City Council — 2023-08-30

Thank you, Weston and welcome everyone to the Ojai City Council's Wednesday October 30 2023 meeting. It's a special meeting.

Oh sorry.

Shoot ahead August. And if this is our priorities workshop so Weston, will you please say,

May I ask a question that the residents might have? When you said we're taking public comment once, what did you mean by that? Because subjects may come up that people want to speak on.

We'll be take after... After Mr. Scott introduces the item, we have all these cards for public comment and then we'll take public comment then.

Okay well I just wanted to know what you meant by once

Well, instead of taking public comment introducing the item and then taking public comment again because we have one item. That's it.

Yes but that one item has 37 items. Let's clarify how this is going to go.

I was just about

to. Thank you.

This is a workshop for the City Council to talk about priorities. We're not making any decisions today right? And when we're all done, there'll be a product of this meeting that comes back for the City Council to bless or edit or whatever. And they'll be yet another chance for people to talk on any item that they're interested in. If we decided that we were going to allow public comment on every single topic that comes up today, we'll be here for a week.

I mean there's just no way in the world so typically in priorities exercises what you do is you start off with an opportunity for people to address the council if there's something in particular they hope will focus on And sometimes depending on what hour of the evening it is, if there's other comments that people feel like they need to make at the end, the council can provide some time for people to give us some feedback in that regard.

But it's very difficult to get through this kind of a workshop If on every topic, we are going to invite individual input through the whole session. It's just hard to get through so it's a trade off that hopefully we can find the balance that works. I want this to I want it to work. I'm Mark Scott by the way, I'm the interim city manager whatever that is. And I'm happy to be here we'll, we'll try to have some fun doing this. This is the idea is that we're having an opportunity for a less formal that's why didn't wear a tie to demonstrate less formal.

And we're going to talk about some things that are important to the City Council and see if we can figure out relative priorities for what needs to be talked about more. I put in front of you just what I called Priorities Exercise Protocols, whatever that means. And I said in here that I'll do my best to facilitate this discussion but it's your exercise not mine.

If there's something you don't like the way it's going, council can direct me differently and we can do things differently. I've already said this, while I want to hear from the public at the right times in the meeting, it's very difficult to interrupt individual items for individual comments so we're probably not going to do that unless you tell me to. Everything on this list, by the way, the Christmas colors?

That's only because those are the only two markers that worked. So that's how we got a red and green theme. Anyway, everything on the list is a priority or it wouldn't even be on the list. Although I put a few of them on myself just to be a little provocative, so maybe some of those aren't priorities. But everything else was on the list that James Vega left when he left. He had provided you with that 36 item list. A few of those we took off because they're done but all the rest of them are on here in one form or another.

During this session, we're going to try to do three things. We're going to try to come to agreement among the council as to what these items mean. In other words, it does us no good to try to rank things if we're ranking something that means something different from one person to another so I'm gonna literally go through each item on this board before we rank anything And I'm going to ask council members if this is what they think it means, you know. And if not, you'll tell me and we'll act accordingly.

We'll also have an opportunity for council members to add items to the list. And there is room for more items. And I can write sideways if I have to. So whatever the council decides you want to add to the list, we can do that up to a point. What the second step then, after we get done with going through the list the first time. We'll actually go through an exercise which is often called dotocracy in the facilitator world where we're gonna don't laugh well you know you've done it yourself um where we're gonna give you each a chance to put up some magnetic dots you will see there's There's 10 dots in each of those colors. Each of you will get a color and you can go up and you can put down what you think are the highest priority items. This is for fun, it doesn't sink anything into concrete but it's for fun to give us an idea of what the relative priority is in your minds of different items and then we can sit back and we can look No strong consensus on which ones maybe don't.

Knowing as I do city council members, my guess is you'll think you need more than 10. But I didn't have 10 in one color for anybody so more than 10. So i've added some extra dots over here and bright green that you can put your initials on and you can In the second round, we'll start with 10. In the second round you can put up some more if that's what you want to do and what I like to do because I'm always preaching collaboration right?

