Ojai City Council, Regular Meeting

City Hall campus master plan update by the Ojai Valley Green Coalition. Yay, all right. Thank you.

Okay, great. Mayor Gilman, council members, staff, thank you for having me here tonight. I'm Kathy Nolan. I'm the board president of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition, and I'm going to be presenting the project that we're looking at tonight. First, you may remember I've been here several times before with this project, but we're kind of winding up our contract with the Knowing that the master plan will be completed by May 31st of this year, so we only have a couple more months to go. So I'm back here tonight with the same actual concept plan, which is kind of the preliminary stage before the master plan is completed, to just get, I know it's just a discussion item, you're not going to be voting on anything, but some either no's or yes's on the progress that we made and the elements that we're proposing.

And then anything else you may want to add. Of course, we're open to hearing that. I also wanted to just say what I've done since the last time you saw me, which was, I believe, the beginning of November. I did meet with the Historic Preservation Commission and had a concept review, and we had two site walks following the Brown Act. And I will generally say that we had a really good response. They were in favor of reuse of the carriage house, the landmarked carriage house.

We discussed the pergola, which is the wood structure on the south side of the children's garden. Some of it's rotted. It's very short in height. If anyone's walked in there, you kind of feel like you're going to hit your head. So anyway, we were generally proposing that that trellis or arbor would be taken down, potentially repurposed. A lot of it's old-growth redwood, so it could be reused, but the general comments from the HBC were You don't have to replace it. We'd like to see it replaced.

It doesn't necessarily have to be replicated exactly the way it is. One thing I wanted to point out is some of the members on that structure are just like a one-by, almost like a laugh material. So it would be up to the city if they wanted to follow the new fire code for like a very high fire zone, hazard zone area. We may want to eliminate that and what have you. But the point of it is that we're open to repurposing if we can, rebuilding possibly there, and or having it in another location. But the point is we want to make sure that some way a structure very similar will be added back into the project.

I was made aware that the Smith-Hobson family would open up the campus here to the public, or if they were having parties, and they had Japanese lanterns in there, and they would entertain. So, it was definitely this welcoming of the community back into the park, so we want to definitely maintain that. Pretty much everything else that we talked about they were open to. There was a couple items where they said they didn't know. A lot of the HPC commissioners didn't know there was a portion of a miniature concrete golf course.

It's a small feature. It usually has water in it and weeds, potentially mosquitoes. Most people don't know it's there because it's usually been hidden. But we have proposed to take it out, but once again, we're looking for feedback. And then here I am tonight, back again. I'm also going to be seeing the Planning Commission, not until next week. I was hoping to go there with a concept review before this, but just due to scheduling issues, it's going to be March 18th, so I wanted to let you know that.

We have continued with our stakeholder community engagement and general comments. We had a programming survey online that I believe we're having until the middle of this month or the end of this month, where we've been gathering more information. And we've also continued to do our site tours. Commissioner Lang, Commissioner Rulewin, I know Mayor Gilman has been there as well, and I also invite the other two.

Council members and anyone else who wants to come. We're actually having one March 21st, but we've had a really good response. A lot of people don't know, and I've said this before, but I'll say it again, that this property is even here behind City Hall, and I will say most people are really amazed to see how beautiful it is. that the water has come back into the restoration area, the elements of the old historic garden, and the potential for redoing the demonstration garden and making it accessible to all users.

All right, so tonight, so I'm going to bring back, let me see if I've got this going correctly. All right, there we go. So this is the same plan that I actually shared with you months ago, and we are actually working on and we're going to be expanding on it for the final master plan. But we're not there yet, and I did want to get your input. And of course, I've gone to HBC and then the Planning Commission before we start making those any updates or changes. But generally, you know, unless I hear that we want to eliminate something from the plan, it's going to be fairly similar to what you're seeing here, but with more definition, more information.

Let me just check my notes real quick here. So some of the items that I wanted to review are, and unfortunately I don't have a, or I can't use a pointer to point things out, but on our plan we have a proposed, what we're affectionately calling the garden house. And the garden house is, it's a building, it's a structure. We're hoping to do it with alternative materials, building materials, methods and materials.

