Making Waves

I RECEIVED WORD TODAY that with the failure of Measure A on Tuesday, the San Buenaventura Friends of the Library have given up their valiant but unsustainable private fundraising efforts to keep Wright Library afloat.

"We can no longer keep the staff at Wright on tenterhooks wondering if this month will be the last," said Berta Steele of San Buenaventura Friends of the Library. "The Save Wright Library Campaign raised over $100,000 and was able to forestall the closing of Wright until the end of this month. However, the electorate has spoken and the library will close."

The Wright, which is operated by the Ventura County Library System, was targeted for closure by the county in an effort to consolidate and save money it doesn't have any more. A smaller facility than the E.P. Foster Library Downtown, it's unable to house the collections of both libraries and does not have a meeting room or computer center. The much smaller Avenue Library receives money from federal sources.

In flusher times, the City of Ventura has been able to step in to rescue library services. But after trimming $11 million out of the current two-year budget and asking employees to take salary and benefit cuts, the money is not there.

There was some question as to whether the hours at both libraries could be cut back even more to save both, but that is apparently not an option any more. The Wright is the most popular library in the city, with a circulation of 210,556.

Part of the revenues from Measure A were earmarked for the library and the Friends were pinning their hopes on the ballot measure's passage to save it.

The group put up a commendable fight to save their beloved library and I really feel for the patrons, both young and old, who consider it a home away from home. It will be missed.

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 turnout at just 24 percent, I am underwhelmed by the sense of civic responsibility in this town.

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.

THERE ARE CERTAIN PEOPLE who come into your life that you realize just fit. I met Mary Haffner back in 2000 when our children's school had been covered in a toxic cloud from a pesticide drift from a neighboring orchard, an incident which I've written about a few times here. My daughter and other children became ill.

Enraged, I alerted every media outlet I could find. The story ended up on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

Enraged, Mary organized parents, held meetings and helped spearhead legislation later carried by then-Assemblymember Hannah-Beth Jackson to stop this from happening again.

Used to operating independently on various activist endeavors, we discovered each other one day with a mutual exclamation of "OK, you were the one who did that. I was wondering."

Three years later Mary called me to co-chair a group she wanted to start to raise money for the Ventura Unified School District. Save Our Schools raised thousands of dollars, sponsored many education rallies and helped bring our highly successful School Resource Officer program back to our campuses.

In 2005 my friend told me she wanted to run for school board here in Ventura and I enthusiastically agreed she would do a fine job. In the past four years she has already been elevated to the position of president. I am proud of her accomplishments and I heartily support her re-election.

The only school board member with children in the district, Mary is a devoted mother of three who manages to do it all and do it all well. An attorney, Mary has also been a strong voice for sustainability and environmental stewardship. As a board member, Mary helped to draft Ventura Unified's Green Schools Resolution -- a statement of Ventura Unified's commitment to sustainability and the promotion of policies and actions that help our district tread more lightly on the earth.

In alignment with this philosophy, Mary serves as the board representative on the Ventura Unified Green Schools Committee and is the Chair of the Ventura County Regional Energy Alliance.

In these tough budget times for our schools, she has shown exemplary leadership. And Ventura schools have weathered this storm better fiscally than most surrounding districts. Our API scores have increased every year since 2002.

But on a more personal note, she has been a wonderful friend. Like any two strong, independent women, we've had our little spats, but we always find our way back to each other because in this life you always need somebody who really understands you.

On Nov. 3, cast your vote for Mary Haffner and by doing so you will also be helping the children of Ventura.

For an interview with Mary on CAPS-TV, go here.

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.

IT'S NOT OFTEN you get to spend an afternoon with somebody your children read about in history books, but on Saturday afternoon I got lucky and ended up shooting the breeze with a true American folk hero, Lilly Ledbetter, the inspiration for the first piece of legislation President Barack Obama signed: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Ledbetter was the keynote speaker at the excellent Ventura County Women's Forum held at Cal Lutheran University, of which the National Women's Political Caucus was a sponsor.

