November 20, 2007

Monday Night Fright...

I went to another Monday night meeting of the Gang in the Ivory Tower, (Ventura City Council Meeting), once again I was astonished at how much the various council people enjoy hearing the sound of their own voices. When giving forth on a subject that should take no more than a couple of minutes these council folks are adept at spewing forth for 15 to 20 minutes, in that time they will repeat themselves over, over, over, well you get the idea.

At one point Mr Bill Fulton, (Smart Planner Extraordinary) gave forth with his thanks to all the folks that voted, him, Weir, and Morehouse back on the thrones of the Gangs Chamber. He did make a slight booboo however, he mentioned that about 1/3 of the registered voters had voted to retain the incumbents, in truth there are a bit more than 60,000 registered voters in Ventura and out of that only about 15,000 voted.... So Mr Fulton, Smart Planner Extraordinary, that only equates to 1/4 of the registered voters, not 1/3, but hey he never said math was his strongpoint.

The reason I went to this particular meeting is because one of the items on the agenda was the "Midtown Corridor Plan", specifically the discussion on exactly how high the buildings should be allowed to be built. The Gang in the Ivory Tower had proposed 3 - 4- 6 stories, the NIMBY'S and BANANA'S proposed no higher than 2 stories and favorably only 1 story.

Now for my own edification I could not care any less about how high the buildings along Main and Thompson are built. The one thing that bothers me about the folks (NIMBY'S, BANANA'S), that are rallying about the proposed height limit is that they are the same NIMBY'S and BANANA'S that fought against the California University on the Taylor Ranch that would have placed Ventura amongst the finest cities in the State of California, they fought for the S.O.A.R. proposal that sharply curtailed home building in our city and surrounding area, thereby decreasing the job market for many years, and denied hundreds of folks a chance to buy their own homes, they fought against the Hillside Proposal that would have been a 20 year plan to build homes in the hillsides out of view of our city, and would have brought thousands of jobs, untold tax benefits, and increased the economy of Ventura by probably double. These fine folk are hell bent on keeping Ventura securely imbedded in the 18 th Century.

I was talking to one of these fine folk at the meeting during a much needed break by the Gang in the Ivory Tower. Somehow we got around to talking about the water problem that will be a major item very soon, we discussed the merits of a State Pipeline versus a Desalination Plant that the people of Ventura voted for in 1992. After some exchange of ideas and thoughts, this member of the NIMBY and BANANA group finally gave me his idealistic summation of the water problem. With all the gusto he could render he stated, "If we didn't have anymore building in Ventura we wouldn't have any water problems." Damn he got me there.......

That one sentence showed the inner most thoughts of all the NIMBY'S and BANANA'S, they are wholly (or Holy) bent on seeing to it that there is no more building in Ventura what-so-ever.

Rellis Smith
res@venturastuff.com