And on the plan, we're showing it's a little over 1,200 square feet. I've looked at it a little further. We could go larger, even up to 1,500 square feet. We're also proposing a small commercial kitchen there. And we don't have it shown there, but the more we have thought about it, it'd probably be a good idea to have a restroom included. We also are including a restroom that we have located, it looks like, I'm trying to read from here, I think it's number 23, but it's just on the south side of Kent Hall, kind of the southeast side of Kent Hall, and that would be a public restroom as well.

There are some options, and I know I've talked to staff about it, and probably, it sounds like the prefab may be the way to go. I even looked over at the restroom at the skate park, Which could be very compatible to what we're doing here. Of course, we could match the paint plaster color to the city hall and what have you to make it even more compatible. But that might be the way to go.

And there I've got the two restrooms. We just talked about the carriage house. And once again, the Historic Preservation Commission, and so far everyone I've talked to has said, oh yeah, it'd be great if you could use the carriage house. We've got to go into it. Thank you to Brian, who's led many tours. But the big question is the structural integrity of the building. That we don't know.

So I have that on here as well. And basically it would be, I'm kind of throwing out that I'm making a request that we do need a structural engineer to make an assessment. And of course the city would have to initiate and authorize that. The other big ticket item, aside from the building, is the Middle Stewart Creek Canyon Bridge. I'm actually working with PAX Environmental right now. They've actually worked on that project. I'm supposed to be with them probably later this week or next week, but I'm looking at just getting some general costs.

And some of you may be familiar with the bridges that were installed in the meadows by the land conservancy and what the cost is. It's not a cheap date to go through all the regulatory agencies, but it would bring value to the property. It would allow Thank you. Getting more information about that right now. And the other thing, there would be trails on the other side and, of course, signage.

There's an endemic grass species there that is really, I talked to Scott Tomkinson, he's the botanist with Pax Environmental. So far, that's the only place they found it in the Ojai area. So that's pretty special. We want to make sure that it's protected and that there would be signage for educational purposes there. The other issue and the other thing that I wanted to mention was we, I don't have it tonight, but I did in one of our past presentations, we produced a plan, a tree plan, so we had all the trees on the property, but we showed the trees that potentially could be removed in what I would call the areas where we're proposing development or where classes would occur if this project gets installed, or even now people do go into the park.

And basically those species were trees that were dead or diseased, so they could have been native or non-native, and then invasive species like the eucalyptus. There aren't really any palms, there is an ornamental palm at the corner of Ventura, right across from City Hall. Canary Island Date Palm, but people keep saying to me, take it out because of fire, but at the same time, I see a picture in the historical photos of a very small Canary Island Date Palm in that location. So it may not be, it's on landmark property, it may not be landmark itself, but there is some historical value to it. So that's still up in the air, but I certainly would take direction from council or any of the commissions if they said take it out for whatever reason or leave it for whatever reason.

It's a tough call, but I would respect information from anyone on that one. Then, oh, the other thing, back to the trees. So, yeah, so the plan actually showed trees that would be taken out. We have an opportunity, and I mentioned this before in the past presentations, that we can actually repurpose a lot of the wood from the trees that were coming down. I actually met with, I'm sure you have met Sage Stoneman. He's been here numerous times, you know, presenting to council.

And we're actually looking at, you know, we'd have to go by code and, of course, get it all approved. But structurally, they could use a lot of that eucalyptus, which is a very hard wood, in a straw bale cob structure. In addition to what I had proposed earlier, that we can use it for the nature-based play for children, we could build benches. Of course, mulch, that's the no-brainer. Chip up the, you know, the leaves when they happen, use that on the trails. But essentially, a good portion of that wood could actually stay on the site and be repurposed. Which I think is great, if we can do that. So that's another consideration.

Let's see, what else am I missing? Oh, I did speak to staff about potential hours of the park. I know it's early on, we're still just doing a master plan. But from my understanding, most of the parks are open dawn to dusk, except for an indoor event, which would be like a special event. And then, you know, potentially it could be open at those hours in the evening or by a permit if it was a special event.

The other thing I had on here was about signs. So signage is a big part of what we're proposing in the project because we see this as an educational opportunity. So it would not only be just directional of like, you know, follow this path to get to the carriage house, but also information about the restoration project. Historical information about the part of the garden. It's part of the landmarked, you know, the old estate. The demonstration garden, which would be featuring California native plants, Chumash culture, fire-safe plant material, and gardening.

