City Council — 2023-07-11

Call to order. Welcome, everyone. Good evening. We have a quorum. Could we have the roll call please Weston?

Yes

mayor.

second. I'm going to make a second if I could? Yep. Substitute motion. Susan, did you make a motion?

Yes, I made a motion to withdraw the item from the agenda. I will not approve the agenda with this item on the agenda.

So we didn't, where are we in? Are we looking for a second on that or do we need to substitute a motion for that?

If Susan made the first motion and I made the second motion. We'll vote on the second motion first. Well, I'd make a

third motion then. I mean hers never got seconded.

It wasn't clear that the Mayor Fransini that you made a motion but clearly you made a motion that needs a second. That's a second, that's the first motion. The Mayor's motion will be the second motion There can be up to three motions on the table. So a third motion could be made.

OK, is there a second for Mayor Pro Tem Francina's motion?

Of course, yes. And I would like to also speak on the item.

Yeah, and I want to respond. I didn't mean that we were going to get into it so deeply. But since we had, I think we all need the opportunity to respond.

So is there a second to my motion?

I would

yeah, I did second. Oh, okay

Thank you councilmember

Okay Council member rule my comment was just simply that the motion wasn't that we shouldn't be entering into discussion about The reasoning behind this but if we are going to enter into the discussion about the reasoning behind this no and then This is not the time. No,

it's not. But you did already start that conversation. Excuse me. You have

perpetuated a rumor. Excuse me, excuse me. We are talking about whether to keep it on the agenda or not so please keep your voice down Mayor Pro Tem

and...

But you

didn't do that

I was responding to the comment that you made. We have a motion, we have a secondary motion with a second so let's go ahead and vote on that. No excuse me. One at a time please. We need to discuss this. It's a motion on the table. It's open for discussion. And just remember, the discussion is about whether to do it tonight or to delay it, which is what you brought up. Is that accurate?

Yes. But you went into why. You think it should stay on the agenda without giving me the opportunity to state why I think it should be

removed. Mayor Pro Tem, you asked me why and I explained. So let's have one round of comments then we'll vote on the motion. Council Member Lange? Yes

so I have thought about this non-stop for the last four days. Honestly I've gotten sick over it. And one of the reasons why I've made a decision to keep it on the agenda for tonight, and I agree with moving it up. One of the reasons why is because this is James's last night. This is the only opportunity we'll have to hear his perspective on the matter. And because some of the comments that were in the mayor's note involve him I think I would like to hear his perspective. The other thing is that having this on the agenda has been really divisive for the whole community in a lot of ways, and do we want to wait two more weeks for that? I mean, I've spent hours and hours on the phone And responding to emails about this subject, and I don't think it's good to continue it.

And I was not aware that he was out of the country until just a couple of days ago. So I think it's all unfortunate.

Can we have a roll call? Or you want

us... Well, you know, you have repeated This accusation and this private email that was sent out to Heidi Whitman, she showed it to me at the end of her driveway. I was aware of it. You have used the words weak young female opponents to characterize Commissioner Starkletter as

a misogynist. Mayor Pro Tem, this is not the discussion we're having. The discussion will be on item number six so could we have the roll call please? I have not had an

opportunity. This is about

the item on the

agenda

and why I think that I am speaking to Councilmember Francina's motion.

And I'm speaking to this is that this was put on at the last minute. This was put on Wednesday or early Thursday morning, Wednesday night and no one knew until we got the agenda. The public didn't know there was no second to put it on There was no information put out It seems to me that it is a unilateral decision by the mayor That has been incredibly divisive and for that reason I think that we should wait another two weeks. There have been comments that have come in disparaging Commissioner Starkweather, that I would like to respond to for those who did That is why I think that we should postpone it for two weeks and give an opportunity to really delve into this

OK, thank you.

All

right, let's go ahead and have the roll call, Weston? Yes. It's a vote of the council majority to see what we're going to do.

to move item six to number four. Council Member Whitman? Yes? Mayor Pro Tem Francina?

No.

Council Member Lange?

