Ojai City Council, Regular Meeting

Check, check. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Tuesday, January 27 City Council meeting. Mr. Montgomery, roll call, please.

Gosh, Mayor, I am a little bit flat-footed this evening, so I will give a bonus one next time. Apologies.

Okay, deal. We accept. All right, so now we'll go to public communications and comments before we get to the consent calendar. So I have, please come to the podium, Larry Steingold, Eric Reiter, and then Peter Laramendi.

Good evening.

Wait, sorry, one thing, sorry.

If you wanted to reiterate that this is for things not on the agenda.

Sorry. Yes, these are for items not on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Ms.

Rule.

I'm assuming everybody's in all hat here. That's not correct. Okay. No, you're right. Good point. Thank

you. Well, good evening, Chief. A lot of people have been talking about the electric bikes and more activity. And while the last police chief was emphasizing education, more education and less enforcement, a lot of people in town think that it may be time to recalibrate. Thank you. That would help increase and maybe add things like require liability insurance within city limits, require registration of bikes or licensing within city limits. At least something that is making the less educated from the past chief more acceptable and more knowledgeable.

Also, if you can make the forms on the website fillable for PDFs, all of them, it would be a great help because not everybody has a printer and wants to type it. So if that could be done within a reasonable amount of time, like a month, it would be nice. Thank you.

Mr. Stangl, can I just ask, fillable forms for what area of the website? All of the above. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. Eric Reiter, please, Peter Laramendi, and then Michael Hutchinson.

Good evening, Council. Hello. We must immediately address the crisis surrounding City Manager Ben Harvey's deeply flawed tenure and the numerous lawsuits it's generated in response. This Council has a critical, time-sensitive opportunity to mitigate significant future legal and fiscal harm. I implore you not to miss the chance to take decisive action now. The most prudent path forward is to grant Mr. Harvey immediate leave without severance.

This swift action would serve a dual purpose. One, fiscal mitigation. The funds saved by withholding severance can be directly applied toward the substantial legal costs the City has and will incur due to his conduct. Two, legal de-escalation. His immediate removal may help alleviate the intense ill will his presence generates amongst the various plaintiffs.

This gesture could potentially soften their demands, resulting in a significantly more favorable financial outcome for the city than otherwise possible. After all, there's really nothing left to lose that is except what we need to lose. Mr. Harvey.

Thank you.

Hello, Mr. Mayor, council members. I wanted to bring to your attention, and I'm sorry if this is, you've already heard it, but the light at Fox and Ojai Avenue, if you're turning left on the green light, this has been addressed? No, no, keep going, I'm following you mentally. Apologies, yeah, so if you're turning left, so going west down Ojai Avenue, The light turns green, and pedestrians, when they press on the button, they assume that they're able to go, but the pedestrian, whatever, walking figure doesn't come up, and it comes up after the light turns red. So there's serious confusion between drivers, pedestrians, and it's causing an issue.

My second thing is I hope there's some sort of network analysis that's going to go into traffic down Ojai Avenue. I don't know if that means possibly reducing the amount of crosswalks. But there's just so many crosswalks and you've got so many people crossing. And then also on Montgomery, for both north and south, people turning left, that causes a lot of issues too.

So some sort of network analysis that, like, where you can put timing of how many vehicles and what have you. And then I also want to second Mr. Steingold's comment about Young folks on e-bikes. I have thousands of experiences of hours on a bicycle, and seeing those kids, it's terrifying. And they're going to get hit eventually, regardless if they have helmets on. They're going 25 miles an hour. So, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Laramendi. Just to say, we have initiated that we'll be starting a safety committee that will adjust those things. But every single thing you brought up, we have discussed at some level, and I know there are issues. Thank you, appreciate it. Michael Hutchinson, please.

Hello, so I wanted to indulge in a thought experiment. I've been told that the trolley has been funded for the Route B for almost a year now, but we haven't seen any action yet. So we're wondering what's up with that. We had a former, I don't know what his title was, but Anthony was very good at getting grants, and I understand that he got $900,000 in one year. And now we're at the level where we may not have enough funding to reach the threshold to get those grants again.

