County Backs Plan to Help High-Tech Firms Adapt

Ventura County officials Tuesday hailed a long-range plan developed to help local aerospace, electronic and other high-tech companies wean themselves from defense contracts and adapt to the commercial marketplace.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously expressed support for the new defense-conversion strategy, designed to assist defense contractors in a countywide transition to a peacetime economy.

Using a $118,000 grant from the county, San Francisco-based DRI/McGraw-Hill put together a plan that outlines a variety of techniques for helping local defense industries convert their facilities to meet future needs.

The 96-page blueprint--called the Ventura Defense Partnership--also outlines ways to educate and retrain defense industry workers so that they can transfer their skills to other jobs.

“You should take great pride in Ventura’s leadership,” DRI/McGraw Hill consultant Jim Gollub told supervisors Tuesday. “Ventura is becoming a region that is discovering itself and doing the right things.”

The push for a defense-conversion plan sprang from last year’s efforts to save local bases from being targeted by the nation’s base-closure commission.

Historically, defense contracts and military bases have pumped more than $1 billion a year into Ventura County’s economy and account for about 15% of local jobs.

But with recent cutbacks in military spending, county officials and others quickly realized that a strategy was needed to aid the transition from defense work to new commercial endeavors.

“I think it’s really exciting,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said of the defense-conversion plan. “I think it bodes well for our future.”

Added Supervisor Maggie Kildee: “I really think the board members should take some pride. I think we are seeing the fruits of our wrestling and struggling in a number of efforts to make sure Ventura County is enhanced and continues to be enhanced.”

In endorsing the Ventura Defense Partnership, officials ordered county staff members to hunt for state and federal money to help bolster the defense-conversion effort.

And other supporters said they would be going throughout the county to raise money to help the plan get moving.

“This defense strategy is a road map,” said Bill Simmons, chairman of the Ventura Defense Partnership. “It’s up to us as a region to decide which roads to travel.”