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iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.Scheduled start 6:00 PM · clock-time estimates pending review
0:00 – 0:0719 turns
Can we come to quiet, please? We're going to get started. Call the order. We have a quorum. Could we have the roll call, please, Weston?
Roll call — called by Weston Montgomery
Show transcript
Thank you, Weston and welcome everyone to the September 26th 2023 meeting of the Ojai City Council. Weston would you please say the pledge for us?
Right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.
Agenda Discussionitems moved / continued / pulled — click to expand
And we'll move on to the approval of the agenda. We do have one
public comment regarding the approval of the agenda. Council, is it all right if we take that now? Are you okay with that? Okay. Jeffrey Starkweather.
Mayor, City Council, fellow citizens. I am gonna ask that the item, I don't know the number on the Youth Council be tabled for several reasons. One it appears that the mayor has represented the city in developing something and under the protocols nobody in the City Council can represent the city without the vote of the City Council And she's obviously put something together. There should have been a staff report on this, and I think given the 35 to 50, I don't even know what the number is, priorities we have, I think it's totally inappropriate for the mayor to misuse her authority to put things on the agenda when we have so many important things to do.
We're setting up a youth council, we never even set up a housing We haven't implemented our Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protection Act. And I know from talking to people out in the community, everyone is confused about that. Now we've got a new priority, which we put up with is homelessness. I just think that's an example of wasting our time at this point until the staff has actually looked into it.
We have a youth council that's connected to schools that does all kinds of this sort of stuff. I don't know why we're not using that. And the city of Santa Barbara and the city, I can't see with how much time I got. And the city of Simi Valley both have youth council set up by the city, by the City Council they're appointed by the City Council. They usually run through the parks and recreation and this is the important thing they concentrate on youth activities and issues that affect youth which i think it's we're going to do something like that should be our focus so I just don't think this is appropriate to be on the agenda at this time And I would request that it be tabled. Thank you
Thank You, mr. Stark weather with Mr. City Attorney and Mr. City Manager what did this be appropriate time for me to comment about it or do we just
No, the item would just be to approve the agenda. You could have a brief comment and sort of why it should be on the agenda but not in common on the merits
Okay, and
of course is up to the council to make any motion to prove the agenda.
Okay, and just to clarify This Is on the agenda because I think it's a really good program And a lot of cities have youth councils mayor youth councils very very common actually Matt we talked about Calabasas Many many cities have this there are 12 schools, high schools in our valley. It's the biggest employer in our whole Valley and I think it'd be a great program and just to clarify this is not a...I don't think it should be a Brown Act group. It'll be self-selected from the schools and there are three volunteers who want to excuse me You know, I'm gonna ask the audience to be respectful. Thank you and um It's very very common So I just think it'd be a really good program and to encourage youths to get involved in local government It's and I am not running this there are three volunteers It's not going to use any staff time or money.
I have talked to the stop Okay, I Have a question
that's pertinent
I was curious if you already sent out the letter to the teachers.
Yeah, I was instructed by the city manager to let the schools know, the 12 schools know that this is a potential and if you look at the letter it doesn't say that's happening. It's saying that I'm looking for council approval.
What I said was I wouldn't want the school districts to read in the paper that the City Council just did something that they had never even heard about That was what I said, that the school district should at least know this is a discussion topic before suddenly they read in the paper that they're going to be doing this with the students. I actually told the mayor, you know arguably if it has nothing to do with the city staff, arguably the mayor didn't need to bring this into talk.
I said, I thought it would be a good idea to put it on the agenda to get City Council feedback on it. And as I said in another communication there's a couple issues like Brown Act that I thought needed to be addressed liability issues. So I actually encouraged the mayor to put it on the agenda because I thought it was something that city council members would want to have comment on rather than to pick up the newspaper and find out it had been created.
So I think that's why it's on the agenda, and I would think you can talk about all these issues when the item comes up on the agenda then you have the freedom to talk about them.
Thank you. All
right, a motion to approve the agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda but I would like to request that we take item four, the ATP before item three on the commissions because we have staff from county here to comment on the ATP. Second?
I
would second it.
Okay all in favor? We do have a short presentation from our chief of police, Trina Newman. A little update. Thank you, Trina.
0:07 – 0:134 turns
Good evening City Council, Mayor. I just wanted to give a quick update. This is something I'm sure everybody has either read about or heard about so I wanted to address it. We have received a lot of concerns about juveniles that are in the city. Causing a lot of problems, essentially just kind of juvenile things. Juvenile antics whether it's on the bike path or throwing items at individuals in the city and we have been doing what we can to identify these juveniles. We have made some headway. We've made two arrests in regards to those that are involved And we have put out some extra foot patrol or bike patrol during the week when school lets out and during the weekends when we believe the times that the kids may be in the city kind of mingling about.
So I wanted to address that as well as there have been some Rumors, I guess you could say circulating about possible robberies that have been occurring in the city and I can say that is not the truth. We have had incidents of break-ins or burglaries or thefts but we have not had any robberies There's also been information circulating that we have some type of organized crime crew that might be involved in these incidents in the city. And again, that is not true.
We have yet to connect any of these incidents in terms of the thefts or burglaries that have occurred other than the most common the most frequent commonality we can we can Find in these incidences that the individuals are entering through locked doors Excuse me, not lock doors unlocked doors or unlocked windows So we just want to encourage our residents to make sure that they are locking their homes at night Their vehicles and not leaving any valuables in their vehicles or in plain sight And that's all I have
Thank you very much chief And then we have a comment from our Public Works Director, I believe, Lindy Palmer. Is
Lindy on? Okay, I'll do it. I'll do my best. I'm not as good at this as she is. We wanted to just comment on the confusion that's been caused at the Y intersection With the the work that Caltrans is doing and and we really want to make sure that People know this is not part of the ATP project So anybody who's gonna stay here and wait for hours to get a chance to talk under that agenda item? This is really a non-agenda item because it's not the ATP project. This is the The Caltrans paving project that's been going on on Ojai Avenue.
Unfortunately we didn't know this was coming and if we had, we'd have wanted to talk about timing and notice and all that but They have to do some work where the two lanes that turn eastbound from Maricopa on to Ojai, where those two lanes merged. Up until this point you've been able to turn on two turn lanes and then merge after you make the turn. They need to do work in the right-of-way on the merge lane.
So you can see out there right now they're getting ready to put up K rails to block off that lane, they have to do curb gutter storm drain other work plus they're replacing the railing that's in there. They think it may take till the end of December they're gonna try to get it done sooner But that's why that's all been blocked off. They have to have a safe place for the workers to work, and so they're getting ready to put that K-rail in probably by this time next week it'll be in.
That's why that happened. Now unfortunately, it coincided with the time when middle school kids are starting at the high school and we have more people dropping kids off than we've had in the past, so the backup has been Obviously noticeable to people, judging by all the phone calls we've gotten. And what they're going to do now is try to evaluate the turn signal to see if they can put more time for the turning movement and what that does to the time it takes away from some other movement. Hopefully they can come up with a better setup.
There are alternate routes that some people will take and you'll find over time that the backup won't be as bad because people will take alternate routes, which then will put people in residential areas where people won't like the extra traffic. None of these things are ever easy but that's what's going on it's not ATP is part of the paving project and it's part of improvements that they need to make along that right away and we'll try to keep people informed of how that how that's going
Thank you mark any Commission reports Okay, we will move on to general public comment and just a reminder These are items that are not on the agenda. And because they're not on the agenda We cannot discuss them. We appreciate your viewpoint and participation and we can agendize them in the future At the end of the three minutes you'll hear a chime and please respect each other's time and in the spirit of equity Please stop talking when the chime sounds no giving away time to another speaker And if you're in agreement with a previous person, please say ditto and there's been a request to Say your name and your address if you're a resident or not when you come to the podium Of course that that is your choice. So we'll thank you very much for being here We'll begin with Larry Steingold then Jeffrey Starkweather then Renee Roth
0:13 – 0:2110 turns
Larry Steingold, resident. I would like to thank Lindy Palmer and Public Works and Rasmussen and the citizens of Ojai for getting the roads done. Okay? They deserve a really big hand because this problem has been festering for a decade Or two, what have you. So everybody owes them a great gratitude. Affordable housing which nobody wants to hear but we need it.
All right so since we're talking about the city of Ojai why can't you get SB 649 on the agenda? We get elephants on the agenda with three phone calls We got students on the agenda with how many? Do you really care about Ojai residents? If people don't know what SB 649 is, it's that the affordable housing gets local preference. That means they get first, not third, not fifth, not 10th. They get first but the property has to qualify so that's a whole another question. But at least do it because it says you get to pick Ojai first.
Is it so
difficult?
Thank you.
Thank you Larry. Next we have Jeffrey Starkweather then Renee Roth.
Miner's Oaks. I wanted to correct the record of a statement that the mayor made at the last meeting, and this had to do with the valet parking back in March 22nd 2021 when the mayor put it on the agenda to try to regulate or ban valet parking And I think Council Member Francina asked why didn't you put it back on? Well, it's because they didn't want to support it. That's not true.
What that was in my opinion was abuse of the mayor's power because at the time the El Roblar Hotel was going before the planning board. In fact, there was a letter sent by Jeremy McBride spelling out all the times they had appeared and the fact that they were about to have their official hearing in two weeks and they had been working with the city planning City Planning Commission about valet parking, and they had a separate lot behind them.
And they were not planning to park on the street like the rumors were spread, and they were not planning to cross the street like the rumors were spread with valet parking. The reason why that was inappropriate, why it got knocked off is because this was a quasi-judicial hearing And city council members should not be interfering with a quasi-judicial hearing that's going on. I think the City Council could have potentially been in legal trouble if they had done that and interfered with the City Council. So, that was an appropriate removal of tabling. It was not saying we would never wanna hear this again.
I would add that this was the meeting, and this is totally tied, hate to say this but I have to, To Tom Francis and Simply Ojai, because this has carried on as of a couple meetings ago when we talked about implementing their initiative to ban valet parking. And the mayor said let's initiate it. Tom Francis at that meeting got up and said point of order which a citizen in the audience doesn't have a right to do that but they listened to him and they said can the mayor read his speech?
Her speech excuse me sorry And her speech, by the way, is the same language as their initiative. It has the infamous words, we all want Ojai to hold on to its soul. Finally she wrote a part of it, the city of Ojai has discretion to keep parking open and available to all and should thoroughly consider restricting valet parking to the site only, and that was a false implication that we were taking away public spots. Thank you
Jeffrey. Next we have Renee Roth.
Good evening council members and Mayor Sticks and staff. Thank you Mark Scott for speaking up about the why and what's going on there that is very helpful. I noticed coming to the meeting tonight there were 10 cars parked behind me trying to get into one lane. And typically there's you know two or three cars in each lane and they just merge naturally so it is difficult for people that change and adjust especially during So it would be helpful if these things start happening in the future that you get notified of these things. I would expect that we would have better communication with Caltrans on these issues, so thank you for that update. I would also like to add a thank-you to The Ojai Valley News for publishing the results of the meeting that was held on August 30th.
And that was where you facilitated, Mr. Scott, the dotocracy and those dots are all over there in Kent Hall but the written discussion of those items I really appreciate having them because I think We need to focus, we need to focus. And I think Mark Scott is doing a good job. He's got two of those items on the agenda tonight so I wanna thank you. So the first item that got all five dots meaning all city council members wanted it to be addressed was the City Hall campus property and homeless services needs. So I thank you for putting that on the agenda tonight.
The next one that received four dots was the fire emergency management process because we are all concerned about that going into fire season. Then the rest that got three dots that were added into this list of 12 was a citywide speed limit SB 649 which was just mentioned Evaluating a full range of revenue and tax options. These are really really important things that the City Council needs to be addressing Revenue and tax options are what provide financial stability for our city. This has been kicked down the road for many, many years and I would really like to see it be a top priority going forward.
Also, council protocols was a priority as well as the capital budget. And I liked how Mr. Scott mentioned it as a robust capital project because that goes in with your tax and revenue financing options. So I just wanted to start with priorities. Let's keep focused on the priorities, thank you.
Excuse me, I have a question for Renee. Do you know where in the list commission reevaluation is or was?
Not on the list.
Okay, thank you.
0:21 – 0:2817 turns
Do we
have
vacancies so we don't have to put them up? Maybe we should clarify that. Do you want to make a comment Ms.? No. All right, we will move onto Nora Harrell.
Hello, everybody. I really just want to thank you tonight for your service. I love you all and it being that this is not easy right? That was all yelling at you for the most part and I want to say one other thing we've done something pretty historic here in this town. We have a female elected mayor. We have a female police chief We have a majority female sitting city council.
We are in a big time of change in this country and you are modeling this change, and it's hard. And I appreciate you all. Thanks.
Thank you Nora. Any comments online Weston?
No raised hands so far mayor but let's give them one moment any attendees on zoom wishing to have general public comment may raise their hand **
We will move on to the consent calendar. Is there a motion to approve?
** I'll move to approve, but I want to take pull item E. ** Okay. All right. Is
there a second to approve?
** Second it. **
All in favor? ** Aye. ** We do have two public comments on E. So we'll go ahead and take those now. First we have Courtney Fern and then Larry Steingold.
Hi, my name is Courtney Byrne and I'm the Director of Government Relations for the Non-Human Rights Project. On behalf of the NHRP and our Ojai supporters, I would like to thank the City Council for introducing this groundbreaking ordinance that, for the first time in the United States, Establishes a defined enforceable right for non-human animal. For humans as much as for non-human animals rights are the only way to protect an individual's fundamental interests.
Recognizing the rights bodily liberty for elephants is the only way to truly protect them from human caused harm now and in the long term while animal welfare laws can help reduce elephant suffering they do not address underlying problem, the fundamental loss of their freedom Elephants are majestic beings. They are autonomous, self-aware and possess extraordinary emotional intelligence which allows them to understand the physical competence and emotional state of others. In the wild elephants have a rich network of social relationships through which they cooperate and build coalitions. They engage in intentional communication including vocalizations to share knowledge and information with others in a manner similar to humans. Through scientific studies and observations we've learned not only what elephants need to thrive But how captivity causes an immense physical and psychological harm.
As we gather here right now, there are 19 elephants in California being held captive against their will in small exhibits unjustly forced to exist for the benefit of their human captors. They're most likely inside barred stalls where they will remain until their handlers release them in the morning. Many of these elephants were taken from their familial herds in Asia and Africa. All of them now live wholly Unnatural lives, unable to engage in innate behaviors in order to entertain and satisfy the curiosity of paying patrons. This is a great moral wrong. Aside from the abject cruelty and pointlessness of it all, this is not what California stands for. We are a state that prides itself on protecting wildlife and the environment, not exploiting it.
By recognizing the right to bodily liberty for elephants, Ojai is leading the way for other cities in the state and the nation to right this wrong. Through this council's leadership, you are ensuring that elephants will never again be deprived of their liberty in Ojai. This happened in the 1980s when the elephant Tara was held captive in the Ojai Valley. You are sending an important message The elephants are not rightless things to be exploited for profit, but rights holders who deserve to live with dignity and respect. Finally you're making clear that humanity's capacity for empathy and compassion as well as the fundamental principles of justice liberty and equality can and should be extended beyond humans. Thank you very much
Thank you, Courtney. Next we have Larry Steingold.
May I just comment? Courtney, I just want to make sure you know that Tara the elephant that was in Ojai was taken by her owner to a sanctuary that the owners started. Yeah, I just want to make sure that people aren't, yeah thank you.
Larry Steingall. Thank you very much, resident. I think it's a wonderful thing, right? We really do need to protect animals and give them animal rights. Our groundbreaking work challenges an archaic unjust legal status quo that views and treats all non-human animals as legal things with no rights. As with human rights, non-human rights are based on fundamental values and principles of justice just as liberty autonomy equality and fairness To change the common law status of great apes, elephants, dolphins and whales for mere things which lack the capacity to possess any legal right to legal persons who possess such fundamental rights as body liberty and bodily integrity. I have no problem giving animals freedom okay but are you people going to draw a line?
And say okay which animals are going to be free and which aren't going to be free or are you gonna say This is all written from their website, which is no problem. It's okay but where does it stop or start? Are they going to go out of business if all the elephants in the country were taken care of? Whales, no. They're not going to go out of business they're going to go on to some other animal which is fine but let it stop or start here because is it next week and I'm trying to be facetious here but is it gonna go to dogs? Are dogs gonna say get take my leash off and let me go if they come back that's great But where does freedom stop or start? If this is going to start here, add more animals please. Add the bobcat, add the coyote, add all the animals that are not pets in Ojai and then we take care of all that then we don't have to come back here.
Now you get two types of animals those that are free and those that aren't. Those that are enslaved and those that are free. So that's what I would do. Please add more animals or draw a line somewhere because this will just keep going and we'll be here next year adding great apes.
Thank you Larry. Any comments online?
Zoom attendees, you have an opportunity to speak on consent item 1E elephant rights. No raised hands Mayor.
0:28 – 0:4326 turns
You pulled the item. Oh, yes Councilmember rule wants to make a
yeah I asked
thank
you I asked mayor pro tem Francine it to please pull it for me as I've never pulled an item and I wanted to keep The process moving. I just wanted to thank the non-human rights project They have this is the 10th anniversary of the first case that they filed freedom for a non-human animal they incorporated in 1996 They've filed cases for four chimpanzees and nine elephants.
And I just would like to give the warmest and most appreciative thanks that I have to Stephen Weiss who started this organization. He thought it would take 30 years to get a court case, it took 28. And also his co-counsel from the very start Libby Stein. I've been following them for years and I know that it's easy to make a joke, but it is huge to have the first defined and affordable right for non-human animals in the country.
It will go to the courts and Ojai has said it's not just individual society, it's a municipal group. It is a municipality who has said we have evolved beyond this. And so I wanna thank deeply my colleagues for supporting this and never wavering for one second on this. And also staff who has been as well very, very supportive. So thank you very much and with that I shall not repeat myself Susan and I will close.
Council Member Whitman?
So I've said this before and I'll just repeat again. I think the topic we're talking about is appropriate for a resolution, not a law for Ojai. And I do not believe that elephants should have been addressed ahead of all of the long list of things that we've been trying to And I do agree that if we're going to do something about animals, we should do it with respect to our local wildlife.
And those are my only comments.
Thank you. Do we need to approve E? Yes. OK. All in favor of approving E? Aye. Aye.
No. Aye
All right great. And just to be clear we're working on wildlife issues and many many other animal issues as well so
yeah as we said this is a start. Yeah this is not an end.
Okay, we will move on to discussion item 2. Discussion and possible budget allocation relating to strategies for management of the City Hall campus including maintenance of habitat and public safety and policies in public services for the community gardens and the unhoused resident population.
Do we have a staff report? May I just say for those that came in late, we have changed the order of the agenda and ATP will follow this topic. So if you're looking at your list there's been a change in the agenda. That's
okay and just reminder council members if you could bring it through the chair that would be wonderful thank you. Mr. City Attorney, I mean Mr. City Manager sorry
Thank you. I think the title of this item is longer than the report. As was mentioned a little while ago, this particular topic was the only topic in our priorities exercise that received five dots.
We brought this item
forward for the obvious reason that it was top priority.
It's a top priority
For a number of reasons, and I don't need to belabor that but this is a city property. The city has obligation to maintain this property. It's a valuable property not only housing government offices but housing community garden that people value the opportunity for educational programs outdoor educational programs There's a natural habitat that needs to be maintained and we have a growing number of unhoused residents that are, that have taken up residence there.
And we know that as encampments of this sort go, as they grow the problems associated with them also grow and again I'm not going to belabor that point But there are safety issues. There are mental or there are health issues public health issues and we need to do something constructive about that. The Ojai community is a good place and people care that we treat the people who are living here properly And so as I presented this to the council, I said that basically as it relates to the in-house population.
First of all we need to deal with that immediately for those safety and health reasons and secondly we really can't get to dealing with the other issues with the property until we deal with it And so there's really two different approaches to take on this. The first one, which I absolutely do not endorse is just an effort to rid the site of the encampments.
You can do that if you follow the Supreme Court or the appellate courts guidance, federal courts on how a city may relocate homeless people. But it's very difficult to do that and probably impossible for us to do in any one quick effort and it's likely to attack lawsuits frankly. So, the second approach would be one that I am recommending and that's that I'm asking the City Council to allocate resources that are as yet undefined but probably pretty substantial.
I suggested $150,000-$200,000 per year is probably a modest estimate of what the cost is going to hire someone or contract with someone or some entity, to provide on-site supervision of the site and to create some appropriate rules respecting the people that live there. Respecting the conditions that they're trying to survive in and doing what we can to make their situation more tolerable than what it may be today But mostly we need to keep from having this grow to a greater size because with the growth of encampments, and I've got a lot of experience with this. With the growth of encampments you get some real problems and we have a capacity, we're going to have to enforce that.
So that's my recommendation to the city is that we need to create this long-term strategy. Eventually, we can deal with issues of community garden and some of the other programs we need to do the habitat maintenance that needs badly to get done but we really have to deal with the first issue first Now at the same time, and I talk about strategies as short-term middle and long term.
We have a great group of people here that are working with us George and Ruth and Betsy and probably others who I should be aware of their names Who are working on trying to help us get some funding to build some, I'll call it transitional housing. Some of us got last week to see the Dignity Moves small housing units that have been used in some communities now There are grant opportunities that we can seek. In fact, they're working on it aggressively.
The NOFA, the Notice of Funding Availability is not out yet but is expected shortly. We think that the application may be due as early as the end of October. The kind of funding that we're looking for, and correct me if I'm wrong but the grant is called an Encampment Resolution Fund Grant. Is that right? It's administered by HCD. And it is a grant that has been obtained by some other cities, Santa Paula being one of the later ones in Ventura County.
