Tales from four cities

Particularly in these days of deep cutbacks in reporting staffs, what you read in the newspapers doesn't always tell the whole story. Nonetheless, a couple of stories today caught my eye on how the global/national/state/local economic crisis is impacting cities.

In our own Ventura County Star is a story that even Thousand Oaks is feeling the pain. Headlined "T.O. prioritizing budget cuts; council expects $3.2 million deficit," the story details the steps their staff and Council are taking to deal with problems "attributed to the decline of revenue, such as sales tax and fees from building permits, and the ongoing increase in costs."

Of course, an inevitable digital critic weighs in, blasting the Council for "fiscally irresponsible spending." Whatever the city, there are always people who know better than the officials elected by the voters. They pick and choose among the headlines and dredge up every controversial decision and throw in a few of their own pet peeves for good measure. They do not appear to have noticed that across our state new development has gone from boom to bust, car sales have fallen by half, retail stores are shutting their doors and unemployment in California will soon top 10%. In their myopic view, local fiscal problems are blamed on stupid and venal Councilmembers and their staff of free-spending, overpaid bureaucrats.

That argument becomes even less credible when looking at cities in even worse shape because of the housing meltdown. A dire picture is painted in the San Francisco Chronicle of two cities on the verge of following Vallejo to bankruptcy court. While Vallejo's underlying troubles were widely blamed on paying their police and fire the highest salaries in the region without a tax base to support it, the misfortunes of the small towns of Rio Vista and Isleton are attributed to the crashing housing market in this story. Home prices have dropped by nearly half and "nearly every home for sale in Rio Vista is a foreclosure or short sale."

Here in Ventura, we find ourselves squarely in the middle. As an older, full-service city, our fiscal challenges are harsher than affluent Thousand Oaks. We've already instituted a hiring freeze on all but essential staff replacements and took steps that saved $5 million in spending last year. For next year, Ventura faces a gap that is about three times the size of our neighboring community. A large part of that disparity is rooted in our tax structure. Thousand Oaks is part of the County Fire District which provides fire protection directly out of its own source of property tax revenue and the same is true of parks and recreation. Ventura must pay for the full range of city services for an older community from our 16% share of the property tax dollar, plus other fees and taxes.

On the other hand, our economy is stronger and more diversified than small, primarily residential inland communities. The market for existing housing remains healthier and our unemployment rate is lower than the state average since lay-offs have not hit our residents as hard.

Critics can certainly make hay about past spending decisions in this or any other city. There is a reason that people say, "Hindsight is always 20-20." I'm sure that those who rail against Ventura's soured investments in Lehman and Wamu AAA corporate notes have not lost a dime on their 401Ks.

Which is not to say that they don't have a point. In a diverse and complicated city, there are always going to be legitimate disagreements between advocates for spending and saving or between spending on one priority and spending on another. That's why we have a democracy and both elections and newspapers are integral to vigorous debate and decision-making.

But the tsunami of the global financial crisis dwarfs these debates. What's happening in California cities (and counties, school districts and even the the state) is real, urgent and profound. Every city will have to deal with it going forward, regardless of past decisions. As our new President said in his inaugural: "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

Here in Ventura, the County Library Director's recommendation to close Wright Library has sparked public calls for putting a revenue measure ballot on the ballot so that the City can provide funding to keep Wright open. The Council is set to continue public discussion of that topic on Monday. The staff report is on our website here -- click on Agenda Reports for item 7.

Every city in California is now facing these tough choices -- some obviously tougher than others. What's best for Ventura is up to the residents of Ventura. Getting informed is the first step toward picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and finding the right way forward for our community.

Will the lights go out at Wright?

Last night, the City Council heard two and a half hours of pleas to keep HP Wright Library open, starting with a dozen young people who got the chance to speak first so they could be home for bedtime. Seniors, parents, teachers, kids and other library users paid emotional tribute to the value of having that popular branch accessible to their schools and homes. (To hear the session, click here and then click on the January 26th Council meeting, either for video or MP3 audio.)

County Library Director Jackie Griffin began the session by outlining the rationale for her recommendation to close Wright as part of the task of closing a $650,000 gap in next year's County Library budget. With 14 libraries serving six cities and the unincorporated areas of the County, the system has been hit hard by State cutbacks. In the past, the countywide Library Board has been willing to subsidize Ventura's three libraries with additional funds. But as their surplus has evaporated, the County Library director has reluctantly called for consolidating Wright and Foster libraries in our city. It would save $287,000 a year.

