City Council — 2021-03-09

Okay, call to order. We have a quorum.

okay all

OK, great. So then can we approve the rest?

You move approval of items 1A, B, C, D, E and F of the consent calendar. Seconded.

Great, thank you. Gail, rate a vote on that one.

Mayor Pro Tem Weirich?

Yes.

Mayor Stixx? Yes Council Member Haney?

Yes

Council Member Francina? Yes Council Member Blatz?

Yes

Thank you so much Gail, okay um so we have item g that was

pulled yes uh mayor I would like to suggest adding one sentence On attachment A, page four of six. We have four items that the city supports and I would ask the council to consider adding one sentence in the city opposes reading. The city opposes state county or federal policies which reduce our inhibit local comma community based business viability. That's my motion to add that sentence I would second it.

Can you say that again? Yes,

there's no city opposes to the section on economic development and i'd like to add the city opposes state county or federal policies which reduce or inhibit local comma community-based business viability

So Susan, that's attachment A4 of six. He's reading the economic development section and it says the city supports but we have no oppose. And so Bill is putting in an opposition statement.

Okay, okay.

I think it's just an opportunity here to discuss our city trolley program period so we're going to remove this trolley from service and surplus it But, you know we've got 2035 and 2040 guidelines coming up regarding converting our trolley system to either electric or hydrogen one or the other. And GoCoTransit that we just approved a fleet management plan in transit asset management plan so what I'd be asking in conjunction with this is that we direct staff when we direct our public works director to actually create a fleet management plan and bring it back to council regarding how many we have, the age that we have and to actually start looking into electric and hydrogen vehicles. And joining other cities that are doing this that have small services like WEA.

And then the other part of that is there's actually a state program that's being initiated now where they're trying to do bulk buying Of these 40 foot buses, for instance an all electric bus that we priced came in at over $800,000 per bus and a hydrogen bus came in over a million per bus. So I think obviously, as more of these buses are built the pricing is going to come down but they're still not a cheap date. So i think that it's going to behoove us instead of waiting to actually get proactive and start thinking about one where are they? Two how much they cost and how we're gonna go about it. Are there grants? What are the ways that we can Go after additional funding to help us meet the needs of our trolley service.

Or it might be something that we phase out and figure another plan, but I'm sure all of us in Ojai would love to keep the trolley service. So that's all I'd like to add to the consent item. I have no problem with the surplusing of this, but I do think we need to investigate what is left and how we're going to move forward in the future. So I would move to approve consent item age.

Okay, Ryan you want to say something?

Yeah i just want to say oh gosh it was probably 15 years ago I stood in front of the council back when you're allowed to do that and they were declaring a right when the Libby Bowl was getting done and it hadn't been done yet but the pledges have come in And I remember getting all this great feedback and the council so excited and they proceeded to not care. The next day, didn't do anything with it so I'm gonna bring it up again now you know, and I got one of the votes, but The trolley, if there is an option because I heard in the last go around and I know this one isn't in very good shape but that we didn't get like anything for it, and that we were actually donating it somewhere.

The Libby bowl foundation and other entities in town especially events at the ball if we ever want to not have to build extra parking for Having a surplus trolley is the way to circulate and there's already a drawn up parking plan inside the public parking lots that would stop at the arcade drop people off right next to restaurants and bars I know we're not there yet with Kobe, but I just want to say that it's been a idea of mine for a long time.

When the bull is really busy, I think that it would be incredibly beneficial if you wanted to get people to park at Park and Ride. If you wanted it to be able to get like the lot that's by my office that's small even there just to circulate through and what would really happen is when people would when they get there they'd probably take the trolley when they leave they probably just disperse and you know might have dinner or go to a bar or go do something downtown all that would be good and when they have to walk back like that it might actually give the merchants a little bit extra foot traffic I don't know if that's an option. I know I saw this and I was actually going to pull it, Randy, so I appreciate you speaking up.

I don't want to make this overly complicated, but if there was an alternative use that exceeds what we're going to get for the value of this because it doesn't sound like it's much. I just want to keep that option open because I think they could make a difference for some of the stuff we were doing and some of the stuff we want to do.

All right. Is it? Yeah, I like that idea. I don't like the idea that people are too lazy to walk from the parking lot where your office is, to the park. That I don't like. But I could see if we had...I could see it being used in various ways. I'd have to think it through but you know for instance if we had weekend parking at Nordoff or some event further away or can it be used? I mean I like your idea but I just don't like to think that people are that lazy.

