City Council — 2020-01-14

Indifference to you, okay. Yeah, will the clerk please call the roll?

Johnston

here

Blatt's Francina here Haney Oh Here Why Rick

here

Quillacy Nolan here Corbin powers and lattice Corbyn is not here

Yes, you missed roll call again.

that meeting and publicize it widely. So, you know and then really what Randy said is correct We have to listen to the community But we also have to show leadership and educate the community as to the seriousness of the times that we live in You know, it's not just normal general whatever if there ever was something so that would be my my thought and then I don't know if it's appropriate to ask this, but along the lines of village mixed use and the housing situation, either now or at some point could we have an update on what's happening with World University for example. That's just one example because every time I go by there, I think what a great artist housing That would make for artists just as an example you have the courtyard it's close to town.

It'll be a perfect artist community Because we're losing our Artists cannot afford to live in Ojai, so I would love to have a discussion about that or at least some updated Thank you. It's supposed

to be available for public booking.

Well I agree with everything that you're saying right now, I think we're getting too specific. I think the general plan is a little more broad in its approach to community.

You're correct.

But I agree with everything you're

saying. Okay thank you.

I'd like to make a comment. On the last page, I think we need to be careful where it says community engagement get involved and let your voice be heard on the very back. It almost presents as something in order of priority our sequence of doing and In that case, it's completely messed up as far as I'm concerned. You know, I really think that needs to be presented to the Planning Commission and maybe thought through in terms of a sequencing more because obviously you're not going to want to have planning commission study sessions be thought of as being after everything else. You know? You're not going to want to have launching a project website before you have community workshops I think there's a real problem with the way that's presented in that list.

And that's an example of where I'd like to see, you know, Planning Commission think about how we present the overall sequence of work, you know? And that's very confusing to the ongoing public, I think.

I'd like to give Ray the opportunity to speak, but just while Bill brought that up. I think the most important thing is recognizing that the city manager, the community development director are heading this and I think it's important that they, and that's what you were saying Bill, is that they interact with planning With the consultant and the consultant term to the work plan that makes sense even if they're having their own meetings prior to stakeholder meetings. But I think it's important that everyone understands what the goal is and how we're going to achieve it or how we're going to attain it so I'm right

One question I think was just answered. So, this last page document was created by the City Manager and Community Development Director or by Ramey? It's

created by Rameey & Associates, their consultant.

Okay yeah because there was no authorship on it so I didn't know where it came from. Okay so this is this last document is from the contracted company that's going to write the general plan And so in this list, where it says community workshops, pop-up events, et cetera, et cetera. They're creating all that? And if so, do you know what model they're using to hold community workshops? I've raised

concerns about

that with the same time. Are they using Sociocracy or World Cafe? Or how are they running them? Yeah, I've raised concerns about that myself.

Yeah, so we entered into the contract about a month ago. And it's a multi-year process. So we are starting the process by brainstorming and then will be narrowing in. But we

specifically have carved out of their contract any semblance that they have sort of exclusive management control over the visioning or stakeholder input process. We have a right to engage in that as we see fit.

OK.

That's

good.

James could talk about that a little bit more. But we had that debate at council and changed their contract to reflect that.

It's just important I feel that whatever model is chosen, it's replicable in every meeting. So if someone misses a meeting or goes to another one they know it's the same format and it's run in that way Great. Because there's a language involved in running meetings, isn't

it? I just wanted to touch more on what Bill was talking to and I think it's important that we have a budget for this and that we've got to recognize that we've got to get this done in two years and we've got a certain amount of money to do it

with.

We've got to recognize that if we're going to bring in outside agencies or someone Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I fully agree with that, but as we have recently seen with the Ventura City Council you don't want just one voice talking to you.

Yeah, one of the things we're planning to do is bring an item to council with stakeholder groups formulated that council can then discuss and decide which stakeholders will meet in what order or if other stakeholders are needed.

Just a quick question and clarification. So, we just talked about how the visioning and the community engagement will be formatted. If I understood correctly that was budgeted into the existing contractor or consultant who has been hired?

So the current agreement is for $700,000 and it includes eight stakeholder meetings.

Okay. And then Randy I think what you were saying was if for some reason the city thought they needed to bring in an additional one outside of this consultant that's what you're referring to watching the budget and

Yeah, I'm just saying along with that make sure that we understand how that's going to impact. We should be

approving

the budget. But more importantly is what I think we just all heard is we have eight stakeholder meetings being presented by this entity which leaves us two a month for two years Okay, which is what another 48 planning meetings Planning Commission meetings that you have the opportunity to Create some type of stakeholder meeting. So that's why it's important.

I see what you're saying

That's why to me It's important that you be a part of it and that you recognize You don't have to just wait for the eight that we've right that were guaranteed that you had the opportunity to do As many as you'd like if you can fit it into the other How much did you say this costs?

