for Responsible Development
Water/Wastewater Rates Going UP UP. Click Here to Vote. If you do not vote, they will go up automatically.Dear Council,
You
are misleading the public when you quote this proposed building zoning
in "stories" as opposed to footage. The footage of the proposed
"stories" in this plan are equal to a higher story building than you
quote.
We are opposed to the proposed interim midtown coding for the following reasons:
1. An interim zoning code implies a protective measure from incompatible development that would be destructive to the existing neighborhood in character, fabric and aesthetics. It fails.
2. This code encourages the destruction of the character, fabric and aesthetics, rather than downzoning to a protective height of 26 feet, as has been repeatedly requested for three years.
3. Building heights of 35 feet, 45 feet and 75 feet will obscure important viewsheds that currently define the area, now seen over the tops of the buildings.
4. These excessive heights, which are currently absent from the area you are attempting to redefine, will constitute an affective upzoning, since they, though technically allowed, have never been built.
5. The corridor and neighborhood fabric is mainly 18-26 feet in the midtown corridors. This is why the community has been lobbying for height limits of 26 feet for over three years.
6. Over10,600 citizens, concerned citywide about this type of coding that gobbles up our defining views, have initiated a ballot initiative that will establish a community based committee to write a view ordinance.
7. We consider the pushing of this coding, in the middle of a citizen initiated democratic process to be a hostile act to counter the will of the community and derail the democratic process now in progress.
8. The viewsheds of the area are too important to the defining quality of Ventura to be left to the political vagaries of coding. Coding is subject to being defined and redefined by various councils in the future and would be subject to variances passed out to those with the "right connections."
9. The View Protection Ordinance to be written will safeguard the views of Ventura for future generations and could only be changed by a vote of the people, not changed with the stroke of a pen by someone with a special interest.
10. The lack of a historic survey, EIR that addresses drought conditions, community plan, traffic study and fiscal impact studies renders the enactment of this coding to be irresponsible to the citizens.
11. With the real estate market in the tank, there is no reason to rush this coding ahead of the responsible measures and protections needed. The only conclusion to be drawn is that it is an attempt to derail the View Protection Initiative on its way to the ballot, thereby negating the will of the people and undermining the democratic process.
12. Forcing retail into nearly every building along both corridors is inviting more empty stores, and blight and creating just one big long strip mall. It also pushes developers to go higher, since the first floor cannot practically be used for residences.
While putting performance requirements on city staff, we question what performance requirements are put on developers once they have all their approvals. Will they just get approvals while the getting is good, politically, and then sit on them for ten years until the real estate market returns? We thought infill would be placing some reasonable, compatible housing on our vacant lots. Instead we see a redesigning of the entire town as if it were Disneyland. Infill has become Overfill and this coding is overkill, threatening to destroy the character, fabric and defining aesthetics of Ventura.
Sincerely,
Camille Harris
President
Ventura Citizens Organization for Responsible Development
www.vcord.org
648-1902 Dear Council,
You are misleading the public when you quote this proposed building zoning in "stories" as opposed to footage. The footage of the proposed "stories" in this plan are equal to a higher story building than you quote.
We are opposed to the proposed interim midtown coding for the following reasons:
1. An interim zoning code implies a protective measure from incompatible development that would be destructive to the existing neighborhood in character, fabric and aesthetics. It fails.
2. This code encourages the destruction of the character, fabric and aesthetics, rather than downzoning to a protective height of 26 feet, as has been repeatedly requested for three years.
3. Building heights of 35 feet, 45 feet and 75 feet will obscure important viewsheds that currently define the area, now seen over the tops of the buildings.
4. These excessive heights, which are currently absent from the area you are attempting to redefine, will constitute an affective upzoning, since they, though technically allowed, have never been built.
5. The corridor and neighborhood fabric is mainly 18-26 feet in the midtown corridors. This is why the community has been lobbying for height limits of 26 feet for over three years.
6. Over10,600 citizens, concerned citywide about this type of coding that gobbles up our defining views, have initiated a ballot initiative that will establish a community based committee to write a view ordinance.
7. We consider the pushing of this coding, in the middle of a citizen initiated democratic process to be a hostile act to counter the will of the community and derail the democratic process now in progress.
