Ojai City Council Special Meeting

public comments for closed session, anything online?

Yes, Mayor, we have two Zoom participants. Great. We have no raised hands, so I'm speaking to our attendees on Zoom. Please raise your hand now if you'd like to make public comment on our closed session items number one and two on the agenda. I'll give you just a few seconds here before we move on. And we do have one raised hand, Mayor, from Luke. Luke, you have the ability to speak now, and you have the floor.

Oh, nothing at this time. Okay. Thank you for your raised hand. Mayor, that's all.

Okay, great. We will move into the closed session. Thank you.

And I'm interested in whether the motion kind of does what you're...

Check, check. Hello, everybody. Are we

waiting

for Taylor?

Yes. Let me go check on our city attorney. One moment. Okay.

Yep, sure. Okay. All right. We are coming out of the closed session, and Mr. Harvey, would you please give us a report out of the closed session?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. So, as a follow-up to a closed session, I believe it was, I think it was almost two months ago, the City Council met in closed session to review the five submittals that were received in response to the City's RFQ process for City Attorney. The City Council reviewed and deliberated those submittals received and directed staff to bring back two of the five for near-term closed session interviews for those firms. A summary of those firms from whom submittals were received as well as the firms that were selected for closed session interview will be released next week.

Thank you, Mr. Harvey. Okay, that will be the ending of the closed session. And now we will resume with the open session. All right,

wonderful. So, Mr. Montgomery, roll call, please.

Well, Mayor,

we have a single agenda tonight, so it's not necessary. We can continue

with our item. Let's continue. Great. OK, so we'll move on to the open session. The council member requests for a review proposal, review of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council And options for fire hardening and wildfire safety and risk mitigation services. I'm not sure who's beginning. Mr. Harvey?

Sure, I can start things off and then I will probably hand things over to the members themselves. But yes, we're here this evening. It's a two-member city council request, Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Rule, who came to me. And made a request for an agenda report that simply asked for a review of the proposal received from the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council and a discussion as to how the city may achieve either through that proposal or potential alternate means, a means towards its Fire-related goals and tactics. And so the proposal from the Fire Safe Council is attached to the agenda report.

I know that there's a number of folks here that want to talk about that. And I think that's really just mostly all I need to say before handing it over to the Mayor Pro Tem and the Council Member if they want to add anything further before you take it out to public comment. Thank you. And we have

a presentation from the Fire Safe

Council? Yes, we do. Sorry. Thank you, Mayor.

So this all came up for a review because I wanted to look at a couple of things. First of all, I was aware that the process that we went Thank you all for joining us. in our fire, in our overall conversation about goals and priorities. And then the other thing that was happening was I was hearing from other organizations who are working in fire, they were asking for clarification, there were conversations about other organizations wanting funding for certain things, and this is all part, taking place.

Within the CAL FIRE grant process, and so I wasn't aware that there were competitive aspects to this too, where partnerships with cities would make one group more of a candidate for CAL FIRE grants than others, and I didn't want to slight anyone. And so my thought in bringing this back is to have a more thorough discussion about what we as a city want to do with FIRE.

to create a process for this. I ideally want us to talk about how do we look at fire In a more concerted way, every year, not just this year. And we don't even have a fire budget right now. The budget for this proposal was coming out of the general fund, out of what we consider our delta. And if this is something that we are going to take seriously, and I think we should take seriously, I want to start back at the drawing board, come up with a process, create a budget line item, look at Implementing the Traffic and Safety Commission that we've talked about implementing, put fire underneath that, so that we're not just responding to ideas and suggestions that are coming to us, so that we as a city are taking ownership of our role in fire prevention, education, and fire readiness.

And, you know, I also became aware of all the other organizations that are already doing the work. And when I voted yes on this, I wasn't aware of how much was already being done, and I, like many people, was afraid that we're not doing enough. And arguably, we aren't doing enough. But there is a lot that's happening and a lot of really good work. So my desire for bringing this back was to look at creating city oversight, coming up with a strategic vision, and ultimately looking at more transparency in how these public funds are going to be used. Because I was also made aware that there were some concerns in the contract negotiation process with having deliverables, having the funds that we're using be spoken for in really tangible ways.

And so I wanted us to talk about this. I wanted us to revisit this as an overall topic of conversation. And ultimately, I want to go further with FIRE than Thank you very much.

