Ojai City Council Regular Meeting

Welcome back. Good evening everyone, we're going to get started again. Quick announcement before we restart which is today is Leslie Rule's birthday and there are cupcakes on the back table. Help yourself.

Kim Mang, thank you very much.

Thank you, Kim Mang. And there's also some bread back there which is sourdough. There is nuts in it but homemade, help yourself. And Mr. City Manager, Mr. Harvey please report out of closed session.

Yes, Mayor. The City Council went into closed session for the purpose of city manager performance evaluation. That was the week before. Okay, sorry. City attorney performance evaluation correction. The City Council did provide the city manager with direction however there is no reportable action at this time. Thank you.

Thank You Mr. Harvey and with that we will adjourn the closed session And we will open the Open Session. Thank you very much. Mr. Montgomery, roll call please.

vegetation against your structure and an opportunity for embers to ignite the vegetation and spread into your structure then it's all for naught. So the state has recognized that. The fire loss information shows that is a vulnerable area and the requirements are coming out by December are going to apply to all existing homes in the very high fire hazard areas With a three-year timeline to comply, and it will immediately apply to any new construction.

Here in Ventura County we already have requirements for new construction that's a zone zero noncombustible so we're already ahead of the state for new construction the existing occupancies I mean if you can imagine for all of us our own homes I mean the implications are substantial for the county and for Ojai So that's coming. Next? So, the Ventura County Fire Protection District as your fire department we are adopting the maps. This doesn't have to be done separately for any cities served by the district so we will bring to the fire board of directors the maps on May 13th for a first hearing and a second hearing will be May 20th Something that's been upsetting, I think to the community is that the state law doesn't allow an appeal process where someone can appeal the state's decision or their proposed maps.

The law only allows—and that's different from 15 years ago—the law only allows for the district to expand an area We are not proposing any expanded areas at this time. As you can tell, they've already done quite a good job at expanding the area significantly and then the maps will be effective July 1st. I just want to share briefly about what we're already doing with our program We do 19,000 defensible space inspections annually in the county. 6,000 of that 19,000 is here in Ojai and we expect that to likely increase.

We do landscape plan reviews for new construction. As I mentioned, the AB 38 inspections and then our wildland unit so we have two different units one is focusing on 100 feet around the structure and then anything outside of that we have a wildland unit that does prescribed burns in the county, fuel reduction projects. They use goats, any tools or resources available to them to reduce a fuel load and to mitigate the fire behavior.

We also have been doing quite a bit more community engagement, and our involvement in partnerships with the Fire Safe Councils is growing. Supporting firewise communities and then engaging with the Wildfire Collaborative. We're also on the Board of Forestry Fire Risk Reduction Community List, so if anyone is asking what is a district doing for us? When it comes to your insurance there's what's referred to as a SAFER from wildfire regulations.

These are through the insurance industry, and they have 10 home and parcel hardening measures or community-level mitigations that can be done that can help someone if they're aware of these regulations. In some cases—and there's no guarantee—it can help someone keep their insurance. It can help them get a discount. Although not substantial, but being on the Board of Forestry Risk Reduction List is one of those.

It's a designation we obtained last year so that applies to Ojai as well and then being a Firewise community those are the community level mitigations all the others are some of the things I already mentioned that really align with the building code home hardening having the right attic vents I'm glad to answer any questions on that. Next slide. So, I mentioned our engagement and involvement with the Fire Safe Councils which is just going to become an even more important partnership and they do quite a bit of work in the community and some things we partner with them.

There's things that they do that aren't really best suited for the fire department For instance, they go and they do home ignition zone inspections. Sometimes people don't want the fire department—someone who has enforcement responsibility coming in looking that closely at their house—when they do it through the Fire Safe Council, they can get an inspection that doesn't come to the fire department. It's really just more of a recommendation-based.

They do a lot more for the community as well. I mentioned statewide is safer from wildfire regulations, and I would recommend anyone interested in this to look at the California Department of Insurance website and look at these steps if you're wondering what can you do on your parcel in your home. Not only too—and I will say that they've done quite a bit to align with the State Fire Marshal's Office And the things that they have on there, when you have proper defensible space, home hardening, the chances of your structure surviving increase by about 60%.

