A Regional Rationale

The frontier-minded folk of Ventura County put great stock in independent thinking and self-reliance. The very idea of putting the common good ahead of one’s own or one’s city’s interests seems just a little suspicious.

And this attitude costs us.

Three issues in the headlines last week demonstrate why we need countywide cooperation and strong regional leadership in the months ahead.

* Highway 118: The Board of Supervisors stepped in to downshift a high-momentum plan to upgrade two sections of California 118. Caltrans and the Ventura County Transportation Commission cooked up the idea, cheered on by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which envisions 118 and California 34 as a beeline truck route to the Port of Hueneme. The proposed improvements cannot realistically be viewed as anything other than baby steps toward four-laning the whole road.

What might Moorpark and Somis think about this plan to turn their main street into a freight corridor? What effect might this have on the farm-preservation desire that voters expressed so clearly in November? If safety is in fact the main concern, why is Caltrans pushing capacity-increasing extra lanes and claiming there’s no need for an environmental impact report?

The supervisors wisely took this plan out of overdrive and instructed county staff to examine its impact on the entire region--in the wider context of its influence on land use and growth patterns. In the new reality brought by the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources initiatives, that is how all infrastructure changes must be examined from now on.

It may well be that four-laning California 118 is ultimately the right thing to do. SOAR may neutralize critics’ fears that a wider highway will surely bring urban sprawl to the green Las Posas Valley. But this one seemingly small decision has big-picture implications and demands to be reviewed in big-picture context. We’ll be seeing more and more of those.

* SOAR Follow-Through: The same day, the board balked at creating an “implementation committee” to carry out the details of land-use Measures A and B. Instead it asked county staff to determine whether the SOAR Measure B rendered moot most or all of Measure A. Amid that and other uncertainties, one fact shines clearly: To work, the measures will require countywide thinking and leadership.

* Helping the Homeless: Meanwhile, more than two dozen officials and social-service advocates squeezed into a conference room to try once more to forge a countywide strategy to get the homeless off the streets. This meeting was catalyzed by Ventura’s bold if unpopular decision to rebel against a long-ago cobbled-together system that puts most of the burden on Ventura and Oxnard.

The undeniable good will and best intentions of those present, including Supervisor Kathy Long, were marred by the absence of any official representatives from the East County. Ventura is right that this problem has been kicked around too long; it is time for a total countywide reexamination.

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Who will herd these cats? The Ventura Council of Governments has not proven to be much more effective than the Ventura County Assn. of Governments, which it replaced in the early 1990s. The Board of Supervisors is right to take the lead in bringing countywide perspective to issues that demand it. If cities want to do their part and help create real regional solutions, they should increase the effort they put into VCOG and make it work.

If ever there was a time for the county and its 10 cities to pull together, that time is now.