City Council — 2023-01-10

Call to order we have a quorum. May we have the roll call, please Weston?

Yeah, thank you Mayor and so obviously we've had a heck of a storm over the last 48 hours And I wanted to start by saying thank you to three kind of key departments, the police department and Police Chief Rivera who were actually out helping people evacuate from down in the Foster Park area yesterday. The fire chief, Chief Parker who I think is not here because he's out responding to some of those calls. And then also our public works crew who were on standby and storm patrol all last night and the night before clearing storm drains.

Our response here in the city we were very fortunate that we did not have any major issues. We had some clogged storm drains things like that That we handled. There are a couple of AT&T lines that are still in line to be repaired by AT& T that we have some road closures where the roads are closed to the through traffic but open to the residents, but all in all as a city for that level of rain we're pretty happy with what happened. But obviously the big impact I think a lot of us felt was valley-wide there was some major impacts and Chief Rivera and the Police Department, Fire Department, Public Works Department were kind of out trying to help with all those things so As of now for that level of storm, we're pretty happy with how it turned out within the city.

And we're staying in communication with Caltrans, the police department and the fire department on those valley-wide impacts and when we'll get all the roads back open. Chief, I think I had heard that the 101 was completely reopened but I'm not sure if you heard the same?

As of this afternoon when I came in, the northbound lanes were closed but the southbound lanes were open. I have since been told that both sides have been opened.

Okay thank you Chief and thank you again and did you want to add anything? Just yeah I know you were probably knee-deep in it yesterday.

I was speaker card so I'll stand up and speak just a minute.

And that's it, thank you Mayor.

commission reports today, James?

No commission reports. There is one item that we'll have a commission speaking on but no Commission reports Okay,

we will move on to public communication and just a reminder These are items not on the agenda and because they are not on the agenda We cannot discuss them when you make a comment. We're not ignoring you We appreciate your viewpoint in participation And we can agendize for the future and a public comment reminders three minutes and at the end of the three minutes You will hear a gentle chime so At that moment, please stop talking and respect each other's time in the spirit of equity.

Yes? Is the presentation canceled? Oh yes, I'm sorry, yes. Chris Stanch couldn't make it.

Yes, and I think several people were kind of... Was it out by Matillaha Canyon? I think we had some people who are still being evacuated, and I believe Chris is one of those people so he's not here tonight.

Okay. All right, thank you. We'll begin with Ron Salazano then Chief Jose Rivera and then Anson Williams.

All right. Thank you, members of council. I hope everybody in here and out there has been staying safe and dry. We've been doing the best we can over at the library with that. So my name is Ron Solorzano. I am the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley. Just to give a little bit of quick context, I oversee the libraries in the Oak View Miner's Oaks and here in Ojai.

In addition to being beloved local institutions with a vibrant and dedicated Friends of the Library group, these libraries benefit from being part of the Ventura County library system. Among other things this gives our local customers access to thousands of additional books, DVDs and other media as well as digital resources, a mobile library and an ever-growing library of things.

Tonight though I wanted to give you a quick update on some of the programming that we have specifically going on at the Ojai Library this month. First, this coming Saturday January 14th historian and writer Vincent Burns and professor of journalism Stephen Bates are going to visit the Ojai Library to speak about their book Rincon Point in a presentation called A History of Rincon Point in Photographs Burns and Bates both have deep roots in the area and are excited to share their knowledge of the area's history, early settlers, and surfing tradition.

Next on Saturday, January 28th, local Ojai author Cynthia Louise Greer will visit the library to deliver a talk titled Magic or Medicine? Grimoires and Healing Amulets in the Muse of Freedom. Greer who writes under the nom de plume of Jules Laramore will share a bit of the history of Renaissance France that is the backdrop of her novel along with examples of healing devices that were often thought to be magic.

These special events are offered in addition to all of our usual library programs, which include a weekly story time on Wednesday mornings for children age zero to five. A ukulele club on Monday mornings for all ages. Parent and child together classes that we offer in collaboration with First 5 Ventura County on Tuesdays and Thursdays Poetry readings, fiber art activities and much much more.

For information about any of these or any of our other library programs please don't hesitate to reach out to me or our library team. Thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a wonderful evening.