What I like to do is after everything's up there, if you want to look back and say, gee, I wasted one of my dots on an item that nobody else liked. So I'm going to take that dot and put it on one of these others where it will make it look more important. So let us collaborate a little bit, right? And so that's the kind of process I like to take now having said all of that.

This kind of process is always dynamic. I guarantee you within two meetings, something that's not on this list will suddenly be highest priority. It always happens so. Nothing is set in concrete, but we're going to do what we do today. Then I will ask for your permission to prepare a work plan based on that input that I'll bring back to the city council that gives an indication of what items the council directed us to give preference to bring back to put on the agenda.

And then maybe some indication of timing and cost involved in doing that. So, that's the process first we rank then I come back with work plan it's your work plan you decide if you agree with it or if you want to change it and then we're through the process so again no decisions today hopefully we have some fun doing it I do want to say that we're not trying To solve any of these problems today. In other words, we're not trying to develop the work plan for what it's going to take. Let me take rent stabilization implementation. For instance, the council as I understand it, the council adopted an ordinance.

What we haven't done yet is we haven't brought it back and said, this is what it's going to take to implement it. What kind of staffing is it going to take? What kind of resources? What regulations do we need to put in place in order to get started on it? We need to bring that back to the City Council. So, that would be what this work plan would say under the topic of rent stabilization ordinance. So each one of these we need to understand what it is that the product will be. That's what we're going to try to do.

I promised at this point I would stop and you may have questions first but then we'll let the public do public comment.

Questions? Council Member

Lange. If we notice glaring things that are missing from this list, is it possible to add?

Yeah I want to make sure I said there's a lot of white space here

okay

so we you know Rachel did a nice input on this that listed several things that she's interested in and I'd like the council to agree to put items up on the board to add to this list before we ever get around to ranking

The other questions. Yeah, Councilmember Whitman

just to make sure I'm clear on this that our goal is to rank things for you to handle in the remainder of your term and that there so that if there may be things that we think are important but are best addressed by our future city manager?

Yeah, I think the goal is to say what items are most critical to get back to the City Council soon. It's fine if we end up with an understanding that something is very important but it's probably something for the next city manager. Any input like that matters but really what I'm asking now is what do we need to bring back Most urgently among these items, because frankly somebody would have an argument for virtually everything up there. I mean that's just the nature of the beast it's our local democracy so really it's looking for what needs to come back to the council and it's also you know there's items up here that are important but they're things that the staff does You know, we didn't put up here protect public safety because we don't need to bring that item to the council unless it's something like speeds on the streets that requires some action by the City Council.

So these are council actions for something that needs to be done sooner than later. Okay, great.

Thank you any other questions Councilmember.

Yeah, just a clarification so basically we also need to think about what is short term midterm and long term as well as what is something that is, you know, implementable versus something that is a vision thing that has many many parts and many many processes, and it's going to be extended over a certain amount. I agree. So we have to keep that in mind as we go forward, as well as what's most important to us.

And I think the way that you'll see that play out is when you rank. First of all, we're going to discuss each project so we'll get a little bit of that while we're discussing them and then when you rank there will be items that don't look like they're highly ranked that are very important And we'll have to say why. And it's either because they're not urgent, like right now or because we've ranked some other things higher that really have a different urgency and we may have to make some adjustments. So the process is dynamic. The list is dynamic. And it's iterative. It's as we discuss, we may make adjustments. The work plan that results from this We'll be way more specific than anything we'll cover today.

Just just a quick follow up. So that so, so the sort of the length of time that something takes will be part of your work plan I'm assuming and so you will integrate that based on the discussion and those kinds of things?

That's correct.

Okay great thank you.

Thank you okay Mayor

any other questions no yes Councilmember or Mayor Pro Tem

Can you clarify, for example I feel that the homeless camp behind City Hall is our number one immediate priority.

Right.

