Ojai City Council, Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening everyone. Welcome to a regular City Council meeting. And Weston, would you lead us in the roll call please?

tonight.

Excellent, thank you. I have a couple of changes that have been requested for the agenda tonight. So I would like to request that we move up item number 12. I'm sorry, item number 14. And yes, item number 12 and item number 14. Item number 12 because this is the Chief's last meeting and we don't want to keep him too long. And item number 14 because it's timely and we need to complete that this evening.

Yes, that's the traffic. So item number

12 is the traffic survey. Yes. And item number 14.

So Mayor Pro Tem, just to be clear, what would the order for the discussion section be just so everyone's clear?

The order would be item number 12 would be moved up to item number 11. Item number 14 would be moved up to item number 12. And then item number 11 would be number 13. And item number 13 would be number 14.

So the sequence will be 12, 14, 11, 13 when we're in the discussion section. Correct. Thank you very much.

All right.

Mr. City Clerk, is that clear? Yes, Mr. City Manager. Okay, thank you. All

right. Can I have a motion to approve those changes? Yes. Excellent. I so move. Thank you. I'll second. Okay. All right, great.

Motion passes.

Okay, excellent. Okay, so we have two presentations and our first one is going to be Chief Jenkins.

No, please go ahead, Chief. Mayor Pro Tem, the Chief is going to lead this off himself. This is his last night with us in the Council meeting as our Chief of Police. He will explain next steps and who is coming, who you've already met. Take it away, Chief Jenkins.

So, thank you for this opportunity to just say a few words, but this is my last week, and then Chief Tyler Abbott will be starting next week. First off, I want to thank Ben for this opportunity. He's the one that selected me for the job. To Ojai, you do have a great leader here. I've worked a lot of people in 25 years. You have a great leader in Ben Harvey.

He is competent and caring. He really does care about Ojai, so I've seen it firsthand. and then he also he's put together a great team of staff so I mean that that goes to show his leadership too and when you have a great team working around you also I want to thank the City Council members each one of you you know we've met we've had lots of conversations lots and and to again the City of Ojai You have an amazing city council. I love working with each one of them. You may not agree with everything they decide or vote for, but when you peel back the layers of each one of them, their heart is pure, their heart's in it for the right reasons, their motivations are pure, and I see that. I see that in each one of you. You're here because you care about OI, so truly, so thank you.

I saw that in each one of you. You know, 25 years in this career and I can tell you this has been one of my favorite assignments. And last week I was kind of reflecting on why, you know, why the hesitation to leave, why, you know, some of the emotions popping up, but I can tell you it's not the traffic. It's not e-bikers. It's not some of the nuisance stuff. It's not working with Caltrans. It's not some of the road construction. It's not all the stuff that all the work we're doing.

I will tell you what it is because I kind of broke it down. It's the people. It's the people here that makes you unique and special. And so it's the city staff, city manager, all the city council members. It's, you know, the deputies I work with, the Rotary members, you know, just, you know, Chamber of Commerce. It's everyone I've come across at all these events. You know, the Ojai people are so kind and just, you know, just so caring. And so I appreciate that.

And so it's the people that Lastly, I'll leave you with this. One of my favorite quotes, and I've kind of built my leadership around the idea of this quote, is from Maya Angelou. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Ojai, years from now, when I think back on my career and all the great things, great times I've had, I will remember the people of Ojai and how I felt around all of you, so thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. And we will absolutely remember you, and thank you so much. It's been a real joy to work with you. You blend compassion with strength and leadership, and I wish you all the best in your new role. Great.

Yeah, I'll just join in that. I've very much enjoyed working with you, Steve, and I think the City of Ojai is greatly benefited by your service.

Yeah, I agree as well. It was just too short. But thank you for everything. Truly a pleasure doing things with you.

And I'll just appreciate you for your availability and willingness to engage deeply with whatever question it is that we have. You and I have worked a couple of things together, and you were really great to work with, and I much appreciated your help and support, so thank you.

