City Council — 2021-06-08

Are we ready?

Recording

in progress. Okay, good evening. Ojai City Council June 8th 2021 meeting call to order may we have a we have quorum and we have a roll call please Gail.

Yes.

Thank you, Gail and

Bill will you please? I have a question am i supposed to click continue or will that do something weird?

I think click continue. I think I just clicked that too. You can

click continue.

commission reports James?

I didn't actually, I think there may have been one commissioner on but I'm not sure if they were on for the commissioner report or another item. Is there a commissioner signed up for this?

No commissioners signed up for the commissioner's reports. Okay

thank you.

All right we'll

move

on to public communication.

We do have public

comment. Public comments please Steve.

We have two speakers. The first one is Severo Lora, and I'll go ahead and bring him in. Severo you should be able to speak now if you're muted please unmute yourself and go ahead you have three minutes.

Okay could everybody hear me?

Yes

yes

okay yeah thank you Mayor Sticks and council members I really appreciate you guys having me here. I know it's kind of different, I'm not used to this whole virtual stuff being on the dais with you guys or with some of you guys, it's different times but I just wanted to get on here just opportunity because I heard that our Public Works Director Mr Grant has departed, don't know any details or anything why or if he's retiring or whatever his plans are but I just wanted to take some time to recognize him as somebody that have has worked with them and known him for quite some time.

And the amount of work that he gave to this community and expertise. Just one of those staff members that try to stay the course, try to follow the council member's direction was honest trustworthy. I just have lots of good things to say about Mr. Grant and my experience with them often on and off the council. very stand up guy who really wanted nothing but good things for the city of Ojai. And it just, it brings me sadness that he's moving on or if he retired, he's just planning his life. But I think that as a Ojai resident, I think we're losing a strong staff member and I just wanted to recognize him during your public meeting And I wish him the best in his endeavors.

And I know that wherever he goes, he's going to be an asset and more than anything not only was he a great staff member but I witnessed him being an amazing father and nothing, and also just a wonderful husband. So I know that he's with the good hands and I just wish him the best. And I just wanted to say it in public. So thank you for your time and appreciate your willingness to hear me.

Thank you, Severo. Next Gail?

We also have Wendy Lerner signed up, but she is not in the queue. So that is the last person I have showing signed up for public communications.

Okay thank you all right moving on to the consent calendar a motion to approve everything? Move to approve.

Yeah I'll second.

Okay, great. All right, may we have a vote

Yes, we have, whoops. Sorry I had my mic off. We have Bill Miley is the one speaker on this. Bill you should be able to talk if you're muted please unmute yourself and go ahead.

Yeah for the record, my name is Bill Miley. It's a good thing I didn't have any critiquing of that but anyway, I would like to just say that I liked the list for road maintenance. I'm glad we are doing that. I went over the list and I like what you're doing I also like, I've been supporting the library tax for years. I'm glad we're doing it again. Also, I like the... Let's see what do we have here?

I guess that's about it. Oh no, assessments for the lighting and landscaping district. I've been supporting that for years. Notably there's no increase, that's great Same way with the Arquette Plaza Maintenance District. Pleased that that's continuing, no increase. So I'm just impressed with what management and the council did on the city on all of this. Thanks.

Thank you Mr. Miley. All right is that it Gail? Yes, that's it. Can

we make a comment Mayor Stuckey? Yeah sure. So we're in agreement that we are not meeting in July, just so the public knows there's no City Council meetings in July.

Great. Yeah and we'll post notice of that on our website and on the doors so everybody is aware as well.

Good. Okay, well moving on to discussion. I just wanted to review a couple protocols so we can have the most efficient and civil meeting possible. So just reminder for staff questions please make sure the question is a question and doesn't turn into a comment. So quick question like tennis game no cross talk so please bring it back to the chair to me And let's just make sure it's all civil discourse. It's okay to disagree, not make it personal and in terms of responding to public comment you know quick response is fine please don't make it a conversation and of course no swearing children are watching.

Okay let's move on to number four COVID.

I think we have, we actually have two public hearings. Yeah, Bill

Riley thought it was part of the consent calendar but we have two and three. Okay let's move on to number two.

