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CAPSTV hosts Legacy families

Photo by John Ferritto

CAPSTV and crew, along with Suz Montgomery, invited several of the Legacy families including the Foster and Dudley families into their newly refurbished studio. They enjoyed learning about the history of Ventura through the eyes and ears of those who were there or from stories told to them.

Richard Abbey Docent Dudley house and owner of the classic Ford, Bob Dudley, Sheri Oelschlager Docent Dudley House and Suz Montgomery host of CAPS Media Ventura Legacies in front of the classic Ford.

 

Savvy Caregiver Workshop

“Did I remember to put the cat out?”
“Did I remember to put the cat out?”

The Savvy Caregiver is a 4-week program for family caregivers offering 12 hours of face-to-face training with dementia experts. This is the opportunity to go beyond introductory education offerings.

The Savvy Caregiver program addresses your biggest concerns:

Understanding Alzheimer’s and other related dementias.
The toll of caregiving.
Managing daily life and behaviors.
Caring for yourself while caring for others.
Decision making.
Communicating with a person with dementia.
Taking control.
Goals for caregiving.

This class will be given on Wednesdays, April 6, 13, 20 and 27th from 9 a.m. to noon at Meditech Health Services , 1650 Palma Drive, Ste. 101.

Registration is limited and reservations required. The fee is only $25 for the entire course. Call Monica Schrader at 494-5200 to register.

City council members celebrating Ventura Anniversary

Mayor Erik Nasarenko

When I think about celebrating our 150th birthday as a city, many images come to mind, but perhaps the most prominent is the Ventura pier.

It reminds me of Ventura’s resilience and optimism, for like the city itself, it may go through tough times, likely the result of high surf pounding the wood pilings or funding gaps in the city’s budget, but the setbacks are almost always temporary, because the pier–like Ventura–perseveres towards a better tomorrow, stronger against the next storm and smarter because of its ability to outlast it.

It is the oldest wooden pier in southern California, built only six years after papers were filed in Sacramento in 1866 marking Ventura’s beginning as a municipality.  Back then products such as citrus, wheat, lima beans and crude oil were shipped from the pier, while lumber, bricks and cement were imported to help the city and region grow.  Today, while no longer used for shipping and trading, the pier has become a destination for tourists and residents alike, who take long walks along the wooden planks at sunset or enjoy the structure from the nearby hillsides, gazing down at what has become a primary symbol of our relaxed, unpretentious beach town.

The Ventura pier is our pier–maintained by a combination of city and non-profit funds from groups like Pier Into The Future for the enjoyment of everyone.  Let’s resolve to keep it that way, so that future generations of Venturans can enjoy what we are able to marvel at today.

Cheryl Heitmann

Celebrating Ventura’s 150th anniversary is a chance for our residents to reflect on and feel pride in our city’s past, present and future.   Appreciating what a special place this is to live; our rich cultural history, our diversity, and our community spirit is a part of the celebration.   Learning more about the people who helped shape our city has been both amazing and educational.  .

Chairing the 150th anniversary committee of 60 people, representing different organizations, many of whom were able to incorporate the 150th as a theme in their signature activities, is a reminder of the engaged community we live in. Companies and individuals stepped up to support the celebration, and giving ourselves the gift of a million acts of kindness has been a way for everyone to be involved.

We will leave a tile wall depicting our history to the present time as well as oral histories by descendants of some of our pioneer families for future generations to enjoy and learn from.  And on April 2, we will introduce the community to (12) 5 year olds, who represent the future of Ventura. To me, the celebration is about the people, those before us and those to come and how Ventura will continue to evolve and thrive.

Deputy Mayor Neal Andrews

In most of the rest of the developed world 150 years would not be such a big deal. Even in the U. S. on the east coast or in the old southwest, it’s not so remarkable. The Quaker Meeting House I attended as a child has been in continual operation for over 300 years. So why are we making such a big deal out of our 150 years? Because it offers us a time for most of our citizens to learn something about the city that most came to relatively recently.

Most never knew that our early records were kept in Spanish. Most never knew that we were once part of Santa Barbara County. Most never knew that in the early days our primary agricultural focus was cattle and cattle by-products. Because it gives us the opportunity to celebrate our traditions, relatively new though they may be. Because it provides us an occasion to recognize the great contributions of so many of the early families, the Bards, Jews, Thilles, Borchards, and so many others, to the growth and prosperity of Ventura. Because it gives us the opportunity to appreciate and celebrate the quality of life we have been blessed with merely by having the chance of living here.

Christy Weir

Ventura’s 150th anniversary is an important milestone that the entire city can celebrate. We are one of the oldest cities in California, going back to the founding of the Mission in 1782. Then in 1866, with around 5,000 residents, we were incorporated as the City of San Buenaventura.

