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.

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.

I SAW MY FIRST Ventura Council campaign sign today and it is only the first of August. This is annoying to me in the way that finding winter holiday decorations in department stores before Halloween always is. Venturans have traditionally been obsessive about placing signs in every square foot of public space around election cycles. But never have I seen anything go up this early.

By November I expect the visual pollution to be out of control with 16 council candidates and three ballot measures cluttering our political landscape. Early signage does not win votes at my house. If you excessively pollute my visual space, expect a thumbs down from me. Most studies show campaign signs don't have much effect on voters.

While I see a few familiar names in the mix and the four incumbents, of course, what always amazes me are the candidates who have not been active participants in city projects, committees, commissions, meetings and charettes. Our local government urgently needs volunteers, especially in these days of reduced staff due to budget cutbacks.

It's just the same handful of us traveling from event to event. In addition to the Cultural Affairs Commission, I've joined the Visitor's and Convention Bureau Board and recently agreed to serve on the Library Plan Steering Committee. This is in addition to the numerous other boards I sit on.

THE TRUTH IS, the city needs good volunteers a lot more than it needs 16 City Council candidates and while volunteering doesn't put your name in lights quite like running for office does, it is far more fulfilling.

Becoming a city volunteer is an excellent way to learn about how your local government works. In an era when cities everywhere are faced with tough decisions with myriad implications, I don't want somebody on the City Council who has to play catch-up. Governing a city is no small task and if you haven't read the General Plan, gone through the Capital Improvement Project Plan and can't explain the term "triple flip" or how SB 375 will impact the planning of civic projects in the future, you won't have my vote.

If you don't have the time to wade through inches-thick staff reports every week, answer 100 emails and dozens of phone calls daily, attend ribbon cuttings, mixers and endless outside meetings all for $600 a month, don't bother.

If you are interested in making an impact at the local level, consider volunteering first. You won't regret it.

POLITICS IS A NASTY BUSINESS and nobody knows this like Leslie Cornejo and Katie Teague, the founders of the California Association of Political Centrists.

A moderate Republican, Cornejo spent five years as chairman of the Republican Central Committee until, she says, she was booted in 2006 for endorsing Congressman Elton Gallegly's primary opponent at a time when Gallegly had temporarily bowed out. Gallegly jumped back in the race, but Cornejo stuck to her guns. "It did crack open the door for an ouster," she explained.

"This party chews up women and spits them out," Cornejo said. "But it was not about women. It was really about certain candidates controlling huge funds."

Cornejo dug in her heels until she got a call from the state party honchos. " 'What can we do to get you to leave quietly?' " Cornejo recalls them saying.

She hasn't exactly been quiet since. Cornejo, along with Teague and 12 others, left the local Republicans. The duo founded their Centrist group shortly thereafter. Since that time, they've partnered with the Ventura County Star on candidate forums and every election cycle their group rates candidates on their abilities to reach bipartisan consensus.

I INVITED CORNEJO AND TEAGUE to speak to the Ventura County Chapter of the National Women's Political Caucus last night because I think their message couldn't be any more timely.

"What we have is a system organized and run by extremes," Cornejo told our group. "You have two sides lobbing grenades at each other over red meat issues."

Part of the Centrists' strategy is to make sure voters are informed and to "take the mystery out of politics," Cornejo said. There is a reason why things happen the way they do and it often involves manipulation.

"Proposition 8 was put on the ballot to turn out conservatives," Cornejo said. "I am appalled that so many things on the ballot are about candidates and not about making good laws."

These two smart and gutsy women figure they're doing a good job when both parties get mad at them. "We've managed to step on probably everyone's toes," Cornejo said.

"But we're trying to wrestle politics away from the ideologues and opportunists."

To contact this group go here.

ONE OF MY EARLIEST POLITICAL memories as a kid growing up in Iowa was standing in a rally for Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential run. I still have the photo: my hair cut in a terrible pixie style popular at the time and wearing a loud geometric print shirt, I am holding a "Nixon's the One" sign and looking quite pleased about it.

I was raised in a Republican family with long-held Midwestern Methodist traditions of fiscal responsibility and honesty coupled with a strong social conscience. My grandfather, a respectable commercial real estate businessman who never drank and counted a U.S. Supreme Court Justice among his friends, walked in the voting booth every other November, pulled the Republican lever to vote a straight party-line ticket, and walked out.