Can you clarify what you can do as city manager without having to check in with us if we gave you just what's the word you know carte blanche? Is that the word? Permission to manage that situation

Is

that what is needed? Not

today, I don't think.

Okay.

I think what we need today is to have an expression from the council that that's a very high priority. If you asked me that question on a day when I didn't have 30 something items to talk about, I would say well, when I look at this situation... I'm going off top of my head here. If I look at this situation out here, I see several different approaches we could take Some of them I don't think are any good at all, and some of them maybe are very viable but they're very detailed and will take a while to implement.

What I'd like to get from the discussion is some kind of feel of where the council's going on all that. Just in that item we could ignore this situation right? That would be one option. We've been sort of doing that as it is and it's growing Secondly, we could have a direction to clean it all up. And that would have its own issues. I've been sued twice in federal court for those actions and I know that it's not easy to do those things to where the federal courts think you did it right.

And third, a third one maybe there's six but the third one would be that we say okay we're going to find a way to deal with the folks who are here right now while we work on a longer term solution. And we're gonna try to provide some services for those people who are here right now, while we work on those longer term solutions. But we're gonna say this is capacity that we can't take more here and so we're gonna have to then have another plan a sub plan what do we do with the people that come in that we can deal with?

But those are all different kinds of actions I can't do all of that for every item today. But if you tell me it's a very high priority, when I come back with the work plan, I'm gonna identify those kinds of issues and try to get the city council's input on it.

At what point do we wait to tell you that's a high priority or do we-

You'll get a chance to take one of these little things and put it right up there.

Okay.

And then when we see where the dots are, then we'll talk about it more.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I really do want to get the show on the road here. So I have the same kind of question around the protocols document right since I think there's a lot of elements there and I think that there are a few that we've been talking about since we actually first got seated as a council. But to look at all of them, it seems to me that it's going to be a process, an extensive process. So how would it best serve you and us to say these particular things in the protocols document we think need to be higher priority even though the document itself may be lower priority?

But as soon as we get done with the public comment, and we're gonna start going through each of these. When we get to that one, and this is one of the ones I put on the list myself. When we get to that one, I'm going to make the point that in the memo I wrote, I listed some examples of protocol issues. There's no magic to it. I went down the index and the protocols manual and pulled a few off. I will tell you that many councils takes two whole work sessions to go through all the protocols because when you start getting into it, I've watched city councils go 30 minutes on who should open the mail It can be very time consuming, but it helps to do it.

You always should do it when you get three new council members and you should do it every so many years even if your council doesn't change. So it's worthwhile doing, it just takes some time but you let the council choose which items you wanna talk about.

Okay, thank you. So just to confirm it's a what? It's not a why or how and we're not going to discuss or decide things today. We're just gonna pick topics.

We're gonna try to understand what these mean so that we all have a general same sense as to what they mean and then we'll do the what.

Okay great.

Thank you.

All right ready for public comment? Okay we will begin Randy Haney Then William Wyrick, then Brian Eakins.

These exploding? And it was not from your fee. What the heck? OK, so thank you for having this meeting and let's start because the talk started. We're in the PV program right now. And I believe that we have some issues and we have some concerns. It's a long story. I'll try to make it short. Most important thing we need to understand about paving is.

Okay, I was still being recorded correct? The most important thing I believe in the paving system that we're having right now is the fact we're trying to prevent water intrusion into our city streets and water is probably one of the most detrimental things To happen to our public streets as well as our homes as well as our community buildings and such When you have a quality program, you're removing asphalt. You're replacing cracked and they have five or six other terms for the asphalt wearing down but the other thing you have is you have curb and gutter work. You have sidewalk work. You have ADA ramps that you have. A lot of things that become a whole of the system I believe When you folks made your decision on this paving contract, that you did not have all the information that was necessary to make great decisions.

