In all my years of ranting and raving against and for the Machine, we call the body politique - here in old Oxnard - Status Quo or we like things to stay the way they are - the status quotient - or whatever pays plays....It's sort of a Chinatown being filmed in Bakersfield-by-the-Sea.

What is really happening to Oxnard?
Are we better off °¿°
 - Crime wise a sizeable decrease has been noted and recorded. 
A boy is shot on his front lawn. 

Money is being devoted to streets and alleys.......
----- whilest traffic grows thicker and thicker. 

We have transparency in government while a standing City Council Member has to file state freedom of information act just to see the work our City is doing in spending our tax dollars on a site specific plan.

Where is the balance? 
Where are we in that Great 2020 Plan in the Sky?

Is it 2030 already and have we filled every available spot of vacant or farmable land just for slap-it-together Condo --- can we please be done with building   N  O  W  ~~  Thank the stars for a drop in the cost of houses here....it was going way too high - and the prices at RiverPark - well - where is park and is the entire Park's vitality hanging on the inclusion of a Movie Theatre.....
 

Life in Oxnard is good - great- and grand ---- The City has actually been cleaned up from a few years hence.  Everyone gets credit - especially our Mayor Tom Holden.   Holden may have not yet gotten the burnt-out Oxnard Swap-Meet cleaned up yet, but he has done a fine job at the helm of giant growing and major dynamic southern California City.   The Council, for the most part has been doing well except for the flaps with Flynn - betwixt and between whatever Triumvirate has the ruling vote.

Maybe it is time for John Zaragoza to please get onboard the County Supervisors and leave way on the Council for some new blood.   A new council member is needed to assist Flynn in getting the swing vote to slide his way.

 The Oxnard Journal predicts for 2008 that Andres Herrera will announce for a higher office - could be Mayor or More -- Standby to Standby.

Oxnard needs to focus on its infrastructure. 
We are a relatively new city in comparison to the eastern seaboard's metropolis of New York City where an 85-year old steam pipe burst.  Oxnard has not much left from that time in the past to save except the  Carnegie Museum.  Oxnard needs to keep the streets up and think about increasing traffic lanes, especially on Rose, Oxnard Blvd., and Rice Road.   Rice Road will soon become the newly re-designated Route One (P.C.H.) when the Rice Road over-crossing at the 101 is rebuilt and redesigned.   Once that bridge is replaced, the State said it would re-designate Rice Road to the new California Route - 1- .

So we all need to keep an eye on how the City spends money.  Be thankful for people like Larry Stein who works hard looking over the public financial records of this City and finds things.  Would do this?  --- Point Made.

Be thankful for the Godwins, Larry and Shirley, for their tireless work to bring public awareness to issues of great import, especially anything involving our environment.

Be thankful for the peeps who work in the City's planning departments.  They have a tough job and they are the gate-keepers to what is built and how in this City.  Be thankful for all the City Departments and workers who toil hard for you - even if you see them having a coffee break, they are on the front line dealing the issues and keeping our services running smoothly.

Oxnard, by far is a wondrous location that keeps our dreams and fantasies fresh, our hearts and loves alive and a place there we can call home.  To me, this is Oxnard - a great place to live....regardless !

       Bill Winter
       Editor
       Oxnard Journal
       08/08/07

Join us as we kick-off RiverPark Alive – free, full-blast family entertainment in the great outdoors at RiverPark — Saturday, August 11th.                        

RiverPark, Oxnard’s great new community, is coming to life with beautiful homes, parks, schools, even a fire station! Lots of friendly people have moved in and there are more new models to see every day. Now there’s RiverPark Alive, where you’ll enjoy movies in the park, food festivals, concerts, fun for kids and families, and much more. It’s all free and you’re invited.

And while you’re here you can also experience RiverPark’s uplifting new neighborhoods first hand. Beautifully furnished models are open everyday with prices starting in the mid $300,000s.

