Ojai City Council, Regular Meeting

We're back. Thank you all for your patience and waiting for us. Greatly appreciated. Ms. Burgess, please report out from the closed session.

Yes. On the first closed session item, council provided direction to make an offer, which, if accepted, would come back to city council for final approval in an open session. And then on the second item, council provided direction to the city attorney's office.

Thank you and with that we will close the closed session and we will now open the regular open session for Tuesday, February 10th. Roll call, please.

Wonderful. For the record, I'm Christine Steiner, the Vice Chair of the Arts Commission, and I bring you greetings from our Chair, Smitty West. First, we want to thank you for the appointment of Bradley Tabak Bank. Bradley has great board experience. Brad is ready to get to work, and we look forward to working with him, so thank you for that. We'll miss David Leeds. David has been very helpful with the city art collection and other matters, and David knows that he's always welcome to continue to participate with us on committees, however you would like.

As I'm sure you know, the grants checks went out to grantees in the past few weeks ahead of schedule from years past. And thanks to your budget appropriations, there will be 100,000 sparks of creativity throughout this community in the upcoming year. And that's very exciting. We expect it will yield great results. Your investment in the arts sector has been widely discussed throughout the community, and it's part of Chair West's push for looking at the creative economy as a whole. Our staff liaison, Bridget, is nodding, having gone through all of these, basically meeting by meeting.

I would be remiss if, in addition to thanking you, I did not also thank Commissioner Karina Wright and her community, Thank you very much. In other Commission news, Commissioner Pamela Grau continues an impressive program of educational seminars on arts-related topics. These free-of-charge programs are standing room only, and they're on topics such as social media, how to market yourself, how to market your art, contracts, copyright, all kinds of interesting topics, and we thank the Ojai Valley Museum as well as the Carol and Glasgow Valley Foundation We're lending their facilities for the standing room only seminar.

I chair the Public Art Committee. I'll be coming to you for conservation of the big red roller. That is the Ted Gall sculpture in the skate park. It's in deplorable condition. It's fading. It's chipping. It's pitting. It really needs attention. As I mentioned in our joint meeting, maintenance is always cheaper than conservation, but we're behind with deferred maintenance, and so we have some catch-up to do. In that regard, on the City Manager's desk for Please, I assume you're almost done.

Letters will be going out to business owners who have works that are city works pursuant to the Percent for Art Program. They're under the obligation to maintain those, and we haven't really been monitoring that, but that's going to happen. Finally, and because I'm almost done, I'd say that I do hope our City Council liaisons will attend our meeting, you know, that's on our agenda, and we're sad and lonely when we don't see you to see what we do and to learn what you do.

And in conclusion, we're working hard, we're working well, and we thank you for your faith in us, and we look forward to the new City Attorney coming to talk with us at some point soon. If no questions, thank you so much. Any questions?

Thank you so much. What a joy. For a future agenda item, I was thinking commission reports maybe could go to five minutes as council reports do, but something to talk about in the future. Okay, moving on. Any more commission reports? Mr. Montgomery, no? Okay, thank you. City Manager report, please.

Yes, Mayor. I'd like to turn things over to Ms. Cervantes.

Great, thank you Mr. Harvey. Mayor, City Council, we're pleased to announce that last week we launched the pilot route for the trolley which is running every 30 minutes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and that's definitely a milestone that follows a 50% increase from The previous year in 2024, and that's thanks to council support and of course, the hard work of our trolley team for building that trust and consistency with the community. We will be going out to hire new trolley drivers because the three that were in backgrounds to have decided to not follow up, follow through with the process because of personal problems. But aside from that, we will be going out. So exciting things are happening.

Thank you. That's very encouraging. Anything else? Oh,

no, Mayor.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. I'll move to public communications. I have Ron Salarzano, Brian Brennan, and Larry Stengel, please.

