ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

Thank you Kenley for bringing attention to these reports. To read these in context, people should take a quick look at the initiatives that were silenced by the city's lawsuit. Here's the link:

http://www.ojaipost.com/2006/10/the_ojai_ballot_initiatives.shtml

One question: Was there any public input in these reports? Did Mr. Kersnar consult with any of the people in town who have been interested in these issues? A quick review of the reports does not reveal any sense of where Ojaians' thoughts are on these issues. Many people in town are way ahead of Mr. Kersnar. They should be brought into this process.

The bottom line: The council should reject both of these reports, and ask Mr. Kersnar to start over.

Here are a couple of reasons why:

On affordable housing, Jere Kersnar advises the council that it has a very limited role and should not do anything until at least 2008, when the City’s Housing Element is due. He addresses none of the six proposals contained in the proposed initiatives. Instead, he conflates affordable housing with additional tenement-style, high density development. He says that affordable housing is merely a question of supply and demand, and that the city council cannot affect demand, so it should focus on increasing supply.

That is simply wrong. If we build more housing – especially “affordable housing” – in Ojai, we merely increase our population. We solve nothing. Ojai remains just as unaffordable for our current residents, only we would have more people, traffic, etc.

The answer for Ojai has to be focused on our existing affordable housing stock. This is how we keep Ojai Ojai, and maintain the possibility that our current residents can stay and their kids will be able to live here when they grow up. This is what is expressly required in Ojai’s General Plan. As Mr. Kersnar acknowledges, the General Plan contemplates “a diversity of lifestyles,” with “housing opportunities for all socioeconomic groups.”

Kersnar's affordable housing analysis is nothing more than a recommendation to continue the green light for replacement of existing affordable housing stock with unaffordable McMansions and McCondoes. He needs to start over.

On chain stores, it is disturbing that Mr. Kersnar's first thought is to note that chain stores really are good(!). As Kenley points out, Mr. Kersnar says he has reviewed the scholarly literature, but the only thing he cites in the report is an Atlantic article titled “In Praise of Chain Stores.”

Again, Mr. Kersnar’s approach spells the death of what is special about Ojai. The whole point is that we need ordinances in place now, before the next chain arrives, so that they have to comply with existing regulations when they come. Every day of delay invites another chain downtown. Size and signs don’t work – look at State Street in Santa Barbara. What we need is a comprehensive, well-thought out, legally sound set of ordinances that encourages owner-operated, non-formula businesses in the downtown core and prohibit the chains. This is the key that Mr. Kersnar wholly ignores: we have to encourage the owner-operated, non-formula businesses at the same time. Healthy local owner-operated businesses in our retail spaces ultimately are what keep the chains out. Certainly this can be devised by a smart city manager with experience and insight?

As far as Mr. Kersnar's legal objections, he needs to spell these out. The vague references to equal protection, etc. in his report merely make him appear uninformed. The reality is that the courts - all the way up to the United States Supreme Court - have long upheld zoning restrictions that prohibit ceratin kinds of businesses from certain areas. (For example, there is no question that Ojai can prohibit adult-oriented businesses from the downtown core.) As Kenley has pointed out elsewhere, the City of Coronado has just such a prohibition for formula businesses. That ordinance was challenged on the grounds Mr. Kersnar cites. The California Court of Appeals considered those challenges and rejected them. What is wrong with the City of Coronado's ordinance as a possible model for Ojai?

Mr. Kersnar's reports shed no light on this and many other of the real issues.

The council should reject both reports. Mr. Kersnar needs to start over. Don’t tell us we can’t do anything. Give us some sound but bold ideas.

In the meantime, the council has the stifled initiatives in front of it. Those are certainly a better place to start the discussion on Tuesday than Mr. Kersnar’s reports.

This is hysterical. I went looking on the web for the article cited by Mr. Kersnar. It seemed that he based the majority of his report on chain stores on this recent article in the Atlantic Monthly. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it from the AM site without subscribing so I kept looking. I was having a hard time understanding how AM could be publishing an article titled "In Praise of Chains". It's not really known as a Cato Institute/free market/right-wing shill publication. Well, I finally found it and you will not believe where. Here's a link: http://palousitics.blogspot.com/2006/12/in-praise-of-chain-stores.html

It's a right-wing, college republican blog that describes itself in the following way:

"Commentary from a conservative viewpoint on current events in Pullman, the Palouse and Washington State from the avid Wal-Mart groupie, a handful of fanatical Wal-Mart advocates, and, as seen on "Hannity & Colmes," the Washington State University College Republicans"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Unbelievable! It would seem that there is no longer any question about where Mr. Kersnar's loyalties really lie.

In this article the author, Virginia Postrel who was the former editor of the free market magazine Reason as well as a past reporter for Inc. and the Wall Street Journal, actually states the following in her defense of Borders Books.

"When Borders was a unique Ann Arbor institution, people in places like Chandler [AZ] -- or, for that matter, Philadelphia and Los Angeles -- didn't have much in the way of bookstores."