One of the most exciting projects to commemorate our anniversary is the historic tile mural that will be built in front of the Mission. The artist, Michael O’Kelly, is designing a pictorial history that will celebrate our heritage in a beautiful and lasting art form.

To find out more about the mural and upcoming festivities, go to www.celebrateventura.org  or Ventura Historic Mural on Facebook.

Carl Morehouse

What a wonderful moment!  A city that has stood the test of time, changed much over 150 years and yet feels so warm, comfortable and unpretentious to this day.  I’m proud and honored to have served on the Council for 16 years and been a part of helping to keep Ventura genuine.  May she thrive for 150 more and beyond.

Mike Tracy

As a lifelong resident of Ventura, it’s great to see the enthusiasm and involvement in this celebration of the founding of our City 150 years ago.  Looking forward, our continued success and vitality will require renewed individual commitment and investment–with time, talent, and resources–in order to meet the many challenges our community faces.  We all agree that this is a wonderful place to live and work, and I truly believe that our best days lie ahead.

 

There are seven members of the Ventura City Council. Each member must be a registered voter in the City and is elected at-large. The Council selects one of its members  to be Mayor. The Mayor serves a term of two years and is the presiding officer of the Council. The Mayor has been delegated the responsibility to act as the City Council’s ceremonial representative at public events and functions. The Deputy Mayor is also selected in the same manner and serves a two-year term.

The Ventura City Council meets at 6:00 pm three Mondays each month.

Councilmembers may be contacted via telephone at 654-7827 or by sending an email to [email protected]

We became a city 150 years ago – how time flies

By Ventura City staff

As we count down to April 2, 2016 – the date we became a city 150 years ago – we as residents can be  proud of the many cultures and peoples who have enriched our city as they made Ventura their home – from the indigenous Chumash Native Americans to the waves of Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, European and new immigrants from other states and nations.

The Chumash provincial capital Shisholop – near the Ventura River mouth – governed a region larger than today’s City of Ventura, from the Rincon and Casitas Pass to the Santa Clara River and Saticoy.

Shisholop – meaning “port on the coast” according to Cruzeño Chumash consultant Fernando Librado Kitsepawit – supervised a lucrative trade with the Channel Islands and other regional mainland provinces, maintained sociopolitical stability among its many communities and directed a calendar of seasonal and cosmological cycles and events. The Chumash were fine artisans and adept traders traveling by tomols or canoes.

European voyagers Juán Rodrigues Cabrillo (1542), Sebastián Viscaíño (1602), Gaspar de Portolá (1769) and Juán Bautista de Anza (1776) briefly visited this influential village by land or sea until Chumash residents became subject to foreign colonization in 1782 with the founding of Mission San Buenaventura.

Saint Serra (1713-1784) founded his ninth and final mission in Ventura, part of a network of 21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to Fairfield. The monk was originally called Friar Junipero – his name means “juniper bush” or metaphorically “evergreen.” A philosophy professor from the island of Majorca (Spain) turned missionary, he left a complex and controversial legacy in our state.

The Franciscans named their California missions – and the cities that grew alongside them – after saints from their order in the Roman Catholic Church. Serra named the final mission he lived to see established before his death San Buenaventura or Saint Bonaventure, after a mystic priest who wrote a famous meditative book called Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum or “The Mind’s Road to God.” The city’s official name, deemed too long to write out completely on railroad schedules was shortened by half to become “Ventura” – and this nickname has remained in common use today.

Mission San Buenaventura soon became a thriving hub of orchards and gardens watered by a seven-mile aqueduct and the largest ranching operation in California with 10,000 head of cattle and harvesting 9,000 bushels of grain annually. By the 1860s a town had grown around it and Main Street boasted a boardwalk, four stores and six to eight rum shops and restaurants.

Ventura city and county government began in and above a liquor establishment. When our first mayor, Walter Chaffee, wanted to convene a City Council meeting, he had only to leave his general store, cross the street and climb the stairs above Spears Saloon – where Capriccio’s Restaurant is located today – to the first offices of Ventura City Hall and, in 1873, the first Ventura County Courthouse.

Then as now, the City of San Buenaventura was a bilingual community. Our second mayor – saloonkeeper Angel Escandon – was Latino. Half the sindicos or council members spoke Spanish as their first language and the other half spoke English. The minutes of the first meetings – kept today between leather boards in the archives of the City Clerk’s office – are written in Spanish in the beautiful cursive handwriting of the day.

That first year of government, Ventura’s staff of five spent a budget of $7,465 – for which residents paid an annual tax of one dollar per head. Council actions that first year included building a public well for $50 – for which water users paid 25 cents per month – and paving Main Street – then called Camino Real – to the river.