And apparently the person that's been replacing Anthony does not have skills or background in that area. I was thinking of a thought experiment, you know, what if somebody were trying to sabotage, and I know that's silly and I don't think anyone is, but if someone were to try to sabotage the trolley, what actions would they take? Well, they may, through passive neglect, allow the funding to die on the vine.

They may, you know, fire or put out to pasture the most effective member of the Council that was getting these grants and, you know, loved by the community. So on and so forth. So I'm not accusing anyone of that. Yet, the actions are there that appear to follow that agenda. So, anyway, also I wanted to put a second to voices on the e-bikes. It's terrifying. My wife says, you know, sometimes you see, like, what appears to be a five-year-old kid going very fast, and, you know, you have to take their life into your hands, trying to avoid them, and others, too.

And so, if there's something modeled that Santa Barbara's done, It's not only good to do a study, but let's have action as fast as possible and not have like a tragedy and then react to it. Let's be proactive. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. That will also be an item that will move more on. We've moved on it, but there's more to be done. Any comments online? Mr. Mayor,

we currently have no raised hands, but let's do tell our Zoom participants that we are in general public comment period. Thank you. Just give them one more second to raise their hand. And we can move on.

Thank you and welcome to Mr. Whitman. Yep, great. So we're on to the consent calendar. Does anybody want to pull anything? I just have one comment that I want to make and that is attachment B, the disbursement by category and item number one. I love it. It's so nice to see things categorized that way. So thank you for that. So you would like to pull number one? Okay.

Okay. Anybody else?

I'd like to pull number four.

Okay.

Just for a quick question. Yeah,

yeah. Anything else? So how about a motion to accept two, three, and five?

So moved.

Okay. Super. You want to call

Motion passed. Thank you.

Let's start with number one. So if we could just allow Ms. Cho to join us. Thank you. Thank you very much.

She's not allowed to respond though until she gets her name placard there in place. Otherwise, it's all moot. Thank you.

Again, so I didn't really have the time to look over things, so I just have a couple questions now. I'm just curious with Benny K Enterprises, for portable restrooms for Libby Bull, so is that, obviously it's something we take care of, that doesn't have to do with the people that rent the bull? It's not their responsibility?

What's your page number at the bottom right?

Eight.

Okay, thank you.

It's that third item. Thanks, okay.

So I can jump in and answer this. No, it is not a contractual responsibility. It is an issue we'd like to bring back to the Council for consideration for the coming year's CIP. The restrooms that exist at Libby Bowl are inadequate as far as their capacity. I'm sure probably a lot of you are familiar with that. And there's a reason we now know. We've been kind of trying to figure out what's going on. But the reason is they tie into a lot of the local businesses. They don't have their own dedicated main line is one of the main problems. So we need to embark upon a significant plumbing upgrade at that area.

Knowing that we have this issue and knowing that we get overloaded, we have been contracting for portable restrooms for certain larger events just because we just aren't able to meet the capacity. But we will come back to you with a plan on how to fix that permanently.

I appreciate that. And then on page 10, check number 79957, CarSoft, the technology corporation for the centralized community calendar, what I know that we spoke briefly about a calendar, so is this what this is covering?

Yes, this is a new community calendar we're going to be unveiling shortly. It's also referred to as Be With, and it's going to take the place of what is on our city website currently. We are going to be inviting agencies and non-profits to participate in it, and the goal is we're just trying to show all the city events without showing the commercial If you want to know about a meeting, if you want to, and it's a cleaner, more clear display.

So when you say people participating, they would come forward with information on various

topics or various events? They would receive an invitation from us, so take the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, and they would have permissions to send over their events. We have an administrator, it'd be James or Christy, and they would review it, upload it, and then boom, their event is approved. So we're just really trying for a more centralized, streamlined approach so that people can find community events on the city calendar more easily.

