Chamber Met With Ventura Officials to Strengthen Ties

While three pro-business candidates mapped their path to victory in the City Council race this fall, Ventura Chamber of Commerce officials were meeting quietly with City Manager John Baker in an effort to make city staff more friendly to business, officials said Wednesday.

The election of Greg Carson, Jack Tingstrom and Tom Buford will tip the balance of power from slow growth toward pro-business on the council, at a time when city staff has begun cooperating with chamber officials to lure new businesses to Ventura, chamber spokesman Mel Sheeler said. The city’s commercial vacancy rate is 28%, he said.

The new council members made few predictions or promises Wednesday about their first actions in office. Instead, they called for unity on a council that has been marked for two years by bickering.

“The first goal I have is just to get a council that’s working together,” said Carson, the front-runner with 10,490 votes. “I put in a call to all the council members that are still on the council, to try to set up a meeting so I can get to know them, set up a rapport with them.”

Buford, who won his seat with 7,701 votes, said voters repeatedly told him that they wanted a more unified City Council. “Time after time, we were told that they want a council that gets along and doesn’t fight all night.”

“I would want to see us all come together somehow and show a united front in some way and let the city know we can work together,” said Tingstrom, who finished second with 7,949 votes. “I’d like to see a business-friendly government. I’d like to see when a business wants to come to town, we’d welcome it with open arms.”

City Manager Baker and department heads have begun working toward that goal for several months in informal meetings with Chamber of Commerce officials. Baker said they will hold monthly meetings.

“We really do have many of the same goals,” Baker said Wednesday. “Just being able to have people say, ‘Gee, this is not a bad place to have a business, to go and do business, to go and purchase’--all those things to make your town more viable.”

Baker said he and the department heads have not drafted any specific plans, but they have discussed ways that Ventura can keep businesses from leaving and encourage others to settle in town in the midst of the nationwide recession.

And he said some Chamber of Commerce ideas could reach the new pro-business council in the form of proposed ordinances or changes in city procedures.

Baker said one of the new alliance’s first goals will be to simplify the way new businesses must apply for permits, which brought frequent complaints from chamber members.

“I commend Mr. Baker for taking the approach that he has taken, for us to work together for the common good of the community,” the chamber’s Sheeler said.

But the new council--including pro-business Councilman Jim Monahan and slow-growth members Cathy Bean, Todd Collart and Gary Tuttle--will face more complex issues than Ventura’s economy when they are sworn in and elect a new mayor on Dec. 2.

Lame-duck Mayor Richard Francis pointed out that two new studies on water will reach the council by June. The council will have to choose between options for increasing the city’s water supplies, including state water, a seawater desalination plant and even icebergs.

“We elect people who . . . should do the homework and make the decisions,” Francis said. While some believe that the taxpayers should choose the best water options for Ventura, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for the council to abdicate authority,” he said.

But Tuttle cautioned that the new alliance between the chamber and city staff--and the suddenly pro-business council--will find it hard to bring sudden changes to Ventura.

“It’s a change, there’s no doubt about it, but what I see is the people that were just elected having a difficult time satisfying their constituency,” Tuttle said Wednesday. “They were elected on several assumptions.”

Tuttle said Ventura Keys residents assume that the new council will decide that the city, not the Keys homeowners, should spend more than $2 million for dredging their back-yard waterways.

And he said owners of unreinforced masonry buildings assume that the pro-business council will agree to pay for earthquake-proofing the buildings or eliminate the ordinance requiring the work.

Most important and least likely, Tuttle said, advocates of connecting Ventura to the state water pipeline assume that the council can and will do it within a year.

But to make any of these changes, the council would have to alter the budget by cutting city services such as police salaries, or raising utility costs such as trash rates to pay for them, he said.

“Yeah, maybe there’ll be a speedup in the decision making,” Tuttle said. “But there are legal hoops to jump through. . . . There’s some tough issues out there still coming that people are expecting them to make the right answers on. And when they make those answers, there’s going to be some budget shortfalls that some people out there are not going to like.”

Another change is that Monahan, so often on the losing side of 6-1 votes on the slow-growth council, will have three allies. Gone are two members with whom he often argued, Deputy Mayor Donald Villeneuve, who came in fourth Tuesday with 5,862 votes, and Francis, who did not run for reelection.

“One of the things that pleases me most is that now Jim Monahan doesn’t have six people who are trying to persuade him to leave his seat from sheer frustration,” said Carolyn Leavens, spokeswoman for Venturans for Responsible Government. The pro-business group of ranchers, bankers, merchants and unions backed the three winners’ campaigns with about $40,000 worth of advertisements, signs and flyers.

“The vote signals a change of attitude in the council, a city more friendly towards business, a council that can get things done,” Monahan said. “It will be nice to have somebody to talk to.”

Tuttle said the new council should not elect Monahan mayor.

“I think it’s a time for healing, and not a time for vengeance and gloating,” Tuttle said. “I don’t see how Jim Monahan as mayor would be positive.”

But Patagonia Inc. spokesman Kevin Sweeney predicted, “This city is not going to change dramatically because these people are elected.

“They all said there’s no need to amend the General Plan in this decade,” said Sweeney, whose company endorsed the losing slow-growth campaigns of incumbent Villeneuve and write-in candidate Steve Bennett. “I don’t think this means you’re going to see a pro-growth City Council or a major change in the way the city feels or looks.”

Times staff writer Santiago O’Donnell contributed to this story.