You know, we're proposing to collect rainwater off the roofs of the buildings, so there would be information about that. So anyone could do like a self-guided tour if they wanted to. But we think it's a real bonus to have something like that included in the park. So those are what I would call the main items that I'm hoping if you have any feedback or a yes or a no, or we'll take that information and put it into the plan as we further develop it. That doesn't mean, you know, I'm hoping the master plan gets approved, that's our intention, that after that you couldn't make a change, but at least we were trying to get in the ballpark, so to speak, and we're working on what I call preliminary cost analysis at the moment.

I'm probably about three-quarters of the way done with that. I was hoping to have it tonight, but I don't have it. Just to give us a ballpark, if we did this project, Today and we did the entire project and or you could face it. This is an estimated cost. So potentially we can figure out together how we can make this work. So I don't know if at this point if you want to give me any feedback.

That would be great on those items. And then after that. Well, I'll just show this too, just to give you a quick idea. So here's just some, what I would call, photo imagery of, you know, what things could look like and happen. So at the top you see the straw bale construction. And a lot of people working on the cob finish on the outside. We also see this as potentially a barn raising project, similar to the Libbey Park Playground, where the community came together, organizations came together. It really helped cut down the cost, but it also brought value.

You know, it made it our own for all of us who participated in that. So we're looking at that throughout the project, whether it's the building or the planting, putting in the trails and what have you. Then we're also showing at the bottom if it was rented out, because we'd love to see some revenue streams. We will need money to maintain it. You know, potentially you could have a wedding or something similar, as you see on the bottom left.

If we have a community kitchen, it could be rented out. I wanted to say, by the way, on a couple of our site tours, and we happen to be at the Fire State Council, they did a big presentation at the end of January. I've had people come up to me, somebody from Rotary who said, when can we rent it? When can we rent that garden? We would love to rent it. California Native Plant Society, one of the head people for the Channel Islands Chapter said, We have a big event every year, and she goes, I want to do it in Ojai. I can't find an event. We always have to go to Carpinteria Santa Barbara. When we're ready, how can we help you foster this project? Because we'd like to do it. I also had a local vendor in town who does fermented foods, has a legal business.

She said, she approached me and she said, let me know, how can I help you? Because I would love to rent that. So just sharing that. And then on the far right, the bottom corner, You know, whether it's a lecture or we're doing a workshop, but we also thought about something else and we put down there creative events. Potentially, it could be used as an alternate, you know, I'm forgetting the exact name, but a site where you rent out, like, a table and you've got all the ability for your electronics and Wi-Fi, so somebody could do an online business or some sort of business. And maybe it's only, you know, a certain amount of days a week. But something like that could happen there as well.

And then, of course, we've, like I mentioned, the Fire Safe Council, they've kind of said to us, you know, just in casual conversation, they're doing a big project out at the West Campus for their resilience program. But this property, if we had the garden house, could be almost like a satellite. were for an emergency and you needed to gather and what have you, you could use that space. So I just thought I'd mention that, that there is definitely community interest.

And then just to take a look at, I've just mentioned these areas, but there's the existing carriage house up on the upper left, the existing arbor that I spoke about that has some rot, it's really low, and we'd love to make it functional and relate to the existing one if we can. That was a restroom that we got offline, but it would be very compatible with, you know, the architecture of City Hall.

The creek crossing there is actually from the Land Conservancy, but just for example. And then on the far right, we have the parking. We are proposing some parking. Let me just go back really quick. If you go into Ventura Street, which is on the right side of the drawing, you kind of see the gray, and it would be the southeast corner, so the bottom right corner on the drawing. I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time seeing the numbers. I think it's 21.

We're proposing parking there that would be like an ADA parking area. So that's potentially an area where we could do a bioswale for catching stormwater off the street. And we were just showing an example there on the

right.

A couple more things, just a sample of a demonstration garden with signage that you could have pop-up events. There's another nice signage sign on the right. The interior wood on the bottom left is potentially reusing the eucalyptus that we talked about, and then reusing it for a nature-based play in the center, and then bench seating. Those are all just images of potentially what it could look like.