Okay. And then Mr. Hans prepared to show what that looks like. We may not get to that tonight. If we would, that would be great, but it would be something that you'll see as a website improvement in communication.

Yeah, please. Is this an acquisition? Yes. This

is not a monthly subscription. Yeah, good question.

Okay, page 18 at the bottom with Matt and Taylor's company. This is the first time I've seen the encampment resolution grant manager for $11,377.

Yes, so as part of the city's ERF grant, we have a line item for legal expenses, and our assistant city attorney has been working on the legal aspects of the application, namely things like dealing with the DMA, with dignity moves, also the bid process and procedure, those types of things.

So, and then that, and then on the next page, it's just the, again, just $1,705. So this is something, will it be, is there like

a fee each? Two different entries related to that. I can tell you, we're planning on, at the March 10th meeting, council asked for an update on the project, and that's when we're bringing back the bids for ratification. I was planning on, in that meeting, kind of giving an overview of where things stand. Thank you all for joining us. All the council. Sorry, but just the boring categories and the amounts that we have so you can see where that's coming from.

And it says travel expense reimbursement. It actually was for the full conference. It wasn't just travel expenses. So I just want to point that out. I don't care if it gets changed, but I was very careful and budget sensitive. And only charged the city for a flight to New York, just so you know.

Thank you. Ms. Burgess, should we have one item for all three of these that come up? And also, do we need to take public comments on the three that were pulled out

of consent? I would recommend taking public comment. I also generally would recommend voting on each of them separately in case the vote may be different on each one.

Fair enough. So let me start off with any public comments on the warrants item number one. All right, then let's go to a vote. Oh, I have a motion to accept consent item number one.

Yes, motion

to

accept. Second on that.

Thank you.

Let's give, okay. Hello. Ms. Mahler is going to speak from the. Sure. Thank you. Hi,

Lindy. Hi, Rachel. Hello, everybody else. Hi. I just had one quick question on this. I have Gridley as part of my district, the south of Grand. Yes. And there were some questions that I received about why that wasn't included in the speed study. It doesn't look like it was included in any of these streets. And there were some people who noticed that cars speed through the area that's not, that's the unincorporated part of town, north of Grand, but then they're still going fast south of Grand. And so I was wondering if there was anything that the engineers could offer about that, or anything you could offer about that.

So we didn't survey Gridley up in that location because we primarily focused on collector streets throughout the city, and that is not one of them. But it doesn't mean to say that we can't go back out there and do a speed survey. We most certainly can. If that's the direction of council, we'll just make it happen.

You're saying between, like, Grand and Main? Okay, because it's straight. Because

in the

avenue. It's confusing because it's 35 north of Grand, and then I think it's 30 south of Grand, and I know we don't have jurisdiction north of Grand, but people are still flying through, and, you know, there are families that live on Gridley, and people that are out working in their yards, and so they're concerned about that speed. So you're talking about between Ojai Avenue and Grand?

Yes. I

know it's a small

stretch, but it's a mighty stretch. It's a mighty stretch. But we can certainly have the traffic engineer go out and do a survey. Great. No problem.

We could also ask the chief to do a couple of drive-bys. Thank

you, sir. It's true. That is a straight,

straight street.

Anything

else? Yeah, I have a question.

Maybe it's more of a comment.

And maybe this is more for staff, but we, so we went through the first reading on this, and I have this recollection that we did want some tweaks to what was being proposed. And then I have a recollection that there were some comments from the public, and so I just, you know, when these Things come back for a second reading. I would just love to see a little more description of what we talked about the first time around and what the public said and then, you know, how we vote.

Because it kind of looks like we're doing a redo on the first meeting when really what we're doing is we're following up and affirming what we did the first time around.

I'm looking at page 55. No, I agree that would be helpful. So like on page 55, the blue items were the either recommended changes or what we requested. So if you see Quiama at Del Norte at being 20, we requested that. So the highlight it is, I thought, at least part of the changes, but I agree with what you're saying. It would be nice to have the shortest narrative to say what.

