City Council — 2020-03-13

Okay, the meeting of the Orai City Council special meeting of the Orai City Council is called to order. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Exactly exactly what you said and just so that Residents are aware we have been having regularly regular Originally daily meetings, but they've become multiple times a day meetings with the county public health officer the County CEO the other city managers in the county and we've all been preparing to take steps as needed and As everybody's aware yesterday. The county declared a public health emergency And all the cities are now going to be taking this action. So it's not unique to Ojai, every city in the county is expected to do this.

And as your office receives the best information and latest information from the health officer you post that on the city website?

We posted on the city website and the county health officer continues to ask us to keep directing people to VC emergency, which we have here up on our screen. VC emergency they just posted a bunch of materials frequently asked questions for residents. They have guides for if you work in the food industry what you can do to be safe, for schools what you can do to be safe and senior facilities so So there's a lot of resources there, we're going to keep pumping that information out as well.

And as far as the emergency declaration, one of the intentions is to allow us to take action quickly without having to wait for a formal council meeting. I'm sorry.

Ryan James, I already know the answer to this but i want to make it clear so i'm going to ask you so you can say officially as soon as um as soon as uh whoever's calling bill will stop calling We are not declaring an emergency because any of the conditions in the city of Ojai have changed. There haven't been anyone diagnosed up here, there haven't been any changes here we're simply falling in line with what the rest of the county is doing and this is a preventive measure not a reactionary measure to anything that's happened

correct? Exactly 100% and you know there's the county declared because they had the third presumptive test uh and that's three out of the one million residents so it's there's no immediate you know concern It's to be extra cautious and for all the agencies to be able to work together and pool resources. Okay

Should we are we gonna pass the resolution first then talk about agenda item number two? Is that how we're gonna do this? Yeah,

that's probably a good idea. Okay Do we have a motion

move approval of the resolution confirming?

Okay moved in second is there any discussion on the resolution that's been issued I Don't know if we have to There's nothing really new in it, but the idea is to have a consistent message. We were reluctant to get too far out in front because they're concerned about having panic. But on the other hand if anybody has been involved in these kinds of things before there's always the element that said well why aren't you warning us? Everybody else is being warned so that's kind of a delicate balance that all of the cities and all of the counties in California have all been trying to follow Not everybody has followed it. It's like a land rush, there are always a sooner or two that want to rush out and say you know we're, I don't know if they're just a sooner or they're panicking.

Right now we have not had the community infection that's been documented. I don't even know if there's even a suspicion and the big problem is is that we do not have the general testing of the population So nobody will know that answer right now. Randy?

I'm glad you touched on those things, I think the most important thing we need to say as a council is that we are preparing, we are communicating and we are collaborating And as long as we state those three things, the community needs to know that we're acting on their behalf and everything that we do. Whether it's through the police department, the fire department, the hospital, anything and everything that affects this community I believe James is speaking to or will speak to.

If we've approved this I just had one question that I'd like to throw out there To the city manager is do you feel that you have the sufficient amount of funds? To take care of any emergency that you see coming forward at this moment So what I'm saying is I don't want to bind his hands that if he has an expenditure of greater than $25,000 that we got to do a special session at this point. We need to authorize something greater

Well, I can answer the question. He does have the authority to do what needs to be done but this is a pandemic which means it's not recognizing state or national borders, state borders, city borders and so we don't have enough money so we can't solve everything so it all gets down to what is defined as an emergency and the Emergency Council James and I are meeting constantly To try to calculate what that might be and so it answers your question is he has the authority But that will not preclude us having a call to all of you and the Brown Act has been modified I guess temporarily That will allow us to hold the meetings as long as we have a spot Which I told James as long as I'm okay, and he's okay. We will be here And then wherever you folks are we'll put you on a conference call if there need be some kind of council action That

to me was my only concern is the limitations that he might have if this emergency act supersedes that I'm a hundred percent. Yeah,

and this does it does it allows Okay, yeah, and I didn't mention I've met Sam or Matt Summers on the phone hey Matt okay

And

I just want to stress it. So we are prepared to act if needed, but there's nothing anticipated at this time.

Okay. Can we have a roll call? I guess everybody would like to be on the record.

Yeah and thank you I wanted to use the opportunity to give a couple of updates and let residents and council know what's going on. We actually we've been coordinating very quickly but we actually do have a couple of people who've called in that can give updates about specific things. We're expecting to have a call from the hospital but we also have a call from Tiffany Morse the superintendent for the school district so that She has an opportunity to give an update to the public as well. So if I may, I think I'll start with that

Okay, you want to put the mic down a little lower? Yeah sure that it's everything picks up.

