City Council — 2024-04-09

The order, we have a quorum. Could we have the roll call please? Mr. Management Analyst?

I just wanted to thank you guys once again for being so supportive in getting us commissioners. So we're going to have our meeting in April and hopefully Rachel will be there, it'll be our first full slate of commissioners on the Arts Commission so we can move our thing ahead. Five minutes before you approve it, or 30 minutes I guess. If you haven't yet had a chance to meet David Leeds who you will be voting in as our fifth commissioner and just want to thank you very much.

Can you tell us something about him? Because I didn't see an application in the staff report. Or maybe you could speak, tell us about yourself.

I was trained actually as an art historian at Harvard, and I've been involved in art and business both actually for my entire career. I've been in the movies. I've been a writer, producer, director of feature and docudrama. I have been a sculptor and painter. I had sculptures in many private collections and paintings as well. I do some ceramics now. I'm still involved with business in some venture capital companies, technology companies that I've been involved with for a number of years and recently moved to OIM three-and-a-half years ago during the pandemic. My wife who I've been with for 25 years has been taking me here ever since we met. She came here 45 years ago When there was only one building at the Ojai Valley and I've done nothing but want to move here since she first took me here.

So, I'm very happy to be able to contribute to the community and look forward to working with you all and Smitty in the commission.

Thank you. You sound very qualified, highly qualified. Thank you.

What I liked about David most despite his great resume was that he worked or works for a homeowner's association on their board for decades and worked. And I'm

glad it's worked

believe me because we want good commissioners not just good artists.

And through the mirror, I just wanted to say that I did not know that David Leeds was the David that I know. I know him to be a great community member and just a really swell guy so you have that as well as to the qualifications, the personal qualifications are there as well. So welcome David. Thank

You Chair Smitty and thank you David for your desire to serve we are lucky to have you thank you All right, we will move on to presentation. We have a presentation from Dr. Bill Simmons of Broadband Consortium Pacific Coast and Vivian Vasquez of the Economic Development Collaborative. They are here to facilitate an update on the Ventura County Broadband Strategic Project. So welcome Bill and Vivian and thank you for being here.

Good evening, I'm Bruce Stensley president and CEO of the Economic Development Collaborative. And I'm sneaking in as a stand-in for Bill Simmons who's long been the coordinator of our broadband consortium not able to be with us tonight. First thank you Mayor Sticks members of the council really appreciate your opportunity and your invitation to be here want to do just a couple of things that I'm going to introduce in a moment right while I can do it now Vivian Vasquez is part of our staff lead on a variety of things on broadband and digital upskilling and related programs And Malika Oum is also with us. She's our expert for the region in working on issues related to digital equity. Vivian is going to do most of our talking, but I'm going to kill a minute or two with you first.

Before I hand it over just a couple of things first as a thanks again Councilmember Lange sits on our board of directors we really appreciate that council member Francine has been on our board and is the alternate I'm here as the president and CEO of Economic Development Collaborative. We serve as what's called the Pacific Coast Broadband Consortium. 14 regional consortia designated as such by the California Public Utilities Commission. Our charge is not to be anything related to delivery of Internet service or broadband deployment, rather to be a facilitator, a coordinator and advocate, a partner with cities in the private sector and other anchor institutions that rely on high-speed communication to make sure that we are effectively deploying fiber and high-speed communication resources, and increasingly around what we call adoption.

That is the ability of folks to access and work with the material effectively. A couple of other things... Our broadband consortium is a three county area so we're Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis but we are most passionate of course about what we're doing in Ventura County I just want to mention two things before I get out of the way So one is that there's often a question, why are we still working on broadband issues in the 21st century? Don't we all have cell phones and high-speed communication? We did a study in collaboration with Southern California Association of Governments and Caltrans just about two years ago.

While we're still coming out of COVID, and about 25% of all families with kids in Ventura County do not have access to high speed communication. And their kids are trying to go to school and try to do education online. And increasingly we've discovered that we are wildly dependent on high speed communication for working remote, for telehealth, for engaging in public service and government, and of course education and public safety. But lastly on my end what do we mean by adoption? There's a handful of things that I could mention I have them written on a card here somewhere. And essentially what we mean is fast, reliable and affordable access to high-speed communication for all residents in the region. A lot of us can afford it, a lot of us have access but the current providers don't reach everyone and they don't reach everyone affordably necessarily And beyond that, what we're really talking about is the ability of low-income families to close the digital divide.

