City Council — 2020-09-08

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea or whatever Walter Winchell used to say welcome to the Ohio City Council meeting. We are now in order and will the clerk please call the roll?

Yes. Okay I have the flag here. Right hand over your heart ready to begin.

consent calendar is approved with the exception of item F. Bill,

do

you want

item F. I want to make sure it is clear for the record that the scope of the MOU we are delegating to the city manager to develop our staff would include a location evaluation and possible alternative sites. And with

You're what, keeping the option open? What to move the compo? What exactly are you...

Well, I want to have the MOU include the scope for staff to evaluate a proper location. Whether or not that's the best location for it. Other locations are either slightly different or maybe more substantial. The point is to allow staff to evaluate the location within the scope of the MOU. Well,

and the other part of that mayor is also that it, uh, that the MOU come to the garden committee for us to look at and digest and talk it through. Um, right now he's submitted a thousand square foot plot of land, um, somewhere on this, on, on the property. And I, I'm in complete agreement with bill still needs to come to the committee and we still need to have a discussion as to the best location for it. Okay.

Will you be including Bill White when you meet to discuss... Dave White, sorry. David White when you meet to discuss it?

Yeah he's on the committee.

David White is on the committee?

Yeah, yeah he'd be a part of

it. So the committee is you and Bill and David White?

No, Ryan. Ryan, Randy, David White. Yeah. All any, any right now, any person that has a MOU to use the facility with the city and we're approving that tonight with David White. So he'll be a full-time member and he'll be part of anything that goes on there being just having a voice and, uh, a sound to reason I think that's what Ryan and I had looked at initially and James

Excellent. Is there any formality to this campus or garden committee that we're referring to? I don't recall seeing- It's an

ad hoc council committee that we appointed.

Okay, but it seems a bit chaotic, but I guess you guys will sort it out. Okay James, do you understand what the suggestion is? Does that just create more flexibility in the process or do you see any issues?

No, that'll work and we'll come back to the council with the full MOU when that's ready too.

Okay, my motion to approve it then. Second. Okay moving seconded Susan?

James do you need anything else from us to have the Ojai Garden Club meet on any of that?

Oh no just as long as we just wanted to make sure that we had the approval to start that program and then we can coordinate with David White.

Okay, so it's been moved and seconded to amend the instructions I guess to And the MOU, is that what it is Bill? Yes. Okay and James has the detail of that. Is there any objection to going forward with this item or do I have a motion to... We have a motion to amend it. I guess we can consider that to be a substitute motion for to approve number or item F okay. Any objection to that?

Hearing none it's approved okay. Thank you for

clarifying that Mayor.

Okie doke, we are. Let's see what time is it 22. We are now discussion item. Now the Planning Commission is this appeals. Do we have any comment cards from the public.

Yes. So we had a, we had some general comments.

Okay. Just let me clarify my question for public comment that comes up at seven 30 cause I didn't want to get into a lengthy item and make whoever's waiting on the public comment test. I did that before because

we received some written comments that were distributed to council. Let me see if are there any, is there anybody waiting to speak in the lobby? There's nobody waiting to speak. So we have the written comments which were distributed and all of the general public comments today were about football, so. Great.

Okay, but so we don't have any under the public communication items out on the agenda right?

No.

Okay let's proceed now then to what is it discussion on number two. Okay James.

Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His): And I guess you know a Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : Let me ask the city attorney real real quick. If the if we should, if the app project applicant should start off or how we would.

Is there a requirement to have David Ensign, PB — He, Him, His.: : I would recommend that we start with the staff presentation and summarizing the planning commissions action. Then the appellant can speak and then anyone else who may wish to speak. The latter two in the public hearing. Okay, so

we'll start with a presentation from staff. The Community Development Manager Lucas Seibert just joined the meeting and he will be giving the staff presentation. He gave the presentation at the Planning Commission when the Planning Commission rendered its decision and that decision now is appealed to the City Council by the project applicant. So I'll let Mr. Seibert, go through that presentation.

Thank you City Manager James Zega. My name is Lucas Seibert, Community Development Manager for the city of Ojai here and what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen here and I have a quick PowerPoint presentation I'd like to run through and hopefully it ends up being some discussion pieces that we can draw from here as well. Hold on one moment here.

