Ojai City Council Regular Meeting

All right. Thank you so much, Members of Council. I am Ron Solorzano, the Regional Librarian for the Ojai Valley. And this is going to sound familiar if you remember the last time I was here, because last time I was promoting the approach to summer reading, and this time we are in it. We just started our summer reading program this week, and we have a program for youth and a program for adults. The youth program has kids logging the minutes that they read.

You can do that, sign up online through our website, and then once the logging begins, kids get one free book for registering, they get another free book when they've read 500 minutes, and at 1,000 minutes, they get an entry into our grand prize drawing, and as a reminder, the grand prize this year is two season passes to Universal Studios. In addition to the overall program, we also have a couple of special events I wanted to highlight at the Ojai Library specifically.

We have coming up on Tuesday, June 17th, we're gonna have Sean McMaster doing a magic show at 11.30 a.m. And then on July 3rd, which is a Thursday, we're gonna have our family game day where we're gonna have a gaming truck come to the library along with Kona Ice. So we're gonna have a nice day on that as well. So June 17th, July 3rd. We also have the Adult Program. For the adults, they're not logging minutes, they're logging the books that they read. Every book that they read gives them an entry into our opportunity drawing for prizes, and the prizes for the adults are $50 gift cards to local restaurants, in this case, Bonnie Lou's and Ojai Pizza.

We also have another activity going on for the adults. It's book bingo, which you can kind of see here. We've made a little custom bingo card with various activities for the adults to complete. It's things like, you know, check out a cookbook from the library and use it to make a dish, or, you know, read a story that involves music or musicians, and people fill out the card, and when you get A row, you know, going in a way, you come in for another type of prize. So, a lot going on there, and all of it running through August 3rd. So, that's when summer reading will be concluding.

The last thing I want to throw out is, I think, again, a repeat, but I want to plug one more time a program called Showtime at Ojai Library. This is a series of film screenings. In this case, they're going to be going on on select Mondays and Thursdays in June and July. Talk to the library about what's showing. We have certain restrictions on what we can publicize, but we'll tell you what's playing and when. So reach out if you are interested.

And that's all I have for tonight. Thank you. Thank

you so much. Laurel Moore, Larry Steingold, and Nicholas Wiseman.

Good evening. My name is Laurel Moore and I am a Commissioner on the Historic Preservation Committee. I am representing myself and not the Commission. At our last HPC meeting, one of our agenda items was labeled Minor Roof Repair of the Ojai Valley Museum. Let's call this option A. A public works staffer told us the repair would involve removing most of the existing machine-made tiles, replacing the sub-roof, repair the leak, then put back the machine-made tiles that had been removed.

Randy Levitt, one of our HPC Commissioners, reached out to Public Works and was told the bid for Option A is about $48,000. Next is Option B. Randy has a landmark Mills Act home in the Arbolada, which needed a tile roof on an addition to his home that would match the tiles of the original roof of the house. He used a company in Santa Barbara that specializes in handmade tiles that look like tiles from a hundred years ago.

That company looked at the museum job description, measurements, and pictures that were in our packet. They will do the same job, remove the machine-made tiles, put on a new sub-roof, repair the leak, but instead of putting the machine-made tile roof backs back, they will replace them with handmade tiles that match the landmarked Pacific Building tiles across the street from the museum for about $50,000.

I do question the bid of Option A of $48,000 because they are using our old tiles. Given the great opportunity to put on a beautiful roof that closely honors the tiles that would have been used when the original building was built, should not be missed. I hope that there will not be a rush and a hard, long think about Option B. This repair has been on the books since before 2022. Obviously, the leak has gotten worse over the years and needs immediate repair. There is no argument there.

You will be told that Option A has to be done because a new historic report will have to be done because we will be replacing the machine-made 60s tiles with handmade tiles in Option B. My response is, so what? Let's do the museum justice and get a beautiful, time-honoring roof on it. Thank

you. Larry Steingold, Nicholas Wiseman, and Clay

Creasy. We all know where the formerly homeless housing is going to go. It's going on the public works yard. Great. Where will the new public yard be? Where are we going to put D.J. Harrison? Where are we going to put the police lockers? Where are we going to put all the stuff that Public Works uses? And when will that happen? We already had a Phase 1, then we had a Phase 2 when they discovered some lead and some other stuff, and that's going to go.