Why I'm saying that is, I took it upon myself to walk Pleasant Avenue where I live and I walked Daly Avenue because the work happened to start there two weeks ago. On my street there's 220-250 lineal feet of broken curb, lifted curb, tree damage and additional sidewalks that have problems. When I did Daly, theirs is worse than ours. Worse! I think it's an emergency. You guys may not, I think it's a priority you're going to have to have that discussion today but right now you're in the middle of a three million dollar or two point something million dollar project and Mr Scott Mark and I were in a Kind of back and forth on emails about it, and ultimately we agreed. Council made a decision early on in the trade off was we're going to pave a ton of asphalt.

And we're not going to worry about curb and gutter. We're not gonna worry about sidewalks. So I get the trade off. I'm not sure if you understood that you were making that tradeoff. And then I pulled up the sand tech report, which I don't know what we paid for but I imagine it was between 50 and $100,000. And it was a report that covered asphalt streets period no curb, no gutter ADA ramps were included but no sidewalks. You had no way to determine what was in the best interest for this community when it came to our public right away.

You could not have made a great decision. So right now you have to ask yourselves, do we stop a contract that's in place? That's happening. Or do we come back and reevaluate? And more importantly, do we ask Stantec to come back and do another evaluation just of curb gutters and sidewalks. So in the future because we got five more years of this that you guys can make the right decision on this. I think it's important. I also think it's a priority. I think personally it's an emergency because if we don't fix these curbs and gutters while we're doing paving We're gonna get water intrusion between now and next year when we think we're gonna get back to it.

Thank you, now let me close with this Rachel I've used orange on our street all of you I suggest get with your public works director take a tour of the streets that are on the paving contract if they're in your district and go mark them And you'll get an idea of how bad and how severe this is in this community. Thank you.

Thank you, Randy. Next we have William Wyrick then Brian Akins then Kathy Nolan and Betsy VanLight.

I'm going to build on what Randy just said because I think what was stated in the introduction by the city manager is apropos. What do these terms mean? A pavement management plan Or as a street management plan, it's a different perspective. Do we want to maximize the life cycle condition that we can get for any amount of money or do we want to maximize the amount of linear feet that we can show got paid those are different things?

As we want to minimize our life, look at it the other way. Minimize the lifecycle costs of any given level of pavement condition in our community or do we wanted to say oh look we just did a lot of linear feet? It's kind of like if you're doing a roof on your house. Do you tell the roofer ignore the soft spots don't check the deck don't look at the rafters if you find something a little rotten just put the shingles over it and be done Is that smart, is that smart asset management. I don't think so. And I think that's what what the issue here is really is adopting an asset management point of view.

As opposed to just a particular linear goal, because again if you do streets. Just without doing curb and gutter without making sure the base I think understand we have a base issue already on pleasant if you don't check your base. And all of those kinds of things you don't get your money's worth. So it's what do these things mean and I urge you to really think about the asset management perspective, as opposed to just sort of a, you know, how many feet of pavement we can lay down perspective. It's a different point of view. And I think to generalize even further as asset managers as the, as the, you know, the people responsible for the city's infrastructure and how it's managed.

When we're looking at a lot of different things like the Arbolada sewer study stormwater system master plan, the pavement program. We're also talking about things in the asset management point of view which are the implications for our entire watershed health. Because if we're looking at how do we treat seawater, are we going to use it for recharge as well?

Stormwater management. Are we going to be looking at just trying to get rid of it? You know the old flood control mentality or are we going to look at storm water as an asset something to help recharge our aquifer help with the health of our watershed? The same with our streets program. We sent I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars on a grant identifying recharge potential as part of our street program None of that, and they identified particular geologic elements of our community where recharge from stormwater in the streets would be advantageous or it would be something we could use in terms of helping with our watershed health. Again none of that is part of a pavement program writ small and I think that in terms of what things mean when we're talking about streets programs and things like that we ought to be looking at and all these other things we ought to be looking at the maximum possible breadth of asset management.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bill. Next we have Brian Akins then Kathy Nolan Betsy van light and then Jessica McCray.

