City Council — 2023-02-14

Okay, call to order. We have a quorum may we have the roll call please Weston?

Please join me in standing. Right hand over your heart. Ready begin.

Thank you very much, James. And in the spirit of love, happy Valentine's to all of you. Let's all take a deep breath and remember that we are all connected and we all are here because we love our town. So everybody can take a deep inhale. Exhale. We may disagree on policies, we need to remember though that we're all connected and members of the same beloved community. To quote RBG you can disagree without being disagreeable So if we want a kinder and more loving Ojai, then it needs to start with each one of us right here. So let's model civility and kindness for our kids and be the change that we really wanna see in the world. And it's so nice to see some kids here, so thank you for showing up.

As all of you know, or most of you know probably, council meetings are the city's board meetings and it's a time for us to do business and give direction to staff so that staff can do its work. We want to create and maintain an atmosphere in our meetings in which we can attend to business efficiently, fairly, and civilly. I ask that we all strive to be our most gracious selves and focus on policies versus personalities To that end, please refrain from side conversations, clapping and of course booing.

Please turn off your phones and if you need to talk please go outside. And just a reminder it's very hard to hear up here when there are side conversations so if you could refrain from that that would be wonderful.

Mayor, I want to make a motion to reorganize the agenda. This will come as no surprise to you. I believe...I've been on the Council since my 11th year. I've never seen and someone can correct me if I'm mistaken. I've never seen the items moved to the end of the agenda. There is a compromise. There's different ways to handle this There can be a time certain that could be earlier in the evening. We have tried that it also failed But I also want to remind you that the reason we did not get to those two items Was because you insisted on delaying the referendum from the previous meeting The discussion on the referendum. That's correct, you want it through there were three votes to bring that item back we could have voted on it that night because the votes didn't change also I left early because I was sick so the meeting ended If I had been well, we could have definitely covered the reach code.

And thirdly, we spent maybe an hour giving police awards, photographs, refreshments, things that we could have done prior to the meeting. So you cannot simply hold the public comment which I believe was either 29 minutes or 46 minutes, I forget, that alone was not responsible I have a question of the city attorney. of public comments be slightly tweaked? Like if there's only three public comments, say from Ron Solorz on the library. People who have public announcements who are not planning to wait till 1030 or whenever we can get to it. Can, if Mayor Sticks sees only a few public comments could you possibly reconsider? Also is this for just tonight or is this a permanent thing? I think people would like to know that

I rearranged it so that we can get through these very two crucial items tonight. So it's not necessarily

for future meetings.

Do you have a motion?

Yes, my motion is well before I make my motion I wanted to know how many public comments there are For tonight yeah I feel that I understand your reasoning and I also want to get to those items, but I want to definitely make clear that we can't blame the public for speaking at the last meeting for the delay. That's not solely public comments back to the With the awareness that we have very important city business, so if I get a council majority vote to go in that direction please keep your comments as concise as possible. Don't use this time to air out any grievances.

You know don't repeat things that have already been said but if there's something important that's a public comment we have no way of knowing until the public speaks. And we can limit the time, some of the county organizations limit the time for public comments. We can do that, there's different ways to handle it besides going to the end of the meeting. Okay so we have a motion, do we have a second?

I have a point of order. So if I second it is there a place for discussion? Are we discussing it or do I discuss it before I second it?

One second and then the motion can be discussed.

Okay, so if it's seconded then the motion is discussed? Correct.

Thank you. It can be

discussed. Okay.

You second the motion? Is that a yes or yes?

Yes I'm going to second the motion.

Any comments?

Do we have a roll call? No, no. I have comments I just wanted to see if any of my other council folks had anything to say Because I'd like to hear it before we vote. I'd like to know sort of your rationale for voting However you vote. I think it's the public has a right to know why you're voting while you're voting To change a process which I think we all agree is going to stifle public comment and I mean we know that that's the point because the mayor said you know it really was there was too much public comment It took too long. We couldn't get to the items. I did I'm with I agree with councilperson Francina That is a red herring that is not what happened at all But okay Anybody can say what you know? Sure.

But what happens is that unagendized items are the only way the public can speak to us... I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on with my phone. I don't get phones. It is the only way the public can actually address us as an entity. It is the only time and the only way that they can do that. And we are now saying we're gonna put that at the end of the meeting. Let's see. I have the

time to spend more time on discussion, please.