WHAT!? That's just insane. Is she really saying that Los Angeles didn't have any good bookstores before the likes of Borders and Barnes and Nobel came along. I suppose Barts isn't really much in the way of a book store either. You should all go and read this article on the crazy right wing blog I posted so you can see just how far out of touch our city manager is with the majority of Ojai citizens. And we really are the majority; remember Lenny Klaif got 50.4 % of the 2,347 votes in this last election.

Here's the article in full. If this is what Kersner is citing, the City is in worse shape than I thought.

Saturday, December 09, 2006
"In Praise of Chain Stores"

December 2006 edition of The Atlantic Monthly written by Virginia Postrel.

Every well-traveled cosmop­olite knows that America is mind-numbingly monotonous—the most boring country to tour, because everywhere looks like everywhere else,” as the columnist Thomas Friedman once told Charlie Rose. Boston has the same stores as Denver, which has the same stores as Charlotte or Seattle or Chicago. We live in a “Stepford world,” says Rachel Dresbeck, the author of Insiders’ Guide to Portland, Oregon. Even Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, she complains, is “dominated by the Gap, Anthropologie, Starbucks, and all the other usual suspects. Why go anywhere? Every place looks the same.” This complaint is more than the old worry, dating back to the 1920s, that the big guys are putting Mom and Pop out of business. Today’s critics focus less on what isn’t there—Mom and Pop—than on what is. Faneuil Hall actually has plenty of locally owned businesses, from the Geoclassics store selling minerals and jewelry, to Pizzeria Regina (“since 1926”). But you do find the same chains everywhere.

The suburbs are the worst. Take Chandler, Arizona, just south of Phoenix. At Chandler Fashion Center, the area’s big shopping mall, you’ll find P. F. Chang’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle Mexican Grill, and the Cheesecake Factory. Drive along Chandler’s straight, flat boulevards, and you’ll see Bed Bath & Beyond and Linens-n-Things; Barnes & Noble and Borders; PetSmart and Petco; Circuit City and Best Buy; Lowe’s and Home Depot; CVS and Walgreens. Chandler has the Apple Store and Pottery Barn, the Gap and Ann Taylor, Banana Republic and DSW, and, of course, Target and Wal-Mart, Starbucks and McDonald’s. For people allergic to brands, Chandler must be hell—even without the 110-degree days.

One of the fastest-growing cities in the country, Chandler is definitely the kind of place urbanists have in mind as they intone, “When every place looks the same, there is no such thing as place anymore.” Like so many towns in America, it has lost much of its historic character as a farming community. The annual Ostrich Festival still honors one traditional product, but these days Chandler raises more subdivisions and strip malls than ostrich plumes or cotton, another former staple. Yet it still refutes the common assertion that national chains are a blight on the landscape, that they’ve turned American towns into an indistinguishable “geography of nowhere.”

The first thing you notice in Chandler is that, as a broad empirical claim, the cliché that “everywhere looks like everywhere else” is obvious nonsense. Chandler’s land and air and foliage are peculiar to the desert Southwest. The people dress differently. Even the cookie-cutter housing developments, with their xeriscaping and
washed-out desert palette, remind you where you are. Forget New England clapboard, Carolina columns, or yellow Texas brick. In the intense sun of Chandler, the red-tile roofs common in California turn a pale, pale pink.

Stores don’t give places their character. Terrain and weather and culture do. Familiar retailers may take some of the discovery out of travel—to the consternation of journalists looking for obvious local color—but by holding some of the commercial background constant, chains make it easier to discern the real differences that define a place: the way, for instance, that people in Chandler come out to enjoy the summer twilight, when the sky glows purple and the dry air cools.

Besides, the idea that America was once filled with wildly varied business establishments is largely a myth. Big cities could, and still can, support more retail niches than small towns. And in a less competitive national market, there was certainly more variation in business efficiency—in prices, service, and merchandise quality. But the range of retailing ideas in any given town was rarely that great. One deli or diner or lunch counter or cafeteria was pretty much like every other one. A hardware store was a hardware store, a pharmacy a pharmacy. Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radically new idea.

Chains do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs across a lot of units. They rapidly spread economic discovery—the scarce and costly knowledge of what retail concepts and operational innovations actually work. That knowledge can be gained only through the expensive and time-consuming process of trial and error. Expecting each town to independently invent every new business is a prescription for real monotony, at least for the locals. Chains make a large range of choices available in more places. They increase local variety, even as they reduce the differences from place to place. People who mostly stay put get to have experiences once available only to frequent travelers, and this loss of exclusivity is one reason why frequent travelers are the ones who complain. When Borders was a unique Ann Arbor institution, people in places like Chandler—or, for that matter, Philadelphia and Los Angeles—didn’t have much in the way of bookstores. Back in 1986, when California Pizza Kitchen was an innovative local restaurant about to open its second location, food writers at the L.A. Daily News declared it “the kind of place every neighborhood should have.” So what’s wrong if the country has 158 neighborhood CPKs instead of one or two?