Yeah

Bend the mic straight down

at the Tiffany are you still on there? You know the

tip will

Hi Tiffany is still on Thanks, Tiffany. Sorry I realized I muted you instead of vice versa. I just did an introduction and noted that you wanted to take the opportunity to give an update and see if there are any questions.

And we are live streaming, Tiffany.

Great. So, we have announced that we are closed through next week. We are on a week-by-week basis so we'll be evaluating every day next week to see if there are further closures warranted by working with the Ventura County Office of Education and the Ventura County Public Health Department We are setting up student care teams so that families will have an opportunity to come to any school campus and pick up a lunch, a breakfast, a device, and have access to mental health crisis counseling services. We'll have information going out to families later this afternoon with regards to details on that. Thank

you. Any questions?

Tiffany, are you posting this on your website and is there any of this information that you could send us so that we can post it also?

Sure. Yeah, we're working out the details now. We'll be sending out the message to families. It will be on all of our social media, our website and I'll make sure that James has a copy of that.

Thank you.

We are also canceling the musical Through the weekend, we're attempting to see if we would be able to live stream a performance. But we will have no shows with a live

audience. Other questions for the city manager before I open it up to any comment? I'll

have a brief update to

you.

Okay, so was that everything for the superintendent?

Are there some issues that have arisen with respect to child care, especially for families of first responders? Healthcare for professionals, things like that. We are

not able to provide childcare services and we are not able to provide distance learning at this time per guidance from the California Department of Education And Mayor, one last question.

I'd like to make one comment before we start volunteering too much. The city of Ojai again is 4.34 square miles, the need of this is much greater. The county of Ventura represents most of the valley and has those kinds of resources. We should do our part but we are not in a position. Plus one of the things that we hear from the health officer is the conflicting goals. One is to try to keep everything going in a reasonable way Which includes what do you do with your children if you're a first responder?

But at the same time, there is this whole issue of crowd or community transmission. So putting a bunch of people together, particularly children without all of the proper safeties which we're unaware exactly what that entails is probably one of the reasons almost everybody's hands are tied right at the moment.

I just wanted to bring up just again, and I respect that thought. And you're right this the school district is larger than the city of Ojai. Tiffany is regarding feeding. For lack of a better term, I got meals on wheels but I know that the school provides a lunch program and a breakfast program for certain children. Are you going to be able to sustain that for the next week and moving forward?

Yeah, so that's the information that will be coming out as soon as we have all of the details specified. But we will have student care teams at each site and possibly mobile student care teams. Those student care teams will provide breakfast, lunch, device checkouts, so computers, possibly Wi-Fi hotspots until we run out and mental health Crisis counseling for students who are having trouble processing this, and books as well. So those student care teams and information about how to access those will be coming out this afternoon.

Thank you Tiffany. I appreciate what the school district is doing. All right, are we ready for any public? Do I have any cards from the public? I don't see any. Okay. James do you need anymore authority or direction from the council?

We're having a technical issue so I'll see if we can get them back on but no other authority or anything, but we did want to just make a report a couple of Things out. So one is that chief Rivera and I have been in contact and wanted to just note obviously the police department is prepared has taken precautions to I want to start by saying thank you to all of our panelists for joining us today.

Should be canceled. So we're working with event organizers in the city to try to Work with them and see about rescheduling as needed

And those numbers to a considerable degree are just arbitrary there's no scientific basis for them It's just the message is let's Stay away as best we can not only from strangers in the community, but even at home this idea of quarantine self Quarantine or whatever they're calling it without a test. You may just be taking it home and giving it to all your relatives so people need to understand that that's an individual responsibility,

but Ryan what I'm sorry Can't

can we get an update on the tennis tournament? What's the current status going with it?

So the current status is we have been in communication with them. Obviously, NCAA canceled a lot of events so they are having a board meeting on Tuesday to determine whether they are going to cancel.

And have we issued a policy? Have we informed them what our desires are as a city?

We haven't yet because we were letting them tell us if they were gonna cancel in the next couple days but we are preparing a policy if need be.

