Communities Benefit From Gift-Giving by Residents : Fund raising: People pay to have names permanently placed on projects. Thousand Oaks has sold 800 bricks for Civic Arts Plaza courtyard.

When Jeanne Stapp’s children reach into their stockings on Christmas, they’re going to find what she calls the perfect gift--bricks.

The bricks, which are represented in the Christmas stockings by a certificate, are actually part of a fund-raising drive for the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. People pay to have their names engraved on bricks in the new plaza’s courtyard.

“Can you think of anything better,” asked Stapp, who has purchased three bricks for family members. “It gives people a chance to have a permanent place in the ongoing history of Thousand Oaks.”

The civic plaza fund-raising effort is one of several across the county that offers residents the chance to buy holiday gifts--such as planks, bricks and park benches--that contribute to the betterment of their community.

“We’ve found a way to keep projects going and, at the same time, get the people of the city personally involved,” Camarillo Assistant City Manager Larry Davis said. “I think this kind of thing is really catching on.”

Based on the early Christmas sales, Davis is right.

Thousand Oaks has sold 800 bricks in two months. In three months, Ventura has sold 2,300 planks on its pier; donors’ names are engraved on a granite marker. And Camarillo has already sold out of bricks it was selling to raise money to refurbish Constitution Park.

“I think people see this as a really clever gift idea,” said Debbie Solomon, Ventura recreation supervisor. “People really like having their names on community projects. They like the idea of their children going back and seeing it.”

Many people have purchased planks on the pier for their newborn or young children, Solomon said.

“Parents recognize this as a way of preserving the future for their children, so putting it in the name of a child is very appropriate.”

In addition to the planks on the pier (which cost $100 and can be purchased by calling 1-800-880-PIER) and the bricks for the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza (which cost $50 to $60 and can be purchased by calling Alliance for the Arts, 371-1391), several other holiday gifts are being offered by community groups:

* Ventura County’s library services agency has placed “book trees” in more than 20 bookstores and libraries across the county with the goal of adding 2,000 titles to its 750,000-book collection.

Those who purchase books for the library can have their name attached inside the book jacket.

* The city of Camarillo is selling six benches, at $800 apiece, and 13 lampposts, for $1,800 each, in Constitution Park.

“They can have their own personal bench on a circular walkway in the new park,” Davis said. “Of course, other people get to sit there too.”

* Cal State Northridge’s Ventura Campus is selling a cookbook for $10 that includes recipes from Ventura City Councilman Gary Tuttle and former President Ronald Reagan.

*

While these gift ideas come with a tangible return, they are not the only offerings from public agencies. Cities around the county have established dozens of funds meant to draw private money to support public projects.

The city of Ventura has established five such accounts, according to Kate McLean, president of the Ventura County Community Foundation, which manages more than 80 endowments countywide.

Donors in Ventura support senior services, youth recreation programs, the Special Olympics, general services and the pier, McLean said.

The concept of private fund raising for public programs is not new, McLean said. Los Angeles has been doing it since 1917.

In Ventura County, she said, it has grown increasingly popular as the economy has worsened.

“Economic conditions have forced people to look for new ways to support public projects which are critical to our community,” McLean said.

In the five years that the Community Foundation has been in existence, public projects have found success in this form of fund raising, McLean said.

In the county library system, which has seven different “friends” groups, private donations have kept doors open longer at several branches and prevented the permanent closure of the Avenue Library in Ventura.

The fund-raising efforts do have a downside, said Dixie Adeniran, library director. There is the risk that agencies will become too dependent on private money.

“I think we are looking at the reality of our situation right now,” Adeniran said. “But certainly, in the long run, public agencies need to be run on public dollars.

“The ideal would be that private funds would be the icing on the cake, rather than the eggs and flour that make the cake,” she said.

*

But Andrew Voth, director of the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, said he looks at the move toward private dollars as a means of escaping his city’s financial crisis.

“As long as they can support us at the minimum level while we accumulate an endowment, I think this is a great way for us to get out from underneath the city’s problems,” Voth said.

“This is not an overnight solution,” he added. “But the way things are right now, the city just can’t be a reliable source of funding.”