Ojai City Council Regular Meeting

Welcome here, everyone. OK, now this is going to be good. All right. Welcome to the regular Tuesday, March 25th meeting of the Ojai City Council. Roll call please. Mr.

We heard you. Thank you.

Incident Management Teams, so the biggest disasters in the nation They're part of a small group of elite leaders that go and take care of those disasters. And we're lucky because we keep supporting them and bringing them up so that when we have disasters in Ventura County, which you all know we're no strangers to, we get to draw off all of their experience from going all around the nation. So Nick is out with his federal team right now, which as I'm sure you all know there's a lot of turmoil in the federal world right now, so as far as those are going, We're glad to have Nick there in his leadership and be up here with all of you, so thank you. Thank you for the acknowledgement.

I'm excited for Barry. I am glad to be stealing him from you and bringing him into our executive staff. Yeah, thrilled with the future. So thank you.

We're a little smaller

numbers in the sheriff's

department. Sorry about that. Good-looking group is small.

We'll have to photoshop

Leslie. Thank you. Do we have any Commission reports? No word. Okay, we'll go to Public Communications. I have a few cards here so far. These are for items not on the agenda for tonight. So let me start with Hope and then Bo Redd and then Dr. Tim Williamson. Hope. Thank you Okay.

Happy spring. Yes. I've lived in Ojai for like almost 12 years now and I'm about to leave, go off to the Midwest and go explore eco activism. And here's a prayer for Ojai because it needs it. So much grass, passing gas onward. Ritual at every breath. A lonesome sea of beauty pleading to death of another man's hypocrisy. Old rain borrowed by pain. Kim trails in the way.

Insane chimes of earthly rage turn the page. Replug the seeds of well-being. You can't eat money. You can't eat money. Learn from your nightmares, time cries at every door. I am a spore. Clothe me in a brighter sun, tell no one we are all one. Within our hearts and our dreams are trees living in an animate fever dream. Sorry this is hard. Save Pine Mountain please.

Cavities crave as a bird lays another egg driven in a human-made plague. Composting, I would like to promote composting in the Ojai Valley. I think that all the local restaurants should start saving up their food and giving them to local farmers because a lot of farmers need that food for their livestock, and it's all really good food. It's going to waste. It's producing methane emissions, which we know about.

As a city of peace, I think diving into our food waste is something to look into, as well as a space for artists to create together and be inspired. Does capitalism control climate change? We as people need to acknowledge environmental degradation, as well as economic inequality. Preserving our biosphere is the least concern amongst the explosive greed consumers weaving all human power against each other.

The living world is a natural domain of the most restless and paradoxical part of the human spirit. Biological Edie Wilson said, hence nature's incomprehensible. Note removing ourselves from 50% of the planet would save 85% of all earth species. Gaia is resilient but not infinitely so. Today's humanity being held by a strand of knowledge rooting towards animating ourselves at any given moment through nuclear chemical warfare and a genocide being...

Being broadcasted across our screens. If you've been living under a silicone rock, under a bridge and have not had the opportunity to observe human behavior look no further. The world

Thank you, Hope. Thank you. Let's not clap though I know there's really great words coming. Bo Reed, Dr. Tim Williamson and then Matai Blacklock. Bo Red, thank you. Oh sorry I put an extra E in there my

mistake. Well you know I've never addressed y'all so I thought I might. Jared Bo Red Bergman I wish I came a little more prepared, but next time. And I just wanted to come see what it's all about and how we throw down here. So a couple points I want to make. Not here to complain about anything. You know living is a hard thing to do. But what we need the most right now is community. There's no doubt about that. There's no doubt about the more localized it can be, the better it will be.

That is really hard to make a living as an artist out here and it's, as a blue collar worker as well. And you know I think there should be a lot more support for those things being in artistic communities. I was raised here my whole life and you know it was always hippies and rednecks and something in between. With all the money that's coming into Ojai, I don't see why it's not lifting us up as well instead of just pushing us out. Because we're all leaving and there's not a lot of places to go. There is, but we've got to go and that's unfortunate for some of the roots here who have held it down for a really long time in a lot of families.

