City Council — 2020-03-24

Good evening, everybody. I'll call the regular meeting of the Ohio City Council to order. Will the clerk please call the roll?

with a shout out to my granddaughters in Austin Nola and Juniper who are watching tonight.

Oh how exciting!

consent calendar that we're? I'd

like to pull

F. Yeah. And I'd like to pull E. Are there any other changes? Do we have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Move approval.

Second.

Any objection? OK, so ordered. Letter E under item one, the Sarasota Field. I would like to hold that at least until after we get the budget report this evening. It seems to me that the direction of the Council should be to kind of put a freeze on expenditures that are not already contractually obligated, as well as any hiring of employees until we sort out what's going to happen with the revenue picture in the city as a result of the stay-at-home, you know, be safe is the thing we want everybody to do. But there's gonna be a consequence not just for businesses but for the city.

Yeah, if I can say just quickly. We spoke with the Public Works Director about this item in depth because we have put a freeze on any new contracts or any new expenses. The one reason we allowed this to go forward on the agenda is that we did feel that this is a potential hazard that we need to address. The current condition of the two wooden poles PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, David Ensign — Henderson, COB

The budget adjustment out of Fund 31 sounds like it's the costs that maybe are, you know, the bids came in in excess of what the budget was. Is that

true? Yes, that is true. The bids came in higher than what we had expected. We do have the donation from the Civic Association of $33,000 towards the project but it still was a $21,000 higher cost than we expected.

Well,

let me ask this. Would there be additional costs if we postponed it at this point? I mean is this midstream James or is because it says a change order so has this already been are they started working on it or

no we haven't started on it so there's no reason we couldn't stop it we just recommended moving forward because of the potential hazard

mayor

yeah

I would argue that that this may be an exception because one is my understanding these Wooden poles are pretty bad shape. And the other thing is it allows this to be done without any disruption of any rec programs, because they're all shut down.

Oh there's no second to motion so far if I have no second it will die for lack of a second I'm hearing crickets, so we will.

Well, I would second it Mayor just to have the discussion and I don't have a problem bringing it back after we discuss budget later on. I'm not opposed to that thought process. Okay

but what does it mean that it's a hazard? Is it a safety hazard at the moment? Can something happen if we have strong winds? That's my question

James, can I let me just add to Susan's question because let's ask it properly. Is it the structure of the light and or is it the light itself?

It's the actual wooden pole itself and I have the public works director here too but it's the wooden pole itself that we are concerned about.

And along with this is that an upgrade to LED lights Is there an upgrade that's going along with this or is it just a replacement of the pole and the standard light fixture stay on it?

It's, the pole goes from wood to steel but no, it's not an upgrade of the actual light itself.

Okay. So it's just the pole that's being replaced?

Yes.

From wood to steel. We approved this last year. What's the safety hazard later? And it's a safety issue? Is the pole gonna fall over?

I'm a little confused because the discussion says two galvanized steel poles with new light fixtures. Right,

but they're not upgraded fixtures?

They're not

LEDs? Well, since I have the public works director here so... So let's see

Greg,

get out of my chair. So the question is so we're replacing the wood poles with steel poles are they LED lights or upgraded?

Right and we are not able to upgrade those we looked carefully at that these are 50% more efficient than the existing lights because the higher reflectivity improvements they've had over the years with these HPS type lights and they unfortunately you can't go to LED because you need more poles, more LED fixtures. You need to swap the whole field LED. You can't really just swap that one pole. I like that pole. They're in bad shape.

And how dangerous are the existing poles?

They're pretty bad. We've been trying to get to this for some time there if you go there, there's acorns being placed all the way to the bottom. I mean, there's a spiraled deteriorated pole on both of those poles in bad shape and as well as across arms they've shifted a bit

Also, I'm not that I know too much about this but we we got another complained about lights that don't point down about light pollution. So these lights are automatically pointing down is that correct?

Yes and Councilmember Warick did having information request on this earlier and these are state-of-the-art fully glare protected cutoff type fixtures yeah so they're the bulb is actually above the horizontal line so it meets the intent and actually even the spec of the dark sky ordinance except they're so high in the air it's possible you could see them from the adjacent area.