We visited the White House when I was a teen-ager and attended a reception for the Shah of Iran, oblivious to the Watergate hearings going on at the same time. In college I worked on George H.W. Bush's first presidential campaign. It never occurred to me to be anything other than a Republican.

And then, three years later, I moved to California. Surrounded by liberal Democrats in my second newspaper job, I remember wearing an elephant-nose disguise one election night just to annoy my fellow reporters. Snorting with disgust, my desk mate stalked off and complained to our editor. But I was given a reprieve by the advertising manager, a stalwart GOP fan who used to give me free Lakers tickets.

I was a rebel! The only Republican reporter in this little California newsroom.

AND THEN THE WORLD began to change around me. President Ronald Reagan ran up huge deficits. Iran-Contra happened. Oliver North and his pals were indicted. The stock market dropped precipitously, blamed partially on rising deficits. Newt Gringrich came into power and criticized Reagan for compromising with Democrats. The poison pen of William Kristol began to influence public policy. Tom DeLay exacted political vengeance. And the 1994 election handed Republicans a heady victory of control of both houses and no reason to ever compromise again.

The tone and hypocrisy disgusted me. I found that I had very little in common with this new wing of the GOP. By the time my grandfather died in 1994, I was a Democrat.

Eight years of rule under Project for a New American Century-inspired neoconservatism left me even more certain I had made the right decision.

I THOUGHT OF THIS TODAY as I learned Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania left the Republican Party to become a Democrat. Part of a triumvirate of Northeastern Republican senators which included Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, they were the last holdouts of the "Rockefeller Republican" era.

California millionaire Republican donor Howard Ahmanson recently jumped ship, too.

While my progressive friends sometimes mock my stuffy Midwestern values, I have found that differences of opinion are far more accepted within the Democratic Party, allowing moderates like Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia to thrive, while the Specters of the world are becoming politically extinct on the other side of the aisle.

We didn't leave the GOP. The GOP left us.

WOULD YOU SUPPORT a program developed with years of solid research that puts young children and their parents on the right track for a lifetime of success? What if you could find a dedicated source of funding for that program, paid for by taxes on tobacco products, and the programs had local control and strict oversight?

That's exactly what the successful Five 5 programs have done since Prop. 10 was passed in 1998. Yet these programs seem to be a continual target of legislative raids. In 2000, voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure, funded mostly by tobacco interests, to overturn Prop. 10. Voters are being asked to circumvent it again through Prop. 1D on the May 19 special election ballot.

What Prop. 1D would do is take approximately $1.68 billion in dedicated funding away from established, locally controlled learning, health and family programs for preschoolers and their families and give the money instead to the state legislature to appropriate for non-specified state children's programs.

According to information provided by the Community Commission of Ventura County, "in Ventura County this would result in the loss of as much as $24.4 million over the next five years meant for sustaining current local First 5 Programs for our young children."

Yet, that is ISN'T made clear in the ballot proposition at all, as the video I've linked to above shows.

State Sen. Dave Cox has been trying to take down Prop. 10 for years. The Republican senator, who has seen more than his share of contributions from the tobacco industry, was one of the few GOP votes for the budget back in February, and many believe the run at Prop. 10 funding to help balance the state's budget was inserted to get the termed-out senator's vote.

Cox and others point to nearly $2 billion in county commission fund balances that is seemingly ripe for the taking. But, according to Michael M. Ruane, Executive Director of the Children and Families Commission of Orange County, "About half of the total, cited statewide fund balance is in two counties, Los Angeles and Orange counties. Of the Los Angeles total, over 60 percent is encumbered in a single multi-year program to provide preschool in the county's lowest income communities."

Ruane's letter can be downloaded here:

OC fund balance Ltr to Correa.doc

First 5 commissions are also hoping to use reserves to backfill funding as people quit smoking and tobacco tax revenues decline. Revenues are projected to decline about 3-4 percent each year.

FIRST 5 PROGRAMS are based on established research from many sources which indicate early childhood programs and intervention have long-term and profound impacts on keeping children in their important early formative years interested in learning and on a path to success.

The Ventura Neighborhood for Learning (VNfL) is a focus area for the Ventura Education Partnership and I have personally observed the good work they do. I spoke with VNfL Director Cathy Puccetti, who explained that an analysis she had read stated Prop. 1D would divert up to 65 percent of her program's operating revenues over the next five years.