All right. The young man's game.

All right, so tonight we have an appeal of the planning commission decision to city council. Um, this item went before planning commission on August 5th. Uh, and the appeal was filed in August. Uh is actually August 19th. What I'd like to do is to go through a little bit of background regarding this item. To give some context to the council and to the community in general, watching from home. In March of this year our associate planner issued a zoning clearance and that zoning clearance at that time was issued in error.

That error was identified as a disability concern that was identified by our code enforcement officer They brought that to my attention, which then caused me to do a quick search and review of the code. And in that same day issued a stock work order. That stock work order had that fence that was proposed as it is offense that we're talking about tonight. That was six feet in height to be stopped in terms of its construction.

At that point, staff then scheduled a site visit with the property owners to talk through the stop work order options moving forward And then during that site visit with the property owners, identified a formal letter would be provided to and mailed to the property owners identifying their options. They included things such as a variance regarding the proceedings reduction height of that fence.

And then obviously the one that they opted for was the appeal of the community development manager's decision That appeal came forward on July 9th. They appealed my decision to revoke the zoning clearance and I should preface it again in identifying this zoning clearance was issued an error, it was a, it was an error on staff's judgment. And that appeal was a part of that error.

And regarding this fence moving forward. That appeal sent the item to planning commission that decision was heard on August 5th. They heard the item, upheld the appeal that was provided by the property owners with modifications to address safety and it's a safety concern that I'll be showing here in slides to come. With that, The decision was rendered on the 5th, and the owner instead continued to do work on the fence. And that started again on August 10th even though there was still a stock work order that was still in place as well as the August 5th Planning Commission decision that had been rendered.

I then went out and met with the property owner that same day, that same evening. Identified that the stop worker was still in effect, that the decision by the Planning Commission had not solidified meaning that there was still an appeal period that was identified but they continued to do work and finish the fence. And by doing that, I made them aware that the citation could be issued in violation of that. And I gave them really until through a written letter that was sent on August 12th. I gave them until the 24th to either peel back defense or remove offense to where it was at when the stop report was issued. They instead opted The city of Davis was asked to maintain that fence at its current location and in doing so, they appealed the August 5th Planning Commission decision.

Staff went out and did a visual window survey of the site on the 24th, identified that there was still a safety concern and it hadn't been addressed And then there was a second window survey that was done recently at the end of the day on Friday, gave the full three-day weekend for the appellant property owner to satisfy that safety concern. A second citation was issued this morning and then obviously September is obviously the appeal for the City Council. So with that, fences just in general there are many legal non-conforming fences in Ojai and they are replaced and required to be brought into conformance with the current Ojai Municipal Code Many residents just overall have installed fences based on other non-conforming fences in their neighborhoods.

I know in the short time I've been here, I've certainly had several conversations with residents that have identified their neighbors as having non-conforming fences and saying why can't they have that? Well those are considered non-conforming and we're looking for compliance to the current standards of code. And then they're just not realizing that the new fences aren't meeting the current standards of code There's really four different types of fences or parameters that we're looking at here. You're looking at new fences, those require to meet, they are required to meet the current standards. You have legal non-conforming fences. Those were legally established at the time of the installation where that would be 10, 20 years or even longer than that but then don't conform to those current standards and what we're looking for is compliance so those legal non-conforming fences when brought to our attention And when a proposal is brought forward, we're looking for those fences to be brought into current compliance.

And then you have existing conforming. Those have been established to the standards at the time and remain conforming to current standards. And then obviously there are legal fences that we usually catch either mid-construction or well during mid construction typically it's a stop work order.

I

also wanted to

please let the staff finish.

Are you finished Lou? No, just about here. I've got a couple more slides and then certainly the Q&A can start. I want to also talk about the intersection visibility triangle. And here we've got a visual of what this, how this exists in the code today and really the purpose of the intersection visibility triangle is to provide safe visual clearance for vehicles bicycles and pedestrians turning at intersections. The intersection visibility triangle ensures northbound vehicles on Lyon Street entering Grand Avenue In the case of what we're talking about tonight, or eastbound vehicles on Grand Avenue turning onto Lyon Street. And I'll have an aerial showing these streets in this intersection we're talking about. Making sure that they have clear line-of-sight vehicle pedestrian and bicycle components.