Thank You

Any other comments on this

topic? Well it sounds like if the poles are in that bad of shape, the last thing we want is them to literally fall down. Would it cost more I guess you know Greg would it cost more to replace it if it falls down than what we're trying to do? We obviously got to remove it and everything if it falls down. I mean that would just look bad if one of them actually fell down

The liability after having this especially

fell on someone that would not be good too. But it looks like Greg is saying, hey we're sometime in the nearest future as could be reasonably calculated that they may just topple over.

To try to give a quick picture of that again when I mentioned acorns I guess sometimes you see those woodpeckers working pretty hard and they're working during the mandatory pre-bid Right there while we're there. And it's not just individual holes for each acorn, you know in the poles you can see the basic growth of the tree spiraling up and so you can see that separation a good one inch separation spiraling both poles. It's not like just acorns holes from woodpeckers it's also just those poles are probably 60 years old at least in this period over the years.

Yeah I'm gonna say I know for a fact I knocked a couple balls off of those in Little League. That was been awhile.

Okay, all those in favor say aye. The motion would be to defer? Yeah to defer.

What do you mean the motion is to defer what does that mean?

To hold off until we talk about the budget which we have a budget report tonight.

Oh I thought we were going in the other direction that it was a safety hazard.

Well that's how you may vote but the motion was to defer it Until then, I would vote aye. I don't hear any other ayes. All those opposed? No. That's only two noes. What else? Anybody else? I

said I heard three nos. Bill, no and Susan, no. I

didn't hear Randy. Motion is defeated. We're going to have to get better at this. Maybe we'll have a roll call on everything. OK, Randy you pulled F.

Yeah, I just you know as I was looking over the streets that are in the paving menu and I noticed that Pleasant Avenue is on it. Thank you Greg but I still wanted to know and I think I ask this every year this comes up.

Randy if I started jump in there We didn't still get a vote on item four, I'm sorry. Item one E itself before we jumped to item one F the motion to continue it failed but that still leaves no action taken.

Oh okay. Okay we got a

motion

approved.

Before we vote can I note that we did receive one public comment on this item which was referenced earlier? It was about making sure that we comply with Dark Skies ordinance

All right. That's from a good one

for me.

Yes, I saw that. I did review that as well.

OK, we have a motion to approve from Bill. We have a second. Second. OK, then moved and seconded. Any opposed? Yeah, only you, Johnny. OK. Motion carries.

Thank you. Sorry, Randy. That's okay. So getting back to F I just, um, again, I'm not, um, I would, I would like a list, Greg and maybe you maybe something simple you can provide me, but I would still like to know the last time some of these roads had been paved and where, um and where are these roads in the big picture of paving within the city? Um, you know, are some of these being done sooner than some of the roads that have not been done for a long, long time?

And, um so it's those are just questions that I have if you have that information I'd appreciate if you could get it to me. If any other council person would want it, I would submit that you submitted to them also but I just wanna make sure that we're not being redundant in our paving and that's paving streets that have been paved in the last 10 years versus streets that have not been paved in 15 20 or 30 years, that's all.

And I just want to assure you Councilman Haney that that's absolutely the case. These streets are approaching at least 30 years since last paved job and also, I want to highlight this one is strictly for SB1 requirement to have a list There's still the intention to come back to council before we proceed with the engineering, and we'll have a full list of all streets that we propose paving. That will be the final list that council approves to proceed with the engineering on. So that would

include- Can you also, Greg, with that list, can you also submit a list to us on the slurry sealing process that we just bought that equipment for? And maybe give us a list of the streets that are gonna be slurried in the future. I think we're still waiting for Metal Arc Oak around the corner from me to be slurryed, I'm not sure when that's gonna take place.

Okay, just keep in mind too that was a hot asphalt patching. It's a pothole patch trailer and I think because of this maybe the COVID issue that demonstration wasn't heavily attended or something but we don't have a slurry seal we just have a hot asphalt patching potholing repair but we can give a list of streets that were moving through on that

Well, I thought the whole goal behind that because of the deterioration of that street was that we had a process that we were gonna be able to slurry it. Am I wrong in that?

