Ojai City Council and Historic Preservation Commission Joint Special Meeting

Do you want to?

There

he is. Oh,

great.

All right. I know, but we'll start and then hopefully she'll come in. All right, hello. I guess you're over there. All right, welcome. Ready to go? Okay, welcome to the Tuesday, February 24th City Council and Historic Preservation Commission joint special meeting. Roll call, please.

Okay, so we had a really productive joint council meeting last year, and a lot of the items that we're bringing up is a recap, is an update to-

Can I pause you for one second? I'm so sorry. I have one public comment on this item that I forgot to ask, so let me do that right now. Sorry about that. Larry Stangle, please come up. Thank you for being patient.

Good evening. Hi. It's my first joint meeting, so I think that's great. My question is that maybe you should have or discuss, and I'm sure you will and have, either pre-mortem or post-mortem of the present arcade disruption so that the process doesn't happen again. So that there aren't any issues, so that the process works, so that things are done in an order as they're prescribed in manuals and regulations that we have, so that mistakes don't happen, so that we don't end up with the present, I'm assuming, with a potential problem.

Hopefully, you will solve it to everybody's satisfaction. I do have a suggestion that can go on later, but thank you very much. Succinct and to the point. Thank you, sir. Okay.

Thank you. Thanks. Is there anybody online that wants to talk? Okay. Thank you.

All right, so last year we celebrated something that happened back in 2018. It was our downtown Ojai State Historic District. It took a long time to first find out that it existed, and then with COVID and many staff changes, we didn't really celebrate it until last Ojai Day. We need to be better about celebrating our wins, especially the gift of the downtown with Edward Drummond Libby, worked with a group of distinguished gentlemen to transform our ramshackled western town into something timeless and beautiful. He relied on City Beautiful principles, something that he had experienced at the World Fair in 1893.

We were the first of its kind that did City Beautiful in a small town in a Spanish style, and many other cities followed our lead, including Santa Barbara, San Clemente, Westwood, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rancho Santa Fe, and even Coral Gables and Florida took that lead. So there are two types of outreach that we want to discuss tonight. The first is outreach to the community, stakeholders, students, and historic resources. We put together a successful booth to go with our Ojai Day jail events, and we would like to duplicate that pop-up at other city events. If we could get your support on that, hopefully staff can send us in the right direction for upcoming events.

Secondly, putting together a presentation for educating property owners and store owners in the Arcade and in the State Historic District, showcasing the significance of the beautiful and historic downtown we all share. We think a lot of compliance issues can date back to a lack of education, of civic pride, and of an overall need sense of belonging. We think that an educational opportunity is long overdue, and we feel strongly that this is part of our purview in our functions and powers that we went over with our attorney during our training a couple weeks ago, and then are tackling right now with our ad hoc, includes F, which is advise and assist property owners, H, which is develop guidelines, and I, which is inform citizens. We are so lucky.

Look where the people are drawn. These buildings and the Civic Center is a gift that just keeps on giving. That is what draws people to town. It is the beauty of the area and it's to everyone's benefit, especially the store owners, to keep this arcade beautiful. People come from all over and many stay because it's authentic and unique. We understand the desire to move more traffic into the stores, but if we all work together to keep the buildings the center stage, it will remain as it has been for the last 100 years and into the next.

If we allow it to get away from us, then it becomes a mocking of itself. It becomes a junky, cluttered, touristy place and loses Libby's vision of a dignified, mission-style civic center. But when we work together to restore and revitalize, like the theater and the El Roblar, we will continue to thrive. So what we are asking is that we produce a slideshow presentation on the significance of the State Downtown Historic District and Arcade And then, after everyone has had an opportunity to view it and understand the founding principles and guidelines of the Arcade, then we set a compliance date. We believe it needs to be holistic. It should have never been one store against another, whether it's complaint-driven or even proactive. It always has needed to be holistic.

If it's going to succeed, store owners and property owners need to feel their decisions, the decisions that are made, are universal and fair. And we believe that you'll have much less problems with compliance when education and fairness are considered most important.

On that point, I know we're intending to inform all of the store owners around our compliance, so this seems like it could be just a shoe-in with that. Is that how you're envisioning it?

Many times in many ways, and it seems that the best way to do it is through education. I think that when you start really having an ownership understanding of Libby's vision and what he was able to accomplish, and then have it burned down and then have him rebuild it for us once again, It's such a gift, and I think that if we all work together and educate and then set deadlines, I think that when people feel it's fair, it's not like you're pointing something out because someone complained or you're doing parts at a time. It's an education piece that seems to be missing, and I think that the HPC is the one that should be putting together the education piece.