You don’t have to live at RiverPark to enjoy it. But once you’re there you might wish you did.

 Come and be a part of living history --------------------

St. John’s Regional Medical Center is a safe place for patients, employees, and visitors.
Ongoing environmental testing continues to show that the mold presents no health hazards.
St. John’s Regional Medical Center has decided to use a new process that will treat the whole hospital at one time.

August 24:
Hospital Reopens following approval from the Department of Health Services

St. John’s offsite Community Education, Outreach, and Food Pantry programs and services will continue as scheduled; St. John’s offsite Outpatient Therapy Centers will remain open. 

Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center – Thousand Oaks

En caso de emergencia llame al 9-1-1. Para atención de rutina, llame a su médico.

          

Opponents of the traffic initiative will argue that this measure may inhibit the construction of badly needed affordable housing. This argument, however, reflects a complete misunderstanding of the forces that were behind the recent build up in the housing market. The traffic initiative may in fact become an important way for homeowners to protect the values of their home against the over building promised by the present city council which wants to build more than 10,000 units over the next few years.

There are currently about 800 used homes on the market in Oxnard (May 2007). There is also considerably more unsold new housing on the market. There are only about 95 homes in escrow so only about 11 % of the present used home inventory is selling leaving lots of housing options for buyers.

In the 93033 zip code, where a majority of Oxnard's blue collar community resides, the LA Times reports that homeowners in that zip code, between April 2006 and April 2007, suffered a 22.5% decline in the median value of their homes. The median value for 93033 homes is now $525,000.00.

On May 23 alone, 114 homeowners reduced the price of their house - think what 12,000 new homes will do to home values.  $525,000.00 is already less than the target prices the Oxnard City Council is proposing for the new affordable housing it wants to build as part of its attempt to exploit an exemption in Soar which allows for a certain amount of farmland to be lost, without a public vote, for affordable housing.

Hence, such "affordable housing" will cost more than the median price home in the 93033 zip code although that price difference will expand as more new homes in a flooded real estate market will cause present homeowners to lose even more of the value in their homes.

All of this simply reflects the fact that market forces are going to create affordable housing and expose the fact that we just lived through a market that was artificially inflated by huge amounts because of lending practices that are now disappearing along with bankrupt sub-prime lenders. It became routine for persons having no more than $2,000.00 in their pocket to put that money down as a down payment and then borrow $500,000.00 or more to buy a home. It was this easy money that created the demand in housing and high prices. Suddenly, anyone could buy a home creating the false impression that the demand for housing was exceeded by housing inventory.

In the real estate lending market we are now going to return to, there will no longer be this easy source of money whereby anyone can borrow any amount to buy a home. And for those who may think that is a bad thing, watch as the foreclosures increase because of the number of people unfairly put into loans they could not afford who will now be losing their homes. As responsible lending practices return to the market, far less money is going to be available to the housing market which will cause a natural reduction in home prices.

The market is therefore righting itself and will create affordable housing.

{{ From a pamphlet in distribution to make Oxnard Citizens Aware of the uprising against any more growth without planning within Oxnard. }}

Oxnard Traffic Initiative Fact Sheet June 200?

•   In 1995, Oxnard had five deficient intersections (deficient levels of service (LOS) are intersections that experience extensive delays in traffic). Ten years later, the number of deficient intersections grew to 25-a fivefold increase irjjust a decade!

•   According to a Ventura Chamber of Commerce Newsletter, the Oxnard/Ventura region has the 9th worst traffic congestion in the nation for communities with a population between 500,000 and 1,000,000.

•   Oxnard currently has 2,700 homes that have been approved but have

not yet been built. Plans are to add an additional 13,000 homes in the

next ten years. At a density factor of five people per household, 75,000 residents

will be added to the city. An estimated 150,000 more traffic~trips will be added

to the city's congested streets.