Thank You Ron next Chief Rivera then Anson Williams and then Jeffrey Starkweather

Good evening Mayor, Councilmembers and staff members. I just wanted to take a few moments to, I think James kind of touched on the rainstorms that hit us the last few days But we've had several storms that have hit us for quite a while now, the last month or so. And the saturation level was pretty high in a lot of the areas. The city fared really well. I drove around a lot yesterday making sure that things were in order and other than a few downed trees, we did really good and I think that's a big thanks to our public works And also our council for those decisions that are made throughout the city to keep our city running.

Hardest hit areas were in the county areas in the valley. I do want to thank our fire department, my deputies. Our entire day shift ended up staying over because of the volume of calls we received. I know fire had an increase of calls just yesterday which was well over 100% of their normal calls for service. I believe they handled 1,300 calls for service and 80 of those were actual rescues.

I was personally involved in a rescue of four individuals down at Camp Chaffee. We had a gal who was hanging by a tree in the river her vehicle got stuck became started going underwater and she had to climb out broke a window out and how to climb out on the bed over truck and eventually had to hang onto a tree While we were responding to find her, we came across two other vehicles that had been swept by the mud debris and into the bank of the creek. And they were stuck. One of my deputies went in there. He was probably waist deep in mud but was able to pull all three of them out of the vehicle.

So I just want to thank My deputies, the fire department. Also our Caltrans workers in public works. They were out all night last night trying to clear our roads and at one point we had 150 going into Santa Paula that was closed. The 33 is closed and that's probably gonna be closed you know going up northbound on the 33. That's probably gonna be closed for a few weeks I was up there this afternoon to look at the debris, and it's Matilla Hall Canyon. There's probably about three to four feet of mud going across the road. It's gonna take quite a while to dig out of that.

So a big thank you to all the responders that were working last night, the road workers keeping our 33 clear for people to come in and out. A big thank you to everybody. The the good thing and I thank God for this that we didn't have any loss of lives so Very minor injuries, but no loss alive. So a big thank you to everybody. Thank you very much

Thank You chief much appreciated next wave Anson Williams then Jeffrey Starkweather and then Sean Sharon Mahari, sorry

Well hey there, I'm Anson Williams. Of course I live in the city of Ojai and first I'd like to congratulate Mayor Sticks as well as new council members Leslie Rule, Rachel Lang and Andy Whitman. And thank God you're still here Sousa! It was a close hard-fought election and I'd like to thank my amazing campaign team and the 1,782 citizens who voted for me. And I assure them I won't stop fighting for the issues you care about disaster preparedness water sustainability climate initiatives manageable tourism and affordable housing But I have to say I'm troubled by what's happening in our city since the final results were tallied.

Two lawsuits? Two lawsuits have been filed against our city, by a tiny group of people called simply Ojai. The same group of people who ran or many of the same group ran the mayor's campaign. The same group won a half million dollar fire grant without any qualifying fire prevention experience. Simply Ojai followers have also filed petitions for referendums, all designed to overturn the decisions made by your elected representatives.

All designed to make our city council irrelevant. Is that the way you want it to govern? Hmm? Is that what we want? I don't think so. I don't think we want a privileged coterie of the mayor's close associates to negate any council decisions she doesn't agree with. Who is this so-called nonprofit and what do they stand for? As far as I can see, their main mission is obstruction.

Obstruction of the Becker Project that will bring the largest number of deed restricted affordable units to our city in decades. Obstruction of valet parking which is critical to the success of the Al Roblar Hotel and the millions and millions of dollars it will bring into our community. This campaign of obstruction will potentially cost the Ojai taxpayers thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

It could subject us to the same fate as a city... I don't know if you heard, Mammoth Lakes was recently filed for bankruptcy because of a $43 million judgment awarded against them. This can happen to us. But for some reason, the privileged few, the few at Simply Ojai are willing to take that risk at our community's peril I say we're not willing, ever. We need our streets paved. We need affordable housing. We need to protect the tenants at the cottages of Mallory Way. We have $50 million in deferred maintenance that we need to attend to. I think you see during this rain our roads. The votes have been counted on the cottages and valet parking. It is over!

Do not risk, do not obey the demands of Simply Ojai Elites to put all of us at risk by overturning the well-considered greatly debated decisions our former council city has

made. Thank you

Anson, thank

you. Next we have Jeffrey Starkweather then Sharon Mahari and then Clay Creasy.

