on, and invited widespread public debate. We're not always rewarded for this (a lot of people seem to think that we're in worse shape than other cities, which isn't true, just because we talk about our budget issues more). But it's a great improvement over the days before I was elected, when our city -- like so many others -- resorted to gimmickry, band-aids, and stop-gap measures to avoid dealing with the real issues.

So, what does the proposed budget look like -- and how is it likely to change between now and June 21, when we're scheduled to adopt it. Here's a summary of critical issues, drawn from the City Manager's budget transmittal letter:

Among the steps to actually reduce service are the following: possibly closing the downtown senior recreation center (more about that later), leaving Fire Station #4 at Telephone and Clinton empty, and reducing the number of sworn police officers but maintaining the same number of beat cops).

Among the steps to reduce cost are a permanent elimination of those 40 vacant jobs and seeking an extension of wage concessions from our unions. (The latter has not been negotiated yet and so is not reflected in the draft budget).

Among the steps being taken to reinvent city government and deliver services more efficiently are moving Building & Safety to the Community Development Department, reorganizing the parks crews (and reducing their size from four to two workers each), and contracting out much more work -- for example, all of the landscaping maintenance and web site management.

In his budget message, the City Manager did lay out one possible big-ticket item to cut: the Aquatics Center at the Community Park, the shutdown of which would save more than a half-million dollars. But he didn't actually propose this cut, suggesting other cuts instead.

Since the budget proposal came out last week, we've heard from a lot of senior citizens who don't want us to close the downtown senior center and also from some folks who are supporters of the Aquatics Center, asking us not to close it. As I stated, the Aquatics Center is not on the chopping block at the moment -- though it could be if the council decides that, for example, staffing Fire Station #4 is more important. And the way we're approaching the senior center is a good example of how we're reinventing government.

The senior center costs $100,000 a year in overhead and is located less than a mile from a second senior center on Ventura Avenue. Worst case scenario is that all the senior programs get moved to the Avenue (none would be cut). But the city's goal is not to shutter the downtown center; it's to save $100,000 in overhead. So the city is negotiating with various private organizations who might lease the building and still make it available for some senior programs.It's also possible that some programs might be moved to the Topping Room at Foster Library, which is lightly used during the day. Oddly, this one could wind up being a win-win -- the senior programs stay downtown, many of them at the senior center, but the city no longer has to foot the overhead bill.

The big unknown -- the big thing that could change -- is the employee union contracts. All of these contracts expire between July and January, so we will be renegotiating all of them soon. If we could obtain wage concessions similar to last year, lower employee compensation would provide us with more than $2 million in savings -- enough to reopen the fire station and restore a whole lot more besides. We don't know yet how the negotiations will turn out, but as I mentioned before the council voted 7-0 just a couple of weeks ago to pursue more employee pension contributions and reform in pension costs.

Which brings me to the last item from Monday night -- the seemingly odd "reaffirmation" of the 2008 contract agreement with our firefighters that increased the pensions of current firefighters. We made this concession in 2008 (as part of a contract negotiation in which the firefighters agreed, among other things, not to take a raise). The firefighters agreed to postpone the pension for a year last year (that saved us more than a half-million dollars). But because they have not agreed to bump it another year, we had to comply with a new state law requiring a public hearing with a state pension actuarial present. (We had to do it last night in order to set the paperwork in motion for a July implementation date.) Our City Attorney had advised us that there was, basically, no legal way to deny the firefighters the pension increase at this point, and all we would do if we voted against it would invite a lawsuit from the firefighters that we would lose.

The actual vote on Monday was something of an anti-climax. Three representatives from the Ventura County Taxpayers Association spoke. But they were low-key, reasonable, and thoughtful in their approach. They suggested we "slow down" rather than reaffirm the pension increase now, apparently on the theory that if we withhold approving the pension increase, the firefighters will be more likely to negotiate with us on other things. I don't disagree with their goal -- get back more from the firefighters than you give -- but I didn't agree with their strategy.

In the end, I couldn't buy the argument that by setting ourselves up for a lawsuit we were sure to lose, we would somehow or other increase our negotiating leverage with the firefighters. Nor did I think that political grandstanding -- voting against something knowing it's going to go through anyway -- was either honest or useful. I voted for it.

But I voted for it recognizing that this vote is part of a much longer, larger, and painful transition in our approach to pension reform. We will go to the negotiating table later this year and bargain hard. In the case of the firefighters, we will bargain hard to get back the value of the increased pension and then some. They may be legally entitled to the higher pension, but we owe it to our constituents to make sure that our employees share the sacrifice required to get us through these difficult times.

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.