Yeah, there was not slurry and it was- Fixed potholes? Pothole cracks. Slurry normally do as a routine maintenance in order to extend the life of the street. These are for streets that have already their life has been extended and they're trying to glue them together.

Well no I understand what a pothole repair looks like but i was under the impression that we had the ability to actually completely coat a street um and that's why that this was put off last year's budget for an overlay is that we had the ability to do that in-house am i incorrect?

But the intention was we would go through and do a hot asphalt repair on the street, and we would do a crack filling job on the street. But yeah, we didn't have a slurry machine. We don't have that ability.

I have a question when you're done, Randy.

Well, then I'll talk to Greg and to James later on and try and set up a meeting to look at the machine and actually have a discussion about that street. And what we can do in the future for it. That's all. That was my only question on this. Okay. Can

I ask a question? First of all, Greg and James are you sitting too close together? Are you six feet apart? I

think we're technically four feet or so.

Okay that's my question. Can we talk for a moment Does bicycle safety infrastructure, should that be included on the list? Because I remember that last year when we discussed it. I remember that the mayor, I think said that bicycle safety improvements would need to be included in the capital improvement projects in order to get funded. Or does that happen separately because there's a note at the bottom of the page about measure C money for additional infrastructure? Because some of this, remember we talked Greg about when you fix the street that at the same time you do bicycle striping and that sort of thing.

How does that work?

And again, this one is strictly a requirement of SB1 the accountability portion of the act. So we have to say what we're going to do that would utilize the funding so the funding you can see on page two of the report is about $350,000 every For this year, we're in this current fiscal year. Yeah

I see that.

Yeah, I'm sorry for 2021 upcoming year so we're just showing that we're using that money to lock in net funding for the city and then when the city went when staff comes back and says which streets we always include a complete streets component and I think some discussion about possibly doing things like you're mentioning but claims and so on

okay I just don't want to lose sight of that you know so okay thank you

Okay, do we have a motion to approve? Move to

approve.

Second. Second. Any objection? If not so ordered okay let's

move to approve A B C D G H I.

Second. Okay the discussion if not any opposed okay Mayor,

I have a text message that they're not getting the YouTube live stream. Just bringing that up.

James?

Are we get are we live streaming on YouTube or just on channel 10? It should be live streaming

on YouTube but somebody just texted me.

Yeah i know that somebody texted me they can't get it on their normal link Where they normally look on our website, they can't see a link either. Oh the website okay. Yeah usually you can either go straight to YouTube or you can get it off the city site usually and I don't know if the link for this is on the city site.

Yeah yeah I had the same sort of message i think

yeah. Okay so where are we on that? Is it uh can that be corrected now or are we just out of luck?

Let's see, can we take maybe a two-minute? Technical break. Yep, technical break. Not unexpected under these circumstances.

I have a comment before we move on when we work out the glitch.

OK, we're taking a two minute break. We'll turn the cameras off here. Yeah, yeah. It's just a little delayed since it's

restarting. Okay so I'll call the Council back to order and Susie you had something

you wanted? On item F since we don't have public comment as we normally do i think it's important that we give Russell Sidney assurance that his rather lengthy and in-depth comment has been read by all the council members I just want to make sure, because I'm sure he put quite a bit of thought into his concerns about including bicycle infrastructure when we fix the roads. I think it's important that we acknowledge that we received this and since normally he would be at the podium reading this.

Okay, where are we? Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah okay uh we're at the public comment period is there anyone in the audience that wants to speak?

There's no one here presently we had two public comments um submitted.

Okay do you want to which public oh they didn't weren't related to a topic though. Exactly

exactly

So do you want me to read those? OK, I have. Go ahead. Yes.

OK so there's two general public comments today. One is from Ron McCray requesting that the city remove the nets at the pickleball courts during the quarantine to encourage pickleball players not to use the courts and the others from Dale Hanson also about pickleball during the quarantine and requesting it to be closed.

And then we mentioned the other two comments that were received, one for item E and another for item F. Okay, we're all caught up on that? And then we'll close public-

I lost the connection so I'll listen on the

phone.