Okay, well I don't know what we're going to vote on or not but i mean i want to make it very public and I've done a lot of research into this. We also had a presentation through VCOG yesterday from the county and there's a couple just facts I just want to point out one Ventura County sits in an isolated state compared to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara because there's no major airport and there's no major port that's a benefit But it is not a, you know, a firewall to anything bad happening. Ojai sits inside of Ventura County in a somewhat isolated area so we're in a low risk zone but it doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything that we can to prepare and to be worried about it.

My major concern with the tennis tournament is that the data and the science we're seeing is that individuals under 25 carry a high risk for having no symptoms and can carry it without being aware of it. And then individuals over the age of 60 are at the highest risk to have serious medical problems. Our city happens to have the highest percentage of over-60 year old residents, and we don't have very many under 25 year old residents. However, the tennis tournament would significantly change those demographics due to the influx of college aged tennis players. So the mix of 25 year olds who may not know they have it with 60 year olds who are at a high risk, although I think we could probably manage it if we had to as a city. It seems to me that it would increase the risks so significantly for our city versus where we are right now that it wouldn't make a lot of sense.

So I'm hopeful that goes that way but of course we'll have an announcement when it's finally done but I've got

a

lot of

questions. Also the majority of our volunteers are over 60

And Bill, I think has a bit to add to that on the Pacific

12. Well, I was actually going to ask about testing and actually that's relevant because part of the problem with a tennis tournament is not having testing It's a whole different world if you can test people, you know before as participants and we don't that's part of the problem. And so I'm going to segue into that okay what's popping up all over the country to address the lag in testing is this drive-through concept has there been any discussion about that either with the sheriff's department public health etc in terms of it seems to be the local response to the testing lab lag is to think about the drive-through testing model that seems to be one response local governments can make. Do we have any update on that?

Yeah, so the update is we've raised the issue with Dr. Levin. Real quick why don't you

explain so everybody knows what the drive through testing model

It's a quick response testing because the current testing takes several days, basically.

It eliminates the waiting room contamination and contagion.

And it eliminates the central collection.

So we raised the issue at the last conference call with Dr. Levin, and we provided some information and asked if there was any county position on it. They had said that they would look into it but that was the last conference call. We don't have an update from

them. Mayor

Nishihara, I thought I heard you.

Yeah, I've been wanting to say something. Okay

now is

your time. Unless it's a response

I

can wait. Okay, what is the level of communication with both individual health care workers and the Gables and Acacias all the different nursing homes? And then the other thing that I never see in any of the national or local preventative measures there's never a word about building Bill this is the time to really build your health and I just want it. You know, I think Our city many of our citizens are health oriented But this is a time sometimes they talk about you know Stocking up on food and when you look at the food list if they don't die of the virus They're gonna get scurvy. I swear to God It's much slower death

It's a much slower death

Scurvy Pixie tangerine season and if there's not tourists coming in to buy them This is a great snack for your kids to help build their immunity. Yeah

buy more oranges Because I feel

the

same

way about I'm Yes, they don't have to be transported. Yeah, we should transport anything to them what we can do to support that Hold

on if anybody tests positive one of these facilities They should not be there and we should not be going there to test them They should be removed from that facility immediately I think the response we're getting a lot of

ourselves What I'm trying to say is we should be in contact with the directors of these facilities Find out what they're doing and what they're prepared to do what we can do to help yes

Everything that we're doing is precautionary and preparation for a problem that we're concerned about. This is not reactionary to a problem that we currently have within the borders of the city, so that's why when you hear us talking about this this is all getting set up for the possibilities with what could happen not what we are dealing

And on that note, if I can add, an hour ago was on the phone with the hospital administrator and he was saying exactly that which is they are getting prepared. They feel pretty good about how prepared they are. They're getting ready for what needs to happen. We had a call with Steve Frank from Lifeline who also said people can contact them if they have any questions They are prepared for if anything were to happen, but everybody at this point just keeps reiterating. There's no reason to panic. Stay calm.

And so we have talked to them. Hadi was going to have somebody on the call to speak about testing, but they got tied up in another call. So he is going to send some information to us that will post on the website tonight and some frequently asked questions. And the question about level of communication. So we reached out, maybe was it I think it was like last Tuesday or Wednesday to all the senior centers that we were aware of and a couple of other facilities to offer masks and see if they needed anything else. So we've been in contact with them. We actually did deliver masks to some of the senior centers just because as noted there are the most susceptible so we're trying to be careful with that And we'll keep in communication with them.

