Foundation casts an eye toward the future





 

 

What the future holds in transportation, healthcare, business and the environment was discussed Oct. 10 at the inaugural Conejo/Las Virgenes Future Foundation “10×10” speaker event in Thousand Oaks.

Ten experts in fields that also included education and public safety each gave 10-minute talks at the T.O. Library.

“Who here has a crystal ball? They don’t really exist,” Jeff Blum, 10×10 committee chair, said to the audience.

“We brought you the closest thing there is to one,” he said.

Many of the more than 100 guests wanted to know how the area will cope with the ongoing drought.

“Most of this area relies on a lot of imported water, or if you live in western Ventura County you’re relying mostly on ground water,” said state Sen. Fran Pavley who represents the local 27th District. “We’re taking more water out of the ground than we’re refilling it.”

“We have 515 groundwater basins: 125 of them are in severe overdraft,” Pavley said. “Ventura County . . . is a microcosm of what’s going on in the state of California and so many areas in Ventura County rely primarily on ground water and are not tied into state water.”

California also has a fuel problem, she said, because there are only six refineries and only a few oil companies that operate them.

“If one refinery goes down our prices go up even more. The gas station company’s owners will take advantage of supply and demand and the prices go up.”

California needs to turn its recycled water into drinking water, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District general manager Dave Pedersen told the audience.

“We need to be ready to treat our waste water to such a level that we can drink it—technology can do this,” he said. “We need regulations that can tell us the constraints to make this happen.”

Pedersen also advocated improvements to the Sacramento San Joaquin Bay Delta, the state’s water system hub.

“When this delta fails it will bring the entire economy and the state to its knees,” he said.

Dan Stepenosky, superintendent of Las Virgenes Unified School District, discussed the changing landscape in education. He said an increasing number of high school graduates are taking a year off before college to improve skills, perform community service and explore various options before immersing themselves in study and taking out student loans.

“They want to make sure because four years from now they don’t want to have $200,000 of debt and not have a passion for what (they’re) doing,” Stepenosky said.

Herb Gooch, professor of political science at CLU who spoke about demographics, discussed the implications of an aging Conejo/Virgenes population.

“By 2060, about 22 percent of the population will be over 65 and another 20 percent will be zero through 17—the two nonproductive groups—who’s going to support them?” Gooch said.

The area’s ethnicity has changed, too.

“Anglos were four out of every five, now they’re about one out of every two,” Gooch said.

The speakers predicted positive things for the area’s economy.

Tourism is on the rise, too.

“Tourism is a major economic driver for California globally and even here in the Conejo Valley,” said Jill Lederer, president of the Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce

In 2014, tourism generated $9.3 billion in state and local tax revenue, Lederer said.

The future in medical technology was presented by James Lee, an assistant clinical professor in the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Patients are benefiting from the virtualization of medical records, in which information is stored in a cloud-based system and can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere in the world, Lee said.

There is also a device worn on the skin that can help detect a heart attack, Lee said. The traditional stethoscope will be replaced with a device capable of monitoring heart function in real time, and robots are now performing vital tasks in hospitals.

Jennifer Seeto, a lieutenant with the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, gave a sober warning about the increase in cyber crime.

“You click on that popup because you want to protect yourself—guess what? You just got hacked,” Seeto said. “They now have complete control of your computer. . . . You’re going to have to pay a ransom to get your files back.”

Darren Kettle, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, said the region’s gridlock will be 50 percent worse in the coming decade unless streets and highways are improved.

“We’re the one county that does not have a local funding program to take care of infrastructure,” said Kettle, who is advocating for a county-wide transportation tax.

“To a certain degree a miracle is needed,” he said.

The 10×10 event sponsors included California Lutheran University, the Thousand Oaks Library, Southern California Gas Company, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District and The Acorn.


 

 

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