Okay, thank you very much, members of council. It's been a while. Some scheduling issues kept me from being here for a bit, but I'm so happy to be here to give you an update on the Ojai Library. The first and maybe most noticeable update is that the Ojai Library is still open. We've been planning this renovation for some time. As is often the case with construction, there have been delays, but we are making progress. We're making some good progress. In fact, this week we should be getting the final estimates from the contractors so that we can have some concrete numbers as far as start dates and duration. So we're really hoping that soon we'll have something that we can actually share with the community that will be letting people know how long it's going to be that we're going to have to be closed for those renovations.

That does mean that the library will be closed for that time. It's hopefully going to only be a few months and then we'll be back and better than ever. In the meantime, we are still going on with programming at the Ojai Library. We have all of our normal programming for adults and children. That includes the Ukulele Club meeting on Mondays, the Shakespeare Salon Monday evenings. It includes our Adult Crafting and Wonder Workshop on Sundays, Storytime Wednesday morning for the children, and our Afterschool Enrichment Center Monday through Thursday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

In addition, we also are going to have, actually we have this week, we have a Valentine's Day themed scavenger hunt going on at the library. Children can participate in the Love Your Library scavenger hunt. You send them all around the library looking for clues, and when they finish, they can select a button or a sticker prize from the front desk. As we get through February, on February 22nd, we're going to be having another special event for the Little Ones. This is going to be our Pokémon Day. We're going to have special crafts and activities relating to Pokémon, including a, I'm told, a Pin the Tail on the Pikachu activity that's going to be going on. So that's going to be going on at 1230 on February 22nd.

Again, all the usual stuff is still going on. As soon as we have updates on the renovation, we will share them with you. If anyone has any questions, of course, I'm here now, but you can always reach out to me at the library, and I'm happy to answer anything as well. And that's all I have for now.

Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Brian Brennan, please, Larry Steingold, and then Clay Creasy.

For the record, Brian Brannon with County Supervisor Matt LeVere's office. Hello. Honorable Mayor, Council Members, and staff, I'm here this evening to promote the Community Emergency Response Training Program. In partnership with the County Supervisor, Matt LeVere, Ventura County Fire Department, and your own city manager, and you, for the residents of your city. I did want to say this will be the first class that actually will take place inside the city.

The building's now been certified. Kent Hall is a better space and able to be acclimated to hold up to about 35 participants. The program educates, I want to say that this is a program that was initiated back when County Supervisor Steve Bennett in 2006 was in office. And when the floods came and closed down the roads, and everybody was stuck here for a while. And everybody was like, after coming out of that, it was like, we need to be better prepared for that. This program educates citizens about local hazards, such as fires and floods, and trains them in basic disaster response and survival skills.

The training enables individuals to provide immediate assistance to victims in their own households and in their surrounding neighborhoods. While it's true that we have an incredible cadre of first responders, the reality is that during a major disaster, we all need to be prepared to have enough supplies and training to shelter in place upwards of 96 to 120 hours.

Help can't be everywhere at once. That said, over the last 18 years, over 1,500 people have been trained in CERT here in the city and in the Ojai Valley. I need to give a shout out to your City Manager, Mr. Harvey, and Assistant Bridget, thank you, who have been very supportive in the marketing and promoting of this class, and to hold the very first class in this very room.

I also need to give a shout out to Councilmembers Lang and Rule. Thank you for signing up, for being a part of those numbers. If there was one more of you, it would have created a Brown Act violation, so I wanted to make sure you guys missed it by that much. Next time, next time. We'll get you there, yeah, if you're interested.

Thank you all for joining us.

Either a small tsunami or a little bit of an earthquake, and the class fills up instantly. I'm not asking for that, but generally that's been the nature of what happened in the past. But I just wanted to say that the City of Ojai and the Valley is very much part of wanting to be prepared.

Thank you. Larry Steingold, Clay Creasy, and Sarah Alderson, please.

Thank you, Brian, for that, and thank you for signing up for CERT. The other people can also sign up also after this. Kudos for the website, for the business portal. That's great. Can we next try to see if we can get all the forms fillable so we can do that online and do DocuSign so it can all be very efficient? Because I know right now it's more efficient for you, but it's not efficient for anyone else.