Question, can you reset the clock please?

First of all I'd like to congratulate our new City Council members in hard-fought elections and I also want to congratulate everybody that ran for office. In my view from what I observed everybody ran issue based Clean campaigns. People can't control what some of their social media supporters do, as someone who ran myself and was attacked on social media I didn't even consider it part of a negative campaign so I'm proud of that.

And the other thing that I think was great about this election that pretty much everybody agreed on the issues that we needed to tackle affordable housing water of business diversity, so forth. I could go on and on but you know there may be some differences in how we tackle those but I think everybody wanted to do those together. I would point out that and of course as was just pointed out that there is no actual mandate based on this election. The mayor got 47.5% of the people that voted a 42-point margin. That is not a mandate doing basically we had a tight election So what do we do?

I think the mayor and Rachel Lang said it best in their campaign statements. The mayor made a point of, we need collaboration. In fact in her speech at Oak Grove she said it three times in her first three minutes. We need to bring people together for the common good and that makes my heart sing. Rachel stated Our community needs to come together to tackle, I can't even read my own writing, but tackle our problems that we face.

If we can't sit and come together and leave our egos behind and work towards a sustainable solution for the future. And she also mentioned collaboration and leadership with a heart, I guess it was passion. Anyway, very similar comments and I agree with them. And so that's why I handed out the stuff about collaboration. I won't go into details of what that means. I think we all do know what it means but I want to work with you in a collaborative fashion. I think if we're talking about forming housing Task force or a climate change task force are dealing with these problems that we need to have them be collaborative, which means we bring all stakeholders together to sit in the room and talk each other and listen.

And unfortunately, we're off to a bad start in terms of litigation but I'm hoping that We can move together with these issues and start actually working collaboratively. Thank

you, Jeffrey. Next we have Sharon Mahari then Clay Creasy and then Bob Kemper.

Hi, congratulations everybody. Glad you were able to make it through the weather. My name is Sharon Meharry I live and own a business in Ojai and I'm very concerned about the lawsuits that have been filed against our city and effectively against us the taxpayers as a real estate broker and not a developer I'm especially frustrated with wrong-headed ideologues who think that blocking any new housing, even deed restricted affordable housing will somehow benefit the people who have lived here for many years.

It's gentrification they say. Well if Ojai is becoming gentrified it's precisely because of the no growth policies of the past and the demands of groups like Simply Ojai. It is truly simple to understand scarcity makes the prices higher Higher prices limit diversity and damage the character of the community. The artists, musicians and seekers are being pushed out.

It's becoming an enclave of vacation homes for the rich and famous. I see it in my practice every day. And what about investors? Are landlords who have paid $1,200 per square foot for a rental house downtown going to rent it out at 1,200 per month? No way! It'll be more like 5,000. And what's the renter supposed to do? There is nothing else available, right Susan?

So, either she has to pay up or leave town. Ojai's no-growthers have created a vicious cycle of ever increasing home prices and rents with no end in sight. And rent control? It is well documented that rent control can lead to disrepair, neglect and blight. Here is the thing. No one wants skyscrapers or three story buildings or any more strip malls in Ojai. But we do have room for improvement. We have space to house our seniors living on fixed incomes and long-time residents with extremely low incomes, but the total solution won't come from profit driven developers even ones like Jeff Becker who's agreed to build twice the number of affordable units in his project than the state demands. We need a commission, as Rachel suggested with experts like Bill Miley on it to address and evaluate our needs and apply for government grants.

But first we need to leave the Becker Project Agreement in place where years from its completion and even more years away from these government subsidies will need to do more. How long do the people of Ojai have to wait to bring balance to our community? I say, let's not wait any longer. Do not overturn the previous council's vote tonight. Vote for a kinder city with a heart for the less fortunate and a mind to do something about it. Thank you.

Thank You Sharon next we have Clay Creasy then Bob Kemper then Kim Barnes

Thank you, Mayor. I'm Clay Creasy. I live in Ojai. I've lived here for four years. Born in Southern California, Bakersfield. Grew up and worked most of my life in California. My dad actually drilled oil wells in the Cespe Wilderness back in the old days but he hasn't done that recently. I am happy to report. Anyhow just wanted to briefly give you some insight with regard to your budget and the potential vote on the ordinance that the petition has now asked you to consider.