Yes, so when Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem Lang and I discussed this, there were a lot of questions. So I agreed that we should reconsider some of some of these questions. There were a lot of questions that came up. I feel like I have reconsidered them. I have and we've come to different conclusions and that will be part of the discussion. So I have I have come, all of the questions that Mayor Pro Tem has brought forward, I have resolved in my mind, through discussions with the other groups, through finding out how pervasive, you know, these, you know, sort of chatter in the street really was.

And I came to a different conclusion, and so we will discuss that. But we worked very well. It was very good to bring this back and to actually work through it and discuss it and figure out what our next best steps. So when we get into Council discussion, I would like to make my comments then. But other than that, I just wanted to, there were legitimate questions to be asked. I think those questions were answered. And I'm happy to address the questions that I thought came up and how I thought they were answered. And so that's what I'm looking forward to doing after, of course, hearing from the public.

Yeah, so would the appropriate step be have the Fire Safe Council presentation and then go to public comment?

I believe so, Mayor. That probably makes sense.

That sounds good. Does that sound good to anybody? Okay. Please. Thank you.

Thank you all for the opportunity to present for the Fire Safe Council. I am Will Castagna, the Board Chair of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council. You see up here a list of some of the folks that we work with. This is kind of our core group, and I'm going to try and move as quickly as I can because I know we're Limited on time, so I want to jump to the next slide and talk about why we're here today. We, as you all know, face extreme wildfire risks, and part of it that we don't think about often is the urban conflagration possibility.

We got lucky in the Thomas Fire. The wildfire burns in the wild. That's why they call it wildfire. Those embers fly for two to three miles from the fire front, and all of Ojai, as you'll see from the maps that will show, is in that ember zone. So we have the potential for having the same thing happen to us as happened in Paradise, as happened in the Palisades.

And that's one of the reasons that we're making our proposal. Community-led wildfire prevention measures are the proven solution. We've been at this for 25 years here in the Ojai Valley. We spent two years leading a process to create what's called a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, or CWPP. Both of those are a little bit of a mouthful. But we firmly believe that now is the time to act. I'll tell you more about the CWPP in a moment. If you could go to the next slide.

We've got a very dense urban core here on the valley floor, and as you can see from the map, ember exposure is everywhere. There's no place that isn't either in a high or extreme fire danger zone. Ojai has the distinction of ranking in the top 1% nationally for wildfire vulnerability. 94% of the valley is classified as very high fire hazard severity. Interesting fact, 90% of structural ignitions that happen, for example, on the valley floor in neighborhoods, come from embers that fly in from elsewhere.

The danger is in the homes themselves, the buildings becoming fuel that then carries the fire further into the community. Next slide, please. We have wetter-than-normal and drier-than-normal weather patterns emerging. What happens is it rains a lot, and then everything grows, and then it stops raining, and everything dies. Those flashy fuels are what create the risk and the danger.

Next slide, please. So the Eaton and Palisades conflagrations are a warning for us. What we take away from this is that prevention is really essential. What we know is that it's way more expensive to clean up 50-some-odd billion dollars of damage, not including the long-term economic damage that is happening in the Palisades. So it also creates an insurance crisis. If we're all in a very high-fire zone, we've got, you know, who's going to insure us? We've had a lot of people that have had their insurance pulled.

We are attempting to address this. We're beginning to address this. We've already had a workshop. We're planning more. We're also working on creating FireWise communities. We've already done five of those. Our proposal includes more of that activity. So we intend to address these issues. Next slide, please. So, good on you, all of you. You recognize this is an important issue, and we're here talking about it, and I'm, again, grateful for the opportunity to do so with you.

Earlier, just last month, this became a priority for the City Council. In 2020, wildfire safety was prioritized in the sense that Measure C was passed, and we began to set aside money for wildfire protection, among other things. Our city manager has identified the Fire Safe Council as a unique organization that has the ability to address these challenges, and our proposal Everything that we do, but specifically our proposal, matches the requirements that were listed in the city's list of priorities.

So there's a direct correspondence. We're addressing the issues that you have identified as issues that need to be addressed. Next slide, please. Again, it's more cost effective to prevent than to fight fires and then recover from them afterwards. So we focus on a lot of things. I'm not going to read all of these, but we've, again, we've been at this for 25 years. We've done home hardening, house out defensible space, community education. We've done neighborhood by neighborhood presentations. We've gone into schools.

