City Council — 2023-04-25

Good evening, call to order. We have a quorum, could we have the roll call please Weston?

yes thank you mayor please join me in standing Right hand over your heart, ready begin.

12 million barrels of oil offset so that's how they view this reduction program So by going after the next 20 plus million tons is another 27 million barrels of oil offset by reducing methane at landfills. Next slide. And the reason they focused on what we're doing today is because it's one of the least costly ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Organics recycling is only about $53 a metric ton of CO2 reduced, rather than an electric vehicle closer to $3,000 a metric ton of CO2.

So there's a whole hierarchy at which what we should be working on first to reduce methane or greenhouse gases. And then ultimately, zero emission vehicles are supposed to help us finish getting the way there but they're pretty expensive. Next slide. This is about the procurement program that I was talking about. I'm going to show you some examples of how cities and farming companies are using the compost in the SB 1383 program. Next slide.

It's a whole new platform that Agri-Min created statewide called californiacompost.net, and it's meant for us to help jurisdictions not have a bad experience in using compost and mulch. Believe it or not, not all composts are created equal just like meals. They're not all created equal. And not all soils can use the same amounts of compost in the material types because every piece of property has its own thumbprint and what needs to be done to it in order to grow plants. Next slide.

So with the passing of AB 1985, 100% procurement in like the city of Ojai was probably around 5,000 tons of compost you'd need to procure. This year in 2023, you only need to procure 30% of that. So it basically created a ramping phase through 2025. Next year it needs to be 65%. And by 2025, you're going to have to cure 100% of the compost and mulch. Ojai has always been really good about using mulch in the community parks and streetways so we're happy to work with James Vega to figure out how to use that in the parks, or we can actually broker it to agriculture if you're interested in doing that as well. Next slide.

The portal just has an assessment tool in there where for free will tell you how you could use the compost and mulch in your communities. We actually combed the internet to find out many park acreage you have, streetways you have, and then we can tell you how much you can actually use in the city. We have qualifying product lines that you can look at with standards, whether you buy it from us or someone else. You can make sure that they're meeting the standard so you get a quality product. And then there's a brokering service in there where we help pair you up to agriculture to be able to use the material if you'd so decide to go that direction. Next slide.

There's a calculator on the website too, it makes it easy for you. You just put in the city, it'll have the year for this year and then it will tell you how much compost you need to buy and mulch. Next slide. At the end of the day, this is the best part of it. It produces a report for you every quarter tells you where you're at. And at the end of the year, it'll produce a report you can just send to CalRecycle so that it shows that you're in compliance. Next slide.

This is a little bit of a story about how the solution to a lot of what's going on is actually beneath our feet and fixing the soil. So I'm just gonna take you through a little education on how compost is used and why it's important for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and then I'm gonna show you some examples of projects we're doing throughout the state. Next slide.

So scientists, if you know a lot of them they'd never agree. And when you get a bunch of them starting to agree that there's a problem, you know that you better start paying attention and more and more we're seeing more scientists agree that the climate is changing. We would argue that it's not changing. It's probably always changing, but it seems to be more severe at times. So some of the things that you can do with soil to sink carbon like Mother Nature intended to I'm gonna show you some examples. Next slide.

Historically and I'm talking a century or more ago before oil in 1860 and chemical fertilizers most of our soils and agriculture had three to 7% carbon organic matter in them. And they healed themselves creating topsoil Well, with the revolution of chemical fertilizer and monoculture our soils today have less than half a percent in them. In most cases barely enough to sustain life so therefore you have to use lots of water and chemicals to grow food.

If we were just to move the needle back to 3% on our agricultural lands you could actually remove a trillion metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. So you got to remember we're continually producing CO2 above and beyond Mother Nature, and that's what's creating the disturbance in our weather patterns. Next slide. How does compost work? Well, if you look on the left side that's a rangeland example and I'll show you one that we're doing in Sacramento.

Today because the carbon levels are so low the plant life barely can consume enough carbon out of the atmosphere to sustain itself So basically, it's feeding the microbes in the ground which breaks down the nutrients in the ground, solubilizes them so it can uptake it through the roots and grow the plants. And that's the cycle. Draws down carbon, feeds the bugs in the soil, so the bugs feed the plants and that's the cycle of life in the soil.