Again, if you're talking about education and telehealth and the rest of this without access to high speed communication, you're really being left behind in the 21st century. I'm going to stop there and turn it over to Vivian who's got more information and I'll stay on the sideline. Thank you.

Thank you, Bruce. And thank you so much to the council for having us here tonight. I'll just be giving a brief informational update about our strategy project and I think Bruce gave a really great context as to why this is so important. I'll ask for the next slide please. In terms of what I want to share with you all, I just want to share a little bit more context as to why we're working on this project. And I know we have a VCOG representative here so as you know VCOG received some funding to be able to do this project and so we're really excited to be able to be carrying it out and sharing more information with your city about where we are.

So I'm going to give a little bit of information about what the Broadband for All initiative is at the California level and then talk a little bit about what we've been doing for the past six months, what the next couple of months will look like for this broadband strategic plan for the county. What that timeline is and then also what some of the outcomes you can expect for Ojai and for the region.

Next slide please. In terms of legislation, I don't think I can say anything more than what Bruce shared in terms of just you know at this point especially around COVID and in the past few years it just became so much more vital and important to think about broadband connectivity for all aspects of life. For employment, for health, for all different areas and walks of life. And so California Broadband for All It includes a bunch of different funding sources, one of them being SB 156 which is how we were funded to be able to kind of think about what the strategic plan is and as Bruce said make that plan for the region. Not necessarily be the ones deploying it and putting the fiber in the ground but thinking about how do we coordinate and make sure that we're thinking about the resources in the area and how to best work together.

And next slide please. In terms of the project plan and activities, our team has been convening a working group, a VCOG Broadband Working Group since September so we've been convening every month and we have Jamie Fleming from Ojai who's been representing but we don't have an official member of the Ojai City Council or someone of your staff working with us so we'd really appreciate having someone continuously who could be part of those meetings for the next few months as we finish out that plan But as part of those convenings, we've been bringing together this working group with representatives from each of the cities and the county to talk about what are the resources that you have? Where do you want to be when it comes to broadband? And also just coordinating among the cities to know who's applying for what grants.

How can we make sure that we're working together and really capitalizing on the resources that are coming down from a state level but also from the federal level that we expect over the next year or two. In terms of data collection, we've also been doing a lot of that. We have an expert on our team working on GIS mapping who's looking at all the different internet service providers and what they're offering and which areas we really need to focus on when we think about making sure that broadband is accessible to underserved communities and making sure that we're prioritizing that.

Although we do have the internet service provider data, we definitely also want to validate that with what people are experiencing on the ground because often there's a discrepancy between what's advertised versus what people are actually experiencing in terms of download and upload speed. And so I'll talk a little bit about this later on as well but we're doing kind of two parts. We have a need survey and then a speed test that we're doing. More of an understanding of where people are getting their internet from, how much it's costing them. And then also a speed test which is just very simple. You go onto a website and click one button and then it just gets the information about how fast your internet upload and download speed is and that allows us to see what people are actually really experiencing on their computers or their phones so you can do that from any device.

So that's the data collection we're doing, and that data collection is helping us understand what areas need to focus on when it comes to broadband. And then using that data, we've been working on creating maps as well to think about what are their priority areas within the region? All this information, the convenings, the data collection that's allowing us to coordinate better among the cities and to make sure that we're offering policy recommendations not only that but also just opportunities for collaboration and regional planning.

In terms of outcomes we are working towards ultimately a broadband regional plan which will include an entire plan for the region but then also chapters about each of the cities and so we'll have a specific chapter about Ojai to talk What are the resources and how is this community unique when it comes to broadband infrastructure and needs? Next slide please.

