My husband, Mike Gibson, will be throwing his hat in the ring for another run at Ventura City Council this November. Our whole family and many in the community we've spoken with are absolutely thrilled that Mike is going to run again and we will be supporting him 1000%. We are all looking forward to an exciting, tough, and engaging race. One that is going to rely heavily on input from the community at large and will be a an opportunity to lend voice to a community that is growing more dissatisfied and disillusioned by the day with our current City Council who have made some horrendous decisions over the past couple of years, some of which have made our collective heads spin:

The 911 fee fiasco; losing $10 million in bad investments of taxpayer dollars; raising utility rates on seniors and the poor by 14%, with no regard for the consequences of this action on these poor folks and their personal finances during an economic recession; enhanced retirement benefits for city firefighters while the rest of the folks in the community are barely hanging onto their jobs; doing their best to discourage Walmart from coming to town, which would have brought in an extra $1 million a year in new tax revenue; scaring off potential businesses and retailers by the ill-conceived, anti-economic growth Victora Corridor Plan (which they are scheduled to approve on Feb 23rd); wasting untold taxpayer dollars on unneeded consultants, like the $110,000 they approved for "technical assistance" the view task force (a task force that wasn't needed in the first place).

This is just a partial list of the bungling efforts and gross mismanagement that has been carried out by these so-called City leaders the past few years.

As a family, we will be committing all the personnel, consulting, and financial resources necessary this time to ensure that Mike does a great job in this race. He was a bit disappointed at his showing last time, but has vowed to make a much stronger go of it this time, including much more precinct-walking, getting out to all the events to meet people in the community first-hand, producing and direct-mailing many, many more flyers to get his message out to the community, and airing several radio ads to reach every area of the community possible.

Mike's nephew (an IT whiz at Chapman College) is already developing an interactive web site, modeled after the one Barack Obama used so effectively in his election to solicit donations and volunteers.

As I said before, no expenses will be spared as we are prepared to put up a significant amount of our own personal resources towards this effort. It is that important to Mike and, as he put himself, extremely important to the future of this community that he loves and cares about so nuch. We have already spoken to quite a few friends in the business community who have committed to making donations to his campaign and will be looking towards many of our colleagues in the Ventura County Republican Central Committee for financial contributions and other support. We have estimated that this effort will take at least $50,000 to do right.

Let me tell you, that he was not very excited about the prospects of running another campaign until recently. We had a heart-to-heart, serious family meeting at the end of last week, based on the issues that have been festering in this community over the last two years, based on the continued failed policies of this City Council and the City administration. Myself, and my three grown children looked him straight in the eye and asked him if he could possibly sit by and let this continue unabated without at least trying to initiate some changes in the elected body of our City to get things moving again in the right direction.

He looked and us and shook his head slowly. "You're right. I can't sit it out," he responded. "I've got to try and do something to get our City back on track."

I think he's getting used to the idea already. He's even roped me into being his campaign treasurer already!

Feel free to pass on any thoughts or comments to Mike's e-mail address at: mgibson1856@yahoo.com