So these mitigations actually do make a difference as far as reducing loss and then hopefully help people with their insurance. Next slide please. As I mentioned, the state law does not allow for public comment. They said that public comment is not going to change Thank you very much. Any thoughts?

I have, yeah, I have a question. So you mentioned that hundred foot distance and then I'm also aware that with oak trees there's a five foot clearing so you know what if you have an entire oak tree in that 100 foot space?

So the State Board of Forestry, I've been attending the meetings. They have both informational meetings for the fire department but they're sharing the same information on the public meetings and I've been attending those. What they're talking about with that is they're looking at what's reasonable to allow to stay so for instance if you have a fully mature tree like an oak tree and it's you know the trunk of the tree Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

But they realize that, and we do too, that just may not be realistic. Here in the county alone, when you look at how many properties we have here in Ojai and then countywide, there's 95,000 properties in these mapped areas. And it has to be a realistic path for people within a three-year time frame. The example you brought up is one of those items that right now, I don't know where it's going to land.

But that's one of the examples they're saying well there has to be some allowance for that versus planting a new oak tree which I wouldn't recommend anyone actually but planting it within five feet of the structure versus what's a 50-100 year old tree. Yeah

yeah I'm more interested in that hundred foot There's some arguments that they're Only marginally combustible or, you know, they're not combustible in the same sense say a Mexican fan palm or eucalyptus tree. But what are we expecting of residents? You know who look at fire hardening their property and they've got a mature oak tree within that hundred foot perimeter where we're trying to get rid of anything

So within 10 feet of the structure it should be limbed up and kept away from, you know, the smaller branches and leaves kept away from this structure. But outside of the ten feet other than limbing it up at the bottom a third of the height of the tree or approximately ten feet just to keep the ladder fuels from igniting the tree is what we're looking for so it's more maintenance it's not Thank you for joining us.

Yes, thank you. I think to Council Member Whitman's—to piggyback on his question, Is there, are they also looking at different things that could help like for example planting native plants that are known to help prevent the spread of fires and I mean are they looking at those kinds of things too?

They're not getting into that level of specifics. What they are discussing is how many plants can be within five feet of a structure, if any. So whether to allow any or to allow potted plants in clay pots, not plastic pots and then how high can they be? It's going to be interesting. I don't know where they're going to land yet but it sounds like the direction things are going is that there's going to be some allowance. It's not going to be non-combustible, nothing that can burn which in that case All we would have around homes would be rock and, you know, cement statues.

I did have a question. This isn't the first time I've seen the map and it looks like if I compare the map prior to the map current one all along San Antonio Creek is now red. If anyway that's not but what I guess what I'm wondering is when we are thinking about what to do in our valley and all the measures were thinking about I know part of it is the Arundo removal down the creeks and all those kinds of things. And when I look at this map, and I see it bifurcate the valley, then I think that's the place where if we can work with our nonprofit partners to work on that area the most, that seems like that's where the fire would come through if this map's accurate. Does that sound reasonable to you?

You don't know the creek

yet. Yeah, and I will tell you, I've been the fire marshal for the county for 10 months. It's been quite an interesting time to start here. But I'm still learning the county.

He's going to show you that. So if you look at that, see the swath that goes vertically down the middle of the valley? If you were to pull, you don't have to but that's San Antonio Creek. And so Soule Park and Soule Park Golf Course are on the south side there that we're seeing So if we look at the map prior to that, that's not a hazardous area right there along that creek.

Anyway, you don't have to answer that question right now but it's something I was thinking about is what in general we're all thinking about is what's our best effort? What's the low-hanging fruit here that we can work with?

