UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.Scheduled start 6:00 PM · clock-time estimates pending review
0:00 – 0:0426 turns
Well, then we'll call the regular meeting of the Ojai City Council to order. And will the clerk please call the
roll?
Is Gail out
there?
Has she muted? We're
having a mic problem. Can you hear me now? Mayor Johnston
We have a
quorum. Uh, James, will you
lead
us in the pledge? Yes Thank
Repeat after me.
Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled, click to expand
Okay thank you James uh the approval of the agenda are there any changes in the uh i guess we're doing this in two parts is that right James? Yes okay so is there anything on Is there any discussion on the
consent calendar in the first part of the meeting that you wish to change or pull out and comment on? Okay. Hearing none,
I'll move to approve.
Okay. Have a motion to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Not hearing any, the agenda has been approved. We have recognition of outgoing council member and installation of new elected officials but we... Why don't we get the minutes out of the way? Yeah okay let's see. Yes. We've got the oath of office all right okay let's go back do we have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Move approved consent calendar items A through F 1A
through F
Second.
Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Randy. Okay. Any objection to the approval of the consent calendar? Hearing none. So ordered. Okay. We are now the oath of office for the newly elected mayor council members city clerk James, tell me how we're doing this since this is the extraordinary session.
Yeah. Okay. So we have kind of two sub items here and first will be our deputy city clerk, Gail Davis will be administering the oath to our newly elected Mayor Spitz Council member Francina City Clerk Cynthia Burrell and City Treasurer Alan Raines. And then after we do that, although you'd like to probably get out As far as outgoing council members. So with that, I will hand it over to Deputy City Clerk Gail Davis.
Thank you. In the spirit of democracy, I'm going to do this alphabetically. So the first would be... Can everyone hear me?
Yes.
Okay, so the first one I'd like to ask City Clerk Burrell if you're there? I am! You are! Hello! Yes,
I am! Surprise surprise.
Our real city clerk.
And you do all the work. Thank you baby.
So if you can raise your right hand and read your oath.
I will. I, Cynthia Cindy Burrell do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic That I will bear truth, faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.
And I am so glad I'm not going off to war.
0:05 – 0:2731 turns
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Okay, so next Council Member Francina are you there?
Is it too late to bow out? No. Okay, I'm ready. I'm gonna raise my right hand
And read the oath
that's
in
front
of you.
I, Susan Francina do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic but I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of California That I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.
Congratulations. Treasurer Raines are you there?
I am here.
So if you would raise your right hand and we'll just trust that you're raising your right hand and read the oath that's in front of you.
Okay, I, Ellen Raines, do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign True faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution that states a state of California. That I will take this obligation freely without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion that I will well and safely discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter.
Congratulations! And now Mayor-Elect Sticks, would you please raise your right hand and read the oath that you have in front of you?
Thank you. I Betsy Sticks do solemnly affirm that i will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
So I will throw this back to City Manager Vega, and you may take it from here.
But thank you, everybody. I know that this is a very strange swearing in ceremony. Probably the only hopefully the only one that we have like this for a long time but I really appreciate it. We did want to see if everybody wanted if anybody did want to just take a moment and say thank you or anything. We wanted to give the opportunity for that so I can't see Treasurer Allen.
Allen did you want Thank you very much. I just, I wanted to give an opportunity if anybody wanted to say thank you to anybody or since this is a very strange swearing in. Just the chance to say anything if you had any words you wanted to say.
But it worked. That's all that counts.
Okay. Perfect. City Clerk Cynthia Burrell did you have anything?
I would just like to say thank you to everyone that voted for me, and I love serving the city of Ojai.
Awesome. Thank you. Council Member Francina anything?
Oh, I also want to thank All the people who voted for me and helped me with my campaign. And I most definitely want to thank Mayor Johnson for enduring being on the council with me for four years, and I think we're still good friends, I hope. Absolutely. So no, I'm delighted that I'm reelected. Thank you everyone.
And then Mayor-Elect Betsy Spitz did you want to thank anybody?
Yes, please. It's short. Don't worry I'm going to read it though. Thank you to my amazing campaign team family and friends. You're incredible. I'm so grateful to you and to the people of Ojai. I am excited to serve and to build on Mayor Johnny's strong tradition of stability and compromise. I will continue to promote love truth unity justice and cooperation.
Thank you to our city hall and to the City Council for being so helpful warm and welcoming I know that we can accomplish so much for Ojai. We're all in this together.
Thank you. And with that, I think we will move on to recognition of outgoing Mayor Johnny Johnston.
James, can I just say thank you to Johnny? He's done so much for the city and for this county and he is a blessing to Ventura County
Of course, thank you. And that's a perfect segue. So with that we wanted to take the opportunity and we have a couple of items we wanted to present to Johnny virtually. And so I will be bringing these down and leaving them at the doorstep tomorrow. So I'm sure he'll be very excited it'll be like Christmas Eve but we have a few items that I'll just briefly We have commendations first from the County of Ventura, signed by Supervisor Steve Bennett.
The City of Ventura, the City of Thousand Oaks and a letter of appreciation from the Ojai Valley Museum which I have those here before me. We also here at the city of Ojai prepared a proclamation for Mayor Johnston and we will be bringing those to you tomorrow We also have two small tokens of appreciation. First, everybody may recall that when Chief Fryhoff left we presented Chief Fryhoff with one of two flags that had flown over City Hall on the police station during the Thomas fire and we thought it was fitting that the other flag would go to Mayor Johnston who also along with With the chief was serving the city during that Thomas fire, which at the time was the largest fire in California history. So we have here today the flag with a nice plaque on it that just says from the City of Ojai with gratitude and then December 2020 so we have this flag that will be presenting to Mayor Johnston And then last We wanted to provide the mayor with something.
You know, typically upon retirement you give somebody a nice wristwatch instead of golf clubs or a fishing pole. And so we were trying to think of what would fit Mayor Johnston better than those items and we think we found it. We have gotten him a gold and red which is the colors of his alma mater USC trash picker upper It's the latest, the deluxe model with a telescoping handle and a safety switch which I'm not sure what that does. But we are going to present this to Mayor Johnston and our goal and our hope was that when he is out making his rounds which we are sure he will continue to do that when he's using this That a residents will be reminded, but also that Mayor Johnston will think about the city which I'm sure he will do anyway. But we will be providing these and these are on behalf of the City Council, the city staff and the city residents.
And so with these, we wish you many peaceful years of using this gift and thank you for your service. And with that, Mayor Johnston did you wanna say anything?
Yes, thank you. You have a heavy agenda so I will try to keep it short but that's not easy for me as those who know me well realize four years went by pretty fast maybe not fast enough for some and there were days when it wasn't moving fast enough My father on these occasions always referred to these gatherings, which we are doing virtually. But he said that it's on my mother's side of the family were Italian and the comment usually is made this is like a mafia funeral. And I said the first time you ever hear that you say well what is a mafia funeral? And he says well half the people have come to say their goodbyes and wish you well. The other half are there to be sure you're going.
So I suspect that even though our crowd may be small, there may still be a few that are want to be sure that I'm moving along. I do want to make a couple of remarks about when I got elected or the reason I got interested in the running for city council was I had a concern both for the fiscal health of the community, because that happens to be my background and specialty. But as important was the atmosphere that seemed to be developing at City Hall for apparently a lot of reasons but they're less important.
Related to the openness, the transparency of the government and the atmosphere where citizens didn't feel welcome. And I want to thank our city council and the staff for the improvements that we have made. Now, with the virus it's kind of hard to tell because the welcoming nature and the kindness and good public service that's offered by our city hall is kind of behind closed doors right now But I can assure the public or anybody who's listening that the environment is dramatically changed. And I think that is a great credit to our city council as well as the staff.
The issues that bothered me most when I ran, where I was concerned about the drought water supply which is still with us. Everybody needs to remember that but we have done a remarkable job in this valley for conservation and well right now it's getting on making me a little nervous with the dry weather and if we haven't had any rain yet this year then we're going to get another reminder but The good news is that your city council reached out to all the other jurisdictions and even though we do not produce water, store water, transport water. All we do is use the water.
We are an organization It's the only official government in the valley that's of general purpose and we have reached out to all our neighbors, including the city of Ventura where we've had some differences. And I think that the intergovernmental relations addressing the problem of water security have been greatly improved Another thing that's always with us, thank you for the flag James.
The Thomas fire was something that those of us who went through it will always remember it but one of the things that I have learned over 50 years in this valley that give it five years and then ask everybody in the audience who was here when and because of the mobility of our population And the, you know just the natural rhythms of life. Probably half the people will not have experienced that fire and within 10 years they won't even be a memory for most. So it's really I think up to the council and thank the citizens for supporting Measure C that we do everything we can in the way of mitigating The fire hazard, because that's all we can do. Then we pray or whatever you believe in.
So I'm going to kind of conclude this with my background in municipal finance. I think the council should be commended for the work, the city treasurer all of us worked really hard to be sure that we did not have our emergency reserve dwindle and not be available. And we went through the first emergency with the Thomas fire and we got through that pretty well because it was brief. But what we're faced with now, please don't forget this is not over.
Even when everybody's vaccinated and we're all able to meet together and shake hands and hug and all of that, the city municipal financing lags behind that. And so the hit we're now taking Will continue probably for at least 18 months to two years. So I say this on behalf of our staff, because when you're in politics, I now learn the hardest thing in the world is to tell people no we can't do that and staff doesn't like doing that saying that either and they're in the awkward position of being dependent upon the politicians or the statesman or state's persons to support the staff when they have the bad news are now faced with, which is we had a reserve that was minimal but was adequate for the average crises.
And now that has shrunk it took the people who went before us years to build that up and it disappeared in like three months, it's down to about a third of what it was So I just say this because on my way out the door, I want to remind everybody because I spent 60 years pretty much engaged in this sort of activity. And the number of times I have heard people say, well who could have seen it coming? Who could've seen it coming? You know nobody we can all see it coming. It's just that we don't wanna look at it. And so I say to the council and to the public you know for the next couple of years there really isn't going to be much discretionary spending. I don't think frankly And I don't want to be hard pressed about for any discretionary spending, but our city staff and I want to thank Pam and James for the long nights they put in tracking all this and working with other governmental agencies trying to keep everything going.
That this is going to be something that we will get through, but we will have to be cautious When I taught in Cal Lutheran, I sound like I'm not lecturing everybody and I apologize for that. But when you do a budget there are two ways you deal with it. One is how much money do you have? And two, how much money are you going to spend? And when you put those numbers together between what people wanna spend versus what's going to come in, and you find my goodness we have an imbalance. We don't have enough money to do everything. Then people start getting real optimistic about their revenue and say well, we're gonna take in a little extra money so we'll be able to cover all this. Well the reason I mentioned this tonight is you have something on your agenda.
The citizens of Ojai gave a great vote of confidence to the City Council and to the city administration when they supported Measure C overwhelmingly, and they supported Measure G overwhelmingly. And I understand tax policy is difficult and can have some unintended consequences. But I'm telling you that one, you do not wanna become reliant on a new revenue source like Revenue G, and you should pledge it as best you can to replenishing your emergency reserve because you're gonna need it.
And I understand it's a complicated issue, I just encourage you all to be very serious about this and be sure that you fully understand it and not just want to... None of us like taxes and nobody likes to tell people no but in this case, I think it needs to be reminded to the citizens. The citizens spoke up and gave us a super majority on both those issues So there is a higher level of, I think accountability on those two items for us as elected or are you as elected officials to be very too.
I don't like using the word fiduciary because a lot of people don't know what that means but a fiduciary in the law is a responsibility to take care of things your treasure Your city manager is responsible, your city manager's responsible and everybody on the council. And so this is kind of a bad news sort of message to be giving our new mayor because we're all so hopeful and want to do things but having been on the other side I find it remarkable that our staff has been able to do what they've been able to During this pandemic, because we are sort of a vortex. Our whole economy is based on attracting people here from everywhere.
There is no higher risk right now and yet we're managing to contain it for the sake of our businesses. So the little inconvenience that we all have been put to putting on a mask, I think that Ojai should take great pride even though we have been told or those of us who are elected and support this. We were told that if we were committing a crime and should be put in jail but if so, so be it. We were the first town in Ventura County. I think we're the first town in California To do this, and we have had a really good outcome so far.
And right now we need it more than any time we've ever needed it when you see the latest report and the fact that we're down to what 1.4% capacity in our emergency rooms. So anyway thank you everybody for all that you've done let me run through very quickly my thanks I mentioned Pam, James and Gail is the ones who have to put up with me. And the new mayor will get real well acquainted with these folks but to the entire staff, to my colleagues on the council and to Betsy Sticks for her good citizenship and willingness to step forward and participate this is not easy.
The I want to thank all of our citizens for their support, because I have received a lot of support. And the other night when they thought I was going to be out of this last Tuesday, I went out to put my trash out late in the evening and I found my whole front yard full of signs which I've kept up until tonight and it came from all sorts From well-wishers and good folks, it touched me deeply.
Thank you all for doing that. I want to thank my family and most of all Miss Kitty, my spouse, best friend, roommate, sharing isolation with me. And then lastly in memory of Cookie Miley, Bill Miley's wife left us very Bill everybody knows bill I think he attended all the meetings and cookie was the strength behind bill or at least he'll come out in the evenings until other things got in the way but I told bill when I heard that.
His emails always made me think. Everybody, I think at least everybody at the city, Bill would go through our agenda every week and research every item on there thoroughly and then give us his opinion. There's no finer citizen in this town than Bill Miley. And there is no greater cheerleader than Cookie Miley. I'd go home at night and I have a nice little email from Cookie that always put a smile on my face. So Bill made me think, but Cookie made me smile and I think anybody who knew her shares that so anyway it's been a great ride love y'all and let you get on with your intermission thank you for listening to me.
0:27 – 0:3416 turns
Thank you Johnny.
I think with that we are, I think we are handing the virtual gavel over to Mayor Sticks. And I think if it's okay with everybody, I think we were planning to take a quick intermission for a couple of minutes and then come back for the 730 public comment just to let people come in and out of the meeting.
Oh good.
Namaste. Thank you Johnny.
We
appreciate it
Johnny. I will have a new respect every time at the courthouse shot on Johnny Johnson Drive. I have a new, uh, new I will give a shout out and a little love for our
mayor. All right. And so I think we will take a short intermission and reconvene at 7 30 if that it looks like that's acceptable. We'll be back in 60 seconds. All right, I think everybody is back. We took a little quick informal intermission but with that if everybody's ready... If you're ready can you give me a thumbs up? Looks like everybody's ready so with that we are, I believe James just indicated we are back on and so with that I'll turn it over to Mayor Stixx.
Thank you Thank you, James. And I'm going to turn it right back to public communication, right?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I think we have Deputy City Clerk Gail Davis on and I know everybody received the list of the public comments so it looks like we have 13 and maybe it's possible somebody signed up this list was printed about 20 minutes ago but Thank you. Um, Gail Can you? Uh sorry, Deputy City Clerk Davis. Can you start calling people in for the public comment?
And before we do that, we probably should take roll call again with the reorganized Council if
thank you.
Mayor Sticks. Okay, okay. So the first person we have to speak is Michael Flowers. Michael if you're there please unmute yourself and you may speak now.
Okay I've unmuted myself can you hear me?
Yes
All right, thank you very much. Thank you council members for allowing me to speak. My name is Mike Flowers I'm a resident of Ojai and I'd like to make a comment about the Maricopa Highway Lane reduction project. I've got some significant concerns three main ones that I'd like to address publicly and have on the record. The first one is the emergency egress implications for the Miner's Oaks area and all residential areas in and around the area on I wanted to publicly voice those concerns to the council and As I think that it was not a wise decision to do that. I think instituting, my second concern is instituting a change of this kind to accommodate essentially bikers and to the detriment of to the larger motor vehicle traffic is just not right and the impact this is going to have on traffic is going to be significant.
And finally you know I do think this is a waste of taxpayers money to do this and I've requested a copy of the traffic study through Mr. Vega, I called your office but was referred to the public works director's office I'm waiting here back from them I think that the traffic study done in the time of a global pandemic does not represent the two traffic volumes and the impact that's going to be created as a result of minimizing the lanes in this section of the road. So, I wanted to voice those concerns publicly and make that a matter of public record because I think they...I think the decision to do what was done to that stretch of road was not done to the benefit of the greater population is actually causing a great risk to the population.
So that's all I have to say.
0:34 – 0:419 turns
Thank you, Michael. Who do we have next Gail?
The next person we have is Mark Whitman Thank you. Mark, you should be able to talk if you can unmute your microphone if it's muted and go ahead. Thanks.