So, if you could make that fillable, that would be nice. Next, the lawsuits, please. Because we're the ones who may be paying for any of the litigation and the legal fees and the payments, I hope you win them all. Because the more you win, the less we have to pay. And if any of this stuff is self-inflicted, please correct those issues. Because a lot of these lawsuits may or may not have been self-inflicted, but It's going to get really expensive, and I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of that over the next couple of hours, maybe. But still, I mean, try to win them. And the fact that it's going up so high obviously tells me that the risks and liabilities are getting rather large, because otherwise the amounts we're spending would be less.

So I'm sorry. I've been in business enough to know that. Money chases money. So please manage the city in a manner that's still here in ten years so that we all get to enjoy it. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Clay Creasy, please, Sarah Alderson, and then Michael Inaba, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

Good evening, City Council members. Thank you for having me tonight to talk briefly. I want to talk about our city's financial controls, and every city's financial health really depends on two fundamental things. Number one, how much money you have in the bank. Number two, how good your control is of your financial affairs. I like to think about it a little bit like flying an airplane. The money in the bank equivalent is how much altitude you have, and your financial control equivalent is basically how good your pilot is.

The good news is when the weather's fair, you know, ordinary pilots are just fine. But when it gets stormy, that's when you want a really good pilot. And unfortunately, I think we're headed for stormy weather on the budget front. Let me give you some details here. Over the last three years, our city's expenses have grown in the general fund roughly 50 percent.

Our revenues have grown slightly less than 4 percent. So we've gone from a very healthy surplus to what is now forecasted for the current fiscal year that we are in is a $1.5 million deficit. That puts a very high premium on good financial management. And unfortunately, when I look at the list of all the things that, to me, constitute good financial management, I don't see very many being done well here. Let me give you a bunch of examples.

We don't do quarterly financial updates. We've talked about it for a year plus. We don't do them. We don't do a multi-year financial projection. We do project capital spending out several years, but we don't project general fund income and revenues. Our budgeting discipline is very spotty. Case in point, tonight we're looking at doubling the legal budget six months after we set it.

Our contract bidding discipline is virtually non-existent. We have debates whether we even need to follow the law or not. We pay vendors more than contract maximums, and we pay them after their contracts have expired. Where are the financial controls that are supposed to be in place to prevent that stuff? We have chronic workforce vacancies, which we blame on systematic, you know, stresses in the workforce. But the bottom line is, if you pay money for people, they will come and work. Our legal costs are triple the norm for a city our size, and we have six law firms actively on our payroll. I think this is beyond the pale. Our consultant costs are ballooning, yada, yada, lots of reasons why. The bottom line is we need to change course. Because we're in for a bumpy flight, and the last time I checked, we don't have any parachutes.

So please get serious on financial control. Listen to your budget committee. Thank you.

Thank you. Sarah Alderson, please, Michael Inaba, and then Sudip Motupalli Rao.

Hello, good evening. I am the Secretary of the United Democrats of the Ojai Valley, the new Democratic Club. I will be very brief. I'm just here to announce two events that we have coming up. The first of these is this Thursday, the 12th of February. It is going to be held at Oak Grove School and it is with VC Defensor. ...who are going to be talking about ICE activity in the Ojai Valley, and specifically how we can work to protect the more vulnerable members of our community. So everyone is welcome, you don't have to be a Democrat.

And that is at 6 to 7. And then the second event we're having is on the 22nd of February. That's a Sunday. And that is a town hall with the Ventura County Sheriff Fryhoff. And he is going to be there to talk to us about whatever we want to ask him, but particularly about ICE and how the law enforcement is dealing with that in the Valley. So that, again, is open to everyone. There are details on our website, on our Facebook and our Instagram. It is udov.org. And we have both. We have lots of social media. So please check us out. It is the United Democrats. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Michael Inaba and then Sudip Motipalli Rao. Am I pronouncing your last name correctly? Thank you.