I want to thank Mark for listing my item first Both on the whiteboard and in the document so I didn't have to flip through all those pages with that fabulous information there. My name is Brian Akins, I'm a non-resident of the City of Ojai 42 years in Oakview. I've been seated in the Historic Preservation Commission for almost nine years since September 2014 no idea who appointed me.

So my experience over the years commissions are a non political group we think that is a plus and part of our mandate. We each have four year terms that are staggered once we are appointed, we work as a team when elections for chair come up residency or non residency has never been an issue. Darwin McCready was chair for three years, I believe. Darwin resided in the Miramonte area non-resident. He was a well respected architect with much work upon historical structures. I was his vice chair for two of those years. When he was leaving, I became the chair and have been for five years. The last eight years that share has been a non city of Ojai resident and it hasn't mattered.

I believe that Mark stated in a meeting that he had never worked in a city that had non-residents on their commissions. A quick check shows that of the 10 cities in which he has been a City Manager, the populations range from Ojai 7,542 to Fresno population 508,993 with the average of those 10 cities being 120,450 or 15 times the size of Ojai. We are blessed. I knew you'd appreciate that, Mark.

We are blessed he came to our tiny burg. Indeed we are. We can see that right in front of our eyes. Tying the term of commissioners to the term of those who appointed them seems very political for non-political city commissions. Wanting someone who will go forth in line with position of a council person seems difficult as we do not choose who the applicant may be and under what circumstances they seek an authorization. Also, with the possibility that someone's term may end anywhere between a brief time resignation to four years may intimidate finding new commissioners. It is hard enough now with the Ojai Valley available to the city council.

Talk faster. I ask that you make it a priority to put in place guidance that you feel best guides the City of Ojai Commissions and keeping Ojai Ojai. After all one of your commissions, the HPC has five possibly going down to four, two residents, two non-residents. And being told with only two residents, we can't meet. Even with four commissioners and we're seeking seven. Arts Commission who has canceled four or five last meetings planning now down to four with three residents, one non-resident, two residents. Parks who can't meet even though they have a quorum of three but with two nonresidents are currently unable to meet. I'd say a priority to get your commissions functioning again.

Thank you for your time and listening to me.

Thank you, Brian.

I have to ditch you. I'm president of the museum. We have a meeting starting in 12 minutes.

Thank you. Next we have Kathy Nolan and Betsy Van Light then Jessica McCrea and then Ruth Miller.

Council members, staff, thank you for having us. We appreciate the opportunity to be here. I'm Kathy Nolan and this is Betsy Van Light. We're here representing the Ojai Valley Green Coalition. And I wanted to say as you know, the Ojai Valley Green Coalition has a community service grant with the city together community input about the eight acre City Hall campus property we happen to be sitting on right now.

The grant cycle will end in two days on September 1st. And soon after that, we will submit a final report describing extensive community ideas and dreams for the land. For instance, folks want to protect and help local plants, insects, birds, and wildlife to thrive, gather for community events, garden and do art together, enjoying nature-based and recreational activities, and use of the site to learn about sustainability in the natural world.

There is great interest in involving children, adults, seniors and families. There's also a strong desire to support and assist community members living in the rapidly expanding tent encampment on the property.

Along with the hopes and dreams there are a lot of concerns about how the land is being neglected. Places that aren't cared for we know easily become abused and harmed. So when we started getting community input last fall, there were maybe three or four tents out here. There's dozens now it feels like. And we've heard concerns that the Middle Stewart restoration site has received some damage. We've heard concerns that vulnerable folks aren't safe in their tents And we know the places that are cared for, invite more care and become a benefit for our community. And so that's why we're here tonight. We want to tend the site and we want to help it thrive.

The city campus is a fabulous place to bring our community together in multi-dimensional ways. And we have momentum. A local arborist has done a pro bono survey of 386 trees for us. A local artist is helping to create a beautiful colorful map of possibilities for the land We're poised to start rehabilitating the demonstration gardens with community volunteers, and we are part of the discussions about how to create better support and solutions for the unhoused community living in tent encampment.