Okay and i'll keep these pretty brief because actually overall I think it's actually pretty good news. I think um uh the first item the lighting and landscaping district assessments The item is to adopt the resolution, well hold the public hearing, adopt a resolution to levy the assessments for the landscaping and lighting districts. And then one in three and then to move forward with that process. I think the good news is that for years and years these reports started with this is how much further in debt these funds are but as the report noted And I think it was 20, I don't have it written down yet. Several years back, I think it was 2012 to 16 if I recall the voters had approved an increase to these assessments to get them out of the deficit that they had fallen into.

It was a 5% increase each year for five years which has now been completely implemented And the good news is after much effort, we are finally at the point where those funds are out of a deficit and are actually building up a small surplus that can be used for bigger improvements. With the approval of this item, we anticipate that the lighting and landscaping district funds will end the year with a $180,000 fund balance Which means that that's money that can be used, or that's after paying for streetlight expenses. And then that money could be used to start doing some repairs to curbs, gutters and street trees. So I think just to kind of wrap it up you know for years and years we would come and say this is how much further in a deficit we are.

For the first year we have we have an adequate fund balance To levy the assessments and make sure that we have the funding there to continue to do these repairs. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Randy?

James how can we increase The amount of money that we have, this $26,000 isn't going to go very far. It might prune five trees. It might replace 20 feet of sidewalk. It might do 10 feet of curb. How do you assess this and how can we move forward with generating more income for these special districts to actually do special projects within these districts?

The point we've built up to at this point isn't enough to do a whole lot of work. I think the, we are at the point now where we paid off the deficit and we have a small surplus. If we continue on in this rate, I think we were anticipating that it would be about $30,000 of additional surplus a year. So it will take awhile to build up a big surplus to do any sort of big project But at this point, the district is paying the cost that it hadn't been paying before. So I guess it's a glass half full situation but if we were going to increase it, because of Proposition 218 would have to be a vote and so You know, it would be a question of if the voters would support increasing it to be able to do even more projects. But at this point we are you know...

It should be noted it's an accomplishment to even get to the point where it's paying for itself at this point and so that'll be the next question. Do we want to go further? Bill and then Randy.

Is that is the electronic hand working Mayor or it is okay good. Has the Edison tariff been modified to actually give the jurisdictions a reasonable rate of return by Edison? When you do LED retrofits for years, the tariff really didn't give cities a rate of return. And then there's still the issue of for years, a lot of cities have tried to get these these polls back and I guess nothing's changed there. So, I basically wondered if anything has changed in terms of the tariff to make it more realistic for the energy savings of LED replacement and also if there is any change in terms of cities being able to get this equipment back under their control?

So the short answer is no. I think, I reported on this last year when we were finally saying maybe by next year we'll actually break even so you know that we had looked at it last year and if people may recall that we had talked to other cities about joining kind of a coalition to do that to take back the polls and have some options there It didn't go very far, I think because of COVID. It's just none of the cities have the time to really make progress on it. So that's something we can follow up on. Actually, the other day I thought about reaching out and asking- And

then what about the tariff? For years, the Public Utilities Commission set the tariffs so it really didn't pay you to put even with the dramatic energy savings of LED, you didn't get it accruing to the fund. Is that changed too? Has the tariff changed at all? Not to my

knowledge, but we could do more research on that. Not to my knowledge at this time, but we'll look into it.

Because that's also an energy efficiency and it's really ultimately a greenhouse gas issue too. Yeah.

Can I just ask you how much time that will take you James? To do

that? We had met with another city about trying to get the poles back Um, like a coalition. Like it'll be, you know, the group of cities are going to work together on it and that one will take some time. Uh, look, you know, I've like, you know, if I were to estimate, I think we spent maybe 20 hours on it last year and didn't get where we wanted to be with it because all the cities were having distractions, but I would estimate this year we'll probably put another 20 hours into that. And then, uh, the tariffs, we could research that in a couple of hours.

Okay, thanks. And just a quick any new street light locations or not?

So potentially as part of some of the other projects we're working on that will come back to council there's going to be some street light options but not related to this item so

okay great thank you. Do you need a motion? Randy it's a question

I had two more questions. One, James in each of these special districts you know how many lights are in each one of them so that we could reconcile how much savings or potential savings and the other thing is again going back to my question about special projects I know I'm in one of these districts. So to me, if someone came to me and proposed that we were going to do so much curb and gutter or so much sidewalk or so much in addition to our annual CIP expenditures it...I might be willing to say well I'd love to participate in increasing the tax in my special district. So, I just think that we need to figure out how to look outside of this box of slowly fulfilling it with very little funding and think about how we can actually fund something and then designate those funds for that.