My name is Michael Inaba, I'm a local arborist. I'm here to comment a little bit about the proposed changes in the tree ordinance. I wanted to see the-

Let me just pause you really fast, only to say, that's an item that is coming up? Of course, yes. Okay. Do you need to speak now and then- I'm just saying hello, that's all. Oh, okay, say hello, say hello. Hello, everybody. No, no, no, no, no, don't leave. What I was trying to say is, we take the detailed comments when we get to that item so that people can speak and comment. So I don't know if you can stay, because we do want to hear what you have to say.

Well, the letter is a little bit self-explanatory, and I wanted to make sure that that gets on the record, because I was given a very short amount of time, one day, for something that's been developing for three years. So we'll get to that later, and hopefully we'll table it and have a chance to really discuss it.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Sudip Motipalli Rao, please.

Hello, everyone. I vouch for Michael Inaba's Arborist Services, and I also want to share that I was one of the ten people who signed up for the CERT class that night. So I look forward to Rachel and Leslie. Yes, we as Ojai people who are listening out there and also who are there, let's get the 15 people we need so we can have this starting on March. I'm here to just share about a couple of things quickly.

We were initially planning on, as part of the Oja Valley Fire Safe Council, to give the council members an update on our work in October, November, and December. Looks like the plate is full, and we're happy to do it, I believe, on the 24th. Thank you. The other thing is that I wanted to announce to both all of you, and I'm looking forward to meeting individually, and I'm with the council members.

If you can spare about 20, 30 minutes to identify leaders in your community, also to identify neighborhoods that you feel could potentially become Firewise communities, as well as also identify resources that we'd like to map. So we are doing a massive map of all the community resources in our Ojai Valley so that these are resources that could come in handy when we have emergencies.

These will go into the database so that our first responders can access them. So maybe all the churches, so I'm going to knock on all the doors for all the churches, schools, and all those kind of resources which can come in handy. So I look forward to sharing about that. And our Wildfire Resilience Festival, this is something that the city has actually has put in our mandate to actually provide. It's going to be on Saturday, April 25th, at Sarzadi Park, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Once again, the last Saturday in April, April 25th, it's the Wildfire Resilience Festival, and we look forward to celebrating Ojai's journey towards becoming a fire-adapted community.

And so, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., it's a family-friendly event, and you're all welcome, of course. And this is an invitation to all the Ojai Valley community members to come in, engage, learn about the different things that we have and how we can all collectively work together to actually make our valley resilient. So that's a key. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Looking forward to the presentation. That's all the cards I possess. Anybody online?

Yes, Mayor, we have one raised hand from Mike. Mike, you have the ability to unmute and you have the floor.

Thank you. The title of my talk is From Gymnastics to Housing, A Pattern of Ignored Advice and Poor Judgment in Ojai. Our city deserves management and leadership that listens, follows the rules, and protects public trust. When sound professional advice Thank you. As the City of Ventura Council is offered, it should not be dismissed. By doing this, fiscal and legal consequences can impact our community.

In June of 2025, the Finance Committee delivered a clear, data-driven warning to City Management. They disclosed multiple budget expenses that increased over 45% in just two years. They presented analysis, specifics, and recommendations. Those warnings were kicked to the curb. As we will hear tonight, legal spending and internal processes are now a big problem with the $710,000 budget overrun.

This is not a bookkeeping error. It shocks and angers our community. Another area of concern is procurement. Procurement rules exist for a reason. Staff should have been advised to solicit competitive bids for over $300,000 of accounting services, a process that should have been followed. Instead, sole source contracts were awarded without competitive solicitation and without proper council directives.

Qualified local and regional firms were bypassed. On top of that problem, these contracts have repeatedly exceeded their not-to-exceed dollar limits. In May of 2025, the City failed to challenge questionable legal rationale provided by Matt Summers. Rationale regarding the largest city-led housing project in Ojai's history, Cabin Village. Now, multiple construction management firms are angry after being denied a fair bidding process.

