City Council — 2022-01-25

Thank you, Gail and welcome everyone to the January 25 2022 meeting of the Ohio City Council. Randy Do you mind leading us in the pledge?

Oh,

thank you so much.

The flag is right here, right hand over your heart.

And you can see their infiltration potential that they're putting in is 275,000 gallons a year. Their rainwater harvesting potential is almost close to 90,000 gallons a year. Their gray water use potentials 50,000 gallons a year and so on and so on. So you can play with this slider to get an idea of how this could work on your property. So this is just some of the features of the story map Part of the report out here is, what if we all did this? And so we looked at all roofs within the city of Ojai in the sphere of influence.

And what does that add up to? What if we all provided rainwater harvesting on our properties and not really that number is 435 acre feet a year during an average water year. And of course we don't get... What does that mean? An average water year? Well, that's about 17 inches If just the residents were to collect rainwater, we could harvest 299 acre feet of water. Just residents alone. So with a simple rainwater harvesting program, we can harvest 299 acre feet on just residents. How big is an acre foot?

Councilman Haney, this is for you. An acre foot is a football field. Here's the Nordoff Football Field and it's just one foot tall of an entire football field. That's an acre foot. And an acre foot really is enough water for 10 people here in California. It's 325,851 gallons. So that's what an acre foot is. And we're saying that there's 299 acre feet Of rainwater in just the residents alone.

Now, there's also some areas within Topatopa and downtown south that we identified that could have curb cuts. And so as part of this, we looked at curb cuts and there's 214 acre feet for example, I've just curb cut opportunity but easy to reach curb cuts So you can zoom around in this map, look at the different curb cuts. Look at the tiers. There's different groups that are providing the land resilience partnerships so if you don't, if you're listening to this and you don't live in the city of Ojai some other groups are starting to follow suit such as Miner's Oaks, Ventura River Water District, Senior Canyon Mutual Water Company.

There's a lot of different impacts to this. And I'm going to kind of close here in just a minute, even though there's more we're finding per residents on average, there is an immense amount of water quality potential for infiltration and water quality and ways to conserve water just with these simple devices that we just mentioned graywater roof water, rainwater irrigation efficiencies storm water measures such as curb cuts low flow fixtures and climate appropriate plantings.

There's this is actually from our assessments per average throughout the area from this grant if we look at all residents In the sphere of influence, and we apply this to just the residential properties. This would be able to save about 52% of all Casitas water alone delivered to residents. So again, these are really small actions. Easy to reach that provide a bunch of multiple benefits for our community and that we can do as a community sometimes in work parties and they will add up and make our lives better. And so there is more water out there and there is a lot of wonderful benefits and community building events in our future And with that, I'm going to stop. I want to make sure that there's time for questions and if we get a chance to play the video, wonderful.

If not, I really encourage you to come to the story map and please watch the videos and look at the rest of the story map together. And I'll leave it to Council if we have more time to watch this. Oh here we go!

Everywhere we look, every corner of our world, we see rapid changes and unprecedented challenges. Time, we all know is of the essence. Yet there is hope right under our feet and all around us. When we look closely, we find that simple steps we can take to work with and revive natural processes and improve our quality of life are available at every business, every industry, every school and every backyard.

Capturing and storing rain is one example of a solution based on understanding natural cycles and processes Simple strategies for storing, slowing and sinking rain are available to all of us no matter where we live. When we install rain tanks, build rain gardens or replace hardscape at our homes and businesses We not only save water, regenerate our land and create habitat. We also become part of a movement for positive change that has already begun transforming some neighborhoods, cities, rivers and watersheds.

Rainwater capture and reuse can revitalize our land and communities by recharging our groundwater, preventing erosion, building healthier soils, and providing water security that protects us and other species from the risks of fires, droughts, and floods. The impact of many small actions adds up to large-scale change. The power of natural systems can be re-established, providing clean and abundant water, deep living soils, shade and refuge from storms.

A healthy watershed also means vibrant places to play, learn, gather and connect with the natural world, and supports our health, the health of our environment, and the survival of other species. Capturing and storing rain is one strategy among many that creates thriving places for us all to live. Together, we can create a resilient future. Let's start today.

Thank you Regina and for the residents interested, the website there landresiliencepartnership.org is where you can get more information also just for council's information consistent with that last meeting the city moved forward on providing letters of support for implementation funding for some of the state grants coming out so I think we're expecting to have some updates on that in around end of March early April And so we'll keep everybody updated and have some more updates at that time.