Okay.

All right. So I'm putting Suze on the phone she's lost her connection but she can hear us through this.

Yeah, it's trying to reach a net so it might go back. Okay.

Okay, so we have acknowledged all four of the comments that were submitted by email and they'll be entered into the formal record by the city clerk. Yeah, that's all we have. So we're going to close public comment and move on to discussion item number two. James would you want to kick that off?

Yes. Give me one second here.

Can I ask you, can you still see me on the screen or am I just audio

now? We cannot see you on the screen.

Okay.

So audio only. Okay. All right so this item was put on the agenda it was written on March 18th which one of the points we made in the item and that will make now is that everything is changing so quickly with the coronavirus that We put the item on the agenda with a report of actions we had taken, but knowing that in the next six days from the 18th to now that there'd be a lot more actions taken and a lot more developments occurring. So we'll say that up front obviously, we're all dealing with the coronavirus situation currently which is why we are holding the meeting this way and practicing social distancing For the benefit of the public, we will continue to try to have these video meetings this way. But this item, to give some background, the city declared an emergency on March 13th 2020 a public health emergency to enable the city to react quickly to the coronavirus and take any needed action and also be eligible for potential reimbursement or funding.

Which was two days after the second case of coronavirus was reported in Ventura County. Since that time, obviously people have probably watched and seen that the case count I believe is up to 39 today. I think they've released that they're up to 39 in the county with two now being within the Ojai Valley. So it's just kind of constantly changing after the city declared a local emergency, we took several actions such as lifting rules and regulations regarding grocery store and food delivery to help ensure residents get needed food and supplies. We enacted a residential eviction moratorium which helps to protect residents who would otherwise be evicted due to the coronavirus and its impacts And we're also putting a focus on getting public information out in a variety of ways including video updates, updates on our website, social media usage and signage.

Since this item was prepared the state's called for all bars wineries clubs and other non-essential businesses to close They've issued what they're calling, the county's issued what they're calling a stay well at home order. And we are currently working with businesses in a variety of ways to try to help support those businesses while encouraging compliance with the orders.

At this time some of the recent actions we've taken is Unfortunately, under advisement from the public health officers we've recently closed the playgrounds to limit social interactions there and prevent the potential spread. The hard thing with this is every time we say that we've gone as far as we think we need We keep hearing new advisements. So a week ago, we would have said we'd never do that but obviously things change on this.

In the skate park as well? In the skate park as well and then one of the items that was actually going to be brought up in this discussion is the county had asked us a week ago if we were willing to consider ordering the closure of hair and nail salons But again, the orders come out so quickly that that most recent order already from the county ordered all hair and nail salons closed.

James because the facility behind City Hall is a park I would think that we might want to shut that facility down as we have with the other parks Um, I'm not, I don't know if we need to take netting down. We could talk to the pickleball people about that, but we can just declare that park. Um, the same as we have the other parks and that we remove any community involvement, um, that creates an environment of closer than six feet. So yeah, I'd have no problem with that. And I'm sure none of

the information, I don't think we've closed the parks as a whole. You've closed the playgrounds

Yeah, we-

And James as I understand it the public works director has also taken action under your direction to close the tennis courts but i'm not sure that's the latest step.

No that's actually not correct we haven't closed this the tennis courts yet one of the challenges is the public health officer in even his most recent orders noted that it's important for people to get exercise fresh air sunlight all those things but Becoming a challenge as everybody's seen the videos of the beaches and the trails where even things that typically would be social distancing are not social distancing right now because everybody's walking to them.

The other thing, we heard 300 people were golfing because there was nothing else to do. So everybody went to the golf courses. So the county which operates Sewell Park closed the golf course because of that reason. So those are some of the things we can talk about. Obviously there's no playbook for this type of situation so we're trying to respond and make sure we're addressing everything but at this time we haven't yet ordered the closure of tennis courts or the pickleball courts But everything's on the radar now,

potentially. To me if that does come up and we are noticed or notified that we should be shutting down tennis courts I would assume that we'd be doing pickleball at the same time. Yeah,

I

agree

with that.