Yeah, I'm here to throw down for my community as often as I can and I do as much as I can for the arts and supporting my friends who are artists and I spend my money locally. And yeah, I know that our homelessness is where we see it and I definitely am in favor of building cub homes for the homeless and that sustainable building. Also a community garden would be I think we could feed the people pretty easily, actually. Because I have a lot of friends who are farmers who are really down to sow seeds and tend to land.

And all that's needed is really the space to do that and the permission to do so. And I know so many plots of land in Ojai, whether it's right across from the park there when you're walking on the walkway or down across next to the Shell gas station or Miner's Oaks, the car wash. There's plenty of places to do something like that and to build little sustainable homes.

And I know the worries in it, what it could become, but I think you've got to start somewhere. Also food waste for sure. That stuff is insane and I know a lot of places like North Carolina that have places where you can buy food that's expired because it's not bad. Thank you very much.

I know, it's very exciting guys. Yes please.

If I could add one thing about the food waste so there was a Harrison sent an update just this week actually that they've been working toward We're working on it. Dr. Tim Williamson, Mattai Blacklock and then Dr. Sudip Rao.

Hello

sir.

Hello, I'm Dr. Tim Williamson. I'm here with my wife Marianne Williamson, family nurse practitioner. We've provided medical service in this community for almost 45 years. We were one of the first families to build in Persimmon Hill and have lived there for over 40 years. My talk is really more of a question than a talk. In all of Ventura County, Santa Barbara County, the building of a cabin community which I agree with Has it been in any of these locations near single-family

residences?

I just want to caution you, that'll be our

item number two. Would you like to talk to that item in a moment?

Oh yes! I didn't realize that was the one.

That's what it is but I'll put you here and you'll kick it off. No thank you thanks for being flexible. Nope see you in a second Dr. Sudip Rao and then Renee Roth and then Liz Otterbein oh wait I forgot Mattai Blacklock sorry Mattai I believe it is. It is happening on the back side. Mayor, I believe he's holding our special meeting agenda. There are two agendas.

The special meeting is one in your hand probably. The next one is the one? You're for number two. Okay. Liz, okay gotcha and then now Sudip. All right.

Thank you Mayor Andy, Council Members Andrew Whitman, Council Member Kim Mang, Council Member Rachel Lang and also Council Member Leslie Rule. My name is Dr. Sudeep Modipalli Rao. I'm not a doctor of medicine. I am a doctor of engineering. I want to bring attention to both our city elected representatives as well as the city at large to wildfire Thank you all for joining us today.

Supervisor Matt LeVere initiated March 13th. That, of course, many of you are aware that Ojai is going to see a 64 percent increase in insurance costs. Sixty-four percent, I don't know if it's being covered very well and it's not been covered in the last two issues of the Ojai Valley News that came out after that meeting. Billions of dollars have been given out.

And the insurance companies are asking the Insurance Commissioner, Mr. Ricardo Lara, to approve even beyond the 20 percent that's been approved to go to 30 percent, et cetera. So and the justification is that their models are showing—by the way I'm not antagonistic about it. I just think there's a way to design good homes the way the homes that have survived So, we can learn a lot. Of course there's a lot of lessons we've already learned about home hardening but there are homes that are staying there standing so let's build houses that won't burn down. We do that for earthquake safety retrofitting. We should be able to build houses that don't burn like matchsticks and so those houses should have a very low risk profile and the models for insurance companies should reflect that and then offer credits so insurance costs should actually go down If the houses are built in a smart way.

So I'd like to request the city to help create a forum for us to discuss about it, maybe put an agenda, maybe invite the public to actually come in and participate. Are you okay with a 64% increase in your insurance costs? Yes we have a unique geography but I think it's worthwhile to at least talk about it As a society, do we just want to go by the risk models of one insurance company industry or can we do better? And so thank you very much.

I can respond to you to say on December 8th, the Fire Safe Council had a community workshop at the Ojai Retreat. That 64% number comes from that. That's the increase that has occurred in Ojai. Not that it's going to occur but has occurred. But there are two more panels in the works there so stay tuned. We're all wanting to learn more but maybe the city will do something as well. Thank you very much.

Renee Roth and then Starchild.