We've created a collaborative so that all of the local organizations are working together to bring as much money as we can as a group with predetermined division of those funds to go to the organizations within that group. that especially focus on the aspects of the project that need to be completed. So it's a way to reduce competition for the dwindling number of dollars that are coming into the community from these kinds of projects.

We've done, you've probably seen the goats and the sheep. Right now, we're up at Villanova doing some grazing. Prescribed grazing is one of the aspects that is a lot of fun because everybody loves the baby goats. That's one of the things that we do. We're also building community resilience centers, critical locations for community to evacuate if we need to, but functional locations for other community activities.

Next slide, please. I'll point out that we spent, so we're gonna talk about the CWPP now. This is the most comprehensive wildfire analysis ever done in the Ojai Valley. This was a two-year project. The city, again, thank you very much, provided $50,000 for us to begin the process. We leveraged those funds into a $1.2 million project That we took two years to go through and invite everyone who's got any interest whatsoever in wildfire safety. We sat around the table, and we didn't just sit around the table one day and say, gee, what do you guys think we should do for wildfire safety?

Before we jump to the next slide, I want you to look at the right-hand side. The core working group for this project was every single agency and organization that we could get to cooperate with us, and it's all the key organizations that are the experts, the brain trust in our community and in our county for what we need to do to keep our city and our county safe from wildfire.

On the next slide, you'll see... Can we go to the next slide? Thank you. You'll see that this CWPP process is not a one-and-done thing. It's a lengthy process. I won't read the whole thing. You can study it. Of course, I'm sure we'll make this presentation available. But it's a lengthy process that included four community public workshops that we advertised and invited people to come, sit down with us, tell us what you think is important, let's talk about it, let's ask the experts, and together we came up with the CWPP itself and all those organizations that were listed on the other page, they signed off on it and said, yes, this is the definitive document, so now we have it. We have our roadmap. We have our instruction manual. What do we need to do to keep the Ojai Valley safe?

What do we need to do to keep the city safe? It's right there. Next slide, please. So let's talk about our proposal. Again, a lot of aspects to our proposal. There's a lot in the CWPP, and I will tell you that our proposal doesn't address everything that's in the CWPP. This is a one-year project, and obviously keeping the Valley safe is an ongoing project, as you pointed out.

So this is what we, what's in the proposal is what we feel we can get done in a year. We're doing community outreach, we're doing wildfire risk mitigation, emergency preparedness, assisting the city as requested with planning and policy, and doing some capacity building. We'll be reporting back to the City on a monthly basis and showing up here to do quarterly reports so that everybody is fully aware of what we're doing and how we're doing and which boxes we've checked and that we're doing what we said we'd be doing.

Next slide, please. So, this is really important to understand more about the Council itself. The yellow area is the Ojai area, and of course the City of Ojai is right in the middle of that. It's important to understand that we're working, and the CWPP addresses everything around this, and we're working. We have $2 million of other projects that we're currently working with. to do things called beacon boxes for firefighters that come into town that don't know our area, fuel reduction projects, prescribed grazing over at Villanova, the temporary refuge areas. All of this we're doing outside of the Yellow Zone But of direct benefit to the city. The beacon boxes actually will be within the city. Not all of them, but some of them will be in the city.

But all of these things are of direct benefit to the city at no cost. No cost whatsoever. Next slide, please. So talking about cost, what will this cost? So there's the number at the top for 483,000 is our proposal. That divides out to $36,000 a month, approximately. Check me on the math, thank you very much. This guy does math in his head, I love that. But if you do the math, you'll figure out that we're at approximately $67 per resident.

for a full year of our undivided attention on helping to keep the city of Ojai safe from wildfire. Next slide, please. So this slide is our superpower. Partnerships, relationships, cooperative arrangements with all of these organizations. These are the groups that we have partnered with over the 25 years that we've been doing this work. I can't tell you how much more powerful our organization is as a result of the creation of these partnerships. We're right now what I would consider the Swiss Army knife of wildfire safety in Ventura County, in the Ojai Valley, and certainly in the city of Ojai. Whatever needs to get done, We partner with, we don't have any chainsaws, we don't have any goats, but we know the people that do, and we bring them to the table when required for the specifics of projects that need to be done on a project by project basis.