With compost, by adding nutrients to the ground to feed the bacteria in the ground, the plants grow more vigorously. Their roots grow deeper and they start to sink carbon like they were meant to. So that's what fixing the soil does. Next slide. How do we pay back our carbon debt? Well, it's going to be complicated and it's not easy and it's going to be very expensive. So I'm going to show you some of the projects we're working on that go hand in hand with the waste industry, the water industry, the agricultural communities, and everybody participating in collaboration to try and fix things. Next slide.

Here's Montalvo Park in Ventura. City of Ventura said, Bill what are we supposed to do with 8000 tons of compost? And I said well you have 700 acres of ag land, I mean parks just a quarter inch on 700 acres is actually 12,000 tons of compost so you need more than you actually need to buy. Well what are we supposed to do with it? Well let me show you how to fix the parks.

So we did a demonstration in Montona. We did one application in June of 21 that's what the park looked like and this is a drone that measures photosynthesis And then in March of 22 after one rain and one application, we greened up the park. We started to store some carbon in it and take me to the next slide please. You can see the difference between the untreated and the treated areas, and most important is you can look at what the water infiltration rate was. So a lot of parks are super hard, the ground is super hard, water hits it and runs off.

As you start to add compost, it starts to soften the ground and it doubled the ability for it to accept water. The moisture levels doubled in weight in the soil and the water holding capacity nearly doubled, therefore saving water and the park. So you don't have to use as much water if you fix a soil next slide. This is our carbon farming project in Sacramento on a rangeland project called Van Vleck Ranch. It's been around since 1856. That's one application, one rain.

You can see the treated and untreated. This is not rocket science when you start to look at it going wow! You can actually see visibly the change in the piece of property with one application. So we're gonna be doing this every year to sink carbon Now there's voluntary carbon markets that we're going after to help to pay for these things. So it's gonna be a combination of what we're doing, what the voluntary carbon markets are doing to help sink carbon. Next slide.

Lehman Air Company where we started our first farming project. This is a farm they have out in the desert called Cadiz where we started treating their trees out there. Next slide. You can see the trees on the left started creating new blushes. You could see the yellow, new leaves compared to the trees that are untreated. The trees out there now are growing just as many lemons as the ones in Santa Paula because we started fixing the soil.

Next slide. Agriments carbon factor. So here's some of the projects that are working. I'm going to update you on a Linear project that we're doing or Mountain View project that we're going to be doing for food waste. Next slide. We have a huge footprint now and we're very proud of it. We're continuing to build new facilities statewide to remove green waste, food waste and all organics from landfills.

Lima Nara, which was finally approved in February of 2022 that we started the permitting process in 2011 took nearly 11 years to get a permit. And we finally completed that so we're hoping to start construction on that at the end of the year. Our Mountain View facility that one took six years and we're starting construction this year. And then we have others throughout the state that were building next slide.

The LeMonaire project is going to be 300,000 tons. The CapEx to build it total costs about $30 million. It'll be there for 50 years so that's the good news and it will handle pretty much all of Ventura County's organic waste, green waste, food waste, ag waste at that one facility. Next slide. This is an exciting new technology for commercial food waste, where the trash truck unloads the commercial food waste into these hoppers. And it goes through a series of shredders and presses and screens. And we get out a really clean mash at the end of the day that we can aerobically digest and use it as an animal feed or a fertilizer from the food waste generated. It removes all the contamination, all the bags, cans, corks, forks, you name it. It removes all of that.

Next slide. That's it. It's our call to action. Everybody has questions about bags, so there are bags in everybody's house. We don't care what kind of bag you use. Just put it in a bag. Put it in the green waste barrel so we can pull it out. There is not enough infrastructure in the state of California to do SB 1383. So if you were to just put your food waste in the green waste barrel, it would get commingled and there's nowhere to go with that. So right now, those trucks go to Gold Coast Recycling where we take the bags of food out. The green waste goes to our Limonero Compost Center and the food waste goes to our Simi Valley Center where it gets processed and sent off to composting. As soon as Limonero's open in Mountain View then we can talk about commingling because now we'll have infrastructure for it but for us, the food is more valuable as an animal feed and organic fertilizer than as compost so we'd prefer it in a bag and in the cities we tell not to bag it they bag it anyway And then the cities that don't want bags, we say well take out the rest of the bags because there's lots of bags in there that people put in their green waste barrels.

So you don't have to use compostable bags. You could use a paper bag, a plastic bag, pretty much any bag you have laying around. Like Nan said it's pretty easy if you put it in a bag tied up and then put it in the barrel so you don't have to have it in the house. It keeps the barrel clean in the summer when it gets hot. If you just had food waste in there without a bag I can tell you from experience, the gnats, the cockroaches, the flies, the smell is horrendous.

