IT'S HISTORY. With a unanimous vote tonight, the Ventura City Council took steps to erase the controversial 911 fee from the books. Anybody who wants a refund will be able to get one.

No doubt a very vocal portion of the city, including the editor of the Star, did not like the fee. And there are those, such as an Orange County law firm which specializes in class-action lawsuits, who saw an opportunity for litigation and fat legal fees.

City Attorney Ariel Calonne explained that the legal environment has changed dramatically since the fee and its opt-out were first proposed last January. A ruling last spring opened the door for class-action suits on this issue.

When the opt-out provision was first presented, I knew it would be an administrative nightmare. That has proven to be true. Service providers and city staff have struggled mightily with it. Fifteen percent of the city's telephone lines were opted out. But because of technical delays, Assistant Police Chief Ken Corney said, not one person has yet been charged the $17.88-per-call fee which would have been imposed for those who opted out of the monthly fee.

It's also been a public relations nightmare. Many still don't understand that if you opted out, you would not be charged for calling 911 on behalf of somebody else. Nor did they realize the fee would've been waived for first-time callers.

BUT MY FAMILY DIDN'T opt out and we willingly paid the $1.49-per-month charge on two land lines and three cell phones because we knew the money saved through funding the costs of the city's 911 system in this manner would be used to pay for our badly needed School Resource Officer (SRO) program (which I explained about in an earlier post) and a team of officers for trouble spots in the city.

Since Council member Neal Andrews has taken the unilateral step to end the 911 fee by proposing this policy consideration, I hope he will also be a leader in efforts to maintain a sufficient revenue stream to keep our citizens and our students safe and healthy.

With the possibility of $8 million being trimmed from the general fund by next year, coming on the heels of $7 million in cuts made in the last year, there isn't much left to cut that won't hurt. The public safety budget makes up half of the general fund. Every single attempt at cost recovery for public safety services in the form of fees has met with resistance from some corner.

The Police Department pulled in officers from patrol for the SRO program when school started this fall in the hopes of replacing them when the 911 fee revenues kicked in, Corney said. The school district, which pays for the other half of the SRO program, can't afford to pay for it in its entirety. The schools are looking at devastating mid-year cuts of their own unless the state legislature can get its act together. (And today the state's Republican leaders proposed a $10.6 billion cut in the education budget.)

THE $35,000 THE COUNCIL allocated last summer for Downtown foot patrols on Friday and Saturday nights is nearly gone and won't last until the end of the fiscal year in July. This would've been supplemented with 911 fee revenues, too. Add into this mix the fact that aggravated assaults are up 25 percent in the city, Corney said, and a rash of daytime burglaries have been going on in east Ventura.

Since public safety is such a priority for our city, the budget-cutting teams now being assembled will likely look at other areas. Perhaps we will have to quit heating the pools in the aquatics center in the winter, which will greatly affect our swim teams, or stop cutting the grass under the city's soccer fields on a regular basis. Many items will be looked at.

The Star's editorial writers called for us to think seriously about joining Oxnard and Port Hueneme in putting forth a general-purpose sales tax hike, which would require just a simple majority vote.

It's an idea worth exploring.

Update: Watch Monday night's council meeting. Neal Andrews will be introducing a policy consideration to end the 911 fee. The document can be found here. The item is No. 9 on the agenda. The meeting is packed with interesting items and could run late.

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE the mention of new fees or taxes from Ventura city staff to strike fear in the hearts of our citizens. Two-plus hours of testimony and 47 comment cards later, an exhausted City Council decided to table their own comment Monday night on five different versions of a plan to regulate one- to three-unit rentals, which are now entirely exempt from taxes. The issue will come back again on Jan. 12.

According to a staff report, there are an estimated 6,000 unregulated rental units in Ventura. These rentals make up less than 40 percent of the city's rental housing, but account for nearly 90 percent of the documented substandard housing complaints. City staff would like to be more proactive with these rentals before they become severe problems and affect the safety of tenants.

Multiple plans to finance inspections of these units did not sit well with the large crowd of landlords gathered Monday night who complained that adding a business license tax based on gross receipts plus annual inspection fee of $33 would be a hardship. This was just one of five options presented; two required no additional fees or taxes. The staff report can be found here.

The city already taxes four-or-more-rental-unit businesses and inspects rentals of three or more connected units on a property. One- to two-unit rental properties, such as single family homes and duplexes, are entirely exempt from taxes and inspections.

THIS PLAN TO RECOVER COSTS for city safety services directly from those involved went over about as well as the $99 weed abatement fee plan did in April and the 911 fee did in February. City staff backed off on the weed fee and now is considering ending the 911 fee, too.

So how DO you keep citizens safe in these challenging budget times? Perhaps 20-30 city positions will be lost in the upcoming budget process and cutbacks may include up to $8 million dollars following a round of cutbacks last year totaling more than $7 million.

A few weeks ago the chambers were pretty much empty as the City Council was briefed on these cuts. I figure it was only me, the Star's Ventura reporter and a council gadfly or two who were really listening to City Manager Rick Cole's predictions of the upcoming gloom and doom.

It seems many of our citizens only get activated when they think government services may end up costing them more. News of cuts doesn't draw much of a crowd, unless of course that government service is something that directly affects someone. And then they want it taken care of pronto.