Yes

Mayor Stixx?

Yes

Council Member Rule?

No

OK, thank you. The agenda is approved. Let's move on to presentation. We have a presentation from Help of Ojai regarding services provided by the organization. And we are so grateful and happy to have you here, Jane and Megan, and grateful for all that you do to our community. Thank you.

Hi, you guys. Good evening. I'm Jane Walter. I am one of the co-executive directors at Help of Ojai and I am so thankful that you guys invited us to speak here tonight. I going to kind of go over broadly our services. Some of you guys already know this hopefully but hopefully you'll learn some new things about us as well and I'm thankful that there's so many people here tonight to hear about Help of Ojia So again, I'm Jane Walter. Megan Telfer is the other co-executive director and we transitioned into these roles in late 2021. Next slide please.

Help of Ojai was founded in the late 1960s, so we are almost at our 50-year anniversary. We were incorporated in 1974, so we have been doing this work for a little over 50 years but formally almost at our 50 year anniversary and we aim to meet the basic needs of Ojai Valley residents We run six main programs and within them have several pieces but our priority is to help enrich senior citizens, low-income families with minor children and unhoused individuals. We emphasize sustainable housing support healthy food and health care for those we assist and we strive to provide programs and services that improve the quality of life for our clients and to create community dialogue around emerging issues so that we can intervene and support them.

So again, we manage six programs. I will touch briefly on all of them. I encourage you guys if you have questions for me to chime in. So next slide please. So first program, and again, we've been doing this since the 70s you guys, our Senior Activity Program which takes place at our Montgomery Street location. That is where we host things like Tai Chi, guitar, we have speaker series different courses that we offer, teaching opportunities. The objective being that we are offering a space to older adults where they can connect and integrate within their community and build relationships with both our organization and one another.

Next slide please. Many of you hopefully or likely recognize these vans that zip around town Monday through Friday from 830 to 330. So this is our transportation program, we offer door-to-door service for adults over the age of 60 so we pick them up from their home or whatever location that they might be at whether it's a doctors office or perhaps a salon, variety of things within the Ojai Valley that we will drive you to and from.

This is all volunteer driven so we have one staff member who leads this program but all of those drivers are volunteers and we are so grateful for their time and support with this program. And this again great opportunity and great service for those who maybe don't have a vehicle or who are no longer able to drive And we can accommodate folks who are in wheelchairs or use walkers, or who might need a personal aid with them.

Next slide please. Our senior nutrition program takes place at our Baldwin location so the old Honor Farm. So at that location we prepare 100 plus meals Monday through Friday that are then delivered once again by volunteers. So those volunteers deliver meals to our homebound community members who are unable to leave their home, um, to access fresh food or cooked food for that matter. And then at the same site we also offer our congregate lunch program so those who can are able to come and have a meal with their friends or maybe new friends and it's great foods cooked by our staff and that is Monday through Friday. Next slide please We have our Second Helpings Donation Center and Thrift Store. I think probably a lot of you are familiar with us there, and that is Ladybug, our featured superstar of Second Helpings.

So all the donations that we receive at our Baldwin site are sorted and then sent to our thrift store, and those sales and all of that support that we receive support all of our programs. So it's a really, really important piece of what we do at Help of Ojai. And then next slide please. Finally, and I'll spend a little bit more time talking about this but we have our Community Assistance Program. So this is one of our largest programs. This is the CAP office as we call it.

This houses all of our low income services so including our food pantry and case management services. We support housing and food insecure households by providing them with pantry boxes fresh food two days a week. We can help individuals apply for utility assistance We have grants for medical costs, for car repair. So various services available. We also I think really important to highlight with case management for folks who receive things like Medi-Cal, CalFresher food stamps or who are on housing there is a ton of paperwork that correlates with all of those programs and case managers can sit with someone and ensure that they're doing everything correctly or in a timely manner So that they don't lose their benefits or services and that's a really important piece of what they do that I think a lot of people would benefit from Last month our pantry supported 400 individuals.