So maybe I'll go back. I don't know at this point if you have any feedback that you want to provide.

I just have a couple questions. As far as with the trees, I know when I was first elected, I walked the property with some constituents and they showed me Jan's report that he had did. Are you following his recommendation?

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I'm glad you asked me that question. Yes, we are. All the trees are tagged. The plan that we did is actually based on the site survey showing all those trees and then the numbers and the names. So we're definitely working off that plan. And that just reminds me, and I'll say it right now so I don't forget, because I wrote a little note to myself and read, as many of you are aware, I think it was a total of three, but somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. Three coastline folks had debris removed. They died in the vicinity of the children's garden.

I've been in touch with Jan about that, and I kept saying, do you know what caused it? I just contacted him a couple of days ago, again, and I know that he had spoken with Dr. Jim Downer, who's a plant pathologist, retired from the UC system. And they weren't sure what it was, so there wasn't an obvious organism. So my conversation with Jan was, okay, we'd like to do some replanting and or we want to protect the trees that are there. We need to find out what caused those trees to die. Like, did they get sprayed by an herbicide? Hopefully not, because we have an earth-friendly management plan.

Usually, insects aren't the usual cause. They come in after a pathogen, so it's probably some sort of a pathogen. He has an idea, but he's not sure, so I'm going to be talking to him more about that, and if we aren't sure, I would like to, and I will follow whatever procedure I need to do, but to request that we have a pathology test, and it might be on the soil, and we probably can go into the roots or the stump and do a tissue sample to find out what it is, because it could spread. We don't want it to spread, and if we want to replant, we have to make sure that the species we're replanting with are not going to be attacked by the same thing.

Thank

you.

And then just one

more thing.

With

the night on the terrace, I think that's a wonderful idea, but to be mindful of the neighbors. I know there's been issues, and to just add one more thing to the list that could bother their private life or whatever.

Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought that up because previous to our contract that we have right now for the master plan, the first phase that we got was a community service grant through the city several years ago, 2022. And that was community engagement. And we held a series of workshops and surveys, had the community come and yes, absolutely, we need to respect and honor the neighbors. And I wouldn't I wouldn't think we'd be having something there every night going till midnight. It might have to be something by special permit. You'd have to follow the noise, of course, the lighting and everything, all of our city ordinances.

And we're open to getting more input from the community about everything, but I agree with you. And then even with the use of the park, we're calling it a passive park. Interesting, at one of our workshops, somebody was saying, yeah, you should put in like a zip line and then this, you know, all this stuff. And I just said, you know, the City Hall is right there, so they're conducting business, right, during the day, and then there are meetings here at night, right?

Yeah, I mean it sounded really fun and everything, but it was like you could pay and you could make all this money. And so I had to explain to him, I said, well, business is conducted here and we have the neighbors, so let's just call it, it's a passive park. So everything is quiet. So if there is anything, you know, where there is some sound, I'm guessing it would be acoustic and we'd follow the, definitely follow the ordinance.

We're on the same page as you

are.

Well, first of all, I just want to thank you for all the work that you've done. I mean, I was at the original community gatherings, and I loved the process that you and Betsy led us through. And when I took the site tour, I saw so many of the ideas that had been discussed in those circles. They're being dreamed of and included in the plans. And I had a real, I was fortunate to be on the tour with Julie Tumamae Stensley, and she was telling all of these stories. At one point we were all standing in a circle and she was telling stories about acorns and The Chumash connection to acorns and to the trees, and I could really see the vision of connecting all of these different voices in our community right there in the park.

And so it was really moving to be a part of that and to see how far you all have come. And I guess to that point, I had a question, and that is, are we doing anything, and I can't remember if I saw this on the slides, I know you mentioned it, but are we doing anything to honor the indigenous or honor the Chumash? Any kind of art or installations or memorials?

What we've looked at so far, and this project is still growing, is to definitely include information about the plants and the connection to the Chumash. So I envision, and we'll see where this goes, that all the plants will have signage, of course the botanical name, a common name, and a Chumash name, and possibly some Chumash information about the plant material. Number one, I know Julie, she has, you know, been a big part of our community, the Green Coalition and coming into this property.