No crosstalk and can we finish this so we can

move forward? So yes Councilperson Francina you're right We are going to spend more time talking about it because it's very very important The mayor decided unilaterally not discussing it at least with me or with other any other council person that I know That we would change the order of things It was on the agenda. It was never spoken to the public The public would have had to get the agenda look at the agenda and notice that there was a change That is a little bit difficult So we now have a public who didn't weren't was not aware for the most part There was a little bit of a brouhaha about this because it was so Different than the way things happened, and it was so immediate And it was so unilateral You and I, the first time we talked, we talked about potentially changing and updating and figuring out a way to make these council meetings more efficient.

And that was one of the things that we discussed but we never got back to it and you just unilaterally said that's what we're going to do. That's problematic in my book. I know that you have the right to do it, I know it's in the protocols but it's problematic. So my point... No, I'm not done yet thank you very much this is my time and I am going to do it. This is huge! This is not small, this is huge And it deserves public, it deserves us a talk about it when the mayor decides that the public is now going to be put at the end of a meeting. Disabled people, people with kids, people who don't stay up late all of those people are affected by this and once again it is only in the first non-agendized item that the public can actually speak directly to us And to say, I'm looking at the times.

The council meeting on January 10th was three hours and 42 minutes. You're gonna make people wait three hours and 42 minutes? That's just so unfair. And finally, I will say the public comment on 110 was 37 minutes. It wasn't hours and hours. And the city council meeting on 124, the meeting was four hours and 46 minutes. Public comment was 26 minutes. So I have to ask, what is the real idea behind putting public comment at the end? The Reach Code is great and we understand it. But the Reach Code is not something that's going to change the world today or tomorrow. We know that. The Reach Code affects...we had three houses built in the last five years. It's not going to It does not have the urgency that you say it does. We should pass it, yes but it doesn't have the urgency and neither does the rent stabilization have the urgency that you were talking about so I find both of those arguments to be It's uncredible, at the very least.

And once again what you're doing is unilaterally deciding that the public can wait three hours and 42 minutes to make unagendized comments, the only time they can do that or four hours and 46 minutes to do that So once again, I have to ask where is the logic in this? And I will tell you overwhelmingly if you look at the public comments they do not

agree. They do not want this to happen. I would like to remind you Council Member Will that actually in our first discussion we did talk about limiting the amount of time- We talked about it yeah. Please don't interrupt me. Yeah I apologize. Could we let the other council members speak now?

Asked them if they had something to say I that was my first thing to say was did you have anything to say? So it's not like I'm not letting them speak. I said do my council members have anything to say

Thank You

Rachel, okay. All right. Can

we

please up quiet?

Thank you

Alright, so this is the reason why the people who came here for reach codes and rent stabilization didn't get to talk because the political theater that one of the public comments made a comment about last time took over the entire meeting and it was awful. And we have the next generation sitting in this room, hi! And honestly I think the perspective that reach codes and rent stabilization are not important is coming from a position of privilege I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Just

a reminder

and I

appreciate your enthusiasm you can use jazz hands with no clapping thank you

because there are lots of people that I spoke to when I was canvassing who are concerned every day they rent they're concerned every day about being priced out of their homes there are families who care about the air that their children are breathing I think these are important and let's put this all in context 40,000 families just lost their lives. Their families lost their loved ones in Turkey and Syria.

We know that water and floods leads to earthquakes and rain and fire rather. We know that our community faces real threats within the next two years. And so if we can get through these things, if we can get through rent stabilization, Through these items that we've had on the agenda for weeks. If we can get through these, we can address some of the real concerns that we have facing us. And so I hear you. I do not...I'm the last person who wants to shut down the public. In fact there's a place on my website where individuals can sign up for time to meet with me I love hearing from you. I love sitting down and having coffee with you. The last thing I want to do is shut people down, but that's what this whole dysfunction in this council did last time for the people who were here, restaurant owners waiting for hours to speak about commercial kitchens.

And it – I can't vote to change the agenda. So I'm a no. Okay. Andy, do you want to say anything?

Yeah, I don't agree at all that moving the place in the agenda for public comment is shutting down the public from being able to comment. They are if they're giving public comment they're not allowed to speak on an agenda item so there's no reason that the agenda items don't get resolved first. At our next session, I believe that at least the plan is that we're going to have kind of a organizational planning type of item.

We're discussing that date today.

And I think that would be an appropriate time to talk. I agree with Council Member Lang that it seems like we can't start a meeting Every meeting we attempt to start is derailed and then you know at the last meeting I can't even remember what the topic was suing me, but there was a whole bunch

of Council councilmember rule. I'm gonna give you a warning because there's no crosstalk. You're right. You're absolutely correct I apologize you wait till I finish my sentence until you speak that would be lovely. Thank you

Well, if you're going to characterize it like that. Violation of the Brown Act OK. Communicating privileged communication which one of your supporters said was grounds for firing somebody in a private organization. We don't have that option. But I do remember very distinctly that we were discussing some item, and the comments from the two proponents of this reordering of the agenda was that we needed to get past whatever we were talking about and get to the real items on the agenda. But then when it was determined that we're removing That item from the agenda.

