City Council — 2021-05-11

Let me make sure, James on or Gail are we on? We're live. Okay

thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. All

right next we have a presentation from our own beloved Tiffany Morse school superintendent and as we all know Tiffany has...

Did

I miss something? Sorry.

Did we want to give Barbara?

I'm sorry, I'm just moving right along.

Yeah

it's Barbara here. Yes

yeah a lot of boxes on screen but yeah Barbara is here so she looks

beautiful. I'm sorry Barbara oh my gosh you're gorgeous look at you and your background hi! Hi

well Mayor Sticks and Mayor Pro Tem Weirich and Arts Commissioner Tasha and Vice Chair Chisholm, and the members of the City Council, and the members of the Art Commission. I am overwhelmed. I am really overwhelmed. And I don't know whether you can all see this but this is a beautiful award that was brought over to me last Friday honoring this occasion. I want to thank you for this enormous honor and the beautiful award, and for recognizing the value of the arts and how they affect every part of our lives.

For me, the arts are comprised of the visual arts, the performing arts, and the written word. My interest was fostered by my parents from early childhood and is the thread that connects my entire life. Although my activities involve the visual arts and the performing arts, I think the most significant projects include the arts in healthcare And now there was so much said that I am really overwhelmed and this might be redundant. But, you know, it just shows that art is more than just a picture on the wall for health care research has shown that the exposure of art in the hospital shortens patient stays reduces blood pressure and relieves tension for not only the patients, but for their visitors, their family members and the health providers.

30 years ago when I did do the project at Tiverton House that was already mentioned it was the beginning of the recognition of the arts in healthcare That was at UCLA. That is a hundred room patient family guest house that houses those patients who are in treatment or their families who are visiting with them and staying with them. I was really honored when 20 years ago, the Ojai Valley Hospital invited me to do the same kind of project here under Operation Picasso.

And then, of course just two years ago when we completed the CMHS project which was all also mentioned before I keep saying I but you know that that's not the whole story Throughout my life, collaboration with co-chairs, hospital administrations, mentors and supporters have allowed these projects to come to fruition. I know that my allotted time is short but I really need to thank the following people.

Don't worry it's not more than an alphabet's length. They are Tony, Francine, Minna, Hans and Gretel, my parents. Sheila, Karen, Cheryl, Steffi, Royce, Denise, Debbie, Barbara, Joan, Neva, Richard, Susan, Ray, Hadi, Adam, Mustafa, Elise, Arina, Alan, Mitzi, Ann, Terry, Christine, Nancy, Chris, Teresa and of course my three children their spouses and my six grandchildren.

That's a mouthful. The activities that you're honoring me for tonight taught me about creativity, collaboration, leadership, friendship, giving and receiving. My life has been so much richer and more purposeful by participating in the arts. I have received so much more than I have given And I really want to thank you again, Ojai City Council and the Ojai Arts Commission for this meaningful honor and the beautiful Fused Glass Award.

So thank you with all my heart.

Thank you so much, Barbara. Incredible. Thank you for all you've given to our community. So grateful and so fun to see you here. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Marcy. Thank you. Thank you. All right now we can move on next. Bye bye. Thank Next, we have a presentation from our own Tiffany Morse. Dr. Tiffany Morse, our school superintendent about a year in COVID and I just want to say a huge thank you to Tiffany because we all know how challenging it has been for all schools and kids and parents and families and it's been on some ways a lose-lose and Tiffany, you've made it a win-win so really grateful to you We're just really lucky to have you, so thank you.

I am going to share my screen and while I do that, I'd just like to thank you Mayor Sticks, City Council members and Mr. Vega for having me here tonight on behalf of the Ojai Unified School District Board. And I'm gonna put this into present mode. This is actually, I believe, my first time that I've presented this update to you. I came a couple of years ago when Mr. Cantwell was giving his last presentation to you Obviously, things were a little more difficult. So I'm excited to be here tonight to present to you an overview of where we are in the school district.

So just start by saying one of our big achievements this year was that our School Board adopted seven overall goals that now guide our strategies and where we're going in the district And I won't read all of these to you, but you can see that we have a focus on whole child student achievement, innovation equity. Also reflecting our community values facilities and fiscal health. And so I'm just going to share with you tonight a few updates that we have on some of these items that I think might be most interesting to you tonight.