8. The viewsheds of the area are too important to the defining quality of Ventura to be left to the political vagaries of coding. Coding is subject to being defined and redefined by various councils in the future and would be subject to variances passed out to those with the "right connections."
9. The View Protection Ordinance to be written will safeguard the views of Ventura for future generations and could only be changed by a vote of the people, not changed with the stroke of a pen by someone with a special interest.
10. The lack of a historic survey, EIR that addresses drought conditions, community plan, traffic study and fiscal impact studies renders the enactment of this coding to be irresponsible to the citizens.
11. With the real estate market in the tank, there is no reason to rush this coding ahead of the responsible measures and protections needed. The only conclusion to be drawn is that it is an attempt to derail the View Protection Initiative on its way to the ballot, thereby negating the will of the people and undermining the democratic process.
12. Forcing retail into nearly every building along both corridors is inviting more empty stores, and blight and creating just one big long strip mall. It also pushes developers to go higher, since the first floor cannot practically be used for residences.
While putting performance requirements on city staff, we question what performance requirements are put on developers once they have all their approvals. Will they just get approvals while the getting is good, politically, and then sit on them for ten years until the real estate market returns? We thought infill would be placing some reasonable, compatible housing on our vacant lots. Instead we see a redesigning of the entire town as if it were Disneyland. Infill has become Overfill and this coding is overkill, threatening to destroy the character, fabric and defining aesthetics of Ventura.
Sincerely,
Camille Harris
President
Ventura Citizens Organization for Responsible Development
www.vcord.org
648-1902
To: Rick Cole, City Manager:
Why is the City of San Buenaventura not obtaining copies of reports and documents referenced in Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) in an electronic format such as '.pdf ' in order to reduce reproduction and storage costs and enable distribution of the subject documents to the public in electronic format. Since it is a generally accepted practice in both the private and public sectors to develop reports and documents using computer software, exporting the reports and documents in electronic format should not result in additional costs for delivery to the City and subsequently to the public. It is difficult to believe that developers of the requested documents and reports could not provide a free .pdf copy to the City if so requested.
On 20 April 2008, I requested .pdf copies of reports referenced in the Parklands DMND EIR-2459 from the Office of the City Clerk. On 14 May 2008, I received a status report from the Office of the City Clerk stating the requested information was anticipated to be available by 29 May 2008. On 29 May 2008, I received a reply from the City Clerk’s Office the requested documents were only available in hard copy and that I would be responsible for bearing the costs for reproduction/conversion to pdf.
It appears that the response to the request was developed by the Community Development Department even though it was sent by the Office of the City Clerk.
The apparent behavior of the Community Development Department not only contrary to the goal of improving civic engagement, but is contrary to ‘green practices’ by requiring the public to actually travel to City Hall in order to review documents in person and has the appearance of denying relevant EIR information to the public.
Daniel Cormode
805-647-4063
Dear Friends,
A number of people have asked me for an explanation of my vote against the recently adopted 911 “fee.”
Here it is.
1. This proposed “fee” is simply a device to raise funds for the City. It has nothing whatever to do with 911 except that 911 provides a convenient peg to hang a new tax on, one that is generally so highly regarded and considered so essential that I believe the Council and city staff presumed it would be relatively immune from criticism and controversy.
2. The charging of a fee to pay the operating costs of a core public safety service like 911 is inappropriate in my opinion.
3. The specific provisions and mechanisms of this proposal, particularly as related to the “opt-out” provision, are antithetical to an efficient emergency response system. Even though the staff in response to public criticism has now (as predicted) reduced the “opt-out” fee and provided for the first call to be exempt from the charge in any case, the “opt-out” provision still creates a perverse incentive to work around the 911 system that compromises its design and intent.
4. The “fee” as designed will generate far less revenue than projected, if many people choose to “opt-out”, as I believe they will. It will have huge administrative implications and probably huge administrative expense. Complications and expense usually go together. Moreover, until amended at my request, the proposal directed the staff to spend the money immediately that is presumably going to be collected. That is, the staff was recommending that the Council not only proceed with the tax, but to actually spend the money before they knew for sure that sufficient funds were going to be collected.