The trick on this is that we need to identify location and we probably need to identify a city-owned location and that's probably the hard part. Whether we get the grant or not isn't necessarily dependent on that but it might be. It's a matching grant, but it doesn't specify what the match is. You propose what you're going to do to match There are some expenses that this community is already bearing that might go toward that The grant does provide money for?
The housing itself and it also provides two years of operating money I can't tell you precisely the numbers that we would qualify for but that's That's what we're going for. So that's a middle term kind of effort to try to find some housing for some of the people who are living here in the future, that we may be able to make some affirmative steps toward eliminating the encampment on this property. It won't happen overnight, but it's a step in the right direction and I'm going to quit talking. I know that you've got people here who want to address this and maybe we can start with them and I'll leave the rest of it to Council for discussion. Thank you.
Any questions from Council right
now? I have a couple. I'll save most of what I'm going to say for discussion, but I did attend a Session at the League of Cities where they discussed Homeless Issues and I guess my questions are Do we have any information about the cost of temporary housing if we go the Dignity Moves route?
Yes. The little units that they sell, they're about $50,000 apiece. And so for two million dollars you can get about 20 units. You also have to install a community bathroom and bathing facility, but that's roughly what it costs to provide that kind of housing which is course is way lower than trying to build traditional the cost of building traditional housing
And I understood but vaguely that there's money available for, I mean Dignity Moves seemed to be saying that they would find the money and it wouldn't be a big city obligation. But I didn't get any sense of what
It's like a lot of things. They have a very good track record of helping cities, not just them and you know I didn't mention Jennifer Harkey with Ventura County, terrific manager of their continuum of care program. There are a lot of people out there that will help us try to find funding. I think it's very clear that the City of Ojai can't come up with two million dollars to do this But we're very much encouraged that there are opportunities out there. There is funding in California right now In this arena, I mean there is more money than there's ever been and What you have to do is you have to compete to show that you're ready To deal with it Nobody wants that will get this with the ATP later Nobody wants to fund something and then have it sit there for years They want to know that when they allocate funding you're gonna use it And so I think that's what we have to do.
We have to get ready and we're
trying.
Yeah, one last question and that is if we decided tonight which we're not going to do but let's just for purposes of calculating if we decided tonight that we were going to pursue what Dignity Moves is offering Do we have an idea how long it would be before you know, assuming we had the location selected How long would it take? Before we had those Units in place.
Yeah, I always it takes a while You know, I think you're looking at What year to
0:43 – 0:5138 turns
No, I heard at the farm.
I'll tell you what, I'll buy dinner if we get them in six months. Yeah that's what we heard. And I will gladly do it but... Pardon
me?
I rely on my staff here.
Yeah, those are all my questions.
Other questions from Council? Mayor Pro Tem? I'm
sure the speakers will address the timeline but Dignity Moves was present at the House and Forum that we had and they did say six months That's my memory. You know so yeah but
forgive me for being the bureaucrat that I am
yes I have a question to ask a question because I'm sure they're clear that the presenters will clear that question up but my question is the timeline we have an immediate need to make the encampment more habitable and safe. That comes first. That's
my short-term proposal is that you, as Mr. Whitman said we can't approve it tonight you can direct me to bring back on the agenda an item to fund this position I feel very strongly we need to have
Thank you. Okay, any other questions councilmember Lang
I have a question because I'm also hearing this is a two-pronged Approach that we are going to do something immediate and then also we are looking into dignity moves or a comparable program Are we also looking at other? Public properties that we have like I know that there's been some conversation about Like the lower Libby parking lots or some of the other Like almost as the immediate remedy that we do could pave the way for a space or for a location for Dignity
Moves. I haven't done any of that, but that's the task at hand if we're going to have a competitive grant application and I don't know that we have to have this But we may have to have an identification of a place to put it. And so I think we need to get busy and look at what those options are, and you know there's there are a lot of issues to evaluate when you look at a property site and We need to do that see if we can't put in the best application we can get by having an identification Of a place to put it
We're
gonna discuss that. Let's take turns, let's make sure to take turns. Other questions from Council Member
Ruhl? Yeah you kind of touched on it. I was curious do we know what they're looking for in the grant application? I'm assuming that those who have done it will be able to advise us but do we know how to make our grant as competitive and as strong as we possibly can?
These three people and Jennifer Harkey from the county have studied what the other cities that have received the grant have proposed in order to get it. So I think we have a pretty well educated group of people here today.
Great, thank you. Okay councilmember Whitman?
Yeah, I think this question is for Matt but if So if we create a temporary housing location Under the Boise case, which is a Boise case says that you cannot enforce your no camping rules about a private about a public property if you don't provide a roof over the head of the people you're going to remove. Right. So does it have to be that temporary housing have to be in the city limits?
Or if we're assuming, because my understanding has been going along that we would do a collaborative effort with the county. And the county I understand is receptive to the idea that they will participate and they've got funding sources and they've, I think have generally agreed to about a 50%. Contribution to a solution for the valley, but would we be required under the law to have the location here?
Or could it be on a county property like?
So the requirement under the Boise case doesn't analyze that closely. Subsequent district court cases have made it clear that as long as the location to which you're offering housing at the point of seeking to close down an encampment or enforce an ordinance against a person is in the area, so in a place like Ojai where the limits are small and just outside the limit is closer in some cases than the city limit the other way from an encampment, it's okay if it's not inside the city limits as long as it's within the area. We couldn't ship folks to Oxnard that wouldn't quite
cut
it.
Not that anyone is trying to do that. I don't want to be like Texas or Florida and start shipping people but so when we think about locations to do this We've got a broader scope than just... Yeah, it's not
just what the city owns. I think part of the points to think about will be likelihood of in terms of the grant application in particular they're looking for things that can hit the ground running. Part of that is going to be is the site owner the city who's on board or is it someone else? If not the city are they on board and if it's in the county has the county smoothed the necessary approvals And then I you know,
I don't I don't want to Have Give Larry Steingold too much props on his ideas. But I do like the idea that the Honor Farm, is the Honor Farm county owned? Wait, can we just- I can't
respond. We're not in discussion yet. Excuse me Mayor Pro Tempore. Can we restrict this to questions and then we'll
wait? Yeah well that was gonna just be my question is do we know whether the Honor Farm is even an option It's no longer
an option. Susan, can we refrain from any conversation?
Thank you. I have one final question if that's okay. Yes, go ahead. And you know, I keep forgetting to talk about this but the 48 transitional housing units that are being built in Miramonte with 24 of them being transitional and the others being... I mean, 24 of them being for homeless and the other 24 being for transitional Have we integrated that at all into our thinking and looked at their timeline and seen ways in which we might be able to dovetail and or work with those numbers as well?
No, I'm new.
Okay, well I would say No. No, it's not the Mesa project. It's Cabrillo is building a 48 unit supportive and transitional
Where
they think
where the gas line is
okay so anyway, I just was wondering if you know if we're If indeed, you know, we're talking about the Ojai Valley Way
down the road We do
would we Jane Walters from help of Ojai has the answer so thank you. Somebody has the answers
Thank You
0:51 – 1:018 turns
Jane Walter co-director of health of Ojia I don't have answers exactly to what you guys were talking about, but I think it's important to know as we're talking about a opening a shelter, if Dignity Moves were to come in to do this that they build the structure. You have to have a service provider to staff it so that number that you're hearing is for structures right? But then you're also running a full operation and so that's going to change these numbers a bit and I think and I encourage you all because I feel like we could probably spend hours talking about where this could be and what we need to do in terms of housing But to Mark's point of which like we really need to address what's happening behind City Hall, and these numbers that are growing in a situation that's becoming pretty desperate for a lot of people.
And I'm so thankful to the group who are doing the research for the shelter. can recommend or suggest that we somewhat rein it in, in terms of the housing piece and the shelter piece because that's probably a separate agenda slash hours of conversation that you guys might need to develop. Regarding the Cabrillo unit, Whitney my Director of Homeless Services might know this better than I do but I don't believe any of the units are transitional right? I think they have permanent supportive housing that they're factoring into those numbers But that's likely going to be years, right? Until that's developed. So I just really encourage everyone to really focus on what's like urgently happening right now in our community.
And if you have questions that I can answer absolutely well but also knowing that I don't want to get you guys really far off topic about what is on the agenda for tonight's meeting.
Thank you, Jane.
And I do want to thank Jane and Whitney for meeting with me today. The service provision portion of this is critically important. The grant does come with some operating costs for two years but I think probably for the operation cost of the facility I would guess and so I think we need to fund what we're going to do here ourselves for now.
Let's go ahead and move on to public comment. We will begin with our unhoused, what do I call you guys? Team, task force. Ruth, Betsy, do you want to speak, George? And I just want to thank you all for working so hard on this doing the legwork and the research. But I do have a just one second. And so Betsy you have is this a separate
comment part of my report. So thank you. I'm Ruth Miller and I'm a member of the Ojai Homeless Task Force. That's what we're calling ourselves. We're doing research on how to establish homeless shelter in Ojai. I want to begin with thanking members of City Council for your ongoing support Suggestions and encouragement. I especially want to thank our interim city council manager Mark Scott for his commitment to helping the homeless in Ojai, for his invaluable experience in navigating this complex issue and for his heartfelt compassion for improving the plight of our homeless neighbors. Thank you.
Here's a brief overview of our homeless population. According to the census taken by Ventura County in January, there are approximately 45 people in Ojai, homeless people in Ojai 26 or 62 or older that's 56 percent and 29 or 65 percent There are 20 living in cars or RV who are mostly elderly. That leaves approximately 25 people who live on the street or in tents.
It was suggested we surveyed a homeless in Ojai to gauge their interest in staying in a homeless shelter. To date, we have surveyed 19 of our homeless neighbors 17 have confirmed their interest in a shelter where each person has their own room with the door that locks such as what Dignity Moves provides. Their primary concern is safety, safety for themselves and for their possessions. The homeless at City Hall have had spears thrown through their tents some of them have been assaulted and many have had their possession stolen they are not safe And they're well aware of it.
One man said he lays awake at night and he worries about the shadows he sees and the sounds he hears as bad it is for him. He imagines it must be much worse for the women living here. I was impressed with how polite and grateful most of the homeless were while surveyed them. Most of them became homeless while living in Ojai articles I've read have said that's not unusual Most homeless people stay in their own communities which they consider home.
One 70 year old gentleman told me he has lived in Ojai for 50 years. These are our neighbors. So, how are shelters developed and operated? We studied and visited a number of homeless shelters to see how they're established and operated. Typically municipalities engage a developer to help design and build the shelter and then engage an operator to manage the shelter and provide supportive services to the residents.
Dignity Moves is an example of a growing non-profit which designs, builds small homeless communities which includes small individual rooms with locking doors so people have their own safety. They've recently completed such a shelter in downtown Santa Barbara and are currently developing a shelter in Thousand Oaks. Their communities generally have a common meeting area, bathrooms with showers And a laundry.
Best practice for uplifting the homeless requires an operator for the shelter that both manages the facility and provides supportive services to its residents. Supportive services might start with helping people get a birth certificate, a social security card And supports them in finding a job, accessing healthcare and finding permanent housing. For example, Thousand Oaks chose non-profit Hope the Mission for the largest operator of homeless shelters in California to manage its shelter and provide supportive services.
Ultimately requests for proposal RFP likely will be required to identify developer and operator for our Ojai Shelter. How would a shelter be funded? County of Ventura has a standing commitment to fund half the cost to build and operate homeless shelters in Ventura County. The other half can be funded by state grants, fundraising by Ventura County Community Foundation and other foundations, individual donations and any support offered by the city.
Importantly, the city would get a significant credit by the county's matching funds Offer for building a shelter on city property. In other words whatever that property is where the city will match that value. And for staff time devoted to establishing a shelter as well as waivers of fees in the development permitting process. So development of the shelter on city property provides significant advantages for getting funding.
We reviewed a list of properties we have a list of properties I sent them to you owned by the city and have identified several potentially viable properties We've also recently learned about the encampment resolution funding grant opportunity through Jennifer Harkey with Ventura County Continuum of Care. The grant application period will open soon. Once it opens the city will have 30 days to complete the application. We anticipate the deadline to submit the application will probably be in early November. Fortunately, the City of Thousand Oaks submitted a similar application earlier this year and were approved for a prior round of funding.
Jennifer Harkey has offered to facilitate the application process and believes it's possible to have an application ready quickly because much of the language in The Thousand Oaks Application would apply to our Ojai application. While much of the focus this evening will be regarding temporary better accommodations for our homeless camped at City Hall, we would also urge council members to take first step very soon to establish a homeless shelter including authorizing city staff to finalize the encampment resolution fund grant application which will probably have a deadline early in November.
And thank you for consideration of this very important topic.
Thank You Ruth and
thank
you. Next we have Betsy Van Light, then Jodine Hamrand and Jessica McCray.
1:01 – 1:086 turns
Betsy Van Light an Ojai resident and good to see you all. Am so I'm on that that task force actively working. I'm also on the board of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition and as you know We finished our nine ten month process of getting community input About the eight acre property and then submitted a final report So in that In all the discussions we had with community members, the survey and then different workshops and site tours and meetings certainly people commented on the tent encampment. And of course it's grown dramatically in the last couple of months when we started 9-10 months ago there were probably only a few tents And it's interesting, there were some concerns about safety or about fire hazard and about having tents. But overwhelmingly community members were very caring.
They wanted to do what was right for our unhoused community. So that was one of the big themes. But I'm up here tonight because I want to talk about the fact that there are so many other themes. That property is amazing, and it really... people see it as potentially the ecological center of our community, a place where we really can come together and learn about our place, appreciate it, do environmental study, and gather and feel at home So, there was a lot of themes. I'm hoping we'll be able to get that report out more broadly fairly soon. We'd like to share it because we had a lot of people involved.
The demonstration gardens were particularly commented on. We have a long history in that demonstration garden and composting area doing good work learning together gardening together building community together and I would hate to see all of that just completely sort of set to the side right now. I've been on the property a lot lately, and what I want to propose is that it may be possible to actually begin revitalizing part of the demonstration garden pretty much immediately. And in fact, it might bring energy into the property in a way that's helpful for what we're doing here. We have a lot of people and partner organizations who would like to work in the garden area with us, and there are ideas about how to fund that.
So yes, we need to do short-term what's right for our unhoused community, and I don't see it as an either or. I think we can also find a way to begin to do some work in the garden and bring community members back in, and that's what I would love to see happen. That's really what I wanted to present here tonight so that we didn't lose all of the input and all of the care that went into thinking about this property.
Thank you,
Betsy.
May I ask a question? Betsy, I know you've been trying to get a response from the council and the city manager whether or not we approve posting this online and distributing it and I did respond but maybe tonight one of that we can give her an answer she's been very patient this is such an incredible wonderful report I think it'll just looking at it is energizing and hopeful thank you Thank you so much. Thank you, Susan.
Next we have Jodine Hammerin then Jessica McCray and then William Wyrick.
All right good evening City Council members my name is Jodine Hammerin and I apologize Mr. Scott I apologize to Whitney I apologize to Betsy I wrote this before This is outrageous to have homeless people camped on City Hall grounds. There are, are there any other U.S. cities that allow this? You don't see tents pitched on the government center grounds in Ventura. I highly doubt this Sacramento capital has homeless people camped there and lots of homeless people are in Salt Lake City and Austin. And again, I doubt these cities let homeless people pitch their tents on Capitol grounds. It's my understanding you don't want homeless and mentally unstable people sleeping at the library because tourists would see them. And I assume, and actually heard it's how you feel about the Libbey Park too.
This morning I was playing pickleball with three other people and a woman walked over to the courts and she asked if one of us could call 911 because there was a confrontation at the tent area We just told her that the police station is across the street, you can walk over there. And I also told her that if nobody is in the police station, you can use the phone on the wall, the red phone and call and talk to police.
I kept thinking about her all day today because I thought maybe I should have asked if she was okay. I mean, she could've been raped and I am concerned about something like this happening over there. She could be raped and it's just a matter of time that this will happen and any individual with mental health problems could kill someone. It's my understanding that a doctor and his wife were strolling in the gardens and were threatened by a pit bull from the tent area And I also heard that a resident living in the apartments across the street had a peeping tom at 10.30 p.m.
How can this go on unmonitored before something really bad happens like rape or murder? I have a couple of suggestions which you might wanna consider, it's up to you. So one is Matilla Haas, since it's not being used anymore for school, let homeless people pitch their tents on the football field and there are restrooms there and if you don't want tourists seeing them as they drive into town plant dense bushes or trees Or a rock wall would look great there.
Okay, number two, Soule Park. So now that I just heard that it could be collaborative effort with the county, how about pitching their tents over there? And again, there are restrooms there and whatever happens wherever they may go it must be monitored with cameras Does the city want blood on their hands if something heinous happens on the City Hall grounds? It might be hard to sleep at night and it just might make national news. Thank you for listening, and we have more than just earthquakes making national news. This could also make national news if something terrible happened on City Hall grounds here. Thank you.
Thank You Jodine. Next we have Jessica McRae then William Wyrick then Dee Reed
1:08 – 1:146 turns
Hi, I just wanted to come up and say thank you for the report. This is great. I'm glad you guys got it on the agenda. I agree with you that option two is the best, that we need some organization and structure and having someone manage that Thank you for doing that. I think everything you have in here is exactly right for the immediate need and then what I've heard tonight, the midterm and long term is you guys are doing a great job. Thank you. The one thing that I do...
I know we're just having discussion today. From the last meeting to now, it's grown. The castle out there grows daily. Like you said some of the dangerous things are getting worse. So I just heard that it's gonna be another two weeks before we can have any direction to do anything. So it has to be approved in the next meeting, I think is what I heard. So if we can speed that up and anyway possible please. If we could possibly have a little more police presence for that safety.
Just some organization, safety, police presence. It's what we need and we need it several months ago but you guys are doing great I appreciate it and thank you for making this a priority.
Thank You Jessica next we have William Wyrick then Dee Reed then Jeffrey Starkweather
I'm really glad to see the effort that's being made across a broad spectrum for dignified and constructive approaches to the unhoused problem. I am concerned that the conceptual blinders are on a bit. That the county of, Ventura County is divided in governance districts called areas of interest. Within those areas of interest are spheres of influence and then within that is municipality.
What is the smallest infinitesimal size city out of the largest area of interest? Ojai Valley. To look at this as a city problem alone I think it's too constraining It is a valley-wide problem. It's an Ojai area of interest problem, and in particular I would urge that the Homeless Task Force consider a public workshop where you invite the broad breadth of goodwilled, skilled, experienced people to come up with a broad range of ideas, and I'll mention a couple.
When looking at available sites in the city The sphere, we are also the smallest city as a proportion of its sphere of influence according to LAFCO in the entire county. Parcels inside the sphere of influence are basically pre-approved for annexation in terms of services provision. This is a services provision. Why aren't we also besides just city properties looking at Properties that could be possibly contiguous to existing city limits that would be easily annexed may be a better location.
We talk about behind City Hall, it bothers me a little bit that one of our least well-managed areas is across the street in what's more affectionately called the Boneyard of Public Works which is basically a trash heap, but it's very flat and has more space that's open for private modular programmatic areas than an area that goes to immediately steep into a canyon. That is identified by California Department of Fish and Wildlife as a sensitive habited area and they gave us $900,000 to restore it.
So I guess what I'm trying to say in my 35 seconds left is that please let's try to open up our minds and not be constrained, especially to looking at this as just a municipal problem. The leadership is needed from the city to collaborate with county on looking at this as an Ojai area of interest issue. Thank you.
Thank you Bill. Next we have Dee Reed then Jeffrey Starkweather then Bill Miley
I just want to say bravo and thank you to everybody involved in this. It's awesome. I do hope you hire somebody who will help oversee and manage the structure and the processes involved in the encampment with dignity, and I know that you will. And I'm just thrilled to hear that the task force is really a task force and talking about transitional housing because the homeless are homeless because of lack of housing.
People who get evicted or just one little slide away from becoming homeless and so transitional housing is a great thing not just for the homeless but for people who are who need a swing space when they get evicted. So I think there's a lot to do here a lot of potential it just gives me great hope and I just want to say thanks
Thank you, Dee. Next we have Jeffrey Starkweather then Bill Miley then Renee Roth.
1:14 – 1:226 turns
I want to thank Ruth who's done so much with the Housing Task Force. I guess at this point I'm a nominal member of. I was active when I was a Planning Commissioner and head of the Housing Task Force, so the housing. And of course I sponsored the homelessness workshop that two of you attended and Dignity Moves came there. So I've been a little busy late. See, I'll get back more in this issue.
I do wanna say something about language of how we describe solutions. The word has been used, homeless shelter. But I think there's a distinction between a shelter and transition housing. Shelters are generally considered temporary housing, particularly where you put everybody together. And transition housing is something that's gonna last two or three years.
So in part of the Dignity Moves model, is that they provide wraparound services and they provide another unique thing which shelters don't, is they allow people who have substance abuse and drug issues and stuff to sort of continue I guess you might say but with an agreement they're gonna be treated. So a lot of people who have those kinds of problems mental problems won't go into shelters for that reason because they won't allow that so it's kind of a different model Third, I think as Dee said, homelessness is a housing problem.
So we have three things we need to work on. One is this immediate shelter issue if you want to call it that. What are we going to do with people? The second is what I'd call the middle range transition housing and the third is we got to start working on bringing in new affordable housing And by the way, the one in Miramonte is for disabled homeless people. So it's much more restricted than you're thinking about it at that. I don't know maybe everybody here would be disabled but the final thing is in terms of and Dignity Moves can move in pretty quickly as they said if they have a lot that has water sewer and infrastructure that could get in within six months, they told us.
But secondly as for the temporary thing I think we need to get the whole community involved because I've seen a model where people put tents on platforms. We got a lot of carpenters in this town we could get donations and put them on tents and help them construct, make it a community project to construct this temporary shelter. I think it needs to be uniformed. I don't think you want every homeless person to bring their own tent. I think those tents oughta be provided so everybody's having the same experience and... Thank you
Jeffrey. Next we have Bill Miley then Renee Roth and then Holly Mitchum.
