“Stand in the place where you live . . .”

R.E.M.

You can’t live in a community perched on the Pacific Ocean without being conscious of the much larger world. And I continually encounter and talk with Venturans just about to go on or just returning from international journeys for business, pleasure, study or service. With smart phones, you can literally hold the world in your hands — the design and manufacture of those devices obviously transcends borders and they are the gateway to the World Wide Web.

Yet Ventura remains our home. We may be connected to the wider world, but 100,000 of us share this beautiful slice of creation.

How often do we think about the balance? I get grumpy emails from my friend R. Ellis Smith castigating those who buy anything coming from China. I get urgent emails from my friend Victoria Loorz imploring me to take action against global warming. But it is my friend Kat Merrick who seems to have spent the most time pondering how we live in the world by living in a unique place.

Portrait of Kat Merrick by local artist Johanna Spinks

Kat is the whirlwind of energy behind Totally Local VC. It’s a business she conceived and is totally dedicated to promoting — a business that allows her to make a living doing what she loves to do, which is persuading her fellow Ventura denizens of the value and pleasure of Ventura music, food, products, commerce and giving.

Because she’s on a mission, even her many friends are sometimes intimidated by her fanatic dedication to being totally local. She has to remind them that she doesn’t sew her own clothes or keep sheep to tend her back yard. Her message is not that we turn our back on the world, only that we are mindful of how we spend our time and our money. Her goal: get each of us to consciously spend 10% more time and money on things close to home.

There is an obvious economic impact to this — hers is a business, after all. Amazingly, in this era of counting by the billions and trillions, the total “gross domestic product” of our community is nearly seven BILLION dollars a year. That’s the sum of all the transactions, the combined total of what Ventura residents and businesses make and spend right here. If we shifted 10% of our current spending from leaving the community to local choices by supporting local businesses, local farms, local charities, local culture and local travel, we’d be pumping another $700 million dollars into our local economy every year.

That’s a lot of jobs. That’s a lot of small businesses lifted out of “recession-red” back into the “black.” That’s a lot of dynamism injected into our economy — without relying on a dime of additional tourism, government stimulus or outside investment.

What makes the notion so powerful is that it is entirely within our power. Instead of buying a Toyota in Santa Clarita, buy it here. Instead of going to a national chain restaurant, go to the local neighborhood place. Instead of buying strawberries at Von’s buy them at a Farmer’s Market. Instead of going to a concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl, spend a night at Zoey’s.

None of these choices is “pure.” The Toyota bought here wasn’t made here (although the $300 in sales tax goes to your local police, fire and park services instead of Santa Clarita.) The national chain may have a local franchise owner, while the neighborhood place might be buying its produce shipped from far away. Depending on the season, the strawberries at Von’s might be from Oxnard, just like some of the strawberries at the Farmer’s Market. You might buy gas locally for that trip to the Santa Barbara Bowl, while you don’t need much gas to get to Zoey’s.

Merrick is not about “purism.” She’s about celebrating and exploring great choices that often are right under our noses.

You can find “Totally Local VC” on . . . you guessed it . . . the World Wide Web . . . at www.totallylocalvc.com and she’s, of course, on Facebook. International social media pose another of the fascinating trade-offs in this “glocal” (global and local) world we live in.

The quote from R.E.M. is one of Kat’s favorites. It fits here. A band from Athens, Georgia who reminds us to “stand in the place where you live . . . think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before.”

It’s a big world out there. All the more reason to think carefully about the choices we make right here, right now.

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Under our City Charter, the job of preparing a balanced budget rests with the City Manager.  On Wednesday, I submitted my proposed budget to the City Council.  The focus of the two-year spending plan is “A Safe and Clean Ventura.”

That’s one of the four goals set by our Council in January:

• Prioritize Public Safety and Core Services
• Promote Prosperity/Economic Development
• Maintain a Safe and Clean Ventura
• Restore Public Confidence

Our city can take pride in the innovations and long-range planning we have pursued since the adoption of the 2005 General Plan. Tough economic times, however, necessitate a rigorous emphasis on maintaining the vital services that are essential to our quality of life and standard of living.

In line with the Council’s Public Safety priority, the City sought and won a Federal SAFER grant to re-open Station Four last year, significantly improving emergency response times. The grant and local matching funding ensures this staffing through the next two fiscal years.