The process of multiplication is particularly important for fast-growing towns like Chandler, where rollouts of established stores allow retail variety to expand as fast as the growing population can support new businesses. I heard the same refrain in Chandler that I’ve heard in similar boomburgs elsewhere, and for similar reasons. “It’s got all the advantages of a small town, in terms of being friendly, but it’s got all the things of a big town,” says Scott Stephens, who moved from Manhattan Beach, California, in 1998 to work for Motorola. Chains let people in a
city of 250,000 enjoy retail amenities once available only in a huge metropolitan center. At the same time, familiar establishments make it easier for people to make a home in a new place. When Nissan recently moved its headquarters from Southern California to Tennessee, an unusually high percentage of its Los Angeles–area employees accepted the transfer. “The fact that Starbucks are everywhere helps make moving a lot easier these days,” a rueful Greg Whitney, vice president of business development for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, told the Los Angeles Times reporter John O’Dell. Orth Hedrick, a Nissan product manager, decided he could stay with the job he loved when he turned off the interstate near Nashville and realized, “You could really be Anywhere, U.S.A. There’s a great big regional shopping mall, and most of the stores and restaurants are the same ones we see in California. Yet a few miles away you’re in downtown, and there’s lots of local color, too.”

Contrary to the rhetoric of bored cosmopolites, most cities don’t exist primarily to please tourists. The children toddling through the Chandler mall hugging their soft Build-A-Bear animals are no less delighted because kids can also build a bear in Memphis or St. Louis. For them, this isn’t tourism; it’s life—the experiences that create the memories from which the meaning of a place arises over time. Among Chandler’s most charming sights are the business-casual dads joining their wives and kids for lunch in the mall food court. The food isn’t the point, let alone whether it’s from Subway or Dairy Queen. The restaurants merely provide the props and setting for the family time. When those kids grow up, they’ll remember the food court as happily as an older generation recalls the diners and motels of Route 66—not because of the businesses’ innate appeal but because of the memories they evoke.

The contempt for chains represents a brand-obsessed view of place, as if store names were all that mattered to a city’s character. For many critics, the name on the store really is all that matters. The planning consultant Robert Gibbs works with cities that want to revive their downtowns, and he also helps developers find space for retailers. To his frustration, he finds that many cities actually turn away national chains, preferring a moribund downtown that seems authentically local. But, he says, the same local activists who oppose chains “want specialty retail that sells exactly what the chains sell—the same price, the same fit, the same qualities, the same sizes, the same brands, even.” You can show people pictures of a Pottery Barn with nothing but the name changed, he says, and they’ll love the store. So downtown stores stay empty, or sell low-value tourist items like candles and kites, while the chains open on the edge of town. In the name of urbanism, officials and activists in cities like Ann Arbor and Fort Collins, Colorado, are driving business to the suburbs. “If people like shopping at the Banana Republic or the Gap, if that’s your market—or Payless Shoes—why not?” says an exasperated Gibbs. “Why not sell the goods and services people want?”

It is interesting that Kersnar writes a report on solutions for affordable housing, yet nowhere does he discuss/assess the rental situation.

According to the most recent census figures, 41.6% of Ojai rents. "Affordable" housing is often defined as housing that requires no more than 30% of income. The same census figures show median income in Ojai as $44,593. That means "affordable" allows about $1,100 per month for housing for median income earners. $1,100 per month means we need to talk about renters first when we talk about preserving affordable housing in Ojai. Where is Kersnar's analysis of options for preserving rental affordability?

The obvious answer is rent stabilization. It is probably the single most proven and workable solution for maintaining affordability for a "diversity of lifestyles", as our General Plan puts it. And in addition to preserving affordability for lower-income earners, rent stabilization ordinances have an extremely benign preservation effect in the cities that have adopted them.

Why doesn't our city manager discuss this most basic piece of the affordable housing puzzle?

Ojai deserves better than this. For starters, how about a credible report?

If you are interested in helping to get the word out about the chain store topic, you can download this no-chains flyer (PDF), make copies, and share it with friends.

I have read Jere Kersnar’s administrative report regarding chain stores or “formula businesses,” and I have found some significant problems with both the content and spin. An excerpt from the report:

“Before addressing the various methods that have been employed, it is important to understand the legal context. Only a few cities have adopted ordinances regarding chain stores, and most of those are recent. As a result, there is little in the way of case law to determine what is a legally permissible limitation on such establishments.”

Mr. Kersnar suggests that regulating formula businesses is an edgy new concept in municipal government. This is not the case. Numerous cities have enacted ordinances regulating formula businesses. Nineteen examples can be found at http://newrules.org/retail/formula.html. One of these is Carmel, CA which, some 20 years ago, enacted a formula restaurant ban, which prohibits fast food, drive-in and formula food establishments.

