City Council — 2021-02-23

Thank you and Randy

consent calendar motion to approve anything?

Yeah

we have first are you gonna are you changing oh whoops I'm sorry uh presentation sorry James no

problem And I'll do a brief introduction. Gail, can you let Jordan into the meeting please? While we're doing that so we were working with Watershed Progressive on a number of projects and we met with Watershed Progressive last week and they are working with Jordan Kier who is a certified hydrogeologist and we started to talk about all the water issues in the Ojai Valley Jordan is an expert on that situation. I'm only laughing because that's probably putting it mildly, but he's an expert on the hydrogeology and Ojai surface and groundwater. So we asked Jordan with all the things going on like the grants that we're doing, the monitoring well that we have on this agenda, and all the other water issues that we're currently facing if Jordan would be willing to come do a presentation and kind of just talk about the current situation with Ojai surface and groundwater.

And so Jordan offered to do that, and we roped him into it. So Jordan are you on the meeting?

I am thank you. I appreciate that. I hope you can see me a little bit here. And I believe will have an opportunity to share screen as well. We'll do that, but thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. It's always a pleasure to speak to the City Council and we're of course used to doing it in person and this will have to suffice. As Mr. Vega mentioned, this stems from a conversation we had about a week or so ago with a couple of the council members, Watershed Progressive, and just made sense to sort of Bring a presentation like this to the council tonight, as no fewer than two items on the agenda package have really groundwater at their heart. And the interaction of surface and groundwater is critically important because really that's what is leaving the basin naturally and the city really isn't the heart of it.

Not just the heart of the valley or the heart of the groundwater basin but Surface and groundwater interaction in the southwest portion of the Ojai Basin. Now that's the title of the presentation tonight, but it could also be titled where does the water go once it leaves the sky in Ojai? And really if you think about it that way, it becomes much more simple and so we'll try to keep this as entertaining as possible. So let me share the screen.

And get a slide show going here. Okay, can everyone see this now?

Yes we can see

it. Okay thank you. So as I mentioned this talk is Surface and Groundwater Interaction in the Southwest Ojai Basin. Tonight's meeting of course as I was introduced Jordan Care PG stands for Professional Geologist CHG stands for Certified Hydrogeologist and I've had the pleasure of working in Ojai for the better part of 20 years now Starting with minor work for a number of small farmers and residences, but really picking up steam when I worked on my Master of Science thesis conducting a number of aquifer tests and stratigraphic analysis of the basin for the Ojai Basin Groundwater Management Agency.

And which is now inclusive in the groundwater sustainability agency for the OI Basin and I'm happy to serve as agency hydrogeologist among hundreds of other projects we work on at CARE Groundwater. This image gives a really brief, simple picture of the basin and its position in the watershed. The blue outline is the San Antonio Creek Watershed. The light blues are surface waters.

The black line in bold is the agency jurisdiction for the Ojai Basin GMA. And the red line is more or less the basin boundaries, although that's been modified since this graphic was prepared. Within this are also some of the purveyors, the city of Ojai area and the purplish and the Thacher areas being which are Served by various purveyors, Hermitage Mutual Water Company, Senior Canyon Mutual Water Company, Ridley Road, Siente Robles and of course the Golden State Water Company shown in this graph. That's now the Casitas Ojai system.

Way back once upon a time the basin was thought of as a little bit of a sandbox right on top of a bunch of bedrock that QT that's sort of been in orange there represents What was thought of in 1933 as what we now know is the OI Basin. Come 1953, we get a bit better idea about what's going on in the basin. Number of wells had been drilled to depth in the basin area and still we're looking at just a sandbox over undifferentiated tertiary bedrock formations.

Come 1992, we get few more e-logs that are representative of what's going on in the basin, number of wells with more detailed lithology and a better handle on how the water levels have changed over time. And what that effective base of freshwater which is not necessarily the base of the alluvium in the basin was begun to be defined. Come 2005 we have many more e-logs at our disposal and were able to correlate these objectively across the basin. In this particular case Generated the green to represent clay aquitards, whereas the white in this case were where the aquifers and the reddish material was. The bedrock at the bottom of the barrel if you will.