And there were people coming up from the public who wanted to still speak about the item that was removed from the agenda. You said it was very important that we continue with that, to the exclusion of those people who came for things that we were actually going to hear. So I think that it would be very important for us to move forward on actual items of city business and We can delay whatever theater production that you're planning for tonight until after we conduct some business.

Quiet please and I just want to thank you for the jazz hands, please no booing though and just to reiterate my motivation is to take care of city business, to take care of the people in our town, to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions We've already wasted time in terms of rent stabilization. We could have gotten going on that already, and as we know every day we hear stories of people being gentrified out of their homes, pushed out of their rentals, and the rents are going up so I think it's really important for all of us to commit to getting things done. So we have a motion, we have a second.

Point of

order? Yes. No one denies that these two issues are not important, but to spring a topic to suddenly change you've got to expect that people are questioning it. I don't know how you could not have foreseen that by the time we get done with the discussion public comments could have been over. Public comments are not This is abnormal, the kind of public comments we're hearing now. I've never in all the years I've been on the council had this level these kind of public comments are usually you know about their announcements or about things that are important uh you know things that happen just just life you know this is different and I believe that you can You can control the public comments without putting them all at the end. There has to be a way, but by you know we could maybe if you had discussed this with us maybe I could have come up with a compromise but all I saw was that it's at the end and I didn't even know if it was permanent or what the plan is.

The public doesn't know The public sees this and has a reaction. We've received maybe 40, 50 comments. I had all week long people were calling and texting me disrupting my life just because they saw this with no explanation. That's the problem. Maybe it can work. Maybe there's a good reason for it. So I think we should do a vote and that we have a record of...

I'd like to make an alternative motion that we move the discussion how, where, when we address public comment until that next meeting where we're going to discuss how the board does business. How we do business and that tonight we move forward with the agenda as it's been written.

That's my motion.

So I don't know what to tell you. But that having been said, the problem Mayor is your lack of transparency. That is the problem. Please could we please thank you. You know I think I'm still speaking. That's the problem! That's why people are here. That's the problem it's not yes we are dysfunctional We are absolutely dysfunctional and will not become functional until we understand these kinds of things where unilaterally you make these decisions. You unilaterally make a decision to sue me. You unilaterally, yes you did, you unilaterally made the decision. You put it on the agenda Mayor. You put it on the agenda. Okay, we have a motion. But my point is that this whole circus, this whole dysfunction is the result of what happened in a closed session and people are outraged at it and you don't want people to come out here and say things.

That's what the public sees. The Reach Code and rent stabilization, we're gonna move through those two items Transparency is more important

than any of this. Okay, we have a roll call so I mean we have a

motion. I'm not sure if Councilmember Whitman's motion substitute motion got a second.

What was it?

So I'll restate the motion. The motion is that we address the ordering of public comment and whether there are some ways you know I go to court all the time, and they do have a priority system where people can present ahead of time. Can you take me out of order because I have this thing that prevents me from staying until the end? And we can talk about all those things. My motion is that Discuss those types of issues at the next meeting and that at this meeting we proceed with the agenda exactly the way it's been noticed to the public.

That was actually my question, the point that

Councilmember Whitman brought up.

If there's a member of the audience who really cannot stay till 1030 and they convey to the mayor or to one of us that this is an urgent item, and this is their only time that they can speak. We can change that? The mayor can change it, the council

majority? You have to be extremely cautious that we are discriminating between viewpoints.

Okay.

So something independent of their comments, disability. Advanced age, something like that could be used to shift commenters earlier. But it could not be anything about what they're saying because that would be content-based regulation that cannot work. So the better way to do that honestly is what we used to do about 2018 or so for a while as you noted perhaps failed.

A defined period of time say an hour And then any more commenters are shifted to the end of the meeting. As for example, that's an option, something like that but the key is it's time-based. It's not about who is speaking. That's what has to be avoided. Is anything that's about who or what they're saying? That we can't limit on.

Yeah and per Council Member Whitman's motion, we will talk about that at the next meeting. All of those could be options yeah. So we have a substitute motion and I have a comment

on that at your convenience.