And so I gave each of you a challenge coin. You know, that's just a token of thank you for all the work you do for Ojai and for everything you did for me. But I will tell you, it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I don't think any of us here plan on spending a lot of time in jail. Thank you so much. Great, okay. All right, and now we have another presentation, and I'll invite members of the HPC up. I believe Brian Akin is going to be leading this presentation.

Yes, he is. So, I'm Brian Akins. I'm on the Historic Preservation Commission. I've been asked to do the honors tonight. I do want to point out that I take offense to people not wanting to spend time in the jail, the Ojai jail, okay? It's a really nice place, so just keeping that in mind. So anyway, I'm here again to pass out the annual historic awarding of annual award and then lifetime award. We appreciate very much the council for reviewing this and for your agreement in going forward and presenting these awards.

Waiting for a couple others to show up at any time. So we do have a couple changes on just things that happen, life happens. We will be reserving the award for lifetime, or annual award winner, Stephen Adams. He was unable to make it here tonight and asked if we could postpone that award for him. We all know, we all love Stephen, and so very happy to have that.

So what we would like to do is The second annual award is for the Ojai Playhouse. The three people that we recognized as key persons in this, and this goes back to basically taking the Ojai Playhouse As you can imagine, when the river ran through it, and what has become now the total effort in doing that, and we on the Historic Preservation Commission really enjoyed Working with these individuals, so David Berger, who is the owner of the Ojai Playhouse. Robert Kubiak, I talked to Robert just the other day. Robert is the architect for the effort for everything that took place. I believe he's a Santa Barbara architect. And Kerry Miller, who's a local general contractor, and he called me this afternoon and had Family issue that he had to take care of that, and if you know me, you know me.

Family comes number one, so I wholeheartedly agree with that. But I do want to talk about the Ojai Playhouse and the individuals. David Berger, following his dream of restoring the Ojai Playhouse Theater, Mr. Berger spent around $13 million and four years on the project as a gift to Ojai. Following a successful career as a concert promoter, he wanted to return the theater's 101-year-old facade to its mission revival essence while updating the interior to a state-of-the-art venue. Recently purchased the landmarked Old Tower Theater in Santa Paula, there on Main Street.

David, as I talked with Robert the other night, is an interesting guy. And what David comes up with, we might be hard-pressed to, in all of the great ideas and things that he has brought to, we might be hard-pressed to find another individual, another David, in our Valley. I would say with that, and I think that's very complimentary in sharing that, knowing David as I've known him for the many years, so thank you, David. Robert Kupiak is a Santa Barbara architect. He became involved in the restoration project early on following the disastrous flooding which closed the theater in 2014.

Kubiak worked to maintain the historic exterior, even retaining the restored marquee letters and designed the updated interior into a premier theater and performance space. Sorry, I'm looking behind me to see if any of these individuals walked in while I was at my back, too. And Kerry Miller, again, locally here. Kerry was probably the one I worked closest to. Kerry was documenting, taking pictures of every step, everything that they found along the way. I'm all for pictures of every step.

Put it up in the museum in 50 years. So Kerry Miller, local designer and general contractor, worked 10 years on the project and was retained by David Berger when he bought the building. Miller influenced the restoration through his expertise in green building and his pursuit of creating functional art engendered through a degree in sculpture and architecture.

So again, we are happy to recognize and happy to award an annual award to the Ojai Playhouse Theater, and may it live long and prosper. for decades and decades to come. So we will most likely do the presentation of that plaque at an upcoming Historic Preservation Commission, and we will make it known that we will be giving that plaque out at that time, so people can share their thanks for all they've done.

Okay, so those are the two annual awards and again I apologize for the late letting them know when we're going to meet on these different things. Again, things have been quite hectic. Okay, so now we're going to move to the 100% Club. and the Lifetime Achievement Award. So I would like to invite Robert Parsons to please come up, just so you can tell who they are when they get here.

I love how I walked in the door and I'm like, what's going on here tonight? And they said, Gables. I said, OK. I talked to Dee and she said, yeah, it's an outing. I'd like to bring Alice Parsons up, if she would, please. Thank you, Alice. I'd like to bring Janelle Parsons up, if she would join us. I don't want to lose that paper. Thank you. And bring up David Brown. David, if you would join us also, please.