5. If litigated, the fee is almost certainly going to ultimately, I believe, be ruled a tax, requiring a vote of the electorate. The risk of litigation is high. The cost of defending this ordinance will be huge. Moreover, the reduced “opt-out” fee now may create an additional vulnerability as it is arbitrary and severs the required link between the fee and actual 911 costs. Instead it substitutes a standard of one year’s fees as the benchmark. There is no relationship whatever between one year’s fees and an equitable share of cost. There may also be litigation risk and liability attendant to the “opt-out” provision, should it be argued that an avoidable harm was done to some party as a result of delays or errors in summoning emergency assistance because of it.
Those are the essential reasons for my vote.
Most of you could simply stop reading here.
For those who wish to hear more and have the patience to pursue a fairly complex policy dialogue further, what follows from here is my rationale in some detail.
A key distinction in my mind between a “fee” and a “tax” is whether it pays for a service that is optional or elective in some sense. I do not regard access to the 911 emergency assistance service as an optional service in any sense. It is a core element of modern public safety systems. Further, it is contrary to sound public policy and the public interest to be able to “opt-out.”
Taxes are generally used to pay for services that are essential to the polity in some fundamental way and that individual citizens cannot provide for themselves, but that take the collective effort of the community to provide. The more vital such services are to the community, the more they should be paid for with the first tax dollar. These are services I regard as “core services.” To repeat for the sake of emphasis, for such core services as 911, a tax is the appropriate funding mechanism. When services are optional or elective, and presumably not critical to the existence and proper functioning of a civil society, it is arguably more appropriate for a community to recover the cost of those services by charging a user fee – an amount directly related to the cost of the service that the specific user is consuming.
A second distinguishing characteristic of fee-based services is their variability in use or application from one citizen to another. Without doubt in every community we charge “fees” for some services that fall into a special category where we do not permit people to opt out and use is not elective, services that are indeed vital to the community. Generally that category has some relationship to public health and safety. Public services like water, sewer and trash collection, none of which are voluntary, fall into this category.
While it is true that these public services are vital public health interests for any community and thus cannot be left optional, they still have a consumer quality that sets them apart from such core public safety services as 911, at least in my mind.
First, while you cannot choose to have the service or not, the amount of the service you use is within the consumer’s control to some degree. Second, and more important, consumption of these services is in fact variable. Thus, a flat uniform tax is generally inequitable, and a rated fee that varies with usage is appropriate, which is in fact exactly what is employed in these kinds of fees. I didn’t feel that 911 really shared this differentiating characteristic. Most people do not use 911 often or even ever. Thus, I regard it as a core service whose chief value is that immediate access to it is guaranteed, and whether it is used is irrelevant.
Therein lies the basis for my conclusion that 911 access should be treated as a right purchased with the first tax dollar, not an “add on” amenity subject to fee or rate-based “consumption management”.
Actually, however, the issue of tax or fee per se was not my central concern. My central concern was that treating 911 as a fee-based service in the manner proposed would fundamentally undermine the integrity of the 911 system.
The 911 system is designed to be an easy to use system for centralizing public safety access and improving the efficiency of response. Opting out is counterproductive. It encourages reversion to the use of multiple seven digit phone numbers, received at multiple different locations within the service agency, and subsequently transferred to the central dispatch point, with all the risk and delays of dropped calls, incorrectly interpreted requests and responses, loss of vital information, etc.
When the first emergency medical systems (EMS) in the country were being designed, the engineers and designers realized that these problems, and often even the challenge of finding any appropriate number at all to call for help, were the cause of great delays in response to emergencies, while the inefficiencies of non-centralized intake and dispatch led to huge unnecessary costs in the system. They designed a far more rational system so simple a child can use it and saved taxpayers an enormous amount of money doing it. I am proud to have been a small part of that effort.
In their ignorance of those design considerations and their failure to consider carefully the expertise available to them, the City of Ventura and its Council, albeit without evil intent, have inadvertently launched a very destructive initiative. Unless rescinded, it will predictably become a classic example of triggering the law of unintended consequences. As the old proverb says, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions.
As a result of this action, people now may find it of more concern to avoid a fee than to call for assistance. It won’t be in those cases where someone is being murdered in front of you that we will see a perverse effect of course. At least I should hope not. But it may be in those cases where a drunk driver is weaving down the road, and people could ask themselves if they want to pay $50 or even $17 to call it in, or the mattress that fell off a truck on the freeway and people might say “Oh well, the CHP will soon be along.” It could be in that case where someone sees a suspicious person lurking in the shadows down the street and, now, has yet another reason not to act, or the case where something sounded like what might have been a scream across the street, but nothing now, maybe just our imaginations, let’s wait to see if we hear it again. Or, no worry, someone else will call about the smoke next door. If it’s reall y a fire, they always do. Now, we will have parents who may tell little Johnny to ignore what they tell him in school about 911, that he should never call that number without permission.