I'm an accountant by trade, I read numbers because it's something I like to do. Page 149 of your budget which Mr. Vega put together and by the way I have to say it's a heck of a detailed and very useful budget You have this year $49,000 earmarked to spend on a pickleball tennis sound study. You studied it a couple years ago and you studied it last year I don't know if the sounds have changed that much or not but forty nine thousand dollars will pay for several elections so if you're at all hesitant to decide this current issue of the referendum Based on the economics of having to pay for an election versus getting the final chance to hear the word of all citizens of Ojai, I'm here to tell you that you're in great shape. You can afford this election many times over.

Mr. Vega in his budget many times points out how conservative it is put forth as a accountant who works for a large organization, I can tell you I admire your conservatism and I guarantee you you're in good shape financially if you choose to go ahead and have the election. Thank you very much

Thank you, Clay.

Do you think that everyone knows that the agenda was revised to add item three? Because we're getting comments on an item that's on the agenda. The project referendum was not on the original... I just didn't know if everyone was aware.

Maybe a suggestion would be for the people who have turned in public comment cards for items not on the agenda, we can announce now that if you are speaking on the referendum when we call your name, if you can say that you want your card held until the third item three which was added to an amended agenda on Thursday when the county clerk certified. Bob, are you speaking

on Item 3? No, I'm not.

Hi, my name is Bob Kemper. I live in Ojai and have for approximately 25 years. I am going to reference item three but it's not why I'm here. I'm appalled that simply Ojai has filed the lawsuit to overturn a lawful decision by the former city council. I am not in the least bit surprised given the conflict of interest which appears to exist between the mayor and this organization, and Mindful Citizen as well. I respectfully request that the mayor recuse herself from any and all votes and or discussions related to the above named nonprofits. There is much to lead to the perception of a conflict not the least of which is her campaign manager Tom Francis threatening the city council on 10-18-22 with a lawsuit in the event that the Becker project was approved It was approved by a four to one vote.

And here we are, Mr Francis has made good upon his threat. It is not a good look for the City of Ojai for the Mayor to lose a vote and then appear to coordinate a lawsuit with her closely affiliated non-profits. The lawsuit filed by Simply Ojai shows a Ms. Leslie Hess as an officer of Simply Ojai and Mindful Citizen, and a signatory to the lawsuit. Ms. Hess is also treasurer of the mayor's mayoral campaign. If this does not demonstrate a conflict of interest then I don't know what does.

Further, the mayor and Mr. Francis have been seen together on numerous occasions at Mallory Way collecting signatures in an attempt to convince residents to reject the project. The cooperative efforts of the mayor with these two non-profits to defeat the will of the community and democracy itself I might add is beyond concerning. Not only are her efforts setting up the city for hundreds of thousands of dollars legal fees To defend itself in the event that the project is declined, a lawsuit that the city will lose ultimately because of existing grandfather and entitlements on some of the properties. Her potential conflicts of interest will give your attorneys yet another legitimate reason to sue.

I implore the mayor to set aside her personal ideology make this difficult decision for the benefit of the community If she is unwilling to do so, I request the city attorney to conduct a thorough investigation into whether or not she should be forced to recuse herself for the protection of the City of Ojai. Thank you.

Thank you, Bob. And just to set the record straight I did not collect any signatures at Mallory Way and I certainly do want to follow the law and so Mr. City Attorney could you respond to those questions?

I was under the impression that general comments did not, we don't engage in conversation about them. Are we going to do that here? If if if we need to set the record straight...

The council can provide a brief response to general public comment but not debate by the council To that end, I have analyzed questions have been received regarding the similar issues related to the mayor and simply Ojai and Ms. Leslie Hess and Mr. Francis. I have taken a look at them into the best of my current knowledge there's no law that requires recusal Recusal is required if an official has a personal interest in the matter above very specific thresholds and different than the public generally, or if the official has a conflicting legal or professional duty. For example, a lawyer who has clients that have conflicting duties and goals and obligations than their counsel duty. Here to the best of my current knowledge, the mayor has no personal financial interest in Simply Ojai nor its leadership.