I told them they needed to line up over there for pictures that we were going to do. This is normally where I'd tell you all about the Gables, but we have a commissioner that's with us who wrote the book on the Gables, so this time I'm going to invite Craig Walker to come up and share some thoughts with us.

The Gables of Ojai started out in the late 1890s as a two-story farmhouse on the corner of Montgomery and Grand. Surrounded by an apricot orchard, it was named Gray Gables by the family who lived there. In 1954, the property was purchased by Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus and the National Retired Teachers Association. Gray Gables was America's first national retirement home for teachers.

It was also home to the National Retired Teachers Association. It became the model for a new retirement lifestyle, the one we all aspire to today. In 1958, Dr. Andrus founded the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP, right here in Ojai, and ran it from her offices at Grey Gables. In the 1960s and 70s, AARP was Ojai's largest employer. By the late 1960s, AARP was just too big for Ojai and moved to its headquarters in Long Beach in Washington, D.C.

In 1982, Grey Gables became an independent nonprofit retirement home open to all retirees, and it's some distinction that the largest membership organization in America started right here in Ojai, and it's now up to, I believe, 37 million people. In 2000, the Parsons family and David Brown purchased Gray Gables, renaming it the Gables of Ojai. During their ownership, they have maintained the historic buildings and grounds. It still represents the beauty and gracious living envisioned by Dr. Andrus in 1954. For over 15 years, it has won the Best of Ojai competition in its category.

In 2024, the National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized it as a historic treasure and gave the Ojai Valley Museum a $25,000 grant to write a book about it. The owners were invaluable in helping Mark Lewis and myself research the property's history. With this award, the City of Ojai honors the amazing stewardship of the Gables by the Parsons family and David Brown. Over the years, they have preserved its historic beauty and its purpose. Today, it continues to serve as a model of retirement living at its best. Thank you very much.

Okay, now for the good stuff. I'd like to invite Mayor Pro Tem Rachel Lang to come up, and she has the goody. Or Weston, who's been keeping guard over it, passed it along. Thank you, Weston. Okay.

I want to congratulate you all on Your Lifetime Achievement Award, this is so well deserved. And thank you for the service that you offer to our community and to everyone who has been a part of the Gables community.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much for your support through this process. And thank you all the Gables residents for the fine field trip you decided to do tonight. Thank you.

Yes. Welcome. Welcome to our city council meeting. And we thank you all for being here for this great honor and recognition. And I want to take the opportunity to also thank our HPC members for all of your tireless work and for having these kinds of opportunities where we can recognize members of our community. And we look forward to seeing the award presentations of the other recipients of our awards tonight.

Okay. Okay, we'll move on. Do we have any commission reports tonight?

I did want to make one quick comment, if it's okay. If anybody hasn't been to see the O.I. Playhouse, it's really worthwhile. The transformation of what it was to what it is today is, and it's as fine a place as, you know, any place you'd want to see in Hollywood or somewhere else.

Yes, and since we are acknowledging Stephen Adams, I mean, what is it? I've never been to an event without him. They're taking photos of us. So, yeah, all of our recipients. Great. Okay, so do we have any commission reports tonight?

I'm not aware. No,

Mayor.

Okay,

excellent. Okay, City Manager?

Great, thanks Mayor Pro Tem. We have three announcements as part of my report, so I'd like to turn things over first to Mr. Valdes, who's going to talk about Trolley briefly, and then Ms. Mara will come up to the lectern to talk about business licensing, and then I'll finish up with a brief storm damage date. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, City Council members, we're excited to give you an update on the trolleys. So first off, we have a couple of our drivers that have taken the opportunity and the advantage of our Trolley Benefits Program. Thanks to you all for your support and leadership on that. And then we also have three fully licensed trolley drivers in the pre-employment backgrounds.

for employment. So as soon as that happens and that will help us move away from our contract drivers and also enhance our service in the city. So we're excited about that. And then also we've recently updated the brochure. So we're excited for all that's coming and we continue to build upon the trolley service within the city.

I have one quick question. With those that are in the pipeline for employment, what's the time frame?

