Change in the winds

Our remarkable economy rebounded from the Dot.com bust. Our State government managed to borrow its way out of fiscal meltdown. Home prices rose to giddy heights. Crime and congestion and illegal immigration faded as polarizing political battlecries. Despite our deep and widespread challenges, Southern California was doing okay.

Not so easy to say that anymore. Home prices are dropping -- a little in affluent neighborhoods, a lot in outlying suburbs. Gas prices are rising. Lay-offs are rolling slowly across the landscape.

Now the fires. Two thousand homes up in smoke, reminding us how unsustainably we have tried to live, highlighting the far less dramatic, but far more profound environmental threats to our climate and water supply.

For more than 150 years, Southern California has endured boom and bust. We are again at the tipping point.

Will we ever learn from history? In good times, we ignore the warning signs. Then in bad times, we think the sky is falling.

It's time to adjust our focus. Problems we've neglected will have to be addressed. Budgets that have grown will need to be tightened. Tough choices that have been avoided will need to be made.

And one of the most important lessons will need to be remembered: now is the time to plan for good times in the future.

In 1990, Pete Wilson was elected Governor, promising to make growth management a centerpiece of his administration. Coming from then-booming San Diego, he was the first Governor since Pat Brown prepared to tackle the water, transportation and environmental challenges facing our State. But soon, defense cutbacks, riots and natural disasters had California on the ropes. "I wish I had some growth to manage," he joked when asked why he abandoned his ambitous strategic agenda. By the end of his first term, he was resorting to fear-mongering about crime and illegal immigration to win re-election. His opportunity to leave a positive legacy was squandered. More importantly, when good times returned, we continued to live off the aging infrastructure and policies left over from the early sixties, even as high tech propelled us into the global economy of the 21st Century.

We can't let dumb growth overtake us again because we fail now to plan for smart growth when good times return. In our town, we'll need to redouble our focus on the Ventura Vision. When the economy weakens and budgets are reduced, planning and future investment are tempting targets. Tempting, but wrong. Now, more than ever, we need to take the long view and the high road.

Now is the time to be serious. There may be hard years ahead. But as Tom Paine wrote at the beginning of the American experiment: "These are the times that try our souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Downtown

Yesterday, I visited the new Wet Sand retail store that just opened on Main Street. It is a stylish and unique home grown business that shows how far our downtown has come. The transformation of Downtown Ventura over the past fifteen years is amazing. If you are ever tempted to take it for granted, spend some time in Fresno or Salinas as I've done recently.

And yet . . .

All this progress is being undermined by the anti-social behavior of a couple dozen people. Some of them are deranged and damaged people, ravaged by years of mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse and living on the streets. Some are lost young people deluded into an empty outlaw lifestyle of preying on others. Some are simply opportunists who take advantage of the sympathy of others to live without responsibility.

Lively beach downtowns are magnets for these individuals. Here they find all sorts of resources -- places to crash, people to hassle, drugs to buy and free services to leech off.

Downtown merchants, visitors and local residents are disgusted and afraid. They wonder why somebody doesn't do something about the presence of these drifters, panhandlers and thugs.

Good hearted people also feel sympathy. They imagine the tangled family and personal histories behind the tragic and empty lives these individuals now lead. But even the most charitable don't want to see vicious pit bulls attack pets on leashes. They don't want to be subjected to streams of obscenities. They don't want to worry about walking down a public sidewalk.

It's tempting to see this as a police problem. Why aren't the police there when you need them? And why don't the cops just round up these vagrants?

In response, typically government responds with the usual excuses that people find so annoying: the Supreme Court has struck down laws against "loitering" -- we don't have enough cops -- we have no place to put these damaged people -- blah, blah, blah.

Well, let's skip that part since no one is listening. Let's instead focus on one simple step everyone can take:

Stop feeding the problem.

In the time when the Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and Moslem scriptures were written, beggars on the street were lepers, either literally or figuratively. There was no social safety net. Giving alms directly to the poor was the right thing to do.

It is not the right thing to do today when you walk or drive by someone holding a cardboard sign.

Giving cash to beggers is not a solution. It won't straighten out deeply damaged lives. It's more likely to buy malt liquor or meth than their first month's rent.

Feeding the hungry in the park isn't a solution either. It keeps that person coming back to the park instead of finding a way out.

We can all be more generous. Let's choose wisely, however. Let's give our money to those who provide mental health care, decent housing people can afford, spiritual redemption and jobs that give back dignity to people who've lost theirs. Let's put our spare change to use to make real change.

Government has a responsibility here, of course. We must enforce our laws. We must direct public resources where they will do the most good. But we can't do that without a real partnership to tackle the underlying problems.

The Police are not parents, social workers or pastors. They can't scoop people up for being disreputable, toss them in jail and throw away the key. They can't put them on a bus to somewhere else. Nor can we expect the Police to build housing, help people kick addictions or talk angry kids out of wasting their lives.

Downtown is a great place that shouldn't be undermined by the anti-social behavior of a few. But solving this problem is a shared challenge for all the rest of us, not just "somebody else."

C7 What are we voting on?

Ventura voters will be asked to vote on Measure C7 on the current November ballot.

What exactly is it?

The simplest explanation is that it updates a forty year old-tax on telephone use. It is revenue neutral -- that is to say it won't generate any more or any less in taxes.

So why are we voting on it?

Under Proposition 218, no tax can be raised -- or changed -- without a vote of the people affected. For voters old enough to remember 40 years ago, telephones were pretty simple back then. You usually had one, it was black, had a dial on the front and it was connected to the wall by a wire.

Phones today are totally different. So C7 would update our tax law to apply fairly to the new technologies. Because the new law closes a couple of small loopholes, it would generate about 10% more revenue. So the City Council decided to cut the tax rate by 10% to ensure that this change keeps things the same.

More than a dozen cities have already changed their outdated laws and we are following their lead. It has passed overwhelmingly in all those cities.

What happens if voters don't approve C7?

In the short run, absolutely nothing. The old tax stays the same. But as other cities update their law, Ventura runs the risk of expensive lawsuits challenging the validity of our obsolete statute.

One last question always comes up: Will this tax now be imposed on my cell phone?

It already is. If C7 passes the rate will go down from 5% to 4.5% No other changes to your cell phone bill.

Now that you mention it, What about the Internet? Will that be taxed?

No. That is forbidden by Federal law.

Where can I learn more?

http://www.cityofventura.net/uut/