Our mission is to contribute to a thriving community, and we think that continued progress on the city campus property allows us to do just that. So we imagine a time when we could be celebrating in the demonstration garden, just a stone's throw from City Hall. And we need you to help make that vision a reality by considering the proposal that we have submitted to you about the next work to do on the property. So thank you.

Thank you,

Betsy. Thank you, Kathy. Next, we have Jessica McCrea, then Ruth Miller and then Tisha Morris.

Hi, thank you for hearing us. Encouraging I had put together a brief it's available gave it to James and there's some back there if anyone wants just to take a look. I'm going to highlight. I am encouraging you to make the city campus in the homeless encampment out here a very high priority. It is growing and growing I'm glad to hear that there's a lot of interest in doing something about it and making it a priority, as it seems like we've been burying our head in the sand and just letting it go amok. We need oversight. We need someone to take control of it. And you know, I understand that we have to provide space for people who find themselves in this position but it doesn't have to be wherever And, and isolating the community from the community parks.

There's my suggestion is, and hopefully you guys can, you know, we'll come up with a great solution, but we have eight acres here, there should be some space That we can designate for encampments regulate what those look like there's a gentleman out here who is, who's taken over the water supply. He's building at this encampment larger and larger every day, there's trash all over the place that's that's encouraging rats and mice, and he's building it bigger and bigger and bigger, and he is someone Not only the other in-house folks that are there, but the neighbors as well. And it has been kind of violent. There's no oversight. The police won't oversight. No one's over there controlling what's happening and we really need that now. I like Leslie's, you know, soon medium later Our now is do something, please.

It's out of control and we need oversight. And we do have eight acres that we can make a compromise so that the community can have their part back and those that find themselves in this situation have a space. So yeah, please consider it as our number one issue. Thank you.

Thank you Jessica. Next we have Ruth Miller then Tisha Morris then Vicki Clark

Hi, my name is Ruth Miller and I am currently chairing the Ojai Homeless Shelter Task Force. We have a group of about 25 local citizens working to support the city in locating designing and funding a homeless shelter in the Ojai Valley. Spiking housing costs in Ojai have made homelessness an increasing risk for more and more local households. This particularly affects our senior citizens on fixed incomes. Half of our homeless population are over the age of 62. Additionally, half of them are disabled.

The official count is about 45 although there are probably more. Federal courts have mandated the obligation of municipalities in the western state to provide a reasonably accommodating location where homeless people can spend the night. Otherwise, they can't be compelled not to sleep overnight in Ojai parks or other city properties. The City of Ojai, Ventura County and other cities in Ventura County have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to address homelessness in Ventura County. The MOU provides that Ojai will develop emergency housing resources for those who present as homeless in their jurisdiction.

The cities of Ventura, Santa Paula, Oxnard and Thousand Oaks have established or are currently building shelters. The county has a standing offer to cities to fund half of the cost of building and operating a shelter. Supervisor LeVere has indicated his support to do the same for Ojai. Our task force has studied organizations that build modular temporary housing units for the homeless, we have identified experienced service providers dedicated to managing shelters. We've been exploring how the city's half of the funding to build an operator shelter can be sourced. With Supervisor LeVere's strong encouragement, we recently met with Jennifer Harkey with County Continuum of Care who was both extremely informative and encouraging about various grants available to fund our shelter.

She indicated an enthusiastic willingness to guide us through the grant application process. Also Ventura County Community Foundation has been identified as a potential source of funding But both the county and Ventura County Community Foundation have strongly emphasized that for their incurred in continuing engagement, the need for commitment from the City Council to make the project a near term priority. The first step in that commitment is for the council to vote to include a shelter project as one of this near term agenda items.

While our task force stands ready to help facilitate the analysis by our city manager and City Council of the best approach to sourcing funding, building managing a shelter engagement by the City Council is a critical next step to move the project forward. Thank you for your time.