The most pressing threat to a Safe and Clean Ventura has been the rise in crime and fear of crime in our community. During better times, the City Council expanded sworn staffing in our Police Department to 134 officers. Over the past three years, however, we have been relying on just 122, with five of those performing contract functions not paid for by the General Fund. The results are disturbing. In 2011, our city had a 24% increase in violent crime led by a nearly 60% increase in violent gang crime. There has also been an increase in criminal and anti-social behavior in some of the most visible public areas of our community. To reverse these trends, the Proposed Budget funds a “Crime Reduction Reinvestment Plan” that over the next two years will add seven additional staff to our Police Department.

Beginning with $1.2 million last year to restore nine firefighter positions, an additional $800,000 next year to reinvest in five sworn police positions and another $400,000 to reinvest in an additional two sworn and one civilian police positions in FY 2013-14, totals $2.4 million in additional resources for public safety. To do this in the face of continuing hard times shows the Council’s commitment to a safe community.

While the magnitude of funding is smaller, we have also targeted making Ventura cleaner. Last year, we made a modest addition to our Code Enforcement staffing. Next year’s Proposed Budget includes new funding for keeping the railroad trestle free from graffiti and managing the higher level of sand maintenance along the Pierpont beach. Keeping a clean Ventura is not just a priority for local government, it is the goal of a growing alliance of volunteers, community councils, the Downtown Ventura Organization and many civic partnerships.

Sustaining these commitments to a Safe and Clean Ventura, however, relies on our success in the Council’s goal of Promoting Prosperity. Last September’s groundbreaking for the new Community Memorial Hospital development has generated substantial new construction jobs and the opportunity for significantly expanded growth of the health care sector in the future. Downtown continues its strong performance, with several new businesses opening or moving in, including significant new office tenants. The Auto Center will gain another major brand in coming months and adjacent property owners have agreed to a funding formula for construction of a levee and extension of Olivas Park Drive to allow a major destination retail expansion. The Ventura Ventures Technology Center continues to be the leading edge of our city’s growing high tech entrepreneurship. “Buy Local” marketing efforts have highlighted the benefits of supporting local business, along with special events like Music and Restaurant Weeks. Hotel occupancies have improved and a new “Ventura County Lodging Association” will augment regional visitor marketing.

The City Council is working with our Prosperity Council partners on a 2012-17 Economic Development Strategy. It will emphasize retaining and growing our current businesses; developing new economic opportunities in growing sectors like healthcare and high tech; exploiting ways to leverage expansion of our existing agricultural, creative, visitor and other industries; and enhancing our local competitive edge via workforce training, greener business practices and creative marketing. By building on our existing assets, Ventura will be a leader in the renewal of our local and regional economy.

Progress on keeping Ventura safe and clean, prioritizing public safety and core services and promoting prosperity are all key to the final goal: restoring public confidence.

Partisan division in national politics, political gridlock in our State capital, scandal and insolvency in a high-profile string of California cities has eroded public confidence in government. The hard lessons of the Great Recession have exposed the faulty assumptions and complacent practices of all our society’s institutions, including the public sector. Comfortable expectations about expanding revenues, increasing compensation and unaffordable retirement benefits crashed along with our national economy.

While many city governments sought to “ride out” the downturn, the Ventura City Council recognized immediately the need for fundamental change. The City Council and our City workforce have been leaders in recognizing the need for pension reform and every city employee has accepted ongoing reductions in take-home pay to offset rising pension costs.

As a City government, we are committed to doing business differently. We have focused on “execution” and “piercing clarity” to improve performance and results. We have consolidated and re-organized several key functions to reduce overhead and improve performance. We successfully worked to reduce citywide electricity use, gasoline consumption, vehicle maintenance costs, workers comp payments, document storage fees and other operational expenses. We have revamped permit processes to lower costs and shorten timelines. We have pioneered community partnerships to tackle problems that government cannot solve alone. We have targeted investments in both technology and training to deliver better service to our customers around-the-clock, every day of the year.

In the end, however, most citizens will not evaluate their government by our aggregate performance on the wide range of services we provide. They will judge their city government on the speed of response when they dial 911, the cleanliness of the bathroom when their child or grandchild uses the restroom at their neighborhood park, the condition of the pavement on their street, the experience they have when applying for a home remodel permit — as well as the impression they gather from their friends and neighbors about all those “moments of truth” that people directly experience or gather from news and social media.

Restoring public confidence starts with “piercing clarity” about the foundation of what citizens expect from their government, which is a safe and clean community. Government can’t deliver that alone. But in partnership with our citizens, that represents our first order of business.