Local First 5 funds are used for services such as childbirth preparation; parent and infant/toddler classes; preschool programs; summer pre-kindergarten; developmental check-ups; early dental care and education; health insurance access; parenting support and education; and resource and referral services.

"If the children don't get these services now they will need more later," Puccetti said. "We are also trying to get the parents to value education and their role in the family." VNfL's programs are neighborhood-based, and housed primarily in schools serving low-income populations. They are highly utilized by poor, hard-working families, Puccetti said. And some of these children have severe behavior issues that need to be addressed. "We provide services before children meet eligibility requirements for other funding streams."

Puccetti bristles at the often-heard charge that First 5 serves a primarily illegal immigrant population. "Some of our most needy families are not immigrant families," she said.

As tempting a target as preschool programs are to help solve the state's budget crisis, I urge the legislature and the voters to look elsewhere. Cutting off these thoughtful, long-term programs as a means of short-term financial gain is unwise.

"It's hard for people to think proactively," Puccetti said.

But we must try.

Note to my bloggers: We have recently moved the Star blogs to a new server which seems touchy about hyperlinks. If, while posting with a hyperlink, you receive the message that your comment is being held for approval, send me an email and I will fish it out of my spam filter.

I ALWAYS ENJOY being a fly on the wall at these citizen meetings spun off by the city. The interaction between the various factions represented at these gatherings is always fun to watch. Put some of our most opinionated citizens in one room and you can see the sparks fly. The View Protection Task Force was interesting, but this new Citizen Blue Ribbon Budget Committee is much better theater.

People arguing about taxes is great sport on this blog; it gets pretty heated. That's why you would think more of our citizens would be jumping at the chance to give public testimony to this 15-member citizen's panel charged with deciding whether or not to put a sales tax measure on the ballot in Ventura to help plug part of a $11.4 million hole in our city's two-year budget. It's been well publicized.

Yet tonight I watched the usual suspects up there saying their usual things. Most of these folks stand before our City Council nearly every Monday and they were back in action again at tonight's meeting. There were a grand total of five speakers and that included the one who stalked off because he was asked to fill out a speaker card first.

So I guess the task is left to the group assembled by the City Council and their alternates. It's a diverse crowd and represents the city and its opinions fairly well. But again, the outspoken few seemed to dominate the conversation.

THE FIRST FEW MEETINGS have been filled with a crash course on city finances. I am always amazed at how well our city's Chief Financial Officer Jay Panzica can explain these things. He recounts facts and figures in a simple, easy tone devoid of "cityspeak." I hope they keep him around. He's smart and we need him.

There was talk tonight of putting up a website for citizen comment, since they aren't attending the meetings. I would highly encourage this.

If you were to ask me -- and nobody did -- I'd say just put it on the ballot in November and let the citizens decide whether or not they want to pay extra for the city services they will soon be missing. If not, well that's democracy -- by the many.

The remainder of the Citizen Blue Ribbon Budget Committee meetings are March 18 and 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ventura Unified School District - Christa McAuliffe Room, 255 W. Stanley Avenue. For more information, go here.

OK, I ADMIT IT. There's a few things that Democrats have historically just plain stunk at. Brian Leshon thinks so, too. The chair of the Ventura County Democratic Party's Communications Committee says Republicans have been running circles around their progressive counterparts in talk radio for years.

Rush Limbaugh has his own little on-air fiefdom of loyalists who hang on his every word. He gets plenty of ink in the papers, too. Wishing out loud for Barack Obama's agenda to fail only makes him more popular with his fans.

With the exception of the acerbic Randi Rhodes, who even fights with her own network, liberal talkers are a bit more low-key. It's taken awhile for them to find a following. The progressive Air America Radio filed for bankruptcy and then came back up for air. But there are success stories. Rachel Maddow, my favorite, is smart, funny and now has her own show on MSNBC. Air America's Al Franken ran for Congress and sort of won. So we're getting better at this.

CLOSER TO HOME, Brian Leshon and David Atkins, both Ventura residents, have landed a regular spot on KVTA-Radio's "Locals Only" show with host Kelli McKay. I did a spot on McKay's show recently to plug the Ventura Education Partnership and I really appreciated the airtime. She's a very congenial host and a sucker for any good kid cause. Thanks, Kelli!