In terms of the timeline, we're pretty far along the timeline which is exciting. So we've been meeting with the working group since the early fall and so we're kind of at this point now where we're doing a lot of the data collection and so one of the things that we'd really appreciate your continued support with is pushing out the need survey and speed tests. So we've been doing that a little bit in Ojai and using kind of some of the city channels but happy to you know talk about other ways that we can really make sure that we have Enough responses from folks in the area.

So we're kind of at that point now where we're still pushing for the data collection, and as this spring comes to a close, we'll be using that to inform that strategic report. In terms of the qualitative data, we're also doing focus groups and a regional convening which will allow folks from the community, and we hope to have Ojai represented there as well, to talk about what's important to them when we think about the broadband strategic plan for the region.

Next slide, please. In terms of outcomes for the region, as I mentioned we really want to have this roadmap and strategy for the entire region with those pullout chapters for each of the cities in the region. But even though we want to have a report it's really great to have a beautiful glossy report. We want to make sure that this process is really bringing together a lot of different voices and that we're making sure that the folks that are you know really experiencing a lot of the underservedness with broadband are able to be centered in this process and so digital equity is really important to us and we want to make sure The process brings together folks who maybe haven't worked together before or have an understanding of what different folks are doing in terms of the broadband space.

So although the report is the outcome, but the process is really, really important. In terms of GIS mapping as I mentioned we've been doing a lot of data collection and will continue doing that. And so that will also help us create more GIS maps that are accurate representations of what people are experiencing when it comes to broadband connectivity And some of those we're hoping to make public so that way we can make sure that other folks have access to that information as well.

In terms of the results like I mentioned previously, and we really want to make sure that digital equity and inclusion is central to the recommendations that will be making in that report. And we also want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up in a way for the region to be able to be responsive to a lot of the federal investments that are being made in broadband and that were well positioned and have a plan for The next couple of years as that money comes down.

Next slide please. In terms of what we're asking from Ojai, we are not asking for any funding. We're just asking for your continued support in this process and just helping us center this issue and realizing how critical it is to so many areas of life. We hope that you'll continue to participate in these conversations with us. And if you have a special representative that can be sent to our working groups, we'd really appreciate that. And just continuing to support us with the data collection process and sharing out the needs survey and speed tests That's what we asked for at this point, and we hope to come back to you all in the coming months once we have the report finalized and we can share that process as well as the specific OHI data with you all.

Next slide please. And that's it! Any questions?

I just want to say thank you, Vivian. And thank you, Bruce. It's so important, especially about the digital equity inclusion and getting broadband to our students. So thank you for being here. Any questions or comments from council?

Well my only comment is that I have mixed feelings about all this because it's important that kids be when you say broadband or equity. It's also important that kids be educated without depending on all of this. You know I think we need to recognize balance and not make everyone overly dependent. You know that's that's all but that's probably a separate conversation but thank you very much.

Yes, definitely hear that. Absolutely

through the mayor I very much look forward to your report and as as I remember for Ventura County Your expectation is to reach 95% of the homes in Ventura County And then potentially phase two would be to figure out how those others Would get would get served but a 95% Saturation would be fabulous so I very much look forward to The report and you know any support that we can give And I don't want to, but I'll volunteer to be the staff liaison. You know?

But I will say that I was part of building the largest municipally owned fiber optic network in western Massachusetts. It was a collective of 26 small towns that decided to take the state's money and build it themselves which they did do successfully. So it's a great model but this is also yet another great model so thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

OK, we will move on to public communication and just a reminder to the public these are items not on the agenda and because they're not on the agenda, we cannot discuss them. We appreciate your participation and we can agendize them for the future. So we'll begin with Ron Solarsano then Hannah Drumwright and then Dan McLaughlin

All right. Thank you so much, members of council. My name is Ron Solorzano and I am the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley. And I want to speak with you tonight during National Library Week which is an annual celebration highlighting the valuable role that libraries, librarians, and library workers play in transforming lives and strengthening our communities.

From the American Library Association's website, quote, the theme for National Library Week 2024 is ready set library and promotes the idea that in our always online world libraries give us a green light to something truly special. A place to connect with others learn new skills and focus on what matters most you can find your crew at your libraries author talks workshops and book clubs.