Well, I mean, I'll answer part of it and then I will call upon my backup here. I've got our Division Chief Nick Cleary here and then our Fire Prevention Officer Mike Warford to add any comments to this. The low-hanging fruit is that five feet around the structure. That is the most vulnerable area. It is the weakest link in defensible space While I think the community is not going to like it, it actually makes a difference. So what we already have in place and then next to that there is on CAL FIRE's website, it's also on BCFD's website, there's a list of low-cost home hardening and retrofit items that can be done. I would say the attic vents keeping the fire out of the attic Keeping the embers out of the attic is probably the second best thing that can be done, other than getting rid of that vegetation or reducing it significantly around the structure.

If you can keep the fire... Once an ember gets into an attic and ignites, it's about 85% chance that that structure will be lost. So those would be... And it's really the least expensive thing you can do. You can go to Home Depot or Lowe's and get some 1-8 inch wire mesh, put them over your attic, and it can make a substantial difference. And I want to see if our Division Chief has anything to add as far as the fire risk.

If not, it's okay he doesn't have to come up here.

Thanks council, thanks mayor. I think just to answer your question looking at that map and that's the hard part it's we need to take the global approach of prevention because even as a fire agency we don't know where that fire is going to start. Is it going to start on an east wind day? On a north wind day? On an onshore day? And basically that's just looking at that fuel bed and saying hey that's gonna carry fire either from the south in the north or north to the south. Is it gonna start on Nordoff Peak, CSAR all these different areas we just...I think the global approach to fuel reduction is the biggest thing. We need to be preventative So we don't have to respond and have the recovery side of our efforts, if that kind of makes sense. So looking at those maps, working with the Fire Chief Councils, working with the Los Padres National Forest, where can we best take advantage of doing fuel mitigation?

Whether it's goats, mechanical prescribed burns, pile burns—that's the hardest thing because we can't predict where that fire is going to start.

I have a quick question. In Northern California, like up in the Redwood areas, houses have started putting sprinkler systems on their roofs and I've heard both sort of opinions. One is You know, not really. And the other is, yeah, it works pretty good. So to me, so I'm just curious because it seems that would be something that you could do an automatic sprinkler system on your roof that you would activate and it would saturate at least some part of your, you know, area around your house. I'm wondering, do you have any opinion on that?

I do have an opinion. Okay, I think it's big looking at the big picture putting sprinklers on roofs It's one way to deplete the water supply very quickly and divert it away from The use from the fire department where you're really looking at all the structures and evaluating what can be saved The other thing is it's not with vegetation It takes some time. The best thing to do is ahead of time, keep your vegetation watered not when the fire's coming because it's too late at that point anyways and if you're putting sprinklers on the roof and you're thinking that that's going to make a difference that the fire is gonna evaporate Any moisture that you add right before the fire, the best thing to do is one, remove vegetation that you can remove.

That's number one. What you already have there, keep it well watered. That can make a difference but a last ditch effort to put sprinkler and water spread around the structure is not I don't think an effective use of the water And also, it takes time for that fuel to absorb the moisture. So you'd have to have those sprinklers on for a long time for it to make a difference.

Okay thank you much appreciated

and there are some studies out on that from the IBHS their conclusion was it's not effective they have a lot more details than I just provided but if you like to read more details there is a report out on that

Great, thank you very much. Thank

you, Mr. Morelli. We appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Well, we've got our work cut out for us

just a quick comment on piggybacking on your comment about the Arundi. It's a plant I'll never be able to pronounce correctly, but The I think there's a, there's a lot of room for exploration about removing that plant which From my experience on the groundwater basin board, the removal of arundi is returning water flow to our creeks. And so that's one of those dual-purpose things where we can get double bang for the buck.

Probably most of it is outside of our city limits, but that doesn't mean we can't work with other organizations who are looking at doing that. I think that would be probably worthwhile to look at.

Absolutely. Thank you. Okay great. Thank you for that. Is there any commission reports? No Mayor, none submitted. Thank you very much. We'll go to public comments and Mr. Danch please come up. I know you want to talk about this subject right now.

I

was going to add to the discussion of sprinklers as a fire thing, but I think Joe covered it pretty good. But I did just recently review the IBHS report and so yes, I want to emphasize what he said and that is that all these other mitigation measures are much more important should be done first because they can be relied upon It's a guerrilla tactic.