But if you don't stop the usage of the public yard immediately, the property could be contaminated by accident. And unfortunately, in my past 40 years in commercial real estate brokerage, I've seen that happen a lot. So in order to not contaminate the yard, you need to shut the yard down and find a place to put all the stuff. Now, are we going to make a deal with the state and take over Caltrans? Are you going to make a deal with the county and stick them over in Sewell Park?

Before we take over something like that or anywhere, you need to do an environmental assessment of where we're going because you need to establish a baseline. And I know I sound preachy, but I know where I come from. This is what you have to do because we're taking schmutz from one place and putting it on another place that we have to know what's there. So, but it has to be done immediately because if we expect to put these people in that building in, I don't know, 2027, That's two years from now. They're going to be in these tents for two years.

I mean, do you think we can, like, move it a little faster? I mean, just a bit. I mean, clear it, at least start doing something, because you're going to have the chumash over there looking at the place, because they've got... And I mean, so, you know, all these things are going to be going on, but where is the yard going? I mean, if you're going to stick it, if it's not going to go with the state, if it's not going to go on the county, it's going to have to go on Bryant.

And how much is that going to cost to buy some piece of dirt, which we could have bought probably for what we're doing now, but that's beside, or someplace. So, please. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Steingold. Nicholas Wiseman and Clay Creasy.

Good evening, Council Members. My name is Nicholas Wiseman. I'm the Chair of the Ojai Film Society. I'm here to briefly share a little bit about our exciting summer series program coming to Libby Bowl for the fourth consecutive year. As many of you know, the Ojai Film Society has been around since 1988 with the mission of bringing quality, independent, foreign, documentary, critically acclaimed, and classic films to the Valley.

Coming out of the pandemic, former Chair Kathleen Schaefer and I saw an opportunity to bring these screenings outdoors in community for free, and the City of Ojai generously offered us the Libby Bowl as our venue. Now three years in, we've had over 12,000 members of the community RSVP and join us for 21 screenings. And the response from the community has been powerful and truly heartwarming.

We'd like to acknowledge and thank the Ojai Arts Commission for a generous grant earlier this year, which has allowed us to bring a number of filmmakers out for these upcoming screenings. And we've also received support from the Lions Club, Rotary, and generous sponsors. Our first screening, July 25th, where we'll be screening Sally, a National Geographic documentary about Sally Ride, the first woman in space, the first U.S. woman in space, who also happened to be part of the Ojai Tennis Tournament in her early years, which is fun.

August 8th, we'll be showing the classic, The NeverEnding Story, the film about, that made at least one generation worry too much about the dangers of quicksand. August 22nd, we have The Greatest Night in Pop, with the producers and directors present. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the January night in 1985, when music's biggest stars, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, all gathered to record We Are the World.

September 5th, 9-5, we'll be screening 9-5, the famous workplace comedy with Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton. September 9th, we'll be showing Speak, which is fresh out of Sundance, and that's with the director attending, about high school competitive speech competitions that follows teen orators on their way to nationals. And lastly, October 3rd, we'll have Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Spielberg classic about UFOs.

So we are grateful for the support from the community, and especially to the city for allowing us a great venue to share in three of our films. Our volunteers and dedicated board hope you will join us this summer, and we continue to expand in the future as we plan our fifth anniversary next year of the summer series. So thank you for your support.

Thank you, Mr. Wiseman.

Very exciting.

Clay Creasy.

Good evening, Council Members. Nice to see you again. I missed last meeting on May 27th. I was on vacation in New York. But I did think of you because Tuesday night we watched a Sondheim play, and Burnett Peters was singing, and when she started singing, Sending the Clowns, I immediately thought of the City Council. Anyhow, the reason I'm here briefly is, and I sent a note to you, being made aware very recently that there's a statute in the Ojai Municipal Code that speaks to when bidding requirements are required for services contracts, specifically in excess of $30,000.

There is a bid process called for in the statute, and I think you ought to look at that, because I think, technically, the Dignity Moves contract right now is not in compliance with that process, so I would urge you to look at that before you do anything further on that. That's all I have to say. Thank

you. Thank you,

sir.

Well, get it up here, then. Come on up.

Hello. Hi. Tonight, right now, in Ventura, the Vandenberg Space Air Base is holding a public hearing, a public workshop, for people who can comment on their plans for the coming year and beyond. And I think I read this in the Ojai Valley News. But you can go on the website and submit your comments. They plan to increase their Falcon 9 shots from 50 to 100. And they plan to have at least five Falcon Heavy shots over the next year.