So first just an overview of where we are in the district. Our enrollment remains steady in the 2020-21 school year Which was quite amazing because it dropped significantly for many other districts in the county. We were able to remain within about five students, which was great. After we returned to school in March, we were the second school district in the county to return for in-person attendance and 75% of our students are now attending in person. Which is a much higher percentage than most school districts around the county and the state have.

Partially, I think because we came back earlier. Our budget also remains steady in the 2020-21 school year. That's good and bad. We of course would always like to have more revenue so that we can do some of the things that we need to do district wide like employee pay. But we also did not see the significant reduction that we thought we would have in early March. That's great. We were actually last year able to double our reserve for economic uncertainty, so that's good that we are moving in a steady fiscal direction.

A few highlights for you from our facilities and things that we are very proud of that we've been able to accomplish this year. First is the Matilla Hot. These are no particular order by the way. But first is the Matillaha Watershed Mural that we were able to install on the side of our Place to Grow preschool. That has been very popular and that was, of course, done with an Arts Commission grant which we are very grateful for. We're continuing to make improvements in that area so that people can enjoy that mural. We have some tables and umbrellas ordered that will be putting together as soon as we can We also have been working community-wide on our field and court improvements. So we really see our facilities as a community asset, and so we want to make sure that as the community is enjoying those that they are the best quality we possibly can.

So we've been working on gopher abatement you'll see at the basketball courts at Matilla Hub very nice new backboards that are enjoyed Frequently by the community. There's hardly ever a time that I drive by that. I don't see, you know, 20 or 30 people out playing basketball on those courts on the weekends. We also are working to install a disc golf course in the next couple of months at Matilla Hut, which we're excited about. So nine hole disc course golf that'll disc golf course that will be on the campus there for our students to enjoy. And then we assume also that the community may take advantage of that as well.

We have our Measure K school bond that passed this year in November for $45 million. We are working on the project planning for that and making sure that we are good stewards of that money, and looking at the overall needs of the district and looking forward One of the pieces of that is a master plan at Nordoff. So we have added on to Nordoff over the years, um, without really an overall strategic vision of what's needed at the site and how all of the pieces play together. So now that we are also working simultaneously on the pool and having community use at the pool at Nordoff, we want to make sure that we are really strategically positioning things on the campus So that they make the most sense. So we have a stakeholder feedback meeting for the Nordoff master plan, I believe the first week of June and we're working on several different options of what that looks like thinking really thoughtfully about our athletic fields and what that looks like.

The location of the pool parking tennis courts basketball courts it's likely that we will need to build a new And then for the pool, we are in our planning phase. We've had one stakeholder meeting and But really ensuring that what we develop will be able to be accessed both by the school and by the community. I wanted to share with you a little bit about what we're doing in terms of student and family services, because this has been a huge area focus for us this last year during COVID when we first We closed our schools on March 16th last year. Our number one priority was mental health services, and we have continued that to this day providing mental health services for our students and also regular sessions for our parents who may be struggling with how to support their children during this difficult time.

We also have had a focus on internet, providing internet and technology throughout the district so one-to-one devices for our students, hotspots for our families that don't have easy access to internet or don't have adequate internet to support the distance learning that was taking place this year. We also started last year something that we call Family Fund which is a program that's part of the district that supports the needs of our lowest income families throughout the district and so we provide a number of different services from Bikes, we've given away 150 bikes to families over the last year and a half. We have a regular and ongoing clothing closet. We collected gift cards for families over the holidays.

And generally other needs that families may have are handled through our family fund even for example trolley tokens for families who don't have regular transportation to get to and from school. We also have been providing meals to anyone in the community who has students, whether they attend Ojai Unified or not. And to date since last March we've served over 200,000 meals to families.

And then finally just a little overview of some of our community programs and partnerships that we're very proud of. We have something called A Place at the Table which is really Grown out of our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Guiding Coalition which is a partnership of community members, staff members, parents and students. They are interested in this diversity and equity work. And so we have a monthly event that's open to everyone in the community that is in honor of the monthly commemorative events. So for example, we had Black History Month Women's History Month, where Mayor Sticks was a fabulous panelist. We had Asian Pacific Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month just last week I believe.

So we're excited for those and excited for those to continue next school year really to begin this dialogue in the community, continue this dialogue that we're having around how we can support everyone in the community to have a place at the table regardless of their heritage, background or anything else. We also partner with the Secure Beginnings Diaper Bank and we host them here at the district office. They deliver their diapers from the central location here.