Actually, this aligns very closely with what we have been talking to the Chamber about. What we have discussed with the Chamber is having a this is why Ojai is so special. And then outlining all of our ordinances and all of the policies that business owners, that we want business owners to adhere to for the very purpose that you're talking about. And so what this is making me think is that we should have a combined effort working with whatever education materials you want to provide. Thank you very much.

Please.

Yeah, I was just going to say we've spoken about this in our ad hoc and we'd like to have a party, you know, make it celebratory so that everyone sees the beauty and everyone can get a buy-in and everyone can meet everyone. It would be nice if all of the store owners and the renters, you know, actually knew each other. We think that that would build some You know, some goodwill and everybody's understanding.

The other thing that I just wanted to say, I think also we need to have real clarity on what the HPC, you know, how you fall as a quasi-judicial agency. That's a larger topic. I definitely think we need to have the gathering of everybody, and city and chamber and HPC, And I think, obviously, you guys should lead the educational piece.

I had a similar question to what you just asked, which was, is there anything in the presentation that is not perfectly clear and 100% agreed upon? Because then if everything is, then no problem. If there's anything where you're wanting to have a conversation around a role, or if there's any gray areas, of course, that's different. But I don't see any reason why you shouldn't start with your presentation. I mean, with everything already agreed upon.

Yeah, I mean everything that we said here, it's just, there just seems to be that component missing. Getting everyone just to understand the history behind it. And it's little things, like the other night when you guys had your meeting that we were doing our awards, and the Gables showed up, and Craig and Brian were both reading about the history of the Gables and what, and how Ojai is the founding area for ARP, and ARP is a big deal. The whole, everybody in the audience went, oh, like, No idea.

So I just think that we have to celebrate our wins. You know, I feel like that there's so many things that this town, I mean, how many significant architects have built here? And I just feel like people don't know how awesome. They just think, wow, this is really cool. And it feels right. It feels authentic. But there's a reason for that. And there's a reason why it hasn't changed in all these years, because there's been people for the last 100-plus years that have worked really hard to keep it looking the way it looks so it has that authenticity.

Mr. Seibert, can I ask, the education piece for the shops in the arcade, what's the status of that? I know I haven't talked to you recently about that.

Yeah, so we've been getting feedback from the Chamber, and then I think there was a brief conversation with the Chair about that as an opportunity piece. We have begun the beginning stages of going out and kind of evaluating what's inbounds and what's out-of-bounds out there. We're going early in the morning, but I've also got co-compliance going at other times when the businesses are open to see what happens when the doors are open and what's out there versus when the doors are closed and things are pulled back. So it's understanding what's inbounds and out-of-bounds from a compliance standpoint at this point.

Do you see any objections or any things that you'd want to work out with this kind of joint education piece?

I think there's, it's a three-legged stool, right? Like the chamber, the city, as well as, well, obviously, um, historic preservation is a part of the city, but the history piece is another stool piece. I don't, I don't feel comfortable, um, representing the historical piece. I really think the body that's sitting here is the body that really should be kind of accentuating that. So absolutely.

So you're saying, just to make sure I understand, you're saying you don't have any objection to joint education, you don't want to be the one who's delivering that portion of the education, that would be somebody from this group? Correct. I got it. Okay. Makes perfect sense.

While you're still up there, can I ask, do we have the support to do a pop-up at different city events? We had these beautiful banners made. I don't know if you all got around to our booth to see it at Ojai Day. And then we had a lot on loan from Treasures of Ojai, a lot of artifacts. All sorts of things in it, and really, we had a lot of good conversations, and we have a level of expertise. When people come to us, we can help them before they come to you, before they start things. It's like we can have that conversation, if they see us kind of pop up in more of an informal thing, because, you know, coming in front of the city sounds cumbersome, but coming and talking to us at the park in the middle of a Lavender Festival is a lot less intimidating.

I mean, you know, we can direct people and

I can't imagine anybody would have any objection to you having a booth at any booth opportunity. I mean, I'm happy to hear otherwise. I

see no issues with it.

Right. Like what you did at Ojai Day was seemed like you were well populated. There was lots of people there talking. It seemed great. It was beautiful to see. Please.

Well, I've had a few people in the city ask me which compliance rules are going to go by. Because I understand there are two versions of this.

