New Council May Prove Less Divisive

VENTURA — Paving the way for what some predict will be a mellower era in Ventura city politics, three newcomers joined the City Council on Monday night and Councilman Jim Friedman was chosen mayor.

Sandy Smith, Brian Brennan and Donna De Paola were sworn in for four-year terms along with five-term incumbent Jim Monahan. Councilman Ray Di Guilio was selected deputy mayor.

The new council will be less divided over development issues than others in the recent past, predicted Ventura resident Bill Fulton, an author and urban planning consultant familiar with politics in California.

“We’re seeing a change in the council’s attitude,” he said. “We’re seeing people with energy and ideas coming onto the council. And we’re seeing someone with strong political consensus building skills becoming mayor.”

Council members Gary Tuttle, Steve Bennett and Rosa Lee Measures all stepped down Monday night to make way for the new council members. Monahan, the only incumbent in this year’s race, returned to the council for his sixth term.

Friedman predicted that much of the new council’s work will be to finish projects begun by previous councils: the $100-million expansion of the Buenaventura Mall, revitalization of the downtown and developing business at the Ventura Auto Center, the city’s most important sources of sales-tax revenue.

Friedman predicted that the lasting mark of the new council will be selecting a site for an east-end park and laying the groundwork for construction. The first step in that direction will come next Monday night, when the council begins to narrow the list of possible sites.

“We have the opportunity to be the initiators of one thing that is very sorely needed, and very sorely wanted,” Friedman said. “I hope always to be known as the council that got the ball rolling on the east-end area park.”

On Nov. 24, the new council members underwent orientation. They trooped from one city department to the next to hear summaries by department heads. They talked budgets, personnel and administration. In the afternoon, they took a field trip with Public Works Director Ron Calkins to a waste water treatment plant.

In two weeks they will meet with the city fire and police chiefs for the second part of their orientation.

After new members took the oath of office, Glenn Stallings, who has made “a barrel of gavels” for governors and mayors around the state over the past 53 years, presented the new mayor with his own oak gavel.

Before the meeting, the newly elected council members outlined their goals.

Smith pledged to follow through on the issues he pounded during his campaign--renewing the city’s blueprint for development and stimulating the city economically.

Brennan, too, said he wants to work on revamping the city’s comprehensive plan. He said he also wants to work on restoring the Surfers Point bike path, which has been damaged by the encroachment of the sea.

De Paola said she wants to work on getting the east-end park on track, and sprucing up the Victoria Avenue area.

“That is the entranceway into our city, to the county seat,” she said. “Paradise Chevrolet has moved now and we’ve got the Mound area, so now we can really look for the right kind of business to go in there.”

She also pledged to make the next four years a “fun council” that will be entertaining to watch on television.

“There’s a new hope in the city, that seems to be stretching from the far east end to the west,” Friedman said. “There’s the energy and innocence of the new council--not naivete, but a feeling that they are going into things with wide-open eyes.”