She may have given the money as I believe has been reported publicly but that does not generate recusal requirements because it was money that left her and there's no contract of which I'm aware that would require repayment. A straight up donation by a council member to a non-profit without the possibility of money returning to the council i.e., not a seed money loan or a deposit or something that has a reimbursement component doesn't create a financial interest in that nonprofit Board membership can create conflicts subject to various exceptions, but I'm also not aware that the mayor or any council member is on the board of Simply Ojai. I've reviewed the state's filings, their recent non-profit state filings and I saw no evidence that the mayor nor any council member was on their board of directors.

The fact that their campaign personnel sit on the board does not generate a huge requirement as the campaign personnel are separate people from the council members. So, last I'll note that the FEBC's vote in November that SB 1439's expansion of the Levine Act rule to council members does not apply to contributions before January 1st, 2023 means that any contributions by simply Ojai's parent board members and leadership to the mayor and several other council members campaigns also does not require recusal. Donations after January 1st that are above $250 would require further analysis but to the best of my knowledge given the election timing there were no donations above $250 from the relevant people to any council members campaigns after January 1 2023.

If the FPPC does not confirm their initial opinion, they cancel their December meeting. If they don't confirm their opinion in the January meeting obviously we'll revisit that but that's the state of the law as of today. Last, the other potential source of recusal is the common law. Common law bias due to personal professional duties here does not arise because the mayor is not a licensed profession, not a lawyer and not an accountant with Clients whose duties could conflict with the council and the council role.

Last I'll note, ideological alignment between one side of a debate and a council member does not require recusal when one or the other side sues the city. People can support a council member to achieve a goal they can support achieving those goals via lawsuits that's just the American way so i've analyzed the questions based on previous requests and you'll wonder how do I have all this prepared? The answer is the city manager asked me to analyze these questions when a variety of public comment emails were sent in, raising the issues. We looked at them and the answer is I do not see a basis to require recusal on the facts as I understand them now, as I have recited them. Different facts may require different advice. Thank you.

Thank you Matt. May I quickly? We don't

allow...

Just one second. Council?

It's fine with me. It's fine with

me. Thank you very much. Actually sent a letter in back in December and I appreciate you following up on that. Perception is everything, okay? There really doesn't have to be a conflict for there to be a perception of a conflict and when you have a perception of a conflict it hinders your ability to govern because you lose the credibility of the office and you lose the credibility within the community So, unfortunately Mayor Sticks you are unknowingly or otherwise damaging your ability to govern. You've lost the support of the community at least a large portion of the community because of these perceptions of a conflict of interest thank you.

Thank you Bob next we have Kim Barnes and then Kathy Nolan

Hi, my name's Kim Barnes and I live in Ojai. And I'm reading this for Robin Gerber who can't be here tonight if that's okay. Congratulations to the newly elected council members our reelected mayor and welcome back Councilwoman Francina. The question before you is about process as well as substance perhaps you don't agree on with the four-to-one decision of the last council to approve the Becker Development Agreement But as the people we have elected to represent us, to do the hard work of understanding complex issues such as this.

And listening to the public outpourings on this issue, as was done. And relying on our very able planning commission's input, as was done. You need to ask yourselves what does your role as representative leaders mean if when you make a decision by a super majority vote, as is the case, it can be tossed aside by a small minority of voters? Because if you agree to rescind the prior vote, that is what you're saying to our community.

Don't rely too much on our work and wisdom because a few determined people hiding behind a shadowy nonprofit with multiple names and no members can bully us into submission. I hope you're made of sterner stuff because if you're not, you can look forward to more such attacks on representative government by a minority intent on winning at any cost. We've already seen this nonprofit Mindful Citizen, which also uses the names Simply Ojai and Fuel Reduction Works.

And people closely tied to it bring both a lawsuit and referendum to save us from the horrors of valet parking as well as a second lawsuit on this development agreement in addition to the referendum being discussed. I believe deeply in our system of representative government embodied by you. I hope you will protect it. And I would echo these sentiments myself. This was from Robin Gerber.

Thank you. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Robin. Next we have Kathy Nolan.

