AS EXPECTED, the City Council last night pulled some items off the list of cuts for further study and I certainly agree with their choices. Some items of note:
• The Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau was reassigned to a different budget category, which will mean a lesser blow to this entity charged with generating tourist dollars for Ventura. More study will be forthcoming on how to salvage the budget for advertising dollars and personnel to sell Ventura as a tourist destination. The Transient Occupancy Taxes collected on hotel stays in Ventura are the only revenue source which is increasing in this tough economy, as aptly illustrated by Victor Dollar of the Four Points by Sheraton: "We bought the property two years ago and our revenues have increased approximately $1 million."
• Rob Edwards of the Downtown Ventura Organization offered to have his group do cleanup work, and thus lighten the load on Public Works, in order to buy some hours for increased police foot patrols Downtown on Friday and Saturday nights. Mayor Christy Weir suggested that the new City Corps could be called on to help with Downtown duties, too. They may also be asked to help with Pierpont sand cleanup. I can't say enough wonderful things about this new group and its organizers!
• Also pulled for further consideration were police training programs and the closing of the Police Storefronts.
• The Cultural Arts grants to local non-profit groups, whose activities generate tax dollars for the area, will also be studied. These grants are slated for a $40,000 hit which will affect some of our arts groups who depend on this funding for part of their operating budgets.
The council voted to make the rest of the cuts detailed here and will finalize the budget at an upcoming meeting.
IN THE CONTINUING SAGA of city fees, the council voted to rescind the hotly debated weed-abatement inspection fee and will look at this fee and others in an upcoming meeting. The question is, City Manager Rick Cole asked, "Who should pay for the extraordinary costs of preparing for wildland fires?"
Cole apologized to both the council and the community for not bringing the new $99 fee forward for discussion back in June when it was brought to the council in a very lengthy report. "This was an error and we regret it."
Councilmember Neal Andrews conceded he did not understand how the fee would be implemented when it was brought to him. "I thought this was an enforcement fee and not an inspection fee."
IN MORE FEE NEWS: As of today -- the deadline to opt out of the monthly $1.49-per-line 911 fee -- only an estimated 10-15 percent of the eligible phone lines in the city have been registered to do so. These lines will participate in the per-use fee of $17.88 which will be waived for first-time calls and Good Samaritan calls.
The money raised from this fee will go to offset the costs of the city's 911 call center and free up money for additional officers which could be utilized in heavy-call areas like our Downtown. Other officers will be hired to reinstate the badly-missed School Resource Officer program. The Ventura Unified School District will pay half of the costs to reinstate the program.
The series of cuts the council made last night put an approximately $800,000 dent in the Police Department budget, with about $100,000 deferred for a decision at a future meeting. According to Assistant Police Chief Ken Corney, one casualty will be the Neighborhood Watch program, which may have to go entirely online with nobody to supervise it since the Police Service Officer position has been cut.
I'll detail the cuts to the Police Department budget in an upcoming blog entry.
If you don't cut one thing, you cut another. The money has to come from somewhere.
Although I certainly see Caroline's point, I do have a problem with cutting the Neighborhood Watch Program. I sure hope they can find a way to save this valuable program.
I think it more than pays for itself by providing a means of getting timely and useful information out into the community that helps reduce and prevent crime. The core of the program is the Neighborhood Block Captains who act as conduits from the Police Department to their respective neighborhoods. I know this program has had a noticeable impact in my neighborhood since it's been in place.
The current Police Service Officer, Laura Robinson, is a dynamo who is passionate about her job and the service she provides to the community. This comes through clearly in her neighborhood presentations. I bet she alone is worth several Police Officers, based on the great crime prevention work she does.
I talked to the PD today and indeed that position is going away. You are the one who is always advocating for cuts and no new fees or taxes.
This is what happens. It's sad.
Yes, it's true, Marie, I advocate for cuts that make sense. This one makes absolutely no sense...
There are no good cuts to make in the PD budget. Everything they are cutting will have a high impact. The staff report I linked to doesn't go into detail. I'm working on a more detailed report.
They are cutting things that don't involve taking sworn officers off the street.
Yeah, you got it Marie. The City manager's office made a point that even with budget cuts, essential things that make Ventura safe need to be held on to. The idea of pulling the weekend foot patrol from downtown is, well - ludicrous. How on earth could that one even get by? The other thing that roils me is that they want to curtail the great work that the Visitors Bureau does. Their work directly ties in to the entire strategy of making (keeping?) Ventura a destination for people who are tired of dealing with Santa Barbara. If we can figure out a way to get the vagrants from screwing up the streetscape, and KEEP THE COPS from leaving, the merchants downtown could finally make some money and build downtown back up to what it was in its heyday.
Amen, brother. The very last thing we need is to pull the cops off the street downtown at night on the weekends. dumb, dumb, dumb.
Did I say dumb?
I think they're just reducing, not cutting the Downtown patrols.
Skip, what do you think of the City reducing funding for the Visitors' & Convention Bureau? I think they could be shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. It seems like a good return on investment type of expenditure, given the additional TOT and tax revenue provided by visitors and tourists.