Particular importance is on Grand Avenue because of the importance of the class three bike route, which is identified by the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. Now as I mentioned in March an erroneous zone clearance had been issued with that erroneous zone clearance you can see a six foot tall fence which was what was existing was to be maintained and then rebuilt along this dashed black and white line that you see here.

The visibility triangle was also identified on this corner piece, the northeast corner of the property along Grand and Lyons Street. The August 5th Planning Commission decision included a six-foot tall fence you see in this dashed line here But then that dashed line carries, which is the six foot tall fence. Carries along this edge of the visibility triangle area.

Now again within this visibility triangle area we're still looking at a three foot pipe limitation. Planning Commission's determination identified 12 feet along the northeast corner of the property to be carried down and south and then 20 feet to be carried along the Grand Avenue or the northerly property line for the subject site. Now you may be asking yourself, why is it 12 and not 25?

Well, the distance per code in terms of this visibility triangle area allows for it to be either within the private property or within the public right-of-way. And here there's a 13 foot Right away that we're looking at here taken from face of curb back. And that's where the 13 feet stops and their 12 feet begins that we're seeing here along this, this Easterly edge 20 feet which was a determination made by planning commission on August 5th while the code identifies 25 to 20 feet was taken from the edge of the public right-of-way I would like to I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

You can see the fence to your right or south is the original The second photo that I wanted to show you is the new fence, the fence that was completed even with the stop work order and the Planning Commission's determination that was provided. You're seeing this fence in its completed stage. Still, this is a visual taken east on Grand Avenue at the intersection of Lyon and Grand.

question while you have that slide

up?

go back to the previous slide. Is parking allowed in front of that tree? I looked at the area. I read the neighbors letters, you know, the neighbors challenge that there's a problem with visibility when you're in... If you park your car, I mean if you're in a car, what I'm trying to say is that parked cars Especially SUVs, your trucks are much more of a hazard as far as seeing anybody coming down the street. So why would you not have no parking there if visibility was the concern?

I'll respond to that question in lieu of Mr. Siebert The question of whether or not to sign any portion of the street, no parking and a parking is a question reserved for the judgment. The public works director and should be considered independent Of the questions regarding the height of defense as required by the code as interpreted by the planning commission.

It's a worthy point to consider my recommendation would be that we put that on the list for the public works director to evaluate separately from this appeal as to this fence standard

And then my other question was if they had left that old fence up, we wouldn't be going through this correct?

If the old fence remained.

Uh-huh.

Then yeah, we wouldn't be going through this process.

They would be allowed to keep that old six foot fence.

It would be considered nonconforming by the current standards of the code as I mentioned in the third slide regarding fences

I just want to be clear on that.

Thank

you. All

right, so continuing this is a photo taken looking to the west and this is along Lion Street as you can see off to the left or the south side is the existing fence that we're seeing there And what's important about this shot, and I'll show you also the visual of the new fence as it exists is visibility along this area. It's imperative that we maintain this safety visibility triangle, this 25 foot by 25 foot triangle. Whether that's taken from the public right-of-way which is what we're looking at here, which is from face of curb back 25 feet That's showing that there is this 13-foot right of way, which is where your trees and your sidewalks and landscaping tend to exist.

And that's fine. What we're looking for here is full compliance with that safety visibility triangle area. Here's another shot taken a little bit further back, not necessarily all the way up to the wheel stop or that white line that you can see off to your right or just to the north. You can see with this fence there is... That fence certainly provides some concern regarding the visibility for those motorists, pedestrians Or bicyclists that are either trying to get on to Grand from Lyon Street, either going west or eastbound.

Now this is a slide I put together. I wanted to show kind of the peeling back of what this fence would potentially look like and it's showing The northerly portion along Grand and that area being peeled back in terms of reduction in height or even reduced as to allow for a six foot fence outside of that triangle visibility area. The same thing is true with this 12 foot, that's being taken along or identified along Lyons Street So what we're seeing here is it's a three foot high fence if you're wanting that fence all the way up to the edge here.