Celebrities don't impress me. It's the plain folks who are out getting it done who I find ultimately more fascinating, and in this regard Ledbetter is without peer. With her Southern drawl and quick wit, she's a colorful and articulate voice for pay equity issues.

"You're really something. I hope you never go up against me," Sen. Ted Kennedy once told her.

For 19 years, Ledbetter, now 71, worked grueling 12-hour days and even endured sexual harassment at her job as a supervisor at Goodyear Tire Company in Gadsten, Ala. Then one night in 1998 she received an anonymous note that let her know she was earning far less than men doing comparable work at her plant.

A recipient of a top performance award, she was more organized and diligent than her male counterparts, but nonetheless found herself on the short end of the pay scale.

"I was feeling very degraded, less of an individual with less respect. I never backed down on any job no matter how hard or how dirty," Ledbetter said. And then it dawned on her that her lower wages also affected her overtime pay, Social Security and retirement benefits.

"At that moment I realized for the first time in my life that I was a second-class citizen and would be for the rest of my life. I thought about it and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission."

After several months, the investigator for the EEOC called and said, "You've got one of the best cases we have ever seen."

LEDBETTER WAS IMMEDIATELY shunned by her co-workers. "Believe you me it was like I had a very serious disease somebody could catch and when I'd meet them in the hall they'd turn and go the other way."

Ledbetter found a lawyer who would take her case pro bono, took early retirement and sued for illegal gender discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. A jury awarded her $360,000 in back pay and damages, but the case was appealed and eventually wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court where she lost in 2006 on a 5-4 decision.

Because the Civil Rights Act imposes a 180-day deadline on most claims, and Ledbetter did not find out about her pay inequity for many years, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority said that an employee is not entitled to recover for anything that occurs before that cut-off.

"But bless Justice [Ruth] Ginsberg's heart -- the only woman on the court. She said it didn't make sense. These people don't understand what it's like in the real world because people don't stand around the water coolers discussing their pay. ... These cases are very difficult to prove," Ledbetter said.

A bill to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck passed the House in 2008, but Republicans killed it in the Senate.

More setbacks came for Ledbetter when her husband died of cancer last December. "We'd been battling that all through this. Your life doesn't stop because you've got a lawsuit."

But even while helping her husband fight a serious disease, she never gave up her cause. "The true test of a person is not so much what happens to us but how we react to it. Do we see it and do nothing or do we fight back?" she said.

A favorite of the Obamas, Ledbetter campaigned hard for our new president and after he won, she danced the second dance with him at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball. That's when she knew her bill was destined to become law.

"He kept telling me during the dance, 'We're going to do this.' And I knew he meant the bill. And he did."

ONCE AGAIN PROVING they put their rhetoric before the good of their country, rightwing pundits set the bar so low today even a cockroach couldn't crawl under it.

This is Rush Limbaugh's official reaction to the news that our president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

"Our president is a worldwide joke. Folks, do you realize something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about -- and that is he doesn't deserve the award? Now that's hilarious, that I'm on the same side of something with the Taliban."

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had of course earlier in the day issued a statement from the usual "undisclosed location" condemning the award. At the same time, U.S.- and NATO-backed Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai called the award "appropriate."

"His hard work and his new vision on global relations, his will and efforts for creating friendly and good relations at global level and global peace make him the appropriate recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize," Karzai's spokesman Siamak Hirai said.

So whose side does Limbaugh take? The guy in the cave. Even Rush addicts must be feeling a little icky now.

William Kristol, whose mouth must be permanently stuck in a pucker from sucking on sour grapes since the neoconservative movement bombed, was of course equally indignant.

BUT A LOT OF US voted for Barack Obama for exactly the same reason the Nobel Committee did:

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

The committee's decision was unanimous and reflects its predilection toward multilateralism, a word likely missing from our last president's vocabulary.

It's time to give peace (and our new president) a chance.

NOTE: I first wrote this blog entry back in March of 2008 and my opinion has not changed. I have, however, gotten to know some of the folks involved with this measure. I think they are well intentioned, but have a measure which has some clear problems, including the overly restrictive 26-foot moratorium, which they themselves have admitted was a mistake.