Good evening, everybody. That was a perfect introduction for what I would like to talk about. Good evening staff, council and the community. That was a perfect introduction for what I was going to talk about because as you know, I have talked a lot about fire safety and fire preparedness I understand that the new map that CAL FIRE has just put out has determined those areas within Ojai that are in the high and the very high fire hazard area of Ojai.

And I think that we've been down this road before with the Building Appeals Board, and it was shifted over to the Building Appeals Board to try to determine what the best boundaries are. Blah blah blah. Let's not go there. Let' s not do that. Why don't we just adopt what Ventura County Fire has determined to be our very high and high fire hazard area map? And let's start doing something about it.

I personally did register to have a home hardening assessment done on my house, and I live in a condo, and I live with other people in my village And I was shocked, I was really shocked about the vegetation. And I thought I knew a little bit about plants. I thought I knew what would grow in my area and what the right ones to put up against the wall and blah blah. I was totally shocked by what they said and what needed to be removed and what needed to be trimmed back There are ladders, fire ladders.

There are vegetation that can get underneath the eaves that needed to be trimmed back. There were trees that needed to be trimmed back five feet. I had no idea. And so I just want, I want everybody to really have that wake-up call. You know we got a little bit of rain that was really nice that you know what we have two inches of rain maybe this last cycle but i still think there's a lot of work to do and I really hope you take this new fire hazard map seriously grab it by storm. I know that was one of your priorities And I know Mr. Harvey is on it, and he's ready to present what your next level of activities or tasks or whatever you call them are underneath it. So anyway, I really appreciate you taking this on because I think it's so important and I have learned a lot.

And I don't—I know we have the Fire Safe Council. I do not think we should contract for the Fire Safe Council. I think we need to bring staff in to understand and develop programs.

Thanks, Ms. Roth. Starchild?

Good evening. Today I want to talk about a subject that's been neglected for far too long, the casualty of the distractions that have consumed our city government. I refer to the community assistance program, the rental assistance program If you read just one page of the nearly thousand pages in your packet tonight, make it page 21 of the written public comments where I posted excerpts from the 2021 Ojai City Housing Element.

In these excerpts, the city promises to support financially the rental assistance program through the help of Ojai It tasks the office of the City Manager to see that this promise is fulfilled. It says that this will happen annually. It's a promise made and a promise broken because since at least 2021, the city has not paid a penny to help Alohai in support of the rental assistance program.

Preventing homelessness is a goal the city must see to fruition How many in the tent town would be housed if they had the funds in their hour of need to prevent them from losing their housing? It's time for this city to do more of the things it's promised to do. Millions for legal fees, but not a penny for the rental assistance program. There is no question that funds were authorized It says it in the housing element.

There's no question to whom they should be paid, it's the help of Ojai. There is no question who is responsible, it's the city manager. The only question I ask for the city manager tonight is WTF? Where's the funds?

Thanks Starchild. Mr. Montgomery anything online?

Thank you, Mayor. We'll switch over to our Zoom participants who are attending. Mayor, Council Member Rule is speaking now. Oh yes!

Yes sorry about that I'm not sure what the best way is to check in other than raise my hand and say hello so if anyone can offer any guidance to that I'm happy. I just wanted to say that The rental assistance to Help of Ojai comes up about twice a year, and we have not yet been able to implement it. So I'm hoping that we can either Take it out or preferably go ahead and support it. Like I said, this has come up probably four times in my tenure about how we don't actually do what we say we're gonna do on our housing element and I can talk about that on the warrants because we have an update on the housing element but I just wanted to chime in that maybe we should take this a little bit more seriously

Thank you, Ms. Rule.

Mayor, we currently have no raised hands from our Zoom participants but I'd like to speak to our Zoom participants for a remote option. Now is the time to speak on general public comment if you'd like to raise your hand and use the raise hand function. We'll just give you one more minute before, one more moment before we move on.

And let's move on. Thank you very much. We'll move onto the consent calendar. Are there any items that any council members would like to remove out of the consent calendar?

Yes, I would like to pull item H.

Very good. Anything

else? I would like to pull item B and also I'm going to pull item G which is review of the housing element.