Well we're going to vote on this motion

Well, I there's comments on motions before you before you vote That's you know, that's just a rule of water. Um, i'm just gonna say I don't see how that motion is any different than what's on the agenda Because we're going to talk about the priority workshop anyway, so I don't see how honestly Your motion is any different than what is on the agenda? We already have the priority workshop number three on the agenda which is where what we would talk about anyway So I don' I really don't see the difference. But perhaps, I'm missing something here because we already have it on the agenda. We're already going to talk about it.

The difference is that we will have a vote and then we will get onto business and then you can have your theater after that.

Okay, but

that

makes no sense to me. Sorry.

We've got to keep...we have to move on and take care of business so we have a motion and we have a second. Could we have the roll call please Weston?

Yes, Mayor.

Could you repeat the motion please? I really don't know what the motion was could you repeat it please? My

understanding is that the motion is a substitute motion for the agenda for this evening to remain as written and as was noticed to the public and to set an item for the council workshop date to be determined to discuss public comment planning regulations rules and requirements.

Okay thank you Matt all right roll call please Weston

Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. All right we will move on to our presentation. We haven't approved the agenda. We just approved a motion. That

was a motion to approve the agenda.

Okay thank you. We have the Ojai Valley Community Wildfire Protection Plan or CWPP development update provided by Chris Stanch of the Ojia Valley Fire Safe Council. Thank you so much Chris.

I have a PowerPoint that should be coming on any second. And there we go, thank you.

Could we have quiet

please? Hold on just one, I'm

sorry Chris. Could we have quiet please so that we could hear? This is a pretty important topic. Thank you.

I would like to think this is something we can all agree upon and that is protecting our community from wildfire So, this is to give to announce that we've already done in the paper and other places but I'm taking this opportunity. Thank you to the council to talk about the launching of our Ojai Valley community wildfire protection plan development project.

And so we use from here on out will use the word CWPP next slide. Next slide, there you go. So what is a CWPP? Well that is a planning document for wildfire risk mitigation as other ones across the country it's being done under our federal framework so it's recognized by funders across the country and it has three minimum requirements which of course we will meet But we are planning this to cover a lot more information.

I'm sorry, Chris. Could we please have quiet here? This is a really important topic and I would hope that all of you would be absorbing this information rather than having a side conversation. And show some respect to Chris, please. Thank you. Appreciate that.

So we have to continue many CWPs of this scale are often agency driven. And the act sort of sets that up, so it's not a bad thing but in our as a community based organization focused on wildfire safety, we're looking to have more of a community-driven, community-focused CWPP. Now we are integrating other projects that support this, which we have talked before to this council. And that is the fine scale risk mapping, ember cast modeling and mapping and wildfire vulnerability and evacuation assessments. Those are technical data collection analysis projects but that information will be integrated into the CWPP so we aren't anticipating what I've been calling a very robust CWPP.

Next slide please. We'll spend too much time on the highlights of what it is, because I really want to get to the main point. And that is that... Go through the slides Weston. Of course, we will continue with the projects that we have going as well and the plan will cover expansions of those projects. Most notably our community supported prescribed grazing program which many people in the area are familiar with.

We have established a dedicated web portal for this project that will remain open through the life of the project and probably beyond. Though the technical project will result in a digital dashboard displaying the data that is available to the public. Importantly, there'll be an action plan at the end of this document stretching over 10 years to be revisited as often as necessary And that has one of the main reasons for a CWPP is to access funding. In fact, many funders require you to be able to reference a CWWP properly prepared under the framework as a condition for funding or at least to give you priority. So it is a definitive document in many respects. Next slide please.

Our planning areas extends beyond the city of Ojai, it's quite large. That's because we take into account evacuation and other lots of other measures. This is downloadable from the site for those who want to look at it it's OjaiCWPP.org And it's also accessible through our main site. And as you can see, the boundaries extend all the way up along the watershed, up 33 over towards Santa Paula, all of upper Ojai, the greater Ojai Valley and down the Ventura River Watershed to Foster Park and Conceda Springs covering about 350 or so square miles. Next slide please.

So obviously we involve a lot of communities including the unincorporated areas. We can see those there. Next slide please. Supporting projects I've already mentioned next please Project funding looking at the total of these projects. So we're looking at the USDA funding Cal fire through the venture wildfire collaborative the city of Ojai Ventura County Fire Protection District ongoing community support and then we're receiving a great deal of in kind from contributions of skills, expertise, knowledge from the City of Ojai, the county Ventura County Fire. Jensen Hughes our private industry partner and of course the Ojai Valley Fire Safety Council itself is a significant in-kind match for these projects. Next please.