So put it in a bag. Keep it clean. Thank you very much. Happy to answer any questions if you have any of

me. Thank you so much, Bill. Much appreciated. Stay here. Stay here. Very inspiring. Hey, Bill? Bill? Yeah? Bill, we've got a couple questions. Yes, ma'am.

Susan? Well first of all, are you familiar with Josh and Rebecca Tickell who produced the film in the book Kiss the Ground. Yes, and you know so You know our community is all about regenerative agriculture And composting and so my question is just very practical I'm sure other people have it how much do you have to separate cooked and raw food?

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter you can put old bread together and All together. OK, that's my question. I thought this is absolutely fantastic. Have you watched The Biggest

Little Farm in Moorpark?

The what?

The Biggest Little Farm in Moorpark.

Not yet. I mean, I may have seen it. It's

a movie.

Actually, I have seen it. Yeah. It's an older... No,

it's not that old and they're making new ones on Disney so it's an incredible farm in Moorpark called the Biggest Little Farm. It' worth watching.

Yeah, I think it's on Netflix.

You can watch it on Netflix

and other things. Thanks for the reminder.

Thank you.

Rachel?

First of all this is very exciting. I was writing letters to Senators 20 years ago about Monsanto and I'm very excited about the developments that are happening with this and I had the opportunity to tour the facility two weeks ago thanks to Nan And on my social media, there's actually a little in my stories highlights. You can see bags being separated and so I'm encouraged by all the development.

And I had one other question too. I've tried using the compostable bags and a lot of times they fall apart but can you put Like compostable coffee pods or other compostable items in the food waste as well commercially.

You can and so part of 1383 requires us to compost all the soil paper and compostables and textiles today we are composting clothing Compostable packaging. We are test driving all these new products at manufacturers There's another bill SB 54 that just came out about producer responsibility Everything is moving toward composting So the cotton industry has reached out to agri-min to start composting all different kinds of cotton based fibers And it's it's working so with tools and technology It's just one big science project, and our goal is it came from the ground. Let's put it back in the ground safely and that's our job because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to grow food to feed us. And as the planet population continues to grow, it creates a tremendous carbon footprint so Reducing is only going to get us part of the way, we have to draw down at the same time.

So these carbon farming projects, carbon sinks in the parks, we're gonna figure out how to monetize those so that you treat your parks like a carbon sink. They turn green, they use less water, less chemicals and we can monetize them financially to turn them into carbon sinks. So the industry's changing rapidly. We employ 10 to 1 jobs versus landfilling by doing what we're doing in the recycling and composting industry. So you're going to see a lot new products coming out that's saying this jacket is compostable, and working with some pretty cool innovative companies that talent coming out of Adidas and a bunch of other companies like that.

I have one other question. Susan, yeah? I heard Nan say that it's harder to get private homes to compost or to put their waste in the barrel but she said businesses are better but does that include like schools, hotels, hospitals? All of them. Are they all on board?

Well, so this bill is a hammer. I don't think that's how you get people to do things. So somehow we got to figure out how to inspire them through art and communications which is what I try to do and say you gotta help us do this It's a law, and we have to do it at the end of the day as your waste hauling company. And the Harrisons for 90 years have been committed to being innovative all the time.

But we can't do it without everybody's help. So at the home try and help us out, and at the restaurants try and get them to help put the material in the right containers. Definitely the schools participate, hotels participate, food processors but it's going to take everybody.

So is there something that individual cities can do in the way of making it mandatory?

In 2024 you produced an ordinance, right James? The organics ordinance. Yeah. So in 2024 if the producers aren't participating And the state comes down and tries to penalize the city for not having the participation levels required, then you're gonna have to go be the muscle in the police to get the generators to start doing what they're supposed to do. And that's what the ordinance is that you passed probably last year.

Okay, yeah. Thank you any

other questions or comments

Andy So I had this question a couple of weeks ago I know read through the description of the relationship between the User then Harrison is transporting doing the separation all that then the county Taking things in what my question is have have you? Analyzed the City's end of things in terms of what we have to do and for to report To demonstrate that were in compliance With 1383 and what should we anticipate in terms of staffing that?

