City Council — 2023-05-22

Welcome to the Ojai City Council special meeting Monday, May 22 2023. May we have the roll call please. We have a quorum.

Yes ma'am.

Thank you Weston

the law to ask we can't force anybody

No, so if the box is checked I will say what is there and just remind this a recommendation from former Mayor Carol Smith and at the time. The council agreed that we would do this so it's what we're doing. Okay, so let's begin with William Weirich then Larry Steingold then Robin Gerber

and mayor if I may in public, the three minute timer will be right here below the clerk's desk.

Let's have a general comment. Peripherally related to the Brown Act matter but more about an attitude of governing the city and approaching the challenge of governing. And I hope you'll indulge me in the three minutes, I'd like to start by reading the preamble to the brown act. Legislature finds and declares that the Public Commissions Board and councils, and the other public agencies in this state exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that deliberations be conducted openly.

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people in delegating authority do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and was good for them, not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so they can retain control over the instruments they have created.

I don't think this council has demonstrated fidelity to that legislative intent. And frankly, I also believe that the two people you've hired have not insisted on fidelity to that legislative intent and that's tragic because we're sitting here spending a lot of time, fair amount of money probably who don't know the exact contract with the consultant To engage in something which is really just common sense.

The burden of proof is not doing anything not openly, it's a high burden of proof. This council, this staff has not acted on that presumption and unfortunately undermine the integrity of governance for the entire community. It's tragic thank you.

Thank you Bill next we have Renee Roth and Dee Reed and then Larry Steingold

Hello, my name is Renee Roth. I live in Ojai. I am a resident of the City of Ojai. I want to start off a little bit differently about a commitment to public service What is a commitment to public service? Public servants are committed, in my opinion, to reflecting on their roles and responsibilities. They are committed to test And measure their values, their ethics and their actions as they serve the government and the people of our city.

We all come in with a personal bias but as elected officials, the time to think about what is best for the residents of Ojai Is now not your personal friends, not those who got you elected or those who have an agenda that they want to see carried out. So how do we do that? We have city attorneys and city managers who help guide us on what are in the best interest and following the laws of this great state to help guide you along your way.

But we need guidance, we need collaboration, we need ethical considerations to identify our own personal bias And make a commitment to diversity equity and cultural inclusiveness for our community. So, to change course a little bit here I do want to welcome our speaker miss an rebel. I believe that's how you say it. Um, with the fair political practices board.

And I do well, I do think that the responsibility of enforcing the California code and especially provisions of the election code that have to do with officials recusing themselves. is a very important part, especially when they have knowledge of a participant's financial interest in a proceeding which is what the law states. We have asked Mayor Sticks on several occasions to recuse herself Specifically, I hope you can begin to address the many conflicts of interest involving Ohio's Mayor Betsy Sticks who sent confidential emails relating to The lawsuit filed against the city of Ojai, so acting on behalf of Simply Ojai.

Thank you very much. Thank you and Mr City Attorney just to confirm that statement about the emails confidentiality. They were shared so they would not have been confidential, correct?

I mean it's not clear what emails the public commenter is referring to. I'm not sure i have enough information to provide advice in this moment

never mind all right thank you um D did you want to speak on item number one or okay I'll wait that okay thank you uh Larry Steingold then John Drucker and then Robin Gerber

Larry Steingold good afternoon resident are you recording Weston Are you recording this?

Yes. Is the timer going?

And you can control the video and audio? No, you can't. Oh good. So make sure everything is done correctly so I'd like to be recorded. I want to thank Mr. Vega and Ms. Lindy Palmer for the roads and for the summer activities and for Mr. Sarzadi. It was wonderful.

Oh

yeah. It was packed there were kids everywhere and that's wonderful And please keep up the good work. I think it's great. Thank you for the roads. Now we're all waiting to see asphalt paved and ground up, and for the new list coming out in a couple of weeks to see whose roads are not being paved for the next three years. Can't hear me? Oh, okay. Sorry because I assume the Maricopa is going forward so I would like you all to ask Matt Levere who's running for reelection for 3M dollars.