Good evening. My name is Bill Miley and I'm a resident. Come on in here. Planning wise, we have an immediate now needs. We have midterm needs six to 12 months and long term. Obtaining funds for housing is long term Starting now, these acres should be managed like state parks. Registration, sites mapped out for tent placement and certain requirements for participating in the Ojai City campground services for unhoused folks. I just named it.
Example is having residency history in the Ojai Valley. It would be managed 24 hours a day seven days a week Support services and structures like state parks should be present. Homeless care services, continuum of care services which is in the county, should be part of the registration process homeless people agree to. Providing a contract with help of OHI should be considered to provide such CAIT services.
That's what I suggest.
Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Next we have Renee Roth then Holly Mitchum and then Sue Williamson.
Good evening City Council and staff this is all good here this is all really good news I'm really excited about this encampment resolution grant so I think you should act on that tonight in terms of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition report I think it would be really good if we had a robust plan, and I know Mr. Scott is very good at putting together work plans and ideas that could incorporate the recommendations that the Green Coalition came up with. Because I think we've got to build up respect for this place that the Smith-Hobson family donated to our city. At the same time, we're building up respect. We're also addressing how to manage the encampment area. Now one of the things I wanted to stay in Tinta you're here, this is good. At the June 13 city council meeting on the consent calendar there was a recommendation that the Council adopt a resolution allocating $100,000.
In available citizens option for public safety funds. For fiscal year 23, 24 to address community safety concerns. I believe this is a community safety concern. I don't know if Mr. Mark Scott knows about this but I spoke up at the podium and said James can we use this funding to help monitor and establish order In our encampment area, it went bye-bye. Nobody paid any attention to it I won't go into any more details But I would really like you to look at that and see That there might be funding within the police department to start doing something now The other thing I wanted to stress is I think we should draw some inspiration from the city of Malibu Steve McCleary, who used to be the city manager here is the city manager of the City in Malibu.
They have taken very strong action to address their homeless population because they've also got a beautiful city that attracts lots of people. So they have funded an outreach team and a housing navigator to facilitate the transition to more stable housing. They do routine field checks to prevent the formation of new encampments, and address public safety concerns.
I talked to the man who was the public safety, the encampment person who teamed up with a police officer person and they went together and talked to people and said how did it go last night? What are we doing today? Do we all know that these are the rules in terms of blah blah blah where you need to be. So I think we have a lot of options and a lot of people with goodwill who want to come together and do good on this. Thank you.
Thank you, Renee. Next, we have Holly Mitchum and then Sue Williamson and then William Holden. Is Holly here? No. Sue Williamson?
1:22 – 1:3110 turns
Sue Williamson I live in the city of Ojai. It's been a lot of sort of pie in the sky going on here tonight and I'd like to bring it back down to concrete right now what's going on? And as far as I understand there is one toilet over by the pickleball court and it's on a trailer so handicap people can't even use it Now, can we at least do one thing of getting some toilets there? I mean all this is great to go looking into the future and stuff.
And it was a great report you came up with and I'm really, really thankful that your interests are to keep people not try to make everybody leave and create more havoc and pain and suffering. What struck me is that there's no, it doesn't seem to be a concerted effort to actually meet with the people that live there and to encourage them. They're not all drug addicts. These are some very intelligent people who have a lot of life experience and who should be I believe encouraged to be collaborated with to allow them to create what they want, what their rules will work for them because it's not going to work if you don't include them in the process. And I would like to see that. I haven't really seen it yet that there is an attempt to include the people that live there in this process.
The other thing is, I'd like to point out, I hate to disagree with the coalition for Anyway, the idea being that a garden can be moved easily. There are other lots that could be made into a community garden. Years ago there was a proposal to put something back there and everybody said no, there's a community garden. Well, a community garden can easily be moved and put on another city lot and in fact maybe I'd like It's just going to create more hardship. These people don't have cars, they need to be centrally located so I'd just like to encourage you to consider this property and also to consider including and creating maybe the task force can make more of an effort.
Get more people to volunteer to work with people there, to come up with their solutions and what they need. And toilets immediately. Thank you.
We have a very nice, I don't know what to call them. The porta potties only this is a modern porta potty unit that's coming in there it's a very nice one and we've ordered hand-washing stations and we'll work on what else we can do to bring in some showers occasionally but the yeah all of all of the comments about Talking to the people who are there about the setting of rules that's implicit in the role that we're trying to fill. Somebody who has that if if I walk out there with my necktie, if Trina walks out there and her uniform we're not going to get the same reception that somebody who is comfortable and will be comfortable to the people that they're serving So we're gonna get the right person to get in there, person or people and try to get all that set up.
But we're definitely working toward all of those goals.
Great. Do you know the time frame in terms of the?
I'm sure it'll be very soon.
Okay, great. All
right next we have... I just wanted to, I don't know if this is a discussion, make a quick comment that I know that the Green Coalition at some of our workshops there, there were members of the encampment who came and participated and I'm sure that the task force has also reached out. I have no doubt that that has gone over their heads as a process to
do. And 16 of the people over there are clients of HOPE and so there are people providing services, case management into that population already.
And thank you, Whitney and Jane. Okay next we have William Holden and then Jerry Maranuck, I think? And Drew Mashburn.
Hello. I'd like to thank everybody that's working towards rectifying this homeless encampment problem. Kind of got two points I'd like to make. One is that this is not the original homeless encampment problem We had a woman living in Libbey Park for most of the year. We've had other people living in their cars in unsightly problem areas, scaring mothers with children and what have you.
And myself receiving information that there were people that wanted to thuggery the situation, go beat up the deaf woman in the wheelchair in Libby Bowl to make her move. I found that unacceptable so I did this. I've invited these people who are sleeping in their cars, these people that are under the bridge to come back here because I've heard the police are not making us move like they do when you're in an unregistered motor vehicle or sleeping where you're not supposed to be sleeping I try to ask them if they're Ojai residents but in my heart, I don't feel like papers please is the right way to open with a person.
So you know once I see him around a little bit then I'll be like hey you know we got showers over and they look a little dirty and then you see him sleeping in their car with her dog or whatever and you're like you know we can probably get you a tent and you wouldn't have So this swelling is not just, oh they're coming down from Santa Barbara. No these are people that were sleeping next to West and in Libby Bowl and other places and they're here now okay? It's not new.
This is your old problem that's come home to show you that it's a real problem. That was point one. It's not a new problem. It has just been moved to where you can see it. My second point was trying to figure out what you could best do to help us. I sleep out here in a tent. William, I'm a resident. Unlock the door at Kent Hall. Put in some staff. Let people use the kitchen, the bathrooms, the air conditioning. It's a temporary solution. It's not the end all, beat all but it would ease some of our suffering tomorrow morning when someone turns the key and tells us, rings our bell and says good news! We didn't bring food we brought you some convenience.
We have a bell we ring when good stuff happens. 22 seconds to finish huh? Thank you for considering everything you've considered I was gonna put a grocery list together, but you know what? That's wrong. If you want it for yourself, we want it for ourselves. That's your grocery list.
Thank you William. Next we have Jerry Marino... Sorry for the mispronunciation and then Drew Mashburn
1:31 – 1:374 turns
I am Jerry Maranuck. I'm a non-resident and live on Foothill Road. So, I commend the City Council for taking on the difficult issue of the unhoused population on the City Hall campus but as you search for the best solution, I ask you not to ignore the Stewart Creek Habitat where the homeless are currently living. Regarding this habitat, the city has already shown its commitment to being a steward by accepting an $840,000 California Department of Fish and Wildlife grant in 2020 for the restoration of the area.
And as is stated in the grant, the grantee shall ensure the project site is properly maintained consistent with the objectives of the project for 25 years after the end of the agreement term. Unfortunately, the city is not being a good steward of this habitat. For example, part of the grant work has not been completed because the crew stopped their participation because of concern for the safety of their staff.
By ignoring enforcement of laws as cities allowing people to urinate and defecate in the restoration area, they're allowing unleashed dogs and unleashed cats which are killing birds and turning the entire area into litter box. They're allowing untended open fires and increasing trash They're allowing people to walk and camp wherever they want, damaging the hillside, creek and the reintroduced native plants.
They're causing Ojai residents to stop using the area because they fear for their safety. All this is a failure of being a steward of this land and a failure of adhering to the almost $1 million grant requirements. My request and proposal to the city clearly demarcate and enforce a boundary to the encampment so no tent is within the restoration area or within 200 feet of the creek.
Since there don't seem to be any city or state regs for this, I propose we follow the National Forest and BLM rules for camping outside of formal campgrounds. Choose your campsite and wash at least 200 feet from rivers, streams, lakes, or wetlands. Number two, Realize that the encampment has probably already reached or exceeded its capacity. Number three, ask the police and fire department to enforce the regulations already in place to preserve public safety and public health.
Lastly please start enforcing the rules tomorrow because as you'll immediately see if you walk through the area the damage of the habitat is increasing on an almost daily basis thank you
Thank you, Jerry. Next we have Drew Mashburn.
Good evening. I'm Drew Mashburn. I'll read an email that I sent you yesterday morning, just because I like to get it documented. I read the staff report prepared by interim city manager Mark Scott concerning the management of the Ojai City Hall campus. My impressions of Mr. Scott from watching and listening to him at several city council meetings have all been positive. He seems to be one sharp individual And he seems well-matched for Ojai. I agree with Mr. Scott that the homeless encampment on the City Hall campus needs to be managed. I've seen it increase in size by the number of individuals and geographically.
Creating a position, for lack of another term, camp manager is a terrific idea. There needs to be such a liaison person between the encampments occupants and the city council. Consideration should be given to allow the camp manager prompt access to the sheriff's department rather than having it go through the city council before giving permission to do so. I'm quite aware of problems presented, created by many homeless individuals. I experienced many during my long park ranger career. At one time, the county wanted to train all of us park rangers to be crisis intervention managers. We all bucked the idea that's why there are social workers But the person selected to be this camp manager should more than likely have such a background. During my Park Ranger career, I had to remove a high number of homeless camps.
Frequently, my fellow park rangers and I would encounter piles of filth including human waste and evidence of drug use such as hypodermic needles, drugs, narcotics, smoking devices No, we did not wear hazmat suits but should have been doing so like other law enforcement agencies often do. I've witnessed these problems at the City Hall campus but I'll bet they exist to some extent. I suggest that trained law enforcement personnel be the ones to remove if necessary homeless camps rather than the camp manager.
The purpose of this email is to encourage you to select city managers, Scott's suggestion on how to manage the City Hall campus. I was at-I walked through-that's it. I went ahead and I walked through the camp today, this afternoon. I was dismayed to find one of my friends is now living in the camp. She went ahead and had surgery recently. She's not allowed to work, so she lost everything. She doesn't have any relatives in the area. She's living in the camp.
The camp, I've seen it increase probably tripled in size I'm out of time. I think that something needs to be done pretty readily. Great idea.
Thank you, Drew. Next we have Nora Harrell.
1:37 – 1:5028 turns
So we're talking about beings here, human beings. And I've heard some dehumanizing tonight of that group from our community, not from you all. I think that you all get this, that these are beings and that every single one of us that has a home is maybe one crisis away from being unhoused And I just continue to encourage you to treat our most vulnerable population as they truly are, our most vulnerable.
And when I hear the fear-based sentiments that are spouted about our unhoused population, that to me feels like misinformation. So maybe there's a need for some community education around this as well. I was just kind of heartbroken to hear some of that tonight as we're talking about solutions to tend to those who need our help the most. And, you know, as Drew just shared, right?
This is a national problem. I mean, Bill Weirich talked about it as well. He mentioned it as a county problem. It's a national problem and it's all rolled up in the fact that we don't take care of each other here. It' every man for themselves And that's killing us. So yeah, I just wanted to humanize that group. I know some of the people there and thank you for taking this on.
Thank you Nora. Any comments online Weston?
We'll give those Zoom attendees one more chance to raise your hand for item two. And we'll move on.
All right, we will move on to discussion who would like to begin? Mayor Pro Tem.
Yeah You know this of course in an ideal world This would be a standalone item because we could easily spend another eight hours discussing everything We've heard a lot of great ideas that I just I'm I know you're taking notes that need to be implemented it seems that we need to make a decision if we're going to You know, I said this at the last meeting. I wanted to empower our interim city manager to make whatever decisions he needs to make to address the emergency things we've heard is absolutely unacceptable that people are defecating in the creek and so I don't know... We need to know when the port-a-potty's coming tomorrow?
I've answered that question ten times. Yes,
I'm
sure. And I'm not going to answer it again.
Okay.
All right? If you want me... No, I am not chastising
you.
No, you are and I'm gonna... That was
not my intention at all! Not
at all. Sorry. I'm gonna tell the council something and if you don't like it you know I'm not the guy for you. I know how to do this. If you will just give me the direction to do it. Don't tell me how to do it. I know how to do it I can go get this done. You've got other things to deal with tonight, we don't need a discussion of telling me how to do it. You need to tell me go ahead and do it and I'll go ahead and do
it." That's what I need from the council. No, the purpose is so that the public knows there are people here that didn't know that the potty party that was a case whatever I'm sorry. I'm very sorry mark. I never intended We have a motion excuse me we have a motion is there a second
** I'll second it. ** Okay, great. We have more comments from? Let's get this motion done. Go ahead. ** Discussion
but you know so... ** We're
still in discussion we have a motion on the floor.
** So where is the funding if we approve the funding that you've asked for where is the funding coming from? **
It's coming from the reserve fund It's the only place I've got in the budget. We can draw from unexpended budget lines, I can't tell you tonight where they are. I will look first to draw from unexpended budget lines and after that it'll have to come from the Reserve Fund. We don't have a choice.
Yeah so I support the idea That we do have to expend this money, but I want to share what I got from this conference and the session that I attended. Because I think that in addition to doing this for the temporary, we need to move forward pretty quickly with the idea of providing some form of temporary housing. So I attended a session that was led by somebody from the federal government, Alphabet Soup.
I didn't catch all of the initials but then It was also dignity moves. It was also a woman from the county of Santa Barbara who has been in charge of their homelessness project and it was a mayor from King City and the really big message that they had is that the encampments have to end and because they are a horrific Safety, fire, disease potential. Encampment is not a safe way to do things but in order to end the encampments you have to have the housing source So I don't want to do the immediate thing without addressing the idea that we're going to move forward with getting temporary housing. Now, their message was that if you establish the temporary housing You know there are a lot of people, a high percentage of people who want to be out of the encampments and these temporary housings you know with the roof over your head is a much safer environment.
They also said that it allows the community services organizations to come in and address individualized needs for different people. They said that the biggest threat, one of their biggest concerns are that people who fall into homelessness, like the person that Drew Mashburn just mentioned. That the ability to get them out of homelessness is best when it happens and as time goes on they become much more of a risk to be that way permanently, to be homeless permanently.
So I think it's really important that we look at moving forward. If it's not dignity moves, then we need to find some other way to create because I didn't hear the people who expressed fear and concern To be trying to You know to be mean people. I think that the That there is a great concern that the encampments can be a bad Situation and I my understanding you know, even from what Ruth Miller has said is that That a significant portion of that population doesn't want to be in the encampment type of environment, but it's all they have.
So I'd add to the motion if it's acceptable that we include coming back to us soon with a report on how to move forward with temporary, with a temporary shelter solution. I agree 100% actually you know I talked about the homeless situation extensively with James while he was here And James number one concern was that we is that we incorporate the county and we get the county to take a bigger role, that they had more of a staffing resource than we do.
And so I would like to see us you know one of us or all of us talking with Matt LeVere Rachel, I hope you'll add what you and I talked about yesterday which is that Rachel's been talking to other cities who are in our situation our least populous cities. in the county are dealing with the county and getting a similar response, which is they want to heap as much of responsibility on us.
The city of Ojai represents about a quarter of our homeless situation in terms of population so I'll add to the motion just that we address the issue of developing Temporary shelter and how to fund that as something that the staff would bring back to us.
May I make a recommendation? We don't have
any staff, so what what I'm gonna have to do is I'm going to come back and I'm gonna suggest to you the things that the City Council can do in working with your colleagues in other cities. It's a regional issue that's a correct assessment and we need to have the cities talking together I will tell you that you've got a perfect person at the county right now And the county is not reluctant to help us.
Jennifer Harkey is an excellent head of the continuum of care program and I think there needs to be regular meetings of the elected officials with staff, and we'll find somebody we can assign to this. Maybe we also need to hire some staff. But that's how you're going to get this regional cooperation. That model has been done in counties all over You know, the state.
I think the willingness is definitely there to do that. This whole effort of trying to get the grant is a big part of that. The city could also approve some housing projects. You know, duh. I mean that's one of the things that needs to be done in order to deal with the housing shortage. There are there's a whole series of strategies that the city can and should follow up and it's absolutely appropriate to include that in the motion and to make that next steps but I really think we need to figure out how this elected officials from the various cities can work together with the county to make that happen
I have a question of the city
attorney. My thinking is that it's better
to divide it into
two
motions, the first motion being to empower
1:50 – 1:5924 turns
to give permission to the interim city manager who's highly skilled already. He's had experience managing camps with 300 homeless people I was told at one point, is that right? Two
times.
Yeah twice okay. That we just make that separate that he can do whatever he needs that he considers immediate needs Then make a second motion out of What councilmember Whitman either illegal?
Yeah.
Okay, so let's do the
first
I think the motion though is to authorize the expenditure To get somebody well to retain to fight to fill a position and whatever staff goes with that to manage What's happening on the city hall property. And I assume that that person would extend to whatever other city properties homelessness might homeless people might end up.
That would be my hope yes
yeah.
So it's council member
Lang's turn. If if the city man if the city attorney feels that that's the best way to I mean it seems kind of There was a lot said that was a very long motion amendment
Well, I think what he's asked for is funding of between 150 and $200,000 so that he can do what he wants Definitely definitely we should incorporate that in the motion. We're giving him that authority
Great, I accept it. Okay
councilmember Lang
I just wanted to add that what I was speaking with Council Member Whitman about is that I have talked with other, I was at an event and several other council members of different cities in Ventura were talking about forming not just a task force but getting together and meeting regularly about this and seeing what we can do because it is a problem county-wide. And I know that there's a lot that's happening at the county level And the continuum of care, of course. But this is something that I'm working to organize actually right now so I just wanted to add that and also just thank you for stepping in and making this a priority item.
I am sort of in concurrence with Mayor Pro Tem. I think we need the you know here's the motion, you do the immediate tomorrow stuff you are fully empowered to do that Then there's a second motion that we talk about, you know the $150,000 we talked about I mean to me That's the second step is that we start to put order to what's there? But the first step is we deal with the immediate needs Tomorrow and we don't to me it becomes murky. You know, this is like motion one Mark Scott, you do what you need to do. We're 100% behind you to make sure that the immediate needs are taken care of.
Second motion is a little bit less clear. Which is fine, it doesn't have to be clear. But I'd rather have one clear motion and then we got this sort of amorphous $150,000 model that we're gonna move on so That would be my preference on how these motions work
Mayor Pro Tem do you have right now? It's one motion. Do you want okay
Well keep it together. The motion would include that Mark Scott would have access to whatever funding he needs. I would just like to make a comment. I would just like to thank the task force for working on this for several months and doing all the research and talking to so many people and caring so much about
our community I'd like to thank Health of Ojai, Whitney and Jane for being here. And Whitney, I know you know a lot of the people and you've already done a lot of this work so thank you for being here and you've been doing this for decades. So really like to lean into your expertise. Jennifer Harkey, I've spoken to her in the past. She's an incredible resource and so helpful.
And I'm grateful to the members of the community who have shown up so compassionately And helping us to take care of everybody because that's really what it comes down to. These are members of our community, they live here, they grew up here and I also went to the same workshop that we need to take, is the doggy okay? I went to the same workshop with Council Member Whitman, and Mark was there also. It was great. It's called Homelessness to House, How Cities Create and Leverage Strong Partnerships, and that really what it was all about. And back to Ruth and Betsy and George working with continuum of care, working with the county, and getting everybody involved. The moderator was Helene Schneider who is the Senior Regional Advisor for the US Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Great resource, you gave a really interesting presentation with a lot of interesting information which you can actually watch online. And what struck me at that workshop the mayor of King City was there and he showed an aerial of the Encanto there and just being in a room with all these people from small cities in California you realize it's everywhere So I'm just so grateful to everyone here that we as a community, as a city are focusing on this and doing what we need to show up and take care of people. So thank you all. So yes? I
just wanted to add that while you all were at that workshop, I went to one about crisis like a crisis mobile crisis intervention and having a crisis intervention planned for the unhoused or for people who are at risk of losing their homes. So I think there's so much that we can do in the future, that we can look at and explore to create long-term solutions for those who are at risk of losing their homes.
And I just wanted to add one thing. In terms of, I know that there's been so much work on Stewart Canyon and so thank you Jerry for speaking about the 200 feet setback from the creek. I really appreciate that piece of information and that would be great too. Fold that in there and also figure out how do we limit the growth. I mean, that's a big issue, I think. So what do we do?
We have a motion and do you want to decide what you wanna do?
Yeah so let me just comment on You know, I retain people all the time in my line of work and it's kind of standard operating procedure that you say you give them a budget and you tell them not to exceed except that if you need more money you come back to me with a report for why. So Mark's asked us for I think we should give him the $200,000 that he's asked for and the authority to do what he needs within that budget including retaining somebody to manage the property here and the homeless situation in Ojai in general.
So, I don't want to take over your motion but... No, no, no. That's
fine.
Okay, so my motion is that we So I think everybody here is an agreement We get the motion is that mark? That we give the city manager of the authority to spend up to $200,000 if he needs more he comes back to us with a why he needs more and And then he has broad discretion within his position as interim manager to do the things that need to be done, including retaining a position to manage the homeless situation in the campus in particular and the valley or the city in general.