Anyone who has visited Carmel knows well that one of its many charms is its dining. You can’t buy a Jersey Mike’s on Ocean Avenue, and this does not seem to have had a negative impact on the town’s prosperity. Moreover, the ordinance has successfully stood the test of time, as it has in other towns such as Carmel’s sister city, Pacific Grove.

While Mr. Kersnar claims that “Staff has researched the professional literature…” he cites only one article from the “professional literature,” an article from The Atlantic trumpeting the value of chains to local businesses. I dare say that the owners of Carmel businesses would strongly disagree with Mr. Kersnar’s suggestion that erecting a McDonald’s alongside such Carmel notables as Casanova or Flying Fish would be good for business.

Mr. Kersnar goes on to claim, incorrectly, that all the ordinances that cities have enacted to manage formula businesses can be classified into four categories:

1. Location
2. Size
3. Appearance
4. Operations

The implication is that you can’t explicitly ban a business by type, yet that is precisely what Carmel did, banning “fast food,” “formula,” and “drive-in” restaurants.

While Carmel “can” manage undesirable businesses, I am resigned to the notion that this basic capability is beyond Ojai’s “can’t do” council.

In summary, I find Mr. Kersnar’s report, like some of his council PowerPoint presentations, to be well-written, professionally-presented, inaccurate, and misleading. The common thread in all of these communications appears to be his predetermination to get to the reason why council “can’t do” what its citizens are asking it to do, in spite of a preponderance of evidence to suggest that it is, in fact, possible to do what he claims is impossible.

All the more ironic that Kersnar fails to cite Carmel guidelines since he used to be the City Manager there!

Note his previous job history in the Ojai Blog:

New Ojai City Manager (?)
Do we have a new City Manager to replace interim City Manager John Baker? I've been told that the agenda for Tuesday's Ojai City Council meeting includes this line item: "Adopt Resolution No ... authorizing the Mayor to execute an Employment Agreement for City Manager...Jere A. Kersnar."

So let's Google "Jere Kersnar" and read up on the candidate who may soon be relocating to our little town. A chronological snapshot of a handful of the 469 webpages found.

Cost to rent park facilities in Lodi may rise
Jeff Hood, Lodi Bureau Chief, 09/28/05

Tony Goehring, Lodi's Parks and Recreation director, showed the City Council on Tuesday a proposed fee schedule that would raise rental fees from picnic areas to athletic fields and allow people or groups to rent entire parks, including Lodi Lake Park and the All Veterans Plaza next to City Hall.

"We're basically setting fees for what we hope the market will bear," Goehring told council members, who did not take action on the recommended increases.

"Paying the fee gives you the ability to kick somebody off," Deputy City Manager Jere Kersnar said.

Unhappy ending for top official
Bil Paul, Palo Alto Daily News, 08/19/04

When I asked council members what they were most looking for in the next city manager, as a clue as to what they found deficient in Kersnar, I kept hearing the catchword "pro-active," especially in the area of luring and retaining businesses in Belmont, as well as the desire to find someone who gets along well with city employees.

George Burgess, who in the past few years unsuccessfully campaigned for the city clerk position and for a council seat, thinks that certain South County Fire Authority failures were unfairly blamed on Kersnar (the Fire Authority serves San Carlos and Belmont). Burgess also knocked council members, decision to try to hide their vote to dismiss Kersnar, saying the public has a right to know -- even if the performance evaluations themselves are confidential. "This reminds me of Chicago back-room politics," said Burgess

Burgess for Belmont City Council
editorial, San Mateo County editions of the Daily News, 05/29/03

Kranen['s] name hasn't come up much in the letters column or in the buzz around town, but he shouldn't be overlooked. Of the three, he appeared to have the strongest comments in favor of fiscal responsibility -- criticizing the amount of money the city has poured into a City Hall project that began when Feierbach was on council and blasting the 13 percent pay raise council gave City Manager Jere Kersnar.

During an interview, Kranen said he also believed that city employees should receive raises based on merit. This year they're getting a 3 percent across the board raise despite the city's purported budget crisis. When we followed up to ask Kersnar if the city should re-open its contract with its unions to change how raises are determined, he backed off the idea of merit raises, saying it was a tricky question, and finally saying that salaries should keep pace with inflation. We would have liked it if he had given more thought in advance to the city's payroll, which is the biggest single element of the city's budget.

President's Message
Carmel Residents Association newsletter, 06/2000

At the May 25 meeting, the council and public learned that the city now has approximately $900,000 more at the end of fiscal year 1999-2000, up from the $600,000 projected on May 2. City Administrator Jere Kersnar stated that "This past fiscal year has been the strongest in a decade, in fact, ever for Carmel." One has to ask, what has so drastically changed in the last six to nine months when we heard words of gloom? The answer given by Mr. Kersnar is that no one expected the revenues from property sales and taxes to be as large as they turned out to be. Somehow the sale of the Carmel Plaza and its property transfer tax had not been accurately projected from last fall into the revenue side of the budget.