We can do great things. First and foremost, however, we have to do the vital things. Providing a safe and clean community is the foundation on which great things can ultimately be built.

We have shown remarkable resilience in the face of the Great Recession. Drawing on the lessons we have learned and the resolve to continue our progress, I submit the Proposed FY 2012-13/FY 2013-14 Budget for a Safe and Clean Ventura. Recognizing that “to govern is to choose,” the plan represents balanced choices — based on the City Council’s key goals and continuing to ‘live within our means.’

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For the past three days, the California Coastal Commission has been meeting here in Ventura — in the City Council Chambers at City Hall.  The powerful State Commission has twelve appointed public members and was put in place by California voters to protect 1200 miles of valuable, fragile and unique coastline.

Government up close, as Count Bismarck is supposed to have said, is like a sausage factory because “the making of laws like the making of sausages, is not a pretty sight.”  In today’s televised environment, we get to see governmental decisions made up close — and it can remind you of making the messy business of making sausage.

Ventura was not just the host community for the Coastal Commission hearings this week.   We also provided them a tour of three significant projects on our local stretch of projects.  We showcased the Surfer’s Point “managed retreat” project that has won statewide praise as a model for dealing with rising sea levels.  The Commissioners also got a personal glimpse of two projects where the Commission has taken a very active role in asserting their jurisdiction.  The Commissioners got a first-hand view of the sand removal effort that is finally moving forward after years of stalemate.

The SRP project was designed as the centerpiece of the Ventura Harbor with apartments, shops, a boating center and a public plaza and two parks

The other project was the Sondermann-Ring project designed for 22 acres of land owned by the Ventura Port District.  It was twelve years ago that the Sondermann-Ring Partnership (SRP) was selected to develop residential apartments, ground floor shops and a boating center and slips, along with a public park.  SRP consulted with the commercial and residential neighbors, endured a major redesign at the behest of City staff and finally submitted a project unanimously approved by the City Council to the Coast Commission in 2007.

Two years later, after protracted discussions with Coastal Commission staff, the project was withdrawn and redesigned yet again to address Coastal Commission concerns.  It was resubmitted the following year (2010.)  After yet more discussions and negotiations, the project was finally presented to the Commission with a 104 page report recommending denial of the project submitted back in 2010 — and approval of an alternative proposal developed by the Coastal Commission staff, the City of Ventura and SRP over the past two years.

The public plaza will be a magnet for residents and visitors alike

That final design is a model for sensitive “mixed use” development in a harbor setting.  It combines a landmark waterside public plaza surrounded by compatible businesses with a wide range of amenities that will transform a long-vacant peninsula into the architectural centerpiece of the entire Harbor.

So yesterday, a “who’s who” of business, civic and Harbor-area leaders assembled to support that proposal before the Coastal Commission.  And then the sausage-making began (reported here in the Ventura County Star.)

Ventura Councilmember Brian Brennan, recently appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to fill the Central Coast elected official slot on the Commission, made a motion to move forward with the package.  But Chair Mary Schellenberger and Commissioner Esther Sanchez, expressed strong criticism, reflecting a continuing clash of philosophies on what mix of uses should be “allowed” along our coast.  Despite all the previous work on the SRP proposal, Chair Shallenberger charged it would “set a bad precedent” without three major changes, including widening the perimeter public “promenade” to a minimum of 50 feet.

On a 6-5 vote, the Commission overruled its staff to insist that the Promenade be at least 50 feet wide along its entire length

Considering a typical sidewalk is five feet wide, the Commission staff had compromised to a minimum of 28 feet wide.   The promenade, as designed, averages nearly sixty feet wide along its whole length (wider still on the stretches where it adjoins a public street.)  But there are a handful of areas where it narrows down to 28 feet to accommodate the carefully-planned mix of uses and amenities.

Commissioner Steve Kinsey eloquently praised the overall project design and made the first of several procedural motions needed for approval of the project.  But in a nod to the concerns of the Chair, he also moved to make the promenade a minimum of fifty feet.  Despite warnings about “designing from the dais” from Commissioner Brennan, the Commission narrowly (6-5) voted to include that stipulation.  The main motion then carried 9-2 with Commissioners Schellenberger and Sanchez dissenting.