Yeah. I'd like to start out by saying thank you to our outgoing Mayor Johnny Johnson for his service and welcome the new mayor Betsy Sticks. Thank you members of the City Council. I'm here tonight representing Tony Anow and the old Ojai Bowling site at 1102 East Ojai Avenue. Over the last several years, we have submitted many proposals for redeveloping a site because of the rules and interpretation of these rules, we were never able to bring up completed project to the planning commission. At this time, we feel we have exhausted all our options with the planning department and now would like to make appeal to this body.
We understand that the rules in place Are to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community. And being a residents of the valley we appreciate the protection these rules create. However when the rules prevent projects which would benefit the community then the rules themselves are disservice to our health, safety and welfare. The Ojai bowling site is an awful blight to our community. It is like a festering sore we have grown accustomed to but gets worse and worse as time goes by.
It is a toxic eyesore and safety risk, and does not benefit our community in any way. It is a detriment to our health, safety, and welfare. The proposal Mr. Yanow, he would like to speak later and describe his proposal, is the opposite of this. Besides the benefit Mr. Yanow will describe, it'll clean up an awful eyesore and relieve this safety hazard. It will increase the neighborhood property values, the city tax base, and the local economy.
So CEQA has a mechanism in place for projects just like this. It is section 15093 of our state code statement overriding considerations, and I'll read the first sentence of this ordinance. It says CEQA requires that decision making bodies, it requires them to balance an applicable economic legal social I would like to begin by saying that we are asking for a review of the proposed project, whether it be technical, technological or other benefits included in regionwide or statewide environmental benefits of a proposed project against this unavoidable environmental risk when determining whether to approve a project.
This time before my client once again makes an investment of feeling from you. In closing, I have to quote Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill says we shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us. So let us help the community shape a healthy vibrant community by allowing Mr. Yanow to come forward and make this generous investment in our community. Hopefully we can come back to you with a conceptual proposal for his vision. Thank you.
Next, we have Christy Cooper. One moment let me get there. Thanks Gail. Christy, you should be unmuted go ahead and unmute yourself if you're showing muted on your screen and you may talk.
I believe I'm unmuted. Can you hear? Yeah,
you are we can hear you.
Hi, thank you. I just got online so I apologize if for not being able to listen to the whole meeting today wanted to call about the demonstration project on 33. I know that you guys are into this and you've done a lot of work on it. The community is very concerned about it. And from what I've seen, about 99% of the people I talk to are against it. We're concerned for a number of reasons, not the least of which is I think that the design leaves a little bit to be desired.
I'm concerned that it's an out-of-state design firm doing a design that as far as I can tell is very uncommon. I've only seen it in one city in the US And we've already had a couple of the planners broken. I know that those demonstration planners and they will be trees in the ultimate configuration, and logically it makes no sense that people can't park in those great big parking spots but it's not a surprise to me that they're already breaking the planters.
We're also very concerned about This doesn't seem to be a necessary project. It seems to be a beautification project, but do we really need everything to look perfect? We kind of like our sleepy town and I think it will push a lot of traffic onto Cuyama especially leaving the hospital. You know, I live in Miner's Oaks. So coming from Miner's Oaks, I'll just go through Cuyama if that area is too difficult to get through and last but not least, I think that the timing of the demonstration project is off.
I'm very concerned about what will happen when the high school is back in session and I'm very concerned about the hospital access. I do think that you guys are trying to do a good job and I know that you're really behind this I'm probably very disappointed with the community's reaction. So, you know, just keep me...I guess it seems to me like there could have been a better design that would have accomplished the same goals. We're pretty far down the road here. It's a very expensive demonstration project, I know.
I thank you for everything you've tried to do with the charrettes And just really am concerned about this project. That's all I wanted to say today, thank you.
Thank you Christy.
Okay next we have Rebecca Kenter and one moment while I unmute her.
0:42 – 0:5212 turns
Hi I'm Rebecca. Hi Rebecca go ahead. Hi thanks for leaving the comments open for people to share Their feelings, there's a lot of unrest in the community. People are really upset about the project. I've read it and I've been hopeful that it would turn out better than it's turning out. Unfortunately most people in the area don't like it. The extra burden of traffic as people try to avoid the area is really gonna put a lot of burden on the residential streets on both sides The Arbolada going into town and behind Vaughn's that neighborhood as well.
So there's the concerns from the community are basically distilled, I'm sure you've already heard them but I wanted to bring forward the idea of just doing regular bike lanes. I don't know that we've ever tried that but people seem to favor that and maybe that would be a way that we could reconcile the needs for the bicycle riders as well as the people that use it for the commute Again, I really appreciate all the effort that people put into this. So I know everybody's intentions were good but please hear from the community that people are really not reacting very well to it and they're really uncomfortable with it. So thank you for letting me speak.
Thank
you
Rebecca. The next person is William Gartner and I will unmute him one moment William, if you're there go ahead and speak. If you've muted your microphone please unmute it from your end.
Thank you so much and thank you for letting me have an opportunity to talk about the Maricopa Highway 33 bike lane revision. I think everyone's heard similar comments to the ones that I'm going to make. My primary concern is, I think this will be extremely difficult for Engine Company 22 to go through that passageway when there are cars and students go to school. I think it will be difficult I'm worrying how access of the hospital will work, given that now we've narrowed the lanes down, created parking spaces when there were none before and then also the bike lane. If the fire engines are going to use the bike lane to somehow get around the cars now since it's only one lane, I think that will be a major complication.
Otherwise, I support all the other comments about this is likely to push traffic into other areas Of Ojai and Ojai roads that I think are frankly much more dangerous for both bicyclists and pedestrians. So I hope that gets reconsidered. I'm hoping this is a temporary demonstration and that a better way to think through this can happen. And then finally, the way I want to term this is, this frankly is a bike lane to nowhere because it ends at El Roblar and then bicyclists are now put on El Roblar which has complicated in and of itself.
I don't think this will create high school students using it And using the normal bike path as a way to get to school. So I'd love to see more studies, given that it's COVID time and students are not commuting to school. It's really just a bad opportunity to think about how traffic is going to be managed. We need to get back to normal for where traffic is and then make some decisions about when this will work. Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, William.
OK, next we have Tony Yano and Tony one moment I'm going to bring you on live. OK. I'm going to have to promote him to panelist, which means he may show up on the screen. He has an old version of Zoom sometimes that happens. Tony are you there? Okay, there I think I've got him unmuted. Tony are you there? I
am.
Go ahead and speak.
Okay thank you very much. First I want to thank outgoing Mayor Johnston for his service and welcome new Mayor Betsy and the new council people. And I'd also like to thank Mark Whitman for his words about the project that we're proposing My name is Tony Eno. I'm the owner of 1202 East Ojai Avenue, which is the old bowling alley, which a lot of people see it as a blight, which I believe it is and some people remember it as social hub, which I think it was.
For me personally, I see it as giant opportunity for the residents of Ojai, of which I am one My vision for the place has been crafted not just by me, but by a lot of people that I speak to in the community and friends of mine and families around the neighborhoods where I spend time. And what I've heard nonstop since people found out that I own the building was how much we need more family friendly recreation areas and more activities for families and residents of the community.
What we are proposing to do there is to not just beautify the building and redo it completely, but to create a family-friendly recreation area that would include a bunch of more modern sports and more modern movement activities. So it would be a cooperative with a few different businesses operating under one roof. The businesses would each be independently run and operated by local residents And most of which I've already kind of put together.
Included in those activities would be a state-of-the-art climbing gym for rock climbers and sport climbers, a silks and aerial studio for those who are interested in aerial arts A free running or parkour studio, which for those of you who don't know what that is maybe you know what American Ninja Warrior is that type of thing along with outdoor activities and a restaurant.
And anyway, all together it's something that I feel...I know my family would use and I know a lot of families would love. And I know that a lot of people in Ojai would like to see that space cleaned up. What we're looking for is the City Council help us to work with the CEQA guidelines because we're looking for an override from the City Council which will allow us to make this project possible When I bought the property, I was under the impression based on what the previous administration of the town told me that the building had a lot of traffic credits.
And I've learned that the current interpretation is that those credits have expired and I'm asking to have them reinstated. So I thank you very much for your time and I hope that we can present a full project scope to you in the near future.
Thank you, Tony. Okay, next we have Sonny Crewson and it will take me a moment to bring her on. One moment. Sonny go ahead you should be unmuted if not please unmute your microphone. Can you hear me? Yeah
go ahead. Fantastic thank you guys so much for being there I appreciate all the work that you do on a daily basis and I do appreciate the efforts this project has taken. As some of you may have seen my comments, I am not at all in favor of it unfortunately. Having driven through the town of Miners Oaks for decades, I've experienced the difficulties that commuting traffic presents.
The bumper-to-bumper crawl that begins before Lomita Avenue where people drop off their children to Miners Oaks Elementary was often avoided by turning left on Lomita and taking a right on the 33 to approach the five way stop from the top and many other people did the same so we would enter that corridor in the left lane while the people coming off El Roblar would turn into the right lane Not having two lanes to do this will certainly impact traffic negatively. And in fact, I'm sure you're both or you are all aware that El Roblor is a site of bicycle fatality as well as Cuyama which is the alternative road.
So I really think this demonstration scheme creates more problems than it solves And further, in an event of emergency it's dangerous to expect drivers to go against their instincts not to pull right into the bike lane which emergency vehicles are evidently supposed to be using. Once of course the bicyclist pulled over bikes presumably over the curb and I just want to share a quote with a fire department engineer which is somebody who drives these trucks And he has said, written to me. I don't want to rely on a bike lane to respond code three lights and sirens especially if the two active traffic lanes are backed up because drivers are slowing down then fire trucks beating down on them. I have a great deal of experience with stupid drivers who panic when they hear sirens and see flashing lights and either they'll just stop there or try to move out of the way and create even more of a mess So I think until we actually have true traffic, this demonstration needs to be shelved.
And I would really hope that instead of losing a lane which we desperately need during school hours You know, commuting to work and whatnot. Not just Nordoff but there's a lot of people who are lucky enough to work in the valley or have to use that corridor to get out of the valley that it just needs to be shelved until we have a really accurate traffic scenario and I am much more in favor of having very clear bike lanes. It would seem to me that it would be less expensive Thank you so much for your time.
0:53 – 0:588 turns
Ron, you should be unmuted. If not unmute yourself on your end and you can go ahead and speak.
Okay, yes, can you hear me?
Yes.
Great. Hi, my name is Ron Triggs and I live at 113 Vallerio Avenue here in Ojai. And as a first time commenter to the council, I wanna thank you all for your service to the city that we all call home and congratulate those newly elected. My comment pertains also to the GO High project on Highway 33. I appreciate the hard work and countless hours that I'm sure many have invested and volunteered to advance the redesign of that stretch of 33. However, I believe the core goal of reducing the highway to one lane per side may not be in the best interest of those who live and work here In the first week of driving this stretch multiple times as I live in Ojai on Vallerio and work in Miners Oaks, I've already experienced a parked cars door being swung into traffic.
Substantial slowing backing up traffic a quarter mile despite the lack of typical Nordoff traffic and a noticeable increase of traffic on Valerie where I live. So I hope as this demonstration continues that the City Council will just consider local experiences over the results and data of other cities that are not Ojai. Every city is unique, and unfortunately we are unlikely to get good data for, I think making wise decisions since traffic studies from what I can tell were not performed on all adjoining streets beforehand at least I know none was performed on Vallerio So lacking that data, I question how possible it is to discern the impact of this major change to Highway 33 from data collected after the fact.
I realize the offer of grant money presents one of those rare opportunities to better our city that is hard to pass by. And I appreciate the effectiveness of earlier improvement of the flashing crosswalks, I think that has been very beneficial but I would just please request that you keep an open ear and open mind to consider the real life experiences of your citizens. Thank you so very much for
listening.
We have one more person. His name is Robert Dodge, and Robert if you're listening you're showing on my list twice so I'm going to try each one till i get you live. So let's try this. Robert are you there? Yep okay go ahead
great Okay, listen I just want to say thank you for letting me make a few comments. Outgoing Mayor Johnny Johnson said this evening that Ojai has experienced many firsts and this evening I want to thank Mayor Johnson and the entire Ojai City Council for having the courage in these last years to speak out against the greatest existential threat we face as a planet And that's the threat of actually nuclear war.
Ojai was the first city in California and only the second city in the nation to adopt a resolution to move us back from the brink of nuclear war, and declare ourselves a nuclear-free zone. Our resolution passed on April 10th of 2018, and has subsequently been endorsed by over 46 other municipalities including the cities of Los Angeles, Baltimore, Des Moines, Portland, Washington DC, Santa Barbara To name just a few, and six state legislative bodies including the entire legislature of the State of California. And over 354 organizations ranging from the Sierra Club to 350.org to every major environmental and religious group in the country demanding the abolition of nuclear weapons with the precautionary principles to prevent nuclear war during this process.
Nuclear weapons will soon join all other weapons of mass destruction and being declared illegal under international norms. The International Community of Nations is speaking. Just six weeks ago on October 24th, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified when Honduras became the 50th nation to do so. The treaty will actually go into force on January 22nd, establishing a new international norm whereby it will be illegal to develop, stockpile, produce, fund, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.
Under your leadership in the past council and current council, Ojai can take pride in this global effort to make the world safer for future generations. I look forward to working with our city manager on the annual certification of Ojai's nuclear weapons divestment policy And on behalf of my children and our children's children, I thank each and every one of you. Thanks.
Thank you, Robert. Okay we have no more... We had some other people signed up for public comments but those are all the people that I show in the queue for just general public communications.
0:58 – 1:0416 turns
All right, so moving on to the consent calendar. Mayor I'm raising my hand. I just would like to make a comment about the rest of the public comments that we received if I may. We received 23 comments in support of the ATP project. We received 54 comments opposing and 40 of those were identical Um, but still there was 54. And I would like to take a moment. Um, I know some of these people wanted to speak if I could have like a minute and a half to read one of the comments that I think summarizes maybe all of the other comments. May I do that?
Hey this is from Annika Forrester and it's addressed Dear Council Members and Mayor Please accept my comments in favor of the initial steps toward establishing a road diet along the Maricopa Highway from the Y to El Roblar. My experience driving through the newly redesigned street has been effortless and not at all negatively impacted by the newly established protected bike lanes In every trip I've taken through this stretch of the Maricopa Highway, I have not experienced any confusion or observed any congestion whatsoever. Traffic flowed perfectly fine, and I anticipate this will remain the case once school starts.
I particularly liked seeing the parking lane that separates cars in the roadway from cyclists in the bike lane. And I also appreciated seeing the very long section in front of Nordhoff where pickups and drop-offs can now take place easily for those who don't want to further congest the parking lot bottlenecks before and after school These all seem like very wise and thoughtful design improvements that will benefit all users of the roadway.
Ideally, now that there is a more complete stretch of safer to bike-to-school roads we may see more students riding their bikes to school. I applaud the Council's decision to support this project and I look forward to continuing to make our streets This is a matter of transportation justice, not just for too many decades we have given It's about time to put people and people powered vehicles at the center of our planning, and not the vast unsustainable and polluting private automobile industry.
I used to live in Ashland, Oregon. A town with a somewhat similar size demographic and tourism reliant economy. Ashland undertook a similar road diet project nearby two decades ago and the results have been wonderful for the entire stretch of Highway 33, the state route that runs from the north to the south of that city through downtown. One section at a time, they have adopted improved roadway designs including bump outs, better striped crosswalks, pedestrian activated crosswalks. Reductions from four lanes to two protected bike lanes as well as extensive street tree and landscaping additions the feeling of approaching downtown Ashland now is completely different and much more aesthetically pleasing. And many more tourists now enjoy cycling on their visits to Ashland in addition to the Shakespeare Festival.
Congratulations on a great decision, and I look forward to seeing this project fully developed into a permanent solution. Thank you.
Thank you, Susan. All right. Moving on to the consent calendar?
Mayor I have one comment.
Oh sorry Randy yes.
Can you see all of us?
Uh I can't I can't see Ryan he's the only one i can't see. You there Ryan?
Council Member Blatz is there if you go up to where it says speaker view or might say um are up in the upper right hand corner there's a little grid And it'll say what type of view you're looking at. And if you look at gallery view, it should show everybody.
I gotcha. Thank you.
So real briefly, while I appreciate Councilwoman Francina's comments and reading. But there is a place in time for that in public comments and that's for someone to actually physically or zoom in or do what they can to do. I prefer that we just stop this and we start it now under your leadership. That if someone wants to speak let them show up and speak You know, we could all sit here with 20 or 30 letters like that and spend a lot of time not doing what we should be doing. So I appreciate the comment but I don't appreciate the time it's going to take away from having the business that we need to discuss tonight.
Thanks, Randy. Note taken. OK. Consent calendar.
Chair Sticks, on the consent calendar. On the consent calendar.
Thank you.
I believe that we were looking at the possibility, given that we have a spokesperson from Edison here to consider pulling item D and combining it with eight as the first discussion item. And if the city manager concurs with that, I would make it up a motion to approve all the other consent items.