No matter where you find yourself on the roadmap through life's journey, preparing for a new career, launching a business or raising a family your library provides an inclusive and supportive community where everyone belongs." So we have quite a bit coming up specifically next month at the Ojai Library. On this coming Saturday, April 13th CSUCI Associate Professor of Sociology Dr. Rachel Soper will visit the library at 2 p.m. to give a talk titled Defining Regenerative Agriculture in California. Dr. Soper is currently writing a book about sustainable organic and regenerative farmers in Ventura County.

Then on Saturday, April 27th, local Ojai author Joseph Pulia will return to the Ojai Library to deliver his talk, A Brief History of Westward Expansion from Thomas Jefferson through Manifest Destiny. Dr. Pulia is a former college professor who taught English, philosophy, social science and history of western expansion. Moving into next month, into May we're going to have another CSUCI professor. This time a professor of English Dr. Bob Mayberry who's going to visit the library at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 8th so in the evening to talk about Who Wrote Shakespeare? Dr. Mayberry will examine why the authorship of Shakespeare's plays is questioned and will briefly look at some other likely candidates.

Finally, we will have local Ojai author Catherine Ann Jones visiting the library at 2 p.m on Saturday May 11th to present her book East and West Stories of India. Jones is an actor and award-winning author of eight books who has also taught writing workshops around the world. That's all that I have for you right now please reach out to me if you have any questions about your Ojai Library and thank you so much for your time

Thank you Ron. Ready, set, library. I like it. It's cool. Okay next we have Hannah Drumwright and then Dan. We do appreciate your enthusiasm. I'm going to ask the audience not to clap or make noise but thank you for your enthusiasm. Hannah Drumwright then Dan McLaughlin and then Leanna McNeely.

Hello City Council members, my name is Hannah Drumwright. I'm here to talk about the Community Development Department's decision to deny all temporary use permits and how it's affecting the small businesses As an artist born and raised in Ojai, I was surprised to find that there were no consistent artisan markets for makers and creatives. So in April of last year, I decided to develop the space I was looking for, and I started the first Ojai Artisans Market.

And since then, we've created a collective of artisans here in Ojai that has really become a family. Our market has given back to the community by providing affordable spaces to small businesses and working with local arts stores as well as providing free spaces to minors that are creative. The vendors you see with me and many that aren't have utilized our market on a monthly basis and expressed their concerns as it's a consistent income for them, as well as a meet-and-greet setting to gain customers.

The denial of TUPs in the city has affected our local vendors and prohibited us from continuing a market in a safe open space. for vendors and customers. Complaints from downtown brick-and-mortars have been the source for the department's decision. While I agree there have been too many markets starting in our small town, I think that ours has catered to Ojai Valley residents and it helps keep money in our local economy.

We ask that the City Council and the Development Department reevaluate the decision, and look at TUP applications on a case-by-case basis. And make the right decision for the entire community's development not just businesses in the Arcade. Thank you.

Thank You Hannah Next we have Dan McLaughlin then Leanna McNeely and then Len Clayford

Good evening, thank you very much for letting me speak. I'm here because my profession is I'm a building official retired and I do build, I work, I consult in codes. I had a neighbor who's disabled come to me one day and said all the work that's going on 150 she said there's a lot of things that don't look right so I went out and looked at them, and I saw a lot of curb ramps going everywhere. So I called the city, and I asked the City Public Works what is your involvement? And they said we have no involvement. It's out of our jurisdiction. So, I went to our supervisors, and their staff said it's out of our jurisdiction. So...I waited for a response from Caltrans representative, and didn't get one for two weeks so I filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the State of California, and they put me on a list So what I want you to understand and I left some pictures here for you to see of all the things that I noticed on 150, all the way from 33 to Gridley.