1:59 – 2:1714 turns
I also would like to thank Mark Scott. Thank you for your institutional knowledge. You've been working on this issue for decades, so we are super lucky to have you.
Yeah, well and I'm sorry I get anxious to get going on this.
Well let's have a roll call then Weston! Let's get
going. Are we leaving open like a second motion in terms of at least providing some direction or organization because I really do think it's important that we go to that next step of providing temporary shelters I'm convinced is really important to managing
homelessness Okay, let's
Roll-call vote 0–0 Moved by Suza Francina · Seconded by Andrew Whitman · 5 under review
Show transcript
To authorize city manager to move forward with strategies and budget allocations of up to $200,000 for the maintenance of the City Hall campus property which includes Involvement with current County staff and task force and return to Council with a report
Sounds good.
Roll call, please.
Roll-call vote Passed 5–0 move forward with strategies and budget allocations of up to $200,000 for the maintenance of the City Hall campus property which includes In
Show transcript
Excellent all right 5-0 Thank You Weston Do you have a comment?
In terms of Mr. Whitman's suggestion, I absolutely will be looking to provide other ideas on other ways that we can expand. The grant is one that's hot right now and we need to spend time on that. That's why I'm a little reluctant to be going off and doing other reports because we've got so many, I've already got to get done. Let alone mylar balloons. And that means to minimize mylar balloons. They're very dangerous.
But we will absolutely bring back information and I hope to be working with some people on this project that are going to be knowledgeable in that arena as well. So, we will definitely want to give you that update on what other opportunities exist. It's an all of the above strategy. Yes. It is no one thing. It is an all of the above strategy.
Great, all right thank you. We're going to take a short break did you want to
make a comment? Yeah I just want to say if you feel the need for a stand-alone meeting on one of the other Tuesdays I'm absolutely willing to do that because we may need to do that as we go through the process.
The only...I'm happy to do that too. The only problem with having meetings every Tuesday is they don't have any time to get the staff reports done And you have a very, as you can tell from tonight's agenda, you all have a very ambitious list of issues you want to address. So we'll move things as fast as we can move them.
Okay thank you. All right well we will take a short break and we'll be back with item number four. Ready. Okay, we are back. We will begin with item number four discussion and possible direction regarding the status of the ATP grant to provide bicycle safety and traffic right-of-way improvements on Maricopa Highway. We have a staff report?
2:17 – 2:259 turns
I will do my best here.
There was a request that people don't know what the acronyms mean on page 4-1, I just want to make sure we explain to the public what all the acronyms mean
okay
I'm sorry to interrupt but just want to make sure.
That assumes that I will know myself so the ATP grant is active transportation program project it's one of those P words and And this is a grant that the city first got approved in 2015. There've been number of changes along the way, different iterations on design. A couple years ago it got broken into a phase one and a phase two if, and I'm not gonna go through the funding on this but there's the ATP grant is, I think it's $2.3 million if I'm not mistaken That is mostly for construction. There's some design element to it and then rest construction the there's other grant sources one is CMAQ which is congestion management
Congestion
mitigation air quality. Thank you I'm gonna turn to Matt for these things and then there's then there's a TDA and these folks could tell me what TDA stands for Which we got through your agency, I believe. Through the Ventura County Transportation Commission These gentlemen will speak here before long. They'll do a better job than I will in this So that in any event we've had and there's a third there's a final category that's HSIP
Federal Highway Safety Improvement Program
Yeah, it's that. And that's a fairly small amount by comparison to the others. The CMAQ is 1.3 something. So the project has been going through these various phases. The community is well aware of that. This came before the City Council in March, and the City Council at that time gave staff enough direction that we directed Alta Planning, the engineering company to proceed, to keep working on the designs as they were doing.
Those designs I was told recently are about 95% completion. We'll go back to Caltrans for final review in about a week or 10 days We need to get those designs fully completed and then construction documents, and go out to bid and award the bid by June in order to be able to retain the ATP grant. So we're on a fast track to get from where we are to the day that we could award that bid.
The challenge with all of this is that it's been eight years since this grant first got awarded. It probably will take the greater part, if not all of the funding that we've got for this project just to do phase one. We don't know exactly what phase one will cost until it goes out to bid but The last estimate on phase one was about 1.6 million and that was a year ago in May, and by the time it gets bid it would be 13 months later.
That cost would go up. The 1. 6 did not include what is usually about a 30% for Things like construction management, project inspection, traffic control. Those extra costs, extra soft costs that would cause the project to go up in amount. So when you look at all of those factors together it's conceivable that we would end up using all or most of our funding, construction funding on phase one.
Phase two turns the corner through the why so to speak which is not part of this project, and goes down Ojai Avenue. And in phase two there's a number of very worthwhile pedestrian safety improvements that are called out I think we all would agree that Ojai Avenue is an accident waiting to happen. And, I think it would be very appropriate to be able to pursue that if we could. There's also an element of that That calls for the creation of a bike lane.
And we there are a lot of people who feel that maybe if there's money to put into something like that, And that perhaps that might be a scope change that we would like to see done in phase two and we're going to ask the gentleman tonight if it's possible that in phase two, we might be able to get some scope change. They're also I think and they were very generous in their time with us and in the letter that they sent to us There's also some hope that they'll be able to help us find some additional funding to be able to complete this project So tonight I put this on first of all, it's one of the council priorities. So you asked that I put it on and I'd like to get an indication from the council to the extent we can, and I don't necessarily expect it firmly tonight.
But we need to get your expectation whether we should continue with all the design work and spending that money to go forward with phase one. If we were to pull the plug and not go forward, we would end up having to reimburse, we think something like $230,000. I thought it was more until they advised me last week that it's maybe not more than the 230,000. We'd also end up with the black eye of having sat on this funding for eight years and then pulled the plug and a lot of important funders to us will be aggrieved of the fact that that's happened to them.
So there's an issue there but how do you go forward with something that could cost us millions more over both phases? without having some sense that there really is a hope for funding. So I think that's where we are, we're gonna ask the council what you think about the project as it stands right now and what you think about the possibility of getting more funding to be able to go forward with it as opposed to the alternative which would be to just cancel the whole project right now and take the consequences for that It's a difficult decision. This is not a simple decision it's risky to go forward On the other hand, it's risky not to go forward so With that I'll stop talking and I hope that maybe we can start by having the two gentlemen from the Commission To give some comments
2:25 – 2:3727 turns
I think we need some clarification on the point of page 4-3, next to the bottom paragraph where it says the other option on phase 2. Can you find that? Underneath proceeding with both phases I think, and I actually meant to call you up about this because it's my understanding that all that's planned right now for Ojai Avenue is sharrows. There are no bike lanes on Ojai Avenue.
You know, I don't that correct. I don't know that I thought that there was actually more than just sharrows I thought there was only sharrows in the down in the arcade area. I thought the rest of it There was actually bike lane How
about if we hear from you? Yeah Okay, you're you're correct and then it becomes sharrows right there's sidewalks there's gonna be sidewalks
Sidewalk improvements, gutter improvements, street crossing improvements, crosswalk improvements. I hope there maybe there's lighting improvements this is the darkest downtown I've seen in a long time so it really looks like some good elements in phase two
Thank you. Could I ask a question? Maybe this is a better question for for you two gentlemen Because I have received just in the past week Two or three complaints about the crosswalk in front of that Ohai coffee roasters How dangerous it is as well as the one right in the middle of Libbey Park Yeah So I just wanted to bring that up because I know we have phase one, phase two. For me personally that's the number one priority, that specific crosswalk so I just wanted to put that out there. Come on up.
Mayor Sticks, Mayor Pro Tem Francina, members of the council Interim City Manager Mark Scott, I'm Martin Erickson. I'm the executive director of Ventura County Transportation Commission real quick We are a special district representing the entire county Our board is the five county supervisors as well as a mayor council from each of the ten cities and we also have two non elected official public members Mayor Pro Tem Francina ably represents Ojai on our Commission and we are we are happy to be here tonight I'm with my colleague Peter Dahan who is the director of programming and has been with VCTC for 25 years Ojai is a Really the gold standard of bike lanes and bike activity in many ways in the county with your trail and I'm hopeful that in the memo that I sent to you that we prepared that it Clarifies, I think the issues before you and I believe as Mark Scott noted I'd say it's most important to proceed with phase one and And have that get underway.
There is some room to look at potential modifications for phase two, I believe the items you mentioned Mayor were in phase two, some of the crosswalks and some improvements to that area. This has been a challenging project it's an exciting project. I'm grateful for the participation of Caltrans and especially the California Transportation Commission which funds this project And I think not to belabor the point, but I certainly would encourage you to continue with this because losing all the money, while that doesn't mean that this project may never happen at some point in the future, it is a fair amount of money that you would need to find somewhere else. VCTC has also contributed the CMAQ money that was mentioned. That's money that is competitive countywide with other cities too, so we do have certainly a stake in this but really we are one of the key things our agency is about is working with our partners and those partners are all 10 cities and the county and finding ways to bring projects like this to fruition Getting them funded and and hopefully adding to the in this case active transportation Program, which is a key priority of Caltrans.
And that's kind of an exciting thing because Caltrans wasn't always as eager to fund bike lanes as Mark Scott probably knows well So that's that's a recent change in the way they look at this type of project and funding and I believe it's a good change so with that Peter and I will be here to answer additional questions and And we are at your disposal tonight.
Thank you Martin. Thank you Peter for being here
question You know following up on mayor sticks concern about the crosswalks We've been hearing about those crosswalks for years and even though it's phase two is there any way to? To jump and take care of those, because that's the question right? Am I
articulating? It is a huge safety issue. I think anyone who has been in Ojai for any amount of time has probably seen something dangerous happening in that specific crosswalk. I know a little girl who was hit. You know, I know somebody was killed in that crosswalk. People have been killed and I think it's a bad situation so is there any way to just do something about that specific crosswalk at this point?
I believe that would, you'd have to work with because it is a Caltrans right-of-way and so this as was noted project has been going for about seven eight years right now. They can only move as fast as the local decisions are made too which haven't really been happening quickly either. So it's certainly something we can go back and work with Caltrans about But it's really more at their discretion because it is a state highway. However, I will say that over the period of what Caltrans has done and the bike lanes that exist in Ojai already, I'd certainly say they'd be willing to partners to listen and if there's a way to modify the scope right now it is I believe it's in phase two but it's certainly something we can take a look at
Great, thank you very much
I have a question. So in you know one of the Going back to page 4-3 Looking at that option of redesigning phase 2 I mean if that is on the table for us to consider every design and Then could we also You know include Looking at Could we also include? redesigning the The whole project or aspects of the project that are flexible right now to make a way for For some of those safety concerns because people are also concerned about bike safety on Maricopa Highway there There are a lot of people who are having concerns about this project and and the way it is right now Safety concerns.
I'd say if I'm wrong It's too late to really redesign phase one at this point because there are deadlines approaching and you would be in danger Possibly losing the money there is some room to look at phase two
Thank you very much,
yeah, I have a question did I read your memo correctly that Phase one, the funding is there. It's when we get into phase two that we may have some issues.
The funding for phase one is there, yes. That the funding for phase two that depending again on some issues which we don't have a certainty on yet could involve more funding.
If I could say that differently and tell me if I'm wrong, I think what they're saying is that all of the money that's available for construction can be used in phase 1 It's conceivable it might end up being more than that, but all the money that is available for construction can be used in phase one. And then our hope is and I'm relatively optimistic there will be more money.
Especially if we go forward only if we go for We'd have to do we'd have to figure out how to do that with phase two, but especially if we can redesign scope then that's not so risky Phase one. We don't know what it's gonna cost when it comes time to bid it But that's a pretty good chunk of money the money that set aside is about three point What six million something like that? Correct And that's a pretty good chunk of money when the estimate last May, or this most recent May was 1.6 for the basic project and then add say 30% on top of that and then add an inflation factor on that 3.6 is a pretty good chunk of money for phase one
That's correct, and I know I mentioned this point in the memo. And we try to make it as clear as possible because this can be a little complicated when you look at it. But you'd also have the ability to take funding for phase two if you needed that to make that construction complete just to clarify that more. And we will be looking if additional funding is needed for phase two, we will be looking for that funding and we have some sources identified. I can't guarantee that right now but if the past as any guide VCTC has helped other cities, other projects like this and we have a good track record of success. Peter hope I didn't say anything please tell me if I misspoke he's really the expert on this 25 years of programming projects.
Phase one, there's a tight deadline. Phase two, there's no deadline so there's the luxury of time to work out. Well,
that's good news and it's been recorded too. I
Recorded a lot you are
okay. All right. Well, thank you very much any other questions from Council?
Yeah so It breaks out the report breaks out the right-of-way acquisition Is that cost for the phase one and phase two or just for phase one?
It's all in phase two, and some of it has already been spent. About $250,000 or $300,000 has already been spent. I think there is something like 16 more parcels that need to be acquired And there's a sense that some eminent domain would be involved in that. We're not talking about eminent domain where anybody loses their home, we're talking about slivers of property that people have to give up for right away maybe it's more than that but that's over and above the construction funds
We're still going to have discussion after all this, right?
Thank you very much. I
just want to add, I'm also a cyclist and bus rider so I appreciate the commitment Ojai has made to bikes, bike safety and pedestrian activities.
2:37 – 2:4319 turns
So this is really broad brush strokes basically we got a pot of money for phase one and for phase two. We're gonna use all that pot of money for phase one, basically. And so phase two we're gonna go out and get the money. Is that broad strokes
kind of? Well there's still some money in that phase two pot it's not clear if it's enough for what the eventual decision will be on what you'd like to do.
So we're not using all of the money for phase one. We have some money left over in phase two for phase two
The chart in my report, is that all the money?
Peter, I believe all the money that is currently allocated between the grant itself, CMAX, the LTF.
It's 4 point some million total. I believe that's the correct amount. So we don't know that we have to use all of it on phase one, I just don't know how much of it will be left. Okay,
I just didn't want to describe a completely empty pot.
Right right right. And the right-of-way money is phase two, it's not phase one.
Yeah the right-of way money I understand.
Except we're spending some of it already.
Yeah well but you're
gonna stay right? Absolutely. Appreciate
that.
All
right, well let's move on to public comment. Thank you very much. First we have William Wyrick then Dee Reed then Renee Roth
I'm sure I'm going to run out of time. Probably the person other than Councilperson Francina that has the longest perspective on this, you have the longest perspective.
It's 1994.
Look, council is in a difficult position in terms of this is a...I continue to be a supporter of this project but I want to make two important points in my mind. Number one. When the grant was applied for and the budget was written for that grant, there in my mind at least and I'll stand to be corrected there was no anticipation of the degree of eminent domain issues with the project. And that's related to the cost increases because the delay to address the eminent domain thing has moved us into a high construction inflationary time period So they're related.
Why is all this eminent domain issue? Number one, of course, requirement by Caltrans to Caltrans regulation that wasn't fully anticipated are part of the counter of the city council decision-making when design changes and agreements were made. In other words, when the final design was approved, Councilperson Canfrescina correct me if I'm wrong, we were not actually fully briefed as to the gravity and It's a complicated decision environment that wasn't really the fault necessarily of the council and involved issues that were not fully anticipated in the original grant award.
Number one, number two I still think we ought to try to find a way to finish this because remember it may be addressed The scope of the project in a way that maybe minimizes or reduces some of the imminent domain issue, in particular. There may be some degrees of freedom there and we should look at that and I would hope ECTC would accept that. But remember why we're doing this. This 33 is a orphan freeway access road. Remember that!
It was built in order to try to buy a city manager, sorry you know at the time who was an east-west freeway advocate 1971 Mr. Blalock and I'll read exactly why it was built and by the way it was built after can you give me what 60 more seconds? Yeah. It was built after this hospital was built it was built after the shopping center was built. It was not built to handle traffic It was built to facilitate an east-west freeway project. That's why it was built, and I want to read Ojai City Administrator Jack Blalock who by the way after this all happened there was a referendum and he was resoundingly rejected if you recall and he kind of run out of town. Ojai City Administrator, an advocate of the improvements meaning the 33 revealed that the road will eventually be an access road off the freeway That's the freeway that was going to come up the river and then cut through Miner's Oaks and take out Libby Bowl along the railroad right-of-way.
That's what that was. And the Meadows Preserve. And that the county is constructing the access for advanced planning and economic reasons, he said the State Highway Department will be obligated to pay for the expensive freeway interchange in other words the city wouldn't have to pay for it if we built it first The State Highway Department will be obligated to pay for the expensive freeway interchange if the access road has already been constructed.
That's why the 33 was put in there, that's why the 4-line was put in there. I think it's a golden opportunity if we can find a way to handle this thing, and I think a little more active role with Caltrans of ECT is going to be required. Especially because this eminent domain issue was really a regulatory constraint imposed by Caltrans that wasn't fully anticipated in the decision-making processes of City Council up to this point. Thank you.
Thank You Bill next we have Dee Reed then Renee Roth and then Bill Miley
2:43 – 2:494 turns
I'm Dee Reed and I live in Miner's Oaks, which is affected by just about everything you do including the Maricopa Highway ATP project. I have followed this since I moved here in 2018 and I was very excited about it And then now I feel like a lot of people are sort of hanging their head in shame that we tried to do this and that We're in this position where it's gotten too expensive and we're running out of time and la-la-la But I agree that this is not the moment to quit. We do have over $3 million of funding that Caltrans will allow us to use in phase one, and phase one can be let in time, I believe, which is June. It doesn't mean you have to build it by June. You have to let the contract. Is that correct? If we can't do that then we should hang our heads and just give up.
So let's try to do that and then with phase two we won't have the deadline. We don't have to build a bike lane down Ojai Avenue, I'm not even sure we need one. I'm a bicyclist, I ride all over the city every day my bike is my primary mode of transportation. I rarely ride it on Ojai Avenue and I do all my shopping in Ojai. So I either go through the Arbolada or I take the Maricopa Highway and the bike path. I find a safe side route, and I do my shopping. The kids can do the same thing when they want to go to school. They can find a safe side road, get to the bike path, and if they can get up to Maricopa Highway those junior high kids who can't drive a car yet but sure can ride a bike, they could ride their bike to the new junior high school.
So it's a project that will be used. I see more cyclists every day on the project and right now It's very dangerous for them because it's not appropriately signed And there are two-way lanes on the front side of the street where we want them to be eventually But they're not protected and so if we don't do the project Caltrans will come back and go well, I guess you get your four lanes back That would be a disaster at this moment. Some people in the audience will cheer, but that would be a disaster at the very moment when The Land Conservancy thanks to your help is going to build a bridge in the meadow that will allow kids to ride their bikes to the Maricopa Highway down to the bike path and to wherever they need to go downtown.
There will be more kids on the Maricopa Highway regardless of what we do and they will be endangered If it's a four lane road like it used to be. So please, let's think about that as well and hang in there and try to make this work. Thank
you for what you've done so far. Thank you, Dee. Next we have Renee Roth then Bill Miley and then Jason.
Hello, Council. I'm a very strong supporter of this project. I live right off the highway. I drive it every day. I walk it every day over to Nordoff. My husband and I came here over 35 years ago on our honeymoon. We were one of those people who stayed at the Ojai Valley Inn. We see the people all the time getting on those beautiful Ojai Valley Inn bikes And they hop on the highway into town, and I go, oh my god. They don't know how dangerous it is to get on that roadway into downtown. They go to Bart's Books. They do the towny thing.
And we're just so dangerous. It has just been so dangerous. I'm also part of that bicycle community that wants to see more bicycle use and less highway use, and I'm also one of those people who've had to get out there with my hands trying to get people to stop when they go racing past me on Maricopa Highway with the flashing beacon lights going! And I'm going what is going on?
So, it has calmed down. There has been major traffic calming improvements and Nordoff has changed their entry point and their exit point to reduce the amount of traffic that's built up in the intersections and we have more kids going to Nordoff We know that electric bicycles are going to be the mode of transportation for most people in our town in the future. It's affordable, it's easy and we need to be able to have state-of-the-art improvements and alternatives for people in our town.
Right now, I refuse to ride a bike into Ojai because I don't feel safe. I honestly do not feel safe and I know many people in town with kids do not feel safe so I urge you to go forward with this. I know Measure C funding the last time James talked about this He said he I looked at the budget and I said James you underestimated. The measure C funding that was available in last year's budget, and he redirected some of the measure see funding to help this.
So there are ways to find money and move things around. But the last thing I want to say is for those people who are holding out and making eminent domain a requirement, I urge you for the good of our community, for the good of our town to please stop delaying. Please stop jacking up the price to a million dollars for your three foot of street roadway that is making it difficult and expensive for this project to go through. Please help us community and work together with us. Thank you.
Thank you Renee. Next we have Bill Miley then Jason then Andrew Belknap
2:49 – 2:546 turns
Good evening. For the record, my name is Bill Miley and I live here in the city. I've participated in this since the beginning. The nature of the bike paths seems to be the primary focus of the project as I see it. If there is any question about bike lanes, the Valley Bike Community probably should be consulted again for input. It's crucial that moving about by non-vehicles is paramount to the project.
Electric bikes on bike lanes should probably be limited to a lower speed by law and enforcement Use of the bike path to get through the arcade is a good idea because otherwise, the shared lanes are a mess. They're potential trouble. I would not ride my bike through there when I was riding a bike years ago. The cost for the project seemed very excessive and not well detailed to the public.
Example, the abbreviations used in the administrative memo were not understandable. I had no idea what ROW meant or whatever. It would help to have a journalist write a complete description of the project and post it on the city website Example is when Robin Godfrey was here, she had journalistic skills. And she worked for James Fagan. She wrote several public documents which were very public-friendly.