I'd also like you to ask Mr Bennett and Ms Lamone for the money because everybody else in the country seems to be making bank And we're here going to be sucking wind. And we're gonna now have to ask a million people to pay a higher TOT and a higher sales tax, and they're all coming from Mr. Bennett's and Mr. Levere and everywhere else's location. So you should all get together and ask him unanimously this evening to please give us $3 million to help all the residents here who have to put up with a million visitors.

And that's what I'd like so thank you very much and have a nice evening.

Thank you Larry. Next we have john Drucker and then Robin Gerber,

and real quick while they're coming up just just to that point we can't talk about that tonight because it's not on the agenda but I assume the council heard you and will act as they see fit.

Can we agendize it

tomorrow we actually tomorrow night join everybody can join us for tomorrow night as well six o'clock. We have our CIP review and it could be discussed okay thank

Good evening, I'm John Drucker. I'm a business resident of Ojai and Leslie Rule's attorney in this sad affair. Leslie and I believe that she did not violate the Brown Act but the DA disagrees saying we should have gone to him first and only and Ms. Rule stated too many facts expressing her opinion basically alleges that Leslie did the right thing exposing the council's wrongdoing but in the wrong way.

We can live with that And the knowledge of history is comforting as well. When Daniel Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and Washington Post exposing the government's secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia, he was criminally prosecuted for divulging state secrets. But he was soon vindicated in court and then went on to innumerable prizes and awards from the many, many organizations that appreciate the transparency that he brought to government.

Now Leslie you're not as significant a whistleblower as Daniel Ellsberg and Mayor Sticks your wrongdoing while inexcusable and unforgivable are not equivalent to the secret bombing of Cambodia But we find contentment in knowing that when you do what is right, you can take pride and things usually work out for the best. The city attorney Mr. Summers though takes a different approach addressing his memo in detail would take me an hour but a few things leap out first he's saying we did nothing wrong but I recommend we commit to fully comply with the DA's demand to cease and desist but only to avoid litigation and because it requires no admission that we did anything wrong In short, it's a commitment to keep doing what he's been doing and what you've been doing while placating the DA.

Now there are only two things I don't like about anyone who does, who endorses this approach, their face. Second, Mr. Summers is always looking for justifications to keep council deliberations secret instead of seeking the openness that the Brown Act strives for. That is on you. And third, Mr. Summers' entire defense is at best based on an expansive reading of exceptions allowing for closed sessions rather than the narrow reading the law requires just because you can say an issue relates in some tangential way to the agendized item does not make it a proper topic or a closed session discussion quite the contrary As I've been saying since January 24th, Mr. Summers was a main cause of the Brown Act violations here.

First he neglected to police the December closed session to keep you from straying off the topic of the Simply OI lawsuit and then he changed the topic of the closed sessions for January 9th but he neglected to change the statement of the agenda. That is three acts of negligence that laid the groundwork for the ensuing violations here Accordingly, Mr. Summers is unfit a city attorney and much too close. He does not have the necessary distance to provide any to any thank you john times that one second as Leslie's attorney I would ask for 10 more seconds

out of fairness. Thank you next we have Robin Gerber.

Can't I just have a peaceful transition to the microphone? First thing I want to say, Robin Gerber. I live here in Ojai and first thing I want to say is Council Member Lange, I only recently had chance to see the video of the last council session and I was shocked frankly and horrified by the comments of your partner. I like to think of Ojai as a more open and accepting and loving place So, I am so sorry that that happened to you.

So we are going just to clarify we are going to have item two on the agenda.