Two versions of which rules are you talking about? Of

the rules for the business owners. As far as signage and stuff on the

sidewalk. That's

sort of an important part of this whole

thing. Yeah, there's regulations as it relates to the Ojai Municipal Code and there's design guidelines that also are basically a tier from the Ojai Municipal Code. So both of those pieces are being merged together to help influence and educate those representatives.

I think one thing that people need to understand is that the historical piece is like an overlay zone, and in fact, Los Angeles, their historic districts are called historic preservation overlay zones because they go on top of the other rules and regulations that may be there. Because we have a whole set of procedures and rules that that go along with historic buildings that may not apply to a building a couple of blocks away that still has a Spanish design like say the Fitzgerald Plaza or something, but it's not part of the designated historic. So I think that's one thing that we have to kind of work out is that we have general historic guidelines through the municipal code in the city, but we also have these specific guidelines that are brought up with different historic landmarks and historic districts.

So that's something we can help with with the education piece, I think, is helping people to understand that, which is why the arcade is maybe a little more strict in its rules than it would be for a building two blocks away.

I hear what you're saying. I think the issue, if I understand correctly, is that as this rolls out, it's not happening instantly for every business right this second. And I've heard people say, well, why is the sandwich board happening not here but here? And our hope is that it will happen overall, but it takes time to make that happen. So we want there to be one set of rules, of course.

Yes, go.

So we had, I think it was you and I and Brian that went to the planning commission, that they were going to be discussing design guidelines. Was that me and Brian? It was one of the three people because we were still within our numbers. We heard that they were going to be trying to maybe go over the guidelines and maybe work on them, change them. And we wanted, they were hoping to get an ad hoc, but they couldn't get anyone willing to volunteer. So maybe now that we have different planning commission, Commissioners, maybe we could bring that item back around to them and see if they might want to do that again. Because when we talk about an overlay, we have, there's the East End, there's the, you know, design guidelines, there's the arcade guidelines, there's the plaza guidelines.

There's so many that if we can work with planning and kind of Simplify it, because we don't want to just keep, I mean, we have to have our historic guidelines, but there has to be a way to, we've talked about this for a long time now, just slimlining it and making it to be more easy for someone that, so they know what's

supposed to be. There's something like five different design guidelines that kind of blanket, at least from the downtown district and a little bit west and all the way to the east edge of the city. That conversation has been ongoing, and I do recall there was this opportunity for a joint meeting, and unfortunately, the commissioners for the Planning Commission at that point weren't interested in the joint piece. But that certainly, I mean, we've got basically an entire new commission that we could pose that opportunity to.

I just wanted to respond

that I'm not sure that there can just be one set of rules. For example, if you look at the houses up Foothill Road, there are some that are landmarks. There's probably about five or six landmarks, and the rules for each one of those landmarks is specific to that building. There may be things that they have to follow that are in the landmarking agreement and historic report that their next door neighbor, and I think that's why it's kind of confusing to people. It's almost like the historic properties are a zone, but it's not a zone in terms of one area. It's a zone in terms of the different properties that are within that, so.

I get

that.

I thought this issue was that Some people are being told, take away your sandwich boards, and other people haven't been told that yet in the arcade. Oh, in the arcade? Yeah, at least that's what I've heard. Oh, I see. It's not happening as

quickly as it should. I think that's also, the five overlays are all downtown issues.

Mr. Whitman, yeah. Yeah, so there's one other wrinkle, and that is that it may look like there's different sets of rules, but Each merchant has their leased space, but then there's also the plaza space, which is public space, and there's ambiguity about Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

And then there's the over state historic district. So there's so many things that I feel like we need a welcome basket, a big pot of coffee, and let's just sit down and tell you what you just got yourself into when you came into the arcade.

That would be, I know you're sort of half joking, maybe not, but that seems like what needs to happen so everybody understands when they come in, oh, here's the commissions, here's how the council works, here's a welcome basket, but here's the rules we're asking you to follow. That would save us a lot of heartache.

From what I understand, though, there's legal clarification that we need to have our city attorneys do as well as to what each district is, how it applies, what the state historic district allows us to do or not do. I think we need a deep dive legally as well. There are many, many pieces in this, so I'm going to say that One leg of that stool is going to have to be legal clarification because we can't move forward if we're not clear on what the law is and what our powers are and aren't.

So I would say that's got to be a top. It almost precedes anything else. I think we can move forward with education and all of that, but a real clear sense of the legal situation is Fundamental, I think.

Yeah, because you do, you have state law and then you have local law and sometimes they affect the same area, too. So tying that all together and making sense out of it is part of it.

