I CAN'T HELP BUT WONDER exactly what we gained after that municipal election we just had. For my part it was just a sore throat from too much time on the phone reminding folks to vote. With county turnout at just 27 percent, I am underwhelmed by the sense of civic responsibility.

Yes, after all that money spent by 15 candidates and three measures and their matching opposition groups, we got squat.

For those calling for change on the City Council, you gained a likable former police chief and lost a business and financial expert. I don't expect the votes while on the Council to be very different between the two men.

For Wright Library supporters, you lost a chance to keep your facility open through the revenue Measure A would've brought. And our city's innovative Medic Engine 10 and Downtown foot patrols could go away as well. But the no voters will get to keep their roughly 18 cents a day.

For Measure B supporters, your activism forced the city's hand to form its own View Protection Task Force, which likely helped kill your measure but saved the city from probable legal action if B had passed.

To our Measure C folks: the city's own General Plan guidelines for that area as implemented through our new Victoria Corridor code will prevent Wal-Mart from super-sizing its planned smaller store in the former K-Mart site. But I still won't shop there.

And to my friends on the school board: you worked hard and deserved to retain your seats.

IT'S BEEN MY OBSERVATION that most citizens aren't too dialed into municipal matters and generally dislike ballot initiatives. This election reflected that. The sheer number of candidates and measures required more study than most folks had patience for. When this happens, newspaper endorsements do matter.

Ventura's campaign finance laws keep special interests from controlling elections, unlike our neighbors to the north in Santa Barbara where one well-heeled Texas millionaire threw more than half a million dollars into the pot.

So in this environment it becomes more about established networks and word-of-mouth rather than glossy mailers. Look for a push to change the city's charter regarding Council elections very soon.

And take down those signs.

WHEN I WAS A KID growing up in the Midwest, one of our summertime ordeals was the annual very long car trip through the plains states. In South Dakota, the dreary landscape was broken up only by large signs nearly every mile advertising the merits of tourist trap Wall Drug.

Indeed, in South Dakota, Wall Drug signs are as ubiquitous as cornfields are in Iowa.

To a bored kid who had read all her Nancy Drew books and was tired of listening to her little brother ask "Are we there yet?" this Wall Drug sounded rather intriguing. But my dad always drove right through Wall, S.D. without ever stopping.

One summer, after much begging from me, we finally stopped and I ran out of the car with much anticipation to the disappointing discovery that behind all that advertising, Wall Drug just really didn't have that much to offer.

And so it also goes with the campaign signs in Ventura.

As I predicted back in August, the plethora of 15 City Council candidates, five school board candidates and three measures on the Nov. 3 election has brought with it a perfect storm of visual blight to the City of Ventura. It hasn't escaped my attention that the people and measures with the most signs are seeming a bit desperate these days. Sprouting like toadstools, signs are sticking in every tree well and roadside spot in the city.  With every new one planted, three more pop up next to them.

And although it was certainly not the determining factor, it is not by accident that my vote went to the candidates with the LEAST amount of signs this year.

My fellow Star blogger Brian Dennert has a fun game he plays after every election called "Take down that campaign sign." Readers send in photos of those straggling signs still up many weeks later. We may play that game here, too.

I ASKED MY FRIEND Herb Gooch if those signs really influence voters. Gooch is a multi-titled political guru and professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and one of the brightest guys I know.

"... Their main value is longer term in reinforcing credibility," Gooch said. "The more neighbors see neighbors putting them up, the more a sense of name ID and ground support is generated. In truth they are most important in their absence -- assuming some opposition uses them, and you have little or nothing, your absence makes the other guy look more credible than you.  But if everyone has them, they don't have altogether much affect."

He added: "A final note: signs are relatives of bumper stickers -- they reinforce a sense that the candidate has support and remind people of name and logo (or at least colors), but don't convince people to vote one way or the other unless they are already predisposed to that way. They are less stimulators or determiners than reinforcers."

So... as long as people think they work, I guess we're stuck with this particular political tool. But like politics in general, it isn't pretty.