They say that the residential business areas beyond the base will not get Any sounds higher than 65 decibels, they say. And from the standpoint of sonic booms, they talk about the pressures. And if the pressures are two pounds per square inch, It doesn't register much. If it gets up to four pounds, it can rattle older buildings. So one of the things you might say is, if you find you're in an older building and cracks start to show up, Maybe you should be able to apply to the Air Force for help in repairing that. You might say that in your comments. Otherwise, there's not much else to say. There's a nice section in there on noise and other environmental issues. So, that's important.

Thank you, Mr. Miley. Anything online?

Yes, Mayor, we currently have one raised hand, and I'm speaking to our Zoom participants. We are now on the general public comment period. First speaker we'll have is Starchild. Starchild, you can unmute, and you have the floor.

Good evening, City Council. I was grateful to hear the readout from today's closed session meeting, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't any Brown Act violation during this meeting. Unfortunately, On April 8th, during your meeting, your special closed session meeting, you did violate the Brown Act in two different regards. One is that you discussed increasing the salary of the city manager. The Brown Act specifically forbids you from discussing any salary increase when it's agendized under performance evaluation.

In addition, you call this special closed session meeting to do so. The Brown Act forbids you from discussing things related to executive salary because Mr. Harvey's the city manager. That is improper to do in a closed session. It's very important to the citizens and to me that this council diligently follow the Brown Act and cease the Brown Act violations.

Thank you. Thank you, Starchild. No more raised hands, Mayor. Okay.

Mr. Mayor? Yes, please. Go. The City Attorney and I have a couple of responses to a couple of public comments, maybe that's acceptable to you.

Absolutely. Okay.

I'm just going to take one that has been mentioned now a couple times about there's a narrative about the relocation of the public works yard in light of the construction of the Cabin Village project. That is not accurate. The public works yard is not being relocated in order to build the Cabin Village project. There will be some very minor storage that might have to be relocated, might have to be relocated to some other city locations, but it's going to be minor and it might not even have to happen.

We don't have any concerns about any type of contamination. We don't have any types of functions that need to stop at the yard now to allow the project to be built. We have done all the requisite testing as directed by the Council, so I just want to explain that and state that because that is untrue. Thank you.

Anything else? Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor. I'll add on the bidding component as well. Public contract code section 3400 sub c and OIA municipal code section 8-4.08 allow for selecting for professional services, services that can be provided solely from a single vendor and the approved cabin village project resolution makes those findings in section 5 and then the subcontract will be bid by Dignity Moves to whoever is selected through a public subcontract bidding process to actually build the new units. So that process, the findings for hiring some Dignity Moves were made by the Council at your last meeting, and then the subcontract will be competitively bid.

And the Brown Act allegations regarding April 8th are new to me and tonight's comments, but I will note that tonight's agenda item in open session, item five, is the action on the proposed salary increase to city manager. There's no violation there, and that is on tonight's agenda. So yeah, back to you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Summers. Okay, so now we're on to the consent calendar. Is there any consent items that anybody would like to pull?

Yes, I would like to pull G and H.

Okay.

Anything else?

I'll move to approve the rest of them.

Great, second? Second. Mr. Montgomery, do you want to call roll on that?

G. May

I

please ask the Public Works Director to join us at the dais briefly in the event that there's a question that's better answered by her? Great. Ms. Palmer, thank you. A great value add. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hey there.

Hi. So this item is we're bringing it back to you. We have been talking about electrification of all city facilities, all city owned facilities for for quite a long time. So back in December, we went out for an RFP to solicit proposals from ESCO companies to provide this audit grade Assessment for us. And so that's what we've done. So we received two proposals, one from Climate Tech, who's been doing this for a very long time, and one from Will Dan, who's also been doing this for a very long time.

So our staff recommendation is to award this contract to Climate Tech. And it's sort of an interesting model. It's a design build. So So phase one of this project is that they will go through, they'll collect all of our energy bills and usage, et cetera, and then they will visit every single city facility. So, and at the end of that period, and I will let Jackie speak to the timeline that we're looking at, because she's been working directly with these folks. So we would recommend tonight, we would, after an assessment, after interviews, Mr. Harvey sat in on interviews with us as well, so we've interviewed the two proposals.

and Decided that Climate Tech would serve us well. So I can answer questions. Jackie can answer questions.