This is our greatest strength. We're very proud of it. Next slide, please. So, a few things to think about. We know that community-led efforts are the most effective. Every grant that we've ever applied for, one of the things that they want to know right up front is, does your community support you or is this some harebrained idea that you just came up with? So they require match funding. We have to get sometimes 50%, but mostly now 100%, and sometimes even 150% match funding for the projects that we apply for. That shows the community supports what it is we're doing.

We carry sort of the long-term view and the long-term history of where we've been. We've been through six or seven different city councils. I've lost count. But we carry that institutional knowledge with us, and we feel can provide the city council with excellent advice as a result of having that long view. Do we have the money to do this? That's not our call.

Ben was kind enough to provide us with a memo that lined out how much money the city has. We just did a little math, and Mayor, check me on this, but I think we're just over 2% Of the funds, our proposal total is about 2.3% of the funding that's available at your disposal and at your discretion. And again, that's $67 per city of Ojai resident is a bargain at twice the price.

Next slide, please. So a possible path forward. Fund the proposal as written and let us get to work. That's our first choice. We've got a proposal on the table. We're ready to go. We want to get working. And we're ready, willing, and able to do so right now. In the meantime, we've heard you. There are concerns. You want to look more carefully into things. That's going to take time. And we want to get started now.

And do all that other stuff while we're already working on helping to build the wildfire safety and resiliency that this community needs. So, allocate an annual budget, decide what you want to do. We know that's important so that the Council knows and the City knows what it needs to expect in terms of ongoing expense. I'm very excited that the City is aware now, finally, and taking action to have that conversation and decide on that amount. So whatever that is, that can go to additional projects.

You'll notice that the things in our proposal are things that either we and we alone can do or things that our partners that we've already arranged to work with But there's things outside of that that you might decide are important to do. And so talk about those things, create RFPs, put them out there. We may bid on some, but we welcome anyone and everyone who wants to help create safety from wildfire in the City of Ojai.

Next slide. Thank you.

Would you mind a couple of questions?

Yes, please.

So we all and the public received a lot of written comments. And so, for example, we see an advocacy from the crew and the land conservancy and even the Regional Fire Safe Council and several former fire chiefs, including Mr. Roper. So I'm assuming these are all people that you feel completely comfortable, you're actively working with, and they would be In like the crews case, for example, they would be a subcontractor for you to supply these services is what I heard.

Yes, absolutely. Just to clarify that particular point, we have four, I think, Chris, four projects in the offing for the crew for slightly over $200,000 that are not active right now, but coming. We've got the money, we've won the grants, we've contracted with them, we're ready to go. Yes, we work with them, we have worked with them since 2002, and the Land Conservancy, all these other organizations, we love to partner because they, like I said, we don't have any chainsaws.

The

crew's got plenty of them, and they're very good at what they do.

I think hearing from them directly was helpful. It was helpful for me to hear some of those details. And then my last two questions before I turn it over to my colleagues. In looking at the CWPP again, I did see a couple things that I'm going to give you guys some more detailed questions at another time, but a couple of questions I had, you might know this or you might not, but the existing fuel treatments was one of your charts and you brought up the goats. So I see this sort of proposed grazing and a lot of other proposals.

I'm imagining at some point is what you're going to be offering something very public where people could be looking at all of the things happening valley-wide and what the progress is from the CWPP is what I'm when I look at the dashboard and things like that that you're proposing I think that's one of the missing pieces potentially as people can say where are we at on these projects so is that something that's in your queue citywide and beyond? Does that make sense

what I'm asking? I'm not sure I understand your question.

Let me just wait, because I don't want to complicate the issue. I just noticed that you have dozens of pages in the CWPP about very clear descriptions of particular places and community-wide, and I feel like that just has to be promulgated for everybody to understand in a way that's clear and concise. But I don't want to complicate things right now.

You'll

have to come up, but don't take too long. I'm only trying to say it's part of what we're wanting as a city as well, but as a county too.