A Carmel Business Improvement District is proposed
Carmel Residents Association newsletter, 09/1999

A group of Carmel businessmen has proposed to the City Council the formation of a Carmel Business Improvement District (CBID). About $750,000 would be raised annually through increases in the hotel tax, paid mostly by visitors, and in an assessment on retail and restaurant sales, paid by both residents and visitors. Benefit Assessment Districts do not require voter approval.

The money raised would be used exclusively to benefit the businesses within the district, and could include: Promotion of public events in public places. Furnishing of music in any public place in the area. Promotion of tourism. Activities which benefit businesses located in the area. Parking facilities. Benches. Street lighting. Parks. Decorations. Fountains. Also, tourism promotion now paid by the city would be taken over by the business district.

City Administrator Jere Kersnar outlined the plan at the Nov. 2 City Council meeting. Several members of the public, mostly from the business community, spoke up with concerns. Among them, that this would add a new layer of bureaucracy to city government. The members of the council agreed to postpone formal consideration until the many businesses in the proposed district themselves reach agreement.

It is disturbing that these reports appeared out of nowhere, with "public discussion" scheduled a couple of days away. The reports are dated January 2 - but was there any announcement? When did they become available for download? It looks like nobody would have known about them had Kenley and the Post not brought them to our attention.

"Public discussion" is supposed to happen at the next Tuesday meeting. But it looks like the council agenda scheduling these items also was not released until Friday. That also seems unusual. There will not even be an Ojai Valley News between Friday and Tuesday. How did the council expect the public to find out about this proposed "public discussion", much less review and consider the reports?

Affordable housing and chain stores are complex issues. They deserve a better chance for public comment and discussion than the city is giving them. As a suggestion, perhaps the council could direct the city manager to circulate his reports publicly to interested parties - the Chamber of Commerce, local businesses, the green coalition, the individuals who have commented on these topics, etc. - for comment over the next two weeks, and then prepare a revised report that incorporates and takes into account public comments - submit them to the council all together, invite members of the public to make comments and presentations on related topics at the meeting, and have as an agenda item the scheduling of next steps to take on these topics?

Oh wait. I forget that I am in Ojai, where we have a city council that wants to sweep these issues under the rug.

Hi Anonymous -

Regarding your comment, "As a suggestion, perhaps the council could direct the city manager to circulate his reports publicly to interested parties..."

I've talked to numerous people at the city, elected and unelected, since February and they all know they have an open door to participate at The Ojai Post, or at the very least, use it as a distribution channel for important community info.

I wholeheartedly agree that there needs to be far more transparency with the council and other city officials.

Good idea Tyler. If the city were serious about addressing these issues, that could be effective. The city manager could put his reports up as a post, and then all of the comments could be submitted to the council as part of the record. Let merchants, the chamber, etc. know that the "official" place to log comments is at the Post. Similar to how a federal agency puts out proposed regulations for public comment. The beauty of that is that all comments are publicly available as made.

I suppose it might be too much to ask that the city council then be required to actually consider all comments, the way a federal agency is required to do.

During the past two days, I have talked with many residents of Ojai (at Farmers Market and door-to-door in the Arcade) and the message for the City Council seems clear:

Reject the reports and put it back on the agenda.

If you are speaking on Tuesday, please include this language.

To: Jere Kersnar, Ojai City Manager

“The number of zoning regulations that “feel” inappropriate may be indicated by the number of requests for variances we receive; variances should be reserved for the truly unusual case. Therefore, if we are granting a good number of variances (and we have), it may be an indication that our regulations are not meeting our needs.” -from your “quilt report”

Maybe laws that “feel” inappropriate to the people who break them could be “indicated” by the number of crimes that take place. Drug possession, a lot of people are going to jail for it, should we make drugs legal? No. Robbery, theft, corporate crimes, there have been a lot of those, shall we make them legal? No. Murder, rape, kidnapping, they happen all the time, should we make them legal? NO.
Your logic does not make sense. Zoning regulations are there to protect the character of the city, not to lessen the number of variances granted by the city.
You talk of quilts, touchstones, etc.; maybe you should give up politics and start writing children’s books or maybe take up quilting. The imagery used in your “report” is hackneyed and stilted. Ojai is a small, progressive community, but I don’t think anyone who lives here feels warm and fuzzy about what you are suggesting.
If you have your way, soon there will be strip malls up and down the east side with more franchise food stores like Jersey Mike’s. Stop trying to make the city something it is not.
People like you overestimate their importance, Jere. You have ONLY been here a short time, in the capacity of another political appointee who is hell-bent on doing something “big.” When your contract is up, you will move on to another city, and try to put your misguided ideas into practice somewhere else, leaving the residents of Ojai to gaze upon the ruin you have caused.
Your vision is not the people's vision.

"My own opinion, formed with many years of planning/land use experience, is that the picture is much more complicated than it might appear. Nonetheless, I agree that too many formula businesses, developed in the wrong way, would undermine Ojai’s success, namely its uniqueness. We (and our predecessors) have done a good job in creating a commercial area that residents and visitors enjoy."