It's seems like everyone should share equally in the pain to me. I would have to know what else would be cut to give them all the money they want.
Well, to me, the difference is that the VCB results in ongoing revenue for the City in the way of tourist dollars. I believe the amount at stake (correct me if I'm wrong, Marie) is only $83,000, or at least that's the amount Councilman Summers is proposing to spare in budget cuts to the VCB.
The cut to the VVCB is now about $61,000 since they moved it to the Prosperous Community category which was slated for smaller overall cuts than the Creative Community category where it was before. The VVCB's current funding structure is calculated at 20 percent of previous calendar year TOT collection. They are eligible for a bonus if they outperform estimates. If TOT in the new fiscal year exceeds their prediction of $3.9 million they would be eligible to get 20 percent of additional funds.
This is all very complicated.
Bottom line, I do not wish to see their budget cut. We will have two new high-end hotels soon enough and all these dollars will need to be stretched even further.
The California Tourism Bureau, even in the midst of this state budget crisis, significantly upped their spending.
I'd like to suggest that to free money in the budget our City Council cut the 3 fire fighters who staff the "roving" truck. My guess is that the fire department personnel waiting at the stations can handle the calls just as effectively.
Not sure I agree with Venturaguy's point on the firefighter positions. My understanding on the "roving crew" is that it works as an efficiency measure by requiring less staffing at the fire stations and less overtime as well. Marie, any comments?
The roving firefighter crew was added to help decrease response times and I believe it has succeeded in that regard. I wouldn't advocate for fewer public safety personnel.
As for the cost of the of the roving team, I believe that's in addition to the costs of operating the current fire stations. I don't think it has any impact on the number of people working at each station, overtime or other costs associated with the stations. Maybe someone from the City can answer that question.
I believe that eliminating that 3 person crew would save a lot of money. It was tried as an "experiment", and apparently has shown that having fire people out of the station driving around town helps response time. And if that's true, here's the question...if one 3 person roving team, working 40 hours per week, significantly impacts the response time of the fire department to emergency calls, why not get all the fire personnel out of their stations and onto the street? How about if 3 of the 6 stations "roved" from 8-4, and the other 3 stations from 4-midnight? Seems that would really speed up the response time.
Maybe someone in the Fire Department could weigh in on this?
I hear the City is installing parking meters downtown. Woo-hoo! The fee-o-rama continues.
I'm not a big fan of parking meters downtown either, but most coastal cities charge for parking somewhere. Santa Barbara's parking garages charge steep fees. Ours is free.
Speaking of fees, I heard the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers' Association is filing a lawsuit against the City of Ventura to challenge the legality of the 911 fee on the strength of the recent court ruling in Union City.
It was only a matter of time. I guess we'll have a chance to see if Calonne is worth his salt.
Parking fees downtown, huh? What's next? Fees to park at the City parks, with an opt-out provision if you don't use the swing set?
I'm guessing that American Airlines charging that baggage fee is chapping your hide Mongo. Private business has to do it too.
The difference, of course, being that private business has to deal with the consequences of their actions (i.e., losing business to competitors, like United or Southwest Airlines) due to their fee policies.
The City, on the other hand, has a monopoly on a lot of these services. Who do you call if you have a medical emergency in the City of Ventura, the City of Oxnard? I think not. You're stuck. No options, no choices. You have to suck it up and pay the 911 tax.
The same thing with development services. If you want to build something in the City of Ventura, you have to go through their crappy, cumbersome, and expensive planning & building permit process. No options, no choices. It's a disincentive for new business to come to the City, which I believe is quite intentional on the part of the City Council.
Mongo, why is it you always go back to blaming the City Council for everything? Do you have some sort of agenda? We both know the answer to that.
The Council as well as City Commissioners, like myself, are citizens who work really hard to be the interface between the public and city staff. But they do not have broad oversight into the workings of every single member of the staff and largely need to confine their directives to public meetings because of the Brown Act. Some on the Council have full time jobs in addition to their busy public schedule.
It's just plain false to claim that the Council isn't interested in attracting new business to the city. For example, several of our Council members and mayor just returned from a retail convention in Las Vegas where they were working very hard at generating new retail.
I've tried to stay out of the comments section here for the past few weeks but sometimes I just can't let you go on unanswered.
What about the local neighborhood community councils picking up the Neighborhood Watch Program in their neighborhoods? They meet each month and have different committees that meet also. Public Safety is a concern for all of us. I know I am going to sugggest this to the Westside Community Council. I think it would be a great way to get more people involved in their local community council or the DVO and to include alot more concerned people into the Neighborhood Watch Program! A Win Win and we do not have to lose this valuable program.
Jeez, Marie,
When are you going to stop jumping to the City Council's defense at every opportunity? What is your agenda? Are you planning on running for Weir's seat when she hangs it up, or something? We all know you're her campaign manager.
If the City Council doesn't have the time to do their jobs effectively, then maybe they should reconsider running for office. We, as citizens and taxpayers, count on them to run the City. That's why we elected them. If they're too busy to do that, then they should choose what they want to do - their real jobs, or their "not so real jobs" as City Council members.
