Times Endorsements

On Tuesday voters in Ventura will choose three City Council members and decide yea or nay on Measure C, the first referendum under the city’s 1995 Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative. Here is a recap of Times endorsements:

City Council

Of the 12 candidates, we believe Jim Friedman, Doug Halter and Carl Morehouse are best equipped to build a thriving, increasingly livable city. These candidates have demonstrated a solid grasp of what it will take to restore the city’s leadership role as seat of a county that suffers from too much intercity competition and too little regional cooperation.

Incumbent Friedman, currently taking his turn as mayor, was instrumental in negotiating a truce with Oxnard to end 15 years of costly lawsuits over the cities’ dueling shopping malls. And as chair of the Ventura County Library Commission, Friedman is part of the county’s greatest success story in bridging the rift between county government and the 10 cities. Those are two examples of the sort of regional teamwork it is going to take to overcome the destructive competition for sales tax dollars. Like Halter and Morehouse, Friedman supports a regional sports park in East Ventura, improved mass transit and turning the big dreams expressed in the Seize the Future campaign into a blueprint for tomorrow’s Ventura.

Doug Halter embodies the passion and “do it” spirit that is driving the Downtown renaissance. He is president of the Downtown Community Council and a member of 16 other local boards or commissions. While others were talking about restoring Ventura’s faded luster, Halter converted an old church into the charming Laurel Theatre and commissioned a classy rehab for his Villa Tasca home and garden shop. We believe he deserves an opportunity to share some of this energy and creativity with the rest of the city.

As the effects of SOAR begin to be felt, each of Ventura County’s cities will need to make smarter use of the land within its boundaries. Carl Morehouse, a professional planner, has the right skills and perspective for this new era. He also believes the Ventura Council of Governments and the American Planning Assn. are resources that could be used to find cooperative alternatives to the sales tax wars.

Measure C

In this ballot measure, the First Assembly of God seeks permission to rezone its 25 acres of cropland so it may build a 2,000-seat sanctuary, preschool, gym / auditorium, ball fields and running track.

We cannot endorse Measure C for the same reasons we did not support the countywide SOAR initiative last year: Like SOAR itself, Measure C leaves too many questions unanswered, too many potential pitfalls unaddressed.

The problem is not the concept of the proposal. The problem is that the proposal, as it appears on the ballot, is undetailed and unenforceable. As the first local test of the SOAR approach to land-use decision making, Measure C will set an important precedent. By approving it, voters would suggest to other developers that vague promises are all they need to offer. We encourage the First Assembly of God to bring forth a more detailed proposal. But on Measure C, we say vote no.