The mayor and I both live right by Drown, and I received an incredible letter today about speed bumps and speeding and the lack of curb and a lack of gutter. And it's just a horrible street. So again, if that's part of district one or district three, it seems to me that we could earmark something to enhance or expedite the improvement on that street as something in your special district.

I think we need to start looking at this a little differently than just accepting what little bit of money we get on an annual basis.

People on drown would sure be happy.

We'd all be happy.

Yes, we would.

That's all I have.

Anything else?

Yes,

we have one speaker Bill Miley. I can bring him in.

Mr. Miley, you should be able to speak.

I'm Bill Miley. I am back again. I did make a mistake but I had forgotten that there was a deficit for a bunch of years and so I am impressed by the manner in which the deficit has been filled up and we're operating in black I think Randy's comment is really good about Drowned. I'd like to see something done about that, and maybe the capital improvement project funds could be done. That's really a bad street.

Thanks.

Mr. Miley? Any more? No

further public comments. Okay,

thank you very much.

Do we need a motion?

First to close the public hearing and then a motion would be in order if that was the council's preference.

Okay, let's close the hearing please. Okay,

I'll make a motion. Sure thanks Susan. So we've already done the first part So we are, I make a motion to adopt a resolution ordering the work and levering the assessments for landscaping and lighting district number one without an increase of or during 2021. Do I need to read it? Can I just say and three and four?

That'd be fine. The motion is to adopt, to move the recommended action items two, three, and four.

Yeah. That's the

motion.

Thank you.

Second.

Great, all right. May we have a roll call please, Gail?

We have one more public hearing for the arcade district.

Sorry.

Let's do it. Thank you. So yeah, the next public hearing very similar but it's for the Arcade Plaza Maintenance District which Was a result of the fact that after the renovation, the $2.5 million renovation of the Arcade Plaza in 2002, that over the years we realized that there was more and more maintenance and repairs needed on the Arcade Plaza. So in 2012 much like the lighting and maintenance district, a voter approved 5% per year increase went into effect to try Reversed the trend of deficits. There have been deficits of up to $40,000 per year prior to that.

Similarly, although not quite as much of a surplus, those assessments have gone into place. We've made up the deficits and again another accomplishment where this year we are actually at a, we've erased the deficits and we are at a fund balance of $10,000 To Council Member Haney's point, there's not a whole lot we could do with $10,000 but the first step was to get out of the deficit and out of debt on those funds. And we have done that.

But so this public hearing is our staff is recommending that city council hold the public hearing and then adopt the resolution to levy the assessments for fiscal year 21 and 22. So with that, I can answer any questions.

Randy?

I just can't let this go. Every year we do this and every year I come back saying the same thing. How? And I think what this plays into is James, I asked recently for in fact, Two or three months ago to have a maintenance assessment for all of our facilities. And I think this would play right into that, that if we had it we'd have a clear evaluation of the conditions of our facilities and then we could actually earmark funding Rather than waiting for someone to call us and say, we got a leaky roof. So I'm just trying to think how we can be more proactive in these special districts and like to see you put on your thinking cap between now and let's say next year and let us figure something out.

And so-

Yeah, I think the one thing to keep in mind for any of these rates to change, we'd have to go through a Prop 218 vote process which would Probably we'd have to aim for, or I think we would aim for that to be in 2022. So just as far as timing and process it would have to go through Prop 218 there would be some cost but we can start thinking about that so. Thank you.

Bill? Just to be clear I assume correct me if i'm wrong and so it's a question that this includes landscaping, maintenance expenditures in the plaza and a program of landscaping to Randy's point. A program of landscaping could be an eligible 218 planned expenditure. Okay yeah this does include landscaping thank you

any other questions uh public comment Gail

yes we We have one public comment from Bill Miley. I will bring him in. Bill, you should be able to speak. Go

ahead. Hi. I am here, Bill Miley. I have nothing else to do so that's why I pay attention. I was impressed that there was nobody against this from the Arcade Plaza businesses. That was impressive. I didn't hear anybody supportive of it but silence would be support. So I was impressed. I'm impressed that we have a positive balance, that's great. It's the core of our city folks as you know, okay?

But I would like to see more greenery in the arcade somewhere more trees on Ojai Avenue or plants along with the city areas so it looks like there's a little bit more life there. That might be nice, I would like that. But anyway, I'm very impressed with what I read and what exists. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Miley.