Good evening, Kathy Nolan I'm here representing the Ojai Valley Green Coalition. We're a local non-profit and I just came to introduce us some of you may know the green coalition but I want to welcome the new council members and I did want to say that last year we were awarded a community service grant to actually do community engagement or stakeholder engagement with the general public in regards to the eight acre City Hall campus And last Saturday we had our first engagement.

Council Member Francina was actually there and joined us, and it was very successful. We had a lot of people turn out and I just wanted to throw out an invitation that on—and this is to everyone in the community in addition to the council—January 28th which is a Saturday, we're going to be having another site tour to do a walk and then March 22nd, and in April, in June, and I'll give you our website.

We are having three World Cafe tables to further engage the public so I just want to let everyone know. And if it is okay we'd like to reach out to each individual council member and just maybe have a little chat and just let you know what we're up to and what we're doing. Our website is OjaiValleyGreenCoalition.org and if you go on to that, the opening page will be the community engagement project so it's easy to get to and I forgot to mention we actually have a survey as well. So opening that up to the community as well and we'll be gathering all that information and bringing that back to the city at the September 1st. That's the end of our term for the grant.

Thank you, Kathy. Weston are there any public comments on Zoom?

Yes Mayor we have two remote participants with raised hands first we'll have Stephen Colame followed by Elle Codwell. Stephen do you have

the floor? Sure. Hi Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and newly elected council members welcome. My name is Steve Nkolome and I'm a Ojai resident. I have some good news to report to start this new year on an issue that our city has been monitoring. Some of you may know that the fleet of local postal delivery vehicles that park behind the post office and adjacent to Libbey Park are operating well past their useful design life Speaking with our local postal master, our vehicles are figuratively being held together with duct tape and bubble gum at this stage.

This time last year the US Postal Service was preparing to replace the aging nationwide fleet with only 10% of the next generation vehicles being zero emission and the remainder were going to use antiquated technology Our city manager sent letters to our congressional and Senate representatives asking that Ojai's allocation be electric. The good news is that at the end of last year, the Postal Service nudged by information that their plan was based on faulty economic and environmental analysis as well as legal action by several states. The Postal Board of Governors adjusted their plans so that 50% of the initial tranche of new vehicles will be battery electric and by 2026 100% of new postal delivery vehicles will be zero emission We should continue monitoring progress and reaffirm our request for clean vehicles, though we do not have any direct authority in that decision.

My hope is that we can plan a community celebration along with state and federal officials when we welcome in a brand new fleet of replacement clean vehicles at our post office. Our postal carriers will thank us as the new designs have better ergonomic features and important for Ojai, the carriers will have air conditioning. Thank you.

Thank you Steve.

Next we have Elle Caldwell.

Okay go switch and I'll put this down.

Oh no here I am.

Pardon the wait.

For some reason, I can't seem to unmute.

You are unmuted.

Oh great! All right, I'm new to this format. I want to begin by saying good evening to all of you all and I wanted to say my support for a Citizens Housing Committee. We need a group We need a group representing our diverse community, researching and recommending the best and most expeditious ways to move forward on solving our housing issues. So I hope that's already in the works or will be soon. I also have a request for a public workshop on housing in Ojai with an emphasis on low and very low housing which is our greatest housing need I would like to see presentations by knowledgeable people to educate us on past projects that have been completed or defeated, and also educating us on the resources that exist such as state and federal assistance and nonprofit builders.

I don't know who is best to organize this but such a forum could get the community moving on solving our housing shortage. Thank you.

Thank you Al. Is that it Weston?

Yes, no more raised hands.

Okay

thank you very much we will move on to the consent calendar we have one public comment on item F Wayne Maynard

Council my name is Wayne Maynard. I'm a resident of Ojai, and I just wanted to Read into the agenda. I saw this item on annual attendance report for commissioners. I just think that's a really good idea Volunteers we have in our community to make sure that they're you know fulfilling their responsibilities Going through it. I noticed one issue that I'm not sure is being accounted for and that is when a A commission meeting is canceled. I experienced one earlier this year, the August 18th Arts Commission meeting was canceled and the notice of cancellation said a special meeting the following week was going to be rescheduled so cancel the 18, reschedule on 25th.

My assumption was that probably they didn't have a quorum for their meeting, okay? But I look at the report and that kind of information doesn't indicate if somebody wasn't available because the whole meeting got canceled. So if that's something the staff could look into sometime in the future for their report next time, I think that would be a good way to do it.