Was there, does that feel good on

each? Yeah, that feels good. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay. Now, before we change topics, I did want to say that we, as you know, a couple weeks ago we gave out awards. We do that once a year. There's a yearly and a lifetime, but we're noticing that maybe there's room for another award that is something that It beautifies Ojai, the Ojai beautiful sort of city, beautiful principles of this gift of Libby. So we're not ready to present it, but just know that it might be coming towards you at some point soon, that we just feel like there are opportunities to really celebrate people who, or buildings or situations that have really kept Ojai as magical and historic and wonderful as it is. And so we thought that adding one This is about the survey.

Last year at our joint council meeting, you gave us unanimous support to update our survey of historic resources and then unanimous vote to fully fund it in the city budget. Thank you all for doing that. This is just an update. As you know, we picked our agency, Historic Resources Group, HRG, who just completed the City of Ventura. The City is in process of contract signing and hopefully will be starting in the next few weeks. The reason we're bringing it back to you is we just want to remind you that this is the number one focus for the HPC goal for 2026. It is very important to the timeline that right now seems a little long and we're hoping is a worst-case scenario timeline, but that when there's a time when HRG needs to come to council, that you will give it priority and that you'll try really hard not to bump them.

And we can control what's on our plate. We can make sure that to keep them to task by answering questions promptly, And getting them on to our agenda whenever necessary. We also have Commissioner Walker, who will be their liaison, to keep everything flowing smoothly and efficiently. What is out of our hands is whenever it's necessary to come to you, so we're asking, pleading, that when HRG needs to come before Council, Thank you.

Although the last survey was not adopted, the survey itself was never declared invalid. It was the agency's recommendations that came into question with adoption. So as we wait for our new survey, the 2011 survey is still a useful document that should be considered even with the precursor of unadopted, but please direct staff to look at it when considering permits and projects that it could be helpful evidence which buildings might be historic.

My request to you is, if an item comes up that we need to see in a very timely way, don't be shy about reminding us of the priority. Because it's hard to squeeze things in, but if it's important, we can do it. Any other questions related to that?

No, I have a comment, which is that I think, I don't know if it was the last time around or the time before that, there was a lot of fear from the public about what a designation would mean to them, and I think it would be good, you know, with your education part, to let people know that it really isn't something to be afraid of, to be designated as a building of significance.

Yeah, I mean, that is one thing that with these, we only assume that just a few hundred of the thousands and thousands of buildings that they'll be looking at will actually be historic. So that actually can take a lot of weight off if you wanted to do something to your home that you know it's not historic. You can look at this document, see your number two on it, and know that it's nothing you have to be concerned about. But the ones, most of them would already kind of have that feeling like, this house is, you know, it's old, it's special.

So, a lot of people already know, but I think that just being listed just puts into place, it's our responsibility to let you all know that we have these resources, which is why you need a survey. But it's not a structure of merit, it's not a landmark, it's strictly just kind of a heads up before anything happens to it. That's when things come into play where we can hopefully protect the handful that it would be. But even with that, I still think that having public forums and opportunities and answering questions would be really helpful because it does sound like something, you're going on this report. But most of these homes, they've been on this report since 2011, and it's like everybody kind of knows what's what, and it's just making it, doing our job, doing our due diligence.

Yes, Mr. Wah.

Yeah, I think it's important for people to realize too that if they're a one on the survey, that doesn't mean they are historic or that they have been designated in some way. It just means they're potentially historic and it needs further study. So, if someone who is a one on the survey came and said, I'd like to get Mills Act status and get my property taxes reduced. They'd still have to go that extra step to getting a further study done to go over and say, yes, this is historic, you are eligible to be a landmark. And the same with if they came and said, I want to demolish my property.

And it's a one. It doesn't mean that they can't demolish it. It just means that there has to be this extra step taken to review it and to go through that process. And it can still be demolished. We've had several on there that were ones, but the further studies show that they weren't historic. So it just shows everyone whose place is potentially historic so that they could take further action.

No, thanks.

It occurs to me that there is that fear, you know, that someone, it's going to be historic and then they're going to get into a quagmire on being able to do what they want to do with their property. So I think part of the education piece, like we've talked about, is, you know, the idea of being a resource to people as well. I know that we've heard that, you know, there can be expense related to further evaluation of your property and who bears that expense. So if you're a one and you want to demolish, And you have to determine whether or not you are historic. I think some sort of guideline as to what that would cost, sort of what that procedure would be, would also be really important because people will make up numbers in their head and, you know, make it more expensive than it is or more difficult than it is, so as an educational component as well.