While we're talking on this topic what about this Sunday's farmers market? There were definitely people congregating too close last Sunday

Yeah, so we've been in contact with the farmers market. We actually were in contact with them I think it was about two weeks ago on and we agreed on a list of precautions that they were going to take. They were going to cancel all of the non-essential booths, cancel the music and some of the other things that they typically have Put some requirements in requiring, you couldn't pick up food and put it back. Once you pick it up, you have to purchase it.

And then also trying to put in some distancing requirements. We did hear that this weekend got crowded at some points and we actually had code go out and talk to people Apparently there were some people there playing music, but they weren't with the farmers market and so we had to go out and talk to them about not loitering essentially under the circumstances.

So we had talked to them. We've talked to them again this week about trying to improve some of those things, the challenges the state and the governor formally said or I wouldn't say formally but they went on record saying farmers markets are an essential service because of the need for nutrition in food so we are trying to work with them and put some precautions into place rather than potentially shut them down.

Okay, anything else? So again a lot of the things that we had planned to talk about have already happened because it's happening so quickly. So I guess you know it would be if any if there's any other requests or needs identified but other than that that's fine.

I would just like to say James, and i'm sure i'm speaking for all of us but we really appreciate how fast you are responding to any and all the federal state and county requests. And the fact that you're thinking outside of the box and are really demonstrating a true concern for our community so I am just going to say thank you and just keep up the good work and thank your staff Um, because you're, you know, you're all in it together down there and, and uh, I just can't say thank you enough. And I don't think the community can say it either.

Thank you for that. That is, you know it's funny we've been talking to a lot of cities recently, we've been in constant contact with the county the public health officer and other cities and people are always surprised to hear that we have, you know essentially 28 full time employees and we're continuing All of the normal services that City Hall offers and then we've also pulled people in to try to be able to respond to needs quickly. Obviously, we always want to do more and we're looking at things we can do but I appreciate it. We'll pass that on to them so the

staff. I can tell you yeah we're doing very well in that regard just again a real congratulations to the staff on that and when it's appropriate Mayor I had a couple questions.

Okay well I'd like to make a statement Just because watching the social media and some of the people I have seen around town don't seem to, maybe they haven't heard or they don't understand. But the issue started out being called shelter in place but now it's stay safe at home. And the reason for that is to try to break this cycle and they say well why don't just the people who are most at risk stay home? And the rest of us go out and do our business The concern that everybody needs to understand is that this is a geometric progression and New York City is a classic case. We're very fortunate where we are, but we also have only one small hospital.

The big danger is overloading the hospitals and the lack of personal protective equipment So everybody, as the governor of New York said, we're all first responders. We need to control what we can control and be supportive of those who are the first responders at the hospital that will be taking care of everybody because it's not just the coronavirus. There are things like heart attacks and other things in auto accidents that occur that we depend on our hospitals to take care of And if we are loading it up with people with the flu, even when they don't know whether it's... We want them all to get treated. But that's an important message for us all to keep remembering.

I had some people who didn't believe or say that they think vaccinations were a problem in town and their children shouldn't have them. And I told him I didn't wanna get into that political debate but they needed to understand that in this particular instance, we all just need to do our part since there are no tests right now that are universally available. And so it's, as was described I think by the World Health Organization, it's like fighting a fire with a blindfold on and worse than that we all know from the Thomas Fire what an ember storm is and the virus is the ember storm.

We don't know where it's gonna hit and we don't have enough tests yet to deal with this. So we're fighting an ember storm blind. And so the best thing to do is for us all sit tight And try to ride this out. Bill, did you? Yeah I

had a couple questions and again because of earlier i'm doing another shout out to my granddaughters Nola and Juniper who are now watching! Does

anybody want to say hello to their mother or?

No plugs. Hello. A couple things really a question for Matthew. Matthew under the emergency powers does James have the authority let's say that an opportunity Do a real quick procurement of support products, you know that are in desperate short supply to help the hospital. Does he have the authority to do that under his emergency powers if we could help with that situation for example?

Yes if the city manager finds that the purchase of supplies is necessary to help the city and the community's response to this crisis then under the emergency declaration as affirmed by council he has the power to make those purchases of necessary supplies.