So, it would just depend on when they're able to get their physical and their life scan and things of that sort. So, it would just depend on their schedule. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Cervantes. Ms. Mara, could I ask you to give a brief business license update?

Okay, so I just wanted to, you're all aware that we're switching over into HDL. It's an online portal. It's going to be great for everybody, not just for me, for the entire business community. Easier access to your business license, payments, changing and updating your license. I know we've reported out that the Portals should be going live the last week of January. Fortunately, HDL has let me know that it's actually going to be about February 4th. That's the go-live date that they're giving me right now. I am asking them if they can mail out these letters to the businesses earlier so that they at least know. But I am open to help anybody out with their business license. There's no reason why I can't give them a temporary one while we're waiting for it.

So if anybody wants to come into the office and just pay for, you know, I can give them that temporary license. There's no waits.

Okay? Any questions for me? No, that was one of the questions I had, so

that's

good

to

hear.

Yeah, yeah. And I can take payments. Like I said, everything's online, but we've made it clear to HDL that this city likes to pay with checks and cash, so we will be taking checks and cash. We're not cutting that off at all. And, yeah, if they need one to give to one of their requesters, I'm happy to give them a temporary license until the portal is open.

Thank you, Ms. Mara. And then lastly, I just want to make the council and the public aware that the city is working with the county and Cal OES to seek reimbursement for expenses and damages incurred during the storms around the holidays. And so we were able to participate under the county's emergency declaration, and we had a phone call With the state and the county, the state will be letting us know next steps. So even if we're able to achieve just a fraction of some of our costs and damages, that would be a victory. I will keep you posted on this one. Thank you.

Great. And I just wanted to add that excellent response from our city staff, from our police chief, from our fire department. Really, you handled the storms from the minute we had the warnings until the debris cleanup. So, excellent job. Okay, all right. So now we will go on to our public communications. And I just wanted to remind you all that these are comments, public comments on business, anything other than what's scheduled on our agenda tonight.

The council members cannot respond to any comments that you have. We can't discuss any of those items since they're not agendized. But this is your opportunity to let your voices be heard. So we'll start with Mariah, Mariah Mark, Dalton Foreman. Wait, what? I'm sorry. Malk. I'm sorry. Malk. Thank you. And Dalton Foreman and then Mike Hutchinson. So go ahead, Mariah.

And the last week I missed two appointments because the trolley was not running when it should have. One of those appointments was a very important medical appointment. I missed it. I tried to go and they said, nope, you have to reschedule. Why? The trolley wasn't running. So I called the supervisor multiple times, 20 times, never answered, never returned my call. He finally called me. He said, oh, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. And I said, oh, OK, well, is there anything you can do?

Oh, he was of no help. That's OK. I had to reschedule for February. Anyways, long story short, here I am. I'm speaking for not for myself, but for other people. I'm the one who rides the trolley all the time. I used to call Anthony and he was always there to help, the old supervisor. I just don't see why he's not here now, but we know why. You have been paying him for a year. Bring him back. There isn't anyone that I talked to that had a bad experience with Anthony. The trolley was running better when he was here.

You know that. I know that. We don't have to say now because the trolley is not running how it should be. We don't have that. Now we have to switch trolleys at every shift in the morning and be afraid we're going to miss our appointments like I've had multiple times. That's why I'm here. Why are we hiring weekend drivers that don't know anything? And also that they miss that they're not here in the morning when we miss our appointments. I have missed several appointments. I just don't understand why. If there's drivers here, why am I missing my appointments? Thank you.

And we had an update just now about the trolley, so.

Following public comment, I'm happy to have Ms. Cervantes get details on the dates when the appointments were missed, and we can follow up and see what happens.

Excellent, thank you so much. Okay, Dalton, Mike Hutchinson, and then Eric Ryder.

Hi, again, my name is Dalton Foreman. I just wanted to introduce myself. I recently moved in town with my family about six months ago. I'm now the new pastor of Ojai Valley Baptist Church just before Baldwin at the split of the 33 and the 150, and I wanted to introduce myself and let myself be known as someone who wants to participate in community and thankful that I can be here to be able to get to know you guys more so as I get to help and Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you and welcome. Now we have Mike Hutchinson, Eric Reiter, and then Clay Creasy.