So thank you, Regina. And then if there's any questions, I know Regina or I will be happy to answer them.

Thank you, Regina. Any questions from Council? Beautiful work, Regina, thank you very inspiring much appreciated looking forward to March.

Looking forward to more rain. Yes,

absolutely. Hope you feel better. Thank

you. Thank you everyone and please don't hesitate to contact us for

any questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we'll move on to public communication and just a reminder this is the time where we discuss items that are not or we or you discuss items that are not on the agenda um and so uh generally we don't accept comments at this time that are agendized so I just want to ask the council are you there have been a couple requests to take comments that are not on the agenda?

I mean that are on the agenda earlier

yes Yeah, that's fine if people don't wanna leave early.

Okay and because we have so many comments tonight we're going to limit each public comment to two minutes. So if you could please just respect that and just in the spirit of fairness and efficiency.

What just

happened? We agreed that if anybody would like to make a comment on an item that is agendized they can speak at this time. We just have a few though.

Okay yeah

okay and

actually they know that we can't comment

yes yes at this point I only have one public communication it's Brian Akins. Thank

you. Are you ready for me, Mayor? Great. Thank you. I'm here on behalf of the Historic Preservation Commission. I just want to thank the Council and all here and on the screen for the time that you gave us a week ago. We very much appreciated the input. We appreciated the supporting vote. We appreciated those who may have voted against us because by that we learned We've already had two official ad hoc committee meetings, countless numbers of phone calls. On February 10th we will be holding our next Historic Preservation Commission meeting and talking with Lucas. We are dedicating that meeting to talking about the downtown historic district so we invite people who may have questions to come to that meeting and ask those questions of us just so that we can find out early and be able to address them going forward.

But again, we want to thank each of you for your time that you gave us in an extended period. We appreciate that so much. Thank you very much.

Thank you Brian. Gail any public communication on Zoom?

Let me ask if there is anybody in the Zoom queue who is interested in speaking on this item. If you would use the raised hand function on your screen, I will go ahead and call on you and you can speak. And nobody's raising their hand. All

right thank you Gail. All right we'll move onto item number two or I'm sorry the consent calendar. Is there a move to approve?

Move to approve. Second.

Ryan?

Yeah, it's fine.

Okay great thank you. All right

Yes, Mayor. Thank you. And I'll be pulling up just a single slide and while I'm pulling that up we do have copies anybody who's interested? We have copies of the PowerPoints up on stage and so we will be...I know it's a little difficult to see on the TV screen so feel free to get one of those. Okay so we have two Mills Act items on the agenda today and so each of those are required to be approved in a public hearing. So as the mayor mentioned, we'll be opening and closing a public hearing and receiving a public comment for each of these items.

The first item is actually a Meals Act revision. And so it's for the property on 410 Tico Road, the property pictured in this slide. The property was designed by George Washington Smith who's known for popularizing the Spanish colonial revival style which a lot of people call the Santa Barbara style I call it the Ojai style because I think we did at first but uh so was actually landmarked as landmark number 15 in December of 2008, quite a while ago. And we entered into a Mills Act agreement with the resident at that time for those who don't know what a Mills Act Agreement is it's an agreement for these landmark properties that provides a tax incentive to the property owner and the benefit to the city and the community is that they have to agree to restore and preserve The historic buildings using those property tax savings.

And so we approved this back in 2008, we landmarked it in 2008 and so essentially this is correcting an issue where in 2020 a work permit was approved to do some work on the project by the Historical Preservation Commission And at that time, the County of Ventura Assessor's Office when they reassessed the property interpreted the language of the Landmarking and the Mills Act to exclude a portion of the property.

And so we've been working with the residents since that time to try to correct the issue because it's basically An interpretation issue. And so, in working with the resident and the county we, we realized that we needed to come back and just clearly state that the agreement it was intended to include all of the land on on the parcel. And so, in December of 2021 the Historic Preservation Commission reviewed the item and voted to recommend that the Council approve that revision.

Revising the description to include the entire parcel of land And so typically, the biggest question when we approve these items is what's the total fiscal impact to the city. How much are we reducing our property tax revenue? We did note that it's about $1400 per year as the estimate But in this case, it's already been landmarked and it's already been Mills acted per our requirements. It's actually where we need to revise it to meet the county's requirements at this point so there's no real new fiscal impact. So that's all a long way of saying this is essentially revising the agreement to try to make it clearer so the county will accept that language.