Yes,
thank you. Okay,
is there a second? Second. All right, great.
1:04 – 1:1211 turns
And are we in agreement on then, do I need to make another motion that we combine D and 8 as the first discussion item?
Roll-call vote 0–0 · 2 under review
Show transcript
And then I think it would be appropriate to call for a roll call vote.
And unfortunately that the rule of the change does require now for the Zoom meetings roll call votes for each vote. So with that I'll turn it to the Deputy City Clerk.
Okay, so this is a roll call vote on the motion to combine item D with agenda item eight. Is that
correct? And approve the other calendar.
Roll-call vote Passed 3–0 · 1 under review
Show transcript
Not sure what we're trying to achieve but I'll vote yes for that.
Council Member Weyrich?
Okay. Approved. Yay! Okay, so then we'll go and talk about the item that was pulled. Is there any public comment on that?
No. So it's pulling the emergency item and then combining it with the coronavirus response update. So if you'd like to open that I can give the staff report on that item. I do have a quick presentation and Gail, while you're unmuted is Rudy Gonzalez. Has he signed into the meeting?
Yes, he's here.
Okay, so I'll start with the quick presentation and then we do have Rudy Gonzalez from SCE here to speak about one of the recent emergencies. So we will pull him in in a moment. Have a quick presentation Let me see. Are you able to see this PowerPoint? Yes. Okay, I have a new setup. So we wanted to start as we mentioned there is a... We have on the agenda currently during this declared emergency situation, we have a coronavirus response and an emergency response that is kind of a standing item.
And bear with me it's not quite working but we'll make it work. But in the last two weeks, we actually had multiple emergency situations which I guess is kind of the theme of 2020 just continues on But we had the ongoing coronavirus response and importantly from that, the rollout of the new stay home order which had dropped right after our last council meeting.
We had the public safety power shutoffs and then at the same time we have the public safety power shutoffs which impacted a large portion of our city. We also had the Cornell fire in Santa Paula that we were monitoring So we wanted to take this opportunity to kind of talk about each of those just quickly. And like I said, we have Rudy Gonzalez from SCE here to also talk about the public safety power shutoff.
One thing we wanted to do, we talked about this is the three year... We just passed the three-year anniversary of the Thomas fire and we have put a big focus since then on enhancing our communication tools and we wanted Take the opportunity to remind people of where to look for accurate local information as far as from the city or county sources. So we have made improvements to 1610, AM1610 our radio station and so we will have breaking news there. We also have channel 10 web crawls at the bottom of channel 10 and some other alerts That we've started to use on Channel 10 to try to utilize that TV channel more often, as well as the official web sources are Ohiocity.org and Facebook City of Ojai page.
We've been posting a lot on there. I think we're, we have a reach right now of about 9000 people on Facebook but a lot of people uh we heard from multiple people that they um they went to like groups in Facebook but they weren't aware that the City of Ojai has an actual official page so we wanted to try to get the word out on that also when the fire broke out in Santa Paula VC Emergency whenever there's an emergency will update to the newest emergency and start putting information there which is really useful And then lastly, VC Alert is a really handy tool and this is just our annual reminder to sign up for it so you get alerts right to your phone. If you signed up a long time ago and you've moved, re-sign up with your new location so you get accurate information for where you actually are.
We just wanted to show this slide to show people what to look for on Channel 10. We will either have a crawl at the bottom of the screen or we'll have, what we did during the Cornell fire and the red flag alerts was we put a couple warnings up on the screen like this high fire danger. Lastly, along these lines the newest source to get information out to people is the new Hilo evacuation sirens.
And I will quickly If I may show just a quick, I believe it's a two minute video. I think it's important because this is a new siren that we had not had in Ojai before or in Ventura County before and if you hear the siren, it means evacuation so we want to make sure everybody's aware and is listening for it. So if I may, I'm going to play this quick video. One second here.
And the most critical thing is I want to make sure everybody hears this. We've posted a video online, so if it doesn't work here... Oh, I think it's working now.
1:12 – 1:2816 turns
Hello, I'm Ojai City
Manager James Vega. This week, the week of December 7th 2020 marks the three-year anniversary of the Thomas Fire which was at the time both largest fire in California state history. The fire severely impacted the Ojai Valley as we all remember and caused the evacuation of many of our residents. We have looked for ways since then to improve fire safety and disaster preparedness And we wanted to take this opportunity to tell the community about a new improvement, which is the new high-low sirens. These are special sirens put on the police vehicles to inform residents that an evacuation is occurring. And so when you hear those sirens, you'll know to start getting prepared to evacuate.
The Ventura County Sheriff's Office and our Police Chief Jose Rivera have provided the following video with an example of that siren and some additional
information. Thank you for watching. That unique timing siren is known as the high-low siren. The Ventura County Sheriff's Office has implemented this siren to alert residents to the need to evacuate during emergencies. The frequency and intensity of wildfires That's really the critical part and we wanted to make sure everybody knows what that sound means. We know during the last evacuation, during the Thomas fire, we had a lot of people who said that they hadn't heard about the evacuations
so we just We wanted to take the opportunity with, you know, the anniversary and the recent fire weather to remind everybody of that.
Moving on to the next emergency situation that we dealt with over the last couple weeks, we had the public safety power shutoffs. Just as a quick overview, we have the three circuits here in Ojai, Matilija, Patricia and Thatcher which are reflected here We had last week, two of those three circuits go out. Sections of the circuits be turned off at various points to prevent potential fire risk and I know we heard and I'm sure everybody heard that there is a lot of confusion and frustration so we wanted to provide just quickly some locations where people can get information and then like I said also we'll have Rudy Gonzalez from Edison But there are places you can sign up for either text alerts, voice alerts or email alerts. And this is on the Southern California Edison Wildfire PSPS page where you can sign up for either of those and you should get an alert by either text, voice or email to your phone.
And do we want to kind of pause there before coronavirus? I think we will pause there and let, or ask Rudy Gonzalez from Southern California Edison to also comment.
Question James?
Yes
In addition to these alerts weren't we going to have a Board, either at Nordoff or the Marquis or some other place in town in front of the park where people get information.
We have talked about doing that for emergency like if there's a fire or if there's an earthquake or landslide We haven't talked about doing those for just the public safety power shutoffs, but that's something we can look at. I think last year was the first year of public safety shutoffs and we're kind of still seeing how often this is going to occur and how frequent we're gonna have these. They are a new animal for us so we can take a look at that.
Okay i understand thank you
Are you there? Do you want to just kind of comment on the public safety power shutoff?
Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Thank you. Great. Good evening Mayor Sticks, Council Members, Mr. Vega. Appreciate the opportunity to share a bit of information regarding last week's PSPS activations. Just to give you a refresher on our processes We track the weather seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And we've got meteorologists on staff who are constantly tracking the weather and it's the tracking of that weather and the forecasts that are established based on not only National Weather Service weather stations, but also our own weather stations that we've installed at various locations throughout our service territory that allow us to make what we feel are the most informed and educated decision in regards to implementing a PSPS event.
Last week we were tracking and we had the Thatcher circuit in scope And we sent out communications as such that there was a likelihood that the Thatcher Circuit could be impacted by a public safety power shutoff event. We de-energized the Thatcher Circuit, as we said we would with all the proper communications The one thing that caught us off guard and therefore led to confusion and concern in the community is the Patricia Circuit, which is the other circuit that serves a large segment of the city of Ojai came into scope without the appropriate notification that we would normally send out.
Communication protocol is that we would send out a warning 72 hours ahead of any potential event. That would go to our local government agencies, as well as our emergency services coordinators for the county and for the cities. 48 hours out from a potential PSPS event, we would send out our first notification to residents and businesses who could be impacted. And then we follow that same protocol 24 hours out. So we conducted all those notifications for the Thatcher circuit. However, the weather conditions changed And we had to bring in and we had to de-energize the Patricia circuit as well without the normal notification. It doesn't happen very frequently, but again we were monitoring the weather on an hour by hour basis and the conditions changed to the point where we felt the need take the Patricia circuit out of service as well.
Among the factors that we utilize in making those decisions again are information that's compiled by our in-house meteorologists using high resolution weather models, data from our weather stations and then also publicly available weather stations. The fire potential index which is a tool that utilizes weather data fuel conditions, and vegetation moisture content to rate the daily fire potential across our region.
So those factors led to the decision to implement PSPS not only for the Thatcher circuit but also for the Patricia circuit. The process of re-energizing once the winds have died down is an issue that has caused a significant amount of concern in the communities You know, it seems like it takes an inordinate amount of time for us to re-energize after we've taken these circuits down. And the reason for that is we have to actually visually patrol those overhead lines before we re-energize and in the case of the activations last week, we ran out of daylight so we had Conclude our visual inspection when it got dark and then we proceeded to complete those inspections the following morning, utilizing helicopters. So we know that these events are a huge inconvenience to the community I can tell you that we are continuing to conduct work on the overhead lines in the City of Ojai replacing the bare wire with cover conductor.
Our hope and intent is that once that work is completed, and it's ongoing, we hope to be completed within the next year. The hope is at The factors related to the decision to de-energize will change and the lines will be able to withstand higher wind speeds and wind gusts. So, the information that we That we utilize to make the decisions to de-energize all come out in a report that is submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission. You can go to the CPUC website under the de-energization link And you can find a report that's typically we submitted 10 days following an event. So for last week's PSPS events, the report will likely be out in the next 7 to 10 days and in that report and I can tell you that it is a lengthy report for the Thanksgiving Week activations we had unfortunately Ojai was not involved That report was 59 pages and this event that we had last week was actually a larger event so the information will be probably lengthier but in it you'll be able to find all the information that we take into consideration as we implement these PSPS activations.
There's a lot of room for improvement, we understand that There's things that we can do to try to shorten the amount of time that folks are out, but just know that these decisions that we take to de-energize the lines are a big decision for us and is something that we consider carefully before we actually de-energize. With that I'd be happy to answer any questions you might
have. Thank You Chair Sticks. Rudy? Thanks for coming and answering questions, because it's never an easy position to be in. I think from the community three things I want to ask. One is it seemed like the helicopter took a while to get up there midday rather than morning in terms of inspecting the lines after the winds had died down just wondered if you know it's an observation from the community I thought I'd pass on for you to comment on Second, the call centers seem to be completely confused about what circuits were out and not out. When people got through to call centers they were being told your power's on it must be your house must be your business it's not your neighborhood because we can assure you our screen is saying that you're on uh you're energized and the other issue if you could speak to was the community resource centers in the protocol for shutting them down because of I guess there was a threat in another part of Ventura County and wondering how we can do a better job of backup for people's basic needs in these community resource centers.
So that's my three-part question
OK, and those are all very timely questions. I was informed that the helicopter would be out at daybreak the night before when we had to discontinue the visual patrol of the circuit. So I don't know what happened that caused it to be delayed. I apologize for the extra amount of time that residents had to be out of power as a result of the helicopter being delinquent in getting out and starting the patrol.
I will try to ascertain that internally. In regards to the call centers, you know the flow of information from the field and the accuracy of that information sometimes gets bungled. We'll be the first to admit that. You're not the first city that's raised that issue with me and I apologize for the poor information we need to do a better job of getting our folks who manned the phones good accurate timely There's no reason that we should be telling a customer that, no you have power if they're sitting there in the dark. I mean there's just no excuse for that so my apologies for uh that poor communication from our phone centers and then in regards to the community resource center this is something that that we're um we're kind of fine-tuning We have both community resource centers and community crew vehicles that provide limited resources to the community.
I don't know off the top of my head if we have an established contract with any facilities in the community, I think we were looking at Sarzotti Park as a community resource facility. So if and when we have a future event, we will certainly look at citing something there. There was some misunderstanding about our ability to man the Community Resource Centers because of the restrictions, the state restrictions around COVID but we need to figure out a way to be able Provide those resources and still maintain the distance and the safety that protocols that are in place in order to be able to provide those resources. So we were, we are taking a look at that.
Thank you. Sure. Andy.
The Rudy thank you again for coming on and responding to the community's concerns. I think one of the biggest ones I had was the fact that our city manager who receives a ton of phone calls in emergency situations, had a difficult time interacting with anyone from your operations. And maybe you guys need to evaluate your protocols and maybe set up a line that allows city managers or city officials And for us in particular, our city manager to be able to get timely information and to get accurate information more quickly than the other systems that are in place.
That would be the suggestion I would have for future emergencies. We all have to be grateful that the system worked as flawed as it is because the winds were horrific And I don't think there's anyone sitting here tonight or anyone in the community that wanted another Thomas Fire event. So we're grateful for that, but like any procedures they need to be honed and they need to be worked on better.
And again, I think our concerns are valid and our thanks to you and thank you again for listening to us.
1:28 – 1:3913 turns
I completely agree with your comments, and I will take your suggestions back to our leadership. And we're committed to doing better. We have to do better. So thank you.
Thank you, Rudy for being here. Appreciate your efforts.
My pleasure.
Anybody else?
There's no other questions. I see Council Member Haney.
I don't know where we are in this discussion because like i said, I'm not sure why we combined these but I wanted to touch on something that Council Member Francina talked about and the Libby Bowl Committee did put together a really nice presentation on a public marquee. It was initially set up for Libby Bowl performances but But one of the components was a safety related component and that was being able to clearly communicate with the community any event such as this.
The other thing I wanted to bring up was, you know, is I'm heading down into LA if I'm going to the international airport there's signs all over the place that states what channel to listen to give me traffic reports and traffic things of this nature We don't have any signage around the city that actually tells anyone to listen to 1610. So that seems like a pretty simple fix along with all of the other marketing that we do through the City website, but it seems like just maybe a couple more signs placed in strategic locations might benefit the community also.
Yeah I agree with that well uh we actually ordered two things one is the face covering sign that we currently have at the entrance on both sides of town was our AM 1610 signs. So we had to choose which message to keep up, but if the emergency situation hadn't gotten any more... If that Cornell fire from Santa Paula had started to threaten us, we would've made that change, but obviously that was one challenge. But we have ordered some additional orange construction signs that say emergency tuned to AM 1610 so we will be using those moving forward.
You know, James also I know we had this conversation it was interesting when we started talking about am 1610. Interesting thing is how many of us have am radios or even am contacts and it was James who had to educate me on the fact you can go out your truck and turn am one right. So again, but how many in our community actually and in an emergency situation are going to be thinking clearly? So again even marketing that or broadcasting that or sharing that I think is important too James. Thank you.
And James and I have talked about upping the texting program yeah getting PR out there and getting people because they just don't know
The only legal issue on this one would be if the council has completed discussion to take a vote on item 2D, adoption of the resolution confirming the existence of the local emergency and directing the Director of Emergency Services City Manager to take the necessary actions in response.
Can I can we had a couple slides on the coronavirus? We go back to those then all that Rudy Gonzales, thank you again for attending and then we'll let you go.
Thank you, Rudy.
Thanks so much. All right, so just a couple quick slides. There have been a lot of changes since our last meeting but I know that they're well publicized so I will kind of just briefly touch on them but We are seeing a pretty serious surge with case numbers and ICU capacity. And I think this chart over the last couple of months, each of these dates was about a month apart from October to November to December reflects that. You can see that from March to October was seven months.
In Ventura County from October to December two months. We've had another 14,000 so You know, we've seen more cases in Ventura County in two months than we had in the prior seven months. So it's definitely... We're seeing a surge. Same thing applies here in the Ojai Valley almost, you know, it's a pretty close ratio where we've had more cases in the last two months than we had in the prior seven months. And then obviously the big number that has been a lot of discussion lately is the ICU capacity Yesterday, Ventura County reported that it had dropped to 1% capacity available of ICU beds. And that's reflected as well as we've gone from eight in the ICU unit to 56 in a matter of a couple of months.
So you know, the concern about the surge and last meeting we had, we were talking about a potential surge. We're definitely seeing that. The county VC recovers website has More, more data available by zip code and so you can go on there and see that again just more cases picking up in the past 14 days we've had 54 which you know it took us months To have 54 up front, so it really is the surge that we're seeing and it's reflected in the charts.
And so that led to I think again this meeting we had originally scheduled last week when all this was coming out. We postponed it but it's still worth talking about that the state then put the regional stay at home order in place where they closed several businesses Recreational facilities like outdoor playgrounds, hair salons, barbershops, personal care services, wineries, bars and breweries. And then they modified and restricted other businesses like restaurants which obviously is a major business type here in Ojai can now be only take out or delivery no outdoor dining or in restaurant dining Uh, hotels can only be open for critical infrastructure support under the state order. Retail has to be reduced capacity under this order and places of worship have to be outdoor services only.
