By Pacific Coast Business Times Staff Friday, October 31st, 2008

Two of the most important items are Measure A in Santa Barbara County and Measure V in Oxnard.

We want to remind our readers why we support Measure A and oppose Measure V.

Arguments against Measure A focus on cost, but the argument for it faces commuters on Highway 101 twice a day, five days a week.

But Santa Barbara commuters aren’t the only ones worried about the thin ribbon known as Highway 101. It is a concern for anyone doing business from Westlake Village to Paso Robles because it’s the only game in town when it comes to shipping goods up and down the Central Coast.

Anti-tax groups look at Measure A’s $1 billion price tag and the possibility that bike paths or mass-transit improvements could be added to it.

Civic and business leaders support Measure A because it is a superior program with better uses of funds than any previous ballot issues of this kind.

California is struggling with a lack of updates to public facilities, which can be most readily seen the all-to-narrow, deficient, two-lane fiasco that is Highway 101 between Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Giving Measure A a 30-year term will allow for improvements on the highway up and down the coast.

It’s difficult to predict exactly which improvements will be made on the 101 corridor during the next three decades, but it’s safe to say the highway will be the key to better commerce, more jobs and increasing opportunity for 1.4 million tri-county residents.

The first order of business is to rebuild the highway through Montecito and Carpinteria. Next, prepare to fund more Highway 101 improvements and all of the other highways that feed into it.

We stand with Santa Barbara County Supervisors Brooks Firestone and Salud Carbajal and with the chambers of commerce in the Regional Legislative Alliance in backing Measure A.

MEASURE V
Oxnard’s Measure V is the traffic jam that won’t go away. It throws away the keys to prosperity with its severe traffic restrictions. Sure, traffic is an issue in Ventura County’s largest city.

However, Measure V would be in place for 20 years and calls for most commercial projects larger than 10,000 square feet or any housing project of five units or more to be submitted to a public vote.

similar measure was voted down in Thousand Oaks earlier this year. Measure V should see the same fate in Oxnard.