•   Oxnard's 2020 General Plan (city's blueprint for growth), called for the, city to add 50,000 residents in a 30-year period. By 2007, in little more than half the time, Oxnard had exceeded that number by 20,000 residents! The Riverpark development alone will add 94,000 traffic trips per day within the next eight years!

•   According to a Washington Post article in August, 2005, Oxnard is the 12th most densely populated city in the United States. Overcrowding has only worsened Oxnard's traffic problems.

• The average commuter now looses 47 hours to congested traffic each year, eroding quality family time and individual quality of life. See U.S. News and World Report, May 7, 2007.

•   According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, being stuck in a traffic jam more than doubles the risk of a heart attack within the subsequent hour.

The Oxnard Traffic initiative allows the residents of Oxnard to determine which large-scale residential and commercial projects will be approved.

*••

Questions? Call (805) 340-1922.

THE OXNARD TRAFFIC INITIATIVE:

HERE IS HOW

IT WORKS

IF THE CITY COUNCIL APPROVES ANY LARGE PROJECT THAT CAUSES TRAFFIC FLOW AT INTERSECTIONS WITHIN A 5 MILE RADIUS TO FALL BELOW A LEVEL "C OPERATING LEVEL [THIS IS A WELL KNOWN TERM OF ART AMONG TRAFFIC ENGINEERS BASED ON AN A - F GRADING SCALE], THE PROJECT CANNOT GO FORWARD UNLESS ALSO APPROVED BY THE PUBLIC. THE INITIATIVE IS AS SIMPLE AS THIS. IT ONLY AMENDS THE TRAFFIC CIRCULATION ELEMENT OF THE GENERAL PLAN TO INSUE THAT THE PUBLIC CAN PARTICIPATE IN THE APPROVAL OF PROJECTS THAT WILL INCREASE TRAFFIC.

THE INITIATIVE DOES NOT, THEREFORE, AS ITS OPPONENTS CLAIM, STOP DEVELOPMENT. IT SIMPLY SAYS IF A LARGE PROJECT IS GOING TO FURTHER ADD TO TRAFFIC, THE PUBLIC HAS TO VOTE TO DECIDE IF THE VALUE OF THE PROJECT OUTWEIGHS IT'S IMPACT ON TRAFFIC.

EVEN THE CITY COUNCIL IN ITS GENERAL PLAN SAYS IT IS THE GOAL AND POLICY TO NOT HAVE ANY INTERSECTIONS FALL BELOW A LEVEL C OPERATING LEVEL. HOWEVER, THE DEVELOPER SUPPORTED MAJORITY ON THE COUNCIL ACCEPTS REALITY DEFYING EIR'S THAT SAY ANY PROJECTS THAT COME BEFORE THEM HAVE MINIMAL IMPACT ON TRAFFIC AND THE ENVIRONMENT. THAT MAJORITY IS READY TO APPROVE MORE THAN 10,000 NEW HOMES AND OTHER PROJECTS IN JUST THE NEXT FEW YEARS. THIS INITIATIVE WILL ALLOW YOU, THE VOTER, TO DECIDE IF A PROJECT THAT ADDS TRAFFIC TO OUR ROADS IS A WORTHWHILE ADDITION TO OUR COMMUNITY.

THIS IS A SOAR LIKE INITIATIVE IN THAT IT RESTORES POWER TO THE VOTER TO CONTROL DEVELOPMENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY.

PLEASE HELP COLLECT SIGNATURES TO PUT THIS INITIATIVE ON THE BALLOT AND PUT OXNARD ON THE MAP AS A LEADER OF SMART GROWTH THAT INVOLVES THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY.

The Oxnard Traffic Initiative Committee

- - - - SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MAJORITY PARTY IN OXNARD - - - -
 

View the Oxnard Budget Analysis --- Courtesy of Accountant L. Stein.
........requires>>> Microsoft Excel . (xls file)

Oxnard City Council Members:

Tim Flynn

John Zaragoza

Andres Hererra

            °¿°
..............^{~
             Ox
                       Jo}
 

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