I mean, it'll make sense if your house is out in the middle of

nowhere. That makes some sense if you're independent water supply, independent power you can control when you need to control it. You know that kind of stuff but in an urban situation where we risk the kind of conflagration we saw down south those systems would be completely ineffective

and Yeah, and I think that the best argument is that it drains the water from places that are strategically much more important.

They can be fed by a pool and everything else but they're still... yeah if everybody turned one on and tied to domestic supply then you'd have a rapid drop in pressure.

Yeah okay thank you. Okay I'm sorry. Thank You Mr. Danz.

And let me call up um is it Lei? L-E-I City Staff? Lei, thank you so much oh thank you please thanks

Good evening Mayor, Council and Ojai community. My name is Leigh Talaro and I'm honored to be your new Recreation Coordinator for the City. I am thrilled to be here tonight and even more excited to share some great updates with you all! To kick things off, I'm happy to announce that registration for our Summer Activity Guide officially opened last Tuesday. You may have already received your copy in the mail, but if not don't worry we have plenty available at the Ojai Recreation Department located at Sarazote Park. So feel free to stop by and grab one! This summer our main goal is to welcome more people into our recreation center and strengthen connections through fun and inclusive programs. We want to provide a variety of activities that are accessible to everyone in the community, a safe and enjoyable space where you can try new things learn new things and meet new people.

We're not just adding new activities for youth, adults and seniors. We're also expanding many of our current offerings. For our kids we're excited to offer gymnastics birthday party rentals perfect for high energy celebrations. Summer day camp is back and better with amazing new field trips to places like Ventura Pier Beach, Sky Zone, the Sea Center in Santa Barbara and more. And we're also thrilled to bring back horsemanship lessons. For our adults, we're expanding our offerings with even more opportunities to get active and have fun. Join us for a drop-in basketball and volleyball on Sundays or take part in the return of our Aikido and pottery classes. And lastly, for seniors, we plan exciting new excursions including a trip to Lotusland and a Lake Casitas boat tour in June.

To beat the summer heat, we'll explore cooler trails in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties We're also launching a new Thursday social club with bingo and pain and sip class, a Hawaiian lei necklace workshop. And we'll wrap up the month of May with the new Elvis movie. There's so much more happening and I encourage everyone to check out the full activity guide for all the details Thank you so much for your time and I can't wait to meet all of you at our upcoming programs and events, including our open house on May 24th and 4th of July picnic immediately after the parade. So mark your calendars it's going to be a great time! The Recreation Center is here for you all and you're always welcome. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, great. And Larry Steingold

Larry Steingold, good evening. I would like to thank Public Works and Toro for all the roads that they're doing. I know it's difficult but it will all be done within a few days, I believe in a week if we can please have a road budget that goes forward from now until forever because that's how long the roads are and they don't get taken from us but I would also like to thank Park & Rec because that they're doing that's a wonderful job And if you haven't been to parks and recs and haven't looked at the catalog, please do.

It's fun.

Thank you Mr. Steingold. I will echo that Zerzoni Park this weekend looked it was like a million people were there and having a great time and it was wonderful to see any public comments online?

Mayor we only have one participant and no raised hands but let's just tell our participant we're taking general public comment now And we'll move on, Mayor.

Thank you very much. On to the consent calendar. Does anybody want to pull anything from the consent calendar?

Yeah I'd like to pull

H. Anything else? Okay do I have a motion to approve all the consent items but H?

I'll make a motion to approve. Thank

you, second? Second. Okay great all those in favor? Aye. Opposed okay H

yeah

just give something to say oh

no no getting ready if there was a question on H yes I don't have any problem with the appointment we're making I just wanted to get a report I think this makes Commissioner number four.

Correct.

Where are we on getting commissioner? Number five, I can answer six and seven. And yeah. Yeah. So oh, go ahead.

Yes. So I have Andy and I have the final appointment which will be a number five providing that just next appointment, the next appointment pending item five will be our interview will be on Wednesday. So that's it.