One change since our meeting got postponed originally outdoor playgrounds were closed under the order but now that's been removed and they've just been modified to a low capacity so we put capacity signage at our playgrounds And people have probably heard that a lot of sheriff's departments, including the Ventura County Sheriff's Department has said that they're going to focus on education and outreach of the order and focusing on super spreader events but not necessarily policing businesses on some of these factors. So it's been an interesting couple of weeks.
It's been challenging for all of the businesses in our town so we kept kind We keep trying to encourage people to support local business, and I think that's something that we should focus on and keep doing. The other thing is the county is going to issue updated guidelines for what exactly is expected with this critical infrastructure support because it's really not clear at this point. So that'll be coming out in the next couple of days.
At this point City, some city actions that we've taken. We're working closely with the county to provide education and outreach materials and where we've had code enforcement go out and make sure people are aware of these changes. We reopened or kept the playgrounds open and we are only continuing outdoor recreation activities at this time We also went out and added additional food pickup zones since outdoor dining is currently limited.
And then we just keep reminding people they've probably seen the signs in town that the Keep Ojai Safe signs that encourage people to stay distant, six feet distant and to keep wearing face coverings. And then lastly one item that we can discuss today is the county recently requested a letter of support from each city in Ventura County to support their request to create a central coast region. For people who aren't aware, the state created a Southern California region that had 10 counties as diverse as Inyo County, to San Bernardino County, to Ventura County, to LA County, to San Diego County. So it's a huge region that's a huge chunk of the population. So Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties And we have agreed to try to create this new central coast region for those three counties, and that would get us away from the LA statistics is one of the goals.
So the county has requested a letter of support from each city. We have a draft of that but we haven't submitted it yet pending council discussion. And then just quickly, the COVID testing has been extended through the end of this year and we're expecting that it'll be extended even further but we don't have a solid deadline yet. So we still have COVID testing at Sarzotti Park on Mondays from noon to five and then the latest breaking news ever people will probably have heard but vaccine distribution has begun in California with 2000 doses arriving in Ventura County today So this is all happening kind of as we speak. It's good news, but the initial vaccine supply is going to be very limited with only key healthcare facilities and long-term care residents in the most at risk categories getting the first doses.
So I think Governor Newsom had a press conference today where he said that the light is at the end of the tunnel but it's still a dark tunnel and I think that is what we're seeing at this point. So with that, that's the COVID update for Council. We have the resolution to extend the emergency situation before you and then also the item regarding whether we support a letter of support to the county and then anything any questions that council has we can respond to as well.
1:39 – 1:4526 turns
Is this the time for questions? Is that what you said?
Yes.
Okay, are the hotels clear on who can stay and who can't stay?
So the county, I spoke with the county this morning. They are going to issue clear guidelines for the hotels because it's not completely clear but I will say that I talked to some of the hotels and they are going... I was encouraged they're going above and beyond as far as even requiring people to sign in an affidavit saying that they are critical support, critical infrastructure Which is not, after talking to the county that's not a requirement. They were just going to let people say that they were critical infrastructure so I'm encouraged that the hotels are going above and beyond and then with that when the county sends the updated guidelines we will make sure that they get a copy of those as well.
Any other
questions?
No questions.
Any legal issues on COVID?
Just to echo the point that was made, at this time the city's posture barring an extreme case is to educate businesses that are coming out of compliance with the COVID regulations and not to be strict in enforcement but rather to focus on education and encouraging compliance in that way. Reserving of course the need in extreme cases to use more hard code enforcement tools.
Sure okay thank you so much James for all your hard work on this
Thank you.
Bill, yeah?
I'd like to offer a motion to support the letter for forming a central coast region.
I'll second that.
Great. Vote?
And Gail can you call roll call on that?
And so that, that's a roll call on item eight then correct and we're going to do a separate roll call on the consent calendar item. Yeah okay
yeah
Roll-call vote Passed 5–0 · 1 under review
Show transcript
And so that leaves item D
Move to approve consent item B
Second
Okay,
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 Move to approve consent item B Second Okay, · 1 under review
Show transcript
I'd like to make one comment before we move on if that's all right with you very short The sense of balance and judicious approach that we just heard from Mr. Summers and Mr. Vega, I'm gonna give you an example of why I think it's important that we all really be very sensitive to how difficult this is for so many people. And the consequences that we don't anticipate, Hearing some interviews today with bartenders in LA County saying as soon as the stay at home order came in, they started getting calls for coming going to illegal house parties because they weren't. They knew they weren't working anymore in the outside bars. Now we know that illegal social gatherings are a major vector or this spread of this virus.
And said, here's an example of where possibly banning the outdoor activity is causing an unintended consequence to put us at greater risk. So I just think we're in a really difficult situation and it's gonna be interesting to see how these lawsuits proceed with the state. Asking for the data showing that outside dining is a risk vector which LA County was not able to produce in their proceedings before the judge in that case. I just want to point out this we're in a really difficult situation.
Yeah thank you Bill yeah and thank you so much James and Matt it's a lot going on right now Okay, so
moving on to the next item. Mayor Pro Tem, you ready?
Yeah and I can give a quick There's not much to report on this, but City of Ojai we traditionally elect the Mayor Pro Tem at the first council meeting in December which is tonight. This year. The Mayor Pro Tem acts in the absence of the mayor at council meetings or ceremonial events and we typically begin the process by asking for a nomination by motion from the Council We did not we do not have any public comments on this item so the item is before the council for discussion.
1:45 – 1:5327 turns
Mayor may
I comment? Oh sure yeah Randy.
So i'm i'm not necessarily going to make a nomination because we have some we have some protocols that are in place and they had been a rotational position for the Mayor Pro Tem. And the reality is it would be Councilman Wyrick's position this year. It would be mine the following year, I believe it would be Ryan and then followed by Suze if I'm correct but we've had this procedure in place for almost six years so I'm a little lost on what we're voting for tonight other than accepting past practices and are we moving or are we going to continue them? Is that what I'm hearing?
As you know, that has been the rotation. That rough rotation has been the council's past practice but it does require confirmation each year as to whether the council wishes to confirm that or to take another approach. So hence is on the agenda for the council to confirm where the council would like to go.
Susan? Well I just think it's fun to nominate Bill Weirick and so therefore I nominate him with this term and I also want to nominate him
I'll second that. Oh, I was going to say who's going to second it?
I may but thank you Susan. Yay! Okay now we can vote on that one? Yes.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0
Show transcript
They can stop calling me that, Gail.
I may have some trouble with that tonight but I will.
No problem.
Thank you Bill. Let's knock on wood
here. Stay healthy Betsy.
All right. Thank you. Um, all right. Great. Uh, moving on to the cannabis tax. James?
Thank you. Just briefly on June 11th 2019 the City Council adopted a resolution placing the Cannabis Tax measure which became Measure G on the ballot. That resolution would allow the council to set a tax at up to 10% so anywhere from 0-10%. The City Council, at the same time did adopt a resolution setting the initial tax rate at 3% for each category retail and delivery distribution manufacturing and testing labs. But this at this time that is what is currently in place. So council could choose to take no action Um, on November 3rd. The measure passed and is mentioned. I think somebody mentioned earlier it passed with a 69.2% in favor and 30.8% opposed under the I just mention that, um The item before you allows council to discuss As we it also allows are asked recommends that council, uh, direct staff to bring forward a policy that identified any revenues from that tax.
Um That it designates those revenues to the emergency reserve reserves which have been pretty drastically depleted during Determine which rate to set, and then asking for direction to designate the revenues to the reserve. Staff has recommended council implement the tax and direct that policy to be established. So with that, that's the staff
report. Question on the staff report, Chairman? Yeah. Chair Stakes is that all right?
Sorry one more time.
I have a question on the staff report
Just get a legal report from that first then we can move on to questions of the staff. Is that okay?
I'll make it very brief, thank you Mayor Sticks. So just wanted to note a couple quick points one is that as the council may recall there is an existing resolution number 1928 that was previously adopted that if the council does not take other action would control and sets the tax rate at three percent for each of the four business categories Retail and delivery sales of cannabis, distribution of cannabis, manufacturing of cannabis and testing laboratories of cannabis.
Second questions have arisen regarding the scope of the tax what the voters approved is a gross receipts tax that applies to all the revenues with certain exceptions from any of the cannabis business types I listed critically including manufacturing testing distribution and retail as you're all are aware we have three existing We have two retail dispensaries in the city. We also have two manufacturing facilities that are in the process of being built.
They have active building permits, but of course none has yet been opened and then the testing laboratory, the council has approved authority for that to exist. There's been inquiries but I don't believe there's no approval yet there and the gross disease tax would apply to all of those including And with that, we're available for any questions. Thank you.
Bill?
You have a
question?
Yeah, thank you. James, I had asked the question and you were going to see if we could get a response whether or not HDL, the company that handles our sales tax audits and analysis Whether they had experience with other clients imposing gross receipts, taxes and other jurisdictions. And what the relationship was between what their predicted yield was and what their actual yield was? Did you get any response on that?
Yeah, so we got a response. It wasn't as thorough as we were hoping. And they said that they could provide more information but they basically responded Two points, basically. One was that they said that almost every agency other than Fort Wynieme it appears has done this gross receipts tax and they said that it's just too difficult to compare because of things like closest competition and all that so they just didn't have a good answer offhand of the impacts They did say that they provide some additional data in the next week or so, but we weren't able to get it before today.
Thank
you. Anybody else for public comments? Gail, any public comments on this one?
Yes, we have two people for public comments. The first person is Chelsea Setula and I will unmute her one moment Thank you.
1:53 – 2:0323 turns
Hi, Chelsea. Hear me? Yes. Okay Great. Thank you. Welcome Mayor sticks. Thank you, Council. I could talk for way longer than three minutes. I'm sure many of you have heard my opinions already. Um generally, City Manager Vega just expressed support for local businesses, as we all are right now. And so I find it contradictory to both support and tax local businesses at the same time.
We can't even qualify for federal COVID assistance. So we were denied hand sanitizer by the help of Ojai because we were COVID, we were cannabis. So we're really struggling with this double standard that we're facing of being considered essential and also being considered the savior of the city's problems, yet not qualifying for basic federal COVID assistance like everybody else.
In addition I'll make a couple other points about why I'm strictly opposed to this and I hope you will consider reducing it as much as it's in your purview to reduce it. Number one There's really no medical exemption here. Yes, you've carved out something for people with a medical card from the county. Less than 1% of our patients have this because most of them are completely afraid to go sign up on any list at the county level.
They're just not gonna do it and pay the added $100 fee. 3% roughly of our people have gone to the added expense and trouble of getting a medical recommendation. But many of our people are using this for medical reasons, that's why we are considered essential. So I don't think it's just fair to tax us period. I think the Ojai Valley News did a huge disservice to the community by not investigating this issue thoroughly or helping voters truly understand the difference between gross receipts tax and a sales tax, or helping them understand the ramifications of passing taxes that are too high on this industry.
I'm sorry, it just wasn't a fair or balanced view of anything. So to say that while this passed overwhelmingly in favor, well why did it pass overwhelmingly in favor? Because people didn't understand and if you go and talk to them and explain to them they'll actually probably be changing their minds and I'm sure you've heard from them a lot of support and favor of reducing this tax.
narrow-minded to say we have to tax this one surviving industry right now. We're surviving, we're not thriving let's be clear. The estimates are really high. We barely broke even last month November Black Friday we barely broke even so redo your estimates HDL yeah they don't really know what they're doing and I think you need to Get some of your money back there. I think Ojai, this is a lure right now people come and shop and they spend money everywhere.
And if you tax that it's, you're disincentivizing people to come and spend their dollars here and they'll spend it at home instead. That's all I have to say thank you. I appreciate all of your service.
A question of Chelsea. Chelsea, are you still there?
Yes.
You know I started to investigate this medical card or whatever you call it. I looked on the Ventura County website and I saw all the paperwork. And all of that. And then I called up the neighbor that lives behind me, I think she's like 87 and she uses cannabis for sleep and for pain. And it always surprises me when she tells me how much it costs per month.
It's not cheap but she says she used to have some kind of card but she doesn't have a card. She hasn't had a card in years Because she gets, I guess a senior discount. Is that correct? And plus maybe at some point she had a letter from a doctor. So does a letter from a doctor count?
Not the way your current rule is written. It does not exempt strict medical recommendations. It only exempts people that have the county issued The card, the MMIC.
That's something I want a little bit better understanding of because we're in it. I mean, personally, I can only speak for myself. I'm in a dilemma because the majority of the voters did vote for this 3%. But with the understanding that medical cannabis is not taxed but that's only if they have the card And there must be some valid reason why so many people or so few people don't have a card, because the second person I called had never even heard of the card.
For pain for years and years. She didn't even know I said, Well, you should look it up, you know, but she said because she had a letter from a doctor that she got some kind of discount. So I'm just trying to yeah
every stores policy is different. But generally ordinances are written only granting exemptions For people that have that county issued card, which like I said most people are reluctant to get because they feel like they're going to be on a list. It's also an extra hundred dollars for people that can't afford it. It just an onerous burden.
Okay so you cannot on your own, what's the word? Your own volition give the discount. You have to prove to the city that this customer had this card or how does that work?
Yeah, yeah they have to furnish proof of their ID from the county. We have people that can't even renew their driver's licenses right now because of COVID and so it's just like adding another bureaucratic layer of administration that they have to get. It's difficult for people right now and you're right there's a lack of understanding they don't even know about it.
So could we have written this ordinance in such a way And then this is probably a legal question for Matt. I'm happy to
answer that question, yes.
Can we tweak the ordinance in such a way that a letter from a doctor will suffice for no tax?
Yes. Council can do that. The ordinance provides in compliance and rather in line with state law and the state exemption from certain state cannabis taxes for persons who possess The county issued medical cannabis ID card. That's the basis for the exemption that's in the ordinance that was approved by the voters, that's in section 1881705 subsection C provides that exemption for anyone who possesses the county issued medical cannabis ID card. The ordinance went further section 81710 subsection A allows the council by ordinance to establish exemptions As desired. So the voters did create in endowed with the council, the power to establish a further exemption. So if that was the wish of the council you could provide direction tonight and we would return with the appropriate legal document to do that.
Okay.
To expand the exemption to include patients with the patient's recommendation is what the doctor's letter is in the legal parlance. The last point I'll note is that there is a distinction between a dispensary offering a discount And the city adopting an exemption for the tax. The tax exemption is solely within the council's control, within the bounds set by the voters.
A dispensary can give a discount to anyone it wishes. That's the dispensary's choice and not the city's choice. I want to make sure that's understood.
Yes, yes it's understood. Okay so when it comes time whatever we do I just want to make it clear that I would like to have that added. I would be much more comfortable to vote for a reasonable tax if all medical, if a doctor's letter counted as a medical, so that they could, like my neighbor behind me, could buy her products without extra tax. I think that's what I want to say. Yeah. Thank you Matt. Yeah
Susan. Okay other public comment Gail?
Yes, we have one more. Leslie Hess, one moment and I will bring her up. Okay, Leslie you should be unmuted if
not
go
ahead.
I want to say first off good evening to the new mayor and good evening to the other council members I primarily want to remind everyone of the language that was on the ballot, that the voters less than 60 days ago voted yes on a super majority. And that language says shall the measure approving an immediate 3% tax on cannabis businesses and approving authority for the city of Ojai to increase the tax on cannabis businesses up to 10% of gross receipts in the future until the voters decide otherwise be adopted.
That language is pretty clear and I'm just here to ask that you respect the will of the voters, an attempt to lower the taxable rates in any category below 3%, seems to me would go against the will of the voters And that's it. Thank you.
Thank you, Leslie. Okay, so bring it back to council now for discussion?
2:03 – 2:099 turns
Yes. Are we in discussion now? Is it my turn? I received a letter that Bill Weirick had requested be circulated. It was dated the 8th of December, so it was received a week ago and I don't know if it was circulated earlier. I found it with all the other comments and I wanted to understand the map. Do you have it in front of you Bill by any chance? I wanted to ask if, or if the city manager has seen your calculations. I wanted to know if they were correct as that...I still can't understand the report. The gross receipts taxes are not sales taxes?
Correct. They're
not the same thing as a sales tax.
I would appreciate that and i think the public would like to understand it better.
Well if I could, may I? I'll just comment. You know I tried to make it as clear and simple as possible because dispensaries are a controlled substance from the federal government's point of view, they are treated completely differently for tax liability, federal tax liability than any other business. And so under Internal Revenue Code 280E I believe which is always subject to some back and forth nevertheless but the bottom line though is that a gross receipts tax is not deductible against your federal tax liability and the way that other businesses could do that.
So that when you have a gross receipts tax, which first of all is shown because of the way it acts as just everything that comes in without regard to the expenses that are involved in generating that gross receipts which makes the effective tax, even for a normal business that doesn't have that particular situation of being a controlled substance. Study after study shows that the effective tax of gross receipts taxes is much higher than the statutory percentage because of the way it's not a sales tax. When you add to that the situation with the dispensary, the effective tax is even magnified more than the actual stated tax.