Thank you Ruth. Next we have Tisha Morris then Vicki Clark then Jeffrey Starkweather

OK, second to the in-house situation. That was pretty compelling. So something that's not on the board and I'm only bringing it up because I feel like it would save so much time so that the council could address the things on the board. And I'm proposing that making a priority draft an act, a code of ethics The Council has exhausted itself meeting after meeting and dealing with issues that could be addressed through a code of ethics that contains a process for reprimanding actions.

We are unfortunately living in a time When what seems like common sense courtesy and decorum no longer exists. So, for example, some of the things that the code could contain or outline would be decorum among the council members in session on social media And in toward the public during public comments, I think we all know what i'm referencing many of the things i'm referencing could also. outline what constitutes conflict of interest so many of these issues that you guys have spent so much time on literally to midnight when we could be focusing on these things.

This code could also apply to appointees, including commissioners. This would have been a formal process to address the issues pertaining to Mr. Starkweather. Instead what's happening is it's putting the onus, the burden on the public to be the police of ethics and also on the council members with no guideline to follow in trying to figure out how to weigh in on these issues.

Here's the thing, the council sets the tone for the public. When a council member criticizes another council member on social media it gives a permission slip to the public to do the same. If anything you should have each other's back regardless of how you feel about the policy We live in a dangerous time when people feel emboldened to use hate verbally and physically. We all know what happened recently in Lake Arrowhead, a community very similar to our own.

Please do not feed this type of energy. I urge the council to prioritize a code of ethics, to relieve yourself of the time spent on these issues and set an example for the city of peace that Ojai has historically been. This would be a pretty low amount of time it would take. There's many cities with this that you could use as a guide. And it could be interim until there's a commission set for the deals with these things and how to reprimand but in interim code of ethics, I would encourage you to do act on immediately. Thank you.

Thank you, Tisha. Next we have Vicki Clark and then Jeffrey Starkweather.

Hi everybody.

Mr. Scott your priority workshop document is a thing of beauty the organization format comprehensiveness observations comments are clear And concise, they are factual with no undeclared bias. You demonstrate how a task oriented productive city government can and should conduct business. Whatever you're being paid is

not enough,

you're worth your weight in gold and I thank you very much. Okay. In regard to priorities something And your comments may make my comments irrelevant, but I like to say them and then perhaps I could be redirected on where to direct them. With the tragedy on Maui earlier this month and our recent hurricane as wake up calls, my hope is that the City Council will make public safety and emergency protocols a top priority.

I fear that we are just one heavy rainstorm, one half point on the Richter scale, one landslide or one out of control fire away from tragedy ourselves. With only four options for entering and leaving the valley, I think it is important to analyze just what the valleys critical mass is. If every hotel bed were filled an additional day tourists were enjoying all we have to offer at a time when a natural disaster occurred would be would we be able to handle all that humanity?

Our own residents housed and unhoused, not to mention the animals and livestock in the valley. Would we be able to shelter and feed people if we were limited to one or no outlets from the valley which has happened before? Would visitors have a way of knowing what our emergency measures entail? Would people merely be inconvenienced or would there be loss of life?

These are just a few questions that I hope will be considered in regard to the safety of our residents and visitors. Thanks.

Thank you, Vicki. Next we have Jeffrey Starkweather then Martha Ditchfield and then Nick Otway.

Thank you City Council citizens Um, I want to echo what Ruth Miller said about the issue with homelessness. But I want to talk about a little more long-term issue and not long term midterm issue around housing. We have a housing element that has been approved and revised. We had a consultant come in did a lot of excellent work but when I was still on the planning board back a year ago or so it became clear to me Looking at our code, we have an incredible amount of subjective standards which are illegal from the Housing Accountability Act. You only can use objective standards particularly when it deals with reducing the amount of housing or rejecting a housing project plus we also have some standards which are objective which are unreasonably barriers to affordable housing Now we've made a commitment, actually we've made it at least eight years that we are going to address this.