With that, staff recommends following the HPC recommendation to approve the revision to the Mills Act.

And

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you James. Any questions from council? Randy?

I just had one. You know on the there's a list of The list of improvements. Of the improvements over every 10 years?

Yeah, I think it's the very last page.

It was interesting as I was going through the packet and I was looking for that on the front end and I'm glad you provided it. The only thing that I feel is missing from this maybe it's a question I can come to you directly and look at but We're landmarking the entire site now. And generally when we're doing that, there's a description of actually what we're landmarking and I didn't really see this other than all land except so many square feet under the garage or something of that nature here if I find it. So again, I just didn't have a complete description as to what's being landmarked hedges trees walls You know, all the landscaping.

There's a slight mentioning of some things inside the house but generally they're very specific so I was just wondering if we just didn't include that in the packet because we had already done this in 2008?

Yeah you know we should have included that but I think the thought process was it's revising the language to already include what we had intended to include in 2008. Okay thank you.

No other questions? Thanks. Okay, all right we'll move on. We'll open the public hearing. We have two public comments Randy Leavitt and Brian Eakins.

Hi there, Randy Leavitt, Fort Antica Road. We worked with the city in 2008 and had the property landmarked. We've been having terrible problems with the assessor's office, misinterpreting our clear agreement with the city. The community development department tried to clarify that. The assessor's office was not interested at all. And so we needed to revise the Mills Act Agreement to get rid of any ambiguity And I can go into that if you all would like, but that's the situation. We're also in 2020 we received approval from the HPC to make some changes to the property that in part will correct some issues that were designed and done in the 40s with an addition there We hired a really prominent architect in Santa Barbara who's done numerous George Washington Smith renovations.

He did a fabulous job, the HPC reviewed the plans and approved the city's... Hired an architectural historian and his summary was that the home and the property, and it is Mr. Haney, It is specified as the entire parcel, should be included in its entirety. So that's happy to answer any questions that you may have. We also did all we can to work with the assessor's office first before coming back to the city and not wanting to take your time and unfortunately they were pretty intractable so...

Thank you. Pretty clear.

Thank you, Randy. All right next we have Brian Akins.

Hello here again I'm here on behalf of the Historic Preservation Commission first of all i would like to congratulate the Leavitt family who are all here tonight in support of this by including the youth who I passed out agenda so they could do some social studies homework while they're waiting um Say that everything that Randy shared with you is what was presented to us and what we understood.

This was, they don't usually come back to us but again this was the county that was causing issues. The question has come up in landmarking property. Do you want to landmark some portion of it or do you want to landmark all of it? That's a question that we ask. In this case there seemed to be an issue, now it's clear. We fully support the revision of this Mills Act and hope for the residents to be able to take Take advantage of it. Another thing that's important is the fact that the reduction in the Mills Act doesn't mean they pocket this money again as Randy was pointing out there's a clear designation of the different items that they specifically have to address, as a part of the mills act in the, in the next 10 years.

And I'm guessing that will outweigh any little amount that they're going to get from the Mills Act savings to go towards the protection of this valuable resource for to the city of Ojai. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Brian. Gail, any public comments on Zoom?

If there's anybody in the Zoom queue who is here to speak on this item, if you would use the raise hand function on your Zoom screen. I'll go ahead and call on you. And nobody's raising their hand.

Thanks Gail. All right we will close the public hearing and move on to discussion.

I would like to move approval of the staff recommendations with appreciation to the Levitt family for being great stewards of this property.

I'd

like to

second. Okay, great. May we have the roll call please Gail?

Yay.

All right, congratulations Leavitt family and thank you for doing the beautiful work in preserving your beautiful home. Thank you very much. Okay

Yes, just very very brief again. I know I won't repeat some of the things we just said but it's another Mills Act agreement this one is not a revision it's a new Mills Act agreement and so a lot of similar similarities but a little different. So this The potential Mills Act agreement is for Ojai historic landmark number 29, which what is referred to as the humble house. It's at 1105 North signal street.

It's called the Hummel House because it was designed by Fred Hummel as a California ranch style house that has elements of the mid century modern style. And you can see that in the picture on, on that slide. It met all of the criteria, every criteria to be designated as historical except for one. And maybe this is too much detail but they don't have to meet all of the requirements but this one actually did meet all of them except for one and the one requirement it didn't meet was that it didn't have like that The historical owner or like the, it had all the architecture.