The City of Ventura charged 24 cents per head to check cattle brands during slaughter to prevent cattle rustling, and an entertainment tax of $2 per billiard table. By fine or 10 days in jail, the City government outlawed cattle driving, horse racing and bull fighting on or near Main Street [$100 fine], limited milking on the main roads to one cow per family [$25 fine] and forbade concealed weapons within city limits [$100 fine].

Our city grew rapidly with the establishment of Ventura County, carved from Santa Barbara County in 1873, after an oil boom and “big agriculture” operations such as the 2,300-acre Dixie Thompson Rancho of lima beans, orchards and cattle. These ventures, along with major businesses such as the Hobson Brothers Meat Packing Company (the site of today’s Patagonia) brought immigrants, wealth, bridges and roadways to the city, transforming our city’s downtown from 1910 to 1930 into an eclectic architectural mix of red brick storefronts, terra cotta “Beaux-Arts” banks, Victorian-style homes, a Moorish-influenced Bard Hospital and Spanish Revival Ventura Theatre – all crowned by a magnificent new Ventura County Courthouse (today’s City Hall) in 1913.

 

Vol. 9, No. 13 – March 30 – April 12, 2016 – CAPS Media

CAPS Media crew covers the Fair Parade live on channel 6.
CAPS Media crew covers the Fair Parade live on channel 6.

Happy birthday Ventura
By Elizabeth Rodeno

CAPS Media, otherwise known as Community Access Partners of San Buenaventura, has been around since the early 2000s. Initially we had one channel, channel six on your local cable network. Back then we provided live broadcasts of various Ventura city meetings, including the City Council meetings. These broadcasts brought the community closer to city government. CAPS has helped to better develop a relationship between them. CAPS has been supporting the city all these years. We have had the opportunity to share the annual State of the City hosted by the mayor on behalf of the city council with the plan for the subsequent year. Not to mention we participating in non-partisan election coverage and programming to provide the candidates a forum for their views. So during that time we were also proud to be able to broadcast live community events such as the St. Patrick’s Day parade. We have been involved in covering so many community events, there is not enough room here. I’m sure if you ask any organization in the city they will tell you have worked with them in some capacity.

Why go on about this? Because we are deeply involved with the City of Ventura and are so thrilled to able to share in the celebration of the 150th Anniversary with everyone.  Along the way we have developed better ways to reach out and share what the city and community have to say. We are proud to support our members in sharing their stories and supporting their hard work and dedication in the production of their stories. Videography requires hard work yet it also allows creativity and fun.

We have the opportunity to be there, cameras in hand, for many of the150th events, including the launch at the museum back in November. We have been the West Park open house, the groundbreaking of Kellogg Park, the Corporate Games, all City Council meetings and the St. Patrick’s Day parade, featuring five legacy families of Ventura. In addition, CAPS Media launched the Ventura Legacies program where we bring in families with long and interesting histories with the city and learn what the city was like over the decades and centuries. We encourage anyone to contact us to share their stories with the community. Saturday April 2nd is the big birthday celebration and family picnic to be held at Plaza Park. Later that day, the city will host for a concert with longtime Ventura’s Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at Mission park. We will have our truck and crew ready to hear your stories. Please stop by the truck and share your great history of Ventura with us.

Check out our new website and become a member for $25, seriously.  You can sign up and reserve your space in a class, enroll your kids in our Summer programs and get information on and support our new venture, CAPS Radio. CAPS Media is everywhere, on Vimeo, Channels 6 & 15 and live streaming at www.CAPSMedia.org

Vista Real Charter High School

Ventura Chamber President and CEO Stephanie Caldwell holds the ribbon while Councilwoman Cheryl Heitmann cuts it at open house.

By Sheri Long-Vista Real Community Liaison

Although Vista Real’s downtown Ventura location opened in July, we officially celebrated with an Open House and Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on Thursday, March 10th. Students, staff, and community members were all invited to tour our facility, meet with school and student leadership and enjoy some good food and good fun with the local Scratch food truck and Q104.7 live on location!

Vista Real is a free, independent study high school diploma program, currently serving approximately 1,000 students in the Ventura County Region and throughout our six school resource centers located in Ventura, Camarillo, Simi Valley, Oxnard and Santa Paula. Students that were previously at risk of dropping out, find a whole new way of learning at Vista Real with one on one teaching, on site computer labs and readily available, free tutoring from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Vista Real staff and teachers work diligently with students to create a positive learning environment where in students are successful each and every day.

Students have stated that our schools allow for “flexibility,” they assist with keeping students “on track” and “focus on students’ individual needs giving everyone the right amount of attention.” Students ages 14-19 may enroll at any Vista Real location. We also accept those youth ages 20-23, who have aged out of a comprehensive high school and are still interested in obtaining their high school diploma.