There were ramps that went into trees, there were ramps that went into light poles, there were ramps that went nowhere but the sidewalks, the path of travel that you use on the north side of 150, I challenge you to walk from 33 to Gridley. I did it with my wife in a wheelchair When you go from Gridley down about a quarter mile, there is no sidewalks. So a person in the two hotels that are down there, guess what they get to do? They get the wheelchair on the highway which I don't think that's a good thing. So my logic here is if I can get the city and the county to start questioning Caltrans which should have been done in the planning process and it wasn't done Why not because the city is not going to redo those sidewalks. Even if you was even if you did it would only be if somebody's developing those private lots you would require them to put in compliant curbs and gutters but not you got one down there that's a sewer gutter almost its dirt water and people have to walk in the dirt so if you're visually impaired you're on a walker you're in a wheelchair Good luck.

You're not going to make it without going on 150 you go down to Country Club Drive. You've got a right. You've got a curb ramp on the north side one goes into a light pole one goes into an oak tree where is the person supposed to go? You go across the street on the south side. It goes into dirt both ways. Why would why would a government agency do that? They're never gonna put sidewalks on the south side of Highway 150 on the north side. It's feasible to do it all the way and Again I'm just trying to make you aware of the situation. I brought a wheelchair here if you'd like to try and do what my wife and I did, and my wife couldn't come she's a she used to be the planning director her interim. I worked here for a year as a building inspector so I know this city have lived here 30 years but I think you ought to just walk it see what I'm talking about and see what you think because remember.

Thank you Dan. Next we have Leanna McNeely, then Len Claife and then River Sauvageau.

Good evening, Mayor Sticks, council members and city administration. My name's Leanna McNeely and I live very close to the City Hall campus out here on South Blanche Street. I'm a member of Better Solutions for Ojai group comprised of over 60 neighbors at City Hall in the encampment. The purpose of our group is to encourage city council and the city administrators to seek a better solution for the homeless population than the one laid out in the grant proposal, as well as to remind the council that the permanent residents around City Hall need to have their concerns heard and addressed. From everyone in our group we do want to thank you and the city administrators who have put forth a great effort cleaning up the encampment. The progress is steady and does allay some of the frustrations many of us in the surrounding neighborhoods have felt.

The increased engagement by our city officials with the citizens has also been a welcome change and I encourage continued engagement. That said, there's been much talk about the needs of the homeless on the City Hall campus. In particular, the need for security. There has not been a public discussion about the impacts to the surrounding neighborhoods. The encampment does not exist in a vacuum. The issues that plague the encampment do not stay on the campus. They bleed into our neighborhoods sometimes with profound effect.

We would ask City Council to publicly acknowledge that the current site surrounded by residential homes is completely inappropriate for the permanent location of this project. We would also like the City Council members to publicly recognize the impact the encampment has had on not just those in the neighborhoods, but the merchants in close proximity who serve those neighborhoods and all of this city. I once again urge the Council to not take the easy and fiscally irresponsible route as outlined in the grant proposal, but to continue to work with the County and other entities to identify and procure a site that better serves the needs of the homeless population without disruption to families and businesses that occur when camps are embedded in residential neighborhoods.

City Council and the administration must find a solution based on a long-term viable plan which can accommodate the growing population of homeless in our valley, and one that will be physically responsible to all the citizens of Ojai. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Leanna. And just a note to the public. May 14th, the unhoused encampment progress status update is on the agenda. OK, next we have Len Clayf, then River Savageau and then Robert Graham.

Good evening, Leonard Claife. I live in the city of Ojai. Something like 40 years ago, I walked into a chocolate store in Solvang and saw a young high school student employee dipping milk bone dog biscuits into pink chocolate. I thought that was really odd, so I asked her about it and apparently I was the only person who questioned this practice. So I thought to myself well maybe it's not odd to put milk bone dog biscuits in pink chocolate. Maybe I'm odd for thinking it's odd.

And I mention that because I sort of feel the same way about Caltrans leaving holes in six major intersections, six major curbs in the city of Ojai. This is the third meeting in a row that I've come before you. Nothing has changed and as far as I know, the city has taken no action. So if you have taken no action because you think it's perfectly okay that Caltrans leaves holes in our major intersections then I'll go away and I won't bother you anymore. If you agree with me that it's just dangerous...

and strange that they would abandon these projects, then if you can't do anything without first agendizing it, I would ask you to put it on an agenda. If you can do something without agendizing it, please send a letter to the local Caltrans, the state Caltrans, our state representatives, the governor's office, and there's a GOA in Sacramento which is the Government Office of Accountability which is supposed to monitor programs like Caltrans It's beyond my ability to comprehend how a state agency could leave holes in front of the post office, in front of the pharmacy across the street at Chevron.