And I guess one other comment following up on that is that I received some comments leading up to this meeting with people feeling like Their comments weren't, like, being highlighted enough, and so this would be a way for us to assure the public that, you know, we're listening and it's part of our decision-making process.

I'll just add, if it's okay, just one caveat. We do action minutes by design because we want the video record to reflect what actually took place. We don't want to represent What somebody said, and I'm very resistant to do that. We'll take this as direction. I think we can talk about general themes that were discussed and general direction, but we don't want to quote people or try to get into specifics, because invariably when we do that, what we've seen, and I know you guys remember this, some of you, somebody comes forward after you print the agenda packet, that wasn't what I said.

Understood. Okay,

we tried.

Even if it was page 55, the page I'm thinking of, looking at, and if it said, you know, recommendations were the following, council recommended the following, that would suffice.

Sure, and I'm taking this as general direction for a second reason. Okay.

And just to be clear, too, on page 55, those are the recommendations as per the study and in the ordinance and also council's direction. And the other thing that I'd like to add, too, is this is sort of just the beginning of us talking about real traffic solutions. And we've heard earlier this evening already about some of the things that we're looking into.

The second meeting in February, you have a first reading of an ordinance for the formation of our new committee, our commission. So I think that's going to be very helpful in addressing citizens' concerns, your concerns, our concerns, and PD, of course.

One tiny little logistics. Assuming this will pass, how long will it take for the new speed limit signs to go up?

30 days. That's what I want to hear. They're sitting in our yard waiting for installation.

Love it. We have to

wait for 30 days.

Thank you, ma'am.

Great job,

Lindy. Thank you so

much. Any other comments on number four? Any public comments on item number four? All

right. And Mayor, no raised hands on Zoom.

Thank

you,

sir. I move to approve consent item number four. Second. Great.

Full call. Thank you. Council Member Whitman? Yes. Mayor Gilman? Yes. Council Member Rule? Yes. Council Member Mang? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Lang? Yes. Motion passes.

Moving on to item number six, the confirming the appointment to the vacancy for the Arts Commission. Mr. Whitman. Yes.

So I just this is more, you know, some just some questions about the process. So when I saw this item, I went to a location on our website that I've visited frequently over the years, which is the Madiac listing. And we've traditionally had the I'm going to start with you, Mr. Chairman. Whoever had made the appointments wasn't listed. And that's, you know, and that one reason I look for that is to, you know, if it's an imbalance among the City Council, that might, you know, that might mean that we're calling somebody out of turn.

But then I saw Another email with an attachment, the names of the appointing people put back in. So I'm assuming, I haven't been able to have the time to get back and look at the MADIAC, but I'm assuming that we're going back to including that as part of that document that people can look at.

That's correct. In 2025, we updated the MATIAC list for the public, and it did not include the rotating council member assigned to each nominating committee. But we've listened, and although we made an improvement, we're going to make it better. So since that happened, like Councilmember Whitman said, we have added that. So if you look on our local appointments list, our MATIAC list, it does state that. And it now states the existing vacancies and the next council member in rotation.

And I really believe that will help the public with some confusion around commissions. And thank you for bringing it up. I appreciate

it. But the other thing I noticed is that this is across the commissions. There's multiple where it says this is prior to the current. So a name isn't listed, but I do think it's useful. If we have that information available, I think it's useful for people to know who made the appointment of

a particular

commission.

I will look into our records and I'll get the past elected officials before the ordinance to create a nominating committee was established.

And then for the Arts Commission, I had some confusion because it looks like there's an appointment for a position number five, a vacancy, but we're doing a position number six tonight. What's the status of position number five?

It's a good technicality to point out. The chair and the mayor, working with the clerk's office, activated that sixth seat following the municipal code because these commissioners are volunteers, and we had a commissioner who was leaning towards resignation for personal reasons, but wasn't. And so instead of asking that person to resign their volunteer position, we did not, and we activated the sixth seat. Since then, that person has resigned, resulting in another vacancy. But these seats are not interchangeable because there's a rotating council member involved in each of them, or that midterm So it's important for Councilmember representation that we don't just swap out and willy-nilly these seats. So yes, there's a sixth seat that we're appointing now, and there's a vacancy.