And I just wanted to mention that, you know, at your booth, you guys are this fabulous resource. Like, come talk to us. You know, we'll tell you. Anything historic you want to know, you want to know Libby's history, you want to know your house's history, your neighborhood's history, we have all of that. And that's something that I think we should, the city as well, should really focus on celebrating is, you know, the deep knowledge that's in your commission and the value that you add without the fear.

Let's take that fear away and let's add that value in, which the celebration is exactly the right way to approach it, I think. I love it. Anything else on that?

All right.

Another thing that's sort of coming back, but it's not coming back to you, which is kind of funny. When I started attending HPC meetings, I attended for about a year before becoming a commissioner, and then my first years as a commissioner, there was a time each year when the commission would bring forth potential resources for landmarking. It was in our budget, it was money for doing two HRRs, historic resource reports. Then COVID happened, and simultaneously we pivoted to looking into the local district, and we stopped asking for the HRRs.

And as we all know with budgets, if you don't use something, you often lose it. So, in fact, I think Lucas is the only staff or council member that was here before COVID working with the HPC, so of course you don't know that we did this. So what we are asking for is to have it come back into the budget and into the city's budget. Often property owners come to us thinking their home might be historic. Sometimes it might be a public building that stakeholders ask us, why isn't this a landmark? It's important to the future history of Ojai that we are able to assist those in getting these done because we have a tremendous number of valuable resources by important and significant architects that should be landmarked, but often it's cost-restrictive, we're just saying, And for the property owner and having the ability to assist that through providing an HRR and possibly a reduction or elimination of fees is both a benefit to the city, its people, and to the property owner.

So we're asking that you would consider putting support for two HRRs a year back into our budget starting next year.

And the dollar amount is?

What do you think?

Well, I just think that there needs to be both the carrot and the stick. There needs to be incentives as well. And the city actually has a lot of incentives. They've got the Mills Act, the use of the State Historic Building Code. There's all kinds of opportunities for people to work with the city to waive certain requirements like parking requirements and things if they landmark their building. So, if we can have that conversation with them and have that opportunity, but sometimes they'll say, well, how much would it cost me to landmark my place? And here's this public benefit that they're gonna have to pay five or six, eight, $10,000 to make happen, and they just go, eh, you know, it's not worth it to me to do that, but it's worth it to the community to have those properties.

Thank you very much. Thank you. That would come in and do a historic report on it, and it wouldn't necessarily mean that they would be landmarked. It doesn't mean that they, anything, it's just getting a professional job done so that we know what we have or don't have.

So just to say, a proposal for the next fiscal budget would be something like $20,000.

Yeah, no more than that.

Something like

that. More than 20? No more than 20 for the up to... I'd have to check prices. Well, you said five, six, seven, eight. I was trying to go high, but

basically two with something like that. Yeah, and if you wanted to lower the fees for also, that would help.

I'm just, no, I'm just asking to say what, how, what would we look at?

I'm not...

And I think

it probably has to come to us as a formal No, I'm just making the

note at this

point.

What I'm asking

is,

do we have your support to go

further? We'll definitely listen to it, and you guys have made compelling arguments, but we can't really decide

anything right here, now. But what I would say, though, is do go further and outline the benefits, and then it will come to a council meeting. That would be part of next year's budget. Okay. Yeah. Unless there's any objections to

that. I would support the discussion for sure. For sure. And I don't know if it would go into the Budget Committee as well. But anyway, I would certainly support the discussion. I think you do make a compelling case. And I would be interested in finding ways to incentivize. Me

too. I just didn't want to come show up at a Budget Committee meeting without You know, in the backstory that this is something that was done for years until COVID. And so this is so I wanted you to understand that this is it's a new ask, but it's not a new ask. So, you know, just to have a backstory to it. So when you do see it, you'll be like, Oh, yeah, I know. Okay. I know a little bit about that.

Okay. Are we done? Yeah. Next one is our ad hoc extension. So this is another item that is more like housekeeping. It's at our last joint council meeting, you all unanimously approved a two by two meeting ad hoc, which it was Craig Walker and myself and Andy Gilman and Kim Mang. And then soon after that, Andy Gilman was replaced with Leslie Rule. And after several months of almost completing our mission of getting through Our functions and powers, Leslie stepped down and Mayor Andy jumped back in. So we were almost at the point of being finished with all the back-end work, and so we had our first meeting with, or second meeting, but first big meeting with Lucas and Mara. Happened a couple weeks ago to start going over what our interpretation of the functions and powers and When we should be brought into conversations with properties that could be historic.