These opportunity youth are given a second chance at success while placed in a workforce program with the ability to obtain their high school diploma and job skills at the same time. Vista Real strives to create strong community ties, positive relations with service organizations, and course offerings in varying Career Technical Education fields.

Upon graduation, we work with our students to place them in areas of interest for jobs, internships or offer personal assistance with college applications and financial aid. In the words of one Vista Real student, “It’s an amazing place to be, and an amazing place to learn.” For more information please visit us at VRCH.org or call (877) 360-LEARN.

 

Ventura Family YMCA has many different classes and sports offerings

Participation in YMCA sports provides a fun learning experience.
Participation in YMCA sports provides a fun learning experience.

Registration is now open for youth of all ages to participate in the Ventura Family YMCA’s Spring II Session. This spring the Ventura Family YMCA has many different classes and sports offerings for their local youth including, swimming, ballet, baseball, football, tennis, basketball, and many other sports.

This is a great way to give children an introduction to a new sport or help them improve their skills in a sport that they already play.

Participation in YMCA sports provides a fun learning experience for all players regardless of their ability. Kids learn the basics of the sport, develop skills and sportsmanship, get playing time and enjoy an encouraging environment.

The Y’s Youth Programs Director recalls his past experiences as a child athlete helping shape who he is today.  Vinny Savelich  stated “When I think back on my time playing sports as a kid, I see how my teammates and coaches shaped me and helped establish my self-confidence and identity. These experiences really gave me the right direction to succeed in life, which is something that makes me feel really good because I can give back this type of help to our Y kids.”

The Y emphasizes the success and improvement of each team member rather than winning. The leagues offer competition to challenge every child’s ability and focus on fair play and teamwork.

Registrations close before the beginning of the Y’s Spring II Session, which runs from April 11, 2016-June 4, 2016.

To learn more and to register for summer programs and camps, visit ciymca.org/ventura, in-person at the Ventura Family YMCA, 3760 Telegraph Rd. or 642.2131.

 

 

Student musicians impressed the judges with their musical skills and maturity

 

Five finalists playing as a band at VMF jazz competition after the judging.

Ventura Music Festival held their 10th annual Student Jazz Competition at the Wyndham Garden Ventura Pierpont Inn filling the Ventura coastal air with groove and swing.

The five finalists (many talented students entered the competition) gathered and showed off their best Jazz solos in front of an eager audience and judges waiting to hear these young emerging musicians, from those who hope to join the best bassists in the world to those readying for classical careers. The stakes were not only bragging rights, but also cash prizes of $500, $250 and $100 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. The contestants ranged in age from 14 to 18 years old and played a variety of musical instruments.

Each musician was backed up by the local band Coda, named after a term used in music primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end, featuring Bevan Manson, Tom Etchart and Charles Levin. Charles is also a former Board Member of the Ventura Music Festival.

The judge’s decision was first place going to Blake Kasting, a guitarist and senior from Ventura High School. Second place went to trombone player Max Fourmy a high school senior from Santa Barbara’s Alta Vista High. Third place went to Henry Urschel an alto sax freshman attending Dos Pueblos High in Santa Barbara. Honorable mentions went to Chris Seagraves, a Junior from Moorpark High School and Matthew Michalek a sophomore from Thousand Oaks High School.

The Ventura Music Festival presents classical, jazz, popular music and family concerts in a variety of venues in Ventura, and educational outreach programs. This year the music festival has moved from April to July. Founded in 1994, the Ventura Music Festival is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. VenturaMusicFestival.org.

Gershwin brothers coming to Ventura

event RubiconThe Janet and Mark L. Goldenson Broadway Musical Concert Series at Rubicon Theatre Company continues in its second year with a weekend concert celebrating one of the most significant and popular American songwriting teams of all time, George and Ira Gershwin. Who Could Ask For Anything More? will be presented  only on Saturday, April 2 at 2&8pm and Sunday, April 3 at 2pm.

Who Could Ask For Anything More? features six performers  singing timeless Gershwin classics such as “It Had To Be You,” “S’Wonderful,” “How Long Has This Been Going On,” “They Can’t Take That Away, and over 20 magnificent numbers. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 667-2900, or go to www.rubicontheatre.org.

Upcoming concerts in the Janet and Mark L. Goldenson Broadway Concert Series:

Broadway star Liz Calloway brings her acclaimed cabaret act to Rubicon, Stars of Broadway, West End and National Tours, by talented husband-and-wife duo Beverly and Kirby Ward. Back To The Garden: The music of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Laura Nyro

Box Office 667-2900
Hours: Mon-Sun Noon – 6:00 p.m. www.rubicontheatre.org