I'm Christopher Danch, the Executive Director of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council. To respond to your question, Mayor Gilman, one thing is that we have in our digital dashboard, which contains the same risk maps that are in the CWPP and all the other stuff that backs that document, we, you know, if you look at our proposal, you'll see that there's always a digital dashboard integration in there. That's what keeps all this current. That takes contracted time to do that, but it allows us to keep track of projects that are happening, what the progress is. Furthermore, as part of the Ventura County Wildfire Collaborative, of which Ventura Regional is here, as one of the other founding members of that, we're currently working under a grant from the State Coastal Conservancy to do what's called a Regional Project Prioritization Plan, or RPP.

That's countywide, but divided into our various areas that we're responsible under the collaborative, which covers the entire county. That will be a dashboard. That has all the projects that's listed in our CWPP and what's happening and their status. There'll be geospatial information you can click on and then it'll be a description of what it is, what's the funding, when's it going, what stage is it in, and if you want to look at what that might look like, go to Santa Barbara Fire Safe Councils. It's very complete. But that's what we're aiming for, that's an example of work out way outside this proposal that will begin to educate people about where we are in this web of projects going on.

I appreciate

that. Let me go to my

colleagues for questions before public comments, please.

So I have a question. So in one of your slides, you mentioned all the things that the Fire Safe Council is currently doing and has been doing. And some of those things were included in the proposal. So I'm checking to see, did you have funding sources that have dried up and now you need the city's funding for some of these things, or are these things that would continue to go on as a part of a different grant from a different granting organization that the city would be double paying for?

How much time do you have for me to answer that question? It's kind of a complicated question because the way our grant process works is we We identify a project, we prepare a proposal in response to an RFP or a publication, and then we submit to see if we can get the funds. If we get those funds, then a lot of times we wait, and we wait, and we wait. And then, finally, the first check arrives and we can begin our work.

So, we do, and so we work, and all of these projects are well-defined in advance. In order to submit, you have to say how you're going to spend every nickel through the whole six or eight quarters of the length of the proposal. So, it's very specific and any variance beyond 10% has to be approved and, you know, changes and so forth. So, that's how an individual project happens. So, we're working on certain projects now.

Those applications were submitted two, sometimes three years ago. The funding, some of it has arrived, some of it hasn't. You know, that's a perennial issue that we face. So, there are projects that we're currently working on, and Chris can speak very eloquently to all of that. There are projects that we hope to be working on, and there are projects that, of course, we are in the final stages or have even completed now.

There's, if you look at our sort of project flowchart, they overlap all the time. So it's hard to answer your question specifically, but again, Chris can speak to the detail of, oh, there he is, okay. So, go ahead.

Well, to further answer the question, so we have these grant-specific projects, but one of the things, and we're not double-dipping, we're not having twice pay. What is hard with grants is that long-term consistent planning and reiteration and execution is very difficult in just simply being in the grant world. You get some, you don't get some. You get one, you wait. Costs go up. These things happen. But what we need What every community needs is a partnership that allows for the sort of this base funding that allows these plans to continue to evolve. It's a lot of nuance, a lot of complexity, and that's what we're looking for in a partnership from the city. The grants are just money on top of that to go do other things because tree removal is in the millions of dollars, right?

We're not asking, you know, the city to pay for that. But by giving us what we need to, what's outlined in the proposal allows us to greatly leverage our ability to go get that money. Just like we took your $50,000 and made it $1.2. That's the same thing we're going to do over and over again. So, but that sort of continuous funding allows for consistent overtime planning to go that isn't interrupted by not getting the grant. If you depend on that for your long-term efforts, it's very difficult to sustain that for the years you have to do it. And what this proposal is looking at is how do we sustain ourselves and do this work that isn't neatly fit into a grant that we may or may not get. The grants are going to be on top of this. I hope that answers your question.

Any

other

questions before we go to public comment? Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Feel free. Yeah, I'll have other people come up now. Thanks very much for that great presentation. We may call back if something comes up. Let me start with Randy Coggin, then Brian Akins, and then I know what we want to do is I know it's clapping is so exciting to do, but if you can just do something silent so we can stay on track.

Brian Akins, and then Bob O'Connor. Mr. Coggin, please.

Randy Coggin, Board Member of the Fire Safe Council. I'd like to read into the record an abbreviated summary of a letter we sent to the City Attorney Anderson and the Council on July 18th. On July 14th, at the request of the City Attorney, we submitted a detailed breakdown of our use of funds stated in our proposal and requested a revised draft PSA. The City subsequently suspended further negotiation pending the results of tonight's special meeting.