So do we need a report on the ways? And I mean, that would mean that we would store it somewhere. Is that what it means and then use it for special events because that would be one way that we could have less traffic on Ojai day. I can think of all kinds of days Earth Day where people could where we could use that trolley for special events with that is that's the idea.

I completely agree. If it worked, if we could figure that out and I always thought that you know this again this all happened right when the bowl was starting to kind of the idea was starting to gain a lot of traction and I don't think it's been too bad a problem at the ball but I also I've also sat in the information desk that Jamie Fleming put out I volunteered there before On a bull day, and I can't tell you how many cars pulled up and said we don't know where you park. How do we get into the bowl? Because if you get there like most places it says parking for the ball.

We have nothing that says where to quite go. So I don't know and of course we have other trolleys and they may be available at that time but it was always an idea too to put it off on maybe a different organization that might have it and take care of it and be able to use it for their purposes since we couldn't use it as a city anymore.

Okay, so selling it is not a decision we have to make tonight. Is that correct? We don't have

to make that decision tonight and there's a couple ways we could do it. One is if you want to approve it but we can hold off and explore some of those options or we could just bring it back but I'll answer two of the questions real quick though. So this is our sixth trolley so even surplusing this will have five And so we could do some of these things using some of the other better condition trolleys.

And then probably the estimated value of auctioning it off is probably going to be between maybe $7,000 to $12,000. So it's not going to, you know, the value isn't going to, you know, be a huge amount that we're losing out on if we wanted to explore some options. So I think the idea, the one that caught my attention As far as for our use, we have five other trolleys that are probably in better condition. But the idea of maybe seeing if one of the other nonprofits or the chamber or someone would want to use it, that's something we can

explore. I could see a situation where I'm just spitballing here but let's say we had a dollar surcharge on tickets at The Bull and it paid for You know, part of subsidizing a traffic plan. And I know way back then, I brought this up and Bob Daddy had drawn something to get from parking lots with the city's a little different now, but we you know, but there was kind of a circular pattern that would make sense. So anyway at least if it's an option, I would love to see it come to fruition, but if not no big deal.

Mayor just one last thing on this is also it'd be interesting It's being surplused and can it be used for the things that we've just discussed? You know, there's a reason it's being surplused. It's either not safe. It just can't because it's eight years old. There's got to be other reasons besides that so that would be nice too is to have Greg bring it back and explain to us The surplusing process the why. I remember last time we discussed this, I think Santa Barbara has trolleys too and that they were going to be purchasing our old ones or something of that nature so but i think these are all good ideas.

Randy remember it was sold off for parts and I also remember that I think back then when I brought it up there was an issue with the trolleys that we had Because they were from grant money, like they couldn't be used for anything commercial or something. It was a weird rule that it wouldn't work real well with the bulls so we you know times have changed maybe it's you know maybe the best way is using the trolleys we have but I saw this and thought the idea might be worth a little breath of life again

okay.

I love that and Jamie Fleming has been talking to some of the merchants recently about having some kind of you know trolley or that would go up and down and take people especially from the inn which would be really cool All right, we have a motion. Randy made a motion?

Is the motion to develop a fleet management plan and then to return at a later time with more information on this surplus? Yes.

I'll

second that.

Great, all right thank you. All right moving it's 6 52 can we move to public communication now

Gail? Let me check if we have one person who signed up let me see if they're there Oh, they're not here yet. We had one person who signed up for public communications but they haven't signed into the meeting yet. Our agenda says public communications at 7 p.m., so it's your call but if you want to do another item and come back see if they've come into the meeting then that's up to you. All right thanks Gail yeah let's move forward to discussion to

COVID Number two, James me or the staff report. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. So we'll have a brief update today. But we wanted to, you know, we've been kind of tracking the case numbers and providing kind of that information. We'll start with that then we'll talk about some of the changes with vaccines and with the state's changes to the reopening process so we'll kind of try cover all those because we're getting a lot of questions on those and hopefully it'll help people to understand. So I think most people probably have heard that the case numbers have really, really significantly come down you know and it's a positive step that as you can see here was almost monthly we were having a doubling of the case number total cases and the cases in the 93023 zip code Now that has dropped off dramatically where there's only been less than 2,000 new cases in the last few weeks and less than a dozen new cases in the 93023 over the last few weeks.

That trend on a county level, state level but also local level that the case numbers are coming down, hospitalizations coming down, ICU bed capacity is getting better And, you know, positive steps there. So what that means is that the case rate is coming down. You can see here that we are at 10.6 cases over a seven day average per 100,000 residents. We talked about this last meeting but to get to red tier at this point which is the next step in the reopening we would need to drop under seven cases per one hundred thousand residents.