And those facilities are professionally staffed, one of the things we can do to help is not to do to them what we're doing to the hospital which is trying to get information. Everybody's getting so many calls that it is kind of dissipating some of what resource and energy we have. So it's important to communicate but there's such a thing as over communicating unless there's a need to talk.

You have two speaker cards

Okay, I have two speaker cards Trevor. Come on down and Bob you're on deck Sorry, Bob. I didn't see yours first,

right? Probably see I'm live-streaming this and all I of course

you are

yeah And what I'm trying to do that I'm getting questions from the community and they wanted to know if there's any if their questions are going to be addressed which caused me to submit a speaker card I think one of the questions is, is there going to be an online definition of this emergency? Is there gonna be some type of definition from the City Council as to what this emergency is. Is that going to be posted online somewhere?

Yeah so the resolution will be posted and the resolution will have the full declaration.

Where and when?

It'll be posted today on our homepage

OK. The second question I saw that came in was, are there going to be resources for people who are of lesser means like helping with utilities? They can't work. They have to pay for child care, et cetera. Is that going to be available from the city in any fashion?

Yeah, I guess in response to that, I'd say keep in mind 10 minutes before this meeting President Trump declared an emergency. So a lot of this is going to be developing over the next

couple... And also some state governors just as we speak are declaring holidays on things like utility collection meeting certain like if you have to get your license renewed they're gonna extend those kind of things so some of that will hopefully we're gonna see coming out of the governor's office and we'll see

I think the question was more though, is it going to be made available from the city as opposed to...

I'll answer that for you Trevor. Most of the people live outside the city like you do in the upper Ojai and Miners Oaks. The county is the one to ask that question. We obviously are gonna do what we can do but that is not necessarily a question for the Ojai City Council

And we don't have the authority to do, for example, what the governor can do on that matter. OK. I hope that addresses

her question. Just add, I hope the people asking that are aware that we do have help of Ojai and there are services in the city already in place to help you pay your utility bills, your rent, and no one need go hungry. There is quite a substantial food bank, I believe, on Fox Street

And that is a much more area-wide service, which is an ongoing program that the city supports.

And we're in communication with other agencies like this morning there was an EDCVC conference call for small businesses so a lot of the county agencies are also coordinating these meetings and calls for people that are affected

Someone said that they had reached out and spoke with the Ojai Valley Hospital Administration. Is there going to be anything public made from them or the City Council in relation to testing? Where can you get it, when can you get it, are N95 masks available etc.?

As the information is available we will be sure that gets out to the public.

I'm

expecting information.

And Trevor unfortunately we had a plan, we had a call planned with the hospital directly but they're unavailable at this moment otherwise we would be getting that answered.

We'll be using our Facebook posts and their website posts.

Mr. Haney mentioned another thing that is near and dear to my heart, there are thousands of kids who are on the, you said Meals 2 Wheels? I don't know the specific program.

They have a food service.

I was meeting with school board officials this morning and leaders, and one of the things that we were talking about is how do you best service that? And continue to offer that program to kids and families in particular because I think the school board can only offer it to children. And then I was listening to Mr. Johnson speak about, you know we're balancing two separate interests here that is social distancing with also simultaneously serving the community. So I'm wondering if the city council could come up and collaboratively start thinking and talking about how do we best do that? Because one of the things that I'm thinking about is these families who rely on that program who now are having to watch their children At home, and not only are they going to have to feed the kids but also the families.

What's the best vehicle to do that? Is it like making Sarzadi Park available for some type of drive-thru breakfast pickup? Well what are the implications of an affected volunteer preparing a lunch and then transmitting someone who picks it up or vice versa. These

are very complicated issues that are being addressed, being watched and as things unfold and the issue like your first question was what is the definition of an emergency? The definition of emergency is going to become more intense as this goes along hopefully it will not but if we do not flatten the curve the burden on all of us will be addressing and answering the kind of questions you're bringing up

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, right? There is no food shortage currently and there is no prohibition to go into the store and buy your own food. I don't want people to think that ideas that we may have for things that may come down the road which are responsible to think about that are currently there. There is currently not a proposal to be running around providing meals to anybody because there is no need for it at this moment. Well, of course there is because there's families that rely on that. The school district food program as the superintendent just said they're continuing to run but that's the school program we don't have unfortunately anything to do with that.

We have another card here and you can submit your questions to the city manager separately. One more

germane comment and that is that the very fact of a declaration of emergency allows a scope of discretion and action by the city manager without prior need for council deliberation. We have confidence in our city manager, a lot of confidence in our city manager to make those judgments and act accordingly as the needs arise.