That's it Gail? That's it no more public speakers.

Okay we'll close the public hearing. Discussion? I

have a question. Do things like benches in that area come out of this fund or out of the general fund?

This fund, the major categories that it pays for is landscaping, lighting, sidewalks. And then there is other public improvements but I would We may be able to pay them from there, but I would say that if we were going to do things like benches it would probably come from just our public works maintenance fund. Okay

thank you.

Anybody else?

Bill? Well with thanks to Bill Miley for keeping us on our toes and I really do sincerely appreciate bringing his accumulated wisdom to our deliberations. I really mean that sincerely. I want to move adoption recommendation two and three. Second.

Great, may we have the roll call please Gail?

Yes.

Excellent, okay wonderful thank you all right now we can move on to number four COVID it's I'm so excited about the parade I can't wait to hear about James take it away

please. All right and uh I mentioned I think last meeting these presentations I think will get shorter and shorter as we get closer to June 15th but we do still have a brief presentation um I think Really, we'll keep it pretty simple. I think everybody's heard this but on June 2nd the County of Ventura moved to yellow tier. I think we were the third county in Southern California after I think it was LA and Orange County that we moved to yellow tier as you can see from the chart here the three statistics that they based that on we are well under at this point And we're in the yellow tier range. So we have moved to yellow tier, which means that certain categories become less restrictive. Gatherings can increase up to 100 people outdoors.

Private events can increase to 200 people outdoors and just a quick note along those lines is one of the things we've done now that we're in yellow tier Rentals so that people can, you know hold outdoor family parties and things again. So that was exciting for us and our recreation department has reopened that and anybody interested can contact Recreation to rent those facilities.

The other things that have happened is the gyms have increased capacity to 50%. Restaurant indoor capacities increased to 50% Wineries and breweries increased capacity and bars are finally able to reopen, although it's still just 25% capacity. And then outdoor live events which for us is important because of the Sterling Concerts and other local events we can increase capacity at those outdoor live events to 67%, It's really helpful. We've been meeting with all the different event holders and a lot were saying that if it didn't open up, they may have to cancel and I think that this will allow them to continue.

The other thing to keep in mind is this is expected to just be in effect for a couple of weeks actually one more week from today because on June 15th California, the state of California has said that we are essentially reopening to normal operations with exceptions for mega events of larger than 5,000 indoors or 10,000 outdoors. Which Ojai we couldn't think of any event that we had that large so for Ohio it essentially means we would be back to regular operations for things that happen here.

I think one important note on That is that the state has said at this point, but they anticipate that masking will no longer be required except on public transit. And then we wanted to mention this it'll impact us at city hall I'm sure it'll also impact other businesses as one wrinkle is they've the state has essentially announced that where there's a mixture in an office space or work environment where there's a mixture of vaccinated and unvaccinated people That they will require all workers in that room to wear a face covering.

And so we've met here at City Hall about what that means for us, and essentially what it means is anytime we have any employees or members of the public and where there's more than one in the same room, we're gonna ask everybody to keep a face covering on to be in compliance rather than ask people if they're vaccinated or things like that. And so we're kind of figuring that out. I'm sure the public probably has questions about that as well, and so that may be useful.

There has been talk that the state might change that soon because it's very confusing but in the meantime here at City Hall people coming in to do business at City Hall we're just asking everybody to wear a face covering to comply with that. That is the reopening process now and on June 15th. In the meantime, we still have the testing site on Wednesdays at Sarzotti Park from 9 AM to 3 PM.

The vaccination clinic has closed locally but vaccinations are now being offered at the local pharmacies by appointment including Ojai Village Pharmacy, The Medicine Shop in Rite Aid And then we continue to make progress as the county has gotten over 60% of all residents 12 and older have been at least one dose of the vaccine. So moving closer to those goals, and that's part of why we're reopening.

I mentioned this a minute ago but What the yellow tear and the June 15 announcement mean for us at City Hall is that we're planning to reopen city hall completely without appointment will have protocols in place that require face coverings and it'll have plexiglass shields, at the counters. We want to give people the opportunity to come into City Hall if they'd like, but we realize some people have told us that they're not comfortable yet. So we're going to continue to provide the telephone and email service for anyone who's not comfortable.