Governor Newsom also announced that That metric may change in coming weeks as they roll out more vaccines and this metric may actually increase so that cities are able to move through the tiers a little more quickly, or counties are able to move through the tiers a little more quickly. So right now for the first time in a long time we had gone to all purple tier most restrictive in all of our key areas But you can see here our seven-day testing positivity rate is now dropping to orange tier for the first time in quite a while.

And our health equity testing positivity rate has dropped to red tier, so the only number right now that's holding us back from moving forward a tier is the seven day average case rate and even that's getting very close at this point. So all the statistics that the state uses and the county uses to measure that are trending in the positive direction And I think that we'll be seeing some positive changes in the next couple of weeks.

We went over this in depth last meeting, but I'll just briefly touch on it that as a reminder when we say moving from purple tier to red tier what changes and it's these items that are in bold. So retail stores can increase their capacity. Restaurants can open indoors with the 25% capacity. Gyms can reopen indoors with the 10% capacity Movie theaters can reopen indoors with the 25% capacity and museums, zoos and aquariums can reopen indoor with the 25% capacity.

So that's what we're trending to at this point. The other big change since last meeting actually just recently I think it was Friday that the state announced this is that prior to that announcement whether we were in purple tier or red tier Outdoor live events were not allowed, but that's been tweaked and the state has announced that effective April 1st 2021 outdoor live events with assigned seats can begin according to these Restrictions per each tier. So at worst, if we are purple tier which by April 1st it's looking more and more likely that we won't be purple tier will probably be red tier but at worst purple tier would be that 100 people or less but they have to be visitors from within 120 miles.

But 100 people or less with advanced reservations can attend a live event And so an outdoor live event, I'm sorry. And so that's our right now what's looking like the worst case scenario barring any unforeseen major change. What's looking more likely is by April 1st that we'd actually be probably a red tier at this point which would be actually live outdoor events with the maximum of 20% occupancy and the big limitation that everybody's talking about people may have heard about this on the news over the weekend It will be in-state visitors only is going to be the interesting restriction on that. And then just as we move into other tiers, orange and yellow, the occupancy can increase little by little up to a maximum of 67% in yellow tier.

So that is, that's a big change. That's a complete change from prior where most of the tiers did not allow these events. These are now potentially allowed and it opens up the door for some of the events that we would typically have in Ojai as well. And so to that extent, we've been meeting with all of the event holders We've been essentially meeting with them and telling them to start preparing their plans and their protocols, and that we'll work with them. And we all need to be flexible.

Depending on what tier we're in at the time of these events, depending on how the case number looks statewide in Ventura County We be prepared to have strict protocols and hopefully if things go well, then everything can be a little bit easier. But so far the groups we've been working with that have indicated that they're going to try to put some protocols in place and try to have events is potentially Earth Day is being planned. Art in the Park is currently being planned. Fourth of July events are currently being planned The Sterling concerts, sorry I put contracts, I meant concerts.

They've been postponed until July, but those could potentially be held under these new regulations just with some protocols in place. We also, we kept waiting for good news to start talking about our 100th anniversary plans and I think this is the first meeting where it feels like we have some good news. So we'll start talking about those a little bit more. We didn't want to talk about them when things were negative but we reached out and the museum reached out to us so we're going to work with the museum to start trying to have some safe events for that as well.

And then Ojai Day, I would say we're very preliminarily working on that as far as just seeing what vendors and businesses are interested in coming out this year. So we'll have more reports on that as we get closer but you know the big changes From before that change to the tiers on Friday, most of these events. The answer was just we didn't know if they could happen now it's changed to they're looking very likely that they would be able to happen in some form so You know, news and the big topic is vaccines.

Nordhoff High School is still doing the vaccine clinic Wednesdays Fridays and Saturdays that's operated by the Ojai Valley Hospital. They have appointments going up every week on VenturaCountyRecovers.org and so I had heard this morning And I'm not sure if it changed that there were appointments available for those eligible. So it's something I would suggest checking Monday and Tuesday, if you are in the group of people eligible to get vaccinated. The big change that is coming up on March 15th is that individuals 16 to 64 who have any of these severe health conditions could be eligible to be vaccinated.