And I'll get out of your hair real quickly because I sense that coming from the mayor.

You're very sensitive yes.

I know these things from being a trial lawyer. Will the city's resources be available for things like the Meals on Wheels program or whatever it is? Because one of the things we talked about is, okay let's do this on Monday but can we do it at Sarzadi Park and who do we communicate that request to? Would it be the City Manager?

Yes. Okay, got it. I just have one more thought also is this and Trevor as this evolves For instance bill and I met with the city manager a couple days ago And we've already asked for another session So as the as these things keep popping up in questions like that The council has to come together and talk about what we're prepared to do and how fast we can act on it So it's going to be evolving, and we're going to be moving forward. And again, we're going to be communicating, collaborating, and letting the community know that we're with them 100%. Cool. Thank you. We're going to move as fast as we can.

And the Board of Supervisors meets on Tuesdays, and it would be a good idea to ask similar questions that you're asking to them. Bob, you're up.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Trevor.

Yes, thank you, Trevor.

One thing I've become aware of, driving out really early in the morning, five, cruising around town. We have quite a few makeshift mobile residential dwelling areas, we have a much larger homeless population than I was aware of. And I'm not sure what we're going to do but if you take a look at the most vulnerable people It's going to be them. And one of the things we certainly don't want to have happen is people that are outside in the cold, wet, no food, no medical, not seeing doctors for a lot of reasons. Not that it's not available just a lot of its personal choice I would certainly hope that we would find some way, whether it's through county social services doing something to at least monitor. We do not want a population of roaming people that are sick and need help that have an aversion for asking formally for help.

So I would hope some way we can go ahead pretty easy to see where everybody is 5.30 in the morning, drive down Ojai and look at some of them. I think we have to outreach make a special. We're probably less than 50 people in population but I really think that you folks need to make a special effort for them so thank you.

Mayor yes, maybe something as simple as Someone can go out I think it has to be written on some kind of laminated thing that we are in an emergency How urgent it is to wash your hands and perhaps we can be more diligent about keeping the bathrooms open and clean It just seems that's so fundamental that that would be money. Well spent if made sure that you know that how you know however Whatever we can do to help them keep their hands clean that just you know, something as simple as that That's the first thought that pops into my mind

Okay, we're

I Just want to say that. Thank thank you Bob for your comments. I know part of our integration with the county plan on how to handle and deal with these issues. The homeless population is definitely one of the key components of how the county and how we're looking at it, to make sure that we have coverage overall especially into the high-risk areas and people who are more susceptible to having serious illness out of this.

I know it's part of...I've heard it on everybody's radar and we're definitely integrating that in everything.

I have one other question for me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I watched the exchange between the elected official—she's high up—with the head of National Health, whatever his title is? And she ended up convincing him to offer free testing and services. Am I correct? Yeah, she was

the Congresswoman.

The Congresswoman! Yes, my mind just went blank. They're trying to

back away from that right now. That's Katie Porter from Orange

County.

Oh,

Katie Porter, yeah. That was a fascinating exchange.

But those are the kinds of things that need to be addressed. Things that you know, we're doing what we can at this level but it's the real power comes from the top down. It's the economy that's getting hammered but it's not really a financial crisis. The consequence on the financial sector in which apparently the stock market just surged again on the 50 billion promise the president made.

Yeah, but wait till Monday. Okay. The biggest thing they could do is release test kits.

Millions.

Yeah, millions yeah so you know the virus is the enemy trying to fight an enemy that you can't identify where they are is the real crisis. These

numbers might have changed but on the other day it was our community is 750,000 in our county That's more than

that, it's

almost

a

million. Yeah we've tested 77 so you can do the math on that and out of the 77 we've had four confirmed and though the reality is we're not testing enough so we don't even know what these numbers are so we can't forecast, we can't do anything to help communicate or to

lessen...

To

manage you must measure.

Right. Yesterday's numbers taking this to a national level was something like 11,000 tests And yet in South Korea they have the capacity and are processing like 15,000 a day. You know that's what's got to change otherwise the best we can do is tell people maintain social distance wash your hands you know don't touch your face you know the list You know, try not to move around any more than you have to. So that's unfortunate, but that is where we are.

OK. James, is there anything else on the agenda besides what we just talked about? Because this meeting we ought to bring to a close if-

Let him get back to work.

Yeah. We're adjourned.

Thank you.