Date: February 18, 2009
Agenda Item Number: 10
Council Action Date:
February 23, 2009
Introduced by: Mayor Christy Weir
Subject: Request for Out-of-State Travel to attend the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference, March 14 - 19, 2009, in Washington, D.C.
Requested Action: Approve Request for Out-of-State Travel
Issue/Idea/Concern:
(1) The National League of Cities Congressional City Conference provides local elected officials' valuable opportunities to learn about federal issues important to America's cities and to lobby Congress on those priorities. This conference will be attended by mayors and council members from hundreds of cities. The program includes general sessions featuring national leaders, members of the new Administration and Congress speaking on the current fiscal crisis. I will have the opportunity to learn firsthand about the economic stimulus packages and the $700 billion economic recovery plan, find out what additional steps the federal government might take
to stabilize the economy and understand how they can help our local economy.
(2) On the schedule there is time for lobbying on Capitol Hill, which is especially important for us to call attention to our readiness to receive federal funds for several "shovel-ready" projects in Ventura. There will be a high level of competition for these funds, and it is crucial that Ventura be well represented in our request for millions of dollars of infrastructure funding, as well as other categories of available funds.
The total cost of this trip will be approximately $2100. The Council is well within our yearly travel budget. I understand the sensitivity to spending city money on travel but believe that this trip will result in a positive financial impact to the City
Posted: 02/18/09
| PRESS RELEASE
DOWNTOWN VENTURA
PARKING APPROVAL
Good afternoon!
It has been many years since the initial work was begun in 2003 to improve the management of parking in our Downtown. I wanted to let everyone that was involved along the way to know that we received final approval by the City Council last night to begin implementation of our new downtown parking management program including:
* Approval of new ordinance codes that base on-street and off-street parking pricing strategies on 85% utilization
* Creating a Downtown Parking Advisory Committee.
* Funding the installation of parking pay stations and way finding signage.
Along the way we collectively change people's perspective of parking in Ventura. The final approval was relatively non-controversial, but there is a lot more work to be done as we work toward getting the pay stations installed by this summer.
All of this would not have been possible without your help along the way. Whether it was as a staff member or consultant helping write the parking plan, staff from other agencies answering my questions about how to do this, or working on the two year process to figure out how to implement our plan,
Today - congratulations to all of our participants in this
long process...I want to take the opportunity to thank you and I truly appreciate all of the effort given to this important step to make our City a better place to visit and live.
If you would like a copy of any of the final reports or new ordinance code, let me know. I probably left some people out so please pass this on.
Tom Mericle
City Transportation Manager
City of San Buenaventura
01/14/09
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