So we don't have to do anything else on that? And the other thing, if the bill that is before Congress passes it includes opening up a liquidity window for local cities which is definitely on the table basically either forgivable loans or outright grants. Do you believe he has the authority to proceed with at least applying for those at this time without any further council action?

Yeah, city manager has the power to apply for any assistance available from the federal state or other local governments include the county. Applying for any kind of a commercial loan is something different but if it's a federal grant or a federal loan or a federal loan facility then the existing emergency powers give the same manager the power to do that. The commercial would have to be set. There

might be a liquidity window that opens where we could apply for a line of credit. We wouldn't be spending any money we would just have the line of credit available and so all of that could be uh could be at least applied for in other words under the

yeah if it's a government government program then yes that can definitely be applied for okay um commercial line of credit would have to be separately as separately assessed

i'm not

talking about that yeah okay why would we be applying for a line of credit at this point

well one example mayor would be One of the ideas is that if things get bad and you're looking for having to dip into your reserves, it maybe would be liquidating a higher rate of interest instrument than the cost of getting a line of credit from the government. Plus they're looking at maybe saying if you are not furloughing people in your organization, their loans would be forgivable. In other words, it becomes a grant rather than alone. And these are just options that are being discussed right now in Congress and I just you know if something becomes available for cities, I just want to be able the city manager can act. That's all i'm asking for. I

have

a comment Mayor. I cannot see the other councilmembers unless they speak but that's okay. James, I was wondering there is a lot of concern in the community about the homeless population perhaps give a brief update that you can identify Give a summary to the public.

Yeah, we can do that update so we've been in contact with the county frequently every day and we told them that the next big issue you know we immediately tried to help the residents help businesses and the next big issue that we're looking at and that we're all trying to figure out which is a big issue that everybody's struggling with is how we can do enough to help the homeless and the vulnerable populations within the city So some good news is that the county is moving forward with the program that a lot of areas are talking about, which is the county contracting with motels and hotels to get rooms to put people who are at risk in.

They have opened up the first of those facilities and they're working on a couple others at this point. The good news for us was that they've already said that they have identified 10 Ojai residents who needed those services and they're going to move them into those facilities, which looking at the The amounts of the vulnerable populations in different cities in the county, 10 from Ojai is a big... We got a big proportion probably more than our proportional share there. So that was a good sign obviously I think we have identified that we have 51 homeless people so obviously we're working with them trying to get more services but that was a positive that just happened this morning.

Okay. Could you check into that? Because Tiffany Morris identified 36 students in the Ohio Unified School District that were homeless. And so and then, you know, consider the parents. So that would be at least 40.

Yeah.

Possibly yeah. But

one point that we should make to people too is make sure and we'll put resources on the website tomorrow but That we need to make sure that they are contacting the county as well and getting on the list because that's how they are. They are identifying people, so if they're kind of under the radar it's going to be harder to help.

I'm sorry Susan but James didn't the county receive was it 300? Yes, yeah 300,000 to actually provide services to the homeless.

Yes

I think that anything the best thing that we can do is in the event of individuals that Suza just pointed to or that Tiffany's aware of maybe we interact with her But the county provides these services and are good at providing these services. And it's not something that we have a branch or that we have the ability to do. I think the best thing to do is to make sure that anyone that's in need knows who to contact, and if they need help in contacting help them do that but I think that's one of the best things we can do.

May I say something? In response, my understanding is Martha Ditchfield and Tiffany Morris have had Problem contacting the right person. That's why I started sending uh their emails to james Because they really were asking the city to step in and contact steve bennett directly or whatever it takes Martha ditchfield was on the phone, but this is so new she was on the phone with someone in ventura but um They do need our help. So,

yeah we've talked and we actually talked to Steve Bennett's office I talked to them personally yesterday about it so where we're working or we're trying to work through those channels and then to that point too. We're trying to make sure we have the good contact information for everybody I think the point made about, the county received $300,000 in funding for homeless related to coronavirus. And one thing people don't realize is we don't get any of that funding. So we're trying really hard to connect the right people here.