We also coordinate with our meal service and so families are able to come and get diapers and meals. And then finally, we are partnering with the library The Ventura County library system, they have lost their lease in the Miners Oaks Library. And so we're developing and designing a public library to be at Miners Oaks Elementary School that's a joint partnership. So we're very excited about that and we hope to have that complete in the next 12 months or so.

And with that, that is the end of my very brief overview. I know your time is very valuable and so I will take any questions that you may have.

I just want to say thank you Tiffany for your heroic amount of work and just helping so many people members of our community. And I mean, so many ask, you know, the mental health services, the family fund all the collaboration with our community. So thank you. Thank you.

Very great team of people working here at the district office. 300 employees who work every day to make that happen.

And the plan for the pool, a lot of people are excited about that so thank you. Anybody questions anybody? OK alright well thank you so much for coming Tiffany and see in the neighborhood real soon

yes

I thank you thank you bye. All right, no more presentations James. Okay any commission reports?

I do not believe we had any commissioners. We did not have any commissioners signed up when i checked earlier let's confirm that. Gail are there any commissioners signed up to speak under commissioner reports?

No none

okay thanks all

right moving on to public communication. We have no one signed up for public communications Okay

moving right along to the consent calendar a motion to approve.

We have one person who wants to speak on an item on the consent calendar okay.

Shall we pull it? What what item is

it? I don't know um it's Mr. Miley, I can bring him in.

If I could jump in there Madam Mayor my recommendation would be take a second as I didn't hear a second then take the comment and then vote it's up to the council to pull an item or not not members of the public Okay. You can take Mr. Miley's comments after a second, but before the vote.

Okay. Who was the first? Made the motion to approve and I'll second it.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Thanks Matt. And may we hear from Mr. Miley now Gail? One

moment. Let me bring him in.

All right. Thank you.

Mr. Miley, you should be able to speak now if you can go ahead.

Good evening. I'm aware that this agenda item is about allocating more reserve funds for the law firm we've contracted with to be able to continue participating in the Ventura River Watershed adjudication, and I'm okay with that but I'm not happy with the City of Ventura for adding us to this messy water conflict especially after seeing what appears to be hundreds of high-end rental apartments Built on the bluffs above the Ventura Freeway. Now they're running.

Just where is all this new water coming from? When several years ago, the Santa Barbara channel keepers challenged excessive water use from the Ventura River which is now the lawsuit. Another complaint I have is about how Ventura planning decisions created the first row of New apartments overlooking the ocean with four stories. And the ones behind are lower.

What's the justice for not allowing more units to see the ocean by building the first row one story, and each behind a story higher? At least more get to see the iconic view. This way only those with money who can pay the higher rents get to see it. Social justice has not served. These are all good reasons for not looking to Ventura for any planning ideas. Boo on them!

Thank you. Good night.

Thank you, Bill.

Yes.

Great, thanks Gail. All right moving on to discussion items number two my Ohai smartphone. Exciting!

Yeah so we're here today to launch a project that was identified as a City Council goal back in 2018 it was actually one of the last few items on that list that hadn't been completed And it was to enhance our communication by investigating what's called a citizen request management application, which allows residents to quickly and easily submit issues or find information from the city and other agencies.

And so we looked at it back at that time. People may recall we actually had a demonstration at a City Council meeting but the cost was very high and the functionality To the level we were looking for, so we continue to reach out to different groups and we found and connected with GoGov who helped us put together the MyOhi app. And they helped us put it together, we tested it out, and we think it has great functionality. One of the key items that has is the ability to submit a complaint That shows the location of the complaint where somebody can quickly and easily add a picture from their phone and upload that, and we have photos of that complain or that issue. And so here today we are launching the software, launching the application. It's available as we speak on the Apple Store and Android is the MyOhi app.

So anybody watching that wants to follow along can go and download by searching for MyOhi and it'll come up And with that, we wanted to start with a demonstration tonight from GoGov. And I believe we have Kevin, I believe is attending to give us the presentation and I think he is coming in now. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Kevin to walk us through a demonstration of the MyOhai smartphone app.