Or it's a six foot fence with these areas carved out, constituting that triangle or that visibility triangle area that we're discussing tonight. So with that, I wanted to also provide city staff's recommendation that the City Council adopt a resolution upholding the Planning Commission's decision to uphold in part the appeal regarding the relocation of its zoning clearance for the relocation and reconstruction of a non-conforming six foot tall fence located within the front yard area along the north and east side of the property located at 603 Lyon Street. That's a part of the attachments Agenda report for tonight.

Additionally, there's a second piece to this and that is to determine whether to reimburse the appellant or the modification to defense pursuant to the planning commission's determination. So with that, that ends my presentation for tonight if you have any questions.

I have a question.

For Lucas?

Either Lucas or James

Yeah, I was going to go back to James. Why don't I go to James first and then you're next to ask the question? James, do you have anything else to add to the staff report?

I think the only thing I'll add is one point that Lucas made that is a challenge for us which is that Ojai does not have a lot of development and so he made this point up front. To correct these Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His): These fence issues that have existed for decades, if not longer. It really is almost a you know a case by case as they come in we have we try to grab them and correct them when we can And so it is a challenge, we had a fence this week actually on Monday that we gave a stop work order to and their response was well there's a lot of people on my street that have a similar fence which is you know. It is the challenge that we have because there are so many existing non-conforming fences but the one point that I want to make is just that The direction to staff at this point has been, follow the code and enforce the visibility as the code is defined because that is our direction from council at this point.

And so obviously these situations are not situations that we enjoy or they're fun for anybody but it's just we get a chance on occasion to try to correct You know, a fence that had been there for 40 years or 50 years. And that's what we are trying to start doing little by little which is frustrating for I'm sure for the people that are replacing those fences.

Okay Suzy you had a question?

Yeah, well we're in a dilemma because as soon as I left looking or as soon as I was finished looking at that fence. I began to see all the other non-compliant fences you know the and this is the sort of situation that definitely creates a bad feeling between the public And the officials and the staff at City Hall. It's a difficult situation, it's made more difficult because it took two months for staff to realize a mistake had been made so the fence was partly constructed. I mean, I understand that there's obligation to follow the letter of the law But I also can see the, I think we can all see the situation from the homeowner's perspective.

And oh, my other question was if we decide to reimburse the appellant what kind of costs are we talking about?

I believe the appellate they have a presentation that has their invoice and I'm sure they will give their presentation. I think the invoice I saw was about $2,700. Okay,

I'm done for now yeah thank you.

Okay, is there any other questions?

Mayor I had two questions if I may. Yeah go ahead. I wanted to clarify that the address is 603 Lyons so it's not their address does not face Grand it is facing Lyon.

It faces Grand, Lyon and

Summit. I'm talking to Lucas. The staff. I want to be clear on that and then I didn't see anywhere in our information packet about, didn't we just have a discussion about fencing and setbacks and alignments with houses? Remember the pull over on, it'll help me with this. Yeah. And then we had a clarification of where a fence and what its setback would

be. Maybe

that was Ventura.

Yeah.

And I didn't see that cited anywhere in here, so I see the triangle, which I agree with, but I'm not sure about we're still allowing a six foot fence unless Lucas I'm wrong in your interpretation, but we're still allowing a six foot fence to come from the corner of the house towards lions make a right turn towards grand reach 12 feet or 25 feet from the curb from grand And making a diagonal cut to grand and then heading west to the other end of the property line. And you are allowing a six foot fence in that entire area?

Yeah, so that was the determination made by City Planning Commission on August

5th. Did we bring that modified code that we had just gotten two months ago to their attention What the setback should be and that's the corner of the house. We shouldn't even be allowing a six foot fence to come towards Lyon from the corner of the house, much less down Lyons towards Grand. That should all be 36 inches am I correct?

Yeah, so if you're looking at the parameters of the code in terms of how it reads this site functions in two ways. It functions as a through lot. So as a through lot it has frontages or front yard areas on Grand and Summer. Okay, because it's the narrowest portions. As a lot that also has access along Lion Street, it also has a front yard area. So like Councilwoman Francina had just mentioned a few moments ago, this lot has front yard areas along Grand, along Lion and along Summer.

That's pretty clear in the code. However, When this item was heard before the planning commission, that was the opportunity for them to evaluate the existing conditions as it, as the matter was presented to them and make a determination. That determination was not in line with what I had identified in a letter that I sent back in June which identified frontages along Grand, Lyon and Summer. But that was their determination that they made on August 5th.