All the architecture was historical but didn't have like the story that some of the other properties do. But it is interesting because it was built for Dixon Kelly who served as the president of the Ojai Festival And the president of the Ojai Tennis Tournament at one point. So it's interesting that wasn't considered historical, but it is a piece of Ojai history.

And so everything else about the house, though is historical. The City Council and the HPC both reviewed the property and designated it as Ojai Landmark 29 in August of 2021. In December of 2021, the HPC reviewed and then voted unanimously to recommend that the council enter into a Mills Act agreement which again would provide tax incentives for the property owner in exchange for restoring and preserving the properties.

And so this property, because it is a new Mills Act agreement will have some fiscal impact the fiscal impact is estimated at about $3453 per year for the city. But as Council Member Haney noted on the last item, the last page of each Mills Act item has a 10-year timeline for the rehabilitation and preservation of the project. And looking at that timeline you see that it's expected that a lot more money is going to go into restoring this property than that $3,453 per year Such as for 2022, there's $14,000 expected to go into sanding and painting the eaves of the home. In 2023 a $60,000 replacement of the solar system.

You know you can see from the 10 years replacing the vintage hardware. Fixing the older electrical plugs that don't work, replacing vintage tiles. Just you see a lot of work that goes into these properties so it is important that the city be aware of that fiscal impact but I think the HPC and staff acknowledge that there's a lot of value from these historical designations as well.

So having said that, the HPC unanimously recommended approving this Mills Act agreement and our recommendation is to approve it following that public hearing. And so I'd be happy to answer any questions. Oh, yeah, the one... Thank you. Just one more comment is that the landmarking in the Mills Act is for the house and the surrounding property in this situation. So like the last one, it's the entire property.

Thank you, James. Any questions from Council?

Randy and then Susan. Susan go first. Is the landmarking of the house and surrounding property due to the fact that far away from that there was a change that can't be landmarked? There was development

No, so the landmark and the Mills Act includes the house and the property. So it's actually landmarking that.

The whole property? OK I thought you meant the surrounding property. It's a large property.

Yeah no it's the property at 1105 North

St. I'm very happy to hear that thank you. I

think the whole property is eight acres isn't it? Yeah, it's a good size about 80 acres. This number rings the bell for many years.

Oh yeah we

know that

property.

You know what any time when you look at the costs associated with maintaining a property of any of these properties I You can see it's real. It's not a cheap date, and they have to do this in a 10-year period. That's the assumption that I'm reading into this, right?

Yeah, we require like a 10-year rehabilitation and preservation plan. OK.

And so who reviews that, that it's done? Is that something HPC does or is that something that we do?

You know, I don't believe we have a standing review but I know that we've had situations where we've had questions about if items were completed and then we did review them at that time.

So go ahead Matt. I was just going

to add that staff is the first line there. The Community Development Department is the department that has that responsibility and then HPC has a role and of course council if we look at modifying or canceling a contract.

I'm not going to vote against this. When I see stuff like this, we're giving up $3,400 a year of tax dollars that could be utilized somewhere else within the city. So I see the exchange. In fact, I don't think it's fair. I probably think we should be giving them a bigger tax break if they're gonna implement all of the changes that I see in this sheet here. But again, the only issue that I have is two things.

The significant Points of interest on this property. Again, it's a little vague. I've always wondered how you landmark an oak tree or a sycamore tree or a pittosporum or caffeine or what we call potassium. I just don't know how you landmark a living entity but again not all. I'll leave it up to smarter people in me to figure that one out but So aside from that, like I said, I just look at is the fact that if we're going to be giving A rebate of some type that we should have some form of follow-up.

Just so that we're all in agreement, that's the... That we're giving you this, you are giving us that and that's obviously a well maintained historical landmark in our community which has an incredible value but I still think that there should be some form of follow up whether it's through us or whether it's through HPC

And I'll always take the opportunity when you queue up a conversation on property tax. I think it's just, I always try to point this out. A lot of people think that every cent they pay a property tax comes to the city but we actually get a very small portion and the county gets the majority of it. And so this is the portion that... This is the entirety of the portion that the city would receive and the remainder is the counties.

Do we know what that number is? Well, I think... You know what you don't have to share that with me publicly. You can share that. I'll call you tomorrow and we can talk about that. Yeah,

but

I don't think that's fair to the homeless stuff.