I just want to jump in if I could. We anticipate receiving a lot of grant funding for this effort, and you may see that there's no cost to this initial phase of the project. And you will be informed each step of the way If there are, when there are, excuse me, building modifications to be made, it will go through the normal public works process and it will come through you. But this early stage is just their review and assessment. Thank

you. And one of the reasons that we did choose Climate Tech, and I'm not saying that Will Denn wouldn't do this either, but Climate Tech has a proven track record. of Getting a lot of external funding. So grants, rebates, et cetera. And we're really sort of counting on them to do so. And as Mr. Harvey mentioned, there's no cost to the action tonight to enter into the initial phase. They do it and they get paid and compensated when the construction actually starts. So I would anticipate that you all would be seeing Each individual project that we bring forward and recommend to implement.

And it would become the build effort. And that's where they get compensated. So maybe Jackie could speak a moment about the timeline too on phase one.

Sure. So as Lindy stated, we will be coming back to the Council for any type of construction or implementation. They, Climatec, they estimate that once we get started, once you guys do award Well, tonight we're not really awarding a contract, but we are choosing to go with them. So with that, we'll get a kickoff meeting started this month, hopefully, and then what they'll do next is in July, they're gonna do a utility analysis. Now, that may take a little bit of time, depending on the actual utility. So Southern California Edison, SoCal Gas, they need to collect all this information so that they can give us an accurate report of how much energy we will be saving.

Then we will probably at that point, depending on how many facilities they are going to recommend that we do implementation on, we'll come back probably in August and we'll present all the items that they recommend. And this could be not limited to microgrid, The HVAC systems, lighting, and solar, things of that nature, but it's not limited to that. So they may actually, excuse me, they had the facilities and parks included. So they may come back to us and say, hey, you know, you could do some irrigation efficiency models. So we would look to them for those types of recommendations. And then they noted here on their timeline In September, October, to finalize a scope and funding plan. So they have a dedicated project manager that will help us secure this funding, and we're looking to them for, you know, what is required, what are the, you know, different items that we need to give so we can secure the funding.

And then about at 12 months, they're saying that we will do project implementation. So, even after that, they're going to do a measurement and verification, meaning that they're actually going to keep monitoring how much we are saving, and how much energy we are, you know, kind of putting into our facilities, and then seeing what the emissions are, and how much we're reducing that, because that's the goal. So, if you guys have any questions, I

have just a couple of questions. It was my understanding that we received, that as part of our grant, we received an audit. I believe it was SoCalREN, one of the two, CPA or SoCalREN, was going to do an audit of our existing energy usage. Can you speak to that at all?

So there's a lot of things going on right now. There's a lot of moving parts. So we've worked with SoCal REN, we've worked with CPA, Clean Power Alliance, and of course this now. Nobody has done a comprehensive assessment. What we began doing in Public Works last year, last summer after After a lot of discussion about climate mitigation, et cetera, we moved forward with what we considered to be sort of low-hanging fruit, water heaters, HVAC units, anything that we could recognize that we could get done fairly quickly. So we did that. Now we're looking towards this consultant to be creative and clever and help us really sort of dig in deeper on anything we can implement for energy savings.

Can I, on the CIP that you presented recently, the 500,000 or whatever that, that number sounded, thank you, that was the, I assumed that that was the easily identified and easily done projects.

It was. Okay. So, so that figure included what I just mentioned, so this low-hanging fruit, in addition to our fleet being converted to all electric, and we're doing that as we can as well.

If I could jump in, Ms. Palmer, so remind me, I think you're going to have a better answer on this than I am going to produce. CPA is providing a grant of, is it $250,000? And so that's carved out from this effort so that we can take advantage of that award. So we're trying to realize as many different awards as we can as part of this.

Correct. So the $250,000, when we worked with CPA, we had to identify a facility, a singular facility. So we identified the Sarasota campus, which is all of the buildings on the campus. So we've worked with, we've had the conversation with Climatech and CPA. That funding that we received from CPA will be used when we implement any improvements at that campus.

And so we're looking to Climate Tech to find other funding sources for us. We're really, really, and we have had this conversation, we're really going to hold them to that because they promised that and we really want to make sure that that happens.

Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't paying for something that we were going to be offered as a part of a grant for no cost. So that's what I was just confirming.

