Letters to the editor: Issues with city manager; a favorite school in Simi?
Ventura needs new manager
A town or city is more than just roads, buildings, utilities; without its people and history, which define its nature and character, a city is empty. We Venturans live in Ventura because we like the weather and ocean, and we think it’s a fine place to live and raise a family. We choose to call this home.
Akbar Alikhan, our interim city manager, is apparently a competent and ambitious man. His former employers speak highly of him, and his income rose from $50,000 to $250,000 in the last 10 years. He’s a man on his way up. But he doesn’t live in Ventura. He chooses Thousand Oaks as the place he calls home.
For Alikahn, Ventura is a problem to be solved — and likely, given his history, a steppingstone to bigger things. For all his skills, he has neither reason or means to understand the heart and soul of this place, and his vision, if it corresponds to the proposed 25-year plan, does not match what Venturans want and need to maintain the values that brought and keep us here.
On the city’s website, you will find results of the much-vaunted surveys recently conducted. In a 400-page document (without table of contents or index), it is emphatically and repeatedly clear that the people of our small city don’t want six-story structures looming in our critical areas and that we value open spaces and agriculture. That overwhelming opinion must be respected before the wishes of developers for whom the bottom line is the only line.
We need a city manager whose ideas and values correspond with our own; someone who lives here, who thinks this is a place to call home. I call on the city council to find a qualified Venturan to lead us into the future.
Lin Rolens, Ventura
Preferential treatment in Simi?
What is going on at the Simi Valley Unified School District office? Are they playing favorites? Simi Valley High is getting a new scoreboard (about 4 in 10 years?), while over at Royal High, the parents have to keep track of the time on their phones because their scoreboard isn’t working. It’s an old one that hasn’t been replaced in years.
The SVUSD is giving Simi Valley High a new, state-of the-art scoreboard, while the “other” high school has to make do with phones. What is going on at the SVUSD? Does the SVUSD have a favorite child?
Becky Berg, Simi Valley
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Letters: Issues with city manager; a favorite school in Simi?