And we're going to, Lucas gave us a nice big two-hour chunk, which was very nice, and we're going to have to do it again. But we, at the time, asked us to have an end date, and I think we picked 12-31-25, but we would like to have it to the end of this year. I'm hoping that the meeting's going to be done before like June 30th. But I'd like to, like, maybe meet at the three-month spot and the six-month to see if what we all are agreeing upon is being implemented and we all feel good about it still. So if everybody is okay with that, and the mayor and CAMDA don't mind putting a little bit more time.

Yeah, and I thought about, with the change, I thought I would bring it back to our council to see, are we still, I'm happy to do it. I mean, I was happy to do it before. So are you continuing to be happy to do it? But if anybody, and if another council person really wants to do it, we'll hear that too.

I do, I mean, I don't, I'm just going to brown act it. Already, I feel like we have to turn Leslie upside down and take the knowledge out of her when we put it over to you, because then if we had a fourth person, then it's four people that have had it. So I think we're better off just sticking where we're at. Yeah. That's okay. And I'm happy

to do it.

I know that at one point we had, the general guideline for ad hocs was six months. I don't know if, and I know that that was just a number, like nothing was ever pointed to any kind of regulation, but I think we should get clarity on, you know, how long a ad hoc can, and I know it's probably loosey-goosey, but can legitimately meet, so I think clarity on that as well would be helpful.

Mr. Burgess, what would you represent? What would you suggest? Thank you.

Good evening. I think at the end of the day, what would be most important would be that it has a clearly defined time like term and timeline. So I think to start with, I would probably recommend maybe another six months or if you think less than that would be adequate, you know, potentially something less. But I think the bigger point is that it's not a standing permanent committee or

commission. So the idea of I had originally written it that it would end on June 30th, but we would meet again three months and six months just to see how it was. Does that mean it's still active, if it's meeting? I

would say that's probably still active, and so we could extend it potentially another six months. A quick question.

Group meeting, if that changes, does that reset the clock for the ad hoc? Just curious. I don't think so.

Okay. Yeah. It's the ad hoc itself. Okay. Yeah. All

right. Thank

you.

Thanks. Okay. Any questions about that? Super.

All right, now we're going to go on to our presentation. This is a little cares before the horse situation where individually I think we've all talked to you about the The railroad sign project, that interpretive sign that Craig and Rick have been working on, and they've talked to people in the community, they've talked to, and then we came and asked for a budget to get seed money to get it started, which you all unanimously gave us, but we've never actually asked you. Thank you.

Okay, well, we've been working on this, Rick is my partner in this, and we've been working on this for a year, and talking to various people, getting ideas, and the HPC, one of our functions and powers is to educate the public about the history of Ojai. What makes it special? So we got this idea to have an Ojai Railroad Heritage Trail, which would be an overlay on the Ojai Valley Trail, so it wouldn't be a different trail, it would be the same one.

And we would just install signage, interpretive signage, along the way that would point out the history of the railroad and also the history of various places along the way. There'd be approximately 20 to 25 Down to, on the Ojai Valley Trail, which would go down to Foster Park. And the county is very interested in picking it up and taking it from Foster Park down to Ventura. So we're hopefully, we can work with them. The panels are two feet by three feet, set in a metal frame. They're similar to those used at the Ojai Meadows Preserve in Ventura County.

The company tells me that here's a sample of what the graphic looks like in my hand here. It's a beautiful color, and they print the sign actually on both sides. Each side is guaranteed for 10 years, so when it gets to the 10-year point, if it starts to fade, you can just flip it over. But also you can just print another one because they're not that expensive to make so you can adjust them and substitute various ones.

Let's see, whoops. Okay, the Nordhoff's Railroad Era, I'm going to give you a little background on the railroad era, which goes between 1898 and 1917, when Libby came in and introduced the Libby era. And this, the Ojai Valley, the Ventura and Ojai Valley Railroad was constructed in 1897, 1898, after a 10-year effort by the people of Ojai to get a railroad. But it got me to exploring a little bit about that era, which is a 20-year period from 1898 to about 1917.

And a lot of people think, and I did myself for a while, that it was Libby that really brought Ojai into the modern era, and that he was the one that really brought all the improvements that we have. However, the town experienced something of a golden age during that period when the railroad came in. And that 20 years were very productive and very growth-oriented for the city, or for the town. The 1898 railroad brought major progress to the town and the valley, and it also set the stage for the Libby era.