Based on the testing that we did in the early some 20 years ago early knots, we found that really the most productive areas of the basin are in the central and eastern portion of the Ojai Basin The production tends to be a lot less from wells that are drilled in that area. Although the aquifers do correlate at depth, it's that deep production system that is yielding the water to the cities and the agricultural interests within the basin.

And over on the west side things are a lot more clayey there's a lot more fine grain material Water moves a lot more slowly through those zones, and there tends to be what's known as this perched aquifer system. And that's the one that seems to have the most weight with respect to the surface and groundwater interaction. More detailed model development went in in more recent years really stratifying the basin with respect to quantification of different characteristics of aquifers, how permeable and porous they were, and correlating them across the basin But if we take a look at what happens to a drop of water as it enters the basin as surface water, we take a little bit of a tour from northeast to southwest in the basin. And in this case, the flow into the Ojai Basin from San Antonio Creek as it has a confluence with Gridley and Ladera Creeks to become San Antonio Creek proper.

In this case, this is Ladera Road crossing creeks flowing over took this picture right about the location of that yellow star in the inset map. As we go a little bit further downstream, it gets a bit more picturesque and you see quite a bit of water flowing through the old diversion works for the San Antonio Creek Spreading Grounds. As we get deeper into the basin, Fort Ice Road is projected here and you can see the flow's a lot less. This was all taken on the same day a couple years back but by the time we get to where that yellow star is, the water has fully infiltrated into the basin Now it flows in the subsurface here toward the deepest aquifers or those production aquifers that are in the central portion of the basin.

As we get further downstream, the water begins to daylight again, in this case south of Grand Avenue Bridge. Again these are all on the same day and then as you get further south, the flow picks up a bit more and finds its way out of the basin. And by the time you get south of the O Avenue bridge on this particular day, it's flowing Quite a bit of algae in the water. This is a May photograph, and all these were taken on the same day.

So if we think about what's happening in the bigger picture back to that original graphic, we see surface water flowing into the basin, finding its way into the subsurface in one way or another, and then discharging out near the boundaries of the Ojai Basin GMA. That southern boundary is where the Arroyo Parida Santa Ana Fault lifts up bedrock on the south side and allows surface water and groundwater to come up against that boundary, and jump up over that dam if you will. A natural feature that keeps flow in the San Antonio Creek effectively perennial at that point always flowing but it takes about 12 inches of rain on the valley floor before we see that surface water flow crossing the basin. You may have seen a little bit surface flow this year when we had some of those flashier storms.

But to get a sustained flow, we typically need about 12 inches of rain and that's about half of the average over the long term in the Ojai Basin. This year we've got just under four inches of rain on the valley floor at the county fire station up on the ridge tops it might be closer to six inches and that's pretty typical that we see close to double the amount of precipitation at elevation which is where much of the recharge comes from as opposed to on the valley floor, slightly drier.

Now where that first water goes, the OBGMA has a network of monitoring wells and this is downloaded today from one of those monitoring wells at the San Antonio Creek Spreading Grounds Rehabilitation Project. This is from a 210 foot deep well that's screened from 190 to 210 feet and this is a question we often get. We get an inch of rain how much does that contribute to the basin? And this is the answer And that December 28th to 31 storm brought about 1.42 inches of rain on the valley floor, and we see a jump up a couple of weeks later from about 55 to 62 feet. So we had about seven feet of rise in groundwater at this point. This is where the water first reaches the saturated alluvium of the basin along San Antonio Creek.

That January 24th to 30th storm system that we had Had about two and a half inches of rainfall on the valley floor. And you can see again, a couple of weeks later that bigger spike bringing up nearly nine feet of increase in water level. And this is always fun to look at in the beginning of the water year because it's been drier and the consecutive storms are not blended into noise. So when you look at a graph like this, it's somewhat easier to see how The level on the right hand side of the y-axis of this graph jumps up with that precipitation.

Now, we have several of these wells in which we monitor relatively consistently and there in the triangle is the point of discharge from the basin. Now we have one of our key wells it's known as the Elrod well and we have a logger in there that monitors the depth to water and the temperature of the water At 90 minute intervals. So from 2017 to 2021, you see it here except the times when those aberrative data points are present. The logger had to be removed because the pump was being worked on. It isn't active producing well but you can see how the precipitation in wetter years makes a significant increase in groundwater levels and storage over the course of each year and it recedes Typically from the late spring to the wintertime before the next storm systems come along.