I also wrote an exhaustive entry back in February on the good work the already-established View Protection Task Force has accomplished toward protecting our views.

In general, I am not a big fan of the ballot initiative process. On the state level, it has been hijacked by special interests who have tied up a good portion of the state's general fund with costly mandates which are difficult to later overturn. These measures have contributed mightily to our state's budget difficulties.

HERE IS A PORTION of my March 2008 entry on what is now known as Ventura's Measure B:

Here in a nutshell is what you'll be voting on: The establishment of a View Resources Board made up of people appointed for the most part by a special interest group, the Ventura Citizens' Organization for Responsible Development (VCORD). This group would then draft restrictions on building heights which would affect approximately 93 percent of the properties in the city.  VCORD was originally set up as a watchdog group to keep buildings from springing up which block views of the hills from the bungalow homes in Midtown.

I called City Attorney Ariel Calonne and asked him to clarify the legalities of the measure. Letting the board of VCORD, a 501 (c)(4) political organization, decide who appoints the View Resources Board violates the City Charter, he said.

"I'm not for or against it," Calonne said of the measure. "I've given an opinion that a lot of it is illegal."

It's like letting the ACLU appoint judges, or letting the AFL-CIO appoint the National Labor Relations Board or ... well, you get the picture.

AND THERE'S MORE. If the initiative passes in 2009, a moratorium restricting building heights to just 26 feet will be put in place for up to 2 years until this board is appointed and drafts a view protection ordinance, with the contents still to be determined.

The ordinance is intended as a General Plan amendment, yet the process completely bypasses legally required review by the Planning Commission. Whatever the board comes up with will eventually be voted on by the City Council. If they vote it down, the measure will go to the voters in a far-off municipal election. If that fails, then what?

To their credit, VCORD has exempted a few business areas such as Downtown, Victoria Ave., and the hospital zone.

If you're looking at your property as an investment, be aware that potential buyers may be casting a wary eye your way. If the measure passes, the city's already established guidelines will then be in limbo and it could be a significant time before you will know what can be built there.

The City Council and a majority of the citizens support protecting public views and the quality of life in Ventura. But this is not the way to do it.

The city attorney's analysis of this measure can be viewed here: Download file

The Community Development Director's analysis of the measure can be found here: Download file

I HAVE BEEN a big supporter of San Buenaventura Friends of the Library's dogged efforts to save their beloved Wright Library from closure due to cutbacks in the Ventura County Library System. They've done event after event and even invited science fiction legend Ray Bradbury to be the featured speaker at a fundraiser. So far they've raised $92,000.

But there comes a time when even the most devoted volunteers get tired. Volunteer-driven fundraising efforts cannot always be sustained. I've been there, done that myself when in 2003 as part of an equally determined group of moms we raised $84,000 to save the School Resource Officer program in Ventura's middle schools for just one year. We couldn't do it again the next.

So the Friends are pinning their hopes on the passage of Ventura's Measure A, the 1/2-percent sales tax measure on November's ballot. The estimated $8 million raised locally by the measure would stay in Ventura and wouldn't be subject to a raid from Sacramento. The state is taking $4 million from the city's now balanced budget to solve the state's budget crisis -- "borrowing" $2.8 million in property taxes and taking an additional $1.2 million from the city's Redevelopment Agency.

The spending plan for the revenue measure, which sunsets in four years, would do much to restore some of the service cuts our older, full-service city has had to make in the last few years to balance the budget. Supplementing the county's funding for our libraries would keep Wright open and maintain hours at our other library facilities.

Today the Friends and other community leaders and local families officially kicked off the campaign for Measure A in front of the Wright Library. The measure has broad community support if the endorsement list is any indication. On the growing list is the Ventura Auto Center Dealers Association and other local business leaders. 

SBFOL President Will Thompson put an impassioned plea in the group's latest newsletter: "So, it will be up to us voters to save Wright Library. ... We are, in the face of so many voters in previous elections who just said "NO," the voters who now have the opportunity and the privilege to say "YES." We love Ventura and are eager to save our Wright Library!"