The agreement, our agreement is for $700,000.

Would it be appropriate for the- Just

buy somebody a house! Over what period of time? Over two years and just for the record you know we looked at other cities and most other cities are about a million dollars right now and the county is four and a half million dollars.

Would it be appropriate for each phase of stakeholder meetings for that to be a circulated agenda for City Council and Planning Commission along with you know to review from you Just so we make sure we think, you know, we see how it's working and that we're sure there's nothing being missed. I mean would that be appropriate for us to ask them what's your structure for this meeting? What's your agenda? What are you going to be talking about? How are you going to be presenting it? And we have a chance to look at that.

Yeah, I think we could. We would be in contact about how they're gonna proceed.

Well, of course you need a work plan. You need to know their work plan and And if the Planning Commission's gonna bring things and Ask stakeholders come in if the Planning Commission decides oh let's do a workshop for a few hours, you know outside of a planning on something See that that would want to be in the same format again what I was speaking earlier and same model that Ramey is going To use and their stakeholder meeting. So we have the same format across the board Whatever citizen goes to whatever meeting they know the model they know the language there's not a steep learning curve about how to interact and and And I'm not talking about adding anything.

They should be clear what they're doing

James um, there's eight. There's eight categories of the general plan are is it intended that the eight meetings are topical or that? They're all general Or do we or do you get to decide that? Well, I wasn't it just those numbers seem to they are consists I wasn't sure because to me I wasn't sure if you go to one meeting have you gone to them all I mean Are they topical are they gonna be for different aspects of the General Plan?

So the elements that they're going to focus most of their efforts on are land use, circulation, housing element, which is going to be critical and timely. Safety element and environmental justice. The other ones they're going to touch on but they're not going to do completely so I'd expect that some of these there will probably be a couple meetings for something like land use and maybe not a meeting for one of the elements that we're not getting us into. But we will circulate a plan. Plan and like I said, we're planning to bring an item to council to talk about the stakeholder meetings

Well, one thing I would say is as far as planning and the council, we're all kind of in the same boat on this and how we're reviewing it as well. To me it seems like there's a number of areas of town that may not have sweeping changes that are necessary and some that do. I think the first step would be kinda like when your monitor changes on your computer, it only changes the things that are different. Some of it's gonna be the same. We should make sure that we kinda do that inventory first so that we can figure out early where we're gonna need to spend more time.

And then after that, I would say some of the at least on the land use side of things on the zoning part. We have plopped in different things in different areas that are not necessarily consistent with the general plan or zoning and we want to look at that. I think the M1 and MPD is one of those I think there's other areas. So, I think we'd want to make sure that we've targeted especially areas that have already been mixed up a little bit maybe on accident or a purpose or they're just different than they are. We should look at those as an inventory because obviously there's a little bit more work that may be needed in those areas than the areas that are pretty much the same as in the past.

The consultant will present you with a work plan and maybe already has to some degree, and they'll be working with community development. The assistant manager happens to be a professional planner. And then when you guys take a look at that if you have any misgivings as to whether or not the professional firm we have selected is taking us in the right direction and using the most current methods that you let us know but then once Staff guiding the consultant and using the Planning Commission to you know, it's Highest and best use there the skills that are there.

And so when it finally comes to council That's it'll come as a product or that's being recommended for adoption and then we'll have a public hearing on that and I would assume we would break it down by element and rather than try to do it all at one time, would we not? Okay. Well maybe, you

know

we like to connect

you so I'm going to

hold you

to that.

It'll be broken up into elements but we're going to emphasize that each element is intimately connected the public has to We all have to understand that housing and transportation is completely, everything's connected. And

obviously environmental justice is a much more important topic now than probably it's

ever been.

Although our community, as a general rule we are not you know because of the nature how small we are and we don't have a slag heap or you know a substation particularly that is you know contaminating the neighborhood. It's a lot different than when I was in Los Angeles. You know, in the East L.A. area where you can measure it in the air or the kinds of stuff like battery recycling type...

Don't want high school comes to mind?

Yes, it does. Yeah, after they spent a hundred and something million. Well I

thought we were very environmentally conscious but then apparently we got sued for our water usage so... Again, we're

replacing

water.

Cutting

50% is not enough right? We're

just not doing enough around here.

I just have a couple of quick comments. For the outreach and the stakeholder and community involvement, I would encourage all of us to think hard about getting more than the usual suspects because that's what happens. It's the typical experience that we have the usual Suspects participating and it would be nice to get a broader as broad as we can community involvement in that.