But you can see the big jumps here in 2019 and really sustaining that in 2020, down where we are in 2021, we're just near the point where we're at what we call the nadir, a low point of storage in the basin but then also starting to see some recovery on the longer term scale from 1944 to 2024, shown here on this graph. We use this to create a long-term hydrograph what years and years of precipitation and drought how those are recorded in the basin water levels.

And just jumping forth to today's system we're at 143.04 feet below ground surface at that key well area. And that's about 73% of the basin capacity or 58,400 acre feet You heard it here first. Now, that's what's going on in the producing aquifers of the basin. But if we look around this city, we notice that there are several places where water is very shallow.

There are places where we need to pump off groundwater French drains around foundations and walls and retaining systems and things like that. But we also have a network of monitoring wells from environmental investigations places where there were leaking underground storage tanks, typically in some cases of dry cleaners. But that's resulted in a number of field points here shown in this map as these light pink dots and there's one right there in the south portion of the city right along Grand Ohio Avenue you have I think that's Gabriel's and then you've got a couple of other old or new gas stations that had leaky underground tanks and a number of monitoring wells were drilled there. And what we noticed is that the data from those wells, they're all very shallow some 25 or 30 feet.

They all encountered groundwater very shallowly some three 10 or 13 feet and it tends to stay relatively constant right there. So why is it that we have this shallow water in the area of the city? And this deep water that fluctuates seasonally and with production in the production aquifers of the basin. And the answer is that we have this perched aquifer system, water that precipitates within the city and on the west side of the basin tends to go to that perch system first and then discharge to San Antonio Creek whereas the water that infiltrates within San Antonio Creek and Thatcher Creek and Horn Creek and Reeves Creek on the east end and the north end They tend to find their way into the production aquifers, and that's separate. And why that's important is because of where it comes out.

The first daylighting water in San Antonio Creek today tends to be right around Soule Park Golf Course. It's something that we've been mapping. You can see the GPS unit here over time for years now. And the idea is to monitor where that daylighting occurs on a monthly basis and get a snapshot of where it's flowing in, because that tends to be relatively consistent. Consistent regardless of the depth to water in the producing aquifers.

So we also measure the flow at the points of exit. This is today's photo underneath Creek Road where the surface water discharge is from underneath much of the city area. The creek is known as Stewart Ojai Creek Montgomery or Fox, depending on what maps you look at. And this is the discharge that we see coming out of that little notch today under Creek Road.

Now on San Antonio Creek proper just stones throw away literally from that notch is where we monitor the outflow from the basin because it's direct surface water flow directly over bedrock. This is today's photograph so this is a... You can see how beautiful it was. The trees are deciduous and but yet the creek is flowing And we measure this by taking a flow probe in sections of the creek right here.

All of this flow that you see was gaining from the point of that first daylighting groundwater where that GPS unit was in the middle of the creek, and at the same time, the depth to water in the keywell area is over 140 feet down. So we take these monthly readings, and we've been doing this since 2019 in San Antonio Creek at a monthly basis. And we also have added when there is flow there, flow out of Montgomery Creek in that notch.

And today's flow was about just under six tenths of CFS from San Antonio Creek proper and about five, you know that'll be one hundredths of a CFS out of the Montgomery Creek notch. That adds up to about 0.64 CFS, which is close to 300 gallons per minute. So that water you can imagine flowing continuously adds up. These are snapshot-based data points and they tend to be pretty effective but we see that between 30 and 45 acre feet per month discharges to San Antonio Creek from the Ojai Basin during this time frame And in the water year to date, we have over 180 acre feet that has flowed out of the basin.

So what does this mean in some of these scientific terms? This is a graph that we've developed to illustrate this and I'll explain it here. The upper graph is daily rainfall. So every time it rains a little bit, we put a little bar on this graph and you can see how the rain was much more intense in 2017 higher precipitation in total, but 2018 19 and 20 similar events.