Shall we start with D? Or should we start with the motion to approve the ones that are, okay. So do I have a motion to accept A, B, C, E, F and I? Sorry Mayor, not B. Not B. Councilor Rule is pulling B and G. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't hear the B.

No problem.

My mistake.

So I'll move to approve A,C,D,E,F and I.

Thank you. And Mayor, with Council Member Rule remote under the Brown Act will require roll call votes for all votes. Great.

Very good.

And just did you say you're pulling D or was it B?

It was B as in boy

and not D at all. D is fine. OK, thank you very much. Great. Mr. Montgomery, roll call please.

Motion passed. Wonderful

and let's start with B, Ms. Rule

Yes, so in looking at the warrants I noticed that there is nothing for legal bills from either Myers-Knave or from Matt's firm. For...I think we're still looking at December, January and February for Myers-Knave that haven't been submitted and for Matt's firm January, February and March And in the previous three months, October, November and December they were all paid within a month. So given that our budget is looking for legal fees over $1 million right now I'm hoping that we can stay a little bit more current so we can understand really where we are with the fees. I don't know why there's a delay in them showing up But I think we should make an effort to make them as current and as possible so that we can track what our actual costs are.

Thank you.

Let's move on then to item G, the housing element Ms. Rule?

Mr.

Mayor it may be

wise to approve each of these polled items.

Okay thank you all right so let's start with B. Mr. Montgomery

I had a I'd like to hear motion and a second please. Oh yes. I move to approve

Item B.

Second. Thank

You.

Thank you

and then Ms. Rule moving on to G

Yes, so once again I think review of the city's housing element is fascinating and I want to thank Lucas for putting this forward. I just wanted to mention that you know it may not just be a consent item or perhaps it goes into our goals but certainly fitting into this review would be the comments by Starchild about rental assistance that has been in our housing element So, if we were doing a review we could actually say here that we have provided no rental assistance even though we have said so in our housing element. And I just wanted to sort of make that connection with this progress report, which by the way I love. I love to read these numbers so thank you very much but that's all.

Mr. Rule if i might point out in the goal setting that we're having under the affordable housing piece one of the tactics there is annual financial contribution to help with Ojai rental assistance etc. We took help of Ojai out but the items there so yes we're publicly saying we're curious and going to work on it

Yeah, I understand that. I was yeah, I voted for that for sure. I just wanted to make sure that we do indeed and that we are consistent really with our housing element and reviewing our housing element. That's all but thank you.

No great

okay. I have a yes quick question on that item so for Lucas I I'm not familiar with the format of this report, but I assume that it complies with what HCD requires that we do on an annual report basis?

Yes.

So the interesting thing about this report is it bases itself on this spreadsheet. I do not get to go in and change the formatting of that spreadsheet, it is set in stone by HCD, Housing and Community Development Department. So what I get to do is plug in those numbers for the entire year. And what it really boils down to is those projects that have come in for review, those that have gone through plan check, and those that have gotten certificates of occupancy. And those are the different buckets that we get to plug into. And then also, in addition to that, we provide updates to our different programs. One of the 19 programs that we've got going on with our housing element for the sixth cycle.

I have one question in regards to what's considered very low, low the different types of housing. Is it possible to put what the percentage is with a dollar amount so down the road if we're looking we can go back and say oh in 2025 it was this?

I could. The only concern there is from year to year, that's a sliding scale. It just depends on what the average cost is per house. That then tends to be the sliding scale because it's based on a percentage of that market rate.

Thank you very much.

It's easy enough to do.

Thank you, thank you. That's a good question.

Yes? Actually I'm glad that Councilmember Rule pulled this because I just wanted to point out how many low-income very very low moderate we have a lot of truly affordable houses On this list, housing projects on this list, 31 very low income deed restricted. One low income deed restricted, 26 moderate income deed restricted and only one above moderate income housing project.

I think that says a lot about our priorities and our values in this community, and I'm really happy to see this much being moved forward to help the people who need it the most.