From the standpoint of the Coastal Commission in the midst of three days of public hearings, their decision was a balanced and fair one, reflecting their zeal to ensure public access and amenities on our precious coastline.  From the standpoint of the City of Ventura and the developer who must now yet again redesign his project to meet the last minute change, it was a frustrating outcome.  The great news is that the project can finally move forward after 5 years of efforts to meet the Coastal Commission’s concerns.  But because of the limitations of a public hearing before 11 decision makers with a crowded agenda, there will be unintended consequences of significant additional costs and delays that won’t actually produce a better outcome for the public.

Of course, the irony is not lost on City officials that the shoe is often on the other foot — that our processes can seem just as arbitrary or unbalanced to participants.  Government public hearings have the job of producing sausage and sometimes it isn’t pretty.  One hopes at least two things: that the SRP project will eventually get built and provide the promised benefits — and that everyone in public service will work that much harder to reconcile diverse views and complex issues with common sense, fairness and attention to the full range of consequences of our work and our decisions.

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Out here on the fringe of the vast sprawl called “Southern California,” we sometimes regard Downtown Los Angeles as almost a foreign land.  If you want to get there during morning rush hour traffic, I’d advise taking a Metrolink train or leaving yesterday.  But I braved the freeways after dropping off my girls at school and made the journey from Ventura to the Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles in about an hour and twenty minutes, just what my iPhone Google maps query told me.

I was among several hundred local City officials and leaders from business, labor, public health and the environmental movement attending what one day may be ranked as an “historic” gathering of the Southern California Association of Governments.  As the front page story in today’s Ventura County Star described the significance:   “The government group that oversees transportation for Southern California voted Wednesday to approve a $524 billion agreement that aims to make train tracks, bike lanes and clear skies as much a part of the region’s image as boulevards and freeways. The unanimous vote from the Southern California Association (SCAG) for the 25-year Regional Transportation Plan provided a moment of consensus and celebration for the government officials and advocates who worked on it for four years.”

Of course, plans have been made before and they don’t always come to pass.  So what’s different about this one?

SCAG's landmark Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy

First of all, it’s the first to be completed under new State legislation that weaves together transportation, housing and environmental concerns.  While the new plan has no direct authority over local land use decisions, it seeks to guide our region toward a more prosperous and sustainable path.  Second, though the plan is an ambitious one, it is strongly focused on practical implementation, emphasizing “public-private partnerships” to spur investment in promoting regional mobility.  Finally, it reflects a much more collaborative spirit that’s taken hold among cities big and little across our diverse region.  We have wide divergences of opinion, but the unanimous vote on the plan shows that elected officials are willing to bridge those differences for the common good — a spirit notably lacking in Sacramento and Washington these days.  The SCAG President this year has been Pam O’Connor, a lifetime planning professional from the reliably liberal City of Santa Monica.  Her successor will be Glenn Becerra, a proud private sector advocate from the decidedly conservative Ventura County City of Simi Valley.  That the two of them could stand shoulder to shoulder behind SCAG’s new plan is a heartening show of commitment toward actually implementing it. (When Becerra takes over, our own local representative, Councilmember Carl Morehouse, moves up to Second Vice-President, in line to head SCAG in two years.)

SCAG Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata

For a group that covers six counties and 191 cities housing 17 million people, hammering out a unanimous “blueprint” to guide future transportation policy is a remarkable achievement.  And while the elected leaders have done an admirable job of collaborating, there would be no celebration today without the transformative leadership of SCAG’s Executive Director, Hasan Ikhrata.  His predecessor, Mark Pisano, headed the agency for 31 years.  A visionary thinker Pisano was not much of an administrator — and his greatest achievement was keeping SCAG intact over three decades of explosive growth that largely swamped any coherent regional planning.  Few expected that promoting Pisano’s assistant director would inaugurate a new and dynamic era for the agency.  But what Ikhrata lacks in charisma, he has more than compensated with incredible energy and enthusiasm for building consensus around a better future for what our former Mayor, Bill Fulton, labelled “The Reluctant Metropolis.”  Because while Southern California has the 15th largest economy in the world all by itself, few of us think we live in “Southern California.”  We live in Ventura or Laguna Hills or Compton or Redlands.  Aside from the Lakers, we have few truly shared interests that unite the 17 million of us.  It is much easier to get people riled up about what they don’t like or fear than it is to get us all on the same page.  For Ikhrata to guide SCAG to unanimous acceptance of a ground-breaking new direction for transportation policy is the equivalent of winning an NBA Championship, although it’s doubtful there will be a parade anytime soon.