So if Council chooses, we could stay at five seats with that, but it's up to your discretion.

Well, my only comment on that would be that Having an even number of commissioners means that you can potentially have a draw vote, and you even can when you have an odd number, but it has to be an unusual circumstance where somebody's absent or whatever, but we're kind of setting ourselves up. So my preference would be that if we're adding to the number of commissioners, that we're adding to make it seven, and that we should be in the process of I'm not going to want to interfere with getting somebody appointed to this commission, but I'm just worried about the process.

Yeah, that just improved.

Direction received, and the city attorney and I have already talked about that because the municipal code is silent to how the seats six and seven are. I'm using the term activated, but it's not in the municipal code, activate. So now staff will know we can present that staff report for discussion.

I just have one quick question. When it says his term, item number one, I thought the terms were four years. I know it's only a few months, but it's more than four.

Great point. Before this is done tonight, I wrote the staff report and I just wrote four years, but following our municipal code, we And what is written, they'd be appointed now to four and a half. So instead, I don't want to get lost in the mix, we're going to fix that. What I'll ask you to approve in the motion tonight is for the term to be, correct me, can you take over?

So we can get it right. So, pursuant to the Municipal Code, appointments to the Arts Commission should be no more than four years. And so, that will be, the recommendation would be to approve the appointment, or approve, yeah, approve the appointment through May of 2029, which would be a three and a half year term instead of a four year term. And then it would follow a normal four year cycle after that.

I think we need to figure out, I don't want to belabor this endlessly, years in the making, but from what I understood, we were moving to seven commissioners on the Arts Commission. So if that wasn't understood by everybody, there's got to be a formal way that it is understood. And, you know, there's a lot of sort of lack of everyone being on the same page or getting the same information.

Like, I have other information that I could add, but I'm not going to because, you know, we'll figure it out. I just want to say that I think we need to be more codified and formalized in what the, you know, the expectations around numbers on the Arts Commission and all of the commissions. That's the only thing I would say. Can

I follow up and just ask the attorney? So if you have a commission that says it can have five or seven members, by what's the process of which they would move from five to seven?

So the way that the code is currently drafted, I think it is a reasonable interpretation of the code for the nominating commission to make a recommendation to council, which is what has happened here. I also think, though, when the council is considering that recommendation, You know, obviously, I think one of the factors that the Council should be considering is not only the appointment of a specific individual, but obviously the filling of another or addition of another member to that commission. So, I mean, by approving the appointment of a sixth seat, you're effectively approving Having a sixth member, and so we could also certainly look at amending the code to make that process more

clear. The way it seems to be right now, correct me if you understand differently, if the chair and the revolving council person, they usually are having a conversation saying, we need actually two more members in this case. And we say, let's do it. That's how it's kind of been informally, it seems to me, so far.

I thought we had agreed that the Arts Commission would go to seven. In fact, we voted on that. Did we? I thought

so. What we agreed on when we changed the original code from five to seven was that each Commission, they selected in an open meeting whether or not to do 5 or 7. And so the direction of 5 or 7 comes from the Commission itself. I

like that.

But

don't we have to approve?

We have to approve everything. Yeah, we have to approve who it is and we have to approve the 5 or the 7. But we let them Because some wanted to be five and some wanted to be seven, and so we allowed them to let us know which one it

is.

And the Arts Commission wanted to be seven, but they wanted to stay at five until they were ready to move to seven.

After the grants.

So they're

ready for seven now?

As I understand it, they're ready for seven now. Yeah, that's my

understanding. This is my memory. Certainly could be wrong, but what I remember is that we've had one commission come to us for a vote that wanted to go to seven, and that was the Planning Commission. Not the Planning, the Historic Preservation. And so I don't recall it coming to us for a formal vote, yes, let's approve the move to 7.