Yeah,

and we could just in generalities put out here in the public domain there's no reason for that.

Let's go ahead and open the public hearing. We have one public comment Brian Akins.

Not very often we have two Mills acts that come before you. We're very excited by, by that because that is our purview with you is to protect the historic resources of the city. This is an exciting item I know from hearing it personally that this is a house that David Mason Hope he would live for to have it landmarked and now has been. And so we remember him in this exciting house again, like the Levitt's they took us all through the house, all the nooks and cranny except for I'm still a little bit upset that I didn't get to find out where the bomb shelter was still verifying that.

But they were wonderful to do that. And in fact, in that house this doesn't happen often in that house is a wall size mural that was originally put in when the house was built that is still intact and imperfect. I'd like The house was just a wonder to walk through to see the items that were there when the house was first built all those years ago. To look at the dance floor, a big thing was having ballroom dances there on the door and looking out across the east end it just has so many wonderful things to it and so we're happy to have it again on who watches it goes to staff first but we in the HPC are happy to help in any way we can You know, follow up on the Mills Act. So thank you for that.

Thank you, Brian. Any public comments on Zoom?

Gail? I will check and also, I'll check to see if we have any public commenters but note that we have Tiffany Rochelle the homeowner in. So I will bring her in first and I see one other person who has their hand raised so I will bring her in after I bring in Ms. Rochelle. And if there's anyone else in the Zoom queue who is here to speak on this agenda item please go ahead and raise your hand And I will call on you. So first is Tiffany Rochelle and Council, if you want me to have us bring her into the meeting as a...

On your screens, I'll go ahead and do that but for now, I'll just bring her in to talk.

Thank you Gail. Let's have

her come in. Tiffany, you should be able to

speak. If you're muted please unmute yourself and you can go ahead. Okay, I think I'm unmuted. Can you hear me? Yes we can. Okay, great. I just wanted to chime in and thank you all for your consideration and Just your comments about our home. I know long before my husband and I bought this home, there was a lot of history and we are so pleased to be a part of saving this home.

And you're right. There are things like a Sears & Roebuck kit 1960's bomb shelter with the full kit book. The murals from 1962 from a prisoner, a World War II prisoner of war that was commissioned by Dixon Kelly and his wife. And she was the heir to the Juergens Lotion family and she was a ballroom dancer and heavily involved in the Ojai Women's Center. So there's a lot of history there and we're just, my husband Paul and I were just so, we just feel so honored to be able to live in this home and just preserve it and love it. So thank you all very much.

Thank you Tiffany.

And next we have, we had one other person. Let me see, Katrina Schmidt did you want to speak on this? Okay she has her hand up so I'm going to go ahead and bring her in. Tiffany or excuse me, Katrina Schmidt um you should be able to talk if you're muted please unmute yourself and you can go ahead.

Hi, I just wanted to say this house is incredible. I've been inside and it's fantastic and the views are incredible. I just had a question about... And it's just really a question about having the whole property landmarked that seems like there's a... Remember, is there a climbing wall on this property? Like a big building that has a climbing wall in it Because I think that's interesting, like any out structures like that would be protected and couldn't be changed. Correct?

Or they would have to go to planning commission or historic preservation commission.

So it's the land that's landmarked and then the main structure not all structures.

Oh, okay. That was that was just a question because I wouldn't think the property owner would want to do that.

Yeah.

Okay. That's it. That's just a comment I had.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you Katrina. Any more comments.

No further comments. I want to make the motion

okay thank you well move on to discussion yeah

i want to make sure i understand the nodding heads and exactly what so that climbing wall structure which has something of a notorious history is in fact uh could be removed theoretically Without having to go through historic preservation commission. Is

that correct? Yes, because the climbing wall structure is not a contributing element and not a contributing element to this to the landmark status It's not a character defining element of the landmark. Thus, the climbing wall and any other related modern outbuilding could be removed. That removal would take an HPC review to confirm that whatever might replace it doesn't negatively impact the landmark but it would be a Thank you very much.

And my understanding is the owners agreed to that. Yeah, thank you.

Okay and we're closing the public comment so go ahead Susan. That's

what I had in mind when I asked about the surrounding property was that climbing wall um when it's the right time i'd like to make the motion in honor of the late Dixon Kelly. Go

ahead Randy and then we'll