That’s because we televise and glamorize professional sports, not government teamwork.  We prefer to gripe about why “somebody” doesn’t fill the potholes or ease congestion or make it safe for bikes on our streets.  Appropriate concerns, but none of them will be fixed without smarter policies, hard work and real money.  With yesterday’s significant vote, we are on our way to smarter policies.  Now comes the hard work, including investing real money to improve our shared standard of living and quality of life.

As iconic television anchor Jerry Dunphy used to say at the outset of his nightly broadcasts, “From the desert to the sea, to all of Southern California, a good evening.”  Tonight, after returning from the heart of our vast region, I hope we’ll wake up tomorrow remembering the challenge ahead to make our region work from the desert to the sea and provide better choices and opportunities to all of Southern California.

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Removing sand build-up at the end of Seaward Avenue

The massive effort to remove a decade of sand build-up against shoreline homes in the Pierpont neighborhood is on schedule, despite last week’s rainstorm.  The project is almost half complete, although the second half will be the greater challenge.

An average of 75 truckloads of sand are being removed each work day.  Despite the disruption, neighborhood residents have been complimentary of how the private contractor is handling the job.  (To see timely project updates,  see the Construction Status page on the City’s website here.)  City inspectors and engineering staff are closely monitoring the work, along with a City-hired biologist assigned to protect and relocate native plants and species in the path of the sand removal effort.

There are two goals for the effort: push sand back from spilling over the retaining walls of beachfront homeowners and restore safe public access to the beach at the ends of the narrow lanes that dead-end at the beach.  The sand removal effort is creating a buffer 40 feet wide beyond the homeowner and public street property lines that’s designed to work with nature in the future to minimize ongoing maintenance.

None of this could have been done without the belated collaboration between the City, neighbors (including the Pierpont Community Council), the State Beach authorities and staff for the California Coastal Commission.  The stalemate that led to this overdue and expensive solution was fought out over financial responsibility, environmental stewardship — and frankly mutual frustration and mistrust that built up along with the sand dunes.  Unfortunately, it took a lawsuit by two groups of affected homeowners to break the deadlock.

With Ventura Schools on spring break next week, bulldozers will be moving sand near Pierpont Elementary.  Then they move north again to tackle the biggest and widest dune build-up.  If all continues to go well, they will finish the job before Memorial Day weekend.

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The City Council has unanimously adopted four broad goals for the upcoming two-year budget cycle:

1. Prioritize public safety and other core services
2. Provide a Safe and Clean Ventura
3. Promote Prosperity Through Economic Development
4. Restore Public Confidence

They are interrelated.  It’s a “back to basics” focus that recognizes some fundamental realities about the times we live in.  Profound economic transition means we must restructure the way local government does business.  We live in a time of deep suspicion of both government and business institutions.  To restore confidence in Ventura city government, the Council is concentrating on delivering  consistent and cost-effective core services and promoting local job growth.

That means less emphasis on the divisive development issues that long dominated local politics.  Over the past two decades, headlines and elections focused on hillside protection, Midtown redevelopment, farmland preservation, Walmart, height limits, traffic, affordable housing, Downtown revitalization and infill projects.  Now in a time of shrunken resources, what’s key is to protect our quality of life and improve our standard of living.

Which brings us to the recent unanimous decision by the City Council  to borrow $850,000 from a commercial bank at 4% interest and then lend it  at 8% interest for two years to the Players Casino which recently relocated to a vacant auto dealership in the Ventura Auto mall.

It’s a departure from our usual course of business, evoking some sharp reactions.

One thoughtful citizen wrote: My neighbors and I wonder why the Council is lending money to a private business? Is the City a bank?  If we can not support a decent library system and other municipal services why are we lending money? What surety do they offer if the business fails? If the banks wont lend to them because they are risky, why are we assuming the risk?

Here is Mayor Mike Tracy’s response:

The City is not a bank, but we have previously made loans to local businesses under unique circumstances.  By local ordinance [passed by Ventura voters in 2005], the Player’s Casino pays 15% of their gross gambling revenues to the City.  The Casino expanded a year or so ago in their new location and as a result the City is now receiving over $1 million in annual revenues.  Those revenues are projected to be on-going and likely to improve as the economy improves.   The loan you reference will permit the Casino to expand it’s operations including the build-out of a restaurant and bar, which is expected to generate another $250,000 or so per year in revenues to the city.  One of the benefits to the City in assisting the Casino with this loan is that in a few years the State will reconsider how gambling licenses are issued, and it’s possible that the Players Casino will potentially have some competition from other nearby cities.  Gamblers tend to be “loyal” to a casino where they have established a pattern of playing, especially if it has all the amenities.  It’s in the City’s interest to keep these people coming to Ventura. 