Now, because of this proposal, I fear we have a tragedy in the making, and sooner or later someone will be the victim of our poor decisions.
Some of my Council colleagues say not to worry about this stuff, since the first call is going to be free and the Good Samaritan call will be exempt from the fee in any case, but all this does is make the trigger point for the perverse consequence the second call instead of the first, and the ordinance is written so that the Good Samaritan relief is applicable only if the call is placed away from home or business. Perhaps they didn’t actually read it that carefully.
Further, no one has given serious thought to the administrative burden of dealing with all those requests for relief, and if they are simply approved willy-nilly on demand, which is the likely fall back for an over-burdened staff, the result will be to forego the revenue they are seeking, add substantial service management burden, anger the citizen who must apply for the relief and jump through numerous administrative hoops, increase administrative costs, and further erode the system by generating citizen frustration and loss of confidence. Multiply these effects exponentially in a major incident like a large fire in the neighborhood or a big traffic accident where dozens or even hundreds of people may be calling legitimately, not knowing someone else has already done so. Or maybe they won’t call at all, because after all someone else will have done so. “We can save our one call for something that directly affects us.”
Finally, since the largest volume of 911 calls come from the senior community, the very community who are most likely to live on fixed and low incomes, seniors will have both a high incentive to “opt-out”, while having the greatest need and highest likelihood of multiple calls. Or perhaps they will feel they cannot afford the risk of opting out, at least after the first call. Then they are forced to opt in. The “opt-out” provision, even as revised and perhaps more so as revised, is thus inherently discriminatory and inequitable.
It’s these kinds of thoughts that led me to my vote. It isn’t just a simple tax versus fee issue. It has a lot to do with good service design, thoughtful legislation, and public trust in government, all of which are compromised by this inappropriate rush to generate a few dollars more in city revenue.
But even if you just look at it as a simple tax versus fee issue, the voters and taxpayers of this state have determined that they do not want to pay any new taxes without voting on them. That is the rule of law now. I may not have enacted that law or agree with it entirely, as I believe strongly in representative democracy and tend to discourage ballot box legislation, and I take my personal responsibilities as your law-maker very seriously, but it was the people’s decision. Using the artifice of calling the 911 surcharge a “fee” to avoid the voter approved restrictions on the legislative power of taxation is unethical and inappropriate in my simple world. It is tantamount to committing a fraud upon the people.
So, let it be put to the voters as they have asked or, actually, as they have required. Let there be a public debate over the question of whether to impose a 911 tax. Let me give the voters my concerns about how it might work and why it is a poor idea, then let them vote their preference. I’m OK with that. I generally have found that voters, if given enough information, usually do figure out what is good and what is not and can make sound and reasonable decisions.
Then there is that other slight ethical issue. The fact is that the fee, as I mentioned first, is not intended and not needed in any way to pay for the actual 911 system, but is simply a device being attached to 911 to raise money for other purposes. While the City is prepared to put in the assurance that it will never reduce the financial commitment to 911 (or, if it does, it will reduce the fee), that is a meaningless, if dramatic, gesture. It is an easy guarantee to make because the money is not in any way related to 911’s actual operation, and no one has any intent to reduce (or expand) 911 services. The fact is that the only actual reference to spending the money on 911 upgrades was added recently, almost as an afterthought, to head off precisely this criticism. Worse, there is no clear connection between what much of the money will be spent for and the avowed goal of r educing response times to serious emergencies or crimes in any case.
The money will be used putatively to buy more police and fire personnel, but since it actually creates a return of current funds to the General Fund, it can be argued that it would go to pay for anything the General Fund buys, including sand cleaning subsidies to those million dollar homeowners on the Pierpont beach or marketing support to the merchants served by the DVO or to the fee rebates granted developers or to the multi-million dollar relief granted to Olsen Corp. to reduce its Quimby obligations for parks downtown, or even the cost of moving a “historic” hamburger stand (all of which I also consistently opposed, most of the time as the lone vote against, as well).