Yeah, thanks James I appreciate it. Thank you everyone for letting me join to do this so yeah as James mentioned it's a citizen request management software which is just going to make it easier to do all the things that James kind of described and really the parts I would like to focus on with you today are the citizen facing pieces. There's two main citizen facing pieces that are going to be available The first one of course is the mobile app, which is really the star of the show for most of our customers. And it's called MyOhai, search for in the Apple Store or the Google Play Store and once downloaded on the device really kind of the story we're telling to citizens is hey download the MyOhai app and number one get all sorts of useful information at your fingertips and that's these buttons that you see here These are completely controlled and dictated by the city, they can be changed at any time.

And essentially it's pointing to specific content that's available on the city's website. There's a school of thought that folks are less likely on a mobile phone to open a web browser, Google the city find the website and browse the pages. So the concept here is to kind of pull out and surface specific things that people might want to have quick access to like the recreation website or any of these other pages that you see here these are all readily available for people and once they're done browsing them they land right back here on the app home screen.

Of course, the other main thing they're going to be able to do through the app is to do a service request. So if I see a pothole code enforcement concern you know ultimately all city departments can be represented on here. I have some sort of question or request i'll hit this start request button and what i'm seeing here are listing of topics that were collaborated on with the city staff for things that we've made available for citizens to submit And you can see all sorts of different categories here. I can scroll through them as people start to use the app, this popular section at the top will get filled in with things that are most commonly asked for so that you know most access ones are readily available and of course i could search through here.

So let's say I saw a pothole on my street that I wanted to report. I simply choose it from the list and it's a very simple two-step process to get something submitted The first is, hey do you have a photo to better help us identify this issue? And if I didn't i can still submit it or maybe I want to open my camera and snap a picture right here and now. Most commonly what we find is folks have already taken a few photos when they go to report it so they'll grab a few pictures out of their camera roll. I've got a pothole or two here that I'll throw in and then once they click next what the app will do is go to either A use your current location or B pull location right off of the photo and assume that's where the issues submitted If for some reason that's not available, we will show them this map as you just saw where they can go ahead and drag and drop the pin to kind of indicate where the issue is.

You'll also notice there's a boundary around the city which ensures that all the requests that the staff receive are actually from within the area that we actually service right? We always joke with our customers everyone usually has enough of their own work to do. We definitely don't need to be spending time working for other municipalities so it definitely makes it easy in that sense. And then in terms of what else is done That's completely based on the type of thing that we're submitting. So for example, what we ask and require of someone to report a pothole to us might be very different than what we ask and require of them to report you know tall grass and weeds or to do like a public records request so the type of things that you require will fully be dictated by the type of issue.

So here it looks like we just require a description I might say please fix this pothole Thanks. And then all they'll have to do is go ahead and click submit, you will notice here at the bottom I have this option for private or anonymous. Essentially this is giving me the choice for either submit this request with my contact information alongside of it which is beneficial as a citizen if there are any citizens listening because if you can submit this with your information one of the things the software will do is that as the staff are using the staff facing software to work the issue to completion Automated messages will go back to the citizen via push alert, keeping them up-to-date with the status and ultimately letting them know when it was closed.

However there are certain situations where we might not feel comfortable providing our name with said complaint so that we do have the option for anonymous in which case no information is collected. So they'll simply click submit And that's it, it's that simple. Thanks them for their submission I'll also receive an email to my email address confirming my submission giving me a thank you message and then as I mentioned get kind of status updates and a closure notice when this is eventually complete.

Citizens will also have access as they start doing a few requests to this track request button which will show them not a list of open issues across the whole city but rather just a list of things that they've submitted to us in the past and then they can click on the details so here's an example of one That was closed out already, where the big green tag will indicate to me that it's closed. I've got this checkmark that says resolution with some text underneath it that's essentially showing me or explaining to me hey this is why the city staff went ahead and close this out so it's definitely a useful tool we have over I think it's now like 75 municipalities just in the state of California That use this solution so if you look around to some of your neighbors, you know you might find a an app that kind of looks familiar in terms of the layout and some of the functions.

Also just as an example here is the email that I got when I submitted this dear Kevin we assure you a positive experience. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you and it gives me a little summary of what it is that I submitted and even expectation of when I could think that this request might get handled so These are the types of things that are going to have is definitely great for customer service.

There is a second citizen facing piece as well, because getting folks on the app would be fantastic. But we also are always going to have people still visit the website and we want to make sure we can provide them service there and not have to tell them, hey, you need to go download an app. So that's what you're seeing here. This is your website. And this piece right here is actually from our software. And literally it's a duplicate of all those topics or submission that were available in the app. And I can, you know, expand and collapse the categories and browse through them. Or I could go ahead and search like if I search for pothole that starts to come up. If I search for the word code I get an article about the municipal code so there's all sorts of things built in here.