We will earn 4% on loan to the Casino, which by the way is fully amortized over 2 years.  We have liens on property to partially secure the loan.  The city has significant leverage over the Casino via their gaming license, and in the event of default this asset would have significant value.   Every financial transaction has risk, but the council has determined in this case it’s minimal–and the upside is worth that minimal risk.   

As you know, these are difficult times financially for everyone, including municipalities.   Ventura residents have twice rejected sales tax increases.  They have also rejected increases to our Street Lighting Assessment, which causes us to contribute $500,000 a year in general fund dollars to keep the street lights operational.  We do not have special assessment districts for parks, roadway medians, and libraries as many other communities do.  I’m not complaining–just pointing out that we are in a position that requires us to think outside the box to increase revenues that provide the services people in this community deserve and expect.   

I hope this is responsive to your concerns.  Thanks for your interest. 

(For details on the background and terms of the loan, the report to the City Council is on the City’s website here.)

It is safe to say that the City would not have made a loan to a casino under normal circumstances.  But these are not normal times.  The recession slashed local revenues by more than 15%.  With the recovery still very slow and fragile, the City operates with nearly 100 fewer staff than we did four years ago.

Which makes providing vital services and restoring public confidence that much more difficult.  The choices are seldom black and white.  They come in shades of gray.  Over the past decade, one city in our County aggressively used redevelopment power to assemble a lucrative regional outlet mall.  Another local city frequently subsidized auto dealers and big box retailers.  For more than ten years, our city has been paying back money advanced  for expansion of the Pacific View Mall.  All these uses of local tax money were controversial, but all were successful in bolstering sales tax revenues.

No one thinks that’s the optimum way to pay for vital city services.  Still, absent a fair and stable revenue structure that is consistent across all local governments in California, individual cities struggle to match what citizens want from their government with what they are willing to pay.  One alternative is to “think outside the box” to increase revenues. As Mayor Tracy acknowledged, those decisions involve some risk.  Only one thing is guaranteed: the controversy will be even greater if the Council doesn’t “think outside the box” and falls short in ensuring vital public safety and other core services for our community.

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After thirteen years of stalemate, a massive effort to clear sand away from beachfront homes and public access stairs gets underway this week in the Pierpont neighborhood.  Trucks will be moving an estimated 54,000 tons of sand that have built up over the years, the equivalent of an entire football field stacked two stories high.

It’s a long and frustrating story how we ended up in this expensive fix.  Decades ago, a street ran along the rear of the beach, known as Shore Drive.  Over the years sand covered it over.   Although the beach belongs to the State of California, City crews continued to maintain the “easement” by using bulldozers to push sand back from the homes and ends of the “lanes.” That worked fine until 1999, when the City applied for a routine permit from the California Coastal Commission.

City Public Works officials were told that due to concerns about dune habitat, the Commission would no longer allow use of mechanized equipment to be used.  Rather than fight that decision, the City simply left the problem to the State beach and homeowners.  That proved a fateful mistake.

Within ten years natural forces created huge dunes that were toppling homeowner walls and covering public stairs near the beach.  But the four-way stalemate (City, residents, Coastal Commission, State Beach) only got worse as an effort to find a mutually agreeable solution collapsed in a bitter controversy over a “sand management plan” hatched in consultation with the Coastal Commission.  Many neighbors angrily dismissed the idea that they should have to pay for an expensive environmental mitigation project just to keep sand from overwhelming their homes.  Suddenly the elusive “legless lizard” and other obscure rare species were the subject of noisy wrangling between residents, environmentalists and public officials.

Meanwhile the sand got higher.  Fed up, a number of homeowners filed suit against the City to force action.  Although an expensive remedy, it turned out to be the key to finding a solution.  Because it turns out that when voters established the California Coastal Commission, the initiative protected the   “the power of any city or county or city and county to declare, prohibit, and abate nuisances.”

So when a judge found the City responsible for abating the “nuisance” of sands damaging private property and creating unsafe conditions for public access to the beach, the way was finally cleared to start clearing the sand. (For construction updates, go to Public Works’ project info page.)