This is not a description that's public friendly in my opinion. It's a very confusing project and overly expensive, it appears. It needs much more public detail I would suggest by a journalist. Thank you.
Thank you Bill. Next we have Jason and then we have Andrew Belknap.
I'd just like to express my complete disgust for this highway project. It's been nothing but a problem, it's not to mention very unsightly. You put tons of chemicals, toxic chemicals into the environment with the adhesives used for those It seems like a pet project for you, Sousa.
There's
a huge conflict of interest it seems if you're funding it as well as working with the company so I also had a question for Caltrans regarding the lane closures, will those be put back to how they were before this construction starts? So I'd like an answer to that as well because I don't see it going back. You know each day Ojai slips further from Shangri-La and closer to Hellscape that caters to the wealthy Transplants, visitors instead of families. Working class families have been here for decades, generations etc.
It's delusional to think that a budget that you had 15 years ago or whatever it was is going to be sufficient to finish this project in Joe Biden's economy so Factor in the fact that a gallon of gasoline costs almost $7.00 a gallon, what do you think the materials are going to cost? It's going to cost twice as much if not three or four times as much. This is the first time I've come to one of these meetings and I have to say it is definitely a circus and a huge waste of time.
No wonder nothing gets done here in this town in a timely manner because all the talking and no action. I think your ATP project needs to just be finished. It needs to just be killed off and put the lanes back, forget about it. We have a bike lane. I've lived in this town for over 40 years and rode my bike as you know a child all over the valley all the way to Ventura and back you know everywhere never got hit by car once I know how to look both ways when crossing the street, and I don't ride in the road. We have a bike lane, bike path that goes all the way to Ventura from the east side of town.
So the only thing that the ATP project has done is created more confusion and more frustration, more traffic not less, and that's a fact. And it's you know 33 it's not you know there's no highway there's no freeway I mean and you know it's an evacuation route. Nordoff High School was the evacuation center during the Thomas fire if you remember that so people need a place to go they need a place to get to through there and by blocking off two lanes of traffic you've only just created more congestion let alone exhaust fumes.
Thank You Jason next we have Andrew Belknap
2:54 – 3:0816 turns
Hi everyone. Andrew Belknap City of Ojai I just wanted to briefly state my support for completing the project if we want to be a sustainable city we need active transportation infrastructure it's. I honestly think it's that simple so this is something we should reach for.
Thank you Andrew any comments online question
no raised hands will give an opportunity for zoom participants
Larry is going to speak. For
those on Zoom, we are on item four.
Larry Steingold, you have three options. You can kill it, you can get more money from them or from the TOT or from others, or we can cancel part of it and do it ourselves, right? And take the money that we're freeing up from doing all this and put it toward electric tricycles Golf carts, the homeless. I'm sorry, the unhoused. Okay, there you can find all the money. You've got all the money, you're just going to spend it on concrete.
You got a thousand feet of concrete, ten feet wide. What about all the greenhouse gases? Climate control, climate denier, whatever but guess what? It's greenhouse gases, we're gonna do that. All right so but the point is we don't have the money unless they're going to guarantee all of it Your city manager, my city manager said we don't have a clue because you're going to put it out the bids.
And the bids who knows? You get inflation, you get oil, you got concrete, you got labor. Where's it all gonna come from? We don't have enough money so we either gotta raise taxes Or get it from them and have them sign in concrete that it's coming from them, because we don't have it. Because how much are we deferring maintenance? More maintenance? We're doing roads. We did a great job on roads. But if we take money from the roads, the $2 million that we're allocating every year is already underwater so the people that are getting roads now or next year or three years from now may have to wait five years and six years. How's the homeless?
The unhoused, spend the money. Here is the money! It unleashes it. You're banking all this money on concrete. Use the bollards, use the K-rails all the way down, decorate them. All right? We have artists. The bike path all the way to Sewell Park. But it's the money, we don't have it and unless you tax us with bonds which you can now do with 55% I think or raise local taxes you're going to have to raise the taxes from the visitors All right, or we're gonna just have deferred maintenance for longer and longer and longer. It will come out of the budget It's all about money you want to protect the people bike I bike Alright. Yes. I've had to dodge cars. I've had to see rolling red stop red lights whatever it doesn't matter But we can be protected but not bankrupt the town so please find another way
** Thank you, Larry. Any comments online? **
No raised hands on Zoom for this item here.
** Okay. We will move on to discussion. Who would like to begin? **
Everybody's going to look at me. I'll begin. ** Okay. ** Shall I? ** Sure. ** I wanted to give you guys a chance. Okay. So a little history on this project. Kathy planning commissioner, Kathy Nolan who was planning commissioner years and a group of bike advocates, we rode all over the valley back I think it was 2012. And we looked at the flow of traffic everywhere and we stood in front of Nordoff for a couple hours and the two guys from Caltrans looked at us and said you know you could reduce this to 2 lanes. You don't need 4 lanes. So the idea was planted by Caltrans.
I never had even thought of it, to be honest. And one of the key complaints that we keep getting is that people don't seem to understand if there is a fire, we can open up and have four lanes. The whole traffic will be different. Very important to understand during an emergency, we can have four lanes We have a letter, it's posted on the city website from the Ventura County Fire Protection District that they did a demonstration and it did not impact or hardly impacted their emergency response time. And I think same with the hospital you know when there is a siren people pull over its not going to affect response time so thats two concerns.
This project is for keeping families with young children safe. We adults that are seasoned cyclists forget why we're doing this project. I myself, I've ridden my bike forever up until two years ago the bicycle like Dee Reed said was my primary mode of transportation for many years didn't have a car But I didn't have any trouble negotiating Maricopa Highway either. But until we have safe protected bike lanes, the problem that we have of 10 kids riding scooters and bicycles on the sidewalk, that will continue. You know if you I watch traffic a lot from all over town and right now, I live in District four where I have to access the highway almost every every day from the south side.
If you're patient, there's no problem. I don't see the problem with idling cars is real but that was created. Those are problems that can be solved. The other day I saw a family with maybe a three-month old baby on the back, a trailer with two or three kids You know, and other kids that were old enough to ride on their own. This is one segment of the population that this project is for. It's also for older riders that don't feel protected in the current car infrastructure that we have.
I want to quote from Martin Erickson's recent editorial in the Ventura County Star. He wrote a wonderful editorial couple of months ago and he wrote, as a reminder, transportation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases so this project is part, it's a key part of a sustainable bicycle, pedestrian alternative human powered friendly transportation. It's part of it and I am sorry for those that are inconvenienced and the feeling, the objection to reducing four lanes to two lanes is common all over United States.
Our national, what's his title? Transportation... Pete Buttigieg. What's his title? He himself was almost voted out of office because he reduced lanes in his town. He slowed down the speed limit and people just couldn't imagine why would you make it harder for us to drive faster? They couldn't fathom it because we've all grown up in a car culture So this does require a paradigm shift, and I am 100% ready to support it and deal with the challenges as they come along. I believe the obstacles can be overcome.
Council Member Lange?
Sure. Thank you.
So I heard a couple of things tonight that moved me in the direction of moving forward with this project. Up to this point, I have had a lot of concerns about the cost of this and I was prepared to consider making a vote to just stop it and move forward But what I heard from Mr. Erickson, thank you for First of all, thank you for all your work. I know that you're doing a lot in the whole county to improve roads and bike bikeways and And so I appreciate that but one thing I heard that That moved me in the direction of moving forward with this is that?
that That because phase two has Because it doesn't have a deadline because we could we could you know move forward We don't have a timing issue with that that there would be time for us to work with the VCTC to secure funding, to look at other grants. That even though it's really nerve-wracking to move forward with a project that we don't know how much it's going to cost and that does not feel responsible That that there is Not a complete assurance. That's also feels very nerve-wracking but that there is a great possibility that there could that we would have funding for this phase two of the project and especially if we do if redesigning it is an option that's on the table for us I And also, you know what what? Bill Weirich said Also was I think meaningful for me That that this has been a project that's been going on.
I think the other concern that I would have about saying no to the project is If we do have another project that we want to do in the future then is our reputation tarnished with the other granting organizations that we would be asking for funds. Does this put a black mark on our name for future possibilities? And so I'm leaning toward I'm leaning toward, first of all, I would love to hear more from either Eric or you about the timing with phase two and about the potential for funding.
And with that said, I'm leaning toward moving forward with it. Okay.
Council Member Ruhl?
Yes. So I campaigned on a walkable, bikable, livable Ojai and I have to stick with that. I understand that we are completely uncertain where funds are going to go but I do find some light in that situation, some reassurance and I believe I honestly believe that with the advent of e-bikes there will be funding available. And we aren't, as is mentioned, we aren't on a time frame and my real fear after having lived in San Francisco and seeing how when you stop projects you never get them started again And to me a bikeable Ojai, having a safe bike path from El Roblar to the Y and the Y into Ojai.
That's just a natural and so yes I'm concerned about where we're going to find the money We have ways to raise money, we have granting opportunities. We're gonna have to be very aggressive with that. We're gonna be looking to our friends to help us not just you guys but some other friends too and finally to your point in speaking with the city manager yes we would have a black mark So we would be a town that got money, didn't use it, returned some of it and might be sued to get the rest.
I do not minimize the task ahead of us in getting the money for phase two but It's a difficult choice but I'm unwavering in support of the ATP and so that's where I am.
Councilmember Whitman?
3:08 – 3:179 turns
I My understanding From the email we got Explaining the memo. We got from the I'm sorry, I don't know your
Ventura County Transportation Commission
Transportation Commission is that we actually have the We're in a position where we can kind of delay a decision on phase two We don't have to decide now. We can see what we're gonna do on that, but my first concern is that We just we've just gone through a big change at Nordoff. We have 200 more students going there and they're a younger age group and so I think we have a lot more Parents driving their kids to school, dropping people off.
I haven't seen that yet in my daily travels to see the drop-off hour. But I think we need to take a look at that with the idea for how we're addressing safety if the plan we have in place now addresses safety. But I do like the idea that we would, in phase one, get bicyclists off the street and onto a separate path And the last go around when we looked at this back in early winter I was in favor of finishing phase one and not proceeding with phase two, and at that time I was told I couldn't vote that way.
So... With the understanding that we appear to have the funding to complete phase one I would be inclined to support finishing phase one. and revisiting phase two when the time comes. I have, I would say that I've received a lot of comment from the public that they do not like the idea of a full-on bike lane from the Y all the way down into this city center And I think that we have a bike lane that accomplishes that stretch, in other words the path. It's county property but I think we could do a better job of direct and we should do more of directing bicyclists onto that path when it's possible so that's where I am.
Can I comment first? Well, I just want to thank my council members because clearly we are in agreement that we are in a tough spot. This is a very challenging decision and it is a catch-22 and I agree with Council Member Rule's statement that it's It's tough. Nobody likes to move forward when we don't know where the money is coming from. I appreciate Martin and Peter, you coming here and encouraging us and saying there is money out there that we could investigate and potentially find.
My concern is always safety first. And, you know, it's really important to separate bikes and cars. And I think if you talk to any parents—and my kids grew up here—parents want separation. And I think, to Andrea's comment, we need a commitment to active transportation as we move forward on the planet in terms of sustainability. And I'm confident that parents in our town would agree, most of them at least, that they want a safe bike path.
We have more kids around there and younger kids too. And it's also better for cyclists and motorists, motorists also to make them safer because it reduces the chances of collision. Thank you Bill out there for the orphan freeway. I've never heard that phrase before and I think it's good to keep that in mind that it was built to go nowhere really. And I have also talked to fire and police who have assured me that it's safe to reduce the lane. So, it is nerve wracking to go ahead in this, there is possibility for funding so in terms of phase one, I think we should move ahead and then as Council Member Whitman said see what happens when we get to phase two because I've heard some of the same complaints about That issue I would like to once again and I am being repetitive here just come back to that crosswalk And I'm just gonna keep saying that because it is super dangerous, and I think it's a really huge concern Like that is my number one concern right now in terms of this whole thing Because it is an accident waiting to happen so if you could in any way address that I know we need to talk to Caltrans but that is Something we really need to look at So did you want to comment?
Yeah, I want to make a couple comments about the phase two the stretch from the Y intersection To well, I would hope that it goes through the city limit to Boardman Road because And to the fire stick pottery actually that's where the border is My comment is this That if we reduce the speed limit to 25 miles per hour and Lenny Klaif, and I are actually haunting someone at Caltrans Because we've got contradictory signs on the two sides of the street one side it took us about two years but finally they posted a A 25 mile per hour sign just as you approach town, but we still have to do the other side. But if Ojai Avenue was consistently 25 miles per hour and if Caltrans would agree to that because it is a state highway.
If we could do that for the city limit at least in the downtown core where with the downtown core is a pedestrian I'm going to be A horse, a bicycle, a car, little kid you know to remind people and we're going to have for 20 years I've been you know all our advertising if we want to have a really safe town should say Ojai you know welcome to Ojai slow down. You know that should just be a mantra on every hotel brochure that when you come here Don't use, don't try to speed up North Signal Street to get to the bike, you know, the trail. That's unacceptable but tourists are doing it. I've witnessed that so and then the other thing I'm thinking as far as the funding goes, the hotels, it's the hotel, the tourists on bikes that are the most clueless And they don't seem to have very much bike, you know the rules of the road training.
But surely if it comes down to it we can get some funding from the hotels through the TOT because the Oaks all these places are putting masses of tourists out on bikes so somehow the funding is going to be there one way or the other okay? And I'm sure we'll talk another two days on this, but that's it. Are we
ready for a motion? I just have one other comment. Maybe it's a question. So we went from the demonstration and now the demonstration is gone.
No.
Yeah. Well on the Maricopa Highway part we had those Set the yeah zebra zebra dellos those are gone I know so what what
what? I don't know
3:17 – 3:2325 turns
Is is what you know, what is planned to be there like when we do this? What what is what specifically is it going to look like and I think I have a general idea But I'm not sure if what's there now is what's gonna be our You know permanent condition. I know I've had comments from people concerned about That in the event of a fire, we want to be able to have two lanes.
Sousa talked about the idea that her understanding is that we have the ability to go Whatever we've gotten from the engineers so far about what is our end result, we get something onto our website so people can look at it?
It's there.
We
have huge beautiful photographs. I keep forgetting you guys are new but we had slideshows and everything that the previous council saw during meetings most everything is on the
website. Council Member Lange?
I actually have a question. So one of the concerns that people are voicing is pick up, drop off with high school and now junior high. If we can go to four lanes during emergencies, is there a way that we can go to four lanes during pickup and drop off?
No?
Okay.
We don't want to encourage that. All those able-bodied children, if they're serious about the world they're inheriting should be on bicycles. We absolutely need to stick to that point. We need bicycle education in the school system. That's what's missing. That's the missing link. And PE credit! There is no reason why these kids They should get PE credit. That's so logical. Don't make them run during the heat of the day, let them ride their bike in the nice cool early morning. Head of speech.
That is a point to take to the school board who regulates that not
us.
I am sure they would be happy to hear it. Second as I understand the situation and I will ask Mark to confirm in VCTC Something like that, revising the design for phase one is not possible as a timing matter. We're out of options to revise the design. The existing design preserves the emergency situation but that's for emergencies. Any other design revision to phase one is not possible anymore without jeopardizing that funding.
When you get into an evacuation scenario, if you know which direction you want people to go, you literally take both sides of the road. And even if you didn't have four lanes, you'd still have two. Both above and below Maricopa, it has to squeeze into two lanes. So it's not like the extra capacity does us any long-term good. It's just a very short stretch that has that extra holding But they'll they'll use whatever right away they can use when it comes to evacuation
So
one
other question Is that I understood that the plan was to get parking off of Maricopa Highway entirely and but we were gonna do that with that parking lot the parking lots It's got problems. So do we have an alternative plan?
Not that I'm aware of. The only problem what we have is just the funding for the lot, you know there's a difference between the funding for the lot and the funding for the bridge
Right,
and I don't I think we've talked about it being a $300,000 problem. It's not it's only part of that But That's the only thing that I know of about the parking. I don' know beyond that
but the final design That were you know that we're approving going forward with is gonna remove parking from That's
my understanding. So the phase one design removes the parking off Maricopa Highway The partial replacement of that parking through the Meadows site is a partial and be Subject to funding decisions, okay separate from the ATP funding
Councilmember rule
Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge that there are problems that need to be solved but we're in the business of solving problems. I think that is what we're here for. I don't see this as insurmountable problems. I just wanted to echo Mayor Sticks's concern about safety and about biking safety And if you don't feel safe, you don't bike. If you don't feel your kids are safe, you don't have your kids bike as their main mode of transportation which gets to Mayor Pro Tem Francina's point is that we're looking for a way to encourage the next generation not to get in their cars and I understand pick up and drop off Okay I won't be flippant here. I just say that is also solvable on an individual's level, you know give it a minute or two.
So I just wanted to say that I acknowledge all of the problems but foremost for me is walkable, bike-able, sustainable Ojai and safety making it safe for people to do so And that remains steadfast and true through all of this. Would you like to make a
motion, Mayor Pro Tem?
I think somebody else should make it so people stop blaming me.
3:23 – 3:2821 turns
I'm happy to make a motion. I think you should make it, Sousa.
Oh okay. But
unless you don't want to, I'd be happy to make it.
Okay, I wanna make one comment. My understanding with this project is that I want to start by saying thank you to all of the members of the Council. to create a plan that's suitable for all levels of cyclists. So, you know, all of this was considered when we finally, in the decisions that we made but okay I'll make a motion that we receive the report and provide staff guidance on next steps. Okay where is the language? It would
be a motion to proceed with phase one and phase two
Yes, I'll make a motion to proceed with phase one of phase two. That's nice and simple. There's no... that's it. Complexity
is inherent in it.
Okay. I'll
second it and agree to take all heat. So I'll second it and agree to take all heat. Okay?
I want to make a counter-motion that we approve phase one And that we Say nothing about phase two and address that When we get there and see where we are with funding and everything else. I don't think we should Commit ourselves to the funding for phase two until we know That's gonna be Substitute motion simply to approve
phase one
One only
Just one second. Did you want to say something?
And I'm looking to our friends again, um, I believe that we're contractually obligated To both phases If we proceed with phase one, I believe that's how the contract reads
I also share that understanding although we haven't approached Caltrans about getting out of that contract But that's my understanding as well
And I think what we're proceeding on is the assumption that we're going to be able to work on revising scope and that there's a good opportunity to do that, and that we're gonna be able to work on funding. And there's not a time limit on that. But I but I don't think we can say we aren't That were somehow eliminating the obligation to phase two because I think that's in the grant in the agreement
So I stand by my original motion and also with the understanding that every street in Ojai needs to be safe for all users of the road. That is the goal because a cyclist should not have to take a detour to get to the bike trail if they have business to do on, say you know I mean there's exceptions to that but to me phase two means making Ojai Avenue
safe for cyclists. I'm gonna withdraw since I've been told that it's not Contractually possible to approve one without the other great. Let's so I'll withdraw
Okay,
do we have a second?
Roll-call vote Passed 5–0 Moved by Suza Francina · Seconded by Leslie Rule motion by mayor pro tem Francina with a second by councilmember rule To approve phase 1 and phase 2 yes Roll call
Show transcript
Passes 5-0, thank you very much and thank you BCTC for being here much appreciated Could we take just a brief break and come right back? Okay, thank you
3:33 – 3:408 turns
Thank you.
If we could have council members come back to the dais and we'll get going Thank you very much Peter, thank you Martin nice to see you Wait for Andy All right, great.
We will move on to item number three, City Council-Initiated Revisions to Commission Ordinances. So we do have a brief staff report and there's been made a request council members that we hold off from asking questions and take public comment and then we will go through the list of questions that is in the staff report just okay?
Basically what I was gonna say that the item the Commission drafts the amendments that are in your packet Reflect the input that the council gave to the city attorney In
May
right and We wanted to bring them back So that you can see them in writing, understand the implications. In fact today I didn't even understand the implication that we were...that the council would be reappointing all of the commissions. That's the way it's written is that the council would then reappoint the commissions We don't know how the council wants to do it precisely. We wanted to hear confirmation, so we put it back on the agenda.
We need to do it because we need to appoint some people and I think your process is right. Let's take public comment and then there's a series of policy questions at the end of the agenda report and we recommend you start at the top and work your way down those questions.
All right, well let's move on to public comment then. First we have William Wyrick then Dee Reed and then Renee Roth. Oops it's the wrong number I'm sorry I have the wrong number okay first we have Brian Eakins then we have Larry Steingold then Jeffrey Starkweather.
That's why I get here at five o'clock so I could go first Hello everyone. Excuse me, my name is Brian Aikens I'm a nine-year Historic Preservation Commission member and now in my sixth year as chair. I'm nonresident living in Oakview for 42 plus years. I love my bluff view of Roger Haley's ranch and my wonderful neighbors. In answer to interim city manager's first question, should the role of commission chair be rotated by policy? I say good luck and then I share my recommendation. No.
As the longest serving chair, I've been elected six times because they know I will work hard to attend more meetings and that I am passionate about the Ojai Valley and specifically the protection of the city of Ojai. Mandatory rotation will not give you that. A year ago as chair we had one male who happened to be a non-resident myself and four fabulous strong knowledgeable women to complete our commission of five. We lost one in October and another in December leaving us with two residents and one non-resident, me. At the December 13th 2022 council meeting where the annual HPC awards were passed out a new council was installed I took time to ask City Attorney Summers about our HPC being able to continue to meet and interact when we only had three commissioners Cindy Gina and myself two residents and one non-resident Matt informed me we had three commissioners.
Three is a quorum, of course we can meet What do I want as a commissioner and especially as an idled Commission chair? I want to be able to meet this coming October 14th I talked with Mayor Sticks today about the time frame meet today second meeting October 12th I would hope we would be able to meet October 14 So I'm asking the council to recognize that we have a Historic Preservation Commission of four individuals, two residents, Gina McHatton and Rick Basaccia. And two non-residents, Craig Walker and myself that are anxious to meet and conduct necessary business such as proposed downtown historic district updates with a new focused map.