Many people are shocked that a sole source contract was awarded to one firm. Dignity moves. That project is now massively behind schedule, more than a million dollars over budget, and in breach of its development management agreement. Please note, when legal advice is unclear or weak, it must be questioned. Matt Summers did us no favors on this subject. On the contrary, we were bullied.

Bad judgment doesn't stop at procurement, finance, or housing. It reaches into the gymnastics program, the trolley service, personnel decisions, and even basic bid notice practices. Tonight, I'm asking you to reassess your approach. To respect the role of committees, commissions, and the rules that govern us, and commit to a responsible reboot of key project.

Renew your commitment to the public trust. I believe Ojai's future depends on it. Thank you. Thank you.

No more online.

Thank you. Okay. Moving on, on the consent calendar, I had one question for number one. I suspect other people may as well. Anything else that anybody would like to pull out of consent?

Well, I don't want to pull something, but we're making a couple of appointments and I think it would be worthwhile to

report

who we're appointing.

I want that as well. We have one present, and the other notified us that they cannot be here. So, yes, I don't want to pull them, but I want to acknowledge it, too. Thank you for that. Anything else to be pulled? No? Okay. So, maybe what we'll do is let's start with number one, if that's acceptable. I'll just start if other people have questions. Mine's very simple.

The question is on my master page 13 and it's Ojai Unified School District 28,563 for the skate park. Is that an annual fee? There's just no timeframes set on that.

Yes, it is an annual

fee. Calendar year. Annual. Okay. And thank you very much. Okay, perfect. This is a public comment on, am I seeing this as a public comment on number five? On number five in the consent calendar? Okay.

You have not approved the consent calendar. We have not approved the consent calendar, yeah.

Reminded me, so

I

guess that'd be no. No, no, no, okay, great. But any other questions on number one, please? I

just have a couple.

Okay.

On page 11, with the Trapeze Smith.

Whoa, take it easy, take it easy.

On page 11 for Trepippian Smith, it says the $11,000 for graphic art services. Is that for graphic art or like our social media? I believe

that includes

social media as well. That's included. Okay, and I think that's all.

Yeah, and if I could just add to that, I think that also, it's an excellent question, because it also relates to work done on the style guide, which is probably why it says graphic art, but it's both

combined. They don't seem to break out by, I haven't noticed that they break it out in that way. I mean, in terms of what they're specifically working on, it's overall. Am I getting that correctly?

Mr. Bevis-Smith? No,

they do. They do break it down. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. Please continue.

And then just one more on page 15, payment to U.S. Bank National Association for credit cards. And I'm just curious because it says for November, but it was paid in January. And I'm wondering, so then late fees apply?

We haven't seen late fees incurred for the credit card payments. Okay. But on future statements, if that changes, I can notify you. Thank you.

Appreciate that. Great.

That's it.

Thank you for that. Okay, so should I take the public comment on this one, number five, and then we'll get an acceptance, or we'll go ahead? We can go

ahead and take public comment before we, because we hadn't yet approved the consent calendar.

Understood.

So we can go ahead and take

public comment on that. Thank you so much. So, Anita Cram, please come up.

Good evening, everyone. So my comment is on appointments for the Planning Commission. I really feel like we're sorely lacking in the natural sciences on representing planning in our valley. We all know we live in a wildlife corridor, we live in a watershed, but I really don't see good representation of our natural environment in the planning process. So I would really like to encourage you to step away from lawyers, developers, builders, business people, and move into the natural sciences of someone who really understands what's happening in our environment out there and how what we build and what we plan affects that. Okay, thank you very much.

If I might, what I would encourage, there's still an opening, so if you know somebody that you think would be great for it, encourage them to apply.

I'll think on

that, but you do it too.

We all do, we all do, but thank you for that.

Can I also point out that, as has been pointed out here a number of times, there are criteria that people, occupations, that we're supposed to give preference to, and that might have to be changed as well. I am 100% in support of what you're saying, but we will need to amend Whatever that code is that lists the occupations that we should prioritize.

Yeah, we just don't want to have a drill baby drill kind of attitude.