It did when we made the changes to the ordinance, that we voted on several different factors at that time. Because we were also talking about the nominating committee. We were talking about the whole ordinance. And so that decision was made in concurrence with other decisions regarding that ordinance.

If I may, the currently codified, and the City Manager may wish to add something to this, the currently codified version of the Municipal Code does not reflect What was just described by Councilmember Lang. I'm happy to go back and take a look at that and work with city staff to find out if perhaps it was codified incorrectly, because sometimes codifiers make mistakes.

And we can also review the minutes of the meeting in which that was discussed.

Right, I think really we can do that, but I think the better approach would just simply to be, we can do both. Just bring back some revised code that's really clear. I mean, that's, having direction is nice, but just if you have, everyone wants to go to the code and see what it says.

Does anybody want to know another thing? The Parks and Rec, apparently, according to the Parks and Rec, Luis Gomez, who was their liaison, said five, but they all want seven.

Let's talk later about it. My recommendation would be that we bring this back as an agendized item at a future meeting.

You guys, you guys, bring it back, bring it back. Let's talk about this another time. We've got it. I do have one more comment if we're

bringing it back. You know, my impression is that this is a really burdensome, cumbersome process to get somebody appointed. And what I would suggest, you know, when you bring this back, if the rest of the council agrees, look at what some other cities do for their selection process and suggest models for us to use. This could be a two-hour conversation. You know, just as an idea.

We would have to, we have voted on the process, so we would have to have someone who voted yes to bring that back for review, in my opinion. I don't know, I'm

not a lawyer. We will review the minutes of the previous discussion. Take a look at

that. The former council spent hours and hours on this very question. I was in the audience. So let's move on on this one. Is there any more questions about this

appointment? I just want to make a statement that I was part of the nominating committee with the mayor and Smitty to nominate Brad Tabak Bank and I want to, he's in the audience and you know his Resume is amazing, and we are so very lucky to have him and to have him sit through this process, which has indeed been onerous. I will grant you that. So thank you, Brad, and welcome to the Arts Commission.

You're here on that. You want to make the motion then? Sure. Yep.

I move that we. I'm sorry.

Public comments. Public comments on item number six. All right. Anything online? No, Mayor. No raised hands. OK. Continue,

please. OK, I'm going to make the motion that we confirm the nomination of Brad Bradley Tabak Bank as Arts Commissioner to fill the new vacancy on the Arts Commission. Second that.

All right. Thank you very much. We are now on to our first public hearing, consideration of the resolution approving the agreement to extend the timeline to complete surplus property disposal at the Ojai Bungalows. Thank you, sir. Welcome.

Ready when you are. I think we're going to start off, Mayor, if that's okay, with just a disclaimer, if you will, from the City Attorney.

Okay.

Absolutely. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council. I'm here with staff tonight to present this resolution approving an agreement to extend the timeline to complete the surplus property land disposal With Ojai Bungalows LP. As I'm sure every single one of you know, in December 2023, the City Council approved a litigation settlement agreement with Ojai Bungalows related to four residential housing projects.

One aspect of that agreement was the conveyance of what I believe here in the city you often refer to as the Mallory Way Paper Street. And so as part of the agreement, that consideration of that conveyance was supposed to come back to Council for public discussion and consideration at a future meeting. To date, sitting here today, that has not yet come back to Council, and that is due to the fact that under that agreement, in order to go through, it contemplated compliance with the California Surplus Land Act, which is a multi-step process, but the very beginning of that is real property due diligence.

And while the city had begun the process of completing the real estate due diligence work, they need additional time. And so tonight we are here to present this agreement that will effectively provide the city with additional time to complete those processes and come back to City Council at a future date for consideration of the land conveyance. So the item on the agenda tonight is simply the extension of time It will provide City Council and the City with an additional 120 days from the date that the agreement is approved by the Council to complete those activities and bring that back to City Council. However, before City Council can consider that, we need to go, or at least we would recommend that we present this to the Department of Housing and Community Development for preliminary review.