The Johnny Appleseed of Walkable Streets Comes to Ventura

Recently, Dan Burden addressed a forum in the Community Meeting Room at City Hall which was also cablecast. Burden, who's known across the country as the "Johnny Appleseed of Walkable Streets" is a resource to the Mobility effort now under way called, "Ventura on the Move."

Burden, who's crisscrossed America diagnosing the way we've neglected pedestrian safety and amenities, outlined not only the what ails us, but how we can begin the cure. He spent two days walking four of our main corridors with local citizens and staff, analyzing what's wrong, what's right and what can be done.

A quick summary of his points is posted on the website explaining the City's Mobility planning effort at: http://cityofventura.net/mobility/
Prepared for a similar presentation in Chico, California, Burden applied those lessons to Ventura. They echo similar concerns that appeared in an Op-Ed by Nicole Kite in Sunday's Ventura County Star under the headline of Walking Ventura Not Easy: http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/ 2008/mar/09/walking-ventura-not-easy/

Of course reversing half a century of favoring cars over pedestrians won't be easy. Last week, two pedestrians were struck by cars on Ventura's streets, one fatally. In both cases, the walkers were trying to cross streets where there were no crosswalks.

These are tough financial times for cities -- and our streets show it. Not only do we struggle to stretch our gas tax dollars to repair our current streets (the city's largest repaving effort in history is currently underway in Midtown) but we scrape to find funding for pedestrian improvements. As with most worthwhile goals, money is part of the answer. But the first step is making a priority of walkability -- and setting long-term goals for achieving it.

Where our money is going

I have just returned from a vacation in the Middle East. I spent the first five days in the United Arab Emirates, attending a conference on Sustainable Development, sponsored by the Urban Land Institute. My wife, Katherine Perez, was a speaker and I accompanied her with our kids.

Of course there is very little that is "sustainable" about the oil-fueled frenzy of development going on along the western side of the Persian Gulf in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Bahrain. The world's tallest building is under construction in Dubai, along with the world's largest shopping mall -- but there are just symbols of the frenetic pace of building. One out of every five construction cranes in the world is deployed on Dubai's 2,000 construction sites. Nakheel Properties signature development, The Palm Jumeirah, contains 4,000 of the most luxurious villas and residential units on the planet along with 32 new five star hotels, including the 2000 room Atlantis hotel and the 48 story Trump Hotel and Tower.

If you can picture California's recent housing boom, magnified about a zillion times, you might have some sense of the sudden emergence of Dubai as the world capital of wretched excess. But beyond the hype of iconic new projects is the reality that like Athens, Venice, Amsterdam, London and New York before it, Dubai is parlaying its strategic position and wealth into a play to become a world center -- not just the premier business center of the Middle East, but the linchpin between old money Europe and new money "Chindia" -- the emerging mega-economies of Asia.

The way they are going about it, however, is giving even them concern. Just fifty years ago, Dubai was little more than a dusty colonial entrepot with a total population the size of Santa Paula. Today, 25,000 new residents arrive each month from all over the world, hoping to cash in on the goldrush atmosphere.

At the conference, speakers explored the daunting threats and exciting opportunities for rethinking the future of this oil rich region. Not surprisingly, the pattern of development now underway has made the Gulf states the biggest wasters of energy on the planet -- at least on a per capita basis. But precisely because Dubai is developing at such a breakneck, spendthrift pace, the potential for refocusing their model is an urgent priority.

The conference keynote speaker, Chandran Nair of the Global Institute for Tomorrow in Hong Kong, noted, "A sustainable development agenda can't be approached without taking into account the complexities of our world" starting with the stark contrasts in equity. The top 20% of the world's population commands 80% of the world's income. While globalization has helped lift 130 million people out of poverty in recent years, 2.5 billion people still live on less than $2 a day. Given the explosive hunger that share of the planet's population has for a better life, the responsibility rests with wealthier nations to set a far better example of living sustainably.

This has implications here in Ventura, of course. It is, metaphorically speaking, our money that being pumped into building highrise towers in the Dubai desert. The way we get around and the way we build our city directly contributes to making a handful of sheikhs into the richest moguls on the planet. Even more damaging, it puts us in a poor position to preach to anyone else about wasting resources. Most damaging of all, it improverishes our children and grandchildren, who will be paying for the debts we are running up for our current lifestyle, not to mention the sacrifices of our young people on the battlefronts abroad.

Of course, thinking globally and acting locally is not always easy. One of my favorite jokes concerns a poll of Americans that showed that 98% of the public supports public transit -- for the other 2% to ride. But seeing how our money is being spent half a world away has been sobering for me. Let's hope they change -- but let's make sure we do!