Hello, Mike Hutchinson. I've been here 19 years, just adding my voice to the choir about the trolley. Paraphrasing, they say that you can tell a society by how it treats its most disenfranchised members. Again, paraphrasing. And so I think the trolley does need more attention. It used to run to the east of Ojai. That served a large community. It used to go further to the west. When you expand the area that it used to cover, that's 30,000 people versus maybe 8,000 people in Ojai. So it is important. And I'm told that it's been on the agenda for a year to get that second trolley running. That's a long time. It's enough time. It should be enough time to take and address that issue.

And that was what I wanted to address to you. Thank you.

Eric Reiter, Clay Creasy, and Helena Ascarella.

Given the update on the trolley, I'll jump to the punchline. Given that the City already has to cover the costs of defending Mr. Harvey's upcoming lawsuit, the fact that our community will also have to pay for damages if he loses can only leave all of us wishing for his success. To that end, he needs to focus his attention fully on that matter at hand. No one could ably function as city manager in the lead up to and while defending themselves at trial.

Regardless of the outcome, it is past time for Ojai to put Mr. Harvey in our community's rear view mirror. There must be dozens of reasons this council could use to relieve him from his duties without having to pay him severance. We most certainly should not continue to allow someone to direct our community's governance while defending themselves against claims of misconduct in that very service.

Thank you.

Thank you. Clay Creasy, Elena Pascarella, and then Anita Cram.

Thank you, Council, and Happy New Year. This is my first time at City Council in a while. I had three months off in Ojai at Purgatory playing Daddy Warbucks, but I'm now back and in my new normal personality as Ebeneezer Scrooge. Anyhow, I wanted to talk about a couple things having to do with the Cabin Village financial situation. As you probably know, we are now being billed by Dignity Moves on a monthly basis for their expenses associated with Bringing that project to fruition, they have given us six billings. They are charging their development fee at a rate of $30,125 a month, which means they will have fully paid themselves their half-million-dollar fee by this coming October.

Meanwhile, the project has not had shovel one hit the dirt. There is zero chance this project will be anywhere close to done by October. So the real question that comes to mind is, why on earth are they deciding that they should be paid that much money per month when the contract is completely silent on the rate at which they would get paid? We have to approve those monthly invoices, and so far they've all been approved pretty much as submitted. And I think in the interest of my Ebeneezer Scrooge personality, if I were you, I would tell Dignity Moves we're not going to pay any more monthly $30,000 fees until we see more progress than just, you know, something in the air.

The second thing I want to talk about is the question of how much it's going to cost, because as you all recall, we do not have an approved development budget. But that doesn't mean they are not telling us what they think it's going to cost on a monthly basis, because that's part of the required paperwork to submit each month's invoice. At this point, their current estimate, which has been the same number for the last couple months, is $9.8 million, which is $300,000 over the hard limit that you all have set of $9.5 million.

It has been said that Dignity Moves has a requirement to bring the project in at $9.5 million, no matter what. That, in fact, is not true. Correct. Paragraph 3.5 of the DMA is extremely explicit that if Dignity Moves thinks it's going to cost more than 9.5, then one of two things happens. Either we cough up more money from some source, or we reduce the scope of the project. There is zero chance Dignity Moves is going to take a loss or pay back any of their development fee impact. In fact, the DMA specifically says they will never pay back the development fee to cover cost overrun.

So I think you need to pay attention to those two things, how fast they're getting paid and what they're going to do if this thing comes in over budget. Thank you.

Anita Cram and then Cameron Ransom.

Good afternoon, council members and city manager and Sheriff Jenkins. Sorry that we haven't been able to work more because we've got lots of things to do. I want to first acknowledge that the land acknowledgement that we are holding this meeting on unceded Chumash land. It's been a while since I've come here, and I used to speak to you on behalf of the Ojai Ceasefire Now group, and we passed that resolution, grateful for that. But as you know, there was a ceasefire, and the genocide still continues, and more than 71,000 people have been murdered, and it's not stopping.