So I think that one of the problems here is that, I think that it's our fiduciary responsibility to put a tax in that isn't confiscatory and counterproductive. My argument is that because of the special situation of dispensaries not being able to deduct you know, or to have to pay basically a federal tax liability on gross receipts even though they're giving it as a business expense that we should be very careful recognizing that I believe that the voters definitely wanted to put a special tax on cannabis but it's our job to evaluate it and implement it in a careful way.
I hope that the Biden administration And the new Congress finally gets away from this controlled substance situation. And in light of that, I would like to start out until then with a more typical rate for gross receipts tax and bring it back see what it yields and bring it back for evaluation Because in general, when you're imposing a tax it might be a much more higher effective rate than the statutory rate. You want to start low and go high? You certainly don't want to go high and get and go low. You know, you don't want to cause a problem or cause the destruction of our local economic base because we don't realize what we're doing. So while I completely agree about putting the yield from this tax into reserves, I still think we have to exercise our fiduciary responsibility and understand that a gross receipts tax on cannabis dispensaries is completely different than a sales tax.
I hope that makes some sense Susan, I don't know.
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I'm interested in this for a number of reasons and one I've been you know, I've been researching your reading and I see that several cities are going way down like Long Beach went from 6% to 1%. I believe I'm correct in
that? Oakland went from 10% to 0.12%.
Yeah but of course- Oakland has
the sliding scale that goes up to
9%.
2:09 – 2:2018 turns
It's a good point. Before you just run right over what he's saying, that's not correct about Oakland. That's completely out of context so James why don't you say that again?
Yeah Oakland has a sliding scale and it's only the first 500 000 that's that low it goes up to nine percent. So you know OI the three percent is I do want to make sure like everybody understands OI has gone above and beyond to support the cannabis industry in OI we read the The only city I'm aware of that did not tax this immediately, we're two to three years into this. We haven't taxed to let all the businesses kind of get their legs beneath them and also the 3% tax is the lowest that we found that's just a flat tax. Everybody else that is lower scales up and goes much higher than us pretty quickly so like I said every city but Port Hueneme is a gross receipts tax We are giving an advantage with even the 3% tax. We are supporting the cannabis industry, and I know it's a new tax so no one wants to pay more tax but we really have gone above and beyond.
And I just wanna make sure... You know, we could always choose to modify that but the narrative that we are not supportive, that the city council is not supportive of the cannabis industry, I don't think that's accurate.
I agree with what you said, James. I just want to make that clear. Sorry.
We've been very supportive and my point is that we have an anti-formula business restraint on our local cannabis dispensaries because we want them to be locally owned and continue to be locally controlled I just think we should recognize that the effective rate on dispensaries of any gross receipts tax is much higher. I don't think that's really arguable, is much higher than the statutory rate and that's why I think we ought to start low and get some experience and then maybe make an adjustment from there especially If we're, I think on the verge of seeing a delisting of the controlled substance category for cannabis dispensaries.
Yep Randy? James we have three dispensaries in town am i correct yeah and the other two have they come to you asking for reduction in their tax no Have they come to you complaining about our business practices regarding cannabis in the community?
No. In fact, the only comment we've received from any other dispensary was one was asking if they could expand their hours by an hour which we're working with them on but no other comments.
I'm
sorry.
James are you sure we didn't get a letter from Jeff Crowl
I did
not receive a letter from
Joe.
Yeah, I think some council members got a letter from him basically laying out the vast difference between the effective rate and the stated rate in the case of gross receipts tax on dispensaries.
I just wanted to finish up you guys know where I stand on this I wanted to tax it higher So you're not going to see me do any reduction, that's for sure. And I just feel right now personally that we're bending to the needs of one individual when all the dispensaries have not come forward and have not made this claim and have not raised these issues. And these issues were there before we passed this So it's kind of like we're, this is hindsight.
I don't know. Like I said, I'm struggling with this. It seems like one person made a request and now we've got to change policies, practices and procedures versus a whole community of our quote three dispensaries. So I'm just, I dunno, I can't support it. That's where I stand.
Ryan?
Yeah, you know, I think Randy brings up a good point. We spent four months in an ad hoc committee meeting with each individual dispensary. They said zero about the gross receipts tax, we spent months deliberating about this issue in multiple council meetings and we didn't hear any of these arguments from our council members that We then put it on a ballot. We had ballot argument, we had a ballot measure, we had pro and con arguments, we have the independent review by the city attorney. None of these issues were raised during any of that. Now after an election at 69.2%, we're suddenly now going to say oh-oh this wasn't right the entire time after we put it out in front of the public let them vote on it like that?
I don't understand what we would possibly be thinking overturning a vote In the first council meeting after an election where we have an opportunity to do it after 69% of the public did it. And if you're saying that we were all wrong, well where was any of this analysis when we were at any point during this process? And I can say that we met with the dispensary owners each one of them Susan and I sat down with extensively. We discussed this in fact when we brought this to Council it was going to be a 4% tax And it was argued that it should be moved to three, and we passed it at a 3% beginning with no argument whatsoever about getting any more. In fact, that took 25% off of what we were doing right there.
The amount of money if I am correct, I believe Mr. Weirick in something online which I don't understand why you took this argument online to the public rather than into in-house at any point to our staff to our colleagues, to anyone. You went public with this before anywhere else and if you wanted to pass it a half a percent the amount of money wouldn't even cover repaving part of Bryant Street where we have additional traffic at least in the minimal that we're gonna have to pay for additional services out there in an area that doesn't have sidewalks that has a weird circular pattern that isn't even designed for this or was jammed in before. And if you add in the fact that we didn't tax this for two plus years And where we are now, that means the effective rate over the next two years will only be 1.5%.
The public clearly knew what this was. This has happened in almost every other community and all these other places have not seen their cannabis industry destroyed by this. There's no facts that we can support when we looked at other communities. In fact, the example of Oakland is a false comparison because it's a sliding scale. They have massive voluminous amounts of cannabis sales that are completely different Um, we have the most per capita number of dispensaries of any community that we could find with one per every 2500 roughly residents.
And we're talking about being the only community that were aware of that stepped into this without any taxation whatsoever to at least mitigate the additional costs we have. In addition to that, we debated at length about the The cost of the permitting fees and the renewal fees on the licenses, and that was not addressed as something that should be. Because that could be another way to recoup this that wasn't addressed at that point whatsoever. And we have some of the lowest fees in that. In San Luis Obispo County, the renewal fee is like $60,000 a year under 1% tax. We wouldn't even collect $60 thousand over a whole year out of all three dispensaries.
I don't, I mean, I'll say this if we're wrong and we're going to put people out of business. Then we don't then we do need to balance whether that's correct but the idea that we're going to overturn that before seeing how it works when it's worked in all these other communities, and we haven't seen them, the dispensaries go under It just doesn't make any sense. Now, if we want to come back after Q1 of 2021 and review this again, I'm fine to do that. We want to put this on an agenda down the road a little bit where we can get some more data from HDL and look at it again. We did intentionally put the ability of this council to change it from anywhere from up to 10%, but it can go down, it can go up. I have no problem reviewing it if it's going to be problematic because I definitely want to support our businesses.
But let's not forget, I've been in meetings. When we were vetting this at first, I met with the people in Port Hueneme. Everybody thought we were kind of a laughing stock for not having any taxes on this and to pass a tax that doesn't even honestly take care of the roads in front of the dispensaries where we put them seems kind of being asleep at the wheel and overturned the public vote on that just seems kind of Trumpian, to be honest, to overturn a pretty heavy public vote and support.
Bill? Yep.
Ryan, I don't understand how when the plain language of what we passed by this council said that the range of choice was specifically from zero to 10% with a default of three you've acted like your at yours tried to state that what was put before the voters was three percent or up. That is not what was put before the voters. I said, i just said it could go down. No well no you said that what what but was put before the voters was they want a special whether they will have special tax on cannabis which I know you know obviously I think means you know you're taking a retail product and putting a special tax on it And the voters said definitely to do that, but the voters also specifically approved that we exercise our judgment about how to roll it out.
That's what the voters approved. That's what was put before the voters. To say that we're overturning something and the voters approved us exercising our judgment I think is a little disingenuous. Now I know I may not have the prevailing point of view here But I can tell you that as a rule, what's happening across many jurisdictions is that they're realizing that starting out too high and then adjusting down low is not the best way to manage the cannabis sector of your economy. And I'm just suggesting that I provided lots of evidence that I don't see being refuted, that the typical gross receipts tax is much lower than 3% when you're looking at it just like any other product.
I provided lots of, you know, citable evidence to that so i don't understand why we can't exercise our Judgment, which is what the voters gave us. And again we can disagree about that judgment but I don't like the idea that somehow it's overturning the voters when the voters gave us that judgment to exercise.
2:20 – 2:3337 turns
Well, I'd like to respond to that. We just were read from the public the exact language of the ballot measure and if i'm not wrong it very clearly said immediately three percent until decided by the public to not do it anymore. It said it was
not which was not the measure that this council voted for
what are you what that's the measure that was literally put on the ballot Matt go ahead okay we not approve it I know we
approved this Let me read the language that was in the ballot label. Recall that the ballot label is not what is approved, the ballot label is the label in the ballot book that the voters read. We hope that all voters also read the ordinance which was also in the ballot book and also on the city's website. The ordinance made clear that the authority granted to council is to set a tax rate between zero and 10%.
But the ballot label reads as follows. Shall the measure approving an immediate 3% tax on cannabis businesses Which will potentially add $465,000 to $1.5 million annually to fund general city services and approving authority for the City of Ojai to increase the tax on cannabis businesses up to 10% of gross receipts in the future until the voters decide otherwise be adopted. That was the language that was in the ballot
book. I understand that and we now know that number was not professionally prepared and assumed zero impacts from the imposition of the tax.
One clarification there, there is no requirement for professional preparation of that number?
No, no need to be accurate in terms of the information provided to voters. I know that's unfortunate doing what
it
actually
clarified this problem. We can't fix it right now. But no other city has dealt with this this way when the IR when the federal I agree the federal government's got to figure it out but they've also the Congress has voted on legalization The Safe Banking Act, everything is there. The Senate hasn't passed it. Now what are we gonna do? Are we gonna be beholden to the federal government taking the tax money out of our community that we need when we're in a fiscal crisis like never before when we have 69.2% of the public's vote? I'm happy to review this in a few months and maybe that's not the best way to do it but overturning it before we even started after the public voted on it is- Again you're saying we weren't given discretion and we were.
Well, I guess the letter of the law and the spirit of the law are two different things. When you say immediately 3%, I'm pretty sure that's both the letter and the spirit.
Thanks. Okay, Randy?
Betsy remember when we talked about this? How this operation works is so interesting. So what I'm hearing is we were inept from the get-go And then we presented our ineptness to the community, and the community agreed with us. And now we're coming back and we're telling the community not only were we inept but now we wanna change what they voted on. So again I think the community knew exactly what they were voting for.
And that was a 3% tax. And so again, if we're ready to receive a motion I'm ready to move this forward because I think we're just beating this to death.
Susan? I'm comfortable to go with the 3% at this point if the motion does include the understanding and Matt can help with the language That all medical exemptions are exempt from this tax, and that we review it at some point. I don't know what's a reasonable amount of time. You know, I wish in my heart of hearts that it could be lower, but I do agree that the voters have to...
When they voted, they did understand that it would be 3%. If I went any lower, it would not be 1%, You know, something in the middle and maybe we could look at that later if this you know I would love to have more figures but. i'm just expressing that i'm going to go along with the 3% if it does include. The medical exemption even without a card. And the review and a review.
You can help me with it, Ryan maybe what is a reasonable time to look at?
I have a question for Matt and maybe I'll say it or not but Matt how would that work? I mean if it's a um if it was a you know if you're exempt from the tax with just a medical recommendation how does that get verified? What would be the nuts and bolts of how that would work with the city and taxation and how do we end up verifying that with collection and all that other stuff?
So if the Council were to expand the existing medical exemption to include any buyer with a physician's recommendation, then the requirement would be for the dispensaries to first be licensed to sell medical cannabis. Recall that the state licensure draws the distinction between adult use and medical. And I don't off the top of my head forget the licensor status of all three of our dispensaries. But assuming they're licensed for medical, the state requires them to track each transaction as either medical or adult use So if the medical, then they would have to show the medical transactions having been medical.
And then those revenues will be dropped out of the taxable revenue base subject to audit by the city on an annual or more often if needed basis. So it would be tracked through the state tracking system that tracks each transaction and they would have to account for those correctly. And then that would get dropped off their gross receipts which would be reported I believe monthly is a requirement.
So with HIPAA and other problems, are they required to keep a letter? Does that get audited? Do we know how that would work or do we not know even?
We would have to sort out exactly what that would look like. The state system does require them to track the transactions as the documents are medical. How we would verify for example that a physician's letter was issued by an actual physician, that's something we'd have to figure out how that would work. Certainly we're all aware of cases where There have been folks with not actual degrees issuing these letters. We would hope that the dispensaries would be following their obligations to verify things, and we could audit their verification. But we'd have to sort out a protocol for that.
Which would be additional costs, more money, more time if we had to do it in a way. Probably additional audit
services.
I think we will look to either HDL or one of the other companies that has developed a specialization in this. We will look at them to run that auditing service.
OK, Randy? So all of these ideas are great ideas, but I think what we need to do is pass what's on the table tonight and agendize this discussion and have Matt and James bring back more information onto how when and how this could be implemented and the effectiveness of it. And also maybe either reach out to the three cannabis Facilities and get let them help weigh in so that they can help us track this if we're going to implement something like this, but that's not what's before us tonight.
So again I would like to make a motion and I guess i'm not gonna ask anymore i'm gonna make the motion mayor Please. That we adopt the resolution implementing the city of Ojai's cannabis tax and that we direct staff to develop a policy to designate any revenues from the cannabis tax to the city's emergency revenue reserves until the city meets its 50% reserve goal. That's what's before us tonight, and that's my motion.
You mean the motion is the resolution of staff recommendation? The 3% resolution?
Yes.
Okay, well that puts me in a dilemma. We can vote on it. I'm not understanding, Randy. So you're refusing to amend the motion to include the medical exemption because we don't have enough information on how that works? Is that my understanding? Is that the understanding?
Yes, I'm asking that we bring that back on another agendized meeting schedule, and that we actually gather the information so that we can make policy that's effective. So that we don't look like supposedly we are looking tonight, like we don't know what we're doing? Let's get the information. Let's have the proper discussions with the people it's gonna impact. Let them have some type of buy-in.
That needs to be done in a different manner than trying to shove it in through this process tonight.
I have an additional question. Mayor, may I? Sure. So once we get the information that the council majority thinks this is a good idea then what? We bring the whole thing back and amend the ordinance?
The council could if there was majority support, the council could adopt a resolution expanding the exemption to include broader medical exemption as has been discussed. Say again?
That would not require another public vote like this did.
No, correct. It's a public vote of the council and not of the voters. Voters gave that authority to council so we will come back with some options if that was a council's desire.
Randy when I the only thing I guess I would say to amend it is do we want to put a date certain before you know before then to come back and bring this back what I was thinking which is this run from you know per Q1 so January, February and March of next year. So we have at least some legitimate data for three months and then we would bring it back to be able to review it but if there's a sooner date I think it might assist the staff though if we put that timeline together now while we're talking about this now so they know. I don't want this to wait until June necessarily like to see if we can't figure something out that's a reasonable period of time
But I'm not understanding something. Ryan, is that separate from the medical issue? Your suggestion is to review it in three months but if staff can bring back the information at the first meeting in January And the council majority thinks it's a good idea and by then, the dispensaries can weigh in about this. We don't have to wait three months to add it. That's not what you mean? I don't
believe that there would be enough time to get the data we need, nor the discussions we need by the first week in January being that it's December 15th. I would assume that in order to have the financial data to determine whether we wanted to change the tax rate, we've got to have at least a couple of months otherwise we're going to get very skewed incorrect data over for a potential period of time that doesn't give us much information. The three month period of not having the medical waiver, I don't think is going to cost anybody substantially if they were spending $200 a month for three months, that would be a total 18 extra dollars.
over those months. It's just not, I think we would bring both of them back after some input on there and figure out how we you know what impact it would make on what the doctors know but of course that's just my opinion. I definitely think on the taxation we need a little bit of time or we won't get any data in January to really know what's going on to see if we really do need to maybe adjust lumber for purposes of making sure that these are healthy businesses as well as contributing to tax base
And one point I might add there is that the ordinance provides for the tax to be paid monthly with a month in arrears. So the goal was to have Q1 data, meaning data from sales in January, February and March. We won't have that until the end of April. So my suggestion would be this be agendized if the council so chose for the first or second meeting in May. Thereby we'll have the data from first quarter worth of sales that the council can then choose to act as the council may desire.