Yeah, the big part of this, you know, we're building, this is the foundation that we're creating right now. The heavy lift will come when we need to modify the facilities. And what we decided early on that we really needed as a small staff was we needed some firm, and these firms are out there, to come in and do everything, design, build, implement. You just manage them, they take care of everything else. They receive their funding through a modest markup on the overall project. And again, this will all come before you with each proposed piece of it that we want to do.

And we will take the time that you need and that we need to explain in depth when we get to these projects. And of course, we will vet the projects that they recommend and determine whether or not we want to move them forward to you and make sure it's good for the city.

Any other questions for staff?

Yes, please. I just wanted to say that I appreciate that the idea of considering capacity and confidence to be able to get the city grants. Right. And I appreciate you saying that you will hold them to that. So

it's been a discussion that we have had internally to some degree.

Thank you. And thank you for all your great work on this. It's exciting. Yeah, it is. It's really exciting.

And Jackie will be the main city contact with this. OK,

great.

I will work swiftly and as quickly as

possible to get this done.

Thank you. So should we take a motion to approve G before we move on to H? I had no public comments on on any of the items, but oh, gosh, of course. Yes, this would be on G. Mr. Miley. OK.

Hi. Because I bought a house that had no wall insulation years ago, and we finally did that, I don't see that this is going to deal with the building structure. Maybe that's the way it was intended. Everything that operates within the building is going to be looked at. But what about the building here was built in 1925, and they didn't start putting wall insulation until 1968 or 70, something like that.

So that's the question. How do we know if the city buildings have sufficient insulation, walls and ceilings, To keep the heat out and the cold in, especially when we have all these new pieces of equipment.

All, Energy, Use, and Consumption, and looking for efficiencies wherever they can, up to and including insulation, anything, anything.

I'm assuming that we're gonna monitor energy use. That's something that's objective that we can look at over time.

We are.

Wonderful. Okay, motion to approve, or anything online, Mr. Montgomery? No raised hands, Mayor. Okay, motion to approve D?

I'll move to approve it.

Second.

Second.

Thank you. So now we want to talk about H, the acceptance of the REAP grant funding. Thank you very much. Yes.

Do we need Ms. Billings up? No, I think I'm gonna do my best to field this question. Great. Thank you. Thanks so much. There she goes. She was coming up and now she's going back. Oh, come on up here. Sure. Come on up. I'm sorry. Let's let, let's allow them, yes. Let's get people that are much more knowledgeable than me up here, please. Thank you. Thanks for making the long trek up the lonely road. And Ms. Cervantes, we have actually have a seat for you up at the dais.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. I really just had a couple of questions about this. First of all, I wanted to give a huge shout out to the VCTC and thank them for the grant, for the funding. And this funding is going to improve our bus stop amenities, shelter, signage, hardscaping, Will any of this go to signage or functionality that helps writers know more about the schedule?

More about the schedule.

Like the bus schedule or the notifications. I know in some cities they're doing like electric digital notifications and it's proven to be really helpful for riders.

Okay, so I apologize. I think I could probably take this one. We are aware of this functionality, and we would like to implement it. It is not something that we're using this particular tranche for, but we are working on that. We'd actually like to do two things. We'd like to improve our trolley app. We do have one, but it's very rudimentary, so we're going to embellish that, but then we would also like to have something so that you could be at the stop and you'd know that your bus is seven minutes away or whatever. But before we do any of that, what we're really focused on now, as you might remember from some of our past discussions, is making Sunday service available again, and we're doing a big push on hiring additional drivers and getting them trained.

Okay, great. I just wanted to follow up on those two things. Thank you. I feel good. I can make a motion to approve this.

I'll second. Thank you, Ms. Cervantes. Oh, any public comments on H?

I know of none. No raised hands on Zoom, Mayor.

Thanks.

Roll

call,

I'll ask Ms. Palmer to join us.

You thought you were done and now you're back.

And Jackie's back because she has been instrumental in getting to the point we are today on this project. Wonderful. So this is, you've seen this every year and you will continue seeing it every year. The city has three special assessment districts. We have assessment district one, which is our lighting and landscape district citywide. We have Lighting and Landscape District 3, I'm skipping 2, but I'll get back to that. 3 is an overlay of 1, and that was because all 3 of our special assessment districts, none of them have escalator clauses. So we have had this inability to increase the revenue and the assessment.