Understood. Thank you very much. All right. So I know we have one potential here, but why don't I make a motion to improve our consent calendar items one through five?

I'll second.

Thank you.

Great. Roll call,

please. Roll

May

I ask Marcel Rosas please to come up and say a few words. So Marcel is our Youth Commissioner now appointed to the Parks and Rec Commission. I know I'm putting you on the spot. Just let us know who you are and a little bit about your history if you don't mind. Thank you.

Hi, council. Yeah, like he said, my name's Marcel Rosas. I'm a sophomore at Rocktree Sky and Summit. I've lived in Ojai for like, I think 11 or 12 years now. I used to go to Oak Grove and now Rocktree Sky. And yeah, I was recently appointed that role as the youth commissioner. So I look forward to getting to know you guys and working with the city and hopefully working with more youth commissioners in the future.

Thank you. We look forward to getting to know you there. Thanks. Yes, please, go ahead.

I just wanted to make a comment that Marcel is going to be such an incredible asset to that council. He is incredibly creative in so many different ways and my neighbor. So welcome to the commission.

And this is also something that is going to come up actually going forward a little, and that is a future agenda item will be the potential for us to discuss the possibility of a non-voting youth member of each commission. So I hope that we'll entertain that and talk about that.

Yeah. And so that brings a question up for me, is how are we... Welcome. You're wonderful. How do we actually... Like, what was the process here?

I guess I'm really trying to involve everybody I possibly can and not have just the mayor do it, so first we solicited people in the City of Ojai's Youth Council, send the word out, so we had a few people that toyed with it. When we had somebody come forward, we actually met with the chair and also Christy Rivera and myself, and then we unanimously forwarded Marcel.

I think that's the process that's going to ensure sustainability. All right, wonderful. Okay, we will move on. Now we are on to item number... Oh, go ahead, please. Yeah, we're gonna announce number five and... Oh, yeah, but he's not here. Yeah, but

just...

Talk about it.

Okay. Yes, so I was actually on the selection committee and I will say in response to that speaker that I made many phone calls as a prelude to our selection process for people who I thought would be good in that role, but I didn't find that any of them felt like they could serve. But we are confined to who applies. And so we had three people to select from.

And I'm happy to say that who we selected, Brad Stewart, at least by the conversation we had with him during our interview process, I think he will be outstanding.

I appreciate you saying that. I agree 100%.

Just a quick question. Have we had any, because I know Brad is, Brad Stewart has been, he's been an applicant for a good while. And I'm wondering if we are getting new applicants or if the entire interview and applicants were, you know, if they had been on.

There's one additional. OK, that's my question. And we will bring that person on for the next opening. So in addition, so what I think will probably happen is we'll solicit again. We have one more to be interviewed. So when our next rotating council person comes with the chair and myself, we'll try to get everybody in on that one. But as of right now, I believe there would only be three at the moment.

And one of them being a new applicant. Correct. OK, thank you. Appreciate it.

Yeah. No, thanks for asking. But I love, like, what Anita Cram said is critical, right, which is send the word out, like, getting more people on here would be really wonderful. But thank you, Mr. Whitman. I appreciate you saying that. All right. What's that? We voted to approve the consent calendar and it went forward. So now we're on the public hearing number six.

I do have something to read on that, on number six, so as I open that up, let me read what I'm about to say. The City staff and the City's Attorney's Office have requested that this item be tabled or continued in order to evaluate certain legal issues related to the proposed project. Once that evaluation is completed, this item will be rescheduled for a public hearing before the appropriate decision-making bodies of the City. For this reason, the City Council, we are requesting that all public comments on this item be held until a future public hearing.

So I'm asking for a motion on that. That's the request from our City Attorney and staff. I'd move for that.

I'll second it.

Okay. Any questions? All right, shall we do, let's do a roll call on that. Yes. We're suggesting no discussion so that we can bring it forward when there's more clarity. Yes, go ahead.