So
we have a motion, we have a second.
So you're lumping the medical issue everything all at once in May?
I haven't heard support from a majority of council to take the medical up earlier. Obviously it's a political question for the council but i haven't heard support from the majority to do
that.
2:33 – 2:3828 turns
That's not part of the motion that's why And if we want to agendize a different discussion, like the one we're having right now. Then when you do agendized that at the end of the meeting like we do any other agenda is not future agenda item.
Because Matt, you said it could be quite easy to get a medical, we could make it quite easy.
Yeah, we need some time to figure out how would work but it could be done. It doesn't have to, it could be done earlier than may certainly if the council so chose
Randy, I'll make this easy. I'm asking you to amend the motion that for the purposes of adjusting the tax rate from 3% that we go with what Matt said and we agendize it for certain right now as part of the motion in the first meeting in May so that we have collected data for January, February and March which is Q1 2021. If we have not added that to an agenda for two council members agreeing to put it on the agenda as far as the medical card situation, then we will also hear that in May. But at any point, two council members can bring that back to the agenda then and we can review the medical cards. So Sousa if we find out that the medical card issue should happen sooner Then the potentially reviewing the tax rate, then we could do that sooner.
It'll just require a second from you and whoever to put it on that agenda. And I would agree that if we can get that data sooner, I can tell you that pending what we hear later, I would support you in getting that on an agenda sooner if we needed to.
Okay, thank you. All right thanks okay ready to vote?
That would be an order.
I need to hear who was the second.
Randy, I think had to approve amending my motion so I just...
Oh, I thought I heard that. This is like a continuation of the last couple years but that's okay. So we're going to amend it Ryan as you agreed. My concern was that it didn't touch on what Suze's concern was and that's this medical card So again, if we're going to do the medical card, we need as much information as to how that policy is gonna be implemented. How it's gonna be tracked and how it's gonna affect businesses as well as the city. So again, I have no problem coming back to that at a later date. Ryan, I'll accept your amendment providing that we make it for May so that we have a three month record and we have the opportunity to collect those taxes and understand them better.
But Ryan's suggestion was if we can get the data sooner, that we put it on the agenda sooner. And that's what I would really like.
Well, I'm not going to agree to that part of the amendment for the simple reason that we're in COVID. And I keep thinking that we forget that but I think our city manager and staff have a tremendous amount of work on their plate already. Let's give them the opportunity to gather this information interact with the people they need to interact with and bring it back to us in the best possible way so that we can make the best possible policy decisions
James, do you have any feedback on
that? I think all these are valid points and we would do our best to try to bring whatever we could back. With everything going on a little bit of time would be helpful.
But again, Randy the motion would be amended to say we're bringing it back.
And Ryan I accepted that and I accepted that.
Yeah and then we will in May address the medical card issue unless two council members asked to put in on agenda sooner. That's always a policy anyway. We're not gonna be able to stop that. So that's really changed. That doesn't even have to be part of the motion.
Unless that policy changes?
Unless that policy changes which I don't have any inclination it is but That way, at least we'll say Susan if not any sooner than we're reviewing both in May. Does that work for
you? That's fine and then I would discuss with James because I don't want him to feel pressure or I know that he's probably very overworked but if he can get the data sooner then I would ask for support put it on the agenda sooner right that's the understanding
And that could be asked at any future agenda item, whether tonight or another meeting.
It doesn't
need to be attached to anything.
OK, great. Y'all ready to vote?
I didn't hear who the second was.
That was me.
OK.
Council Member Francina?
I don't want to be first. Reluctant yes.
Roll-call vote Passed 3–1
Show transcript
2:39 – 2:5410 turns
Okay, all right thank you moving right along to the license plate reader James
yes thank you and I'm going to do a brief introduction. We also have Chief Rivera who will be available to answer questions here, but the automated license plate readers, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department recently requested installation of these mounted automated license plate readers at four locations in the city. Those four locations are at Saddle Lane and on Maricopa at Cuyama On highway 150 near the Vaughan Shopping Center and on Highway 150 at Reeves Road.
We have spoken with the Sheriff's Department, the City Attorney and I reviewed this issue and determined that the city is required to adopt its own policy prior to usage of these readers so we brought the item forward for City Council to consider whether to adopt a policy to use these readers The Sheriff's Department has its own policy. We reviewed that policy, and it's a fairly standard policy that's in place at many organizations but we reviewed it and determined that there would be two potential additions that we wanted to recommend First was that the police department provide a quarterly report on usage if we allow them. And second is whether to require more frequent purging of data, which we've seen some cities do.
And so this item is on the agenda for council to discuss whether to allow these readers and whether to adopt or request any modifications to the policy, if so. As I mentioned, Chief Rivera is present. And we've asked him to just kind of explain how these are used and how they could be beneficial and then to take questions from City Council. So if it's appropriate, I'd like to have him weigh in at this point.
I'm bringing him in.
So Chief, you're on mute
if you're on. You
guys hear me?
Yes.
Very good. Good evening Mayor Sticks and Council Members. I'd like to talk a little bit about the license plate readers. Automatic license plate reader technology has been in use in Ventura County for a number of years. It is widely used along our freeways and in various cities and county areas. This technology allows for the automatic detection of license plates Recording of the plates and also a photograph of the vehicle associated with those license plates. The Sheriff's Office converts this data associated with the vehicle license plate for official law enforcement purposes that include identifying stolen vehicles, locating missing persons, identifying and locating vehicles with wants related to crimes as well as other vehicles associated with crimes against persons.
The Sheriff's Office has posted a use and privacy policy regarding the use of automatic license plate readers, and is in compliance with the current requirements of California Senate Bill 34 which became effective on January 1st 2016. The bill establishes requirements regarding the operation and the use of ALPR systems and the data it captures And our policy can be found on the Sheriff's website, on the internet.
ALPR devices have been in use in the city and county areas of Ojai Valley for the past six years. These devices are mounted on two patrol units that patrol the Ojai Valley, one in the city and one in the county, and on one electronic reader board trailer. We have been operating under the sheriff's policy and requirements of SB 34 And the state civil codes which are related to the use of the ALPR systems.
Yearly audits are conducted by the sheriff's office and designated personnel, to ensure the system is being utilized for official and legitimate purposes. For Sheriff's policy no member of the sheriff's office is allowed to operate or access ALPR equipment or access the data without first completing the department approved training and are certified. The cities of Thousand Oaks and Camarillo currently have and use ALPR on their patrol vehicles, and also trailers.
The city of Camarillo recently has these devices around the premium outlets to assist law enforcement with organized retail crimes that are pretty prevalent in that shopping center. In June 2020, purchased the service of four portable ALPR devices utilizing COPS grant funding for year 2019-2020. These devices are the size of a game camera and will take several pictures of vehicles and license plates that pass through its field of view.
The photographs capture a photograph of the vehicles, not the drivers or the occupants. These are not high quality definition type cameras that can photograph drivers or occupants Like the traffic cameras you've seen in some of the cities. These devices are not hardwired into electricity, they are actually solar powered. The Detroit County Sheriff's Office utilizes the ALPR technology to capture and store digital images of license plates and vehicles while recognizing the established privacy rights of the public.
All of the data and images gathered by the ALPR are for official use of this department because his data may contain confidential information is not open nor available to the public for review. Photos of the vehicles are taken and confirmed the license plate information matches whenever there is a hit on the license plate from a mobile unit, it's the sheriff's policy that the deputy confirmed the license plates and ensure the alert in one is still active by contacting Sheriff's dispatch before any enforcement action is taken The deputies will not rely solely on the ALPR hit to take action. In case there is a reported erroneous data in the ALPR system, the Sheriff's policy addresses a procedure that will take correct information.
Retention of all ALPR data is five years unless it has been used for criminal or civil action. This data is physically purged automatically After five years, it will no longer be accessible. All saved data is closely safeguarded and protected both procedural and technological means. The Ventura County Sheriff's Office observed various safeguards regarding access to and use of the stored data. All stored ALPR data shall only be accessible through a login password-protected process capable of documenting all access to the information by the user date and time for the civil code.
This information, this includes an authentication process that requires a user password and a reason for access including a report number associated to the crime being investigated. ALPR system audits are conducted on a yearly basis Once the data is captured by a ALPR device, it is sent encrypted to a secured cloud-based server that is maintained by Motorola Solutions.
Motorola Solutions has significant measures in place to prevent unauthorized access and use of the data that is collected and stored. They also conduct regular audits To ensure that the data that is being accessed is by authorized users for a legitimate purpose. The Ventura County Sheriff's Office does share its ALPR data with other law enforcement agencies upon the execution of an interagency agreement.
This means that other agencies have agreed that all ALPR data will be gathered, assessed, utilized and disclosed in accordance with applicable law. Each of these agencies, by way of agreement, further commits to having only authorized users access ALPR data for legitimate purposes and conduct and maintain audits as defined in the department's policy. The Sheriff's Office does not share ALPR data with commercial or private entities. If another law enforcement agency does not follow our agreement or requirements, data will not be shared.
The audit conducted yearly also includes an audit of outside agencies who are granted access to our server. If any violation is identified, they could be excluded from future access. There's also commercial ALPRs being widely used by vehicle recovery companies. This information that is collected from these commercial reads is accessible to law enforcement and has proven beneficial with a quick recovery of stolen vehicles.
These quick recoveries have allowed the victims to have their vehicles returned quicker And in many cases, undamaged. Some of the examples that probably would have benefited us in investigations was early in the year we had some burglaries over at the True Value and Rexall pharmacies. We had several guns and ammunition that were taken from the True Value stores.
And luckily nothing was taken from the Rexall but We didn't have any leads on the suspect in this case, and it remains unsolved. In 2019 Ojai Greens was burglarized. Several iPads were taken. Again there were no leads that could have been established and crime remains unsolved. We've had several vehicle crime sprees in the city one that happened in October another one just this month in December Where several unlocked vehicles were open and items were taken from those vehicles.
Again, these devices could have helped in each one of these cases. And these are just a small example of how the device could assist us. Some success stories. In Thousand Oaks there was an attempted adoption of a 16 year old female from a city trail It was a failed abduction. The suspect fled the scene, but luckily there was a deputy that drove through the parking lot with a license plate reader and captured all the vehicle plates that were in that lot.
They were later able to identify partial plate for the suspect vehicle and we're able to track that compared to the cars that were in the lot at the time. Suspect was caught in San Diego and was arrested DNA analysis actually linked him to several sexual assaults that happened in the city of Ventura. So he was also charged with those crimes. In the city of Oxnard out in the county area, Silver Strand area there was an LPR hit on a vehicle. It was actually a motorcycle on the back of a truck that was stolen out of Northern California. Detectives detained the suspects and recovered the stolen motorcycle, 40 pounds of marijuana and $2,500 in cash.
These stories can be found online on the internet if you want to look them up. The following case was not submitted to the media but I'll mention it since it just happened here in the heart of Ojai. On 12-3 Ventura County Sheriff's Deputy assigned to the City of Ojai was traveling on the 200 block of Ojai Avenue which is right in front of the arcade When he was alerted by his automatic license plate reader of a stolen vehicle that was parked on the street, the vehicle was unoccupied. So the deputy stopped to investigate and were able to identify two subjects associated with the vehicle and determined one of them was in possession of the keys to that vehicle. The vehicle was stolen out of Santa Paula and the person responsible was out of Oxnard and also had a warrant out for his arrest for vandalism.
He was obviously arrested There was also mention of a California legislator audit that was completed earlier this year. The audit was conducted at four different agencies, three in Northern California and one in Southern California. There were several issues identified with these particular agencies. One of the four agencies was missing their ALPR policy. Our policy has been in place for a number of years I believe it since 2015.
The other agencies were identified by audit as lacking some of the policies requirements For those operating and maintaining an ALPR system, all of which are currently in place with the Ventura County Sheriff's Office. The audit does not reflect all the other agencies who are properly operating under the requirements of the state civil code. Now my biggest fear is having a significant incident in the city. Worst case scenario someone's loved one is hurt during a commission of a crime, a late night burglary or robbery, a hit-and-run suspect who flees and there's no information that could lead us to their capture. These devices can at least possibly identify a lead that we can follow up on and identify a suspect vehicle, to lead us to the suspect himself.
As chief I feel it's important to be proactive when it comes to crime prevention and look for ways to deter crime from happening and look for better ways to solve these crimes when they happen. So I hope you agree having these devices in place is the right decision for the safety of the community. Thank you.
Thank you, Chief. Bill and then Susan?
Chief a couple questions and thanks again for coming. You mentioned Motorola Solutions. I saw a report that We see the Sheriff's Department uses Vigilant Solutions. Has that been a change of contract? And is it true or not true that whatever vendor you use is actually the manager of the cloud database that the county subscribes to, is that accurate or not?
2:54 – 3:0017 turns
Vigilant uses Motorola Solutions
to capture the data. You are contracting with Vigilant then and they maintain the cloud database that you access? They maintain the server, yes. But we own the data that's in there. Right but it's a private server. And does the contract with Vigilant then allow individual client cities to put specific policy stipulation that augment or diverge at all from the standard sheriff's policy?
It does, but
once that happens and that particular city now becomes an operator. And once you become an operator, you are now following the requirements of the SB 34 and
several civil codes. So you're saying that the client city wanting a policy stipulation that differs from the sheriff's adopted necessarily makes us an operator?
Yes, because the Sheriff's Department has its own policy and we have our own basically our account. So what we would do in this situation is we would take the cameras and put them into our accounts and they would fall under the requirements that we already have in place. Now if you want to make your own policy and your own requirements as far as data retention then that would fall under the city becoming an operator and it would have its own requirements.
Is that a legal requirement or basically a policy determination by the Sheriff's Department?
No, it's a legal requirement.
Mr. Summers you agree with that?
Let me rephrase it so under Senate Bill 34 in Civil Code Section 179890 at SEC If an automated license plate reader camera is to be operated by a government, the City Council or the Board of Supervisors for the county, the elected body must have adopted policy governing its operations including data retention and the other issues raised by Captain Rivera. The Sheriff's Department's position is that if the Sheriff's Department is the sole operator Play reader system and there's the system comes under the county policy. I agree with that, with the caveat that Sheriff's Department has to be the sole operator of the program. The reason this item is on the council's agenda tonight is the cameras that were installed but not yet turned on are intended to be operated by the Sheriff's Department but require or rather use city resources They're placed on city right-of-way, they are placed on city poles or and were installed with city staff.
Those actions require approval by the City Council this elected body as an operator or here a co-operator with the county. The Sheriff's Department has added the position that if the city adopts its own data retention policies different than the counties then the city would be the operator but my position is the city the sheriffs have already requested the city to be the operator by installing the cameras using Mayor, I may have other questions but I don't want to hog the Q&A.
Chief Rivera, thank you for the presentation. I did my best to follow it and understand it but I wasn't clear. I kept hearing you say the deputy had an automatic license plate reader so there's the cameras are in Ojai. The cameras would be installed at four locations is that correct?
Correct. And the ones in the vehicles are much different than the ones that we purchase a service for. So, the ones in the vehicle are mobile and they take photographs of depending on where the patrol unit goes it'll be snapping pictures and the fixed devices, the ones that were looking to operate They are portable, they can be mounted to a pole or anything like that and they're solar powered.
Currently we have three on Edison poles. We went through the permit process with Edison and got their approval for that and a fourth one is on a stop sign.
My question is why do Well, I guess there's all kinds of reasons why you need both. But the deputy can operate the automatic license plate reader his own reader without our permission and it does some of what the stationary camera does is that correct?
Correct
okay And then why, you know I mean I'm assuming these businesses that were robbed. They have cameras but the cameras didn't catch the You know they were not adequate for catching any facial recognition or any they couldn't see the getaway car.
Correct. It all depends on the position of the camera, the quality of the camera. You may not even get a... Even if you get a shot of the person, you may not get a clear shot of their face. They could have a mask on, they could have a hoodie over their head. If we have these readers that record any vehicles traveling through a particular area especially all the egress and digresses of the city Especially at the time when some of these burglaries occurred. We're looking at 1, 2 o'clock in the morning. One two o'clock in the morning how much traffic is coming through
Ojai?
Very little so the chances of catching who was responsible for these burglaries is greatly increased they've got to make their way out of the city somehow.
3:00 – 3:1030 turns
If I may ask, is the public going to be aware where these cameras are installed? And if they are then the thief would avoid that area and take a different exit.
Correct so we try not to publish that information. I don't mind telling the public that they're out there. I think it's helpful because it'll prevent crime If the criminals know that the cameras are out there and there's a chance they're gonna get caught, more than likely hey, they're not gonna take a chance to commit crime in the city. And that's what I'm hoping for.
I wanna prevent as much crime as possible if this is a deterrent, I'm all for it.