So it'll be this kind of a hybrid for the time being of people that are comfortable in person, great. And if you aren't, we'll still keep working through telephone and email. Similarly, we're going to do the same thing for our City Council and Commission meetings starting on June 16th. We're going to allow anybody who'd like to attend and speak electronically to do that or we will be opening up to have people attend here at city hall.

We're gonna really try to use our patio space which is I think we're very fortunate to have where people can sit outside You know, and be able to view the meeting and come in and make comments still. So we're going to have in-person in that way, and then we'll have the Zoom meetings as well. Then lastly, the questions we get most right now are about upcoming events so we just want to keep updating people on the status.

The Ventura County Potters Guild is this weekend in Libbey Park June 12th through 13th With COVID protocols in place. We had the art in the park, I think since the last meeting and we got very positive comments that people felt like it was a good event and we didn't receive any complaints. So thanks to the Art Center and them for doing that. And I think for a lot of people, it was the first event that almost felt normal again.

We're hoping to continue that in safe, positive ways here. The big one everybody's talking about is the 4th of July events. I can say that the slide noted that Caltrans permit was pending and as of about 3 45 PM this afternoon we were told that Caltrans has issued that permit so we announced as the city And I saw that it got some attention, to keep the right-of-way clear and to prevent the risk of people touching the same surfaces and all that kind of stuff. We're going to ask everybody not to put chairs out prior to Monday, June 28 at 8 AM. But it is looking very promising at this time The events will be able to occur.

And then just quickly, the first round of Sterling concerts is expected to start in mid-July. We're planning a centennial celebration on August 5th that we'll be providing more information on and that will be outdoor to be safe as well. And then the music festival still is scheduled for September 16th to 19th this year And we're still working on a scaled-down, more locally focused Ojai Day for this year.

So that's just a small snapshot of the many events that are in progress as we get closer to reopening here. And with that, that's all I have. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, James. Exciting. Randy?

James, are we going to be going around to the local businesses and just asking them what their protocols are gonna be regarding employees? Some vaccinated and some not, what they're gonna do. And also just making them aware of what the policy is. So as

of June 15th there are essentially no COVID protocols. State's position is return to normal operations. So, yeah so you know so for us we're not planning to do that one thing we are planning to do is we're planning to pull the pickup zones I forgot to mention that because we mentioned that last meeting but we're going to pull those pickup zones on June 15th and we have notified all the businesses who have outdoor dining that um we need to extend permits prior to June 15th and what that process will be.

Thank you. Bear in mind is that under recently released OSHA regulations from the California Department of Occupational Health and Safety, or rather Commission, the mask mandate will continue in many workplaces. In some the requirement from the state is that in a space in which everyone has proven to be vaccinated against COVID-19 masks or face coverings may be removed, but if you're in a space in which everyone is not known to be vaccinated against COVID-19 then masks must or face coverings must be maintained.

And so a number of businesses and the city will have to maintain masks based on that directive released last week from OSHA although there is some possibility of further change as the state works out where it wants us at the requirements. Isn't that what I just asked?

Yeah yeah that's a good point the um yeah the mask Requirements are somewhat complicated. I

was just wondering how we're going to educate our businesses, that's all. Again i'm not going to expand on what I run into but I'm just saying what are we doing to help our our businesses so that we don't run into this confusion of who is policing the customer and who is policing the employee?

What we'll do, I think one thing we can do on that is we can work with the chamber to try to send some information out to all the businesses about just best practices at this point. And I think the challenge with it, the reason why I'm thinking that will be a good option I do think, I expect there to be some change like maybe by or right after June 15th. So it's going to be a fluid situation so I think if we can work with the chamber to get the word out to the businesses on the mask issue that'd be an effective way to do it.

On that front I've sent us an assessment of the OSHA regs to staff and I'll work with James to make sure that gets sent to Jamie and through the chamber to the businesses

Thank you, Matt. And what about the issue? There's some issues with some of the outdoor dining, something about specific ones.

Yeah. So as part of the extension process we're asking them to come in and provide approval from their property owners because we've heard that that's an issue in some cases. And then we're also checking with the immediate neighbors to make sure there's no negative impacts on other businesses being caused by that, like by one particular business impacting other businesses.

So that is part of the process to date we've only received one business that said or that has applied to extend their permit. We haven't heard from a lot of those businesses yet, we're not clear so we actually are sending reminders to everybody I think we sent them earlier today saying, reminder we're now one week out. You need to come in and extend your permits.