So that's 400 individuals who access the pantry several times per week So we're seeing those people quite often not just one time per month There has been this conversation We've heard where we're a soup kitchen, and I just want to clarify that we indeed are not we distribute groceries And so that is for anyone who is dealing with food insecurity, please we encourage and welcome them to come to our space on Montgomery Street for services.

We are members of the Ventura County Continuum of Care and we practice a housing first model with any of our unhoused clients. We have two full-time case managers, one who specializes in supporting older adults and then the other is our Director of Homeless Services. Next slide please. So going back to that original point about our mission and that we are sort of always assessing community need.

We have seen this significant increase in the number of our clients who are housing insecure, meaning their rent is significantly More than 50% of their income, they're potentially living in substandard housing. They might be living with multiple families in one home and we've seen a big increase in that in addition to our community who are literally unhoused. Last year we saw an almost 16 percent increase in the number of unhoused in Ojai. So with that, I want to highlight two programs. There should be another slide after this one. Thank you.

Our Homeless Prevention Program and our Housing Assistance Fund. So for us the easiest way to address homelessness prevention and to clarify none of it is easy but it is to keep people housed in the homes that they are in so when we work with a family or individual who had some maybe type of hardship and they are unable to pay their rent which might lead to an eviction our hope is that either help of Ojai or one of our partner agencies can intervene, support that family and keep them housed. We know our data shows it is what we are living day-to-day that when someone becomes unhoused in Ojai they cannot replicate their housing. They will become homeless and or leave the Ojai Valley So for us, it is so important to intervene when we can when people are housed and that often is through rental assistance.

If we have the funding, we absolutely support households at a time like right now when we don't have a specific rental assistance fund, we make referrals to agencies within the county. So we support that household in applying for that funding and as far through the process as we can with the hope that another agency in the county can give them the financial assistance.

And again, this all goes back to us being a part of the continuum of care, having a close relationship with our partner agencies and that being of the utmost importance. And then second, I just want to highlight and share information about our Housing Assistance Fund, the inclement weather program specifically. I think we all experienced this last year of that like very very intense heat that came super late in the summer or early fall as well as all of the rain that we had in the winter And so for us, this program is super important because we are able to support any of our clients who are living on the street during those times and get them into hotels and to safe shelter.

So that is a very important program for us because we know the heat and the rain and this very erratic weather probably isn't going anywhere and that these services are super important. And again, this just kind of came into fruition as a full-on program this last year We, I think it was 27 households or we assisted people with 27 nights in a hotel. And just one thing that I think is important to mention knowing kind of with this mindset of the help of Ojai's been doing this work forever right and so for us one of the big challenges or changes is that when I came on to the org six years ago and I did our rental assistant program You know, our budget was like $2,000 a month. So that's not even fair market value for a one bedroom anymore. So with all of this and the need to support community members comes this very important increase in the amount of rent which means we need more money than to pay people's rent right?

And so kind of factoring all of that into these programs and really making note of what existed five years ago is so different from what it is now and how important it is have support and for us, you know who are always actively seeking out funding for these programs. Just have the community know you know help of Ojai almost 50% of our budget or our revenue is through community donations and so how important it is that people support the work that we do I will end it there. And if you have more questions about what we do, you can go to the next slide. I have my email address here for anyone who might be watching.

We do have a somewhat active Facebook and Instagram page and then we do publish a newsletter every other month for anyone who wants to read that. You can sign up but it's also published on our website so you don't have to sign up. But I'm happy to answer any questions you guys might have. Yes?

Thank you so much.

First of all, thank you for participating in the recent homeless and housing panel that the Ojai Valley Democratic Club sponsored. That was excellent. And I really hope that people understand the gravity of what you just said, that once you become unhoused in Ojai Your chances of finding another rental are slim to none, and I can vouch for that as I've been looking for 19 months.

And I have endless documents on people who have lived here practically their whole life, they're now in their 80s They end up in a small trailer on Telegraph Road. This is shameful that this is happening in our community and it has to somehow, we have to work together. I know Mayor Sticks and Rachel and Leslie and I were all working on this separately but We're working together also, which I greatly appreciate.