Potentially more dense in 2019 a little less dense in 2020. But as we go down in this graph, this is a pretty complex graph so bear with me on the on the X axis of all of this is 2017 18 1920 and now 21. On the Y axis of the center graph is the elevation of the water That is at ground surface at the key well, but 880 feet. The ground surface elevation at the spill point of the Ohio Basin on San Antonio Creek just under 640 feet there and then on the right Y axis is the discharge rate of flow that is how much water is flowing out? That's in the pink for San Antonio Creek in total near where it's confluence with the Ventura River is and then And those little magenta Xs are the flows that we've been measuring on a monthly basis.

On the darker blue is the depth water or elevation in that key well, the automated logger that records it and then the elevation of the spill point of water daylighting water is the lighter blue. So where that light blue is continuously vertical, that's when San Antonio Creek is continuously flowing across the basin And the lighter pink material, or the pink bars are where the discharge is measured by the county at Creek Road. So that is what the county is measuring as entering the upper Ventura River groundwater basin near its confluence with the Ventura River. Now I happen to check today you'll see that there's no real pink bars much past the end of the 2020 water year Much of that flow has been underground in San Antonio Creek. It doesn't daylight at that point because it's infiltrated out of the Ojai Basin, over that bedrock notch and into a number of wells, little surface diversions and quite a bit of uptake from plants and trees in that area.

So more water is flowing out of the Ojai Basin as surface water than is flowing into the upper Ventura River basin as surface water. And I happen to check today at about the same time that we were collecting this measurement today of 0.64 CFS, cumulatively coming out of the Ojai Basin and at the Ventura River in at the Casitas Vista Bridge where the United States Geological Survey measures the flow continuously there They were measuring about 1.5 CFS, so less than half of the flow that is coming out of Ojai is what is measured in the Ventura River.

And there's quite a bit of alluvium that has subsurficial flow there as well. So the idea is that we have a significant amount of flow coming out of Ojai but nothing compared to what Actually flowing in the Ventura River. It's a very small component that is finding its way out of the Ojai Basin, out of the perch system and into the Ventura River system. And this is important because if we look at what the Ojai Basin is and where the city is it's largely over the perched aquifer system. That's water that flows into the city area finds its way out of San Antonio Creek separately and distinctly from deep production zones, and this is shown in this cross section here.

So the idea is that what we can do to affect the water systems near surface within the city can have a greater and more acute effect on flow in San Antonio Creek for habitat benefits or water retention projects acting in the city area. It's the places like the San Antonio Creek spreading grounds That can focus on what's going on to provide the production aquifers that are located at depth within the city. And part of the projects that I believe Ms. Hirsch will be talking about and these, the depth discrete monitoring well which actually is shown here later agenda items will help to better quantify and identify exactly what is going on quality and quantity wise over the long term within this portion of the city and help both Contribute to the design of and realize the benefits of many of the projects that the Wildlife Conservation Board, Ventura River In-Stream Flow projects and grant funding are geared toward.

So it's a pretty complex story. I thank you for your attention and happy to take any questions if there probably are many but we'll be around for many of the other agenda items as well so I thank you for your attention and appreciate the ideas. I see a hand raised or three.

Jordan, sure would be interesting this is kind of a question and kind of a rhetorical statement to see how that graph changes plotting around the San Antonio Creek Spreading Grounds if they ever went into operation actually finally Many years, a lot of money spent. Never in operation. Sure will be interesting to see what happens when it goes into operation. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah absolutely it is interesting and there have been many water years when the conditions were ideal but the permitting conditions were not to divert that water and infrastructurally the spreading grounds themselves should be fairly well versed and ready to accept as much of that flow Between the powers that be and time passing, it certainly will be good to get that up and running.

As far as the quantification of it goes, we see potential benefits depending on how much is able to be diverted and stored within the basin both in storage but also in water levels and energy savings too because wells would not have to spend as much energy lifting that water from depth

I think it's very timely to start trying to pull together the focus on that. And the other thing I really want to emphasize is how important what we're learning about these perched aquifers, because what it really means is that the city by re-engineering its hardscape can have a disproportionate benefit in terms of habitat restoration and instream flows for the entire valley.