Leshon and Atkins have ambitious plans for the show, which they call "Reality Check." Their first guest is Assembly member Pedro Nava (D-35th) and they'll discuss the recent budget uproar as well as the initiative process.

"It's really important for Democrats, progressives and independents to get their voice out and this is the way to do it," Leshon said. "We can't allow the conversation to be controlled by the right. They don't represent where the county is going."

Leshon points to the fact that Democratic registration in the county has overtaken that of Republicans. With a large contingent of Obama volunteers in the area, he's hoping for a built-in audience.

Both men are radio veterans. Atkins, a researcher, is co-producer of BlogTalkRadio's progressive hub "Heading Left," and co-host of multiple shows on ePluribusRadio. He is a contributing editor at the blogs MyLeftWing and Booman Tribune and writes regularly for the DailyKos on policy framing and other issues. Leshon's media and communications career spans 30 years in television, radio, music, publishing, national lecture series and the Internet.

I plan on tuning in to this new show every week. It will air on KVTA, 1520 AM, every Friday at 11 a.m. It starts tomorrow (March 6). McKay's "Locals Only" is aired daily from 11 a.m. to noon and features a wide variety of guests.

UPDATE: Listen to the podcast of this show here.

WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION of our battling state legislators, you couldn't find a group of people with more divergent opinions than Ventura's View Protection Task Force. Thrown together in one room are representatives from each side of the city's pro- and anti-development factions. Yet the group gets along so well that an observer might jokingly wonder if meeting at the police headquarters has something to do with it.

That's not to say it's not a very opinionated group. This 15-member committee is tasked with the nebulous goal of defining exactly what a viewshed is and how to protect it. A passel of new planning terms have been coined since Venturans started fervently worrying about their views. Viewsheds, solar fences, and skypaving are now in the vernacular.

Our city's General Plan spells out in very loose terms that we value our views and access to sunlight from our homes, yet it wasn't until a group of Midtown residents started making a fuss about proposed multi-story infill development along Thompson Boulevard that it became a real issue. Now, many City Council speaker cards later, the council is serious about it. While a ballot initiative pushed by the Ventura Citizens' Organization for Responsible Development to address the issue is slated for this fall, council members who are attempting to complete an overhaul of city planning decided they couldn't wait that long for this issue to be addressed, so the task force was appointed to get a jump start on it.

To explain further, VCORD is seeking to draw up its own view plan, based on input from its own mostly hand-selected citizen's group, a move that our city attorney has already said violates our City Charter. Legal issues plague this initiative. If the council rejects VCORD's plan, it would go to yet another municipal election.

JUDGING FROM THE differing opinions surrounding the issue the night I visited the Task Force meeting, it is not an easy thing, this protection of views, and the focus that night was clearly on Midtown residents and their views. It was not until the end of the meeting that the east and west sides of the city entered the discussion. But for now, the goal just seems to be to protect views as seen from public areas throughout Ventura.

As it turns out, View Protection Task Force Chair Rob Corley said, the group has found that lowering building heights has little to do with protecting many public views. "A 10-foot building blocks just as many views as a 50-foot building. But taller buildings hugging the sidewalk really do cramp views of the hills and ocean."

Solar access has also been a touchy issue with many residents. The night I visited, Town Architects Torti Gallas and Partners ran their first-ever simulation program of how larger buildings at full build-out, following existing planning guidelines with cut-outs in the back, would impact the sunlight filtering into Midtown homes.

AND GUESS WHAT? Because of the way the sun travels in the sky, solar access in most of the city can be protected with some simple calculations and building guidelines, the models showed. Corley estimated the group will only spend perhaps $30,000 of the $110,000 allotted to them for professional services from Torti Gallas.

It would appear that designing buildings with clear setbacks from the sidewalk and cutouts in the back seems to be optimal for protecting flatland views of the ocean and Two Trees. The Task Force will report back with recommendations for adjustments to current planning guidelines some time next month.

But how this information will get incorporated into VCORD's initiative, should it pass, is still undetermined.

"Anybody who buys a house next to a commercial lot has some impacts," Corley said. "Protecting every inch of every lot in the city is unattainable."

It is clear to me that complicated tasks such as this are best left to planning professionals with appropriate citizen input and I hope VCORD takes the current Task Force's recommendations very seriously. But it is also clear that city officials need to better communicate with neighbors about the guidelines for adjacent projects and work harder to allay fears and mistrust.