Our proposal is synergistic, integrated, and a capital-efficient plan designed for efficient use of funds. It cannot have parts removed and still have the remaining pieces accomplished for a proportionally reduced price. Therefore, if we aren't going to proceed as originally approved, we must conditionally withdraw our current proposal, including the use of funding detail provided separately.

We're particularly pained to make this decision because of the urgency we feel this work demands. We could already be working on our deliverables, but now must wait for a committee to be formed, a revisit of our already approved proposal, review changes proposed, further negotiations, which will take months. As stated, this proposal submitted is based on the CWPP adopted by the City in September 2024 and was the result of a $1.2 million, two-year-long project prepared with advertised public community meetings and input from leading wildfire safety agencies and experts. It provides a comprehensive strategic roadmap for wildfire safety projects in the Ojai Valley, including the City. Now the Council wishes to create an ad hoc committee to attempt to hastily recreate the work already done under the CWPP.

Some suggest the City contracts directly for brush removal to begin in a matter of days. This creates the appearance of quick action, but it isn't the strategic approach required to cost-effectively harden the City. All work needs to be strategic to have the greatest impact on overall safety while minimizing costs. Our proposal does that. Our organization has operated in good faith and physical integrity for a quarter of a century in the Hawaii Valley, obtaining and managing over $8 million in funding, completing every project undertaken on time, within budget, and meeting all deliverables. If the Council proceeds with our proposals previously approved, we will complete negotiating the PSA with our suggested revisions, and begin our work. The City could still contract with other parties outside the scope of our deliverables, and we would welcome and collaborate with any such initiatives.

If the City Council instead chooses to proceed in a different path, we are open to receiving and reviewing any new RFP that the City publishes relating to wildfire safety. Sincerely, William D. Castagna, Board Chairman, on behalf of the entire Board of the Ojai Valley Fire Safety Council. If anyone desires a complete copy of the letter, I have copies with me. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Coggin. I appreciate it. Brian Eakins, and then Bob O'Connor, and then Matai Blacklock.

So, I'm Brian Eakins. I'm a member of the Historic Preservation Commission. I am the liaison to the Green Coalition. I started going to the Green Coalition many, many years ago when they started, when they had the purview to go out and to develop this property. And so I joined the Green Coalition to basically point out the areas that were landmarks, City Hall, tennis courts, stables over there, and to help them in maintaining this property and what they could do, how they could repurpose.

Those places, and it's worked out great. Very much appreciate Kathy and the Green Coalition. They've done a fabulous job, but one of the areas that intersects with this that I'm going to talk about is our own backyard. That would be everything right outside the doors. If you haven't walked them, beautiful in the morning, lots of brush, lots of plants and lots of very tall trees, which will turn into matchsticks. And so, a little bit disappointing that Stewart Canyon didn't show up until page 22 of the report.

And that's right outside here. Very concerned about this area being, attention being given to it as quickly as we can because, again, it could tend to be a matchstick. You know, where did the fire start? Where did it get worse? Oh, it was right behind City Hall right before it burned it down. So, don't want that to happen, don't want that headline to show up. Very careful with those parts.

I do want to point out that our beautiful City Hall is known as one of the most unique and beautiful government office buildings in the state of California. Think about that, hey? And that's why we want to keep it just like it is. We have another commissioner I know that's talked to you about that, and we kind of talk about that and coordinate going to meetings that are outside of the HPC just to stay with those things. So again, I've attended multiple meetings with the Fire Safe Council, including one last week.

I'm very pleased with what they're doing. We talk about this often at the Brown Bag that the mayor has, and very happy with how they're moving forward. And again, just want to get, move Stewart Canyon up to a few more pages in the report. So, thank you all very much.

Thank you, Mr. Eakins. Bob O'Connor, Matai Blacklock, and then Stephen Watson.

Good evening. I've lived here since 1979. I've never attended a City Council meeting before, so this is the first for me. Welcome. Thank you. I feel I represent the dozens of homeowners whose insurance was canceled this year, and so I have no insurance. My life savings is tied up in my house. When this fire comes, and when one's coming, I'm sure my life savings will go poof. And as you said, this is an existential threat, not just for the City, but for folks like me.