Some of our citizens believe each and every one of these recent expenditures of our Council is inappropriate. Many would suggest that, if our Council were just more prudent, there would be no need for the 911 fee to begin with, but that in any case it is simply an unethical ruse to disguise the purpose in the robes of 911 services, when the truth is that the money will clearly pay for other things entirely – expenditures on which many would not concur.
There is also the matter of the ease with which a “fee” can be increased year after year. It’s not so easy to do that with a tax, of course. Now, they will say that this fee has a limited escalator built into it, but read it carefully, my friends. As I read it the Consumer Price Indexed annual escalator for the fee actually only guarantees that the fee must increase by that amount each year. It is within the discretion of any future Council at any time to increase the fee more than that amount. It is the current policy of the Council to increase fees annually to recover the full cost of the service in question, unless bona fide reasons are found to subsidize the service by charging less than the true cost. Voters might anticipate naturally that these fees could grow quickly in future years after public scrutiny has diminished. Ask yourself when was the last time there was a lot of press coverage and public attention wh en the City “adjusted” its standard fee schedules.
The voters are often well served by finding a voice they trust and heeding it. I am fortunate to be regarded by many in our community as such a trusted voice, at least for the moment and on this issue. Whether it lasts for a moment or a lifetime, I try to take great care not to betray that trust. I hope my explanation helps you understand my reasoning and reinforces the confidence some of you have placed in me.
In sum, I opposed the 911 tax not because I am opposed to “public safety”. I voted NO because I am for public safety, and this measure may do the greatest violence to public safety of any proposal I have ever seen this Council consider in all my time in the City. I voted against it because I am for responsible government. I voted against it because I am for fiscal prudence and financial integrity, and I refuse to be manipulated into making unwise decisions in the name of paying allegiance to alleged “public safety.”
As I said this evening in Council session, there is something very wrong when the leadership of a community stoops to deception and sleight of hand to achieve its goals. The affront is only made worse when it is perpetrated behind the shield of “public safety.” It is worse still when the very act clothed in the guise of “public safety” may, in the final analysis, undermine the people’s true safety and well-being.
With apologies for the length of this explanation,
Neal Andrews
City Councilman
Dear Council,
It appears you are
missing my initial letter to Mabi Plisky, our City Clerk, outlining our
understanding with the city, requested from me by the City Clerk and dated December 7th.
It may help you understand the frustrations of our 10,972 petition signers. You
have only included the second letter that the City Clerk requested from me in
your staff report for the council meeting Jan.14, 2008, item 7. The first
letter illustrates that there was a prior understanding that was fair and
cooperative between the proponents and the city. The new strategy of the city
appears to one of stalling and obstructing our democratic process.
Obviously, the longer the
process is stalled, the more approvals for view blocking buildings and projects
can be approved, thereby negating the need for view protection, resulting in
irreparable harm being done to our community. We believed our representatives
to be charged with representing the will of the people, rather than to promote
their own ideology and personal agendas, so invited you into the process.
As you can see from the first
letter to the City Clerk, dated
Full
Count Was to Be Done by December 20th
The City Clerk initially
instructed me, the week of December 3, to examine the 500 sample from
the county for sufficiency. I was instructed, by her, to have a letter to her
by
City Would Pay for the Count
Since They Lost Signatures Under Their Care
The City Clerk stated that if
we could not find the 500 sample to be flawed, then we would need to enclose a
check for $16,400. to pay for a full count to. If we found the 500 sample
to be deficient due to the city’s or county’s work, then the city would pay for
it.
The random sample was, indeed,
fatally flawed, and a full count was due us. Because our citizens’ signatures
were handled carelessly, 310 had been lost and had not been included in the
sample, as required by law. A full count was to be done at the city’s cost,
since the error occurred while the petitions were in their care. Believing the
initial communication from the City Clerk, we expected the full count to be
done by the 20th of December.