And there's probably some more that we can add to it, and I'm open to it, in addition to classes and workshops that we can do. So I've definitely talked with her about that. Yeah, so we're still, you know, great idea and deservedly so.

Thanks for being open to that. Any other questions? Mine's related, I guess, to the timeline in your last slide.

Oh, yeah, which I can.

No, which is just I see May 2026 council approval. Is that when you would have a master plan with the detail, the financial detail? Is that the?

Yes.

OK.

Yeah. Now this is projected, of course.

OK,

so let's just take a look at it. So up on the top left, it says community and stakeholder engagement. That's what we did with the community service grant that we had in twenty So we went out to the community and said, you know, what do you want? What do you see here? And then we also spoke with, you know, commissioners, staff, and what have you. And now we're in this master plan stage. So the master plan, as I mentioned earlier, our contract ends May 31st of 2026. So the plan will be done, and in addition to the, when I say plan, there's actually more than one plan.

But in addition to that, we will have a comprehensive master plan report, and we will have this preliminary cost analysis included in that. I'm also willing, if you wanted me to come back, I don't know if I could get on the schedule, but I could come back sooner with that before May, potentially, or if you needed me to for anything. I'll just say that I'm open to working with you on that.

That's great.

Yeah. And then on the second column over, assuming that the master plan got approved, if it gets approved, it does, the next step is design development. And so design development is taking the master plan and giving it more detail. So when you get the master plan, we're going to have information like six foot wide decomposed granite accessible path. But when you go into design development, we can give it more detail. What's the edge condition? How deep is the DG? We're starting to go into more depth and flushing the design out more.

Mr. Harvey, you can please correct me or guide me on this part. What we're proposing is to have an RFP or, depending on following city procedure, gather a group of a design team. So we would bring in like an architect, civil engineer,

So, right, it would go out for an RFP process? It would.

Okay, good. I wasn't sure if it needed to happen then. I know for sure it needed to happen at construction documents. Okay, because I know we had talked and I wasn't sure, so that's why I wanted to refer to you. Thank you. And so we're proposing that potentially that could start, you know, anytime after May and potentially be completed by January of 2027. The next phase in the design process on the third column in the kind of yellow ochre color is the construction documents. So the construction documents take that design development even further. So those are the plans that somebody could bill, bid and build off.

So all the specifications are there. This is how you do it. So it's more technical. But you have to build on the master plan to get to that point. Once again, you potentially would have the same consultants on board, but then you could do an RFP for contractors, contractors who would be potentially bidding on it and hopefully installing, and then project management, and then You know, the funding was right, and the phasing figured out. In June of 2027, essentially, you could start constructing.

And then this just gives you a little more information about the consultant team, what it could look like, just to give you an idea. I'm sure you're familiar, you've been working on the Dignity Moves, the OI Permanent Supportive Housing Project. It's a very similar project, but we're showing the Green Coalition up on the top left. Those are the plans we would be doing. You probably have it in your package, so I may not have to read it all. Then, we would have also some expert advisors.

For instance, like Pax Environmental for the restoration, Sage Stowman could be a consultant with the architect and the team on Straubiel and Cobb. This is just for example, and then you see down below the consultant team. The architect would be in charge of the garden house, the restrooms of chads, the carriage house restoration. You may need a geotech report. We're trying to do a minimal amount of grading, but we probably have to do a little bit by the garden house.

Civil engineer would do grading and drainage, site plan, circulation, parking, biospills, and rain gardens. And there's pre-construction management, budgeting, scheduling, value engineering. And then, of course, a structural engineer would be needed probably for the garden house, any structures on the site. So just to give you an idea. So if there's interest, We would love to, you know, just to move forward with this. I'm sure it would probably entail me having a meeting with staff as to next steps.

But of course, we want to go forward. We're hoping you say yes. At this

stage, we're talking about just a presentation one way. Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. Not not to move forward on design development. I just wanted to give you a hint, a taste of what potentially.

We're loving it.

OK.

Yes. Any more questions? Thank you so much. This is incredible.

You're welcome. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much for being here, team. Any commission reports? City manager's report, please.