The resolution. Okay, it'll be on the agenda whether or not Council takes action is,

I see

pending,

then I will hold this comment but I do want I have been advocating for a code of ethics here long before any of you except for Sousa were on the council. I came here from Washington, D.C., where I was a lobbyist and an attorney, and I was frankly shocked that this city didn't have a code of ethics. So I am hopeful now that we will get there, that it will be strong. That this issue of recusal will be handled by that if we had the same language as the city of Ventura it would be very clear that there is a recusal needed for you Mayor but we don't have that And many other cities have the kind of language that I think would work very well here in restoring trust in the people, in you and in you with each other. Thank you.

Thank you Robin West any comments online?

No raised hands Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Well

Thank you Mary just a brief introduction. You know thank you everybody for attending the workshop tonight. There have been a lot of questions and concerns related to the Brown Act and, and how it's followed and whether we follow it correctly and transparency. And I think even more with the district attorney's letter coming out last week so we thank you for joining us for this discussion.

There's two items on the agenda tonight. And we'll start with the first which is, it was intended to be a brown act and transparency workshop to give some overview about the Brown Act talk about how it works for the city and why there are things like closed session and what needs to be reported out and sort of the basics of the Brown Act and transparency. Uh, the 2nd item which was added after the letter is considering a response to the letter.

And so that'll be sort of part too but we're starting here today with the brown act and transparency workshop. And I just wanted to take a moment to introduce our guest speaker, Anne Revell. She'll give a little bit more thorough of an introduction but her qualifications are quite impressive. She's the adjunct professor of ethics professional responsibility and campaign finance at the University of California Berkeley Law School, Former Federal Election Commission Chair nominated by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the Senate, which I don't think we hear that happening very often anymore.

And also served as the chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. And so we thank her really for coming out and doing this. I think after flying across country she drove down today to do this. So we really appreciate it. And Anne's going to start with an overview, but really one of the ways we decided we wanted to set this up is allow plenty of time for interaction and questions. So that'll be part of the intent of how we hold the Brown Act and Transparency Workshop. And so with that I will introduce Anne and I will hand it over.

My recommendation is to take them after the presentation, just because we may speak to the questions that come up so

are we going to have a. We talked about potentially having an opening statement from council members,

so that is Council's choice I, I believe I informed the council that there may be a request to have an opening statement, and that can be a request made at this time. So do it isn't an official motion. It can be or it could just be, you know by consensus or if it's not clear then there may need to be a vote on it.

I mean ask how you do feel okay about that.

Absolutely.

I'll make the request with a council member rule for to allow her opening statement

everybody's opening statement. If anybody has one I mean that was kind of the idea was that if he chose to make an opening statement you would have the option to do so.

I'm going to hold my comments until I hear more.

Okay, that's actually I would prefer, I would prefer to hear from and as well before I make comments because she might address something in in her statement that would that would change the way I changed my thoughts about the whole scenario and what happened. I would be interested in hearing from you first.

I would agree with that, you know the goal tonight is to learn and so we have an expert here i would love to hear from you. So are we going to take a vote on

it?

I mean you can keep your comments as long whenever you want. This...I would like to have a statement.

We'll have time yeah

no i'm asking for a statement and we can take a vote

Probably

a good idea

to

take a vote. Is it a long statement?

No, it's a short statement no it's a very short statement

that council member will be allowed to make a short statement and the rest of us will wait

or you can make it if you want yeah I mean this was something that I had brought up

you want to do right now

yeah it's

I would, I'd like to make a substitute motion to do it after we hear from the center. So, anyone know,

I'll second the mayor's motion.

Okay. I know. Okay, all right we will wait.

No. Welcome to our world

and this is the problem. Right, it's

just too much to make a statement. I would like to ask the council to refrain from comments of that nature, and you know we voted so let's go. You're right, he voted.

So we'll take a breath and we'll let will give in a moment to prepare and we'll get started.

Should I start?

Okay.