Actually, Jere, Ojai's success will be undermined by ANY formula business, developed in any way. Chain stores/franchises are dangerous to a small community like Ojai. With the exception of stores that have been here for five or more years, all franchise retail and restaurant applications for business licenses should be outright denied by the city. You, Jere, have not created anything more than a poor image of yourself.

"The rapid surge in housing prices that has pushed many Ojai homes toward the upper end over the last several years now threatens the wholeness of Ojai’s community character. Some people have expressed the fear that we are quickly moving to become an enclave only for the rich, who will be the only ones who can afford the high housing prices."

Ojai is an enclave for the rich, and they are the only ones who can afford to buy a house in Ojai. In California today, the affordability index shows that, depending on whose numbers you look at, only 13 to 20 percent of the population can afford to buy a median priced home in California. The minimum household income required to buy a median priced home hovers around $100K. Although supply and demand affect price, they do not determine it. The interaction between market participants determines price in the housing market. Greedy realtors and mortgage brokers also determine price. The latter being the cause of the recent spike in housing prices. Every realtor in CA was telling their prospective buyers, "you had better buy now, or you'll be priced out of the market forever." They were telling their sellers, "let's ask some ridiculous amount because someone will pay it in this market." Mortgage brokers broke records in interest only loans, qualifying people for money that they could not afford. Now that housing prices are declining, many of those poor fools are upside-down on their mortgages, and soon the foreclosure rate will be at an all-time high.

"The reason Ojai and many other places have an affordable housing problem (high prices) is that more people want to live here (demand) than there are housing choices available (supply)."

Your argument that the lack of affordable housing is a consequence of success, and that no one is to blame is flimsy and reeks of haute bourgeoisie. High real estate prices do not have anything to do with the lack of affordable housing. The city is fully to blame. In your vast experience, Jere, I'm sure that you have encountered cities that have affordable housing programs. The city of Ventura provides incentives to builders to offer a certain number of units at prices limited by a negotiated contract for a certain number of years. There is an application process, during which the applicant's income and resources are examined to determine eligibility for the program. The qualified applicant then finances the reduced sales price, using all available sources of help, federal, state, and local. The city therefore creates opportunities by leveraging builders who apply for building permits with incentives to allow everyone(even the poor, Jere) to enjoy the joys of home ownership.

"The foregoing discussion leads to the second point, which is that no one is to blame for the lack of affordable housing. That lack is an inevitable consequence of our economic system, and for the common and understandable desire of communities to become enviable places to live. Rather than acknowledging the negative consequences and looking for ways to minimize them, some people spend a great deal of energy trying to affix blame for this unwelcome situation. But it is far better, I believe, to understand the market forces that have created the problem, so that we might consider methods to influence the market in ways that constructively address it, rather than assigning blame to municipalities for forces largely outside their control."

It is up to the city to create affordable housing supplies. Market forces affect housing prices, not the supply of affordable units! To say that it is out of the control of a municipality is a cowardly statement of untruth. In any case, if the city is not responsible for creating more affordable housing opportunities, who is? And please do not villainize people who question your infinite knowledge and experience. This is America, Jere, not 18th century France, although the working classes are still taxed heavily to pay for foreign wars and a rising national debt.

"Since municipalities don’t control very much related to supply, and virtually nothing related to demand, it is hard to argue that we are responsible for the high level of housing prices."

Housing prices are not the issue here! A working affordable housing program is the issue. No one is saying that the city is responsible for the level of housing prices. Everyone knows, however, that it is the responsibility of a competent city manager to try and develop an affordable housing program that works! Please realize, Jere, that it is YOUR job to figure these things out. Please contact the city of Ventura and ask them for some tutoring in the administration of an affordable housing program.

In your "report," you provide three examples of solutions that you apparently believe will not work. Your "dead man walking" attitude is not going to get anything done! Why don't you try coming up with ideas that you believe will work, instead of espousing a very pessimistic view of the situation, and blaming the city residents for complaining too much. In my opinion, Jere, you enjoy making excuses.

CHAINS AND TENEMENTS (Part One)

To understand the issues of affordable housing and chain stores is a daunting task, somewhat like untying the gordian knot. Legend has it that on one could do it until Alexander came and cut it with his sword. Today it also takes a sword to cut through the knot, the two edged sword of understanding money and power.

Chicago will illustrate the point. I remember driving through Chicago, and seeing row upon row of huge tenements, sticking up like some gigantic waffle iron below the mighty Sears Tower. They were creations of ivory tower dreamers to solve the affordable housing problem for the poor. No one in their right mind would choose to live there unless forced to do so by economic and racial circumstances, certainly not the creators. These dangerous, segregated, inhumane prison houses are testaments to the folly of the big, bad modern world.