Thanks, Mayor, just a couple items. We are proposing a community workshop as a follow-up to City Council direction for the community and the Council and some subject matter experts to discuss the proposed Draft Tree Ordinance. We're proposing that for Tuesday, April 7th, 6 o'clock. So, I've not heard from the Council that we shouldn't move forward with that, so I'm going to plan on doing that. We'll, of course, put out notification postings, but we just wanted to make you and the community aware of that.

Secondly, another good news item, in consultation with Ms. Mara and the Fire Chief, it looks like we have 28 people signed up for the CERT training, which is great, so that is moving forward. Very glad, I thought I might have to come here tonight and ask for people to join in, but it looks like we're good. And then lastly, Ms. Cervantes has a very brief trolley update. Thank you.

Yeah, so starting tomorrow, we will have a new trolley driver. So we're excited to get them trained and behind the wheel. And then the next thing is we do have the Outlook newsletter out on the March 23rd. So look out for that.

Hey, thank you. I know it's wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, we'll move on to some public comments. I only have a couple of cards here. Ron Salarzano, please. And then Clay Creasy.

All right. Thank you so much, members of council. My name is Ron Solorzano, the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley, and I just wanted to give you a quick little update on the library today. We have a special program that started this week. We are partnering, the library is partnering with In-N-Out on what's called the Cover to Cover program. This program is running from March 7th until April 18th. It is a reading program for children between the ages of 4 and 12.

And the idea is that they can come to the library to pick up a reading log that they then are able to fill out, and for every either, for every five books they read or for every 300 minutes they read, they will earn a little card for a free burger from In-N-Out. They can win up to three of those burgers, so that's means reading up to 15 books total or 900 minutes total.

So they can just, you know, families can stop by the Ojai Library, just come to the front desk and ask about the cover-to-cover program. We have a little sign and everything. And yeah, so through April 18th. Other than that, we're just continuing on with our normal programming. We have our Storytimes weekly on Wednesday mornings. We have our Adult Crafting, our Wonder Workshops on Sunday afternoons. Those are going on still as well.

And then I'll also put in a plug, the Pause for Reading program is continuing as well with Therapy Dog Radiant visiting us on Wednesday afternoons. So other than that, things are relatively quiet, but if you ever have any questions about what we have going on, you can always reach out to me over at the library. Thank you so much. Yeah.

Construction timeline?

No updates. I was hoping to sneak by on that one, but no. No, no, no, it's okay. No significant updates as of yet. I will shout it from the rooftops when we have that information. No sweat. Yeah. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Clay Creasy, please.

Good evening, Councilmembers. I'm talking tonight on financial matters. I'm, as you know, a member of our Budget Committee. I've been on that committee since mid last year. I wanted to give you sort of a brief recap on where I think we stand and some of the problems we have facing us. As you know, with the Ida Bailey and the Kroll reports, we have a lot of financial control issues that we're grappling with.

Some of them are we've seen errors on staff reports, payments are omitted from the warrant list, bank reconciliations are not done or done late or not signed off, contract bidding laws are not being followed, contract payments The city's budget is based on the city's budget. The city's budgets are made over the not-to-exceed limits, or spending authority is being exceeded. Budgets are sometimes unrealistic. There's no long-term financial forecasting that the city does. We have inadequate financial reporting, chronic understaffing, which we all know about, and occasional nonresponse to data requests.

You know, bringing bad news, aha. But it is a sobering list of things. And as we contemplate doing extra stuff, one thing we have to remember is if you don't get the basics right, the extra is very hard to execute. Having said that, we have another very big issue that's looming, which you probably are not well aware of, and that is we are about to, in fact, are now violating a policy that we just enacted last year, and that is the balanced budget policy.

When we did our budget for this year, the budget was balanced. It had $16.9 million revenue, $16.8 million expense. Assuming you approve the legal budget change tonight, which I expect will happen, you will now have expenses of $2 million even versus what was budgeted. Revenues will only be up a couple, 400,000. So you will now have a deficit of 1.5 million, which means we're in violation of the policy that the Budget Committee unanimously approved not too many months ago. So what's that all about? I think going forward what we need to do is convene a somewhat of an emergency subcommittee. It's obviously up to you to figure it out. I would highlight four potential things that this committee should do. Number one, we should Enter into no new consulting arrangements until we figure out where we're going to be on budget.

