Measure B: The will of the people

We've all had the experience of being approached as we head for the supermarket: "Are you a registered voter?" If you nod, you are pressed with a soundbite pitch about signing a petition to solve some burning problem. If you express skepticism, you are reassured, "This is just to put it on the ballot." There is a clipboard with an initiative in tiny type for you to read (if you have twenty minutes or so), but you are handed a pen and at that point, you probably scribble your name and address.

Then later, these signatures are waved around as PROOF every one of those thousands of people ardently support the proposed initiative and are now clamoring for its adoption.

That was the case with Measure B, the so-called "view protection ordinance" that went before the voters on Tuesday.

City Councilmembers, the City Attorney and, yours truly, the City Manager were all denounced for doing everything in our power to thwart the "will of the people" for not scheduling a special election to put the measure to an immediate vote. Camille Harris, the measure's chief proponent, repeatedly claimed that it took a lawsuit for the City to even count the signatures. When the County Registrar apparently misplaced a packet of 100 of the 10,972 signatures submitted, we were all accused of deliberate conspiracy.

Supposedly the citizenry was boiling mad and demanding an immediate vote to "save our views." There was quite a bit of fuzziness about what views, exactly, were at risk. Sometimes it was the view of homeowners out their back windows, which would be forever blotted out by three-story "highrises" built along commercial corridors (this was in areas where zoning had for decades allowed six story buildings to be built there, although, to be fair, none had been.) Other times it was the view of motorists traversing our east-west thoroughfares to have unobstructed views of Two Trees and the hillsides as they drove by. And when the County broke ground on a long-delayed hospital tower, "view protection" was advanced as a general right not to have to look at tall buildings near your neighborhood.

In other words, view protection was, literally, in the eye of the beholder. And that was the beauty of the proposed initiative: it would empower a board of appointed citizens to craft a "view protection ordinance" covering each individual neighborhood's views and desires, all packaged together at the end for the City Council to adopt. If the Council did not, then it would go to the voters (exactly how that was to work was not actually specified.)

To ensure that this process was untainted by City Hall interference, the backers of the initiative would have been authorized to appoint 20 of the 23 members. How this was to be done, like most elements of the initiative, was also a little fuzzy. The initiative said the board of "VCORD" would make the selections for each neighborhood. But when that was criticized, Harris announced that instead there would be an election by all VCORD members. Since VCORD is a political organization, exactly who would be eligible members would be left up to them, but Harris assured one and all that "anyone" could join. How this "election" would take place was left for later.

There are other fascinating aspects of this unusual initiative, but in the end, despite the claims that the signatures proved overwhelming support for the View Protection Initiative, when it was actually put to a vote, it lost 3-1.

As I acknowledged in yesterday's blog post, it is not easy to decipher why voters support or oppose measures or candidates -- after all, we have a secret ballot and there are no "exit polls" in Ventura. But my point in re-opening the often contentious discussion of this measure is simply this: whatever the merits or demerits of an initiative, just because a lot of people sign a petition doesn't mean that a majority of people actually support it.

That's what elections are for. Imperfect as they are (and we've all had our disappointments about election outcomes in our lives) they are the final verdict on whether voters do or do not support someone's panacea for a particular problem.

Had the voters, in their wisdom, passed Measure B, the Council, the City Attorney and the City Manager would have all done our best to actually implement it, despite its fuzziness and flaws. Our failure to immediately do everything its backers demanded was not out of disrespect for the citizens who signed the petition to put it on the ballot. But initiatives don't become law based on how many people sign a petition at the supermarket. There has to be an election first.

Measure B had its opportunity before the voters and like Measure A (placed on the ballot by the Council) and Measure C (placed on the ballot by another citizen group), they all failed to win majority support. That's how our system works.

Of course, we should all give Harris and VCORD credit for putting focus on this issue. While their initiative may have been flawed, their activism and advocacy did prompt the City Council to appoint a citizen task force to tackle the issue. VCORD didn't get everything they asked for, yet the key recommendations of the task force have been embraced by the Council and Planning Commission. This ensures that public views will be better protected in the future, just as the 2005 General Plan promised.

Democracy is not perfect, especially if your standard is always getting what you want from it. But experience tells us that when someone steps forward claiming to represent "the will of the people," we have a right to be skeptical. As the great American political humorist Finley Peter Dunne observed about similar claims advanced in his day, "your argument is interesting, but not conclusive."