No, I'm ready. First off, I want to thank you for inviting me here Microphone on her. I'm mic'd on, yeah. Although happy to go anywhere that anybody prefers. Thank you. No, I'm really very glad to be here to speak to you because these are issues of real importance to me and have been throughout my career in public service. In addition Federal Election Commission and the FPPC. I also was county council in Santa Clara County for many years, so I have been at every level of public service and one of the things you spoke about public service for me what is really important here tonight And I know there's concerns, and I've been asked to come because of transparency issues and closed session issues in the Brown Act. But I do want to say that what I see as public service both by elected public officials as well as appointed is exactly what you said.

That is We owe an obligation to the public and that's why we're there. We're not there for the purpose of our own self-interest, it's for doing what is best for the public. And the same is true in terms of transparency because I am a really strong believer in transparency without any question at all. That has been big aspect of my career in, particularly in campaign finance issues where transparency is so incredibly important. So that the public can know about who's behind political campaigns for one thing and also so that In the state of California, not just the Brown Act but there's requirements for form 700s for information financial information by all of the elected and appointed officials and people who work in government to be transparent about whether or not They're getting money that would put them in a conflict with the rest of the community and with the, the interests of the public.

But with respect to the Brown Act, and I'd like to begin with that. The Brown Act was enacted in 1953. And the purposes, and you spoke about the preface to the Brown Act which is definitely there really important. And the purpose was so the public can participate in issues of their local agency but also so that the public has a right to be informed about what is happening However, I do have to say that and well that you know the importance of that and the importance of disclosure cannot be underestimated.

The Brown Act itself, when it was written, obviously it was knowledgeable to the legislature that there needed to be exceptions to open and public meetings. There are situations without any doubt that the city and the public needs to be protected About certain information and those exceptions, while yes they're supposed to be somewhat narrow. They're also very clearly enunciated in the Brown Act about what is required in a closed session in order to have a closed session.

And those are things, if you look at that and you read all of the provisions about why there are those closed sessions. It is for the protection of the fisk of the city and the protection of the public in fact in certain things. And one of those is litigation and as a lawyer lady who was in DC as a lawyer, you do not disclose your strategies in litigation publicly because that is a detriment to the city when the city itself is involved in litigation. And the same is true for other aspects that are exemptions to the open meetings and are part of the closed sessions.

One of those has to do with personnel, and personnel evaluation or in many instances determinations to fire personnel. And those are things that should not be public period. That is a decision of the council. Yes. No, this is I'm talking about the crowd. Excuse me?

This is a workshop was a workshop so

they can see me well. I didn't get instructions prior about where I could look

yeah there's a workshop and I have let Miss Rivella know that she's fine to speak to us in the public and that we're all interacting so thank

you right

So,

excuse me, can we have a quiet please or excuse yourself. Thank you.

Right.

So

there are other aspects, and I understand labor negotiations as well and personnel evaluations as we discussed, and real estate negotiations because all of those two are matters that will impact directly the council and the public fisc. And as a result, the legislature. In what I consider to be great wisdom decided that as to those discrete issues there can be closed sessions and there should be closed sessions and trust me, I have spent many years in close sessions at the county level. And it was extremely important that those matters that could be disclosed publicly should be disclosed at the end of a closed session. But those matters that will create a problem for the public entity should not be disclosed and legally do not have to be disclosed because it will be to the detriment of the public agency.

And that's why the issues surrounding the Brown Act, I mean certainly transparency with respect to matters that are not going to be a detriment. That are going to be something where the public should weigh in but the public is not gonna weigh in on personnel matters. They're not gonna weigh in or should they on litigation? They're not gonna weigh Real estate negotiations, and as that those are things that are solely within the sort of role of the council.

And that's who should be there to discuss these issues and come to conclusions together. That's what a closed session is for you all have to be there. And so it is not about public disclosure or having public input into those particular issues. So, those are the major issues that I wanted to talk about. I was asked to also mention there are some other issues in the Brown Act that are of real great import In this context, and that has to do with communications.