Well, so I can say so we do have three as you pointed out. Here's our number four. So the intention currently would be to have each council person in turn have their picks meeting with the chair and myself. So that we began that with Ms Mang and then Wednesday with Ms Rule And we will continue to proceed through the applicants. Presently, it would be up to seven and then there'll be one appointment.

I have a meeting with this with the superintendent of OUSD the week after next for a possible student appointment but they can meet presuming this would go forward. They have a quorum to meet

right? Right. They'll be able to meet with four optimal to get to five and then eventually to seven.

As it currently stands, that's true. But yes they can meet with four even with the body of seven

Mm-hmm. Okay

Great Yes, okay Do you have a motion to approve H then? Yeah All right Any seconds?

Thanks.

Okay all those in favor. Aye. Aye Great we have a Parks and Rec Commission now that has a quorum that can meet yay. All right Yeah, yeah. Okay and we'll proceed, we'll keep going on the process. Moving on to discussion item number two City Council goals and tactics.

Okay great mayor and council thank you very much I'm going to allow our chief deputy clerk to situate himself just for a moment because what he may or may not do depends on your direction so as you know we've been on the journey of developing our goals and tactics now for a little while here Where we last left off, we made it through goal number five, public safety providing tactics for all those goals that we made it through. You have nine so that left us four more goals that did not have any tactics in the interest of trying to give you a starting point this evening your staff went through and provided potential tactics for The remaining goals, so that all of your goals now have somewhere to start at if you like.

As our Assistant City Attorney likes to say, you can trash or treasure what we've provided. No offense either way. We also wordsmithed some of the goals, excuse me, some of the tactics that you submitted. The Mayor pointed out to me that in our zest to edit, we inadvertently removed a tactic or two. So our apologies there. We're still in the process of trying to formulate all the tactics that we'll have to go with our goals, and that's why we're here tonight. A couple different approaches that you can all take.

I know that you all read your packets and are prepared for your meeting so if you want to just dive in and wordsmith a tactic or add a tactic or remove a tactic, we can take that approach. As I said, Mr. Montgomery is prepared Do some editing on the fly, if you will. If you don't want to do that and if you'd prefer to kick this to a subcommittee to work with me and then come back, that's certainly an option too or there could be some other direction that you might want to provide but we're just trying to simplify and expedite this because we really want like you do of course to have the goals in place before the budget is adopted. The budget of course should reflect the goals and the tactics that you have So, that's kind of a very short presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions before you go out to comment and then have a discussion. Thank you.

Anybody have any thoughts they want to kick it off? I'm hearing you say that we could dive in, spend time going on the items that we did not finish or going back to these that had some smithing and refine. Or we could have a subcommittee work on these things, bring it back to this body with more detail spending more time in that group just to clarify.

That's one approach. There are many, many other approaches you could take.

We have six through nine to do

still. That's what I thought we

were going to do, so it is time to do that. If there is agreement? I am going to lean on Mr. Montgomery. I very wisely left my reading glasses at home, so you are going to have to unfortunately. Please, if you – I think what we're going to do… It's not going to help me. That's kind of you, but I thought maybe Mr. Montgomery could simply read all the tactics that we provided for each goal that you didn't get to and you could tell us if you want to revisit or move on? Does that sound okay?

Yeah, should we do public comments and then go to

this? You can certainly do that. Let's do that. Okay. That was wisely said. This will be the discussion portion when we come back then.

Okay, great. So let me start with Betsy Sticks. Thank you. Then Molly, then Ruth Miller. Okay, thanks. Hello.

Hi.

Hello.

Brought a handler. Good evening, Mayor and Council, and thank you for all your hard work and dedication. Happy Earth Day birthday, Leslie! It's a great day for a birthday. So that makes every day your birthday, right? I would like to take a moment to introduce Harry to you. Harry is a Humane Society of Ventura County alumni and a resident of District 2. He was born and raised here, as were his parents and his brother. He's a real local.

He was six months old when the four dogs were surrendered to the Humane Society after their human family in consultation with the Humane Society decided that they could not take care of him. Harry and his brother had Parvo, and they were nursed back to health by the Humane Society's medical team. I'm happy to report that all four dogs found loving forever homes in our community.