Change
In Direction:Certificate Issued on Flawed Sample
At some point during this
process, the City Attorney, Mr. Collone intervened to inform me that he
planned to, rather than allow the City Clerk to order a full count of our
petitions as she had committed to us, direct her instead, to issue a
Certificate of Sufficiency, though the 500 sample was clearly flawed. This certificate
would delay the vote until 2009, when, in our opinion, few views would be left
to protect. This Certificate of Sufficiency for 2009 was subsequently
issued, based upon a fatally flawed random sample that did not include the 310
lost signatures. One would presume the certificate to be invalid. In spite of
these irregularities, the Certificate of Sufficiency was issued to me by the
City Clerk on
I Was
Directed to Re-date or Re-write a Second Letter
I was directed by the
City Clerk to either re-date my letter of December 7th
or re-write it with a date later than December 11, the
date on the Certificate of Sufficiency on the flawed sample of 500, giving us a
ballot date in 2009. I complied and that is the letter you have in your package.
I request that the first letter, attached herewith, dated December 7th,
also be included in the public record, so the record gives a full and complete
account of what has taken place.
Expediting
Approvals While Stalling View Protection
With the city’s newly
strengthened efforts to expedite approvals for view blocking projects, View
Protection would be a useless exercise by the time View Protection came to the
voters in 2009. In fact, even one year may be too late. As 10,972 citizens have
indicated their desire to have a say before the views are paved over, stalling
with questionable legal tactics only serves to undermine the will of the people
and the initiative process and further waste taxpayer dollars to promote the
city’s opposition to the will of the people.
We
Tried for Inclusivity to Bring Closer Relationship
I remind you that we did not
need to invite the city to participate in writing a View Protection
Ordinance. We idealistically believed that this could bring our community
together on a common cause, building trust and workability between the
community, developer and business community along with the city. Our invitation
to the city to engage in the process was meant as a generous and trusting
gesture to deepen and heal the community’s relationship with the city..
In retrospect, we could have just worked with the business and developer
community to get the view ordinance completed quickly so we could all get on
with our lives. They have to pay cash for legal costs just as we do, so are
focused on a fair and expeditious completion of the project.
Impacts
of View Protection Biased with Conjectures Lacking Fact and Credibility
The staff reports to be
presented January 14th on the imagined negative impacts of the
View Initiative are a perfect example of the city staff and City Council
bias, with Jim Monahan’s exception. These reports prepared by city
staff to support the City Council’s position lack facts and objectivity, and
are replete with personal opinions, conjectures and distortions The reports
lack credibility, and the findings, based upon imagined assumptions are
purely speculative, by the staff reports authors’ own admissions. How can you
expect an objective report to be done, for view protection, by the staff
that advocates and promotes view blocking corridors? Of course it supports the
council’s aversion to the initiative process and this initiative in
particular. Saying there are no impacts from 75 foot buildings, that
would remain for our lifetime, while impacts on a 26 foot temporary hold
to protect residential areas would be devastating, is hard to fathom.
Especially since a view ordinance would likely begin at a 30 foot height.
Spending
the Citizens’ Tax Dollars Unnecessarily
In a double whammy, we are
required to also come up with the money to defend the 10,972 citizens’ right to
have a choice on saving the city’s valuable views, while also funding the
city’s opposition to their having that right through our tax dollars. Already,
we, as taxpayers, are being dinged $20,000 because the careless handling
of the public’s signatures triggered a recount.
I say enough of this expensive
stalling game, using our tax dollars to fund personal agendas and
necessitating the spending of our own personal savings to defend our right to
complete the initiative process in a timely manner. In the interest of
the community, we request that you put your own agendas aside and get on the
side of the 10,972 people who want a View Protection Ordinance. Sit down
with us and join in the writing of it, so the moratorium is short in duration.
Most Southern California cities with views that attract tourists have or are
already in the process of writing it. Santa Barbara
recently passed their own. Ventura needs to get on board with its citizens and
other Southern California cities who recognize the value and gift of being
placed in the center of a 360 degree beautiful natural setting. Concrete
is forever and should be poured with caution.
We invite you to join us and
be part of the solution and rebuild the community’s trust in
government. We are proceeding positively with this task and will invite
the business community and developer community’s engagement as well. Clearly,
10,972 citizens have a concern about their views disappearing, and though we
would like for the council to join us, we feel a strong responsibility to
respond to those citizens’ concerns with an ordinance in which they are
stakeholders and feel compelled to proceed with that process as a community
organization if we feel the city is only interested in undermining the
initiative before you.
Sincerely,
Camille Harris
Acting President
05/30/2008