Well, our dilemma is that we have to weigh the crime prevention aspect with public not you know the public has spoken. The majority received tonight 14 comments opposing the reader the automatic license plate readers one in support And I don't know if there's any public comments, I'll wait for the mayor to ask. Any public comments Gail?
No.
Okay here you go. So now we can discuss it. Randy
set his hand
up.
I
thought
we were discussing but Chief Rivera first of all we all want to thank you for what you do And we all believe, and I know I'm speaking for all of you but I'm gonna speak for me personally that we have the best police force and departments in Ventura County than anyone else has. And you strive to be the best and to do the best. So I think this discussion tonight is is more policy than it is about, do we want them? I think we want them and I think that most of the citizens in this community law abiding good just good people wanna do whatever they can to deter crime in their community. And that's how I look at these devices.
So in fact when you were stating some of the things that they prevent one of the things that you didn't state which is dearest to me as child abduction And what's interesting about all of this is we can all sit back and say, nah, we don't want big brother in our backyard or in our front yard until we need big brother. My best friend is a retired police officer, retired detective from LAPD and he made a comment the other day when I was talking to him about this issue and it's about criminal activity and do you wanna be in front of it? Or do you wanna be chasing it This gives us the opportunity to be in front of it.
So, it's a preventative mechanism that this community deserves and that this community should have. I have a couple questions for you. First of all, you stated that if we choose to activate these and create our own policy that we'd be in conflict with You've had these instruments in other cities. How many discussions just like this that we're having tonight have you had with other cities?
And have they raised the same concerns about the fact that we would just like to have a policy or some form of agreement with you as to where these instruments are placed, and probably the most important thing is the duration of the information that is tracked. That's what I see are our concerns. I don't think it's a concern of do we have them? At least that's my perception only. So you're in the City of Camarillo, correct? Yes. You're in the City of Thousand Oaks, correct?
And so you have no binding agreement with those cities right now to the same type of agreement that we're trying to create and that's a city, its own city policy regarding these instruments?
The information that I received was at the City of Thousand Oaks in Camarillo. Their cameras were put into the sheriff's account just like I had explained earlier. So I don't believe they have an adopted policy. They're going off the sheriff's policy that's already in place
So then it would behoove us to have our city manager contact theirs and have this discussion about what their policy is or what they believe their policy is. So that would be one thing that I'd like to see us follow up on. The other thing is, I would like to see us turn this over actually. I'd like to see the city manager chief Rivera and maybe two local citizens get together and actually start thinking about if we have a policy regarding these instruments, what it would look like And versus us again, trying tonight to hammer home something that all of us need more education on. And we also need more input from the community versus what we've had so far. That would be my choice moving this forward based on my assumption that that's what this discussion tonight is about.
One last question are there any other cameras that have been placed in the community without us knowing it?
No And just to make things clear, that was an oversight on my part. Not the Sheriff's Department but strictly on my part. I should have told the city manager ahead of time before we even looked at purchasing the service for the devices. But I think we're in the midst of the COVID pandemic and social unrest Various other things, and it was a complete oversight on my part.
So I just want to clarify that we have no other devices like this in the community? These would be the first of any?
Other than the ones on the vehicles and the trailer, no. OK, thank you.
We have a similar question. I've under the impression from what I've read is that anyone can install these cameras on private property, correct?
They can. There are commercial companies out there that do have these devices
and
housing. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you can purchase it and set up your own account And install it in front of your house if you want.
Yeah,
the answer
complex could put them in the parking lot. Right? Yeah. So anyone can purchase these cameras.
Correct. And they're widely used. I mean, the airports have them. I remember working in major crimes back in early 2000 and we would track suspects down to the airport and we would give them a plate and they would run it for us They would tell us yes, it's in the parking lot or no, it's not. But this technology has been around for quite a while.
Yes, I think 10 years or something like that. My other question is something related to what Randy said. Randy, are you saying that you want more public comment on this? Besides what all the dozens of comments we've had on Facebook and the comments we received from the public tonight. Are you wanting more community input? And we would have to have a Zoom meeting and alert the public to come to the meeting or what were you envisioning? I
think we are having a Zoom meeting that we alerted the public to come to the meeting.
Yeah, that's what I thought too.
Well, what I'm trying to say is if we're going to write a policy. I'd like us to include the community and right in that policy rather than it being dictated to them as to how we're going to use these instruments of prevention. One of the things that I wanted to bring up too is I do enjoy The aspect of it that they're portable or potable. The fact that if you run into a situation where you are having more vandalism, or more home thefts, or things of that nature, that you can actually take these four instruments and you can move them to any street or any location in the community to help you utilize it to your best interest so Like I said, I'm not against them. I just want to make sure that if we're going to do it as a community that we have a proper policy in place that we can all agree on and the community agrees on.
Not us dictating to them the county policy of five years. We may want a policy that says Erased in two years or one year. That's the question I have and then the other thing is, you know we hear joint power agreements all the time. Matt help me to understand is what can we also do legally to be a part of the county system?
But I think you're getting ahead of the discussion because not all of us want those cameras
Well, I understand that. But these are my questions. Can
I clarify one thing real quick? So I heard a couple of questions about if people install their own similar devices and if we have other devices. Is the question license plate readers or cameras period?
3:10 – 3:1829 turns
And if I could hop in on that one. So as I understood it, Chief Rivera's answer was The only government-operated cameras that we're aware of are the cameras that are on the deputies' vehicles, the Sheriff's Department vehicles which is solely county resources.
Right.
They're mobile cameras reading the world everywhere they drive and the four portable but fixed location cameras that are under consideration now that are not yet turned on. Obviously we have no idea what the federal government may have, they won't tell us anything As to private cameras, anybody could install a security camera and they could with the right technology install an automated license plate reader commercial security camera.
Doing so is not a government action and that would require solely compliance with any lawful expectation of privacy. There is no expectation of privacy on the street That's the theory under which these cameras operate. When you're driving out in public, under current law there is no expectation of privacy in your license plate. But again that's not something that we would have access to who's installed security cameras that are non-government because we don't have that kind of data.
Right but I want to clarify and make sure in the interest of full disclosure that several years ago the city did install surveillance cameras at the police station for example.
What? The city what?
The city will install surveillance cameras at the, for example, at the police station there's surveillance cameras.
I thought we had one at Libby Bowl.
I was just saying... Yeah so there were back in I think it was 16 2016 or 17 there were some cameras installed at Libbey Bowl, the police station and I think City Hall. So there are, I just wanted to make sure that you know that could be responsive to that question.
And the other thing worth noting there, the cameras that were installed there are operated by the, installed by the city with the feeds visible to the city and to the Sheriff's Department. And those are also limited to areas in which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, including the out, including the park, um, the exterior City Hall, um and the public areas of City Hall.
Chair Snacks?
Yes, Bill.
We might have some common ground here about how to proceed, because I think for me the issue and I think the issue in many citizens' minds is to what degree we want to deploy a mass surveillance system in the service to the deterrent of crime. And it's important also to note that the Sheriff's policy does not limit it to crime but also civil actions not just criminal, for the use of this license plate information.
And also the statistics I saw from the legislative auditor's report is around 99.9% of the information collected is not associated with any civil nor criminal action. But I think it's a legitimate... I think what Randy's saying, I think maybe we have some common ground here that we wanna find some way of studying this in a way that assuages what clearly some of the community concerns in terms of balancing the use of a mass surveillance device, a mass surveillance system against the crime deterrence goal. So with that in mind Randy are you and I in agreement that we form some sort of an ad hoc group to come back at a time certain with a policy recommendation?
Sure Bill, I think that's a great idea.
Yeah, it's like a good idea. Most of the people I've talked to are not for it.
Right and so I'll make that in the form of a motion and leave that up to you Mayor to choose the ad hoc group which is usually your job. And then maybe we come back no later than What, maybe the first meeting in May? Is that too long or would that be long enough?
Chief, is that too
long? You know, if we can go back sooner, that'd be great. How about the first meeting
in April? We have our agenda in May and we're going to fill it up tonight apparently. Okay how about the second meeting, first meeting in April then? Sure. And I'll make that in the form of a motion
And I think assumed in there, we will keep the four ALPRs off and non-operational. That's
it.
Yeah, that's it. I think Chief also is part of this... You'll be part of obviously this ad hoc meeting but I think one of the important issues that we need to know are though the crime statistics that we should be looking at as a community because I'm sure they would like to see it And I think that's important to making any decisions regarding the use of this again, this equipment is what are the levels and be really specific as to how these instruments will help us either deter or to capture.
And respecting the privacy rights with data retention policy. Yeah and
if i could also make a comment about the retention you know there's been very many cases where We actually cat somebody in the act, could be a serial criminal. And we can use this data that's been retained for X amount of years to locate additional victims. So we can actually look back to see where this person's vehicle has been parked and see if there's any other crimes that were committed that were similar MO that could be associated to this particular suspect that was caught.
And also these devices, they're tied into our dispatch center because they're in a shared account with all the cities and they go directly to our dispatch center which are monitored. So if they get a hit on a stolen vehicle, which is what happened with a case out in Sierra, They were alerted to a hit of a stolen vehicle, and they put that information out to the deputies in that area.
And they were able to locate the vehicle at that time. So these hits, stolen vehicles, any homicide suspect that's wanted, we had that attempted homicide suspect from Santa Barbara not too long ago. He was actually a resident from Ojai. And they were able to track him down to his address here. I think he was living out of an apartment, I believe off of Montgomery.
So there is value in retention to identify additional victims and maybe locate a suspect. It may not be his residence but maybe staying at somebody else's house. So there's value in the retention period
Well, I'm seeking a second so we can vote.
I said I'd second it Bill.
Oh, I am sorry. Okay,
let's vote.
Yeah.
Council Member Blatz?
3:18 – 3:2636 turns
I want to make clear that I don't agree with this at this point but I do agree with studying it more and coming back so yes to this motion.
Council Member Francina?
Yes, I'm fine to study it more.
Mayor Sticks?
I agree with Ryan and study more. Yes. Yes,
Mayor Pro Tem Weirick?
Yes, study more.
Council Member Haney?
Yes. You know, I want to close with this real quick though. It's really interesting about instruments like this. They're not important until they affect you and you need it. And I think the community needs to be aware of that, that to me that it's a method to help us And again, that's why having a good policy in place is paramount to bringing something like this into our community. So...
And Randy they're not a problem until somebody abuses them or until somebody hacks into the cloud and steals all the data.
That's right. Or until your granddaughter stolen or something of that so like you said that's why you got to have a quality discussion and you have to have great policy. I agree Ryan. And nothing says that out of this ad hoc committee comes out that we're for. I mean, the committee may come back and say the community may not want it and that's what we're going to abide by so...
Do we need to put that committee together? Is it gonna be you and Bill or...?
My motion delegated that authority to the mayor to use her discretion. Are we gonna do that now are we gonna do it later right? I'm happy with letting her choose what she wants to do.
Right now okay Randy and Bill you wanna do it?
And the chief.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chief. Appreciate you being here.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Chief Baron Council if I could just point out we are about 10 minutes from our 1030 cut off which I don't think I mentioned that to you. We typically don't take items after 1030 and we have two items remaining Um, so we may want to choose one to postpone. That would be up to
Council. One may have a person here I mean is...I don't want to...
I think both. We have a person here. One person is one
time sensitive?
Yeah. The Rock issue that has been pending and you know he's waiting for closure on that the watershed update There's not any immediate action to be taken on, but we have a person here for each. So I think I would recommend postponing the watershed update and I can apologize to Regina on our behalf. I
would agree with that.
All right,
Regina. Would you be willing to promise her that next time she's first on the agenda?
Yeah, we could do that. And the other thing too I'll offer is I'll ask her if she wants to send a presentation in the meantime that we can review and I can get some questions back to her so we'll try to make it up to
her. This also might give us some time to make those graphics regarding what a gallon of water looks like in a football field. Okay.
Okay rock wall.
So I have a brief staff report on this. The issue is really there's two issues here, which is one is just our general policy on this. This is the first of its kind question since we've adopted this policy five years ago and then second is more particular. It's this particular address that raised the Back in 2015, the City Council adopted a resolution that created a policy for approval of these what are technically called private encroachments in the public right-of-way. But in layman's terms it's the rock walls and the Arbolada essentially is what we're talking about.
And so at that time, there was a policy adopted. The discussion by council was focused on these existing rock walls that needed to be repaired. But the resolution that was adopted did state that new encroachments could be allowed under a particular set of circumstances. As I mentioned a moment ago, we haven't actually had any in five years that have met those circumstances.
But the policy created that ability and then said that if there is one that's complicated, that the staff may bring it to the City Council for discussion. So that policy required encroachments to be set back five feet from the curb or edge of pavement except for low-laying landscape or a driveway. And the wall at five feet could then be three feet high or shorter So it's pretty spelled out what the approvable circumstances are.
How this arose as an issue is that recently, after we adopted our new fences, hedges and wall standards Yeah, I just wanted to say that. Staff observed a rock wall that was being constructed at 305 Palomar Road. I think everybody's seen pictures of it, but I do have a picture that I'll pull up in a moment. You know, and it appears to meet the criteria. Area of the Arbolada is narrow and the first 15 feet off of the curb is public right-of-way. So by allowing a five foot setback, and I'm pulling this up at the same time, but by allowing this five foot setback and then a rock wall as illustrated here, the first five feet is below laying landscape which is acceptable under the resolution. And then allowing this rock wall at five feet By allowing this, we're actually giving up about 10 feet of public right-of-way behind that space.
And so essentially it boils down to council or we're asking counsel for guidance on if this is in line with what was intended with that resolution or if there are concerns and then As a general policy and then more particularly about the actual address at issue which is 305 Palomar. And just quickly to show some pictures, this is what it looked like prior there was a hedge growing into the right of way they have taken out that hedge and put five feet of DG and then the wall and you can see it here from this angle so That's it in a nutshell. I hope that made sense, if not we will clarify but with that we'll take questions and I think just Mr Duncan who is the property owner is also only available for questions and I believe he had a presentation of council wanted to receive that as well.
I
have a question. But I want to see the picture.
Can
you go back?
Yeah, I'll pull it up. This picture?
OK, yeah, yeah. So I went back again and I looked at it I've been there a couple of times because it's a beautiful area and I love the wall. So my question is, the driveway is also in the public right-of-way correct? So if he removed the rocks at least on each end people could just walk right on through.
3:26 – 3:3845 turns
You're saying these, I think by arrows reflected these rocks here?
Yeah just on each end
Yeah, and we you know when we when we analyze this there's pros and cons. You know what we wanted to really look at all the issues and one pro we said is compared to the hedge before where there was no walkway you had to walk into the street Now there's a walkway, so that's a pro. The main con is that like we said, we're giving up 15 feet where if there was ever long-term plans to do something with the right of way this would create a challenge for that. So those are kind of the issues that we have to balance when we're trying to figure this out and what the long term goal is here and whether we'd be OK if long term everybody starts having these DGT And I think that's a good point. I don't want to get involved in it at this point. So, but to your point, yes, these rocks could be removed and this could be a
walkway. Or if we needed... If we wanted something else there you could just remove all the rocks. Correct? That wouldn't be... Maybe that would be a good idea then we'd have a sidewalk. Yeah.
Mayor?
Randy,
yeah. James who owns that road and who owns that 15 feet?
That the 15 feet is the City of Ojai's yeah.
The citizens of Ojai own that 15 feet so if we grant this what we're doing is arbitrarily giving up 15 feet of city property am I correct? Yes
But it would be 10 feet, right? If we if it was just the wall. So
is this five feet here and then 10 feet including the wall you know it's not exact but including the wall it's ten feet back so 15 feet total.
Can I get a clarification on that answer Mayor? Sure yeah James what you just said giving up I thought the issue was granting an encroachment, not giving up. Yes, that's true. My point being is that it's still city land with an encroachment and aren't there provisions for using the land if a public need arises then the property owner agrees on removal if a public need arose? Yes, that's true.
And I believe we have conditioned that And are we were preparing to condition that if we do approve it, but we can make sure the condition that if that is.
And also what about identification for liability on city owned property from a an approachment Yep. Are we indemnified by the private property owner for that?
Yeah, we had spoken to them. We told them it would require insurance and indemnification and I believe Mr. Duncan was... Mr. Duncan, the property owner here was fine with that. Okay.
I appreciate you indulging me Mayor but I just want to be clear when the term giving up wasn't exactly giving up.
And if i could add two quick points to that. The requirement to indemnify the city for anything resulting from An encroachment permit, as is the case here, is baked into the Municipal Code, OI Municipal Code section 71105. So if there was a problem as a result of the rock wall that resulted in liability to a third party, the property owner would be the one paying for it.