We hear you. The Ojai City codes structures of merit stand as a code requirement on their own They are not a backdoor to take control of your property. When I asked Mara about preparing for the October HPC meeting, October 14th again looking at how much staff is available she replied, I don't expect to put together an agenda for the HPC meeting until we have a quorum At that time, we'll go over a draft as usual. I expect we'll be going over the same draft as before unless something new comes up. We had spent two weeks getting ready for that draft only to have that meeting canceled.
I need the council to ask staff to prepare for the October 14th meeting. Other items we need to get the package ready to submit to council for the HPC awards. The nominees have been selected, write-ups prepared. We just need to finalize those write-ups and get them on your clocks a lot faster than mine. I had three minutes and .7 seconds. And get them to council for the review and approval so they can be awarded in the December meeting as customary. As mentioned before, we host one of the more popular locations during Ojai Day. You too can find out why they call it The Slammer.
I'm concerned about the recruitment effort. Mark said in the September 12th meeting, the advertisements have already been placed. I have not seen any in the three weeks I've been monitoring. Oh no, I haven't seen any advertisements for any openings.
3:40 – 3:4914 turns
They are posted on the website and were advertised in the Ojai Valley News, but not Mark Scott is correct. Not it's not the HPC
It's also posted on the front door of City Hall, but again, not for the HPC well Okay
I'm see I do have three residents I have reached out to two former HPC members one application on file with Western from earlier this year. I Asked her to please contact you to update that I ask you to please not leave today without enabling the HPC with the opportunity to meet in October. I will finish with a quote from our interim city manager, Mark Scott.
If we didn't trust these people they wouldn't be on the commission in the first place. Thank you for your time and for moving this up in priorities. We need to get our commissions back. Thank you
very much. Thank You Brian. Next we have Larry Steingold then Jeffrey Starkweather
Back where I come from, city commissioners are picked by council people. They're picked by mayors. It's fine. It works but they don't micromanage the commissioners otherwise they can be the commissioner if you trust people to put them on the City Council that you choose or you back or support That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. They're supposed to take your view of the world, your agenda. That's part of the deal. They're on the committee. They're picked by you. They've got to be agreed to. You've got to be simpatico, right? You can't have people running off all over the place.
But you can't micromanage them. You're not going to go look at some guy who says, well I want to have my house lit but it's too bad. Well, my neighbor doesn't like it. Well, do you have to run to the City Council to ask them about every variance? Every permit you want a thing? You can't do that. You have to trust your commissioners or don't pick them. This is all about trust. We trust you.
Not everything you do but we trust you You have to trust the commissioners you put. So pick them, be objective. You've got a lot of smart people in this community. You may not like them, they may not like you but they're good for the community so pick them, use them. Thank you.
Thank you Larry. Next we have Jeffrey Starkweather.
Thank you, Jeffrey Starkweather. I've written to you all several times about this and I've spoken on it so you pretty much know my views. I think this is a dangerous move to make politicize our commissions. I've heard the term there's about the soul of Ojai I don't believe there is a soul of the city, but if there is one it's our planning. It's our commissions.
They have historically been hardworking non-political non-partisan they staggered terms nobody as I recall at least when I replied said to me well you need to follow the views of what I ran on In fact, I got the opposite which was I'm supposed to be there to be objective and to take in all views. And secondly if we go there We're gonna have to change our handbook because our handbook says Page four Consider the overall public good, not the exclusive point of view of a sole group or interest.
So if commissioners are picking people that supposedly support their point of view of the group that helped them get elected Or as Mr. Whitman said he wanted to be able influence his commissioner which by the way would be illegal with a planning commissioner and I just think that's the wrong direction to go. These commissions have been working well in the past, and also by the way, Mark is right, the way it is written now literally when it's passed every position will be open for change. We don't have an even balance in elections In the next election when Rachel's up and when Andy's up, there'll be four city councilmen elected at one time which means four-fifths of our commissions would have to start over again. No historical memory You know we're so lucky I was so lucky to have Mr.
Quellesee on the Planning Commission because he'd been on there for like eight years He knew a lot of institutional memory And most of the rest of us were pretty new on the commission when we got in there. So I think that this direction is a mistake and I would ask you not to do it, thank you.
Thank You Jeffrey
any comments online West yes mayor we have one raised hand Steve Quillacy Mr.. Quillacy you have the floor Steve Quillacy are you there? One more time.
Unmuted, thank you. I apologize for that. You can hear me now?
Yes please proceed.
Perfect. I appreciate the kind words from Mr. Starkweather as he says i have been through particularly title 10 of the municipal code quite a bit over the last four years and while i don't approve of the idea of individual council members, putting new commissioners on every commission. Every time there's an election because I think that would be chaos. Um, I do want to say that the current draft ordinance that is in the packet still needs work and I'll give you two examples.
This is an attachment C which is the red line if you will version of the draft ordinance. Paragraph 10-1.101 lines four through seven says at least two members, this is the planning commission I'm not talking about any others just the planning commission. Two members shall be chosen from persons having distinctly separate training and experience in various fields that is not the current case What if there are not sufficient volunteers or nominees coming from those fields or having that separate training and experience?
Nothing in the ordinance tells us what to do. When Kathy Nolan, our longtime resident landscape architect retired, there was no landscape architect available to be appointed to the planning commission So that paragraph needs some work. 10-1.102 appears to say that there are very narrow grounds now for removing a commissioner and I would like to understand if this draft of the ordinance were passed, would the removal of a commissioner for no stated reason still be possible?
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Steve.
No more on Zoo Mayor but Phil Miley in person?
3:49 – 3:543 turns
Good evening. I'm Bill Miley and I'm a resident There are some key factors I believe that should be considered in your decision. Item number one would be what about continuity? If all of the commissioners get removed and appointed at the same time, where's the continuity from one year to the next? Two, what about historical chronology? Remembering the past so you can bring that to the present and the future. How will that occur if they all get appointed at one time and removed at one time?
Three, there are generic features that I'm sure council members use to pick a commissioner Does the person have overall perspective in the city? Are they looking to the welfare of the city? Where is their residence? Do they have experience? Do they value government? And do they have a city commitment? Once you do those generic features, you screen people based on your own values as a councilperson.
Council members, commissioners appointed by council need to defend and support the city's general plan. And specifically the elements that make up the plan like the housing element. They need to be either knowledgeable about that or they determined to learn about it and if they don't have that motivation you shouldn't appoint them but that's an element in And then the last one would be in the screening process that applicants go through.
So, in the selection by a council member to recommend appointing a particular person to a commission, there's a screening process that council goes through based on what you think, what you would like And it will help sort the candidates out so you don't necessarily have to appoint them every four years or every time somebody gets elected and then do away with them when they get unelected. So I think the criteria, continuity, chronology, the generic features of being a commissioner, do they meet those?
Will they defend and support the general plan? And then they have to go through Thank
you Bill. Mayor, we have one more raised hand on Zoom. Renee, you have the floor?
Thank you. I'm going to keep this brief. I definitely agree with the previous speakers. I think this is just going to throw all of our city commissions into total chaos. I tried to understand and read the report, and I'm pretty good at trying to filter through this stuff, and it was really confusing. And Mr. Interim City Manager Mr. Scott, I would really like to hear what you have to say about this chaos. This seems to me like a lot of chaos and much ado about nothing.
I think our city commissions worked fine in the past and when there was a vacancy that vacancy was filled by somebody that was appointed By the I don't know it was at the mayor and one other council person, but it didn't have anything to do with your politics or your loyalty or your point of view. It had to do with are you experienced? Are you interesting interested? Do you have something to contribute?
Government work well and for the benefit of the community, not from my personal agenda. I am really opposed to this kind of politicization of our commissions and our volunteers. I think this is just such a waste of time. And I'm really sad to see so much time have to be spent on this. And i hope you just completely dismiss it and go with one solution that's very simple when there's We will move on to discussion. Do you just want to go down the list of questions?
3:54 – 4:0434 turns
I would suggest we go down the list of questions. I will say that, you know, I've worked in 12 cities and we've had commissions in all 12 of my cities and I've seen every different way that you can appoint commissioners. And I've seen both of the models that people talk about possibly here The one thing that makes commissions work is when the council and the Commission work together, and they have periodic discussions, and they approve work plans, and they evaluate how we've worked together.
And then it doesn't matter so much how you appoint them. And because I've seen everything possible and they've all worked, but you got to work at it. And I think a lot of times what happens is appointments get made everybody's busy there's a million things to do and there's not a lot of attention paid to what's going on so with that I want you to do what the council wants to do and I don't have any particular strong opinions one way or the other because I've seen it all work So I thought we could just go down down the list. I do think that there's maybe a Am I allowed to say there's an elephant in the room anymore did we change that it's
all good
And that's the point that I brought up, really the way this is written it would require all of the appointments to be remade. I certainly don't recommend that not because I think it would change every commissioner. I think you'd end up reappointing people to the commission that are already there because most of them are doing just a great job and so I don't think it would lead to wholesale changes in the people But I don't know that that's a drama that you need so I certainly Don't suggest that you start from scratch, but that's not one of the questions So if you need to deal with that issue You might want to do that. But otherwise, I'll walk you down the list We just start
Is it okay if I just because when we first talked about this, since then I have tried to meet with every commissioner and I've done a lot of really digging into some of the concerns that people have. And I want to speak too to the idea of the politicization which I've heard I don't think it's about politics. I actually think it's about relationships, and so the point that you're talking about of...
The point that you brought up about how it works well when commissioners work really well with council members, what we have seen in the last several months there has been a real spotlight on this issue because there are commissioners who were appointed by previous councils and there are fundamental issues within those commissions and with some of those commissioners, including the lack of a quorum. Including the fact that we need more people to sign up.
And so I think that I am not for starting all over from scratch and throwing everyone into chaos But I think that there is value in working, in aligning commission terms with council member terms for those relationships. So that if there is an issue with a council member You have a relationship with that person. You appoint that person, and there's a sense that you could have a conversation with them that wouldn't be awkward because you're coming in without a background.
Yeah? What did I say?
Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner. Yes, yes, yes. So the personal relationships is where, and so I do think that there, but I'm also factoring in that we have incredible volunteers with incredible expertise. And I don't think we want to presuppose that aligning Aligning the appointments this way would Would Cancel everybody out and start all over from scratch. I don't think I mean, I know personally I would not do that That that did that that I care too much about the city and about the Commission's and about the functionality But I think that looking forward, go ahead. Okay. I was just trying to clarify that some of the things that I voted on and agreed to in the first draft of the amendment I have since reflected on and changed. So that's what I was trying to clarify.
Can I make a suggestion though that we go through these questions and then we can make comments? I'm
gonna have to, I'm gonna have to make point of order here. I think that there are large broad strokes that we need to discuss that our elephants in the room and you know going through question by question by question is not going to get to those broad strokes for instance this grandfathering we can talk about how that got there Because someone wanted because councilmember Whitman Wanted Jeffrey Starkweather off and the way to do it was to change so that we talked about you know, okay well if Councilman Whitman can say that he would like Jeffrey often all of us can say we would like them off We need to be clear about what this is about this and what the real elephant in the room is.
And your questions are very important if you're actually trying to get to an ordinance, but we've never talked about what really happened amongst all of this here.
I hope that it's not going to devolve into a recounting of the recent past. Well, it is you'll get nowhere if you do that well, you know and That's why I think if you work through the questions There's no need for anybody to have to deal with personal issues on this. This is governance we're talking about, it's not politics and it is. It's governance that I'm trying to get you to focus on.
I understand.
And I hope you'll give it a try.
Let's go. Let's start with the
questions
No, the City Council has to set the policy Sorry to jump in there But we need direction from the elected city council We have no dog in the fight of the staff level hold on hold on let me finish my point Staff has no dog in this fight, to be very clear. We will write up exactly what the council directs. What we have now is what the council directed four months ago, almost five months ago. The world has changed, we realize that.
So what we need is direction from the council, the elected city council on what the council would like. That's what we need so and the council could give us that direction tonight another meeting You could ask direct staff to talk to the Commission's first and see what they would want right? And then come back to the council, but counsel can't give this decision to the commissions It will have to be council's decision But you don't have to make it tonight, but we do need direction eventually from the council on these questions. I
So, can we thank
you answer the questions
let's go try it yes Let's do it. We try it and see how far we get we can do it
You guys are much more optimistic than I am
I
we can do it. Oh,
I know I'm more optimistic than your but definitely But I
would like to say I appreciate that about you in most instances not sure now oh
Well I have my moments too as obviously I've shown.
Okay,
let's see where it goes maybe the mayor will give us a little bit of leeway to be a little informal on some of
this. Do you want to just go in a row?
So which Commission should be increased to seven members if any that's a fairly simple question Okay, and I think we got Commission input on this when James was still here And I think when the council gave the direction to the city attorney It was based on the input from two of the commissions that they preferred to be seven member commissions instead of five Is that correct?
Yes, and I
would
agree with that leave it up to the commissions. It's
not exactly correct park and rec couldn't meet And so they were undecided and they were going to come back With a decision on whether they wanted to stay five or seven depending on whether or not They would have a youth council member who would actually count in As a member and be a voting member which they would support or not so that was park and rec was it was a question mark around five or seven so other than that you are correct
and they still can't meet.
Exactly they still can't meet but they still yeah
I mean you can always change it later right.
4:04 – 4:1959 turns
Okay, excuse me we're in discussion right now so can we keep going?
Please. So unless I hear otherwise I'm assuming that that part of what's been written up continues to be two at five and two at seven and if there's a change later you can always make that.
Yeah, you want to jump
in You know sometimes the process people use is to ask a question and if no one objects then the assumption is positive
How
are we gonna
fill the commissions
then if you don't tell us how to do it Microphone please I was in favor of the former, I didn't see the need for change. So this, I was not one of the council members that voted for the process that we're going through now but I'll try my best to honor it. But I heard you say that are we certain which commissions want to be set? Are we... You know, I would want, I mean, I would wanna know from the commissions themselves what they want to do
I think that the report that the Council got in May said that the staff had asked. Apparently, the Rec and Park Commission couldn't meet but the other three had been asked according to that staff report whether that...I wasn't here. I don't know if that's accurate but that's what it said. And really it's up to the council to decide whether you want to continue to leave that in the ordinance as five for Planning Commission and Reckon Parks and seven for the other two if that's your direction Then when this ordinance comes back, that'll still be in it. If you want to change it will change it
And I'm gonna ask council just let's be as succinct and concise as we can to answer these questions. So keep going
yeah the second one was For each Commission how many seats may be occupied by non city residents?
Well, I think I like the 4-1 and 5-2
I'm not sure I'm in here. So, I don't think it's feasible. We already have commissions that don't have enough volunteers, that don't have a quorum and we've seen some real challenges with that. So, I mean I would be open to that for Planning where we're talking about land use but I don't think it's practical and also I think you know Mayor Pro Tem Francina mentioned at the last meeting when we were talking about this That we are about that. We are a valley that it could be exclusion exclusionary But I think it's just a matter of practicality We can't get people to sign up to volunteer.
So what are you suggesting?
So I'm suggesting that we keep it at the two for, that we keep it what it was so two for five and three for seven but that we eliminate the quorum requirements so that they can meet That's what I would propose. I
support that,
I support that. I guess I have one question if I could just follow up So they can meet but can they make decisions? Can they actually vote? I mean I would support yes because if you're a commissioner You should not be excluded from voting Yeah, I mean it seems to me that that's a little bit of a double standard so I would support them also being a voting member
I would support that too. It's important for them to be able to meet, I mean...
And vote and vote. Yeah. They have to get the work done. We're a perfect example of...
So I have some concerns there. One is that... If we're going to expand the number of non-residents there should at least be and I understand your concern that there aren't enough residents who want to serve. Well, we should address that as a general proposition how do we attract commissioners because Apparently we've had it Advertisements out and we're I don't know. I mean, I I think I've been waiting to make an appointment and But If there's a resident who's qualified who's willing to serve Should a City council member be able to pass over the resident is qualified and willing to serve in order to bring a non-resident in What we all just the last round of planning commission appointments.
We had a resident who spent her entire career as a planner and was a city resident and she heard term expired but she was willing to serve again. And then although our ordinance says that there is a preference for residents She was passed over in favor of somebody not a resident to put in that spot. And I don't understand how that happened, especially with the fact that she was a planner and her removal meant that we had nobody with the qualifications as Mr. Quillacy said and that has not been the case.
The origin of the idea of going outside of the city was that Some of the commissions needed special qualifications. And the planning being the most, you know, noticeable. And so we wanted to have architects serve and it just didn't happen that we had very many architects who lived in the city of Ojai. So we went outside, you know, the city and my recollection is that was created So I'm going to go ahead and ask for a motion to approve the I think that with planning in particular, it's important to have residents because they're experiencing the traffic that we experience. They're experiencing the taxes that we pay and the non-residents aren't really experiencing it in the same way so that's My suggestion would be that for planning we go 5-1 and if they want to go to 7, we go 7-2.
Traditionally, we were 7- 2 on planning and then we got reduced down. The other thing that I would point out is that district elections only started like
So that
introduced a whole new component
to things that we didn't have before and our
you know prior prior Prior council decided that it would be appropriate to make selections by each elected district. The person, the district council member can appoint from the entire community. I'm not saying that but they have to be appointed from the I'm saying that each district representative should Have their own selection of a commissioner
I'm not understand. I'm not following as it seems like you just said two different things It seems like you said that you weren't talking about. Are you, are you saying?
I'm not saying that the commissioner... I'm sorry,
I really don't understand what
you're saying. I'm not, I'm not saying that the commissioner needs to be from the same district as the person making the appointment.
Yes, that's what I heard you say.
That's not, well that's, that' not what I meant to say.
Okay.
Uh, what I meant to say is that, that the prior city council Presumably in 2020 or whenever we went to districts. I don't know, maybe Matt can speak to when that was here, I guess when we amended
but never heard of such a thing.
No, hold on. It was in 2020 or 2021 as I recall. We can look at the exact date. The commission ordinance was amended to provide for the individual appointments by the individual council members. That's what Council Member Whitman is referring to. Right. So the requirement that we have right now that the five council members each appoint not rather each nominate for council ratification one commissioner on the Planning Commission That's what I think he's referring to. And the requirement, so it's each council member gets one nomination ratified by the full council but the persons that are nominated do not need to live in the districts for the four districted council members. That's the present rule.
Council can change whatever wants for
them. Can I ask a council member? Wait, I had my hand up. No, well, I had my hand up. I had two hands up. And
I'll check the data, but
yeah. Yeah. So that makes sense,
right? Well, it doesn't make any difference if you have a district or not. I mean, it's one council member appointing you could be from, you know, I mean, the districting is irrelevant to the fact that each council person gets one person. I could be in District two. I could be in District three. I could be in District four. I still get my one person. So the districting is irrelevant to this entire conversation really because it doesn't It does I mean yes, I'm attached to district one But I'm still going to be a council person whether I'm attached to district one or not. I'm still gonna get my one person And it's still gonna be in the order that it's gonna be in You know so
but it's relevant because before we had districts you didn't get to make that selection and
Of course I did.
No you did not.
Of course I didn't. The mayor
made the selections. All of them. Council Member Whitman
is correct. The
old rule.
Oh, the old rule? OK.
Correct. Right. It was only when we went to districts that we decided to give each council
member... But it was coincidental that it went to districts. That had nothing to do with this. Hold on.
Let me jump in with some straight facts. The ordinance that I described that made the change was in 2019 It was after districts had been drawn, but not before the first election. It was in that sort of interregnum period and that's when it was provided that the council members would make the individual appointments. The old rule before 2019 was the mayor generally in consultation with the commission chair would make the nominations and then the council had to ratify. The new rule became That each of the five council members can make the nomination ratification by the full Council and that was phased in over time. It was also phased in or paired with reducing the commission from 7 to 5 at the time it was adopted if I remember right there were 6 sitting commissioners so the 6th was allowed to stay in place until they resigned on their own And are there term expired whichever happened first and then the fifth and they're on within appointed?
Were then as each seat came up it was then filled by the individual council members and now we're on the rotation,
right So just one that was
so that was in 19 when
I just really one point. So at some point We had a rotating mayor And so that would have been in a rotating mayor, you would have had the rotating mayor. Each mayor would've had an opportunity. So it makes sense that you would then change it because there's no rotating mayor anymore. That also makes sense because if you just let the mayor do it then since we're not rotating nobody else would ever have an opportunity to make an appointment I mean, when you had a rotating mayor then everyone would get a chance because everyone rotated into the mayor's seat. Yeah, yeah, yeah Susan.
Anyway... I think we need to move it along a little bit so... If I could
make a brief suggestion? The past is the past. We're looking for direction for the future.
But we still need to clarify, I believe that it was strictly coincidental that this change took place when districting was also discussed. It was just a coincidence.
I believe that may have been the case for some members of council. Other members of council voted for mindful of district.
Yeah, but
that is part of the goal But I never inquire into why councilman votes the way they vote
and Councilmember Whitman I'm very familiar with what happened transpired and I agree with you. I was pretty shocked when the Commissioner you mentioned That had a background in planning, did not get reappointed. But the fact that she did not get re-appointed had nothing to do with her background it's just that that council member felt that she was more of a you know he had criticism and he was allowed to appoint someone else because that was the rule I didn't vote for lowering the, you know, I didn't vote for, I don't remember voting for any of that. Definitely did not vote to reduce a commission if they didn't want to be reduced from seven to five but I don't know if you can follow it. The mess started, I feel when the council had had a little bit more power before even when Johnny was the mayor as I recall We took turns, you know the liaison, the council liaison would if there was a vacancy in the Arts Commission.