Motion

passes. So I realize some of you may have come here for that read, that point, and it will come back or go in front of the appropriate bodies, but we are needing more information. So I hope that it hasn't been too long of a waste of time. My apologies for that. I will move on to the public hearing number seven, the energy modernization program.

Just point of clarification there. Yes, please. Did we want, are we doing this first and then we're going into the

Oh, I forgot. Sorry. Well, I was saying this and then the discussion, but for number 15. We could do 15 now. Do you guys object to 15 now and then help if Ojai can leave? Does anybody object to that?

And the city attorney's just telling me I jumped the gun. Actually, I had the wrong place marked on my agenda.

That's okay. I had it be for after this item, but anyway. Okay, well, let's proceed as we were saying. Okay,

no problem. So here we are. Okay, thank you, Mayor. So Ms. Palmer is with us. We have Donna Lease also from Climatec. So I'm going to just kick things off with Ms. Palmer, and then we're going to kick it over to John. No, please stay, please stay. We'll be very, very brief. I will be brief. Also, I want to point out that we have Ms. Ashley Lowe, who's also joined us via Zoom. So, anyway, this is a follow-up item from earlier this year.

You may recall, Clemson Tech came before you, presented, you know, basically the concept of going through All of our city facilities and modernizing our energy equipment to make it more efficient and to lessen our carbon footprint and make an investment in our buildings. Taking another step back further, the year before, if I'm getting this right, we did an RFP. Thank you.

We received two very competitive solicitations, one from Climatech, one from Wilden. Ultimately, we recommended Climatech to you, which you approved, and so that's how we're here for this tonight. Again, now I'm going back to earlier this year. The Council's direction to Climatec was come back forward with a comprehensive scope of work showing us what's intended to be done, what's the investment, and how it's going to work. And so that is essentially why we're here now. So before I turn it over to Ms. Donnalise, is there anything else I forgot?

I don't think so. The last time this was in front of you was in November, and you looked at a preliminary scope, so this is follow-up to that, and we'll get some more details tonight.

Thank you.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Gilman, members of Council, City Manager Harvey, members of staff, and the community. As mentioned, we had our study session back in November, and we are here tonight to share a fine-tuned scope of work for the Energy Modernization Program. The program aims at modernizing infrastructure past useful life, electrification, and decarbonization, and taking advantage of grants and incentives before they expire this year.

As mentioned, we were selected and awarded by way of a competitive RFP process in June to act as the city's energy services provider and design an energy modernization program. Over the last eight months, we have collaborated with staff to analyze utilities and perform a citywide assessment of facilities. We shared those preliminary findings with you back in November, and we are here this evening for Council consideration to proceed with program implementation.

These are the areas that the City asked us to assess for energy efficiency and renewable measures, which are incorporated in the Energy Master Plan on this slide. You'll see there in yellow, the city has already made excellent progress in terms of energy efficiency improvements, electrification, renewables at select facilities. And then in green there, you will see our scope that's really going to help the city address a large portion of the remaining need in terms of standardizing HVAC, modernizing to LED, and complying with state mandates and implementing renewables in the areas that are most cost effective.

In blue, you'll also see future opportunities expected to be analyzed by this fall that require further coordination with other agencies like the Clean Power Alliance for further opportunity for renewables. This is a summary of the final scope of work reflected in our agreement, and this reflects everything that you saw in green on the last slide, including measures for HVAC, lighting, and renewables.

The Phase 1 total program is $2.7 million and generates over $3.3 million from improvements over the useful life. The City intends to fund it through City Contribution Measure C, federal incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Clean Power Alliance Building Assistance Electrification Grant already awarded to the City in the amount of $250,000. In addition to financial benefits, the city will also reduce CO2 emissions by over 6.77 million pounds over the life of the program.

And as we shared in our study session, we will also support the community in engagement and communication through a host of initiatives to keep the community abreast of master plan progress. After tonight, shall Council approve this motion? We would begin construction mobilization by March. Permitting and equipment procurement would follow in the coming months, keeping in mind the Inflation Reduction Act safe harbor deadlines.