And so as we get closer to that, people with these conditions should start checking venturacountyrecovers.org on Monday mornings to try to get appointments and we've heard that people are able to get appointments fairly quickly in at the OI clinic which is really nice that people don't have to figure out how to travel out of the valley to get these vaccines We're continuing COVID testing every Wednesday through the end of the month, and we'll announce if that gets extended.

But it's every Wednesday from 9 to 330 at Sarzotti Park. And we're hearing from people this last couple weeks especially that there's essentially no line at this point in its walk up and get tested so anybody You know, even though the vaccines here anybody who hasn't gotten the vaccine if you think you've been exposed or your you're worried about it. You can you know essentially walk in and get tested in 15 minutes so that's An important tool still to help prevent the spread There's a couple other just quick announcements One is that on March 4 last week Governor Newsom signed an executive order that extended the authorization for cities and other agencies to have the eviction moratoriums for commercial renters impacted by the pandemic, and he extended that through June 30 2021.

So we get a lot of questions still about if there's eviction moratoriums in place and Governor Newsom has allowed that to extend through June 30th. It also extends protections against price gouging, which we have had not recently but early on in the pandemic. We did have reports about price gouging that we had investigated and worked with stores on so Seeing those things happen, it's still prohibited. And they can notify us or other agencies like the county.

The other big news both on an individual level for our residents but also for the city is I believe Thursday the American Rescue Plan Act is supposed to be voted on and it looks like it's likely to get approved It's going to provide stimulus payments to individuals unemployment extended benefits, some school funding and then the critical thing for the city is you know we are.

We are at one year this Saturday we declared a emergency on Friday march 13 last year. So we're hitting one year and we still not received one cent of funding from the state or federal for city services, which most people are aware. The cities have done the bulk of the enforcement and implementation of COVID orders so after one year it's looking likely that city funding will finally be provided We've lost three to $4 million in revenue and we will receive 1.3 million, almost 1.4 million so that is going to be critical for us but we are in a unique situation where most cities because it's based on population they're receiving funding that makes up for their last funding their last revenue I mean And we are going to be, like we always are a unique city in that we're still gonna end up losing substantially more than we receive.

So we're still gonna have a hole to dig out of and it's you know but it's a critical first step so the other point as indicated on this slide is we projected this out a few times We started with $3.4 million for emergency reserves, we're down to about 650,000 so that 1.3 million will be helpful but it's not going to put us back to where we need to be to meet our reserve goal.

At this point we'll be glad to receive anything just like probably most residents and most community members So with that, those are the key updates for the COVID response. And I'll take any happy to answer any questions.

Bill? James, two questions. One is the listing of health care workers as being eligible is in many cases in Ojai not actual reality. What's happening is that People who are caregivers for many elderly households in this community go to get tested, they go oh you're not a part of an institution. Therefore you're not eligible even with a doctor's note saying this person I certify this person is the necessary caregiver for these senior citizens in this household they are being denied getting the vaccine. So basically it's discriminating against assisted care in homes, and I think that's a real problem.

And I don't know if it's going on generally, but it's certainly going on in this valley where there is a growing level of frustration among health care workers for assisted in home care are being denied the vaccines right now. Uh, I know that for a fact I've heard many stories. I don't understand it. I really don't, especially if you have if you can be certified with a doctor's note that in fact, you are not making this up. You actually are doing the service that the county is doing now.

All right. And the second question I have is, I don' understand the rationale of saying in-seat concessions only as being somehow safer than physically distanced Concessions, especially if you could have a rule saying you can't get up during the performance right. But you have to get your concessions ahead of time, physically distance. But they're saying you can't do that. You've got to have people roaming the seat aisles? I don't get it. Yeah.

That second part you just added would actually help and we could try to advocate for that. But what you said about not letting people get up while others are seated, I raised this issue as a question I asked some of our public health experts like what the logic was Phil Kleisler, CoB, ESF-14): For this and they they stated it was to prevent people from getting up you know and walking across the row in front of other people then potentially breathing on the person in front or in back of them. Curt Brown, OSBT & Caleb Melton, OSBT:" But I think we'll have a concessionaire doing the same thing right and I think your point of if there is a rule saying you know that it was designated times are you know before the event and after the event or. Or, you know, an intermission.

Maybe have

more frequent intermissions as part of the rule?

Yeah. And I brought it up in the response I got was that which is true. It's you know, the states announced this but they haven't actually up until noon today was last time I checked. They haven't actually released defined guidelines for these events and so what about

vaccines to health care workers that are in private assisted care capacity?

