Press Release

ANDREWS DECLARES NEED TO FUND PUBLIC SAFETY

Adequate funding for police and fire services is essential to assure basic service is there when we most need it.

Ventura, September 19, 2005: Ventura City Councilman Neal Andrews today announced his intention to sponsor one or more specific revenue measures to fund additional public safety resources within the City. He said he would defer specifying any details because he intended to work through the existing budget committee process with Mayor Brennan and to bring their joint recommendations to the Council in the near future.

“The City needs the additional resources,” he said. “There just isn’t any way to continue to try to meet all the service demands from our citizens without more personnel. Both our Fire Department and our Police Department and the respective Chiefs and their entire management teams have done a marvelous job for years introducing efficiencies, adjusting assignments and priorities, and making optimal use of resources, but there just comes a point that you can stretch no further without something breaking. I think we are there. We now have to convince the public that they need to stand behind our public safety team and approve a revenue enhancement measure to pay for the needed additional fire and police personnel.”

Four years ago Mr. Andrews introduced the concept of performance based management to the City to improve service and increase accountability. Such a

system was finally adopted by Council last year with the appointment of the new City Manager. “After a year of measuring performance of the various departments citywide,” Andrews pointed out, “We realize that we have a significant gap between our goals and the actual service we deliver in a number of important areas, especially public safety.” Data from the first year-end report shows that, while the goal for fire and police is to respond to serious calls in less than four or five minutes respectively 90% of the time, the fire response hits that target only 68% of the time and the police response only 55% of the time. “I am committed to fixing that problem,” Andrews insisted. “ There really shouldn’t be any surprise here. We haven’t added personnel to either the police force or the fire service in over a decade, but our population has grown by 13% and our calls for service have grown far more than that because of the changing nature of society and the addition of paramedic services. Nonetheless, we have to fix the problem and do it soon. It’s time for people to stop burying their heads in the sand as if everything is hunky-dory. If we don’t tell the voters the truth and ask them to pony up with the tax funds to fix this, we’re just going to be another New Orleans waiting to happen.”

On the joint recommendation of Andrews and Mayor Brennan, the Council has already approved placing a ballot measure before the voters in the upcoming election that will raise some funds by levying a special tax on the City’s only local card club. In a few weeks, at Council’s direction City staff will also present a recommendation for a special fee to be paid by establishments selling alcoholic beverages in the City. Mr. Andrews has been a proponent of stronger regulation of alcohol sales within the City since his election, and he has argued that enforcement of such regulation has to be funded by appropriate fees on the sale of alcohol. In recent months Police Department sting operations revealed that as many as one-third of alcohol sales outlets were selling to minors.

“These measures, however, will not be sufficient,” Andrews says. “They will raise only a very limited amount of money. The card tax is a drop in the bucket. In the case of the alcohol fees, the money will go right back to enforcement activities related to

alcohol sales themselves. We’re going to have to ask the taxpayer to see the realities and step up to the plate on this.”

-30-

Press Release

June 23, 2005

HEADLINE:Council Member Neal Andrews Proposes New Affordable Housing Program for Employees

BODY: Neal Andrews, with the support of Deputy Mayor Carl Morehouse, has proposed the development of a joint venture between the City of Ventura and area employers to establish a program of employer sponsored affordable housing for local employees. Employers would join together to either develop housing for their employees, to participate in the purchase of market rate housing with their employees, or to leverage the buying power of their employees in the housing and mortgage market.“Employers often offer special housing assistance to new executives, especially those having to move to the area from other parts of the country where housing costs are lower,” Andrews noted. “Creating a program that extends that kind of arrangement to the workforce in general is not a great stretch conceptually. In the kind of heated housing market we have seen over the last few years in Ventura County, it could really make the difference in helping our area employers to remain competitive in attracting high quality employees.”While the concept could require employers to commit significant investment capital, Andrews argues that the cost of capital in the current market is low enough to make the idea feasible. Moreover, with multiple employers participating in the capital fund, the plan could leverage a relatively small pool of funds from each participating company into a far more significant housing program than might have been possible in prior times.“The advantages are clear,” according to Andrews. “An employer sponsored affordable housing program for employees would enhance employers’ ability to attract high quality employees. It would reduce commuting times, increase the amount of time a family could have together, reduce traffic, reduce smog, reduce costs and just generally improve the quality of life in our City.”Andrews indicates he expects to offer a more detailed and specific policy proposal to the Ventura City Council in coming months after working with interested city employers and financial institutions to iron out details of the proposed plan.

-30-