Change

I was invited on Thursday to give the lunch keynote at Caltrans annual planning conference in Long Beach. Attending were transportation planners from around the State, both from government and the private sector. I asked the audience at the outset of my talk what all the presidential candidates were talking about. "Change!" was the response. "And what are the drivers of change?" I asked.

"The economy . . . global warming . . . rising population . . . immigration . . . budget crisis . . . declining home values . . . credit crunch . . . congestion" were among the responses I heard.

We are living in a time of rising anxiety -- and a clamor for change. Locally, across the State, in our nation and -- if we were paying attention -- in the larger world.

We can focus on the symptoms -- and that's easy to do. We can look for someone or something to blame . . . and that often is tempting. Or we can look for the underlying issues and long-term solutions.

If we do, I think most of us are willing to admit that our way of life is unsustainable. We've become the most powerful and richest (at least in aggregate) nation on the planet, but in so many ways we can't afford the cost of sustaining the way we've built it. And as Herb Stein, the very practical economist who advised Presidents' Nixon and Ford long ago pointed out, "That which is unsustainable has a tendency to come to a stop."

All is not gloom and doom, however. We increasingly recognize the need to change so our society doesn't end up coming to a stop. Like the dramatically titled book on the lessons learned from people who've suffered near-fatal heart attacks (Change or Die by Alan Deutchsman), we recognize the grave risk of continuing down the path we are on -- and that can motivate us to take a new path to a healthier life.

I think Ventura is a leader in seeking a new path. Our community is ready for change, although we may not always agree on what that change should be or how to achieve it. Our Ventura Vision, our efforts to curb sprawl and pursue smarter growth, and our commitment to more sustainable environmental, economic and socially equitable practices have all attracted attention from other communities seeking answers -- as we all face the concerns identified by the people in the Long Beach audience.

I was interviewed last month by the Planning Report on Ventura's approach to these issues:

http://www.planningreport.com/tpr/ ?module=displaystory&story_id=1302&format=html

I concluded on a positive note because I'm optomistic. President Kennedy kindled in young Americans a long-lasting belief that we could change the world for the better. I still believe that. I've been heartened that millions of Americans believe that too. As Senator Barack Obama, one of the presidential contenders, reminded us recently, "In the unlikely story that is America, there is nothing false about hope."

Mea culpa

We took another beating in the newspaper today from a raft of letters denouncing the City for the sin of gouging citizens out of $1.49 a month per phone line.

According to the outraged letter writers, we're guilty of arrogance, incompetence, waste, sloth, manipulation, stupidity, greed and, probably the most grevious offense of all, getting the newspaper mad at us.

Mea culpa.

For those who don't know Latin or aren't Catholic, it means "my own fault." Those who are Catholic know that early in each mass, we admit, "I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do." We used to ritually beat our chest while reciting these words, but I notice that has fallen out of fashion.

When I was hired four years ago as City Manager, I inherited a budget crisis. We had a hiring freeze, a salary freeze, a contracting freeze and an out of town training freeze. We were spending more than we were taking in and the budget office's projections showed it would continue to get worse. The Council's Ad Hoc Budget Committee had come up with a sweeping set of recommendations for change.

The first thing I did was to undertake a comprehensive review of all City operations, top to bottom. The report is still "online" on the city's website:

http://www.cityofventura.net/oeprations_review

It was the basis for a Three Year Budget Plan that was approved by the City Council. It called for cutting city expenses and increasing revenue to eliminate the spending gap. It also called for addressing four neglected priorities, starting with expanding our police and fire staffing to improve emergency response, deal with a rise in gang crime and put school resource officers back in our schools.

The three-year budget plan worked. We reduced expenses. We raised revenue. We eliminated the deficit spending. And we hired seven additional police officers and put on the streets a new 3 person fire/paramedic crew.

With the revenue from the 911 fee, we can add an additional six officers and three firefighter/paramedics. After sixteen straight years in which our population grew and 911 calls soared, without adding a single officer or firefighter, in two years we will have added 13 officers and 6 firefighter/paramedics. We will have improved emergency response time, reduced gang crime and put school resource officers back in the schools.

Did we do a lousy job of communicating all this? Absolutely. Did we give the impression that we were bent on sneaking through a crazy fee for people calling 911? Unfortunately. Did the newspaper and out of town media have a field day with all this? Yes, they did.

Whose fault is all this? I'll take responsibility. Great, say the angry letter writers and bloggers. RESIGN!!! Go to Texas!!! REPEAL THE EVIL TAX!!!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But the next time they or you have a life-threatening emergency, I want the response to get there within five minutes. I want the best qualified and best trained people to show up with the right equipment with one goal in mind: saving your life and home.

Maybe there is a better way to achieve that goal. Clearly there was a better way to handle getting to that goal. But as City Manager, that will continue to be my goal, as it has been for the last four years.