Griffin sympathized with the criticism and outrage from Wright Library users. "If I could pick up the Foster building and put it on a site we own at the Wright location, I'd gladly do it," she has explained. But while the Wright Library is more centrally located and easier for patrons to access than Foster, it is also half the size and lacks both a community meeting room and computer lab, two vital advantages that Foster boasts. Most obvious, the 50 year lease on the property where Wright sits runs out in 2015. Also, as Griffin last night reiterated, if she were recommending Foster be closed instead, the room would be full with supporters of that library. Although it doesn't boast the same book check out numbers as Wright, it actually attracts a higher number of library users (particularly for access to library computers.)

While most speakers focused on the value of what would be lost, a number of speakers presented ideas for keeping the Library open. Will Thompson of the Friends of the Library spoke on behalf of that organization in announcing a drive to raise the $287,000 that Griffin estimates could be saved by closing Wright. He also called for the Council to put "some kind of tax measure on the ballot" to give voters a choice of providing City funding to preserve Ventura's libraries and other vital services. His call was echoed by several speakers, but several Councilmembers, expressed concerns that the public response to previous efforts to raise taxes or fees did not bode well.

Many alternative ideas surfaced, from greater public use of the Ventura College Library adjacent to the Wright Library to creating a less expensive "children's branch." But the mood of the citizens was clearly to do whatever was necessary to keep Wright open.

The challenge is, of course, bigger than Wright Library. Yesterday, corporate America announced 62,000 lay-offs on a single day. Brutal choices are being forced on individuals, families, businesses and governments. It is possible to raise emergency funds to keep Wright open, either from private fundraising or "robbing Peter to pay Paul" schemes drawing on strained County Library or City of Ventura resources. But that not only just postpones the day of reckoning, it actually worsens it -- as the State of California demonstrates. Failure to make tough choices doesn't make those choices go away -- it just makes the eventual choices tougher.

Citizens look to the City of Ventura to provide the level of services they are used to and desire -- in this case a library actually run by the County of Ventura that serves our community. The national economic meltdown has punched a $4 million hole in this year's City budget that is estimated to grow to $5-8 million next year. Will Ventura citizens dig into their own pockets to raise $287,000? Councilmember Carl Morehouse did that last night, writing a $600 check, his monthly gross pay as a councilmember. Councilmembers Summers and Brennan agreed to match that. Another 500 people willing to be that generous would keep the lights on at Wright for another year. But as the economy worsens, private fundraising will only go so far.

In March, we will be delivering a plan to Council to slash $5-8 million in costs from the City's budget, redesigning the way we do business to live with 10% less revenue. There will be efficiencies and cost savings, but the magnitude of the gap is such that there will be more overflow crowds at City Hall, unhappy about losing services.

In the meantime, the Council unanimously approved support for the fundraising effort to keep Wright open, to ask the Library Advisory Commission to look at alternative ways to save $287,000 from Library services in our community and to schedule a discussion next week to publicly discuss putting a tax increase on the ballot to fund Wright and other vital services.

Stay tuned. The time of hard choices has arrived.

Is closing Wright Library the right choice?

The Ventura County Star last week picked up the story about "a proposal" to close Wright Library, which ironically is the best utilized of Ventura's three libraries.

Where did the story come from? The County Library Director sent an email to her staff outlining her thinking on the upcoming County Library budget. A staff member at Wright Library talked to a volunteer patron. The volunteer talked to someone active in the San Buenaventura Friends of the Library. That Friend of the Library called the newspaper. A reporter then began calling around to find out whether Wright was slated for closing.

Prominently quoted in the story was Ventura City staff and Deputy Mayor Bill Fulton. Casual readers could (and did) draw the conclusion that the idea originated with the City in response to the City's budget challenges.

Wrong.

The County Library system is a partnership of the member cities, funded by property tax collected in those cities and the unincorporated areas of the rest of the County. The system runs on the principle that the library services in each city are funded by the property tax collected in that jurisdiction (and the immediately surrounding unincorporated areas not served by other County library branches.)

Ventura is the only city in the system with three libraries. We have a Downtown library that was rehabiliated some years ago. It's a fine building with a dated collection of materials that gets light usage beyond the free computer terminals. We have the Wright Library on the edge of the Ventura County campus which is in a leased building scheduled to revert to the College in five years. It has the highest circulation and usage. We have the small Ventura Avenue branch that is open just 25 hours a week and serves the families of Ventura's lowest income neighborhood.

The other members of the system have allowed the County Library budget to subsidize this higher level of service by using State library funding. Unfortunately, that source is drying up -- at a time when overall property tax has peaked and is expected to dive like housing prices have done.

So the County Library system will have to make cuts. The Library Director has identified Wright Library as the most logical place to cut. Why?

Here's the case. Wright is going away anyway. It is on the campus of a college that recently built a $40 million "learning center" -- a high tech library geared to its students, but open to the general public. Foster Library Downtown is underutilized. Avenue is a dinky Library and is funded largely by Federal funds earmarked for aiding low-income neighborhoods. So the long term answer could be to build a new "state of the art" library like the new Camarillo facility. Closing Wright saves the other libraries in the system from further shaving hours and makes the most efficient use of the existing staff.