Yeah, I think a good point is you know A creative way to market this to people that aren't just the regular people that show up at all The meetings is probably a good idea finding some way to try and entice them or incentivize them to come and understand it I think that's really

Well, that's also where the online surveys on a website. If you construct a website that then is sent to every resident, emailed it, whatever our outreach program is, bilingual people can do visioning online on a website because a lot of people just don't show up at meetings. I mean, that's just the nature of the beast

for whatever reason. To dovetail with that James, is there any... Is there a website or public information that's part of the contract?

So we are launching a website. We're working on it now. We're going to launch a website called Ojai 2045, and it'll be hosted on our city website.

Yeah so we may be able to utilize that for some of that too right? I think that's a good tool. Maybe the one thing that we can do is get everybody on the same page literally.

Right. And the one thing I was going to point out was we're talking a lot about very specific stakeholder meetings, but as I believe Council Member Haney said, we've got 48 meetings which really are going to be stakeholder meetings and if we look at each of our meetings as a stakeholder meeting that'll help just keep that in our minds every step of the way from more of a global perspective how does this affect The general plan which is going to push us through to 2045. So each of those meetings, my point is each of those meetings is a stakeholder meeting as well.

And I would encourage the staff to

help structure those agendas to focus on this. Because it's easy when somebody is at the door saying, you know, I want to build such and such on such and such a lot. And then everybody goes to that and focuses. And then if nobody is asking to do something like that, well we don't have much on the agenda because this other stuff is more amorphous but is going to be an important part of feeding into the end product.

And every one of those builds that come to us for design review is completely related to the elements. So I think we need, even though the general plan isn't written yet, I think we need to keep in mind the directions it's going and review in such a way so we're not pushing through projects that aren't aligned to the direction the city is going.

I might differ on that a little bit, but not a whole lot. I think what's important is we have policies in place. We have a general plan in place and that what we're striving to is to create our future So it doesn't mean that you can abscond with what we have in place. We've got to recognize that we do have rules, guidelines, policies and procedures that exist and that you need to recognize those. And I don't think we're in the position or the Planning Commission's in the position to make changes that aren't acceptable to existing policy so just saying that. It's two years is a long time

All we can make is recommendations anyway.

Hold

your

horses.

Yeah, I think that's true but what comes up now and especially like when we did title 10 when we were doing and we're still doing the reviewing of that is that we get to issues where things have changed since the general plan was written so for example one topic we talked about was Was living spaces in commercial zones and since commercial has changed drastically since the general plan was written.

And you know there's a whole lot less viable commercial going on other than you know restaurants and drinking places we talked about What we might like to see and how we have to think about the possibilities of changing our approach to those topics. So I think we're already thinking about how the general plan might Evolve to make those those things that have changed since the last time More viable how we can make our downtown more viable how we can fill empty spaces in a good way That will enhance the town and I think it's important that we think about The direction then we want to go in as opposed to just where we are right now. So

Commissioner Corbin is absolutely correct. And going back to what Mayor Johnston said, the city's business needs to proceed so we're still gonna be processing applications and moving forward on those some of these bigger applications we might be Receiving or might be getting inquiries on which would require a general plan amendment zone change Environmental impact reports those things those would take two years Anyway, we might hold off on bringing those applications to work to the Planning Commission until The general plan is approved because those type of projects could change the face of the

entire city And I think that's what we're trying to do. Concerned several of us when this what is a very lovely home now at 1.9 million dollars Just up the street Is beautiful and it would be in Scottsdale I think it'd be terrific But when I compare it to the neighborhood study that the council went through a few years back It didn't really square with that and or anything around it now, maybe everything around it would change too Kind of blend in with it, but those are the kinds of things that the staff and the Planning Commission Could help the council by taking those and getting it Incorporated in the general plan and then in title 10 or whatever other sections of the code Because the people who owned the property You know they had one expectation and they stayed within the law And that was the law at the time.

But That's how communities shape changes And if that's our vision, that's okay. It could be Scottsdale. There are a lot of places where that would fit and maybe some of the neighborhoods around here. Some people would argue that that's eclectic and every neighborhood should be that way. That's okay with me too but it just seems like as planners and planning commissioners, that's part of the function that you could fulfill in helping the council.

Mayor, I think in the same lines. I guess this is what I'm trying to say and I think that's a perfect example. We have policies that are on the book that the developers or the owners of that site followed okay? And I don't think that we have the right to prevent that from occurring. What we do have the right to do is recognize that it doesn't fit the needs of our community and bring it back and change it but to tell someone no you can't because we're going to change it I would struggle with that if that was me, and I don't care what type of house it is or what type of home or what type.