And I think you bring up a really good point that I think maybe we don't discuss enough in this community, which is the aging population of Ojai who are on a very fixed income and how it takes one event to make them housing insecure and or vulnerable in terms of their housing

Yes.

And I think that is so important and such an important reflection of the Ojai community that we value and love so much, right? Our elders and the older folks who make this community what it is and how we really need to have the infrastructure and support for them. Yeah.

I have one other question if I may. Can you... because we've discussed with Matt Levere, Supervisor Levere, can you get matching funds from the county or is there a way that we can help you Obtain those

funds. So I think that the matching funds that I've, so I've heard this sort of circulate and float about. So I think part of it depends on the service right? We as members of Continuum of Care are aware and are notified of services or funding opportunities we might be eligible for. And I think with that there's like county funding that's incorporated in that and so I think that's where that comes from. I don't know that we're offering the exact services that the county would match Right? Because we're not, we don't have housing right? Help of Ojai doesn't manage housing. So I think that there likely is funding in the universe, right? That could maybe very loosely sort of trickle down to help of Ojai but I think what they're looking at are much more of those very specific and direct service providers who are doing housing related work That's my understanding.

That is also my understanding, but there may be a way. Yeah! When we have the opportunity maybe I can discuss it with supervisor. Thank you because you do such great work. Thank you. Councilmember Will?

Yeah, um, I just wanted to check in with you guys. We will on our pending priorities list be talking about SB 647, which is basically a California law that allows us to prioritize low-income renters at risk of displacement in affordable housing if it is funded by the state. So I wanted to make you aware of that and potentially, you could be a conduit for people coming in because you have ears on the ground.

So I will be reaching out to you about that. I think that it's a fabulous opportunity for our at-risk renters of displacement So I just wanted to make you aware of that, and then I'll be reaching out to see if we can have some sort of communication around that. So thank you.

Sounds great. Thank you.

Council Member

Lange? I just really want to thank you for all that you do. You know when you gave me the tour of the facility and showed me all the programs that you have, you're meeting a need in the community that nobody else is or nobody else could. And I know that as we talk about community contracts and things like that, there will be consideration. Great. And so I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate all that you do and that you have.

Thank

you. May I? I do have one quick question. Are the hotels that you mentioned, are they in Ojai or Ventura?

So they're in Ojai when they can be. One of the challenges with all But our hope and our goal with the program is to keep people here, knowing that they might not have transportation. And then it's a lot easier for them and us because we can transport them right? And so that's the idea and that's the hope but it really comes down to How booked is Ojai when this is happening, which is challenging. But

there are hotels at Ojai really who work with you? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's good to know. Thank

you.

Absolutely.

Well

thank you so much Jane. Thank you Megan for being here and can we all just give the help of Ojai a round of applause?

Thanks you guys so much!

We are blessed and grateful to have you. All right, we will move on to commission reports. We have Pamela Grau, Commissioner Pamela Grau from the Arts Commission. Thank you, Pamela.

Good evening, everyone. Hi. So as part of the Arts Commission and our five-year plan we're committed to impacting the community and I've been put in charge of art education. My project this month is art festivals and fairs How to, I'm going to read it to you because I'm nervous. How to help artists within Ojai look outside of Ojai for opportunities? We have a huge art community here and we're very limited. There's not a lot of galleries, not a lot of opportunities so last month we focused on grants how to get grants thank you Heidi Whitman This month we have Elaine Unzicker, a renowned artist in town who's going to be sharing her expertise about how one does fairs and festivals. We're going to be meeting this Thursday July 13th from 2 to 3 30 at the Ojai Valley Museum.

It's free it's free to the public so everybody who's watching please come And this is, you know it's really tough being an artist. It's tough to make a living. It's tough to get your work out there. So having these supportive seminars teaching our artists how to think bigger, how to dream bigger we're really looking forward to doing that and thank you for the support and trust that you give us as the art department or art commission.