Do you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely. You couldn't have said it any better. It's an excellent

statement. Do you concur? I do. Jordan, when I look at all of this science which i think is incredible in all of the years that you've been doing it and seeing actually what I understood better tonight were the two You know, how these perch systems and how the actual lower aquifer system work simultaneously based on the amount of rainfall. And eventually where they go to, which is going to help in this lawsuit. Am I correct? Having a thorough and a better or just not a thorough but a better understanding of how water is collected in this basin or in this valley and how it moves downstream and how the different types of surface flows and subsurface flows and how all of these work together to dictate how much water is actually entering the Navinto River watershed area.

I just find all that information incredible and i just see it as being beneficial to the citizens of Ojai in this lawsuit, that we actually understand how this water enters and how it leaves and where it leaves and when it leaves and how much leaves So that's one thing that I think I'm right in stating, that this information benefits us and if we're drug into that lawsuit deeper than what we are.

And then the second thing is the projects that we are doing with Progressive and Regina is the fact It doesn't sound like, originally I thought that we were going to be impacting the aquifer. But it looks like we're going to be impacting the perch system of the aquifer which is more beneficial to the city itself. So again it's a win. I knew we were doing something right when we initiated this. We didn't necessarily know how right um but your science is dictating and presenting to us that we are on the right footing and we're on the right direction and we need to continue with what we're trying to achieve with Regina.

Yeah Randy you and I kind of lucked into this doing the right thing without fully understanding it when we started trying to You have to do better things with stormwater capture where the streets.

Yeah, I kept thinking that we were going to core this big old hole and take it down to the aquifer and dump this water into it. And that's not, that's not the science. So it's interesting how you've got a cap capture it. You've got to let it percolate and then it's going to go in and migrate to where it needs to go. So it's really interesting. Just great science, Jordan. Really good job.

Thank

you. Oh Ryan?

Jordan, thank you. I've been privy to this or a very similar presentation a number of times and I always feel like it's really buttoned up for the current situation and what we're looking at. And I always appreciate it. I've explained the science much poorer than you have presented it many times to a lot of people but it's really important to understand because it's difficult that... The idea of water conservation Is not the same as water flow and rivers, and those don't necessarily equate to one drop becoming a drop of water.

And as Randy alluded to the waters shed that water adjudication, the river water case that's going on. It's a very complicated geological science question on how the interrelationship between all the wells and properties in different parts. And Jordan just talked about the Ojai Basin, there are three other basins and a bunch of spaces that are in between that are all part of it too. You can see how complicated Just understanding the science under our own feet, where we have had the luxury of having a really good groundwater basin management agency for a very long time. Whereas these other bases are if they even have an agency are brand new for the most part it just shows how complex and difficult this question is. And we're ultimately going to end up with a lot of Jordan cures, and a lot of people trying to catch up to what OB GMA has been able to produce as far as data for this entire watershed.

And you know when you see a final product and it's not even finally yet I mean obviously there's more data to get there's more wells to drill. We're still Very much in the infancy of learning everything about our own aquifer system. And you can see back as the 30s, 50s, 70s we were way off base on some of the data that we had compared to what we have now. So it's just I really appreciate it. I'm a little bit of a nerd when it comes to this. I love it and it's important for what we're trying to do in a much larger picture but It is so well put together It's very easy to understand once you hear it. I've had the luxury, like I said Jordan, of hearing it a few times. I think you're getting better at it each time too so I really do appreciate it but without commenting further, I think that the more we can do that's reasonable to get as much data in the hands of OBGMA this is what it turns into and this is why it's worth investing where we need to to get better data because we're still learning and the more we learn the better we can do with taking a limited resource and also You know, if you look at one other proof in the pudding fact as far as talking about the city of Ojai.

The City of Ojai and the former Golden State District has reduced its water usage so extensively that if drop for drop of all that water was going down into the Ventura River that otherwise isn't being pumped out of the San Antonio Creek well field There would be a lot, a lot more water going down the Ventura River than is. The reality is that that water just doesn't go that way so conserving it as we've seen in the past also doesn't result in it getting to the places our neighbors think it needs to get to and want to tell us what to do with it. So again Jordan just really appreciate it and I'm sure over the next well probably it'll be a few years but I'm sure gonna be talking a lot more about this.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the kind words and importantly, the city's stewardship of these resources. It's paramount to success.

