ELECTIONS : VENTURA CITY COUNCIL : Most Candidates Emphasize Need to Lure Tourists

VENTURA —  Campaign rhetoric gets blunt when candidates vying for three open City Council seats hit the topic of money.

It is a popular issue for the field of 12 mostly pro-business candidates who have championed tourism and commercial development as keys to the city’s future.

“Bring them in, get their money, and send them home,” says Charles E. (Buster) Davis, who like other candidates contends that Ventura’s prosperity hinges on luring free-spending visitors.

It is a doctrine already set forth by Mayor Tom Buford and Councilman Greg Carson, who decided not to seek reelection this year. Councilman Jack Tingstrom is the only incumbent on the ballot.

During their tenure, the three council members have pushed hard to transform Ventura into a premier tourist city, voting last year to invest more than $4 million in renovations to the city’s historic downtown.

“The snowball has already started,” Tingstrom said. And most of the challengers say they intend to keep it rolling.

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Ray Di Guilio, Craig Huntington, Brian Lee Rencher, Donna De Paola-Peterson, Keith Burns, John S. Jones, James Friedman, Davis and Tingstrom all want to continue--if not step up--the city’s efforts to increase tourism by promoting the city’s beaches, harbor and downtown.

They also contend that the city can make millions of dollars by embracing proposals such as the Buenaventura Mall expansion and construction of a baseball stadium and aquatics center.

“I have heard so many times that Ventura is the best-kept secret,” Friedman said recently. “Well, what good is it being the best-kept secret when we don’t have the tourism dollars here to help our economy?”

But candidates Christopher T. Staubach, Stephen Hartmann and Carroll Dean Williams have questioned such actions. And at least one warns that marketing Ventura’s charm and embracing grandiose developments could destroy the city for the people who live here.

“People come here because downtown Ventura is different,” Staubach said at a recent forum. “There aren’t traffic jams or parking meters. Ventura has a simple, unique charm, and if we change that charm, we will never be able to get it back.”

Increasingly, candidates and council members say, the city is being forced to rely on tourism and sales tax revenue to pay for basic city services.

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Wedged between the Pacific Ocean and coastal hills, Ventura is limited in terms of where and how much it can grow. And suburban sprawl is virtually prohibited because of restrictive land-use agreements between neighboring cities.

Without the influx of new residents and development to boost the economy, the city is forced to look elsewhere for revenue.

Currently, Ventura’s largest source of revenue comes from sales taxes--about 27%, or $13.3 million of the city’s $51-million budget last year.

The Buenaventura Mall generates the single-largest portion of sales tax dollars--about $1.3 million. Car sales from the Ventura Auto Center generate about $1.1 million annually.

Developers of both the mall and auto center have proposed multimillion-dollar expansion deals, which are expected to come before the new council within the next year.

Mall owners want to add two new anchor stores and a second level to the 30-year-old shopping center. The auto mall owner wants to build a baseball stadium and entertainment complex on land behind the car dealerships.

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Both deals are alluring for the potential profits the city could make. But they also concern some residents and council candidates, who have criticized proposed tax-sharing plans with the developers.

In July, city leaders refused to finance a share of the $70-million sports complex known as Centerplex, though they indicated a willingness to renegotiate.

The mall’s tax-sharing plan was attacked by lawyers representing The Esplanade in Oxnard earlier this year and is now the target of an initiative drive.

The details of both developments have been greeted with mixed reactions from the council candidates, but are generally supported.

The Chamber of Commerce-backed trio of Di Guilio, Tingstrom and Friedman--front-runners in endorsements and fund-raising--enthusiastically support both plans.

Huntington, De Paola-Peterson, Davis, Jones, Burns and Rencher also support the proposals, but have expressed reservations on how best to finance them.

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“The problem is,” De Paola-Peterson said, “we don’t have $10 million to hand over to a baseball stadium. We have got to keep an open mind as far as creative financing.”

Staubach, Williams and Hartmann have criticized both proposals, saying developers--not the city--should take any and all risks.

Hartmann doesn’t mince words on Centerplex. On his campaign hot line, the marketing manager calls it “the most expensive and misguided proposal ever to be served up to Ventura residents.”

Staubach says city leaders “spend a lot of time out there talking to big-name developers, but they don’t spend a lot of time talking to the small businesses.”

But other candidates argue that existing small businesses profit and new businesses are attracted when people come to the city’s commercial areas, such as downtown, the harbor and mall.

The city now spends $357,000 annually to woo tourists through the Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau, which has taken a leading role in defining what types of activities or events would attract people to Ventura.

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One goal embraced by most candidates is to secure more overnight visitors. Last year, hotel sales peaked at $19 million, according to Bill Clawson, director of the visitors bureau. Of that, the city skimmed $1.9 million in bed taxes.

If the city could increase the hotel occupancy rate from its current 60% to 80%, Clawson said, that would generate $25 million in hotel sales annually and pour $2.5 million into city coffers without having to build new hotels or putting stress on public services.

“Tourism in my mind is just about the cleanest, best form of economic development,” Clawson said, adding that bed tax figures do not account for money that visitors spend on food, merchandise or entertainment.

One way to attract overnight visitors is to recruit circuit sporting events--an idea embraced by nearly all the candidates.

A city task force has recommended recruiting volleyball, surfing or softball tournaments to attract people who would arrive on a Friday and be gone by Monday.

Earlier this month, the council approved spending $60,000 to secure Ventura as a site for a national offshore powerboat race next year--a move council candidates were quick to praise.

It is those types of events, some say, that will give visitors a reason to come here. The city now does not offer much beyond its beach view and fledgling downtown corridor, some say.

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“You can’t just say ‘we are a tourist destination’ and have nothing to offer,” Burns said. “Just sitting on your assets does not guarantee your future.”

A key piece of the city’s financial puzzle lies in downtown Ventura, council members and candidates say.

The city’s long-term redevelopment plan for downtown stretches over a 20-year period, and includes such projects as building a parking structure, movie theater and 900 new residences.

Outgoing council members say downtown redevelopment must be embraced by future city leaders if it is going to succeed.

“It is a beach town,” Councilman Carson said. “And we [decided] that income is going to have to come from sales tax revenue. We know that this can be and should be a destination city. . . . I hope that they are running to keep that direction running on line.”

* Q&A;

The candidates explain their methods of boosting city’s economy. B10