If it's fair right now, it's fair. And if after we've gone through the process, we recognize it not really fitting the needs then come back and change it because you can change it in that moment. You can change it by bringing it back and correcting it, modifying your policy, modifying your

But when you see examples like that, then that should be something you file away and say do we want that? And if we do, that's fine. If we don't want it, then we should start being more I hate the expression proactive but we need to get out ahead of it a little bit because I know those people work really hard night and day over there investing in it. But as somebody with SUSE, I guess you were saying everything's related to everything.

We got a housing element. We have an affordable housing issue if we are going to encourage... You know, I've worked places where that is encouraged. That's a great asset to any community from the standpoint of assessed value which then translates into ad valorem tax which helps budgets But everything's related to everything. Is that what we want? And if we don't, you know, don't pick on the person who got caught in the door when people are changing their attitudes.

This is the time with a general plan to start figuring out are these things that need to be addressed and after we look at them. We may leave them alone or we may address it. And I keep saying to people when they come to me, I say the general plan is not in sync with what you're asking. Well why not? In some cases, I don't have a good reason for why not. It just isn't so we need to take that kind of input and start adapting our general plan and our land use You know what the economics and what the people want

at the same time What what Randy has said is is very pertinent here We have to keep in mind that any change to the general plan or any piece of the municipal code isn't with with vanishingly small number of exceptions Is intended to control what happens in the future, right?

Mm-hmm

You can't, I mean even you know you see an unsafe hedge around the town. You can't change the rule on hedges and make people cut them down unless it's public safety or something like that so it's all to control what happens in the future and we need to keep that in mind as we start thinking about any changes what do we want the future to look like? The other thing that I'm really concerned about is that as the mayor said, we're a small town. 4.2 square miles or thereabouts. Now granted we're surrounded by unincorporated county and we all breathe the same air and all of those things but I personally worry about how many people that actually live in the city are making an effort to influence the evolution of the municipal code or the general plan compared to people that don't live in the city, that one, don't have to live with those rules and two, don' have any influence on the people that will make the rules.

Don't have any formal influence on the people that make the rules namely the council

I would like to respond to that. I know that comes up a lot and in fairness, a lot of people don't live in the city because of the affordability but they spend all their money here, they shop more locally sometimes than people that live in the city And those are the very people that will drive and sit all day long at the Ventura County supervisors meeting to advocate for the whole valley. So I think we need to respect those people, it's not like they're dictating but I feel that their input needs to be respected. Many of those people would love to live in town closer to town That we need to consider that it's not like they don't want to live within the city I know lots of people that once lived in the city that moved to Meyers Oaks or Oakview Because of the affordability factor

bill.

Oh, oh,

I'm sorry.

Okay. Well, I have the floor Is this our slogan I have an issue with prosperity.

I told the consultant we would. They think they know Ojai, but...

Maybe not enough. So yeah so this is the first draft we wanted to... Prosperity? Not everybody was for that.

No no prosperity is an old way of thinking where we measure... prosperity is measured in money. I think that's a tradition. And

it

tends to have a

highest and best use aspect of land use which is not what we're into.

measuring wealth in health and environmental and sustainability. This is not the right word,

Prosperity.

We worked on a draft to try to get materials ready to discuss today because we knew general plan update was going to be the focus but you know this is just an early draft we're able to make changes so I figured that would be an issue and so we'll let them know that it's an issue

Mr. Spock say about what live long and prosper? Yeah, I'm bringing it up for discussion if we want to

send James other words.

Okay,

guys.

We got two more items here.

Steve?

I had

a quick comment on this last part. So I totally respect what you said, Randy, about we have ordinances and we have policies that are current and that's what we need to go by I want to just speak just for a second on a more expanded view about stakeholders, because it's missing in government as a whole for me. And that is people come up for public comment and neighbors of certain projects.

What they say doesn't have much bearing. Even though they're stakeholders, something might be being built across the street or next door. They could give their opinion but how much does it really weigh when we're just going by policy and ordinance like well we hear you but we're gonna say yes to this anyway no matter how it impacts you next door? And it feels like there needs to be some model of facilitation somehow where leadership in government and the architects and landowners and the neighborhoods all get to weigh in. I'm not saying any one of them, you know someone needs to have a final decision but I'm not sure the way in stakeholder process is robust enough

Okay, I would like to comment on that. And I would like to say that the most important thing we can do to have viable stakeholders Is to educate them and I think that that's one of the issues that we have when people come up for public comment on a project. Is that often times they don't really understand the project, they haven't read the materials, It's something they've heard or their drawings, but they can't read them. And I think that some of the comments are emotional without having enough knowledge behind them.

Or my favorite comment and usually when the room is full you'll get this Oh, he's such a great guy. Well that really doesn't have any bearing on the project and we hear that all the time so I think that if you want to get viable stakeholders we need to have a process that educates The public and maybe the website is the way to do that in terms of what the meaning, what these issues mean and how to understand, how to think about things and what the implications are for the future.