Tuttle Getting Winded After 8 Years on City Council

Since Councilman Gary Tuttle burst onto the political scene in 1989, his City Council career has stretched into a long-distance run.

The final lap of his eight-year stint--these days as one of a two-person environmental minority--is starting to feel like Heartbreak Hill.

“I’m becoming an old man at a young age,” the former world-class runner said. “It’s time to move on.”

November will mark the end of Tuttle’s second term on the council. He announced in December that he would not run again, on the night the council approved the final link of a pet project--the Ventura bike trail.

Tuttle has been portrayed as everything from hero of the people to anti-business villain to bumbling politician.

In 1993, he appeared as a smelly fish--”Tuna Tuttle”--in a derogatory campaign ad paid for by thrift store magnate Ray Ellison. In 1991, he was lampooned as “Gary B. Fuddle,” a wishy-washy ex-athlete in a political satire about Ventura politics.

But in the real world of politics, he helped raise thousands of dollars to keep the ailing Avenue Library from closing for three years, and he helped double the city budget for social programs in 1990.

Some will mourn his withdrawal, while others quietly celebrate, but few dispute that the departure of the sometimes testy, always passionate Populist with the black pearl stud in his ear will leave Ventura short one of its most outspoken champions of slow growth and the environment.

“Gary has been a continual advocate for restrained growth and development and sensitivity about the impacts of growth and development on existing residents,” said Everett Millais, Ventura’s director of community services.

Tuttle came to the council in 1989 with Cathy Bean and Todd Collart. All three rode to victory on a wave of anti-business, slow-growth sentiment that swept the city in the late 1980s, assisted in their bid for office by a hefty cash infusion from Ventura-based Patagonia Inc.

Serving with incumbents Donald Villeneuve, Jim Monahan, Richard Francis and John J. McWherter, Tuttle recalls it as a heady time when ordinary citizens with grass-roots connections held political sway.

But in 1991, the pendulum began to swing back to a more pro-growth, pro-business climate. Mound Nursery owner Greg Carson, Jack Tingstrom and labor attorney Tom Buford were the top three vote-getters, joining Monahan, Tuttle, Bean and Collart.

In 1993, the pro-business members retained a slight majority, with the addition of former banker Rosa Lee Measures. Environmentalist Steve Bennett was also elected that year.

In 1995, the council shifted even more sharply toward pro-business interests, with Jim Friedman and Ray Di Guilio joining Mayor Tingstrom, Monahan and Measures to form a solid five-person majority.

For his first two years, Tuttle was in the majority, the next four in the minority. These days he often votes alone, or as one of a 5-2 minority, a change that’s brought him rising frustration.

His decision not to run followed a rocky autumn where the council grappled with a proposal for a $10.5-million ballpark on the celery fields behind the auto mall south of the Ventura Freeway.

Tuttle’s position as one of the most outspoken critics of the project threw him into the limelight. When he was ousted from the ballpark negotiating team in late September, the public rallied behind him, calling his running store to express support, and jamming his mailbox with letters.

That brought a momentary adrenaline rush at the prospect of a political battle, but he could not shake a deeper feeling: Politics just wasn’t much fun anymore.

“Instead of a force for positive change, the council became a negative forum,” he said. He feels comfortable leaving now because he thinks he can find an ideological successor, one who will take up his slow-growth mantle.

Tuttle’s family came to Ventura in 1947. His father, Bob Tuttle, coached at Ventura High School, where a gym is named after him.

The slight, down-to-earth Tuttle first gained local fame as a phenomenal athlete--excelling in baseball, basketball and running.

In high school he was involved in student government. When he was drafted by the Army, he became a conscientious objector--agreeing to serve, but refusing to carry a weapon. By college, he knew he wanted to become a council member.

But it was running that consumed him. In 1985, he placed second in the Boston Marathon.

After suffering an injury, he decided to run for office in 1989. To many constituents, he is probably more familiar as a fleet-footed figure pounding the pavement from the beach promenade to the orchards of east Ventura and into the hills of Ojai than as a button-down politician.

Tuttle estimates he has covered 200,000 miles of Ventura in his daily runs, helping him notice the small details of development that many car-bound Venturans might not.

As he sells New Balance shoes and Speedos at his store, Inside Track, he greets constituents, fields reporters’ questions, and keeps his finger on the pulse of Ventura.

“Gary’s got a style. He’s got his store, you can drop by--that’s where he does his council business,” said former Councilman Tom Buford, who served with Tuttle and attended Buena High School with him. “He’s a hang-loose, hang-out kind of a guy.”

Tuttle will leave behind him an eclectic legacy--harder to categorize than the slow-growth label many have applied to him. Colleagues, friends and city officials say it is his stubborn clinging to beliefs that distinguishes him.

His younger sister, Trudy Arriaga, principal of Sheridan Way Elementary School in Ventura, said conviction is a family value.

“Our parents always instilled in us to be active members in our community, to stand up for what we believe,” Arriaga said. “I think that’s what he does well. He’s not afraid to say what he believes, no matter what people think.”

To the frustration of some, he will leave without having revealed who vandalized the Two Trees, Ventura’s most dominant hillside landmark. Tuttle said in 1990 that he knew the identity of one of the tree vandals, but he refused to reveal the name.

Politically, he has worked to increase social services funding, to redevelop downtown, to complete the Ventura bike trail, and to keep the Avenue Library open.

In 1990, the Ventura City Council, influenced by Tuttle and its other two new members, nearly doubled the city’s financial help to nonprofit groups and public agencies that aid the poor and disadvantaged by allotting $265,650.

When the Avenue Library was on the brink of shutting its doors, he worked with several other council members and volunteers to raise $85,000 to keep it open.

When he arrived at City Hall, no one was talking about downtown redevelopment. Now, people talk about a renaissance marked by a 10-screen movie theater and a four-story parking structure.

He has left his mark in other more controversial ways. When Ventura had a chance to open a Cal State campus on the rolling hillsides of Taylor Ranch, Tuttle and others lobbied successfully to keep the land pristine.

Councilman Monahan sees politicians of Tuttle’s ilk as Ventura’s nemeses, and he is not alone.

“That whole Patagonia group,” Monahan said, referring to the environmentalist majority that once dominated the council, “they really killed Ventura.” He called the defeat of the Cal State campus at Taylor Ranch “one of the worst things that ever happened to this city.”

Looking back, Tuttle said the thing that has been hardest for him has been watching his family suffer political mudslinging.

“The name Tuttle has always been famous in Ventura,” he says. “It’s been hard for the family to have negative things said about a Tuttle man.”

His sister, Trudy, says it has been especially difficult for the next generation. She describes family gatherings where opinionated Tuttles throw themselves into spirited political debate.

But when Ray Ellison took out his smelly fish ad in the last election, Tuttle’s family members say they suffered. His wife, Ruth Vomund, says she is relieved he will not run again.

As Tuttle heads into the homestretch of his City Council career, he hints that there may be other races yet to come. His sister agrees.

“I think he will surface again. I just have a feeling,” she says. “I can’t imagine him not being really politically active in some way.”