Just a quick clarification before we hear from the appellant

mayor?

Yeah Bill. Very quick I think we need to listen to the appellate. So Lucas my understanding watching some of the planning commission meeting was that they basically accommodated on the frontage issue I believe so, yes. Thank you. Are there any other questions of staff before we bring the appellant up?

While we're deliberating, does James or Matt have

that? The code you're thinking of that the council had recommended to be brought forward as an ordinance would have required or will require when adopted no more than four feet in between the front of the house and the street Cllr Rachel Gilliland, City of Boulder not be in conformance with that revised code. The reason the Planning Commission did so was because that new code is not yet in effect. The Council has given direction for that to be brought back to Council, it has not yet come back to Council and at such time as it does and is adopted then it would be enforced but pending that the Planning Commission made a recommendation to achieve a compromise with the current code focusing on this traffic safety corner

I think let's hear from the appellant and then we can continue the questions in the discussion. James is the appellant available? Yes, he is

present here.

Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Thank

you all for taking the time today and I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. All right. So I've been working with city staff for a year now in a good faith effort to rebuild an existing non-compliant fence, as you've heard on my property and make it legal. What you see here is a calendar representation of that.

It's not up on our screen.

You don't see this?

No.

It says sharing is paused, bring your shared window to the front. Thank you for telling me. Hang on.

There you

go. Maybe I just can't make it full screen but all right we'll go with that. This calendar representation of this process. You can see that I've worked with staff for six months to permit the fence that is now built After I received my stamp zoning clearance, I invested over $20,000 in the fence described by that permit and began construction. About 90% into the build on the next to last day of construction a stock work notice was served and the permit was revoked.

I appealed this revocation to the Planning Commission and last month the appeal was upheld with a minor modification calling for reduced visibility triangle at the northeast corner The planning commission stated that the city rather than the homeowner should be financially responsible for this additional work since it wasn't described by the original permit under which the fence was built.

I committed to complying with this decision in its entirety, including continuing to invest time and money to secure financial commitment for this additional work as the commission recommended, which is of course what brings me here tonight. In parallel though, I made a judgment call Significant warping had occurred during the months of delay caused by the revocation and appeals process. And that last 10% of assembly was necessary in order to provide rigidity and prevent further damage.

The investment my family had made in the fence was deteriorating by the day through no fault of our own, and I felt significant responsibility to protect what was left of it. I chose to finish installation in order to preserve the remaining value of the fence while I pursued the financial commitment for the additional work as quickly as I could. And I communicated this to both the members of the commission and to Community Development Manager Seabert.

Seibert, my apologies. To that end, my fence builder has provided me with an estimate of just over $2,700 for the modified corner visibility work which includes demolition of 32 linear feet of existing fence and construction of 23 new linear feet, all six feet in height outside the visibility triangle. I'm here tonight, of course following through on the planning commission's decision that the city bear financial responsibility for this work.

Alternately you could determine that the fence as built does not represent a visibility hazard. And I want to say unequivocally that I'm okay with either of those outcomes But I do think it's worth giving you the background to make that determination. During the original permitting process, the city took the issue of corner visibility very seriously as it should. It was given a lot of weight and consideration during those six months and it was ultimately determined that there is no visibility hazard posed by the fence because of the 13 foot unimproved setback that you've heard runs along Grand Ave shown here as a yellow band That's because when you pull up at the stop bar on Lyon Street, you're already about nine feet out in front of the fence.

So you can easily see past it whether it has a corner cut out of it or not. So it was decided at the time that the standard visibility triangle was irrelevant in this particular case. These photos which are very similar to the ones you saw from Mr. Seibert show that visibility condition. On the left from the vantage point of traffic coming down Grand toward the stop sign on Lyon, where you can see a car stopped. And you can see that that vehicle is fully visible from Grand when it stops there.

And on the right from the point of view of that car when it stopped at Lyon looking west along Grand and you can see that driver has a clear line of sight up Grand. I wish that I had taken new photos with a new fence because the ones you saw from Community Director Seibert were outstandingly misleading. The new fence is in the exact same location along its northern edge as the previous non-conforming fence, so there's no difference in visibility there. So the photo that you saw which posed the visibility concern was taken from much, much further back Here you can see documentation from staff that the Community Development Manager and Public Works Director concluded after a site visit in January of this year, that the 13-foot unimproved right-of-way provided adequate visibility.