Yes, so as part of your contract with the Harrisons a lot of that requirement is on the contractor or the hauler and Danny Harrison's here to answer some of those questions too. I just saw him oh he's in the back but they make sure that you're in compliance with AB 939 they're going to make sure you're in compliance with 1383 and then you also have a consultant on your side that makes sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do by the contract to keep you in compliance and that's part of your agreement And that's their commitment, and they do that for all the cities they serve. So Gold Coast Recycling is a Harrison Industries company. Agriments part of the Harrison Industry family of companies. So that's how the hauling, the recycling and the organics are all connected to serve you.

They own no landfills so they have no commitment to landfills. They use the local landfills at Tolan for Ojai but they also use Simi once in a while if necessary and Calabasas but not having landfills makes you creative. They've been salvagers their whole lives and they're really good at it.

I just wanted to say one thing and that's that we have an audit team That is in charge of SB 1383, and right now all of it is about food waste obviously because that's the one thing that we really needed to conquer and try to figure it all out. And we actually have people besides the auditors who keep accurate records if you ever want to see some of the audit information. We do report it to the cities but they, well and you have Kim Nielsen I believe helping you also who we work with to give her all of the information so that CalRecycle is fully aware Of where every city is and understands your efforts because that's a very very important thing So I just wanted to make sure that you knew that your city was watching us Besides Cal Recycle watching us and Myself, I got a prize at my door on my on my doorknob hanger saying thank you Because I am such a good Food was a composter and it helped me.

And I had to call, and I said what was that about? They actually have someone, they take a different route in a different city, and somebody opens up the organic barrel and looks inside and sees if you have any bags. If you have any bags, you get a little thank-you!

If you had to actually see 1383, you don't have enough staff. You'd have to hire 15 people just to work on it and the consultant along with the Harrisons will fill in your annual report that's due August 1 and it'll have everything that you're needing there to be in compliance and it runs the gamut all the way down to the educational pieces and the outreach and the barrel checking like Nan saying I mean it's all in that report that you have to produce and that's what they do for you yeah

I just had a question for city For people who live in apartments do our apartment complexes and I don't know maybe this is a per apartment complex thing Do our apartment complexes have? food waste dumpsters

I'm not sure

so multifamily be required to do it, but I'll refer to folks. Oh

Yeah, multifamily is also included in the programs and typically there's going to be trash recycling and organics card at a multifamily development. But a lot of the HOAs are taking away the landscape material that will either bring it to us or get a Harrison dumpster or manage it themselves but the waste recycling and organics picked up by the Harrisons through those programs would go to Gold Coast yeah

I just have to say it's a mixed bag because there are condominium projects that have their own barrels, but they're in an HOA situation. There are apartments that rely upon the brown container that we put out for green waste. There is something to get exemptions because they have gardeners so For us, it's the last thing that we are really trying to find the solutions for to make them exactly right so far.

It's been a challenge because the associations have things they would like to do that they can't do. A lot of them have asked for exemptions and couldn't get them because they still need to do food waste, so it is a challenge but it's one that we've accepted and we're working on and there's nothing we could say that would be exact about any certain one you'd ask us because one shoe does not fit all so we have to make special arrangements and figure out exactly what is the best program for how those people live.

Great all right well, thank you so much. Thanks congratulations Nan on your prize May we all follow in your footsteps as a model composter and thank you bill really inspiring

yeah I'm easy to get ahold of bill at agriman comm and if you guys any Any other questions or school projects? We love to do education with the young people generation with school gardens and tours. So if we can help in any way, we know how green Ojai is so let us know how we can help you. Thank you much

appreciate one thing. Yeah, I have to introduce Jim Harrison. He's here tonight to watch us watch his

team.

That's Jim Harrison. Thank you for being here, Jim. Much appreciated. Thank you all

Thank

you. We'll move on to commission reports, and we have a commissioner report from the Arts Commission Chair Smitty West. Thank you, Smitty.

Hi

everybody. 28 days ago I stood here and I said, I'm going to have you a five-year plan

within

a month. And there it is. So what you have in front of you there... James do you need one?

I'll get one from you after.

No, Nigel has one for you. Nigel our past chair and senior commissioner If you open, you'll see our smiling faces here. But on the left is really the most important part of this, of our plan and that's telling you that this is not the plan that you're holding it's just that people like to have paper in their hand but what we have done is we have created a virtual plan that sits online out on the cloud that is not only a plan for budgeting purposes but it's a plan for management purposes. It's a plan that Creates transparency that anybody could check at any time, and it will be linked to the Arts Commission website as well.

