Candidate Statement and Additional Statements

By Diane M. Underhill

Growth Doesn't Always Pay for Itself

I am a fiscal conservative. I believe the majority of Ventura citizens want sane, sustainable, slow growth policies.

I believe ours is a community that wants the City to manage its spending so that traditional and essential public services like police, fire and infrastructure maintenance are the main priorities.

I believe ours is a community that values our knowledgeable public employees, and does not want them haphazardly replaced by out-of-town consultants.

I believe ours is a community that understands that our water resources can only sustain slow growth and that the traffic and congestion of major development or major population growth could quickly overwhelm our infrastructure.

Finally, I believe ours is a community that values our quality of life and wants to jealously preserve it for our children and grandchildren, and I further believe that our quality of life is directly tied to the issue of growth and sustaining that growth.

Our present Comprehensive Plan Vision states that we are "predominantly a low density city." The "Seize the Future" Vision Plan which is being created now, calls for higher densities. The reason? The Calif. Environmental Quality Act will not allow development unless the project conforms to a city's General Plan. There are current efforts to change the city's density zoning in order to chase development dollars.

In a recent LA Times article Oct. 6 titled "Putting the Brakes on Growth... increased development just brings more municipal debt. Some cities are questioning benefits of the building boom." The article states: "Development ...which typically comes in the form of housing tracts and strip malls, has failed to keep pace with the cost of growth... What cities are spending to serve new suburbs--extending police and fire protection, water, sewer and streets--often greatly exceeds the property and sales taxes generated by the growth. As a consequence, cities have taken on record bond debt to pay for new infrastructure tied to growth. The debt is being carried on the backs of current and future residents who must pay higher fees to meet the bond payments."

While the article specifically discussed California's Central Valley, the parallels are obvious. When you increase population densities you also must increase costly public safety services. When you increase these population densities you also place added burden on your infrastructure, your water and air resources, not to mention, your community-desired quality of life

Higher densities and population out-growths are not the answer to a sustainable community. We can no more house everyone who might have a desire to live in Ventura than any major university could take and effectively teach all student applicants. Limits must be established for the good of all. We need to keep our present Residential Growth Management Plan and our current zoning requirements intact or adopt even more stringent limits.

Growth does not pay for itself. In another quote from the aforementioned article, Carl Abbott, a professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland University stated, "The general consensus in the planning field is that local governments have to collect a separate impact fee of $25,000 per housing unit in order to keep their budgets intact."

Ventura is now a built up city, we do not need to offer public money subsidies to developers, through redevelopment or any other mechanism. Redevelopment subsidies of big business in an effort to lure sales tax dollars, does not work. Public policy studies have shown that using Redevelopment in this manner is a bad investment of taxpayer money, it does not pay for itself.

Land here in Ventura, both vacant and recycled, is a precious commodity. Any development now needs to be slow and careful, privately funded, in keeping with our current Comprehensive Plan and RGMP guidelines, and needs take into consideration the costs of growth to the City and its citizens.

The committee heads of the "Seize the Future" Visioning process said that the one thing that they heard over and over was that citizens wanted to preserve Ventura's "small town feel." Since this statement was so prominent and pervasive, perhaps it should be the goal we set in planning for our city's future. Perhaps we should plan our future around strategies designed to preserve this small town feel. With this as our goal the question would be: How do we achieve sustainability at our present size and density?

Remember, current city planning methods could be out of date for a future that may be radically different than anything we know. The typical future commute could be leaving your morning coffee at the breakfast table and moving to the computer in the next room. Even now, everything from clothes to cars can be purchased with only a few clicks of the mouse. Future technology will affect city planning.

Perhaps the best planning for the future we could do is to act as stewards to preserve our beautiful coastal town for future generations.

Growth is not the answer to the question of sustainability. Population density is not the answer to the question of sustainability. Fiscally responsible management of the money available to us, that is the answer to sustainability.

I'm Diane Underhill. I support SLOW sustainable growth. I believe the city should get back to basics, making police, fire, and infrastructure maintenance the main priorities.

Thank you.