The next seminar coming up will be in September and it's on copyright law And estate planning for artists. The date is still unknown, but that's coming up next. Thank you.

Thank you so much Pamela. Any

questions? OK. Any questions?

Thank you for promoting art education and supporting our artists. It's much appreciated. Thank

you. Pamela, so the thought that always comes to my mind in addition to needing housing for our artists Without affordable housing for artists, there will not be an art community in Ojai at some point unless it's already a well-established artist of a certain financial status. scale, but if we had more housing where they could have in-house galleries like what Beatrice Wood always had. She always had her home and their gallery in the same place and maybe you could add that to your vision. Well I

was going to say, I was president of the Ojai Studio Artists for several years In October, we have the three-day tour which is everybody's studio at home opens up into a gallery. We have three days that are free to the public and we have second Saturdays. Every second Saturday there's an area it's organized by areas in terms of affordable housing don't get me started but you know I think there's a misunderstanding about, I know that Betsy has talked about it. It's agreed problem not...

Yes we don't

need to get

into all of that but I'm just

stating that in your vision do not lose sight of the hard reality that without housing for new young artists We're in trouble. That's all I want to say and emphasize. I already know about the figures and all the roadblocks, but we can overcome them because that should be part of the vision if Ojai is going to remain an internationally known art community.

ADUs help. ADUs help. And the other thing since I'm up here, the barn that you have that's decaying there on the side of the campus here. I would love to see that turn into a gallery for the city collection, and having worked with grants and city grants and National Endowment of the Arts grants, if we could get some sort of commitment to make it a gallery, I would love to look for funding outside of Ojai to make that happen. So consider that.

Thank you, thank you Pamela. All right we'll move on to public communication and just a reminder to everyone these are items not on the agenda and because they're not in the agenda we cannot discuss them. We appreciate your viewpoint and participation and we can agendize in the future so please Resist veering off into one of our agenda items. And at the end of the three minutes, you will hear a chime. Please stop talking and no giving away of time.

And if you're in agreement, you can just say ditto. And let's all please take a deep breath and practice decorum, because while we may disagree, we need to respect everybody. So thank you very much. OK, so we will begin with the event and organization cards. We have Ron Solarsano from the library, Len Clay from Ojai Arts Center, and Jill Dolan from the arts center.

All right. Thank you so much, members of council. My name is Ron Solorzano. I am the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley and I'm here to just give you an update on what we have going on at the Ojai Library. So right now, this month our big focus is summer reading. We have reading challenges running for both kids and grownups this year. Adults who participate can log each book that they read with each entry giving them a chance to win fun prizes as the program goes on.

Kids can log the minutes that they read and can pick up a free prize book at the library when they reach 500 minutes. Logging reading time for kids also enters them into a drawing for a grand prize at the end of the summer. That prize is going to be a Nintendo Switch, so join the program! Our special summer programming continues every week at the Ojai Library. We're offering Perler Crafting on Monday afternoons, Maker Labs on Tuesdays, regular story times on Wednesday mornings Lego Playtime on Thursdays, Teen Sewing Workshops on Sundays and also our Pause for Reading program where children can practice their literacy skills by reading to an adorable therapy dog continues weekly on Wednesdays at 1230 p.m. You can call the library to reserve your spot for that program.

We will be concluding our summer festivities with a special rocket launch activity on Thursday, August 3rd. That's going to be at 10am and we will have an end of summer party featuring Kona Ice on Friday, August 4th at 2pm. If you have any questions or would like additional information on these programs you can contact the library All of this programming is in addition to our usual offerings which include our Ukulele Club on Monday mornings, the Shakespeare Salon on the first and third Monday evenings of the month, our Climate Action Book Group on the second and fourth Monday afternoons, and the Ojai Poetry Series that meets on the third Tuesday evening of every month.

This month, we also have two new take-home activity kits that are available. One is a kaleidoscope crafting kit for children and the other is a paper art globe crafting kit for adults. You can stop by the library to pick up one or both of these. And that's all I have for the evening so thank you so much for your time and have a wonderful night.