But the U.S. government and the way that things are going and the fascism in our communities. I'm here as the director of the U.S. Department of Peace. We're the organization that has the weekly peace vigil on Fridays. And we've been out there every Friday because of the wars and the bombings that are going on. We've had seven countries bombed in the last year.

But I wanted to speak specifically about what happened on Friday, December 19th. Alan Shorb, our co-founder of the peace organization, was attacked and assaulted by a young boy with his bike. He didn't touch him, but he ran up to him and skidded next to him, and Alan almost fell. So we're having problems with the e-bikers, and I was there, and I ran after them, and it was a very chaotic situation, and they wouldn't go away, and they wouldn't leave us alone.

I called the police. The police came in about 15 minutes. They were still there, and they were circling us, and they came back. And they assaulted Mr. Anan Panambalam, and they used their bike to kick up dirt and rocks on the other people who were standing there at the vigil. In this situation, I talked to the police, they went and talked to them, and they let them go.

And it was just a reprimand. And nothing else was done. We were never contacted about anything. No one followed up with me. And I'm afraid for us. I'm afraid for those children out there acting recklessly in the middle of the streets. We have to wait until somebody really gets hurt, breaks a bone, hits their head, has a concussion, until you do something. We need to have some kind of oversight of this. Somebody needs to be at the park after school.

And then they said to us, I hate you fucking Democrats. And I said, I'm not a Democrat. And Kamala Harris is a bitch. So it's come to the point where it's gotten political. It's not just about kids. They're attacking us politically. Thank you for your time.

Good evening, everyone. So I'm here tonight representing the new Democratic club in town, United Democrats of the Ojai Valley, and I'm recently elected to serve as president of that organization. So what we would like to let you know, all of Ojai community, is that Matt LeVere, Supervisor Matt LeVere, is going to be here January 22nd from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at, it will be at Mattelaha Campus Cafeteria.

And just to let you know some of the topics that we've requested that he speak about are the status of the land lease for the Miners Oaks Park, Threats to Lake Casitas and federal lands that are around the valley where we live. Homeless issues, protection of our undocumented neighbors, and probably more topics. We hope he will cover these, though. They were specifically requested.

And we would like to invite the community to come. It's a free event, so you can just show up at 6 o'clock and join us. Thank you.

Hey, Cameron. Ransom.

Thank you all. I hope that's appropriately auditory. Good evening, all of you. I appreciate everything you guys do for our community. My biggest concern, the first thing I want to bring up is, of course, the trolley. We did have this, it was, and I've spoken with Ben, and I've spoken with Nora, I'm sorry, Norma. This used to be something that was every half hour. It was regular. I've lived here for 35 years, all of my life.

And the service is no longer the same. Sometimes it's very late, sometimes it doesn't show up at all. We don't have a Trolley A, we don't have a Trolley B. The service is not what it used to be, and it was fantastic. Most of the people who ride this trolley are people who, they're older, They're kids, they're disabled, you know, they're working class people.

I think it's very important to have this service, and I'd like to see it expanded further into Oakview and Miramonte, just to do what we can for people who actually work for a living, because those are most of the people who ride this. And at this point, it just doesn't work for us. And then I know, Stephen, I don't know you personally, but I would like to say that I'm very concerned that at our bus stops, we do have a lot of problems where we still have people who are homeless or even doing drugs, potentially, and that's not being monitored. And I think a lot of people who do tourism here, and they come here, they would appreciate it if we had a good working public transit system that was on a regular basis, that came by fairly frequently.

I think that would really help us. I think it would really help our businesses. And I think it would do much better for our entire community. So anyways, my time is almost up. Thank you all.

Weston, do we have anyone on line?

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem, we currently have Mike Donohue. Mike, you have the ability to unmute and speak, and we currently have no more raised hands after that.

Thank you. And thank you, City Council. My concern tonight is about transparency, honesty and transparency. I only have time for three examples, but they paint a troubling picture. For first example, a citizen who followed the rules and filed a proper records request. He said in frustration, quote, City Council, nearly five months have now transpired since my proper request, June 27th, for records.