Not only amongst of course council members, but communications that are facilitated through 3rd parties say an employee or some other 3rd party where you are reaching a consensus on an issue outside of a meeting. And that is. Without question, a problem and is illegal for the council to be reaching agreements without having an actual meeting that's agendized where you're discussing those issues.

So that is really problematic and it can be done by way also of technology If there's emails that are trying to come to agreements on issues, especially if there's a majority or. on I guess there's other mechanisms, videos perhaps and other kinds of mechanisms. Any way where there's an attempt by a majority of the council to come to a conclusion without an actual meeting is illegal. And to go back to also the confidentiality of closed session And I don't have the, I have the code sections here right in front of me.

Pause for a moment. Could we pause periodically to ask a question or to bring up. It's a it's a workshop with me. Yeah, I feel like I'm just hit the nail on the head about decisions that were made outside of Council meetings and That's the real issue. When the new council was seated in December and that meeting was followed by a closed session, it was apparent to me that there was already an agreement or the appearances of an agreement between the three new council members The mayor and the two to the right of the mayor, based on discussions outside of city council meetings and our city attorney. When I asked questions at the closed session all of a sudden it was like.

His whole approach had changed because we had a new council majority. And I was, I may have misinterpreted my distinct recollection is that the city attorney said that he's now working for the new council majority and one of those, in the previous council majority, he challenged one of the new members but now it was like You know, instead of working for the community for the city for the whole council. He was suddenly biased in favor of the new council majority. I don't know if i'm making myself clear but that's to me the dilemma and it's been going on ever since we can we

have a comment from yes

of course you can and I don't think that I'm uh in a position to be able to speak to that issue because I wasn't there.

But if I could just clear something up that it is, there is absolutely no factual basis there, we did not. There was no decision that was made. We did not even talk about that. That is not. That never happened.

You never spoke with Sabrina Venskas or Tom Francis or Mayor Johnny, or anybody

else?

Hold on this is not

a trial. We're

here

to learn.

Also one at a time. Issue so that we can come together and work harmoniously as a council there are certain issues that just have not been resolved in my hope that in this workshop We can air issues out and come to some kind of resolution so we can work together again.

So when we were campaigning, I sought advice and help. And yes, when I was campaigning, I sought advice, help and guidance from a number of people in this community, including Sabrina, including Tom, including Betsy. and others, my neighbors. I sought all kinds of advice and help never once in those conversations did we talk about me voting any one specific way or did we have any conversations about things that were agendized? In fact if anything Sabrina and Tom in particular They gave me so much information about the Brown Act that I went into every single meeting with armed with what not to do.

And then they gave me materials to study on my own, I basically went back to graduate school to understand the Brown Act. I feel like I'm having one of those Serena Williams moments where she's accused of cheating and she says, I have a daughter who is not cheating. I am actually really offended by the notion that I would have violated a law That I, that I've taken an oath to protect the city.

It's just it's not it absolutely absolutely in no in no nothing and I did not do that.

Yeah, I just would like to say one thing though. Keep in mind that this is a workshop to learn about the Brown Act. It is not about fleeing accusations that cannot be proved and that aren't true. So let's make sure to focus on policy education and learning so that we can do our jobs efficiently. So I do have to make a

comment here. There was an email from Tom Francis Saying that the new council members were on board with overturning the Becker rescinding the Becker agreement there is an email that says that now whether or not you are aware of that I don't know, but there is an email that and that's what it says. It says that the new council members are on board for over for overturning the Becker agreement so that's where that comes from. Okay, and We could go deeply into, you know how the campaign went. But as you say, you don't feel that that was true, you know, I mean all the conversation said that's fine. That's not really what we're here for but I will point out that in order to understand the way to move forward we have to know where the issues are in the past.