Thank you, Ron. Fantastic. Much appreciated. Next, we have Len Clay then Jill Dolan then Randy Haney.

Good evening, Leonard Clay. If I live in the city of Ojai, um, I am speaking at this occasion as member of the board of trustees of the Ojai Center for the Arts and in that capacity, I want to thank James for the assistance he has given both personally and as a representative of the city over the years to the art center. Thank you, James, and good luck. I normally do not come up and speak about art center activities, but we have a couple of really phenomenal things going on that I wanted to share with the community. In our theater we have production Nonsense which is a musical comedy and when I use the word comedy I don't mean a little teehee, I mean laugh out loud very funny from beginning to end.

That's the comedy part of it. The musical part of it We have five actresses on stage, each with a better voice than the next one individually and their harmonies are phenomenal. There's tap dancing, a little ballet and a little ventriloquism. It's really, really, really a fun hour and 40 minutes. We have two more weekends Friday night Saturday matinees, Saturday night Sunday matinee and on our last weekend we have an additional show on Sunday evening so there was five shows the last weekend You really should come and see it. It's at oiact.org, O-J-A-I-A C-T dot org for reservations. The other thing I wanted to mention in the gallery We have a phenomenal artist, local artist named Dominic Breaux.

He has both the display cases and the gallery walls in the display cases. He has truly interesting sculptures some of which is made out of palm fronds and things and vegetation that he somehow manages to turn into art The paintings he has on the walls in the gallery and the fireplace room are really beautiful. And it's really worth stopping by, you can see it from noon to four every day of the week except Monday.

And last, back to the theater, our youth branch production coming up is Shrek Jr. The Musical. It's playing August 11th through the 20th, three shows a weekend. Gay Jones who is the director is an internationally recognized expert in theater and children The shows she puts on are really fabulous. I go, I don't have grandkids or kids in the shows. I just go because it's fun and Shrek is just more fun than most shows so again that's August 11th through 20th and again oiact.org that is our youth branch. That's it thank you.

Thank you Len. Fun! Next we have Jill Dolan then Randy Haney then Steve Quillacy

Okay, Lenny and I didn't plan to tag team or anything. I'm Jill Dolan. I always have to be here in front of this happy little group. Oh no, no, no. No, I am and I know that tonight we'll have a big audience so that's why I thought I'd come over. I made a lot of notes they're so cluttered I can't even read them but To those people at home or even the people in this room who only get their fix on Ojai through these meetings, let me tell you there's a whole other Ojai out there that's not quite as contentious and it's really artsy and enjoyable. And you know what? It's yours. It's ours.

I've lived here a long time. I'm not going to go into the competition of who lived here longer, but it's weird. I lived here for many, many years and didn't know anybody, and then I went outside. And guess what people? I was welcomed. I was welcomed at the Art Center. I was welcomed at the Ojai Valley Museum where by the way there is an extraordinary exhibit up right now. Get over there and look at it.

Yes, we're doing nonsense at the art center and then we're doing a thriller. We're doing rope but there's so much going on and I don't want to use the word desperate because that sounds like I'm hanging on by my fingernails but theaters are closing across the country. Big famous ones are closing. The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles is Cutting back or canceling at season.

Museums aren't getting the attendance that they need. We are suffering because you, the people at home, the people who aren't out tonight must still be home sitting on their couches with their remote controls. We need you to come back out. Come back out. We used to be such a thriving... Come out. You're just not going to believe who you're going to see out there. Suddenly, people will call you by name. They'll say hi, Jill or I like your hair or whatever, whatever your thing is. And I'm just here to say the fun things I've done this summer. The museum of course, the art center, I've seen it. I'm going to see it again. I've worked on the auditions for the upcoming show. I went to the Hitchcock night that the Agora Foundation's doing. I am even going to sing, OK?

at Michael Estwanick's tribute to the Gershwins. There is stuff for you to do out there, and I want everybody to stop me in the market and say hello, and ask me what I'm doing this weekend, and invite them to come along with me. So are you all committed? Yes, yes, are you all committed? All right. Thank you,