The Council Liaison and the Mayor and he was very fair-minded. There were three people present in their interviews including the commission chair I just want
4:19 – 4:2527 turns
to say the past is the past we're here tonight to make some decisions. So well, yeah But I think we're gonna will never get out of here unless we go through this list of questions It's
also important to set rules for as rules not for people
Right
people change
so so let's go back
Okay, so I would go four one five two it sounds like the
OK I want to make a suggestion. You see to me you're locking yourself in. Because what if you cannot find a landscape architect in the city, okay? And there has to be some way to craft language where there's some flexibility. There has to be! At the very least, there should be one. But if you can have two, up to two, then that means that you can fill a vacancy with someone with the talent that you need.
You know that increases your chances. We have, you know we're a very small city our pool is very small and why would there has to be if you can't, does that make any sense? It
makes complete sense.
We need a majority direction, so what is I
think I heard that so Let me just recap what I understand. I've got two council members the mayor and Councilmember Whitman who would set the rule at for seven member Commission max to non-residents For a five member commission max one Non-resident and I have three members of council councilman rule councilman relaying mayor pretend Francine who would set the rule at For a five member commission, max two non-residents. For a seven member commission, max three non-residents. Eliminate the residency quorum rule so all commissions would be equal. Is that accurate?
So my one little caveat. I would be in favor of for the planning commission having it being four, five one, no four one rather or like four residents, one non-resident But I think I would also like to include flexible language, unless there is nobody who is volunteering or preference to something along those lines. For in case there is someone who's highly qualified who's outside of the city Who we who you know, the council not us but the future Council wants in that position Yeah,
I would have I would be good with that.
Yeah,
I'm That sounds
good. Thank you for that I actually I think caveating this to you know, except for in this case in case this happens and there'll be a council that might do this You know, I just think it's it's an ambiguous its gray area So I find it, I'm uncomfortable with it because then you have decisions over well. Well, I think we need to keep going and get through this. Oh, I mean, I think I just need to make an argument that for me there's, it's too ambiguous. There's too many if-thens, you know? You make a rule or you make a rule.
Except for you know, except for this committee that might have this that could be that and a future council may think this you know to me It's not Not clear.
I really thank counsel I'm gonna ask us to get through this list because it's now 1025 we also we have another item to get to and We just need to get the answers out there
Please please remember that someone like Kathy Nolan lives one house out of the city limit, and her neighborhood is no different from the neighbors that are in the city. You've got to consider the configuration of our town with the outdated borders where no houses existed for decades. Now there's houses. Why if an architect lives across the street from the city border. Why he couldn't serve, it's absurd. It's
absurd. Okay we have the majority council has spoken correct? So can we continue? Let me recap what I
understand and then we'll move forward just again. I want to make sure I get it right. What I understand is seven member commissions and PC will be separate not PC seven member commissions max three non-residents five member commissions max two non-residents planning commission Max one non-resident with an allowance for the council to approve up to two non-residents if council deems necessary Recognizing that's an ambiguous piece of language, but it's a council vote. Okay, are there three votes for
that? I'm fine with this
I'm with that. I think we should retain for all of those commissions That the preference is for a city resident That's my understanding that's in the language of each one of your existing ordinances
It's in there now, but it's to be honest not enforceable. All of this isn't possible only by the council preferences It's a preference but the council can choose to vote, override the preferences they've done in the past.
Okay
next question. The language if you put as the language that the preference is the city resident is... The preference is whoever is most qualified. That's the preference.
I agree. No the preference is whoever the... Well that could be the
council's
choice. You recognize qualifications are not objective?
4:25 – 4:3032 turns
Okay, let's keep going I just want to make sure that not included in what you understood That we there will be a preference for I mean It's just exclusionary to me and I just don't see the value in it that there will be a preference for residents Because I agree with with council with mayor pro tem Francina. The preference should be the need filled and the qualifications of the person Applying and I'll
just we got two on that one. I need any direction of the other three So I got two to drop the residency preference other three. I need we need direction
Well, I go back to what Mark said which is that he's never served for a city that did not select from their residents. And
I have to go with... Can we ask them how big were those cities? Yeah. I have to go to Brian Aiken's comment that the smallest city he ever served in was 115,000 people so... That's true.
I think we need to rely on our common sense. Okay, this is and keep in mind their city manager candidates watching us right
This these ordinance revisions assume City Council direction to tie Commissioner terms to the terms of the nominating council member. Is that correct? That's what, that's how it's written up right now
and I'll note what to do about the current commissioners is a separate question yeah that's coming that's the next question
Well, I voted no the first time. I'm voting no the second time.
I am
voting yes.
I vote
yes. We just need to get through the list. Can you hold your questions until the end?
But along with that, I would also propose that we discuss the way to do that and the way to move forward with that so it doesn't throw everyone into chaos.
It's not the next one? The sixth and seventh member of a seven-member commission would, as I said here, presumably serve full four-year term as they would not be associated with the term of an appointing council member unless you made it tied to the mayor which would mean they'd only have a two year term I don't recommend that.
I propose that we just continue the rotation If we're going through a rotation that when a vacancy opens up it you know The way, it's written right now. We go one two three four five or one two three four mayor
Six
and seven don't have an assignment. So what you would end up doing is, depending on when the vacancies arose, you might rob another council member of their term. The idea would be to define the seats. If that's the Council's direction, one-to-one match. Five council members, five commissioners. Which means if a vacancy occurs in the midterm for any of those five commissioners, that nominating council member fills the vacancy. So the question is for the six and seven commissioners, for those commissions.
The present proposal is for the mayor and the Mayor Pro Tem and the chair to make nominations. The council would then ratify majority. What do you want those terms to be? For those two? So you could rotate it but that would get complicated.
How long the term is.
Is it the assumption of a four-year term?
I think Commissioner appointment should be four years.
Four years, I think so too.
I have a problem with the Mayor and the Mayor Pro Tem having three appointments, and everybody else having one. I'm sorry but I do. That to me is problematic so I mean I would be...
The Mayor Pro Tem gets the same as anybody else.
Well
we would appoint
it... You would appoint six and seven. The Mayor, the Mayor Pro Tem and the head of
Which is to two positions is all that it's
well, it's six and seven rotate for two
Or possibly over some period of time
right?
It would be When when you're fighting over, you know, I get a plane or I'm going home. I mean, you know At the
time that there's a vacancy be the one to work with the mayor I
4:31 – 4:3735 turns
All of these are options. So your basic option set is any member of council can nominate, find three votes. Option two is the mayor nominates, find three votes. Option three is a mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and in consultation with the chair as desired, nominate, find three votes. Option four would be the chair nominates, finds three votes at the council that's dangerous because you have someone nominated who's not elected.
That's your basic options
So with the idea that you'll have time between now and when you bring it back, is it conceivable that you can figure out a way to just keep the rotation going? I don't think so.
Because if the vacancies can come up out of sequence, all the others are tied to a seat, right?
Okay, well if that can't happen then I think we should just... Well you can pick a name out of a hat. You can pick a council member out of the hat. Have the mayor and the pro tem in the chair. Just make those choices. That's what I
think. And I would say it should be more random than that. I would suggest that all five council members' names go into a hat and one is drawn out to me. That seems to be...I mean it's random but at least... We don't want to be
in the hat, we don't have to be.
You don't have to be in the hat for sure. God forbid! But to me, I think if we're fighting over who gets to appoint who and how many members. I think it's unfair then to say that the two remaining go to two people. If you can't figure out the rotation then you draw. That to me is...
Are you drawing both or just one?
This is embarrassing I know but it is what it
is
My suggestion would be that six and seven be selected by a majority City Council three city council members approving
To be clear that was always the case. Yes, all
of
these please everything needs three votes
I'd like to yeah just to make sure matter
who
makes the nominee we always
affirm But isn't that a simple way to resolve what
It's kind of simple but the mayor and the Mayor Pro Tem are honorary positions and Even if we go back to a rotating mayor at some point, it's an honor. And I think it makes sense to have six and seven be appointed by the mayor and Mayor Pro Tem. It's two of them working together with the commissioner. To me, it makes sense and then we don't have to worry about who is rotating to what. We have a hard enough time keeping track of who is rotating as a liaison each quarter.
So I think just it's the honorary position give them the honor
And just to remind you, we have great chairs who are very in tune with our community who have great ideas. So I think... Okay
so I'm the one who proposed that selection method in the first place so I'll go along with you guys on that.
Actually, Susan did. Okay, let's keep going.
Okay so the next question is one that Matt was talking about. Staff asks if it is council intent that existing commissioners are grandfathered through the terms of the council member whose district they are assigned to? In other words, some of you didn't appoint them. They were there and they got assigned to you. And the assumption here is that they will be grandfathered through the end of that term.
And I'll note your basic options are vacate all commissions upon the effective date of the ordinances and reappoint in full. The clean sweep, pros and cons are obvious. Option two is all terms run to the end of the natural expiration of the term which are varied based on when they were appointed and then the reappointments would follow per the new process. Option three, somewhere in the middle you could provide all terms expire some date certain and then reappoint from there.
You could choose end of the year, you could choose six months from adoption something like that something in the middle three basic choices. You can also split the rule and make a different rule for different commissions recognizing the different commissions do have different roles and different relative levels of perhaps not importance but relative levels of different roles
When will this nightmare be over?
I would just I think it's really productive to stay positive when we're working together So I would say no If their grandpa is this correct so yeah,
yeah not grandfathered
well if they're not grandfathered then what happens to them
So I'm going to propose that we. That they are grandfathered but beginning with the next election cycle. So, November or December I guess a point you know elections will be completed the next time in December of 2024 That they all get picked but then they run concurrently with person's term. So for instance Rachel and Leslie and I theoretically are in the middle of our terms so if we're if whatever whoever we choose is going to have just two years unless we get reelected and do another you know carry it on
what I was talking about the existing commissioners not the new ones that you
know I think what he's saying is that the existing ones are grandfathered But then in 2024 when we have an election, then those selections would be
made. So that means that those
people would have two years, a two-year term unless they were
reappointed
or
4:37 – 4:4226 turns
Okay, so we now and you really do have the question is you know how do we attract commissioners? I mean is that really a question that we're asking as we sit and go through here. Oh Two years and you may stay on or you may not stay on On how we feel This is ridiculous this is absolutely I would like to make a motion that we table this whole thing and
I second that.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I've gone as far as I can go with this.
Are we going to have public
comment? We already
did.
Right so a motion to table and a second...we did take public comment. A motion to table with the second does require a
vote. Roll call?
Roll-call vote 2–2 motion to table with the second does require a vote. Roll call? · 1 under review
Show transcript
Okay, well Council majority Voted to continue this so let's do this in the most positive efficient way possible So back to the question
why I said no, I think this is actually really important we have some dysfunctions in the commissions that have come up since we've been an office and We have to have protocols in place for to preserve the integrity of the commission so that our commissions can function, so they can meet again. We have three commissions that haven't been able to meet. I'm going
to ask Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Rule because we just had that vote to please participate in a positive way and let's finish this because this is what we're doing. This is the work that the council is doing.
But Rachel, the appointment process and the protocols for the actual commissioners, those are two different things. The dysfunction that you and I have discovered in at least one of the commissions is not due to the appointment process. It's just due to there was no staff maybe keeping an eye on the number of times that they met. Those are two different... In my mind, they're Issues We're talking about a
process to appoint now. Can I nuance this for you just a little bit? Yes, okay So here's where I see it. Okay some of the challenges that we have are our interpersonal conflicts yes and and it has to do with certain appointments were made with the previous council and This is where the districting comes in So, if I'm in District 2, I'm coming in under the previous council, Randy's appointments. So some of the challenges actually have to stem from the appointment process and... Okay. Yes. Okay.
Thank you. Okay. So it's important along with protocols to get to how do we function better? How do we serve our commissions better?
Good councils go through these discussions. I'm sorry that they're messy but good councils go through these discussions all the time did we get a position on the grandfather then that it would is is it a consensus that it would end at the next time we have an election that any of the grandfathered positions would then have to either be reappointed or they'd be replaced?
Yes that's that was my vote.
That's good.
Can I clarify? So you're saying what happened so not everyone gets appointed for a four year term or am I just dense?
No, that's correct. Of course keep in mind the mayor is always gonna be getting people appointed for two-year terms so that's not exactly you know out of line with what this ordinance provides I
mean it
may happen but if the person gets reelected then they end up with another term so
The net effect would mean that at the night the council certifies the results of the 2024 election, which is generally going to be the first meeting in December of 24. That would then be that night or the next night the council would make the decisions on the commission terms. All the current terms would expire upon the qualification of a successor. The sitting council would then have the mayor, whoever it may be and District 4 would make their appointments. The mayor for two years, District 4 for four years. The other three seats would then make their appointments for two-year terms through the end of their term.
OK let's next.
OK the next question I don't think is very hard.
We're not like by even if we don't say that doesn't mean we're approving it. We're just discussing this is not
for them
to bring us back. The ordinance will come back for a council vote as an ordinance. You're just telling us what to put in that ordinance.
4:42 – 4:5133 turns
Can we can we just say that out loud 10 terms and in May 2024? OK.
And so for those terms that expire early, the council member for that seat would make a short-term appointment from then to the election.
We'll take a look at that to see if there's some other date that makes more sense than the one we're proposing. The council is not approving an ordinance tonight, you're just telling us what to include in the draft that will get published and noticed before it comes back to the council. The next question isn't even a question now that I look at it. When a council member leaves office, the draft ordinance is written to allow those commissioners To remain in office until replaced by the new council member. That makes sense They may also apply to be reconsidered for reappointment by the new council members, so everyone's okay with that?
Yes
And then the next question Is it the City Council's intention that the new amendments change? Commissioner appointment status from at-will to for cause You all know how I feel about that, but it's your Commission and it's your decision how you want to do that
per your suggestion. I think it should be at will I agree
I've never seen a for-cause city commissioner except in LA, Long Beach. Those are the only ones that I've ever seen for cause.
And are they paying the commissioners there?
Probably. Can I add some question? So is it possible in the new draft of the ordinance to outline like protocol for removing a commissioner? So even if it is at will, step one have a conversation. Step two ask them to resign. Step three you know is it possible to outline in the ordinance that protocol?
Yeah we could draft something like that. One of the key questions that some cities take a look at is when you have one-to-one appointments Some cities allow the nominating council member to remove the commissioner that they appointed without the need for a council vote. Other cities require a council vote to remove a commissioner, other cities require that the nominating council member nominate for removal their commissioners prohibiting the rest of the council from removing a commissioner if they weren't the nominating council member.
Any of those are viable?
And I've worked in every one of those.
Okay, all right let's keep going we're on a roll now. Did we answer that question?
No, we wouldn't even answer my question. Thank you. So it's at will removals. It may be easiest if it's at will to simply have it be... Easiest is not necessarily what you would want to do but easiest would be any council member can nominate removal majority vote controls.
I would support majority vote controls I Want to I want to remove the council person so I bring it to the Council Commissioner Yeah, that we know. I mean, yeah, whatever That was a little Friday 40 and slip there Not really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah always positive So I want to remove someone and so I make, I nominate. I mean, I make the motion to remove them and then I need to get three votes or it's just me doing it?
That's the question. Do you
want three votes or just one? Okay, so I would want three votes. Yeah, that I would want three
votes. Three votes, yeah. That's 5-0 for, okay. So commissioner is required by majority vote. We'll write up a brief process for how that works
Okay, the rest of these questions are more related to commission operations and Council liaison roles and all of that By the way, I think The first question we've got great Commission chairs in this city. I don't see anything wrong with the Commission chairs It's very common that commission chairs are rotated not because you don't want to have these experts that we have here, just to keep everybody engaged. But I don't think that's where you want to go and I'm more than happy to skip that question.
Should the council liaison role be extended for six months rather than three? I will admit, I put this on myself. I think three is really short and you know more sometimes the commission skips a meeting your whole rotation might be two meetings and I thought that maybe six months made more sense. I just thought I'd throw it out there. I
agree with that. I think it makes much better sense. And I think the liaison report would, I think the report is. There's a
flip side to that. What if you don't like them? Let's think about this. See and I brought it up, I admit Because I'm the liaison to the Arts Commission. They've never met right and I spent a lot of time Investigating things so I wanted to either do it for another three months To benefit from everything I'd learned or I wanted to brief the next person I mean does this have to be written in stone?
Okay,
you can also eliminate the formal liaison process and just have any council member attend any commission meeting at will
I do think it's nice to have a liaison. I think reporting back to the council would be a nice thing.
What about doing it every four months?
We have four there's five
you'd go through three Rotations,
but it's a quarter. We're used to the I think we better leave that one alone with and but but there has to be some kind of understanding that That the maybe the previous liaison briefs the next
Overlap on the last month
Yeah, and also I would really like to see more of a commitment that we attend the meetings in person. You know sometimes we get a little loose because we're busy. Okay
next.
That's really a council policy, doesn't have to actually be in the ordinance. In fact I don't know that any of these have to be in the ordinance. Should staff liaisons each commission be tasked to ensure the Brown Act requirements are followed? That's an obvious yes, I think. And it's not something that we have religiously done, and I do think that it's important.
You know, it requires notices, it requires minutes, and we need to make sure that when we have subcommittees You know, there's two kinds of subcommittees. There's ad hoc subcommittees and there are standing subcommittees the latter of which is Brown Act and we need to make sure that we follow the Brown Act with our subcommittees and if there's somebody on staff who's knowledgeable who's tasked to oversee that then I think we'll have a better process
One point on that part of what we're looking for here is council backing when commissions that aren't used to necessarily following every single footnote in the Brown Act are Reminded of every footnote there will be pushback because the Brown Act as we all know and the council level is not designed for efficiency and We'll need council backing to enforce our All right.
To enforce it strictly across the entire organization is a bit of a change for the commissions that aren't used to being litigated, and we would need council backing for that.
I would support it.
4:51 – 4:5714 turns
Along with that, I know this isn't the next question but in many of the commissioners with whom I spoke some kind of training like formal training instead of just giving them a manual would be really helpful for that so maybe that staff liaison could facilitate that too.
Yeah, we need to have an onboarding process for commissioners because you join the Commission cold. Just like you join a council cold, right? Except when you're running for council, you have time to prepare for it. A lot of times you get appointed to a commission, boom! But we need to have an onboarding process, not just here's your manual. We need to do better than that. I
think we would need a checklist maybe provided by Matt's office for how we manage Brown Act issues in our commissions when we're the liaison.
Yeah, what I think we do is we can do trainings for all the commissions not just the planning commission and then also put together an onboarding process. I think part of our onboarding has been better when we have the standard oh three or four terms expire once we're good about onboarding then. I think we're not always good about onboarding when there's a midterm vacancy and somebody hops in at the last minute that doesn't always follow through so that's a good point
I covered kind of the next one the the reason I worry about subcommittees you've heard me say that several times since I've been here. I get worried about subcommittees whether they're council subcommittees or their commission subcommittees Because it's so easy, sometimes with our commissions and they do great programs. But they will appoint subcommittees that really run with the programs. The subcommittee can't legally go out and make contracts. They can't legally go out and take bids.
for spending, but sometimes it slips to that. Sometimes it actually happens and we need to make sure that when we have subcommittees working that they understand the rules under which they're working and we need the staff person who's responsible for this needs to be able to oversee it I just want to make that point because we get a little sloppy on that and it happens in lots of cities.
And we really need to do it right because if somebody calls us out for it, it becomes a big headline and nobody needs that so I'm just making the point here this is something we need to tighten up. And then obviously, how does the City Council wish to keep commission work plans in sync with the City Council expectations for its advisory bodies? You just need to meet with them regularly. Maybe once every quarter you meet with one of the big four commissions and go through a work plan and make sure that everybody's on the same page as to what's important to work on.
And find out about the programs they're doing. I've had council members ask me questions about what precisely the HPC is doing on XYZ program. Well, we have a report every meeting from the chair We should be knowledgeable about what's going on because we have that opportunity, but we need to make sure we do that. And I think the liaisons need to do more than attend the meetings they need to come back and tell the council what happened at the meeting so it's more work but it's what needs to be done.
And then finally, I already made the last point. Commissions don't have spending or purchasing authority and the budgets are approved for commission programs and controlled through the city manager's authority. Commissions don't have their own authority people. I've literally had not here although I've heard that it's happened. Commissioners come in and throw an invoice on my desk and say here you need to get this paid Because they don't know any different. They're running a program for the benefit of the community and they're doing good work They don't know that's not the way it's supposed to work But we need to make it clear to people what their authority is and what their authority isn't so That's my So
he got through the whole
list
Great, we did it. Okay any final comments? I
have a question and then I have a final comment so as it stands now correct me if I'm wrong but we have once a year a joint meeting every quarter With the commissions, and they're only like for 45 minutes or an hour. They're not enough time And all of this takes time I mean what I try to do is watch if I'm not the liaison there in person I try to watch the meetings when you know listening when I'm folding laundry or whatever brushing my dog but I mean that all sounds good, but we're going to have to find the time. Because you know, that's the other thing and then I received, you know, I'm the Arts Commission liaison still till the end of this month and I received a statement from Nigel. I would like to read some of it because it applies to all the commissions.
We have one more agenda item. It's 11 o'clock. Could we all receive that letter? And we all read it, so I would ask that we...
Oh you received it too? Yeah. So could
somebody make
a
motion?
4:57 – 5:0355 turns
I have a comment and I'm concerned about being able to get good people serving on our commissions, and I'm also concerned that we get younger people serving on our commissions. No offense to any older commissioner because I know they're doing a great job but we need to get more younger And so with that in mind, I think that we should at least take a look at the feasibility of providing daycare for child care for commissioners which could also potentially be childcare for people who attend.
But I don't want to take on a whole bunch of liability exposure or whatever by doing
that.
Well, he started business taking care of people's kids.
There may be legal issues with
that. There'd be robust waivers in place.
That's why we have a stipend. The stipend pays for things like that. I mean they don't have a stipend.