Daleytown was in the news this week. Walmart is coming to town, and the fringe element wanted to force Walmart to pay their workers a minimum of $10 an hour, except that Mayor Daley is using his veto power for the first time in seventeen years to crush that outrageous idea. The citizens have apparently petitioned for the granddaddy of all chains, like they presumably did for the tenements. It goes without saying that chains and tenements will not come near the Chicago northside Gold Coast.

What's the connection between Ojai and Chicago, you ask. Would you believe the Ojai Valley Inn? Supposedly, the Crown family, the owners of the OVI, live in Chicago. It may be beside the point, or perhaps not, but rumor has it that they have their money in munitions besides spas, sort of like guns and massage butter, which is likely, given the gordian knot of interconnected money and power nowadays.

By the holistic theory, Ojai is a small scale Chicago, and a microcosm of the nation and world. It isn't surprising therefore to find the Ojai elites sympathetic to chains and tenements, which in their view are a nice solution to the housing and businsss problems, which make money for the elites and keep the citizens in their place.

The money-power complex showed its hand in Ojai with the Frostie-Mallory-Does triad. Frostie was a small, non-chain business, distasteful to elitist taste buds, whether in Chicago or Ojai. Mallory is small, open space, rentable housing also repugnant to elitist sensibilities. The Does are citizens who dared challenge the Ojai hegemony by proposing their own initiatives. As in Daleytown, veto power was used in Crowntown.

The difference between Chicago and Ojai is size. Daleytown has a constitution that calls for a big city; Crowntown has a constitution that calls for a "small town character." That difference poses a problem for big city slickers who want to bring tenements and chains to Ojai. The small town characters in Ojai don't like the Chicago chain style, but fortunately for the money interests, the problem characters are a minority, and the majority can be bought off or seduced with money.

Money and power go together like hand in glove. Which is the hand and which the glove is difficult to say; it's the chicken or egg question. Historically, power came first, since money wasn't around when home sapiens beat the Neanderthals over the heads with thigh bones. However, in modern times money seems to have taken the lead from raw power, since even the sheeple crowding into chains tremble at losing money. Money has become the all powerful god, enslaving rich and poor. Sex is often added to the money-power diad to make the money-power-sex triad, where male macho values trump female nurturance ones.

Ojai is a "tempest in a teapot" next to Chicago but the same storm blows in both. The "O" in Ojai is like the "O" in Shakespeare's Globe, holding up a mirror to our nature. We are all players on this stage of life. The chains and tenements are our props. On the one side are the church and state with their agenda of power and money, and on the other are the rebels with their power to the people agenda. In the muddle are the sheeple, between the church-state steeple and the revolutionary peephole.

Chicato and Ojai become small players when we zoom out farther. Then the stage takes on biblical proportions. It's the global elites against the poor, God against mammon, love against power. Here's where the eyes glaze over, ears wax over and the pencils stop scribbling. This is scary stuff that gets too close to home, whether it be in Chicago or Ojai. We are entering Tabooland, where black is white, and denial is the main modus operandi. Fortunately for all practical purposes, making money excepted, God is dead, and we don't have to fear losing our souls in eternal hell fire.

Prior to all that though, there is the Ojai council chambers, that twilight zone where reality and surreality somehow cohabitate. There the council is really behind affordable housing and small owner operated business, and they would never dream of slappsuiting a citizen for proposing initiatives, and where the lawsuit was not a lawsuit. They love Frostie and Mallory. The DOES are Christmas deer on their lawns, and Los Arboles was built for the poor, and according to the OVN editor is a good idea because of its high density. In case there is any doubt about where they stand, their manager, Jere Kersnar, will clear it all up with powerpoint presentations on supply and demand. The Mad Hatter would feel right at home in the Ojai chambers.

The reality is that affordable housing and owner operated business means SMALL housing and business. The reality is that the Ojai constitution demands a "SMALL town character." The reality is that we live on a SMALL planet. The reality is that Chicago is not Ojai; one is a BIG CITY and the other is a SMALL TOWN. But then elitists are not realists, despite their high claims and low aims.

Reality is a thorn in the side for small minds with big ideas. They must have big cities, big balances, big houses, big businesses, big cars, big trucks and big ideas. They must compensate for their small minds. Lucifer demonstrated that pride goeth before a fall. The Babel builders showed big towers don't reach heaven. The Romans proved that big empires crumble.

But don't let reality intrude upon insanity. The Chicagoans have already sold Daleytown to the moneyists, and the Ojaians are on the verge of selling Cronytown to the capitalists.

[To be continued...]

Dennis Leary, Ojai, 1/15/07

CHAINS AND TENEMENTS (Part Two)

To understand is to see relationships. I find it helpful to link the global and local in politics. I saw the CD, "Freedom to Fascism" last night. It confirmed what I suspected about national corruption, and threw light on what is happening here in Ojai. Ojai is a chip off the old block. Until we get to the root of the stump, we're just chipping away at the surface.

The root of the problem is power and money. The Bible had it half right when it said money money is the root of all evil. Last night's CD movie, "Freedom to Fascism" brought that out beautifully. The movie is available online under freedomtofascism.com, and will soon be available free or for cost, like 40 cents.