And 2, Lighting and Landscape, it's Plaza Arcade, so it's the maintenance for the plaza. So this is really annual housekeeping. We need to report the assessments and we need to levy the assessments every year to the county assessor's office by the second to the first Tuesday in July. So we are doing that now. You've seen an item before on this already this year. So this is just a resolution.

The approval of the final engineers reports with the the reports, with the revenue and assessment and the balance, et cetera, on that. So, I can answer any questions. It's fairly routine, but I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you. It's a public hearing.

Yes,

Ms. Whitman.

Okay, so the reason we can't Adjust, our budget for this is because it's a tax issue where it has to be approved by the voters.

It's a Prop 218 process, a ballot to the taxpayers, the assessment, the assessed properties, and they would have to vote in favor of increasing their taxes.

And then there's just one sentence that piqued my interest. Third paragraph of the discussion, it says streetlight expenses are paid first with the remaining funds used for curbs, gutters, street and street trees. And are there remaining funds?

We carry a small fund balance in all of these districts so we can pay for emergencies if there's anything that we need to get done. We don't carry a huge fund balance, and these are also, I believe these are also subsidized by the general fund. Is that? No? Okay. But there's a small fund balance, not much. We comply with the city's reserve policy on these funds as well. These are special funds.

And so that fund would be found in the budget under each special district?

Yes, we have 51, 52. Fund 50

is 1 and 3, and fund 52 is

positive. So separate funds. Okay.

Yeah. Great.

They can only be used for these areas.

And if I could jump in, there is some general fund support that the city pays for the general benefit services in a relatively small proportion, and the report details that out.

Yeah, so when Plaza Arcade was initially created and there was, like Mr. Summers said, there's a small percentage that was determined to be of general benefit versus special benefit. It's primarily special benefit for the folks who are in the area.

I do see it in the budget. The other key there is the city does pay for its own parcels. We don't pay property taxes, but we do pay the assessment.

Yes. Yes. For any city owned.

Any other questions? I have no public comments on this item. Do you want to check online? Yes, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Still no raised hands. All right. Do I have a motion to approve number two?

I'll move to approve number two.

I'll second that.

punchline. Yes, and I'd like to bring Mr. Seibert up. I see he just walked in. He's arrived from his office.

Perfect timing there. Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening, Council Members. My name is Lucas Seibert. I'm the Community Development Director here for the City of Ojai. The item you have before you tonight is the movable tiny houses. It's the proposed ordinance. It's really the second reading for tonight's discussion. Next slide, please. So let me just give you a little recap. So dating back to 2021, when the pilot program was approved by City Council, it was a two-year pilot program. That then sunset in 2023, was brought back to City Council again. And at that point, there was basically a fork in the road. Either continue with this and kind of look at some lessons learned, or just halt it and then bury it and be done with it.

Council opted to take it through the entire process, which included Planning Commission consideration, which is what we did. We took it back to Planning Commission for a couple meetings, got some really good direction and recommendation before this body, and in 2025, in April of 2025, it came before this body's first reading. Next slide, please. When it came forward as first reading and as part of the pilot program, there were outcomes.

I'm going to go through the outcomes for the pilot program before we start talking about the April 8th. And really, the pilot program itself had a couple of different pieces. This is kind of a refresher from what we had talked about before. There were three tiny homes that had been placed in the city of Ojai. Ten of those, or actually from that were ten inquiries or applications that were either submitted or withdrawn. The interesting thing is it's more than just the applications, it's people inquiring and then realizing that the information or the process by which they were going to have to go through was cumbersome, so they just opted not to even go forward with it. Those were either people coming to the counter, phone calls, emails, you name it.

It was kind of the different varieties. Barriers to that included third-party ANSI inspection requirements, lack of specific guidelines due to being grouped with the ADUs. It was a little bit confusing. And to be fair, I know this wasn't mentioned before, but a lot of the jurisdictions also have that folded in. It's not like we're new to this. Either counties or cities throughout California have this married with ADUs.

So from that, the continued interest post the pilot program, as I just mentioned, the outcome for that was to divorce itself from the ADU regulations and have an AD or a tiny houses ordinance as a standalone ordinance, which is what was brought before you in April. Next slide, please. So when it was brought forward in April, on first reading, there was a number of things that came out of that. And that'll be the next slide after this. But here, I wanted to highlight some of the pieces that came forward and kind of the wins that we ended up having with the community input session or the workshop that took place in May. So as a part of the first reading, Council had asked and given direction for the for staff to go forward with a workshop and potentially an open house.