We need to freeze the city manager's independent spending authority. We need to prepare a realistic five-year financial forecast, and we need to revisit our reserve policy so that it's based on sound professional financial analysis. If we don't do this, your Delta Fund is going to dry up by the end of next year, and I really don't know what's going to happen. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Creasy. Okay, anybody online?

Sorry, yes, we have Larry Steingold. Okay. Unmute yourself, Larry. There you

go. Good evening. Hello. Wonderful seeing all your smiling faces. Please listen to Mr. Creasy. He knows his business. He knows what he's doing. He's experienced. Many of you, while well-intentioned, are not as experienced. You ignore his warnings, suggestions, however it works. At our peril, not just yours, ours, we're all included here, right? It's like buying property.

Please do not commit us to deals or try to put together deals that commit us long term, that can affect our budget long term if there's a shortfall. Because the economy isn't always wonderful. We aren't always 100% vacant, unvacant, sorry, not vacant. Everything's not always moving. Life goes up and down. So please be cognizant of the commitments we make. While well-intentioned, there are predictable consequences to well-meaning activities and processes.

And sometimes these don't work when things go bad. So we need to keep our budget and our reserves sufficient. So please be cognizant of this. And Regarding property where the closed meeting says negotiation for terms and conditions, there has to be an offer, and if the offer is not public, then it must be secret. So, I mean, you know, that could be done a little better, or maybe it's not as clear, maybe you're not negotiating, and the title should be changed.

But either way, again, please do not commit us to things that could disturb our way of life and our quality of life. We live pretty well in Ojai, and having to not have certain activities because we have commitments we can't afford really could disturb the force here. So thank you very much and good evening.

Thank you, Mr. Stengel. Anybody else?

No, Mayor, there's

nobody.

Thank you.

OK, we'll move on to the consent calendar. I would suggest that we pull number four from consent only because it's we just want to make sure that we're clear on the details on that. But any other items? Great. So can I have a motion to approve two, three and five, please?

I'll move to approve the others.

Second that. Should we just do a roll call quickly on that? Thank you.

Council Member Rule. Oh, sorry.

Oh, sorry. I wasn't sure if you heard me. No, she was physically gesturing.

I was pondering the question. You know, is it I would like to pull the warrant if I can. OK. All right. That's

OK. Oh, well, then.

Yeah. So if I could pull three, that would be great. So three and four and then move to approve the others. If we could redo that motion, that would be great.

I'll revise my motion for two and five.

Mayor Gilman?

Yes.

Council Member Whitman?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Ming? Yes. Council Member Lang? Yes. Council Member Rule? Yes. Thank you.

Let's start with number three, the warrants, please. Thank you, Ms. Jo.

I was actually going to speak a little bit to the Ventura County Animal Services, but I think that actually what I will talk about that in council members' report outs at the end of the meeting. So I don't think I need to speak to the exact amount, but I did want to give a detail on sort of what we're paying for and what we're getting and where they are. But in thinking about it, I think it's more appropriate at the end.

I will leave that be.

I spent so much time preparing this. Okay, so I believe the warrant listing is omitting something that needs to be included because, as you know, Dignity Moves was given a deposit of $5.9 million last June, and from that deposit they have been paying various vendors, including themselves, On a monthly basis since then, that deposit was not a payment for services. It was a deposit to pay for services from other vendors, including, obviously, also Dignity Moves. So the visibility of those payments should be identical to the visibility of payments that the City is making right now in its normal course.

Unfortunately, in order to see them, I have to file a Public Records Act request and go through all those shenanigans, which eventually I get. So the bottom line is the same. But the public doesn't see it. You guys don't see it. I made a point, which you probably or maybe noticed. I sent an email, but nobody responded to it. So I'm hoping you saw it. But the bottom line is, Dignity Moves is paying themselves over $30,000 per month.

of their development fee. At that rate, they will be all paid off their entire half million dollars by this August. Obviously, we don't have a shovel in our ground yet, and we don't even have a general contractor signed up, so it's going to be a while before anything significant happens, but you could easily wake up in a few months and Dignity Moves is entirely paid off, and you have a giant project still in front of you. What is going to be their motivation to do a good job when they're basically working for free at that point in time?