Yeah, and that one I can raise as an issue to the count or I could try to bring that up to the county. The language there was language in there that in the COVID guideline are the vaccine guidelines about Who they considered to be an eligible healthcare worker and who wasn't. And there was some gray area there, so we can raise that as an issue.

There's no ifs, ands or buts. In-home assisted care healthcare workers are not being allowed to get the vaccines right now unless they're in some other eligible group. I know that for a fact. Yeah, we'll raise

that with the county. I had heard that is what I looked at the language of The language was interesting, but maybe not super clear. Randy

you have a question?

Yeah I just wanted to tag on to what Bill was saying first of all when you're associated with the care system you're trained and you're certified and there are certain specific ways to lift elderly people proper techniques and they're trained in that they're certified in that Um, you know my mother-in-law had we had caregivers for her for five years here in OI.

So the question would be one how can we get these caregivers certified in some capacity that'd be the first question and then and because one of the reasons they're not they can't get shots is they're not licensed they're unskilled So how can we get them skilled and how can we get them classified so that in the event of something like this occurring again, that it's done?

That would be the question to ask the county. And then when I look at the fact that all of the cities in our county are all gonna be receiving millions of dollars including the county which will receive multi-million dollars Is how do we, what type of letter is it appropriate? But how do we reach out to the county and ask for some additional funding. And how can we identify the areas that we need the funding for?

So it was interesting when we were talking about this seating capacity and concessionaires moving around I thought well maybe we could get some funding for these bazookas that shoot hot dogs in the stands You know, or t-shirts. But on a serious note the county is going to receive millions multi-millions of dollars in this package and surely we can write some form of a letter requesting some additional support and actually maybe even contact our County Supervisor Matt Levere and get him on board but We're going to receive the least out of the 10 cities, by far the least. And Fillmore and Santa Paula aren't too far behind.

So

it's just-

It's very hard to explain to people because like other cities you know when everybody remembers the Ben Franklin fight that we had where we said hey our mom and pops are all we have and we need to support them. The city council took that stance early on And the reality was for all the other cities, they kept Walmart open. They kept Target open. They kept Costco open. So their sales tax, their revenue drivers were not impacted the same way ours was where for us though two or three big businesses in town were just shut down.

And so it really is hard to explain to people and that's where to your point is we can figure out how to advocate with the right people on this It seems like people are understanding that small cities that don't have mom and pops were disproportionately impacted by this, and so I've been hearing it a lot lately. City say, well great this revenue will fix our budget gap. For Ojai this revenue will not fix our budget gap it will help a little bit which is-

I have no problem asking them to waive the police services fees for this year either. There's a multitude of things that we can ask for and you know that old adage if you don't ask you don't receive? We need to start asking

Yeah, I think that's fair. We'll start putting some thought into advocating as soon as it gets approved. Any

other questions? Gail any public comment? No public comments. Okay all right well thank you James once again. You basically are a doctor at this point right Did you ever think you'd know so much? Thank

you

for keeping us safe and being ahead of the curve and taking care of business. Thank you.

Mayor, Jim Shelman's in the waiting room did we want to move him forward well um and get him on board before we go to five or how do we want to do this is that acceptable Before we go to four, five and six.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. We can go right now. Sure.

Mayor

Sticks,

we still have public communications. Okay. Can

we do that? Right. We'll do public communication then we'll move on to the workshop. That's

the next one.

Well, there you go.

Okay. So we have one person for public communications. It's Angelo Haynes. Angelo, you should be able to unmute yourself and go ahead and speak.

Hello, good evening City Council of Ojai. My name is Angelo I'm a private citizen. I'd like to just go on the public record and express some of my distaste with the way that the Ventura County Sheriff's Office services contract is being negotiated. I believe that one meeting last summer in which public comment was solicited is not enough public input into such a very critical service At a time when our country is incredibly divided and politically stratified based on this particular issue, I would like to make sure that I repeat and reiterate my demands. The city should pass by either ordinance or resolution the creation of a City Commission composed of community members of diverse skills backgrounds and ethnicities to control and or have greater input into the VCSO police services contract in our community The Ventura County Sheriff's Office must obtain and obligate all deputies working for the City of Ojai to wear body-worn cameras, and they must be used by all deputies while on duty.

The conditions of the Ventura County jails and those currently incarcerated must be improved including improvement of health care administration and the handling of mental illness within the jail. A plan must be created with public input and civilian oversight should be implemented to execute these measures. The formation of an unarmed crisis intervention team should be created to specifically deal with calls related to mentally ill subjects and those dealing with substance abuse.