And you really need to do something and the same goes for the fact that it's 35 miles per hour going through downtown Ojai, only if you're heading eastbound until you get to the Bank of America. 35 miles an hour throughout downtown is too fast and I believe it's the only place in the United States where the speed limits are different depending on which direction you're going in. It's clearly a mistake Somehow, we should be able to light a fire on the Caltrans to get them to remedy that. And I ask you that you gather all the resources you can, bring in as many people as you can and fix it. Thank you.

Thank you Len. Next we have River Savageau and then Robert Graham and then Pauline Corey and sorry, I can't read that.

Hi, I'm River Sauvageau and I'm here in support of Hannah Drumwright. So for those of you who don't know me, I've been a resident of Ojai for 46 years and a small business owner living off my crafts and my art for 35 years. And I had a boutique that was in downtown Ojai for 20 years that I made a living from my own designs So, one of the things is I closed my store downtown during COVID and I'm working out of my home and then I'm selling at the markets and online. And I am not able to place my work in any stores downtown Ojai.

I can't get in those stores even though I have had a very successful business here for 35 years. So the artisans market that Hannah started is here for the local community and she is fostering young people, she's also creating community there, the kind of community that Ojai has a great reputation for And many of the other markets that are in town, the other art markets and artisan markets are run by people from out-of-town. And they have artists from other places from out-of town, out of the county.

So I wanted to also say that there are studies that having art markets in a town does not take away business from the brick and mortar businesses here. And most of the brick and mortar businesses don't carry local merchandise. So that's something to think about, and even OVA Arts would not talk to me to have my work there. I am a local artist here so I just want to ask you to consider Hannah's Market because I think it's a great benefit to the community. Thank you very much.

Thank you, River. Next we have Robert Graham, then Paulina Corey and Themis Themis. I don't know. And then Larry Stangle. And yeah, and just hi, Bobby, if you want to this is general public comment. If you want to speak on the consent calendar, we're going to ask you to wait

Yeah, I just wanted to introduce myself

briefly. OK. Can we wait for let's wait for can we wait for the public? Absolutely. The consent calendar. OK, thank you. Next, we have Paulina and. Thank you. Appreciate it. Sorry for mispronouncing your name. Yeah.

It's not an easy name, it's Teresa Holliman. Teresa, okay thank you. Hi we also have Echelle Gladstone and Carrie Sanders and we are members of Dance Ojai a 501c3 nonprofit here in Ojai that is dedicated to promoting dance and I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all For one, letting me speak but also like your job looks really hard. I can't imagine being up there it often looks so thankless so thank you for being in this position and trying to do your best to help our city.

This, the Council as well as the Art Commission for the 2024 art grant that you all gave us. It's helping us to co create a wonderful event on April 20 from seven and 9pm carries holding the beautiful poster. It's the Ojai World Dance Festival where we're having a bunch of professional dance troops from Southern California come and put on a really lively, amazing show. So we wanted to make sure you all knew about it and wanted to offer you all tickets as we're offering all of our other sponsors like The Ojai Valley Inn, little small companies like Willow, the Rainbow Market. They're all helping us sponsor this event also and we offered all of them tickets so we wanted to make sure that all of you are coming and had tickets too. So we want to let you know that was available to you.

Did you want to say anything about the festival? Okay um so yeah the show- That's really what we wanted to say. We didn't have any requests from you. We wanted to give you something and thank you and look forward to seeing you all at our show

Thank you, thank you very much exciting

April 20th Thank you gonna be a great event so we hope to see you there. Thank you. Thank you

Next we have Larry Steingold Larry Steingold then Starchild and that's it. Thank

You good evening I've been a resident here now for seven years It seems like 50 And I love it. I want to thank you for the Becker agreement. I was at planning meeting and the homes or apartments are going forward for affordable housing, and that's a good thing so thank you very much. I really would like to know how much it has cost the town, the city Since the Simply Ojai lawsuit, how much in dollars? Legal fees and staff time. How many was it tens of thousands hundreds of thousands? How much money did we spend when we could have probably gotten it then too?