I had my own opportunity to pitch in last Saturday.  Volunteer Ventura stages clean-up events throughout our community, including periodic efforts to spruce up our parks, given the staffing cutbacks due to the Great Recession.  On Saturday morning, volunteers flocked to Marina Park in the Pierpont neighborhood to repaint trash barrels, pick up trash amongst the iceplant and to shovel sand from the pathways around the colorful play structure.

Marina Park play tot lot before

And after.

I joined Terri Huston and her son Billy who’d arrived earlier and grabbed shovel and broom to clear the playground pathway. We teamed up and worked for two solid hours, but were running out of steam as we neared the end, particularly as we dug into wet sand, which is considerably heavier.  We’d gotten lots of nice compliments from park visitors, but then Dominic Gianantonini grabbed a spare shovel and we managed to get the whole job finished.  Dominic was at the playground with his family.  He lives in Bakersfield where he’s an agricultural seed salesman, but has a vacation home in Ventura.  He was happy to help out.

Terri and Billy Huston are frequent volunteers and team up for everything from beach clean-ups to charity walk fundraisers.  Terri, who is retiring soon from a career with Penny’s, says she grew up with a belief in “giving back.”  “I don’t have money, but we do have time,” she says, so she unselfishly devotes generous amounts of it to making Ventura a better community.  She saw the Marina Park clean-up on Facebook.

Billy Huston and his mother Terri Huston

There’s an even bigger clean-up for the South Seaward area coming up on Saturday, March 10.  Volunteers will gather at the parking lot next to Keller Williams Reality and spend the morning from 9 am to noon sprucing up our gateway to the beach.  Refreshments will be served and community service hours are available for students who want to join in.  You can sign up at www.cityofventura.net/volunteer (or just show up if you don’t plan that far ahead.)

All this activity (park improvements, business district clean-ups and long-delayed sand removal) in the Pierpont are all good signs.  Activists with the Pierpont Community Council have not only been vocal in seeking attention for their neighborhood, a number of them have worked hard to clean up litter, encourage property owners to abate eyesores and report abandoned shopping carts.  All this is contributing to new investment and renewed pride in one of our loveliest neighborhoods.

Come down on March 10 and join the fun!

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California Senate Republican leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar announces support for a package of bills similar to Governor Brown's pension reform plan. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press / February 22, 2012)

The State Republican leadership made headlines this week by endorsing the pension reform package of . . . wait for it . . . Governor Jerry Brown. (See the Los Angeles Times story, “In curveball, GOP leaders back Gov. Jerry Brown’s pension overhaul.”)

This astonishing bit of bipartisanship can be interpreted cynically, of course.  Normally, the GOP doesn’t bother to give the time of day to anything proposed by our Democratic Governor (and they would argue the same is true going the other way.)   So are the Republican legislators simply calling the Governor’s bluff — putting the blame squarely on him if he can’t talk the members of his own party into supporting his pension reform plan?

Perhaps.  But I hope better of both the Republicans and the Governor.  I think they realize that junking a public employee retirement system that has worked well for 70 years is neither prudent nor politically feasible, but without meaningful reform, the voters will be tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater sometime in the future.

There is a limited window of time to hammer out pension reform legislation, created by the withdrawal of the threat of an initiative by the conservative watchdog group called “California Pension Reform.”  That advocacy group had actually filed two petitions, one which would have replaced traditional public pensions with 401K-style “defined contribution” retirement accounts and another proposing a hybrid of the two, more closely mirroring Governor Brown’s plan.  They argued that the “title and summary” prepared by Attorney General Kamala Harris was so slanted it would make it difficult for them to raise money and pass either one (As with all initiatives, their fate primarily rests with whether big money is committed by major backers — either special interest groups or wealthy individuals.)  Even though “California Pension Reform” pulled back this time, public perceptions (and the opportunity to exploit them) guarantee the issue will be back (and will also be appearing on local ballots in San Diego and San Jose.)

Most Democrats in the Legislature apparently hope the issue will just go away and are dragging their feet in embracing their Governor’s plan.  That’s short-sighted.  The need for pension reform is not just a political issue.  It’s an economic one.  Unless fixes are made, the cost of replacing investment losses from the Great Recession will erode the ability of State and local government to provide vital services in the years ahead.  The Doomsday scenarios painted by the most strident voices on the right are almost certainly overblown.  Bankruptcy is a remote threat — but painful budget cuts are not.