My point was, dear Mongo, that it is not the role of Council to oversee the day-to-day operations of staff. That role belongs to our City Manager and our department supervisors.
As a Cultural Affairs Commissioner I am not supposed to give staff directives or suggestions outside of our meetings, which are noticed to the public. The council works pretty much the same way.
Yes, I worked on Christy's campaign as well as a number of others, past and present. I've repeated this over and over here. It enables me to understand that our elected representatives are caring, concerned individuals who forsake most of their personal time to help our city. It is a very low paid and often thankless job.
There are days when I just get sick of you constantly beating up on them for your own personal reasons. This is one of those days.
Well then, if the City Manager and department heads aren't doing their jobs, whose responsibility is it to make sure they do? Surely, you believe in accountability, Marie.
To invoke Teddy Roosevelt's famous slogan - The buck stops here!
I DO think they're doing their jobs, thank you very much.
Your chief complaint seems to be that they don't approve development fast enough and you perceive the City and Council to be anti-development. Yet today I had a blogger on another thread complain that they are TOO growth oriented.
http://blogs.venturacountystar.com/mlakin/archives/2008/04/please_dont_shoot_the_breeze_1.html#comments
There are two camps in this town. One says no growth and the other says more growth and there's no pleasing both.
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Hey up there, Sharon! Mongo and I didn't mean to shout over your head. I think your Neighborhood Watch idea is a very good one! Thanks for posting it.
Marie, are you referring to Pete Lafollette's post? You can't be serious. This guy would like to take up back to the horse and buggy days. The City Council isn't even as anti-development (Amish) as he is.
He represents a certain point of view I hear quite often. You represent the opposite.
Why do you always have to be so insulting? In your "real life" are you this way?
Why do you have to take everything so gosh darn serious? Have you ever laughed in your life?
We all laugh at you Mongo. It's just that you aren't trying to be funny when we do.
Marie and Mongo: For the most part I think our City Council and many City staff do their jobs well, but you would be hard pressed to deny that there are at least a certain few who seem to relish the opportunity to say NO to many opportunities for growth in our tax base or to make rules and regulations that fence out developers. Now that the economy has headed south, we have missed a few years of opportunity to improve our community and raise tax dollars coming into the city and even the developers that had weathered the obsticles place in front of them, are packing their bags and leaving.
OK, here's an opportunity we missed: Trader Joe's Downtown. They pulled out over parking and other issues. I don't know where it stands right now. The parking in question was designated for the Cultural Arts Village which never came to fruition. That is also a disappointment.
I don't know that anyone "relishes" the idea of saying no to developers. They have valid reasons for their decisions. One recent example would be the proposed apartment development on Johnson Drive.
Although I'm sure I'll be skewered for even mentioning it, what about the missed opportunity for Wal-Mart going in at the K-Mart site? The City Council dickered around and played politics with this proposal for so long that the company decided to put it on the back burner. Who could blame them?
What about The Star's proposal to renovate their old location on Ralston? Again, the City expressed total dissatisfaction with their proposal and gave them no reason to believe it would move forward. So, they headed over to Camarillo, which welcomed them with open arms.
These are just two prominent examples. There are many more.
As for the apartment complex on Johnson, another debacle by the City. The Casden Corp. specializes in residential development and the City wants to force them to become a commercial developer? That's the same thing as saying "no" in my book.
As for you, Skippy, bite your tongue, my friend. You are just as humorless an old grump as Marie sometimes. You need to up your laugh karma a bit too my friend. Trust me, you'll live a lot longer.
It is my understanding from talking to Star staff that the decision to move had to do with aligning editorial with their already operating printing plant in Camarillo and moving the whole operation to a more central location in the county because they are a countywide paper.
The Wal-Mart issue had more to do with making sure what was done with the site conformed to our citizen-generated General Plan which discourages big box development along Victoria. But you already know this.
I have a great sense of humor. Anyone who knows me will attest to this. I just don't think you're funny.
Marie,
I've heard your take before on The Star's "decision" to relocate to Camarillo. I think the Chamber of Commerce would tell you a completely different story, if you were to ask them. When you think about it, The Star has nothing to gain by starting a feud with the City over a development decision on the part of the City. They had to paint as positive a picture about it as possible, which they did, to their credit. And, in the long run, it may actually have been the best decision for them. The move was precipitated, however, by the City's downright hostile reaction to their proposal. That's a fact.
On the Wal-Mart issue, let's be honest for a minute here, shall we? The City has used the General Plan as a reason to hold Wal-Mart's plans hostage for a long time and they've succeeded, to the detriment of the local economy. It was spun by the City Manager and the City Council as something that was tied to the Victoria Corridor development code when, in fact, it was every bit about keeping Wal-Mart out of there. I just try and call a spade a spade. Unfortunately, this doesn't sit well with the powers that be. Sorry about that.
On the sense of humor issue, to each his own, I guess. My family finds me hilarious (most of the time). In the end, that's all any of us should be concerned about, don't you think?