Second issue kinda related is that I believe when a notice of cancellation is issued for either a council meeting or Any of the commission meetings, it would be nice to have a reason stated. Lack of a quorum or whatever reason we had to cancel it would be nice and transparent for the community to know why that happens. So thank you very much.

Thank you Wayne. All right is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I'll

move to approve.

A second? I'll second. Okay all in favor? All right, let's move on to discussion item number two the proposed local downtown historic district nomination results James you have a staff report

Just a very brief introduction and then I'll turn it over to To our commissioners to talk a little bit more about it Just as far as why is this on the agenda tonight the city about a year ago, the City Council gave the HPC the ability to include on their agenda An item and a committee of HPC members who would work on determining whether there was property owner support for the formation of a local downtown district.

Directed staff to send out a one page letter with information to the 56 property owners within the local downtown historic district. And at that time set a deadline for the nomination forms to be received by November 8th. That date ended up being extended to December 1st. And so those tallies, those votes have been, our nomination forms have been collected.

We then set this meeting January 10th as the date that the nomination forms would be reported out and that the public would have the opportunity to discuss it. It's on the agenda for that reason. The staff report included the vote totals. I will note we've had two people, two property owners contact us this week asking to change their vote. It's the Ojai Valley Women's Club and David and Mary Trudeau have asked to change their vote from a yes to a no so the current vote is slightly different from what's reported It is out of 56 nomination forms we've received 37 responses, 14 in support and 23 opposing.

To move forward the we have to receive more than a majority which means we have to receive 29 votes to move forward So the staff report mentions council has a few options at this time, either to allow more time for the vote to move forward. To remove the item from future commission meetings and not provide additional staff support. And there's some other options that can be discussed as desired.

But I did want to start with an opportunity for the commission to provide some information on the work that they've done. So, I believe it's Commissioner McCatton or is it Commissioner Convery? Okay so it's Commissioner Convery.

May I ask a question? What was the original rationalization for putting a time constraint on an item that's really a longer process, which I did not grasp. I may have been one of the council members voting for the time constraint but since I've been educated more and have thought about it, I don't understand what the rationale was because there's no time sensitivity

Is there. I think, I don't know that we really stated it but just kind of in the context from the council discussions is this is a potential action to people's property that Hanging out there. And so there's not necessarily a Hard deadline or there's not a date that we have to take action but I think we had heard from property owners who had asked for a decision to be made sooner rather than later because They're hearing about this and not knowing is it gonna happen? Is it not gonna happen? Yeah, so there is you know There are property owners and there are property owners who support it and there's property owners who oppose it right now As we said with the report, there's a majority that oppose. But I think that was one of the ideas with the deadline.

The other... We'll leave it with that.

But in actuality, nothing actually

happens. As we noted in the report, the reason I think this one is confusing is that it's being led by the commission and so that's where it's sort of a city action and that's where we got all these questions from property owners about what's the city doing? Why isn't it being talked about at council? But as we noted in the report, anybody can come forward and nominate a historic district and can go out and try to get more than 50% of property owners to support it.

And so I think the question really tonight is does the council authorize the commission to continue to spend commission time? If I could put a further point on that last point. If the council decides tonight to not have the current effort led by the Council's commission continue,

It does not mean the members, the people who are those commissioners cannot continue to move a historic district forward. However they cannot do so if so ordered by the council would not do so in their commission capacity. They would do so in their individual capacity without any staff support and not the city would not do anything until they completed nomination package was received with the minimum property ownership in support nothing else would happen but it doesn't prohibit from that from happening If the proponents were able to do so. Thank

you. Thank

you.

Hi, I'm Cindy Convery. I'm the vice chair of Historic Preservation Commission and I wanted to first say address what James and Suze's question was is that I think when this process started we as a commission and you as a council have never worked together to create something like this So I think there was you know lack of of understanding about how to proceed with it and how much time it would take in the communication and the due process that we were under with government Brown Act restrictions. So I think that's probably why there were some loose dates just, you know, to try to get it moving forward but those dates were put in place without understanding that we did have Brown Act restrictions We meet once a month. You know, we have a very limited commission so time It's very hard to get you know time moving forward and that with those restrictions Which is kind of what I want to talk about tonight?