Still, not a single document has been produced. This non-response is a continuing violation of the requirements of the California Government Code, unquote. Now, well over five months, he and his wife still do not have the documents that they are legally entitled to. That is not transparency. Second example, an Ojai Planning Commissioner raised a very clear procedural issue. He said, quote, Ojai Municipal Code, Table 2-7 states that the density requirement for the land is to be determined by the Planning Commission Through the development review process, the density for the site in question was not brought before the Planning Commission for review, unquote.

He never received the density report. His concern was never addressed. It simply disappeared quietly and without explanation. That is not transparency. The third example is a construction management official from Camarillo, someone who enforces California state code. He had to reprimand the City twice. Alexa, off please. He had to reprimand the City twice regarding the construction bidding process. Meanwhile, citizens still don't know what quote-unquote sole source or sole provider is.

And the City Council and their attorneys have used that regularly. He said, quote, the California Uniform Construction Act requires that all components of a project's construction work be formally bid. Additionally, the City and its proxy cannot perform self-work. He went on to say that we could be in violation of the Act. That is a serious warning and the public still has no clear explanation.

So Council and community members, I'll leave you with this reminder. California Civil Code 710 defines deceit as intentional representation, negligent representation, concealment, and false promise. We're better than this. Play with all your cards up. Play with them face up. We have nothing to hide. Honesty and transparency. Please embrace it. Thank you. No

more raised hands.

All right. Thank you. We'll now close the public communications portion of the of the meeting and move on to consent calendar. Does anyone have any items from the consent calendar that you would like to pull?

Yeah. OK. I want to pull seven, eight, nine and ten.

OK. OK. Anything else?

Mayor Pro Tem, my dearest apologies. I have one more public card from Jacob. I'm so sorry. He submitted it as the last speaker was speaking. Thank you, Jacob, for waiting.

All right, Jacob. We'll open back up the public communications.

Hello, hi, how's it going, everyone? My name is Jacob Acosta, 27 years old. I lived in Ojai for five years, and I have recently received three projects that I want to present to you guys. The first one is the Ojai Dam Project. The second one is the Ojai Eco-Living Village, and the third one is the Ojai Visitors Map. I have some copies I can hand out if you guys want to check it out.

You can hand them to our city clerk.

And so, two minutes. The Ojai Dam Project is about utilizing the dam and doing a steelhead trout foundation charity where some use the dam and there'd be swimming pools, so it'd be like $13 for a day pass. And the dam could be used for producing electricity and also for breeding fish and trout. And it could also maybe power all of Ojai, but I didn't touch that. I just want to say swimming pools The second project is for the homeless community. I titled it as an eco-living village because it sounds better. And also for lower income housing, like around $900 to $1,200 per month.

And what it'd be is shipping containers and geodesic domes. The shipping containers would not have any amenities like showers and bathrooms and kitchens. All of that would be in a separate container or facility. So all they're having is a bedroom and a place to work. And then the third is a I don't know if you've been to Solvang, but Solvang has a great map, like a brochure, and it has everything in Ojai. Like, go to the breakfast club over here, go to the lunch, check out this tourist attraction. So having, like, kind of a map and showing, like, what companies and businesses are in town that also provide to the city of Ojai.

And then for the trolley, the E-train, it should be like an E-trolley where we get some AI chip that runs in like sensors. So there'd be like 10 in like circulation all at once. And we'd have to figure out how Elon would do that. And then that's pretty much it.

Great. All right. Thank you, Jacob.

Yeah, thank you.

And we'll make sure that we receive the information that you sent out. Okay, now we will close our public communications and moving back to the consent calendar. So we have a motion to pull 7, 8, 9, and 10. Can I get a motion for the approval of the other consent calendar items?

I'll move to approve.

Second.

Okay, great.

Motion passes.

Okay, excellent. And we do have a public comment on item number seven. Should we take that first before we?

I would say we should probably. Ms. Cho has joined us up here at the dais. So if there are this is a consent calendar item. So we don't have a presentation that goes with this. So if we could receive the questions on the item, we can address them to the council when the questions have been answered. I would suggest that you then go up. Great.