And there's a lot of hurt and pain around all of this, you know? I mean, Mr. City Attorney has attempted to sue me twice, has called me a litigant and a claimant in an action that I have no fricking idea what he was talking about. So there's a lot of this kind of stuff that is going on. And until we actually peel back the layers and take a look at it, we're not gonna be able to figure out how to go forward And, you know, you may not feel that you did that. But the chatter everywhere was that you did so emails, you know I'm just talking about chatter is like what's in the ether

and the city attorney made an assumption on how the new council majority Bill, I believe that Rachel is an honest person. I love her dearly so i'm sorry if if I didn't convey you know my intention but my question is does the city attorney work for the council majority or work for what's truly ethical and right for the whole community and for the council as a whole? I'm confused about that I'm not accusing, but that was my impression after the first closed session that he wasn't working for the old council majority. He was working for the new council majority.

I am happy to clarify that if I may. My client is the city. The city is an institution. It is controlled by a board of directors in this case, the City Council. I work for the majority of the City Council I work for the majority direction from the City Council. I do not work for some inchoate idea of the community, other than a community as controlled by a majority of the City Council. That is my client per all of the relevant rules laws and regulations. My client is the majority of the City Council, as the council may direct the city to do something or not do something or take an action or not take an action. So,

you know we're going to take a public comment after. After

Mr. fundamental I would like to hear and response excuse me, Miss Rebecca,

it's quite all right

too. The concern expressed by Councilmember Francina and the response by the city attorney. Right, because There's, you may have heard there are people who doubt the job that's being done by the city attorney. I'm not one of them but

Yeah, well I think having been a county council and lawyer in a number of agencies. I think what Mr. Summers is the job. The job is to take direction from a majority of whether it be the Board of Supervisors or the County or whoever. Oh, I'm sorry. I do have the map. Well, they've taken- No

we haven't.

It's when there seems to be a consensus from a majority. I'm not commenting on your particular situation because I cannot. I am just saying from my own experience you need to the city attorney or county council or whatever the lawyer is to a public agency takes direction From those who have made a determination about how to go forward, and you also give advice.

To those who request it so I can't really. Immerse myself in Ojai politics. So I just wanted to I know 1 follow up happy to be here but

can I ask 1 follow up question? You have to have a determination by the majority 1st though. I mean, you have to put that out and the majority has there has to have been a vote so that, you know. You can't assume what the majority is going to do and I think that is the crux of the issue is the decisions were made when there was had been taken no vote. So it was an assumption and that is what Susan is bringing up is that the assumption before a vote is what happened? Not that yes, the council directs you to do something. Yes, that's what you do. It's a council vote but if there hasn't been a council vote then if you're assuming a majority because you're assuming a majority and you go ahead and you act on that is what is incredibly dangerous.

And in some at least some opinions that is what has occurred in Ojai.

So, I think it may be more dangerous to assume that there's been some type of conspiracy that's occurred that broke the law. I agree with what Council Member Lang said and I'm very offended To suggest that there's been some, you know, conspiracy to make decisions before we went into our first session of city council. We didn't. You know, it was very unclear to me what exactly we were going to be discussing in our 1st session. But I won't go into that. I'll also say that it's also inappropriate.

To take the statement of somebody else who says how somebody else believes and say well, that's the way that person believes because this other person said that. Referring to Tom Francis, I never had a conversation with Tom Francis where I told him that I would be voting in any particular way if the Becker Agreement came in front of me. And I will point out as to all of this garbage that we've been going through and I'm sorry to say that but we voted 5-0 on that proposition.

And yet there has been the biggest storm that probably the City Council has ever seen, even though we were 100% in agreement about what to do. So I view this whole scenario that we've been dealing with thousands of hours and dollars to be political opportunism to try to derail a majority And it's the way that America works today. If you got a majority do everything you can to destroy. I

gotta follow, I have to follow up. It was supposed to be a workshop and I am running a meeting. Three to two. No, yes, he voted five in closed session my friend and then we went out the next day and voted three to sorry I

don't remember

that you and Betsy changed you changed your vote my friend all three of you change