They don't have it? That would be the other choice. I think that potentially we've got parents with young kids who might otherwise be interested in serving on our commissions, but don't because they've got child care issues.
Yes this is also... That is
a liability issue. I
wouldn't
recommend you do it
here.
Let's not do that.
I would recommend that you could contract with someone to provide that or you could pay people stipends.
I'll babysit for free. Okay, can we make a motion that we direct staff to draft a new revised ordinance taking into consideration all of the answers responses to our questions? Is there a second? Second. Okay
roll call please Weston
Yeah, is the motion clearly understood?
Yes.
Okay. We're just voting for staff to... To bring back... To draft the ordinances for
everything said tonight. Not to adopt
them.
Okay.
Roll-call vote Passed 3–2 motion clearly understood? Yes. Okay. We're just voting for staff to... To bring back... To draft the ordinances for everything said tonight
Show transcript
Motion passes.
Okay, motion passes. All right it's a it okay and also Brian asked us to consider October 14th that right to meet so can we talk about that later with the city manager or not?
Well, he's got a meeting on the 14th and he wants to timing
won't work to solve that problem Okay, only solution to that would be for any the relevant member of council. I forget which seat I Forget the two vacancies how they've met on the council don't know Appointments can be made at the next meeting under the current process although it would be well only until the the next election with that seat last But that's a choice for the, I forget off the top of my head which commissioner, which council needs to make the appointment.
I think Weston knows that one.
The current term, the vacancy of the current term is 2020-2024 and it was appointed by mayor at large. So mayor at large would reappoint for the current term of the unscheduled vacancy.
Are we in a position to do that with respect to the advertising? We
haven't posted that one so we required 10 days, right? It is yes it's an unscheduled vacancy
So state law requires a 10-day notice before we make an appointment.
So... We could post that one and still get in by the 14th, couldn't we? Well it has to be Council meeting. The meeting's on the 10th.
The next Council
meeting is the
10th so if it's posted by the end of the week
the deadline can be met.
Okay, okay now we do have
wait I believe that a council member can ask the meeting be adjourned Right. There's a there's a There's rules that you can do that forget
A motion to adjourn takes a second and three votes.
Okay, I want to make a motion to adjourn. I absolutely have to get my dog from the dog sleigh.
Well, I'm gonna second that. This is not an
emergency item.
Yeah, you know... I'm willing to do... You know, I am not willing to entertain another... I'm willing to do the final, you know, council reports and city manager reports. I think that's kind
of frustrating because we did start the elephant item, I believe at 11 o'clock at night or something like that. So
this is going to be long and complicated. It's not going to be easy. We're going to be here until 1230, I promise you it's not going to
I disagree with that, but there's a motion in the second
motion to adjourn and a second not
going
to
be
fast roll call mayor pro tem Francina
Yes,
we have what the roll call please please remember like excuse me point of point of privilege. We have a Timeline where we do not take new items after 1030 so we would have to have emotion elephant Well, we would have to happen because you insisted I wanted to you know You said both will stick it to the end The point is that we need a motion to not follow protocols It's 11 it's it's 1105. I feel it's okay
we Are
mid roll call, okay, go ahead motion to adjourn that will end things if that passes If it doesn't pass then a motion is to spend the rules and allow the item to be heard.
It's eleven o'clock. Nobody can go
Roll-call vote 1–0 motion is to spend the rules and allow the item to be heard. It's eleven o'clock. Nobody can go ahead Continuing roll call · 4 under review
Show transcript
5:04 – 5:1049 turns
Oh
I'm gonna vote to stay. This is, I think this can be fast so it's a no.
Council Member Whitman? No. Mayor Stixx? No. Council Member Ruhl?
This is the motion to adjourn my motion
yes
Yes. Okay, well we will continue with item number five and this is designed to be fast and positive. I've been teaching for 30 years. I've been teaching in the Valley for 18 years. I'm well acquainted with the schools here and I did some research. Many many cities have youth councils, mayor's youth councils long list. Carl you worked for one at your past city I know that I could read the list of all the cities.
We are a valley of schools, so I think it would be a really great move to get some young people involved in city government and I researched them. There are lots of different forms that this takes. I'm not gonna read the staff report. I did as Suggested reach out the letter that I wrote to the educators I included that there are three
Can she really legally continue when it's past 1030 this is not an emergency or time-sensitive There's a motion to participate It's
council can vote to suspend the rule and continue
We can vote to suspend the rules? On
that one, yes. And there are three coordinators, volunteers who are locals in the community who have very wonderful backgrounds. I will not be there. I'm organizing it so it is nonpartisan and will be run by the three volunteers on the back of the list. I've gotten some great feedback from schools. I've talked to Mr. Monson and a couple other of the educators, and I've gotten great feedback from kids so I'm really excited about this. I think it's gonna be great to get some young people in here, and I think we should all support our students in getting them involved in government. So any questions before we move on to public comment?
So you so question, so So would there be an opportunity for each one of us to? Be involved like for the city as a whole to be involved or is this just is it well
no It's and the reason that you know, it's mayor's youth council because a lot of these councils are named that For example Newport Beach LA Calabasas Watts, Montana Mountain Manhattan Beach Carmel And they would, if you in the letter the idea would be for them to meet to get briefed on what's happening and then for them to come to a meeting or write in potentially with a comment.
And as most of us know civics has been squeezed out of our curriculum in the last 40 years so I think this is really important to bring it back. Any other questions?
Why are we doing this when we have so many items on the agenda? I thought we had an agreement that were not going to keep adding new items.
It's fast and easy, and it's gonna get the 12 schools in our valley involved.
First of all, I don't feel like we're a model city council for the students to emulate.
Any more questions?
We're getting there, we're getting better.
Okay, let's take...
But you have already... You're not really asking us. You've already set it in motion. You've already sent the letters
out. Well if you read the letter, it says a potential new educational opportunity. That's it. It doesn't say it's happening, and this was...
I have a question.
Yeah?
Have you met with students previously in the last three months?
Do I have contact with
students? No, have you met with a group of students in the last three months?
I know some students
that... No, have you met with students...
I'm not sure what your
question is. A group. Have you met with a group of students in the last three months? A group of high school students
I don't think so,
no. You have not met with a group of high school students? No. It's coming from somebody contacting me saying that they met with you, a group of students met with you and plan to meet with you more. You mean
Green Valley Project?
No, not Green Valley Project. No, it was a governance situation where...
I'd love to talk to you because I don't know what
you're
talking about.
So you have not met with any high school students?
I've met individually with some students.
You've met individually with some students? I've
taught here for
almost 20
years, so I know a lot of kids here.
The reason I'm getting to this is that we have public comment from high school students that mirror your accusations against Jeffrey Starkweather step by step by step. I mean, you know it's true. I'm happy to show you the comments that came in. I want to
invite everyone to have positive unconditional regard for one another. That's
really nice and let's focus on the kids okay no no I'm asking you I'm in so the next question is did you discuss? I'm not I am
NOT on a witness stand councilmember rule
So well, but you have an obligation to say what you've done as a as a representative of this city as mayor. I know a lot of students here I know how do you met with them and discussed the Jeffrey Stark weather issue no Not one student
Okay,
this is not on the agenda either. Okay Larry Steingold then Dee Reed then Jeffrey Starkweather
5:10 – 5:1517 turns
Students involved in government is a wonderful thing You are the mayor of Ojai you're not the mayor of Upper Ojai or East Ojai or Miners Oak Okay, we have students here in school We have private students who live in the city Right? We have public students who live in the city. That's your obligation. Every city, we have districts now. She should get five students from this district for her district. She should get five. You should get five from the city. She should get five. He should get five.
This is district. This is our city having private students who live Outside the city, who aren't even residents of Ojai. Their parents aren't primary residents here. They don't...parents don't vote here. The parents should be here. They live here. They vote here. The students should come from here. THEY should get representation. This should be an all-city government youth function.
Call it a committee, call it whatever you want. But it should not include outside kids who don't live in the city and their parents don't live in the city. Our city councilors have a right to represent their own district. Her constituents are me. Whitman's got constituents, they're his. You've got the whole city. These students should come from here not from there unless we don't have enough students then you can spiral out. Village is not in the city correct or is it? Okay sorry okay but still but the students have to live here and their parents have to live here Thatcher's not.
There are people who buy homes here from Thatcher they live here their kids go there okay fine But not kids. This is Ojai, you represent Ojai. I vote here, I live here, my kids aren't here but if you have it should be you this is your district represent the constituents that's all.
Thank You Larry next we have Dee Reed then Jeffrey Starkweather then Renee Roth
Thank you. I gotta tell you, every time I read these words Mayor's Youth Council, I get a queasy feeling. I mean no disrespect to our mayor. I mean any mayor's youth council. Anytime we link a politician's name with a youth council it sounds an awful lot like someone is trying to politicize some young people to help with their political agenda in this case apparently to activate them to take positions on city agenda items I thought you were going to come and give a report. Was that it? Was that your report that you just gave of what your youth council might be like?
I never saw the report, no it wasn't in the agenda
packet.
It wasn't in my agenda packet, I'm sorry. It's in the agenda
packet online. You click the link and it's there.
I didn't see a link. Okay, let me just ask my questions, okay? Because it raises a lot of questions for me. Anytime there's a mayor's youth council, there are many youth councils. Santa Barbara has a wonderful one. It's called the Santa Barbara Youth Council and they engage high school students in issues that they care about and usually it's about recreation and arts and it tends to be overseen by either the Recreation Department or the Art Department. Simi Valley has a Simi Youth Council But when you call it a Mayor's Youth Council, it attaches a person to the mission. So my question is... It's a lot of questions. What is the goal? Is there a mission statement?
Did you have a mission statement? Would you like to read this? I don't think I can use my three minutes to read it. Who was running the program and under whose auspices? Who selected the three coordinators? Were these positions advertised to the public Who proposed the programs? Who selected an out-of-town fast food business for the monthly meeting sites? What will the program cost? Who will provide the financial support and who will educate the students about the agenda items. It sounded to me from what you had in the packet, I'm sorry I didn't see your report but in the packet it said That they would meet monthly to look at what was on the city agenda and to talk about that so that they could comment at the next City Council meeting.
Is that it? Is that the program?
That is part of the
aim. Who's going to decide how to talk to them about what's on the city agenda? Three people that you picked, I guess. Who picked them?
There are people who are interested in that who would like to volunteer. Did they apply? Did
you advertise this?
No. Can
anybody else get a chance to apply to be one of these people?
Well they're welcome if you'd like to come and help, that'd be great.
Okay and so if this is the Mayor's Youth Council what is the role of the City Council and why are you here does it involve do you need their approval
The reason it's called that and I'm not attached to that name if you google Youth Councils and Mayor Youth Council very common that list of names. I just Sorry, I just
it hurts your credibility as a mayor to call it the mayor's youth council
5:15 – 5:225 turns
And just, I'm not attached to the name. Excuse me, I am not attached to the name. I just looked and looked what's out there and there are lots of Mayor's Youth Councils. Okay next we have Jeffrey Starkweather then Bill Miley and then Nora.
So, I
think we shouldn't invent the wheel here. I actually checked in Ventura County and in Santa Barbara County youth councils there were no mayor's youth councils The two I found were the Simi and Santa Barbara Youth Councils. And then we also have the Ojai Youth Foundation that's already there, headed by the chair of our Chamber of Commerce. And they do a lot of leadership things. I don't know why we wouldn't assign it to them that already exists, and these are people, prominent people in our community already.
If you look at the Youth Council in Santa Barbara and the one city in Simi, they are city council essentially, youth councils. They focus on youth activities and issues that affect youth as opposed to a group of kids, somebody I don't know who it would be. How would you get objective information say about valet parking? And also these schools, a lot of them are borders. They're not people that are going to live here ever again They're just temporary borders. This seems more like something the kids that would volunteer would be trying to put stuff on their resumes to get into college.
I think that the way it is structured raises some serious questions at how would you make sure that if kids are going to be weighing in on any subject, that they're getting In Ojai, there's always at least two perspectives. That they're getting more than one perspective objectively. The other interesting thing I think is that given the obsession about inside the city doing things all three of these people who have volunteered are non-voters in our city. I looked them all up. They're not on the voting register. Two of them live in Miramonte So if you're following Mr. Whitman's rule, you would want at least two of the three to be city residents and I kind of agree with Larry on this one You know we if we're trying to develop kids that are going to be future leaders They should be at least people who are living in our Valley and their families living in a valley.
They're not They're not bordered students that are just here, like at Thatcher or Besant School or some of these other schools. So I think this model is not the best thing. I think youth would be much more interested and more kids would be involved if they were talking about youth issues, and they got to pick the issues. I would be more than happy if they came to City Council on their own and said these are some issues we'd like to present rather than having them weighing in on issues that mainly are only interesting property owners
Thank you, Jeffrey. Next we have Bill Miley and then Nora.
Hello. Come on. A mayor's youth council? How about even more comprehensive an Ojai Valley Youth Council? I read it over twice. The package is complete, like a box of Legos to build something. But what is the thing to build? Oh, it's for the mayor. It's the mayor's idea or isn't? It would be helpful to know who else was involved in drafting this idea. No one from the Ojai Unified School District, I would suggest There's no one from the Ojai Unified School District listed in the design.
Surely, they should be as they're the largest school district here. New entities arise from needs or because of problems. Nothing listed here is those and why now? It's designed to advise on future agenda items apparently only that And why is it advising just the mayor? The selection of facilitators is interesting. No one I've ever heard of, no one from a local school district or the educational foundation.
I find that design has narrowly created for the benefit of one elected official. It seems to have significant political future pluses The base idea is to teach youth about government. Second seems to involve youth and local government processes. What we don't know is what youth know now or what they don't know about local government. Also, such planning should at the beginning involve the Ojai Unified School District trustees and administration It's kind of a slight not to involve them.
I suggest your council start at the beginning and ask why now? Why not collaborate with the public school system and in birthing this endeavor. I am not in favor of this format, I'm in favor of a broader involvement from the beginning with the involvement of the Ojai Unified School District at the start. Thank you.
5:22 – 5:306 turns
Nora Harold Miner's Oaks. At a time when our democracy is under attack, I can't think of anything better than pulling our younger beings into public service in any way shape and form. That coordinated attack against Mayor Sticks? That was gross y'all that was gross okay um I don't even know what to say at this point when I see those kinds of things. Yeah, it's just terrible, right? It's just terrible to watch it happen. The re-litigation of events that are settled now that want to continue to come back and bite Mayor Stakes in the ass. It's gross.
I love the idea. I don't care what it's called, I love that you referenced that there are many different youth organizations like this called the Mayor's Youth Council and I'll say this as a teenager I might have been more likely to jump on board something that said the Mayor's Youth Council than the Ojai Valley, government, whatever. Right? It's a hook. It gets kids excited and we want them excited.
So Mayor Sticks I appreciate you bringing this forward and I hope you all will do anything you can to engage our younger beings in government thanks.
Thank You Nora any comments online Weston
Yes, Mayor. We have Renee with a raised hand. Renee you have the floor?
Thank you Weston. Okay so I want to take a moment and discuss the concept of a youth council and this is what I sent earlier in today. In my opinion, the primary goal of a youth council really should be to empower our young people by giving them a voice in matters that directly affect their lives and address the issues they care deeply about. For instance, they might express an interest in sports programs With access to amenities like the pickleball courts or the availability of a community pool.
Typically, these matters fall under the jurisdiction of the Park and Rec Commission rather than just the quote unquote mayor's office. But I do believe it is essential to approach the idea of a youth council with the utmost sincerity and a genuine commitment. To representing the voices of our young community members, I have unfortunately observed Many people who have concerns and reservations about the mayor's recent activities regarding Jeffrey Starkweather, and how that whole issue was handled. And I know many parents who would never want their children to have to witness that sort of action ever again.
I do believe that this is a really important thing to talk about, and it's an intention that I really do support. But there are other avenues and ways to address it. One option is to engage with organizations like the Ojai Valley Youth Foundation Which actively creates enrichment programs for students at Nordoff. Have you talked to them? Have you even thought about talking to them? Another is to facilitate community service projects, specifically designed to empower our youth such as organizing a creek cleanup in Middle Stewart Canyon Or supporting the installation of a pollinator garden at the North Campus.
So by exploring our alternatives, we can work together to empower and uplift our youth. But I really, really am opposed to the idea that this be added to the agenda at the 11 o'clock hour Okay,
we'll move on to discussion
Okay, I'll start and I'll keep this really brief. First of all, I love the idea of having a youth council I think it makes sense growing up. I was involved in the Outreach Committee which was our schools version of this It is a way of engaging students getting them involved And To me, I mean, I thought it was a no-brainer. In terms of the name, I think what would it be like to have the students name their own organization? Or you know, that instead of us assigning it or we can call it the Mayor's Youth Council and then give them a choice when they're meeting What do you want to call yourselves? This could be your first order of governance.
And then also giving them activities and things that they can do that maybe they could offer us, instead of looking at just the issues that we're focusing on in our council, that they talk about the needs that they have in the community. I think it'd be really great to engage with them. I think it'd be great for all of us as council members to be involved. and meet with them and speak with them. The other thing too I wanted to say about this, the bios, the coordinators, I don't know Chris and I don't know Kathy but Peggy, you can't say anything negative about this woman She is pure goodness, and I mean she's just so deeply committed to peace in our community and to involvement and volunteerism. And if the other two are anything like her I think that this is a good team.
And then also in terms of selecting, I do want to talk about what Larry mentioned Seeing how we can get more kids from our districts. So those are the only things I would say, so I would lean toward... I mean, I would actually just make a motion that we direct staff to move forward with... Would it be with the creation of a youth council? With working, collaborating with these coordinators and developing a youth council.
Is there a second?
5:30 – 5:353 turns
Yeah, I'll second.
Any other comments before we vote? Yeah, I have a few. I think that with this paper and I thought the exact same thing, the Ojai Youth Foundation would be the natural house for this. It's got you know it is set up for exactly this. You know their community advisors are Dr. Cheryl Knox, Trina Newman, Dave Monson Jane Walter, Barbara Haskins as well as having many many different programs that kids could cross-pollinate with.
So you know this was the first thing I thought about thank you Jeffrey Starkweather for printing this out for me I just did not have time today. As you can see the programs that exist are youth foundation programs leadership program car design I mean, they have a group of students ready to go. These volunteers, and I'm sure they're wonderful people. I'm sure they vote for peace every time it comes up. I am sure they love their neighbors but as far as being advisors on a civics curriculum if they have never taught civics, if they don't know the way to broach it in an impartial way, I have a lot of concerns And it just to me, it's a natural to take the Youth Foundation and to roll it into that and to talk to them about it. And then finally because I know that there has been some chatter, I do want to read this letter.
This came in. Dear City Council members, I hope this email finds you well. As a high school student in the Ojai community, I unquivocally support Mayor Betsy Sticks' push to consider the removal of Commissioner Starkweather. The inappropriate and outright harmful behavior demonstrated by Starkweather severely undermines the integrity of the City of Ojai's local government and directly contradicts our city's commitment to fair ethical and accountable leadership. Starkweather's derogatory comments about young women interested in serving our community are completely unacceptable. Such action only serves to diminish the courage of these individuals and further propagate gender inequality in the city. Starkweather's incessant inappropriate requests for city staff to conduct personal research for him shown clearly by his voluminous and relentless email correspondence with them, have the potential to disrupt regular city functions and unfairly burden our staff.
Additionally, the numerous instances where Starkweather belittled our City Manager and Council members through his emails are deeply concerning. Such behavior is not consistent with the role and responsibilities of a commissioner, and deteriorates the harmonious functioning of our local government. I fully agree with Mayor Sticks' suggestion and strongly urge the City Council to consider the removal of Commissioner Starkweather from the Planning Commission. Our local government should be a reflection of the community it serves. Respectful, supportive and focused on advancing the best interest of all residents not just those already with privilege. Best Henry." This is a high school student who wrote this And this is not the only one, and the lines are exactly the same.
They are your talking points, and that is what concerns me. I am not saying that you had any...I don't know what to say! There's like four of these, and they all say the same thing in the same way. I don't know a high school student who could possibly write like this. But that having been said, for that reason I do not support a Mayor's Council. I do not see impartiality here.
I support a Youth Council absolutely and I support a Youth Foundation absolutely. I support youth on all of our commissions absolutely but a hand-picked process like this, I just can't. And I'm happy to read three other letters that basically say the same thing. Just
a reminder that these, the administrators and teachers will select the students from each school. And just moving forward, excuse me, moving forward, The idea is to involve our local students, to get kids involved. I think it's 100% positive so we have a motion and we have a second. Can we have the roll call please Weston?
Roll-call vote 2–1 motion and we have a second. Can we have the roll call · 2 under review
Show transcript
5:35 – 5:3710 turns
So I'm sorry. I want to make sure, going back to what Rachel, was it your motion Rachel? And your proposal is that we would in That we would participate in the structure and how kids are selected and all of that kind of
stuff.
Because I would want the council to be involved with making decisions about, you know, who's instructing and leading. Correct I want to make sure that Ojai School District, Ojai Unified School District has had some input. But subject to all of those types of things, I vote yes.
Okay great. All right motion passes. All right thank you very much. All right we will move on now to council member reports. Anybody have anything to report?
Yeah, I just want to report that we all sat down and had dinner together in Sacramento. And it was really nice.
It was nice.
Yes. You'd never tell from this meeting tonight but it was really great. And thank you so much Mark for bringing us all together and for treating us. It really meant a lot to have those few hours together.
And it was a really great, great conference. We learned a lot. And also we raised the flag, the peace flag on Sunday so thank you for the Peace Committee Peggy and Klaus Peter and Ray. It was a really beautiful event. Anybody else? City Manager's report?
No I'm not gonna make any more reports. Okay
future agenda items no okay all right well thank you all for a productive meeting and we are adjourned.