One example of this type of program is the CAHOOTS Program in Oregon, which has been operating for 30 years. They have had to call for police backup less than 1% of the time, and the program has saved the police departments over $15 million a year. Other examples of programs are Cure Violence and Advanced Peace. I would like to see the release of all documents and communications between the ad hoc committee negotiated new contract with the VCS so for absolute transparency moving forward.

We'd like to create a department of separate unarmed specialized officers who lack arrest power to serve the community during traffic patrol. We'd also love to see a removal of all Blue Lives Matter stickers, flags, clothing masks or any other likenesses from Ojai Police Department office officer uniforms and clothing while on duty and from patrol vehicles. It is only right that the police department which is meant to serve as a neutral body between citizens in the country be as neutral as possible. And when one side wears blue lives matter stickers and the police wear those stickers they are obviously showing which side they're on We must end all voluntary collaboration and transfers between the VCSO and ICE as well.

I believe that Ojai community deserves to be more informed and directly involved in these negotiations for police services, which affect all of us as community members. I believe in a brighter future one in which the dark injustices of the past die in the light of justice of today Let's band together and reshape our public safety. Let's stand strong as a community and address the issues we all face together. I believe that these values are in complete line, alignment with the City of Ojai's progressive values. And I believe that Betsy her leadership is definitely what we need to push this forward. And i hope that I can get the cooperation of the entire council on this thank you.

Thank you Angelo any other comments Gail?

No further comments.

Okay, all right well then moving on to number three the workshop.

Yeah you're right Susan sorry about

that and I'll give a quick introduction while we let Jim in so we have a workshop scheduled for Saturday morning at 9am. We wanted to take the opportunity to ask and Jim was willing to come kind of explain The plan for the goal setting and then to let Council ask any questions or give any feedback. So with that, I'll up there. I didn't see you for a second Jim sorry about that so without all handed over to Jim to kind of give us the background.

Good well first of all good evening everyone James asked that I take no more than about 10 minutes here to give you an overview of kind of my approach and where I'm coming from and how I facilitate these kinds of conversations. I'm going to try to do that in five minutes, and then leave some room for questions. Briefly, my background is I was a partner in a big eight accounting firm in 1975.

And I became fascinated with the question of why is it so difficult to implement change? And as a consequence, I gave up my partnership. Came to California and began working with a lot of different people and researchers and so forth and so on. And was one of the first two or three people that began to talk about organizational culture prior to 1975. That concept did not exist.

Some of you may remember that later on in around the 80s, the word paradigm began to emerge as a way of accounting for why Things tend to change very slowly or not at all, and why it is so difficult to implement change. I'm generally credited for being the first person to distinguish coaching in the context of business and started a university in Argentina to teach coaching as the first accredited program of that sort. So I've been a participant and a kind of pioneer for about almost 40 years in the area of transformation And specifically developing a body of knowledge around that. That's very, very rigorous and very grounded in mostly philosophy and some science but it's been practiced in thousands of different organizations and is a different approach, a different mindset for approaching traditional kinds of activities like planning so that's sort of my background.

In terms of the workshop on Saturday My context for everything I do is leadership. So in my view, any planning but specifically getting together as the council is an exercise in leadership and it's not merely a planning exercise. As a consequence, I view leadership as being about creating the future. I don't view leadership as sort of overseeing a process And that's been a foundation for virtually everything I do.

The other thing that's fundamentally central to my work and would be central in our conversation on Saturday, is that I don't believe anything happens in the absence of action. Action is what produces the reality we live in now. Action is what's gonna produce whatever the future is. One of our contributions is to distinguish that our work or your work as leaders gets done in conversations. That's the playing field of leadership, and it's the domain in which actual actions can be generated to produce one future versus another future.

At the core of this is the idea that commitment is fundamental. Commitment is action in conversation. All of us have been able to hear and participate in conversations Talk about change, but don't change anything. And most of us have participated in conversations that actually do change something. So I view Saturday as an opportunity for you to engage in a conversation, a meaningful conversation with each other specifically around what is the future that you intend that be created for Ojai and that future then is backed up by your commitment?

I have a distinction I use quite often called alignment. That at the end of the day, regardless of how you get to a decision or whatever disagreements you may have amongst yourselves, once you make a decision, once you make a commitment that's the voice of leadership, the voice of leadership in the community. So in my judgment what I understand you're trying to do on Saturday is to give a voice to articulate what is the future that you, the council are speaking for and standing for in terms of the future. Now how big a timeframe you want to look at is your choice?