So if I was to go ahead and choose an abandoned vehicle complaint here's what doing a request through the web would look like where I see the map with the boundary or I can certainly you know kind of zoom in if I need to be able to do that and drag and drop the pin You know, you can even drag the little street view guy over if you want to kind of really pinpoint where on the street this issue is located. This will allow me to do that and place the pin appropriately.

Fill out the rest of my information. Go ahead and add my photos or attachments if I had those available here on my desktop, or maybe I was doing this through my phone if I didn't know the app existed, and click submit. And I'll get the automated email. I'll get the email notice when it closes. And yeah, at the end of the day this is definitely going to be a really awesome tool for request submission. And then kind of the last piece to mention of this is the citizen notification part so once you have the app in everyone's hands and I'm just using my example app here to show you show you a couple messages The city will now be able to push out mass alerts. So there's going to be the ability on the staff side to create a message, whether it's for like a road closure or COVID update or an event announcement or whatever it happens to be and send it out.

And it'll go to anyone that has the MyOhi app in real time as a push notification through your app. It also goes out via email and can push to social media so someone could get a road closure notification that looks something like this delivered right to their device. And it's super easy to use I think the staff has picked it up really well from what I understand, talking to my co worker that's kind of working with them to train on it. And it's just a great tool and then of course there's, you know, a whole staff facing part of this as well. That really promotes like the streamlining of working on these things, having things in a centralized place. You know, as a city council I would say one of the biggest benefits outside of the kind of citizen customer service angle is your ability now to get data.

Once everything's under one roof you can really start to get a feel for where we're spending our time, where we have certain types of issues. James would be able to go in the system now and say pull a report of all the potholes that were filled last year and even say where were they and show it on a map represented with pins Or to find out any requests that are still open, because maybe we're waiting on something. So these are all things that will be unlocked and really looking forward to working with you on it. I'm really excited that it's launching and I'll definitely open up for any questions if anyone has any.

I have a question.

Sure.

May I? Mayor Stix? Go ahead. How does this work for time-sensitive situations Is there, is there like some way or would that person just use a more old fashioned method like picking up the phone? Or is there like a little button that says you know urgent or

Great question. So that's a great question so, you know, there's a couple disclaimers throughout the app that just remind people that this is not an emergency services app and for all emergencies that we should still always dial 911. The idea here is to take things that would have been phone calls and represent them with a digital submission for both parties best concern The staff when they take phone calls will still be able to enter things in here. So to answer it directly, there is no hey I need this done more quickly button or anything like that but we would hope that the types of things coming in here you know are being seen faster. There is the ability to escalate internally so if it is identified by the staff as something that maybe needs to go a little quicker there is the ability to kind of find it and surface it.

Okay so It sounds like staff is looking at this on a regular basis. So say someone notices their neighbor is cutting down an oak tree, you wouldn't call 911 normally but could they get a response? Sure,

sure. So let's say someone notices that someone's cutting down an oak tree, you know, they want it depends on I guess what time of day and when and what your procedure is if that was happening, you know, if you're trying to have someone come stop them immediately. You know, your best bet might be to call. Staff are looking at this I believe you know the way it works ma'am is that every type of thing that can be submitted has a predetermined staff member that gets assigned to it and when one comes in there's actually an automated email that's going to be delivered to that staff person to go ahead and let them know hey there's been a new issue submitted to you so it might look something like this Let me just pull this over. So they're going to get a real-time email that says, hey, you've been assigned the new request and it'll tell them where it's located and show them the photos that were submitted with it, and then give them a link to get into all of the details for it.

So there will be people that are notified. Now, of course, then the procedure of what you do with these will dictate kind of how quickly that happens. That's an interesting scenario that you're describing. You know, even a phone call might not guarantee somebody is able to go over there right that second. So that one's a little tough for me to say either way, but generally speaking, that is how it works.

And I'll just add on real quick, Kevin that all of our standard response responses and communication techniques are in place. So if somebody has an urgent item that they want to call City Hall for they still can but they don't have to if they don't want to because because of this app and the software they can simply take a picture and upload it or they could still call us the old fashioned way so

Thank you. That sounds great.