Some will label the CD like "Loose Change," just a conspiracy theory, thus joining the conspiracy to cover up the greatest conspiracy of all. But the truth will out. The 9/11 truth movement is growing, despite the blanket denial of the mainstream press, including such progressive magazines like Nation. I've found that the only way to access political truth is by the internet and/or free CD's like the ones I mentioned. For the most part, denial is our national agenda.

Sue Broidy's letter to the editor in today's OVN touts the democratic party as the solution. Some solution. The Dems and Repubs are two foxes guarding the chicken coop. The Repub fox is a little bigger. They both voted for the war. The Dems are the lesser of two evils, I suppose, but they're part and parcel of the same evil money system.

Chain stores will be on next Tuesday's agenda, I hear. Jere Kersnar will probably lead off with a powerpoint presentation, which will probably boil down to "the council can't really do much." The council could pass an ordinance, favoring owner operated businesses per Jeff Furchtenicht's initiative, or a more specific one to restaurants or to the downtown area. The chances of them doing this are about equal to a snowball surviving in hell.

Why? Because of the hidden agenda and global and local addiction to money and power. According to today's OVN, the Crown family (of Chicago) has purchased the Ford dealership and former Spa building, quite a chunk of property at the entrance to Ojai. Jere Kersnar's remarks reflect the general concern, which all revolve around money, like the planets around the sun.

Ordinary people don't even show up on the radar screen of money. Money and its brother, power, is our defacto god. See the movie, "Freedom to Fascism," for a documentary on our national addiction to this golden calf and sacred cow, foisted upon us by banker-industrialists. If Moses saw what was going on today in America (and Ojai), he'd break the tablets over every church steeple and city hall tower he could find.

We the People are fighting a rear guard action against the occult cult of money. We are all entwined in its tentacles. To get free, we have to get at the root of the problem. Chain stores are symptom of the problem. Unless we get to the root, we're just rearranging chairs on the Titanic, and Mr. Kersnar's powerpoints will continue to snow us. We know icebergs are not icecubes in a cocktail glass, but we don't know why because we can't see the root of the iceburg, so we pretend it isn't there, until it's too late.

If the ojai valley didn't sponsor housing for illegal citizen's we might have enough available affordable housing for our long time native legal citizens. I live in Oak View as stated in a previous comment, the thought of even more traffic dangeroulsy speeding through on our once quiet at dinner time highway, 33 is unthinkable! It will destroy our well being and the lifestyle we treasure, add to that the Lake Casitas crowd who some in the Lake's rec dept. would love to add more camping and Rv spots and you must see where I'm coming from!
We have to preserve what remains of the unconcreted and nature of Calif.
I say that as a life long resident of this state, whose beauty at one time paradisal throughout the state is becoming more limited and rapidly so.
I will fight anyway to stop this disaster, and hope for a moratorium on building of anything that will add to the adverse effects that the ensuing traffic will bring.

I would hope that any loyal resident in this valley
would not allow the Los Angeles version of the city
of Ojai. Simple physics will not support that much
traffic and sprawl in a finite setting. The writer
reacting to the recent city council meeting on
affordable housing captures the paradox of the
problem. Most participants of the meeting were not
idealogical low cost housing activists though, but
professionals and community voices with real concerns
about the dwindling housing stock here for middle
incomes with families and other residents. It is not
reactionary but realistic that unmanaged unplanned for
growth is the broader ominous threat, and advocates
shouldn't be stigmatized.
A potential multi-story higher density project is no
ghetto blight. The Ross Apartments in Meiners Oaks is
where a denser vertical configuration is more
functional and desirable than horizontal sprawl, and
compliments the European model of a centralized
downtown plaza which provides a pedestrian friendly
district, simular to Ojai's arcade design. Another
positive model to look at is the Fulton Street
seperate residence project- where homes were sold on
condition not to turnover for profit. Or any number of
educational or spiritual foundations here providing
housing on site to attract and keep talented people.
So yes it is possible to limit market dictated
exponential growth, decrease traffic congestion and
lesson environmental impact of housing projects. It is
very doubtful that city planners could or would
approve variances in parking, occupancy,density, and
number of prospective housing units, given current
ordinances and the vehemence of the community. I would
not consider it alternative values- the steady
erosion, by sprawl, of open space and quiet quality of
life- but would assert carefully planned growth
represents majority opinion of Ojai residents as well
as attracting tourist revenue.
Again, I didn't hear affordable housing advocates at
this, at long last, meeting on the subject. More like
creative input from many different perspectives which
is to be expected- coming from what has always been a
creative and thoughtful locale, drawing energies and
talented minds from distant places to share their
lives here. It would seem this is the resource that
will manage Ojai's growing pains, not the demi-Gods of
market forces but collective efforts by those who have
a real sense of place and a mind and commitment to
keep the traditions and faith in this valley.

Pete LaFollette

308 Alisos Ojai
798-1148