And second, the code further requires that if the city ever decides that the improvement needs to be moved in order to facilitate a public right-of-way usage like expanding the road or perhaps more accurately building a bike lane, section 7117 does require the property owner to move the encroachment and bear those costs themselves. So the opportunity exists as a matter of law to restore the use of the right-of-way for public purposes.
Obviously it does raise the question will the council should you approve it now? Does that create an expectation that becomes difficult to enforce in the future? That's the question to be considered as well. Thank you
Is it my turn again?
Okay.
You know, in a way aren't you arbitrary? It's all going to be arbitrary because the whole Arbolada is not clear on what the law and what the rules are. Because we're either arbitrarily granting him the right to do this or we're arbitrarily punishing him in a sense. Because everywhere you look there's the same issue it's all over the Arbolada.
I think that's the challenge for us Is, you know what everybody knows with the Arbolada is that there is You look around and you see this and everybody points to that as precedent. The big issue for us is we wanted to make sure We have direction from council because this will be the first one, the first new wall that's allowed under these circumstances so that's a little distinction here is if this was a new one not an existing one that had been repaired If we allow this one, you know, you could expect that other people will come forward and say, You know, I want to build a new wall. And this one was allowed. And which ultimately, you know, the question is whether City Council has concerns with that or is okay with that? Or he's okay with it with the right conditions.
Just once. So is there any public comment? Gail?
We have Mr. Duncan here.
Okay. Okay,
I'm going to put him on one moment. Mr Duncan?
Yes hi can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi great yeah thank you. Yeah good evening everybody this is Gary Duncan. I am the property owner Appreciate you all giving me the opportunity here and have been listening to the conversation regarding this. And just a couple of things I'd like to add to the conversation, I think the discussion that I've heard so far is obviously accurate. The wall, the intent here I think is important in that you did see the pre picture with the hedge right up against the wall and the rock work stonework that was right up against the pavement When we purchased this property in 2015, it was our assumption that that was the property line. Wrongly obviously We built this wall with the intent of actually improving it. You can see that we put some setback there that didn't exist before, reason for that was to obviously improve not only the area but to allow for some pass-through as you can see in the photographs.
When the city came by and told us that we were not in compliance due to what they said was a permit Issue which our understanding and working with our landscape design was that we didn't require a permit for this project, which is why the project got done without any. Any design review and or consultation with the city so the wall is there I think if to the point that Was made earlier around the Arbolada itself.
We feel as though what we've done here actually, again, improved the neighborhood, the area. The intent was not to do anything too voluntarily or deliberately encroach on city property and obviously when we found out that that was We presented here in October and understood that there was some precedent here, and that this option was available to us. Understand all of the requirements with this encroachment permit and that it is certainly if that area needed to be used then assuming everybody in the Arbolada would be in the same position right because as you go through everybody has something that is uh in the public right away so if the city decided to put sidewalks into And I'm sure everybody else that has something in the city property would have the same issue.
So again, appreciate the consideration. I've sat through this entire meeting listening and I know there's a lot of important things on the agenda other than a two foot dry stack stone wall. So again, appreciate your consideration. The intent here was to Improve the property, improve the neighborhood. Continue to be upstanding citizens here and certainly not to do anything counter to what would be upstanding in the city's eyes so appreciate the opportunity to be heard.
Thank you, Gary. Thanks for your endurance and your patience.
Thank you for not bumping me.
Can I stay on the call?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. May I ask
a question? Gary my impression is that your street is very low traffic but maybe I came at the wrong time of day. Is there a lot of traffic coming through your neck of the woods?
A car traffic or foot traffic?
Oh no, car
traffic. No, we are off of the main road And also, I know there was a comment about the sidewalk and moving those rocks. We could certainly do that. I would tell you that if you walk up to the next two, three or four houses, there's no setback in those sidewalks. So you'd be essentially providing a 50-foot sidewalk.
Yeah.
Again, happy to do what needs to be done.
You know, I had the same impression. I saw people walking their dogs and they were happily walking in the street with and they you know there was not an issue that some trucks down on them. So I think it looks really beautiful. And I would like to find a way to allow you to have what you have And find a way to clarify if there's some way we can.
I'm making a motion so that might work.
Yeah but wait, I have a question. It was said that if we allow Mr Duncan to do this then it sets a precedent for all for this to continue
I'd argue that there's already a precedent here. I mean, 19 to 30 houses on our street alone have something in the public right away.
And it looks beautiful. It looks beautiful. My take on the Arbolada is that if there's ever a problem with traffic and there's a need for sidewalks, I would strongly urge the residents to request a 15-20 mile per hour Through the Arbolada, which would discourage a lot of the rat running that goes on. Does that make sense? You know have just have the Arbolada be a 15 mile per hour zone or 20 miles and then everybody could get along better because traffic would be slowed down but that's separate discussion.
And not on tonight's agenda of course.
Yeah what?
3:38 – 3:4430 turns
I have a couple questions for Mr. Duncan. Hey, Mr. Duncan you hired an landscape architect or a landscape designer?
We did yeah.
They were licensed?
Yeah they were and we were not told of any need to do a survey or in fact you know we put the entire project in their hands You know, they placed the wall. So again on us to know where the property line is obviously but we didn't get advice that a survey would be prudent here.
Well I'm sorry you didn't it would have saved you a lot of headaches but
yes
you know and i don't want to be the bad guy here but again i guess my concern with all of this is Until I heard the clear definition from Mr. Summers tonight, so we can condition the use of this land and Mr Duncan would know that if we ever needed it that we could take it and he would be responsible to remove and um and he'd be in an agreement that he is not going to litigate us at Full with full knowledge that that's not his, that is the city of Ojai's property.
So if we're all in agreement with that I don't really necessarily have a problem now although i was going to say if we're going to have this issue why don't we just have all of this land surveyed and why don't we offer it to all of these people and let them buy it? You know, why are we gonna come back on a case-by-case issue? Why don't we just assess it and say hey here's an opportunity you already have it buy it. And then we won't be running into these problems in the Arbolada and then we won't have to worry about when we want to do a bike lane whose dirt and whose rock we're gonna take up because it's ours no it's not it's mine cuz that's the way it's been So that's my concern going into this. So if we're all willing to condition this the way Mr.
Summers said and that Mr. Duncan is in 100% agreement, I have no problems with it. How about a motion?
Okay well are we bringing it back for discussion? Yeah I still have some questions. A question for Mr. Duncan?
No okay we're probably the city attorney
Yep.
That would be in order, and Mr Duncan I think will remain available if there are further questions but at this point it's back to the council.
Okay thank you Gary appreciate it. Okay
okay can I ask? It's similar to what Randy said uh we could offer to buy by it or they would sell the land to us. No
no The city owns the land. The city owns the land? You can choose to sell it if you wish, but there's nothing the city is buying. The city owns the asset.
We could offer them two things. They would... we would first make clear to everyone in the Arbolada so it's not arbitrary that the city owns the land and then
they already own I'm sorry to interrupt you. I apologize. The city already owns the land.
Yes, but they don't seem to know it.
They haven't read their deeds with respect to property owners. The deeds are very clear as to what they own. The fact that the deeds don't match the land is not a legal issue in that people have built rock walls beyond the land that they own. When you buy a property, you've got to understand what you're
buying.
But I would suggest this. On the agenda tonight is discussion of the encroachment permits policy. If the council wanted to give consideration to looking at vacating the excess right-of-way in the Arbolada, I think that would be appropriate to agendize as a
separate discussion. Just as we've made clear to Mr. Duncan that the city owns the property, if we want it back he has to remove the landscaping and he can't sue and all that, can't we send a similar letter to all the residents in the Arbolada? So that's clear? Yes,
that'd be fine. Remind everyone
of the policy.
If somebody doesn't
abide by that, doesn't build a wall, and then is taken by surprise if this happens.
That really would be within what we do. In fact, it probably would make some sense I think it would be a good idea to apprise all the owners in the Arbalada of this resolution, of the policy and eliminate surprise. I think that would be...
And that way they won't be shocked if the day comes you know that we've told them.
Well there's an issue in the Arbaladas County and City. That is true.
And all new homeowners can get a letter explaining.
And then we'd have to be in a survey every single property and tell them that they were actually confirmed whether they're actually right away or not, and then on top of that we would be informing all of them that there was some precedent which we're not trying to set for the entire neighborhood with this one motion So I think that would, and we're probably not going to go through a process of telling every person who's in the encroachment that hey just give us some money now and we'll let you stay there so you sell it back to us. That's probably not gonna be great policy either. So I make motion that we go ahead and allow this as is with the understanding that we are going to approve an encroachment with the language that's discussed.
3:44 – 3:5862 turns
And the removal of the rock, right?
Not necessarily.
That walkway is not a walkway with that rock there it's a planter bed.
I don't think he needs to remove the rocks and the rocks are all over the entire Arbalada those rocks have been
there. Right that's why i asked him about the traffic the only reason for removing the rocks if someone's moving walking along they can you know they don't but they can use that as a path as they're walking or somebody with a stroller or dog they can But it doesn't sound like that's
necessary.
Right? So we have a, we have a motion and a second. You ready to vote y'all? Gail?
Roll-call vote Passed 5–0 motion and a second. You ready to vote y'all? Gail?
Show transcript
Yay!
All right,
great. We'll
be happy, yes. Okay thank you council members reports. It's late no okay no no reports I don't have one
The only report I have is we had an APCD meeting, all standard stuff. And assuming I am allowed to continue in my position at APCD, I will be the new chair here starting this next year. So just so everybody knows.
Congratulations. Randy?
And Gold Coast, the same thing if I'm allowed to continue with them at the next meeting, I'll be the chair of Gold Coast next year.
When are we when are we is that Are we doing? I thought we might be doing that tonight. That's usually where we're doing that in the next meeting, James or when are we
Yeah, We looked at it. We historically do it the first meeting in January, so we put it on there.
Thank you. Okay. Um city manager report.
Uh oh, I have. I had a few but I'll cut it down because of Everybody's probably aware we're doing the 2040 kind of general plan update, trying to get it back into a reasonable timeframe because some of our elements are 40 years old. So we are trying to get back In front of that, and we are currently doing the general plan update survey. It was extended from November to this Friday so we want to hear your voice if somebody's watching this please go to oicity.org backslash GP update to participate in the survey. We have over 250 responses which is actually very good for a city of our size but we're hoping to top 300 and we have three days to do it So we have that. And then the next step, we're working on scheduling a virtual community visioning workshop which were tentatively scheduling for the end of January, possibly Wednesday, the 27th and that workshop will feature a presentation pulling and a small group activities that will help the city prioritize values, priorities and vision.
We'll be putting flyers out in coming weeks so keep I think that's it. And then just as far as future agenda items in response to that question that was just asked, we do have the Council assignments coming tentatively scheduled for January 12th. We have the Climate Committee report and protocols coming back January 12th tentatively scheduled. I have received a couple of requests to review the City Council protocols and meeting protocols. So that's something that we can talk about if that's something we want to bring on January 12th, but currently I have those kind of penciled in along with the presentation of the HPC Lifetime Achievement Awards with the HPC.
And that's all I have. Thank you.
And when you say protocols James do you mean time?
Yeah, there was a couple of things. And I think maybe I jumped the gun there. I expect maybe a couple council members have a couple of issues that tie into this. But I know I think Mayor Sticks we had talked about talking about the time for the meetings and I think Council Member Haney alluded earlier to talking about the protocols as far as two council members requesting an item to be placed on agenda.
Great. Another one, if you'll allow that I've heard that may also be in that discussion if there's two members or the mayor would be looking at switching from Robert's rules to Rosenberg's Rules of Order which is a rules of order system designed for public meetings governed by the Brown Act and similar public records laws as distinct from Roberts which of course is designed for the British Parliament.
That's
going
to be on the agenda?
If there's support from mayor or two, then yeah we'll bring some options back on that.
Yeah it's just a more modern way of moving I think. I'd also like to add an acknowledgement for the Native American community. It's just a really brief couple sentences just acknowledging the land that we're on and i can send you all some information You met Matthew Vestuto, I think a while back he gave a presentation and he sent me some information. I think it'd be really nice way to start the new year and we would tie it into Martin Luther King Day in the Civil Rights
Movement. Are we on the future
agenda now?
I think we are on the future agenda item.
I do think we should put the ATP on the agenda so that we can assure the public. You know, there were all these issues that were brought up and that way we can respond and report on what we've done in the time between now and then because I know that you're handling a lot of the issues that have come up Would that be appropriate, then? Put it on the agenda.
Assuming there's a second, which I kind of assume there will be with the reaction.
Well, I would second that as long as we can include for instance, there is a lot of tracking that's taking place that none of us have any idea what we're tracking. So I'd like to know what the protocols for that are, who's doing it and who's receiving the reports And it's the same thing with these. I saw on Facebook, the Green Coalition now is doing a survey and then the Florida group, the GO group is doing a survey.
Who else is going to do a survey? And how is all that information gonna be gathered and tracked and who's accountable to it? So I'm lost, I'm even concerned. Did we sanction the Ojai Green Coalition to do a survey or God bless them they're doing it on their own? I hadn't heard that
they were doing one. I thought maybe they just advertised the city but i'll look into that
and then the same thing regarding ATP you know I read somewhere today that now we're going to do fire truck demonstration who made that determination did council discuss it um you know there's just a lot of loose ends that are dangling out there I don't know who's in charge and i sure would like to know at the next meeting.
The council doesn't need to approve if public works or wants to arrange uh to make sure that a fire truck can function on the on with the two lane and the changes, that's that's like essential that we know that
Absolutely, that's why we should also have an evacuation plan for the fire department. So I think that's essential also so i don't know if you just want to drive a fire truck in a circle if that's going to demonstrate anything or if you want to see a fire truck that actually has to respond and maybe we create some type of a collision or something. So trying to say let's find out who's in charge that's what I'd like to know
clearly an item to put on the agenda definitely requiring It's a detailed thorough public review when it's on the agenda.
Okay,
all
right I have another question does it need can we discuss how public comments are handled? Does that need to be on the agenda or is that something that um I can discuss privately and anyone else who's interested if Mayor Sticks wants You know, because there was a time lag between the time Louie's distributed comments that really needed studying. Some of them came in a week ago and I don't know. And I know that he just always does his best so it's not a criticism of him but I'm just thinking about maybe there's a better way, a different way. The other thing is that when we get the comments on the PDF You know, I used to reply to a lot of people even though it was just short.
And now I can't do that because the email is... you know, you can't just click on the email. You've got to copy it. I would just like to examine the whole way public comments council distribution distributing information is handled.
I would suggest if I could starting with the discussion with City Manager on the technical aspects of that And then if there's policy choices, that would return to council together with the other items that have been discussed regarding meeting protocols and meeting structure. That would be the time for that discussion which I think we're setting it looks like for the first meeting in January or the second meeting in January as the Council may
choose. Oh sorry is it still my turn? Because I'm still on future agenda items. Okay you want to finish and then Randy? Yeah Bill, help me out. There was a request from Robin Gerber to put the road issue on the agenda of the Taormina. Would that be appropriate?
I believe that's already in the queue, Susan.
It's already in the queue, okay.
I believe that agenda item is already in the queue isn't that correct City Manager?
Yeah I think yeah I believe that request was like made like a month ago we said it'd be the first meeting in January. Thank
you. So I just again reviewing these protocols, I really want to bring up the fact that a lot of our agenda is manipulated and changed by any two council members. And I have been a part of that in the past also. And what I'd like to have is a discussion in Council about changing that policy and that we set the agenda here And that it's a majority vote on adding things to an agenda so that we stop this sense of, to me the sense of someone calling and calling two council members. And hey put this on the agenda and the next thing you know our agendas kidnapped. So I think that we need to have a discussion about how the agenda is set when it's set and why it's set
yeah.
And that can be accomplished on the council protocols items
sure Setting it at 11 o'clock at night is probably not the best time though. I don't think so.
Yeah, welcome to your first meeting!
Well we're going to talk about the time next time right?
Wait till you get used to the special meetings Betsy then you'll really understand how late these are.
Okay, well can we add a seventh inning stretch? We should have a mid-meeting stretch. I think that'd be very healthy decision. Okay, are we all good? Anybody else?
Congratulations on making it through Ms. Mayer.
I appreciate all of you and your really lovely people and very helpful And I'm grateful to you
all. That'll change, don't
worry. Talk to me later.
No thank you. You did a fantastic job out of the gate. Good job tonight. It's not easy we all know that so thank you. Thank you
and I just want...I've read three versions of Robert's rules. The dummy version, the big version, the little and I think it'd be great. Thank you Matt for suggesting Rosenberg's rule
I'm happy to put anything that can make the council meetings move smoother, thereby increase what the awareness of the public is. I always worry and not so much this council but some of the other ones I work with you know it gets 18 motions in and if I fear that not everyone knows what's happening so anything we can do to increase public awareness of what's happening is for the best thank you
okay well can we adjourn now? bang this baby.