Thank you, Ms. Lang. Mr. Seibert, I have a technical question. When does a structure or building—when does it get counted in the re-entitled numbers? Is it when it's been permitted and approved or when it's moved in or what's—when does that get counted? When it's been finaled. That's when we get

to truly count it. Okay. So, the foreshadowing here is this body has—this council has approved several projects from an approval standpoint. Now we're working into the plan check phases once permits are issued then we work towards the final. Once final comes forward then we get to count them but it's interesting because you end up seeing them kind of progress from phase to phase and HCD is watching, so.

Just for clarification, final does not mean move-in ready or does that? That means move in ready. Okay, thank you. Perfect. Sorry I'm using

some of the technical

pieces. No no no! That's why I keep asking you technical questions. Thank you very much sir. Any other comments? I have two public comments here. Bill Miley and then Starchild on item G. Mr. Miley? Do you still want to do it? Starchild, go first. Thank you.

I wish that the housing in this report existed instead of just being planned. One thing I notice is that ADUs even if they're rented for high prices can count towards arena numbers even if they're not affordable One thing I noticed is that ADU that's already rented but unpermitted, when it becomes permitted counts towards our RHNA numbers even though it's not new housing.

We could meet our RHNA numbers in this city without building new housing and we have to remember that RHNA numbers Don't capture the need for affordable housing in Ojai, that we've not met the need for affordable housing in Ojai and that we have to go beyond the RENA numbers to do so.

Thank you, Starchild.

Mr. Miley?

Hello. That's my standard reading. So, the annual housing element report to the state. As I read it, no low-income housing. I noticed that almost all of the building permits were for accessory dwelling units and I understand that the State Housing Law allows these to be counted for the regional housing number assessment. However, looking at the fair housing chart Showing income level rentals, 99% are rentals. There is no information available to show what rents they're charging.

And I know the state says you don't have to do that. Thus it can be assumed all are moderate income or above. And so I conclude there's not much help for lower-income folks

Thank you, Mr. Miley. Okay anything else on G? I

have just a brief comment. Refresh my memory Lucas, aren't ADUs considered moderate income housing just for Forma?

Across the board yes

across the board. Okay, and just to point out that the Cabin Village accounts for 30 of the 31 very low income deed restricted housing. Just you know, to the point that, you know, to Starchild's point that it's not It's not actual housing, but so to read these is and I know that the housing element is really about projecting. That's why it's you know six to eight years every housing element, but I did just want to point that out.

Interesting.

Anything to respond? Andrew Whitman So yeah, I mean each so there's a reason. I think there's a reason why the annual progress report is literally an annual progress report because it's kind of a tool that's used to kind of gauge where the city is going and it's one of the reasons why, I mean, I know there's a lot of discussion regarding ADUs accessory dwelling units And it's one of the reasons why we already, when we projected this looking at the sixth cycle before we brought to City Council for authorization to submit to the state in 2021 into 2020.

We made the argument early on that, look, our ADUs are going to cover this 53 benchmark easily. And they said not good enough. You've got to do more than that. I understand that you're going to meet that and exceed it, but the ADUs are just one piece to the puzzle. And even the existing non-conforming that end up going through the compliance program ended up getting counted. They exist absolutely. They exist bringing them online to ensure that they are safe In terms of being habitated, that's the important piece for the compliance program. So I just wanted to note a couple of those pieces and you're right in terms of looking at the data from one year to the next, you're going to see some heavy numbers on one end versus the other. It's kind of a sliding scale.

You're not going to have projects all come in at the same time although that would be kind of interesting if that happened. But we tend to see a filtering of projects, even the projects that we have going on right now through the design review phase into the plan check and building permit phase. We're aware of projects that are moving into those phases and either being ready to be constructed or getting themselves into position for that. So it's just... The market in some cases tends to drive that trend.

Thank you, Mr.

Stiebert. What doesn't show up on that chart is the already entitled but not yet built Cabrillo and Becker projects, which together add up to 50-something very low in another 30 or 40 low income units. So those will be coming through. They're not yet at Certificate of Occupancy stage, but those will be coming through as well. And

if I could just add to what Mr. Summers was saying, even those projects, we're keeping a close eye on those and we're getting constant updates. Some of those require federal funds, state funds in order for them to move forward and some of them don't. Some of these projects that are moving forward are being funded internally and they're not looking for any sort of grant funding or support.