For the Democrats to move a bill through the Legislature this year, they will almost certainly need some tacit support from labor unions.  The unions representing public employees are understandably defensive about the blame being heaped on their members for an economic crisis they had no responsibility for creating.  Yet, neither did the private sector workers who saw their 401K balances crash.  It’s fair game to debate how to allocate the pain, but no one is exempt from some share.  And the big jumps in California’s state and local pension benefits that followed the passage of SB 400 (passed in 1999 by Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly 70-to-7 and the Senate 39-to-0) were ill-advised and unsustainable.

That’s the thing about “reform.”  Those who benefit from the status quo are usually skeptical about change.  But probably the biggest beneficiaries of pension reform would not be the taxpayers.  It would be the public servants in our state.  We could begin to restore trust in our ethics and professionalism, so badly damaged by a few abusers and abuses.  We could take heart in increased financial stability for the agencies where we work.  Finally, we could help sustain the vital services we’ve dedicated our careers to provide.

It’s called “leading by example.”  As I’ve written before, the City Managers in California drafted a similar set of recommendations that have been endorsed by the League of California Cities.

It’s time for Democrats to join Republicans in passing Governor Brown’s reform package.  It’s not perfect and they are entitled to propose reasonable changes.  But if they fail to move a credible, bipartisan bill through the Legislature this year, they have no one to blame but themselves.

The last time the Legislature failed to anticipate an issue like this was back in 1978.  The Legislature dithered about property tax reform, leaving it to Howard Jarvis to shake California government to its foundations.  The Governor then was also named Jerry Brown.  He’s clearly learned the lesson.  It’s time for the Legislators to profit from his example.

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There are now dozens of “massage” outlets in Ventura and it is an open secret that sexual services are on offer at a number of them.

So, many residents wonder why “someone” (read the City) isn’t doing “something” about it.

Good question.

There is a reason why prostitution is famously called “the oldest profession.”  Different societies and different eras have dealt with this issue in wildly varying ways.  In our era, there is less prudery about sex and more concern about sexism — the systematic victimization of young women by the sex trade.  And in a town like ours, there is strong concern about the impact on neighborhood and community quality of life from having shady operators of “massage” brothels more or less openly operating.

The City Council acted swiftly to the sudden proliferation of questionable businesses beginning three years ago.  The Ventura County Star’s excellent story back in July 2009 goes into detail on the steps taken by a unanimous Council to recast existing regulations to curb prostitution without impinging on legitimate massage therapy or constitutional protections.

So why hasn’t that “solved” the problem?

First, government alone is seldom the answer, particularly for a challenge as intractable as this one.  Obviously there is a steady stream of customers to support the surge of “massage” outlets.  And obviously in this economic climate there are plenty of landlords willing to sign leases with businesses that actually detract from the attractiveness of the surrounding commercial and residential areas.  If veiled prostitution is overlooked as “just business” by large segments of our community, then there are limits to how much headway can be made by local government enforcement.

That said, since 2010 the City Attorney’s office has actively prosecuted cases against 15 violators of the massage ordinance. Of those 15, 12 have plead either guilty or no contest.  They have typically received sentences imposing a $500 fine and informal probation, which imposes a six month ban on working in any capacity in a massage establishment in Ventura. One case was dismissed on a technicality and one defendant has an outstanding warrant for her arrest due to her non-appearance at her arraignment.  One case is currently in the courts.

These 15 offenders were caught in the course of site inspections of massage establishments for which the City had received complaints.

The second challenge to curtailing the sex trade is the draw on public resources.  Actual arrests for solicitation are rare in California because of the huge commitment required to constitutionally establish a case and win convictions, combined with the recognition that the offenders are seldom the ones making the real money.  A revolving jail door for prostitutes has seldom accomplished little beyond nuisance value.  Our Police Department is stretched for officers so “sting” operations for this kind of crime is simply not a priority.  Our code enforcement staff is equally strained, so they operate largely in response to complaints.  Finally our City Attorney’s office, which must conduct the prosecutions of local ordinance violations, is also short-handed.

Unfortunately, while the City’s regulations should go a long way toward discouraging massage emporiums selling sex, they won’t really work without vigorous enforcement and strong public opinion discouraging customers from patronizing them, landlords renting to them and courts letting them off the hook.

In the end, this is not a problem that is likely to be “solved” — and certainly not by a single community.  But if there is sufficient sentiment here in Ventura, it is a problem that can be minimized.  Achieving even that modest goal would have significant pay-offs to neighborhood quality of life, public health — and reducing the exploitation of women in our town.

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