Thank you, Jordan. Very clear. Thank you. Really appreciate that. Any other questions or comments? Okay well thank you Jordan for coming. Thanks for your time. Okay well we'll move forward to public comment. Gail, will you take Jordan away? Thank you.

Okay we're doing that and there are no public communications

tonight. May I say something? Sure. I thought I heard Jordan say that he wanted to that he was going to stick around Oh, he's at his own house, right? So he can watch the meeting.

Yeah. We're not removing him entirely from the meeting. We are just removing him from the Brady Bunch screens that you guys see. Thank you.

Just want to make sure.

He'll be around for the rest of the meeting

OK. We don't have anybody signed up for public comment but I will note and we distributed it to council. We received 32 comments today that have been distributed to council.

Thanks, James. All right, moving forward to the consent calendar?

I have a correction. Do I have to pull the item to do that? It's just a small thing.

Sure,

yeah. OK, I want to correct something in Item D.

Yeah, if it's in the minutes we should pull it and correct it for the record to be clear.

OK. Also, I'll pull Item D Move to approve the rest. Second.

Okay great all right thank you and then uh D?

Yeah Okay, so Gail on D on page five where it says council members reports. It says do you see that Gail? Council members reports.

Yeah.

Where it says with the Chumash saying could you just change that with the Chumash word for Ojai. At the Arts Commission, it said something about a welcome sign. I had to correct it there too. Let's get it right. OK. Thank you.

Got it. And we're following up and we were getting the Chumash word for OI so that's what should end up on the side.

Good call. OK, so move to approve D now.

As amended.

Thank you, and we have a brief presentation. I will try to keep it very brief because we have people waiting for the next two items. And so just a shorter status update today and hopefully these do get shorter because usually it means that things are trending in a positive direction and there aren't as many issues to try to wrap our arms around. So I'm hoping these get shorter and shorter We have a brief update on COVID.

We wanted to start, there's been a lot of good news over the last two weeks and things are trending in the positive direction but we wanted to start with just showing some of the case statistics because it is important to just keep doing our part while we're working on getting people vaccinated and continuing to slow the spread especially with The new strains that I, we were hearing today about one that they're calling the new California are not new but it's the California strain that is potentially.

Are very spreadable and so it's important to keep. Being. Exercising, distancing and wearing face coverings and all those things. But you can see from this chart we've had a major drop in a slowdown in cases in the last couple weeks but you can see that we were noticing this doubling trend over the last few months from November to December and then December to January And that slowed down. It wasn't a doubling in the last month, but it's still a sizable increase 25,000 cases in the county of Ventura and about a month.

So, um, uh, and that was concentrated around the earlier part of the month and has really slowed down, but it's still, you know, it's still the virus is still out there. It's still spreading. And that is reflected also locally and the same types of trends where we were getting a doubling, and this time we had you know maybe 50% rather than another hundred percent of cases so slowing down but still spreading. The ICU capacity has gotten better, the hospitalization rate's gotten better.

But we have seen there was over the last couple months a spike in deaths unfortunately that's also slowing down right now but still still there so I think the main message is you know things are improving people are getting vaccinated but in the meantime we all just need to keep doing our part. Our Average case rate over seven days has dropped substantially to 16.9 and as a reminder to everybody, the reason this number is important is when it drops below 7 And along with a couple of other key factors, one's already dropped enough to potentially go to the red tier. The next tier which would allow more things to open.

So we need to get under seven on our average case rate to drop. We're at 16.9 but we were almost double that just recently so it really has dropped and we're on pace I've heard a couple estimates that it could happen in the next couple weeks, but it just depends on how everything comes together in the next couple of weeks. On our positivity rate, we actually are low enough to be red tier, but both the seven-day case rate and the adjusted positivity rate are still slightly higher than red tier.

We're still in the purple most restrictive tier, but we're getting closer to being into the red tier. And for people that don't know the difference because it is fairly complicated, we've shown here at a glance you can see the bolded language and that's the difference between purple tier and red tier. So under purple tier retail stores are supposed to operate with only 25% of their capacity When we move to red tier, they can then operate with 50% of the capacity.