But the document you do have there will guide you through some of the visioning that we did. Remember two months ago we brought in all the boards here with all the pictures? So that was an investment in first seeing what was possible and then determine why the arts... What can we do and how do we do it? And so you'll find some high-level sort of summaries of that in the document that you have

there. Can I ask the people in the lobby to be quiet, so we can hear? Thank you.

But, may I draw your attention though to this which looks like a simple spreadsheet. What we've determined from our visioning is that if we reorganize the Arts Commission into six different areas grants education technology public art communications and commission health Virtually everything that we envisioned in terms of what we could do fits into one of these categories.

This plan is expandable, this column here AA was last year's budget and this is our budget request for this year too. I'm going to ask James Hahn to go ahead and open the grants So each of these is expandable, and you'll see within grants. We have some highlights of what we're doing. And why don't you open up marketing now they see it in Blind there too so for every everything within this plan all the way up and down it's expandable right down to the actual tasks that need done. And the Gantt chart on your right takes us out, you can't see the heading but it takes us out five years toward some of our long-term goals.

So let's go ahead and open for one other idea Open Education which is the next one and Collapse Marketing completely So under education, so grants is the most important thing that we do and we have not had an increase since 2018 in the grants. That's the money we give directly back to the community and to the artists and the art projects in the community. So we're asking for a modest I think 10% increase on that this year But one of the other main things that we're doing with grants, like we are with all the divisions, is putting it together in a backbone of technology so that's accessible and manageable and measurable.

So our application process will be online, and we're already updating our website to be able to do that too. Under education, what's new is our professional enrichment seminars By the way, Valerie Freeman, if you look is overseeing the grants and then Pamela growl is overseeing education you could see our little areas on our pictures there too. So I just wanted to kind of give you an idea.

The depth of this I'm not going to go into it all right now, I am. I have discussed it in detail with city staff and have justified and made some changes and. But this is what we're going to ask we need this money to do this plan. Quickly in technology, that's where we're going to move toward connecting ourselves with the community and all our constituents through a common backbone Public art is an investment. We have to We have to own what we own better One we do not know Exactly what we own and what is public art and what is not public art? And what a city property and what a city maintenance So the first thing that we have to do that has never been done is an assess a professional assessment Of all the public art in Ojai, that's owned by the city so that we know.

Is there a What kind of care? Art needs care more than weed whacking and the lawn being mowed, too. But we're going to get a professional assessment. We do have a contract with an excellent firm that does this that has connections to Ojai. And the price comes out to about $160 per piece of public art for just seeing where we are to start with there. And then we move on from there.

Communications, we want to make sure that we connect with our artists community art is something that can bring people together with disparate views. We want to make sure that city government could do a lot for the arts but sometimes city government has to get out of the way too so we want to be able to do it smart and know when When to help and when to do it ourselves. So Nigel is going to head our communications thing, we'll be doing proclamations and try to be present at every important art event that occurs in the valley. Commission health, I advise you to do that. We decided to create a patterned after Rotary with club service if you don't have a healthy group that's making government decisions You're not going to do a good job.

People have to know where they fit, they've got to know what the plan is, they've got to know what's in bounds, what's not in bounds, what legal and what's not legal. So we're going to invest a little bit in education for our commissioners. We're gonna consider going to seven in the future as the plan unfolds but we want to be flexible. We can expand that or you'll be able to do that. By the way, this will be there'll be a link I could provide individuals with it. It will be once sort of finally approved it will be on the website and anyone will be able to access it certain people will be able to edit it so another point is You haven't seen a plan from the Arts Commission which is one of our one of our responsibilities to your council for over four years and And the last one was just a sheet of bullets.

All right, this is actually a document that will guide us through, lead us, make us collaborate and make us communicate. And further as we complete these tasks it'll be kept up to date so next year's five-year plan will just have another year added on at the end. We had to reduce this to an Excel spreadsheet to show it because I didn't want live internet here in the chamber.

That's all I had to say is that thank you. Uh, I will say even though we're asking for it looks like we're asking for more money We gave 7 000 back last year with the idea that was going to be used uh for some maintenance and public art Whether or not the arts commission does it or the city does it out of some other chunk? It needs done You don't need obelisks falling on people Or spending money on things that aren't worth anything either and And the only other big increase besides the public art was on the education side.

So if you take just the 7,000 we gave back and 6,000 for the assessment of the public art, we're really just at about a 10% increase. And James has reviewed it and I think he can answer any questions as well. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity To put this together and it's going to live hopefully long gone my ears.