I was delighted, therefore, when I read that you folks had voted 3 to 2 to approve this proposal. That was smart. That was good. They are Ojai. They live here. They've lived here. They've done everything they could here to make Ojai a safe place, and they know what they're doing, and you can tell from the chart that Mr. Will Castaño put up there. They have all these associations that they bring with them. They walk into the room, they're Babe Ruth, but they got the New York Yankees all around them as well.

I'm sure you would not have voted to accept it by a 3-2 vote unless it made sense, and so why all of a sudden does it not make sense? Why would you want to study it? To go back to the New York Yankees, if Babe Ruth calls me on the phone and says, I want to join your team, I'm not going to meet with the guys in the dugout and say, hey, Babe Ruth wants to join our team. Let's form a subcommittee and see if he's good enough to play for.

Let's study this. Let's think about it. In the meantime, the season's going by. We're going to lose the pennant. This is not the theory of relativity. This is fire problems in Ojai. These are fire problems that we know about. We live it. We've studied it. You've studied it. You know what you're up to. Their proposal, as I understand it, addresses the issues you identified that need to be addressed.

If not now, when? And if it's not now, then we've got a fire that's maybe coming this fall, and boom, poof, my house goes, I lose everything. A lot of people in my shoes don't want you to wait, don't want you to have another bunch of subcommittees and studies and that sort of thing. And if not the Ojai Fire Safety Council, then who? Who could be better than this council? I was very impressed by what I saw. How could you not be? And all the associations they have. They're the Babe Ruth.

of Fire Safety, and they're offering to do something for you at a small price. It's $485,000, but they turn $50,000 into $1.2 million. They'll probably turn $485,000 into God knows how many millions. At lunch, I was asking somebody, what actually does the city council do, what does the city do for us? Well, they cut weeds, they take care of Libbey Park, they make sure teenagers aren't drinking in Sarzody Park, that sort of thing, and they do something for our fire safety, right?

If there's a kid drinking in the park and we've got to avoid that for a while, that's not going to be the end of the world. If there's some weeds growing in Sarasota Park, that's not going to be the end of the world. But if you don't do something to protect us from fires, then that's the most important thing you exist for, this city council, this city. It's the best thing you could do for me and other people in the community. So I would urge that you fund the proposal as written. Don't keep studying something that doesn't need to be studied. Babe Ruth has showed up and said, I want to join your team. Hire him.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. Mattai Blacklock, Stephen Watson, and Renee Roth.

Hello. Hi. Glad to be up here again with such an awesome crew. And I've been working with the Ojai Fire Safe Council on their Community Resilience Center plans for Ojai, the upper Ojai one, and the one planned for the Honor Farm West Campus, where Help of Ojai and other nonprofits are stationed. And it has been amazing to see the connections that many of these humans behind me have made in this community throughout their entire lifetime. Recently, after the Altadena fires, I went to Altadena and opened up mutual aid distribution centers with local Ojai residents who used to run a community garden there. And what we saw firsthand was that it's those community connections, knowing the people in your community, that really makes a difference.

There were these massive aid distribution centers funded from out of state, funded with donations, and it was just sitting there, not being used. People didn't have the relationships To bring in the right neighbors to go get that aid. So our little garage that we cleaned out, emptied out a family's garage and accepted donations, was turning over our donation supply day after day because those residents lived there and they knew the people in the community. That's what it takes. I had to look up the history of fire safe councils coming from New York, moving here just under two years ago, and it started in the 60s. This has been a program that has been around longer than I've been alive to develop these non-profit entities that are focused on this collaborative approach for fire safety.

It is absolutely critical. The same day I found out about the proposal not being fully approved, I also found out that there was a $100,000 artist grant for the City of Oja. I was stoked. I'm sending it to all my artist friends in town, but at the same time, I'm like, is art One-fifth of the importance of fire safety? This $20 million surplus budget, the Delta that Ojai has, is nothing in comparison to what would need to be spent in the case of a major fire. There are more fires coming. The landscape is drying out. Santa Ana winds are getting more severe. We need to try to harden every single home in this community. I could talk more about how with natural building, but I'll save that for a further meeting, which I hope we can have. This is the right team to help reach out in the community, to bring the people into the room, to bring the crew with the chainsaws, yes, that crew and others, to bring in the goats and to go out there.