Probably the biggest one under the current purple tier restaurants can be outdoors only which works pretty well in Ojai but obviously on some of the colder nights it would be nice to move to red tier where we could have some 25% capacity indoors and so that's somewhere we could be within the next couple of weeks but we aren't currently. Similarly gyms currently can only be outdoors only Once we move to red tier, it would be indoor with 10% capacity.

And then movie theaters and museums, zoos and aquariums—we don't have a zoo or an aquarium but we do have museums—would be able to open indoor with reduced capacity once we move to red tier. So not a whole lot changing but there are some key things there with restaurants, gyms, and museums being able to open a little bit more fully. So that's the key thing as far as, you know, watching our case rate. Once our case rate gets to a certain point we can make these adjustments and we're getting close to that point.

In the meantime, we've continued to work on several other issues such as we mentioned last meeting that we were starting to meet with the different event holders in the city to talk about potential plans We met with the Ojai Valley Tennis Tournament. And everybody probably saw, I think it was Friday of last week or maybe Thursday that the tennis tournament has decided to cancel this year's event.

We were working through protocols with them and ultimately, I think we agreed that the challenge for the tennis tournament was that they needed a definitive yes or no answer and to be able Commit and not change by March 1st because of the TV contracts and everything else. And so we just kept going through protocols in case numbers, and one day there would be a little bit of a surge, and the next day it would be dropping. And we just all agreed that by March 1st it was gonna be difficult to predict. We had talked about some options like potentially postponing but it just wasn't workable for the tennis tournament.

We're trending in a positive direction, but just April was too soon to know for sure. So the tennis tournament chose to cancel. We were working with different protocols depending on what the situation was so that they could scale back if needed, but they ultimately chose to cancel. And so the next group that we're meeting with this week is the music festival to talk about how that event could operate. I think last year they did virtually, We're probably going to talk about, you know some options depending on what the COVID statistics are at that point.

And so we're just we're going to keep meeting with the event holders and making sure that they have protocols in essentially for a worst case scenario and hopefully things keep improving and we don't need to use all those protocols but that's a big part of what we're doing in recent weeks. We also just want to remind people that we have COVID testing available. It's been extended through March 31st, but it will be Wednesdays now from 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., and so that is still available at Sarzadi Park.

And then the big news I'm sure everybody heard on Friday, but we wanted to make sure to let the public know as well that this is a big accomplishment With everything going on, we'll probably be overlooked but Ojai was able to get a vaccine center here in Ojai with several agencies kind of all working together which is an accomplishment. And we were able to get this open Friday. Ojai Valley Hospital was definitely the lead on it but I'm sure the hospital will tell you You know, we worked with the school district to set up the site. We were advocating with the hospital and the county to make sure that there was a site in Ojai. The hospital and I both were contacting the county and reminding them that we have a heavy elderly population and that we are fairly remote so that we were going to have a challenge getting people outside of The Valley and we had talked at one point about if we needed to use our recreation vans to get people out, but we can only put one person per van that you know it's not going to be very easy.

So this really was a big accomplishment where they haven't launched too many of these sites yet I know I was able to get one fairly early. They had 400 doses on Saturday 407 to be exact and they issued all 407 of those doses And if you have the chance to check out the site, it's very impressive. It's just well set up, well run, it's perfectly done and they are expecting to receive 700 doses tomorrow and the appointments are available on venturacountyrecovers.org or I should say Those appointments may have gone, they went up yesterday on the website. But keep checking venturacountyrecovers.org for when they refresh those appointments. They're expecting to have vaccinations at that site three days a week. I believe it's Wednesday, Friday and Saturday for the time being.

I don't think they put an end date on it yet so So, you know for Ojai we have 400 doses already another 700 coming. You know 1100 for the valley and it's you know these are going to start making a dent in getting our population vaccinated and hopefully get some of that herd immunity going so this was a big one they also the county announced and this was in coordination with the county as well but the county announced That they are planning to open up on March 1 additional groups for vaccination, I believe they announced this this morning it's been a long day but. They're they've opened up the next group they're going to begin vaccinating teachers childcare providers first responders and food and agricultural workers and then.