All right on the Caltrans thing Mr. Bennett is our state rep And he's running for election, so I think it's time to call him on the carpet to get all the things straightened out. Also regarding the ATP, I understand it's going out to bid and I would like to know if we, the city have the money to pay for it out of our pocket or are we hoping to get funds from somewhere else?

And the last, I know I sound like... The last Falcon 9 launch was very nice except it turned my motion lights on in the back of the house and the whole house shook. So I realized that sending a letter to the FAA or to anybody will do absolutely nothing But at least it shows that you have an interest in taking care of us and just a letter saying, hey Mr. Musk, Mr. FAA can you do something about it? I don't know. It's a technological issue. It is not a science issue.

Sonic booms are going to happen but some sort of comment to somebody up there saying hey this community is getting buffeted And I mean, I'm all for defense. I'm all for rockets. I think it's wonderful. But having an earthquake every week, every other week, is not really acceptable and I had my first earthquake two months ago so I'm new to this.

So thank you. Thank you, Larry.

Yes, sure. Council Member? I just wanted to make a comment that that that I'm planning on with the being a part of the Tax and Revenue Policy Committee. I'm planning on mentioning the SpaceX as a real concern. So I'm with you, Larry.

Next, we have Starchild

Good evening, I wanted to reiterate some of the comments that Lenny made about Ojai Avenue being sort of unpassable for pedestrians. I walk often across Signal Street carrying my daughter from the post office to the library and there's no place to push the button to get the little white stick figure to turn on it's always the red hand and I feel like I'm gonna get Hit by I'm turning cars. So that would be a great thing to add as well I got to talk to Lenny about it And I also told him I was gonna tell you about something that he and I might disagree about which is about pickleball So a funny thing happened to me on the way To the council meeting today.

I went down to the pickleball court because I wanted to hear exactly how loud it was and There was only one court going, two people from San Francisco. The lady kind of sounded like one of those professional tennis ball players you know making the oof when she hit the ball and the guy was a little bit quieter but I stood there in front of the neighbors houses that are just facing the pickleball court and two were actually coming to go in from their house from two different houses and I asked them you know hey what do you think about the noise? And both of them said it really didn't bother them One of them was I spoke to for a really long time, a gentleman with a young child like myself and he said really it's about Well, he said that it didn't really bother him that much but also it's about people having fun.

I think when we live in community lots of people are going to do things that we personally don't enjoy very much. For example Where I live, there's a gardener that comes by with one of those gas-powered leaf blowers that aren't legal in the city of Ojai. That happens once a week and I don't like it because I work from home and you know I take a break for 10 minutes while he's coming by the window but I think that's part of living in a community The other thing that I think about a lot with pickleball is my grandma, who I just visited in Minnesota. She lives near Pickleball Court. She's 92. Her friends play pickleball. Every once in awhile she gets out there and she swings a paddle. She doesn't play too hard.

And I think, you know it's great that there's something that people who are somewhat like older or even a little bit disabled can do outdoors as part of the community. The final thing that the person I wanted to talk about is the person mentioned. that the real problems in front of their house aren't, isn't pickleball. It's a noise from the Encanto and also when the police vehicles kind of leave the gate if they have to go really fast because there are lights and sirens, that's the majority of the noise not pickleball so I just wanted to share that comment and express that I signed the pickleball petition which I heard about here first at City Council and you can do it too.

Thank you, Starchild. Any comments online?

Yes, Mayor Stix, we have two comments online currently. The first is for Leslie. Leslie, please unmute your mic.

Hi, my name is Leslie Hess. I live here in Ojai and I just want to talk briefly about the last meeting and the public comments at that meeting. A correction of behavior is in order For council member rule, in my opinion. Sarcasm, rage and yelling are unacceptable coming from a city council member. Committing to City Council protocol such as requesting acknowledgement by the mayor before speaking and remembering to speak with respect to colleagues and members of the community may help Yelling cannot be an option.