Lousy argument if you live near Wright. Wright is your local library and you don't want to get in your car and drive Downtown. You'd say, close Foster or the Avenue libraries -- or better yet, come up with an answer that leaves the library alone and "finds" the money somewhere else. And of course there are lots of fanciful ideas for doing that (one of my favorite was to cut the City's funding of the San Buenaventura Mission, which would be hard because, of course, there isn't any.)

There are some ideas being explored to mitigate a potential loss of Wright Library, such as a childrens/family branch at the Pacific View Mall and/or an expanded collection geared to serving residents at the College's "learning center" which is just a stone's throw away.

So who decides? That's a little murky. Technically, the decision rests with the County Library Commission (which can only be overruled by a 4/5ths vote of the County Board of Supervisors.) But as a key member of the County Library system, we certainly have a voice. That's why we've asked the Library Director to present her budget proposal to the City Council on January 26th.

There will be much discussion of this, starting with a 10 AM meeting of the Friends of the Library on Thursday at the Wright Library.

A really new year

So debate and apprehension center around whether we are midway through a sharp recession or whether we are in the early stage of something worse. Hope focuses on the new administration and the plans taking shape for a "stimulus" package. Although the size seems to be emerging (the magic number seems to be three quarters of a trillion dollars), the scramble is on to find projects and programs to spend the money on that make more sense than the checks the Federal government sent out to taxpayers last year. That short-lived "stimulus" only seemed to postpone the onset of the real crisis.

Yet if we look past the focus on "right now" and take the long view, the key question is not whether we are in the midst of a recession or a depression. The key question is: are we going to spend to revive our current economy or invest to retool for a new one?

We are a rich country that prefers to live as a very rich country. Like many individuals and households, we've been able as a nation to live beyond our means by borrowing.

This is not sustainable.

Almost everyone agrees on this. But that doesn't keep us from hoping (and even expecting) that others will make the painful changes, so we won't have to.

We see it here in Ventura. We in local government would like to go on providing the services that residents expect, despite the economic downturn. Many residents agree. But there is a big debate looming about how. There are vocal advocates for cutting salaries or eliminating programs that they don't like in order to preserve the services that they do. Others wouldn't mind paying a little more to ensure safe streets, green parks and a healthy community, as long as city government tightens its belt too.

That's a welcome debate -- when it is conducted in a reasonable and knowledgeable way. But that's not always the tone -- given the harsh economy, many times overheated rhetoric obscures the clear choices we will need to make.

Recognizing that what we are seeing is a major long-term adjustment, our City Council starts tomorrow on the "redesign" of Ventura government for the new realities we face. Like any crisis, the current one poses both dangers and opportunities. It would be dangerous to abandon our commitments to successful efforts: in the past few years, the Council's spending priorities have made Ventura safer, more environmentally responsible and maintained quality of life services from parks to arts and culture. Downtown is more successful, development projects are held to higher standards and Ventura has held its own in the competition for jobs and sales tax revenue in the County.

But we also have an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the range of services we offer and how we provide them. By focusing on what matters most, by being open to change and being rigorously accountable to results, we can significantly reduce costs. This is not magic, nor will it be easy. Change never is. But with understanding and support from the community, we can redesign city government for the new era.

The magnitude of the changes needed involve painful choices. It is precisely the avoidance of painful choices that has caused our State government to be frozen in an insoluable crisis. Our problem is not as gaping, nor as urgent as California's. But if we don't take action, we will inevitably end up in the same place down the road.

That won't happen. The Ventura City Council will lead, recognizing that the most important decisions rest with the community. Having taken action to repeal the 911 Fee and facing steep losses in sales tax and building permit revenue, the Council will set clear priorities for what we can afford. In the end, the community will need to decide if that is what they want.

In the end, rhetoric aside, the choices will boil down to this: Ventura city government must live within our means. We accept the mandate to reduce costs and to eliminate or trim less important and effective programs. That gets us part way toward closing the gap that has opened up between our current spending and our anticipated income. But, in turn, the community will need to accept deep cuts in popular and effective services. If the community doesn't want to see those services dropped or slashed , then the community will need to support them with higher taxes, just as Oxnard and Pt. Hueneme recently did.

Again, similar choices face our State. The opposing forces of preserving spending and rejecting higher taxes have gridlocked California government to the brink of bouncing checks. We can't afford that kind of irresponsibility at the local level. That's why the Council is moving forward now to clearly identify the choices that must be made this year.

The Council's special budget priority setting session takes place tomorrow, Saturday, January 3rd at 9 AM at the Police and Fire Headquarters, 1425 Dowell Drive.