And again during the Planning Commission appeal hearing on August 5th, Public Works Director Greg Grant stated that he agreed with the statement made by Chair Quillacy that the fence as currently proposed does not impede the view of eastbound traffic on grant. So again, I'm here tonight following the planning commission's recommendation that the city bear financial responsibility for the newly proposed visibility triangle modification or you could find that as originally permitted and as the director of public works states defense does not propose a visibility hazard as built.

Thank you.

Okay thank you. What we have more questions, any questions of the appellate or of the staff before we start deliberating?

I have a quick question there. Okay Bill on the is not you mind if I call you by your first name. The estimate for the modification is that the cost estimate for the I know At the time of the Planning Commission hearing, you had just posts and rails. You didn't have the slats up. I saw that personally. So is the modification cost from your fence builder, is that for modifying it from its current condition or modifying the post and rails before the slats were on?

No, from its current condition. It doesn't need any of that work, no. Thank you.

Any other questions of the applicant or the appellate or staff Mr. Mayor,

I just want to disclose that I did have some email communication with Liz before this was all went down with the planning commission and I was readily familiar with the situation and I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware of that. That's all

You mean in your capacity as a council person or as a lawyer?

No, just as a council

person. Okay, well then that's good service. We should talk to everybody.

I saw that Matthew had his hand up there.

Yes, Matthew.

Yes thank you. I was going to say before the council deliberates this would be the appropriate opportunity to take any other public comment. I understand we have at least a little bit of other people wishing to comment on this matter.

Oh okay you're right so let's see at least I don't see anybody from the, James do we have any comments from the public?

So no one has called into the meeting to comment but there were the two public comments from Mark Goulat that we forwarded over to the city council saying that you know. I think they drove down the street and said that they didn't feel it was a visibility issue.

It's a code issue though okay shall we now That

deliberation would be in order.

Okay, well it seems like what we're dealing with is a question of how important is the issue of sight distance in this town? It's been an issue for forever. In fact when I came to town, is that Heidi? When I came to town, my wife at one of these intersections had a car accident when another car ran into her and the other car was being driven by the planning director.

But there was a hedge and nobody could see anything and there were no stop signs. Today there are stop signs in a lot of those places so we have choices where this seems to me that it's really about a safety issue rather than Personal taste, whether or not hedges are good or bad. I think the planning commission discussed this in great detail over the last two years And came back with a report saying that the council should be addressing the safety issue of sight distance, particularly coming on to thoroughfares from corner properties. So if that's the case and the appellant says that they're willing to go along with it then I think it's our judgment is this important? And if it is, is it $2,700 worth of importance?

I would say yes. Other thoughts?

Bill? Yeah, I would tend to agree. I'm thinking in that direction because the staff did make an error. On the other hand, the appellant did blow through a couple of tough work orders. I think that the planning commission did a really good job of accommodating as much as they could without basically ignoring the code. In other words, the code is still respected And I think that's important to do what you can with the code and be flexible as much as you can.

But I think it's a problem if you just decide to pick and choose when you're going to respect the code. The other issue that I want to point out is that there are those That including myself that have thought about using that right-of-way, that extraordinarily and a real resource. We have a real resource there in terms of that wide old bridle trail on the south side of Grand.

And if we ever do decide to make that a bike trail as well then the stop line will be at the right-of way. Right now the stop line for Lyon is not at the beginning of the right-of-way, it's at the curb line. And in other words if that is a bicycle lane in the future then the cars will be stopping further from Grand in order to not be parking, not be stopping in the bike lane so that is part of our possibility in the future. So I agree with the mayor's approach on this maybe we try and do compensation.

Susan?

What Bill pointed out is I think critical. If there weren't future plans to use that area as a bike lane or, you know, for horses or whatever, in my opinion there are so many intersections in Ojai that are far more dangerous than this. The sight line would not be a problem. To me it's not a problem as it stands now because of where the cars are stuck But based on future plans, I think we're better off having the appellant make the modifications.