WHAT WILL Ventura County be like in the year 2035 with an estimated 200,000 more people and how can we start planning for it today?

That is the task participants were charged with last week at the first of Compact for a Sustainable Ventura County's citizen workshops. The Compact is a broad partnership of the 10 cities, the county and various agencies, along with the Southern California Association of Governments, which funded the exercise.

The workshop was led by Ted Knowlton of the Planning Center who ran through a series of questions for the group before we began a mapping exercise. The consensus? Most of us felt with that with 200,000 more people, the quality of our lives would likely suffer.

According to baseline projections for 2035 on the group's website, the hours lost to traffic congestion will increase by 166 percent and carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles will go up 129 percent. We'll need almost $1 billion in new local infrastructure projects to handle the population.

And so we began in small groups to tackle the task of what urban planners should do to make life in the future comfortable for residents.

With a map of the county spread out before us which tracked where development and protected open space lies, we were given paper tokens for future housing and commercial areas, along with colored tapes for transit, freeways and hiking trails. 

OUR GROUP decided to invest in more mass transit opportunities with town centers situated near transit stations. These areas would encompass living, shopping and high-wage centers in one spot. To do this we had to trade in most of our single-family home tokens, a decision that didn't sit well with everyone in the group. We didn't add major highways, but added connector roads instead to alleviate congestion on major thoroughfares and freeways.

The exercise was a bit like playing Monopoly and just like that drawn-out game, we didn't quite get finished before it was our time to present.

Our Ventura workshop was just one of several scheduled throughout the county last week and next. Our input will be compiled and will help shape future planning decisions. It was a good learning experience for everyone.

What is apparent is that our single-car commuter lifestyle is not sustainable. New federal and state laws will also change the way we plan. And the sooner we change our existing mindset the better.

IN JULY I REPORTED how the last-minute impasse staged by Senate Republicans to derail stopgap measures already approved by the Assembly added $7 billion to the state's deficit.

Now it has been widely reported that the recalcitrant "Just Say No" crowd, including our own State Sen. Tony Strickland has just added to the pain our cities will feel as the state takes $2 billion in property tax revenues away from local governments  to balance its own budget. These gaps will leave cities scrambling to plug holes they thought they had already filled in their own budget-balancing woes this year.

While the state is obligated to pay the money back in 2013 through provisions in 2004's Prop. 1A, most local officials I talk to don't really believe it will happen. 

So cities and counties were counting on Senate Bill 67 to pass in the whirlwind of the last legislative session which ended Sept. 11. This was "cleanup" legislation which would allow a consortium made up of the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties to accept the state's IOUs for the borrowed property tax and issues bonds to local governments to make up for the loss.

But this legislation, along with other bills which required a 2/3 passage, got hung up in a political snit over several unrelated matters, including a vote sought by Republicans on behalf of Intuit, the makers of Turbo Tax, to deny tax preparation services to low-income people through a program called ReadyReturn. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat and the Los Angeles Times took Strickland to task for his part in this scheme. Strickland has accepted $1 million in campaign cash from Intuit, the Times pointed out. And this OpEd piece points out just how wrong Intuit is in pursuing this matter.

Also lost in this power play by the No Crowd was money for battered women's shelters, federal money for swine flu preparations and a bill allowing the state to renegotiate letters of credit with banks, saving the state about $850 million this year.

Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, was the only one to break from his party and vote for the measures. "At the end of the day we were sent to Sacramento to govern, not play politics," he told the Lompoc Record.

BY THE WAY: If you are looking for more Republican non-responsiveness, look no further than Mike Stoker, Tony Strickland's aide and big-time polluter Greka Energy's spokesperson, who is running for the 35th Assembly District seat along with Susan Jordan and Das Williams. I watched him in action at a forum put together at a Gold Coast Hispanic Chamber of Commerce breakfast last week by The Paladin Principle, Republican Assembly District 37 candidate Jeff Gorell's firm. The press was of course alerted to this breakfast forum, attended by 18 people. 

Stoker's idea of debating is apparently interrupting and shouting over his opponent's voice. He isn't much of a listener.