We have established a core working group which will be not talked about at any length tonight but covers a wide range of disciplines also in the core working group is Ventura County Fire Principally Salim Moumi and Larry Williams, though the people show up as well lending their expertise. And in consultation with the U.S. Forest Service. It would be used obviously to educate, develop a plan and seek funding to support that plan.

And it should be an ongoing living document. We're looking to create a culture of resiliency. And we'll be talking more about that as we develop the CWPP. Next please? And we will continue to strengthen our partnerships that we have, which are extensive. And we will use this document in addition to planning projects and implementing those projects but also just support funding requests for those projects. Next please.

The development process takes a lot of steps. This project was launched in very late November. We're looking at a 16-month period, so we're looking for the final to be done in March of 2024 but there are a number of areas where the public can directly involve though they can continue in many other ways but we're looking at the survey and public workshops one and two, the you are here button over there And that's where we talk about next.

Next slide, please. How to get involved, we are setting up the first series of community workshops. I'll talk about that in a second. We have an online public survey which can be accessed from both sites and we look for people to answer those. We really do take this information in and we analyze it and we utilize it in planning efforts and the more information we get, the more responses, the better we can do our job of developing and prioritizing projects. You can sign up for updates on either site, and better yet become a member and support us because we need that kind of support.

And you can comment on the, there's a common area on the dedicated site. You're free to contact us by email or otherwise. We are planning a series of webinars that will educate on various aspects of this plan over the next 16 months and also we have a large array of resources you can download from either site. Next please? The two workshops, first is tomorrow right here at our own Kent Hall at six o'clock.

And then there's an identical workshop for people who can't make that one the next day at the Oak View Community Center. It starts a little bit later because that's when we were told we could start and these have exercises for people to be involved in and start to give their input. So hoping for good turnout and have people get engaged in this process it's really important Next. Okay, without having any questions.

Any questions from Council? I know that you guys have an incredible grazing program and that you're planning to have some outreach and sort of come and meet the sheep kind of thing in the spring. Do you have a date for that?

Not yet. We had our first event, was going to be this actually this coming weekend and that's in partnership with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy and their Oranges to Oaks due to an issue of access caused by the storm. That has been postponed we don't know when now of course the problem with that is that the grazing contracts line up so you know we're not sure how it is another one we are planning uh... is to launch a crowdfunding campaign And have that and have that supported by in the field activities. We have some grant money to do that very thing, those dates of yet to be set as we trying to line it all up. And furthermore because depending on what kind of rain you know you really don't know until it happens when you're going to be doing it.

Because this is prescribed grazing, which means that you have to look at all these different factors about when you're going to do stuff. So just keep a lookout for that we'll be announcing them as they come out and we're also seeking significant funding from CAL FIRE this year to support the grazing program in a much bigger way as well but thank you and will we just keep looking for that and we'll put it put it out there for people when we have those dates set

I

definitely will. Thank you

so much. Anything else?

Just a big thank you for all the hard work you're doing to keep our community safe, much appreciated and I encourage everyone to come tomorrow night or the following night and get engaged, get involved and get ready because we all need to take personal responsibility. Yes.

And take the survey! Okay thank you very much.

Thank you, Chris. We have no commission reports so we'll move on to the consent calendar. Is there a motion to approve?

I'll make a motion to approve.

All in favor? Aye. Wonderful. Okay, let's move on to the public hearing. It's the first reading and introduction of an updated Reach Codes Ordinance which will require all new buildings to be electric with no new gas infrastructure. Tonight we will get feedback from the public about eliminating all the exemptions except for infeasibility so we have a staff report James?

Yes thank you and I'll pull up a couple slides just I think we have two slides with some information on this let me

Screen.

And so the city of Ojai was one of the first cities in the county to adopt a reach code, a few years back. And that history is provided in the report. We've had several meetings talking about reach codes. We had a committee that also worked through the reach code. So I won't go through the complete history but that is included in the report More recently, the City Council had directed staff on January 10th to essentially take the next step related to reach codes. The city had already adopted a reach code that had the exemptions listed on this slide. I believe it's nine exemptions or exceptions.

The key ones that we spent a lot of time working through were the attached accessory dwelling units, the freestanding accessory dwelling units and the deed-restricted affordable housing projects. Those were probably the three most talked about when we adopted that version of the code Since that code was adopted over the last three years, the city has approved five new single family residences.

No new commercial buildings and 109 ADUs, 109 accessory dwelling units. And so one of the things that we tried to do over that period was collect that data to see what kind of impact each of those exceptions or exemptions would have, so that the council could consider what the next step was. When the City Council discussed the Reach Codes on January 10th, the Council directed the staff to prepare a revised ordinance that changes the name of the Reach Codes.