Council Votes for Programs to Give Businesses Boost : Ventura: City reverses policy of slow growth and OKs plans to waive some permit fees and offer counseling for entrepreneurs to help stimulate the economy.

In an effort to stimulate the city’s struggling business community, the Ventura City Council on Monday approved waiving permit fees for businesses that move into empty buildings and providing free technical assistance to small-business owners.

The council’s unanimous action is part of a larger push by a trio of council members who want to turn around the city’s image of being hostile to business.

“You need to have a business community that’s vibrant to provide a tax base to provide the clean beaches and the clean parks,” said Mayor Gregory Carson, one of the three members of the council elected last year on a pro-business platform.

Councilmen Tom Buford and Jack Tingstrom also vowed to tilt the city in favor of businesses, after the previous council had voted for two years to control growth rather than stimulate the local economy.

All three are businessmen and members of the Chamber of Commerce.

Since the trio took office, several programs and ordinances designed to help businesses have been approved:

* After two years of strict water rationing, the council in April approved a plan that will allow new commercial development if builders replace water-wasting toilets in existing buildings with low-flush models.

* The council decided later that month to consider allowing some small housing projects that had been stalled because of the moratorium on water hookups to go forward.

* The council in July approved changing the rate structure for business tax licenses so that smaller firms would pay less and larger companies would pay more.

* Buenaventura Mall officials announced plans in October to nearly double the shopping center’s size, which would make it the largest in the county. Officials said that city staff and council lobbied for the expansion.

In the first program approved Monday, businesses that are expanding, remodeling or moving into an empty building through June 30, 1993, would qualify for free planning permits.

City officials said a business could save up to thousands of dollars under the program.

“We’re starting a trend I hope other communities will piggy-back on,” Carson said.

“We have been out there relaxing restrictions for businesses, but we haven’t been tooting our own horn. . . . There’s still a perception out there that this is a tough place to do business.”

The council also voted Monday to give $25,000 to the Valley Economic Development Center, a nonprofit corporation that will offer free counseling to Ventura businesses about advertising, financing, accounting, marketing and preparing a business plan.

In interviews earlier Monday, Carson and Buford emphasized that the council as a whole--and not just the trio--has shifted its views toward business. Many of the votes have been unanimous, and other council members who favor slow growth support their plans to make the council friendlier toward business, they said. Tingstrom could not be reached for comment.

“I think the poor economy, the state budget cuts, give us an opportunity for leadership,” Buford said.

Councilman Gary Tuttle, a slow-growth advocate, said, “I haven’t gone along kicking and screaming. I’m a small businessman; I’m supportive of what we’re doing.”

Bob Alviani, a vice president at the Chamber of Commerce, said, “I believe the current council has moved in a much more supportive way to the business community. They know that the business community is going to be the answer to a lot of the problems that they face.”

Everett Millais, director of community development, said the recession has made it politically easier for the council to get support for such programs and that some of them may have been passed even without the new council members.

“I have not encountered many folks out there who will come out and say, ‘I’m anti-business,’ ” Millais said. “There is an attitudinal change.”

But Carolyn Leavens, who led a group of business owners that aggressively backed the trio, called the council programs window dressing and said she was particularly disappointed in the panel’s handling of the water issue.

In the last election, the council decided to let citizens cast advisory votes on whether the city should build a pipeline to import state water or build a desalination plant. Leavens, a state water supporter, said she thought the council was better informed and more qualified to make the decision than the voters, who opted for desalination.

“I’m not going to say they’re political cowards, but they didn’t want to take the heat for it,” Leavens said.

Richard Reynolds, who owns a welding and machine company that employs about 10 workers, also said he thinks the city’s business climate has not improved.

Reynolds said he is moving from Ventura to Charlotte, N.C., soon because the state, county and city have too many regulations. Reynolds said his permit fees last year were about $150, and this year they doubled.

“The City Council is trying to gouge the small businessman any way they can. It’s impossible to do business here,” Reynolds said. “I’m going to take my share of the tax base, my customers, and leave, and never come back.”

Business owners such as Reynolds are still being neglected by the city, said Councilman Jim Monahan, a longtime business supporter who agrees that the council has not done enough.

Monahan said it is still too early to tell whether the implementation of the pro-business programs will be successful.

“I’ve been here the longest, and I guess I have the right to be skeptical,” said Monahan, who has been on the council for almost 17 years. “I think the philosophy has shifted. They’re headed in the right direction, and I just hope they continue.”