Ojai City Council, Regular Meeting

Hello, everyone. Good to see everybody. Welcome to the Tuesday, April 14th City Council regular meeting. Roll call, please.

Okay. I'll make a motion to approve

it. Second that. Any objections? Wonderful. We'll go forward. We have two presentations tonight. First, we have a quarterly progress update on findings of the City of Ojai's targeted forensic review. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. We're getting our presentation up.

Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council, I'm Christy Billings, and I'm presenting to you the progress made by the City on findings within the Kroll Report. Kroll was hired to perform a targeted review, which was presented to the City in December. Included in the review were 23 findings, which were broken down by key areas of observation. The list of the findings and their status has been provided as an attachment to the Administrative Report.

This presentation will go through each of the findings. Council asked staff to provide a quarterly update on the tasks, and this is our first update. Aha, we're on the same page now. Okay, so there were 23 findings within the report. 30% of the tasks have been completed. 26% are in progress and 44% are in discussion. So the next question would be, what does that mean? What do the statuses mean?

In discussion, staff has met on the task and is working towards a solution. Some solutions involve software updates or may require different meetings with staff. Things may need to be ordered from contractors. We're working on it, but I wouldn't call it quite started. In progress, I have defined as things have been implemented, the task is on track, but I have not yet observed that it's fully implemented, so I'm putting it in that in progress category. Complete means I've observed that it's moving through, the city is performing that task, and we're done, or we're in progress, it's heading along.

So, now we've gotten through all that. I'm going to walk you through all the tasks by areas of observation, and within the accounts payable area, there were three findings. One is still in discussion, and two are in progress. So the findings that we have here, the batch check description issue, that would be updating our descriptions that we're providing within the general ledger. And we're working to streamline that and make it, we're working within the constraints of the software though. There's only so many fields allowed.

Procedure documentation documenting our process for accounts payable. Staff has begun that progress, but I've not fully reviewed it and observed staff doing the steps. Purchasing system. We have the purchasing system. The software glitches have been mostly worked out. We're in a test process already, and we hope to have it fully operational for the next fiscal year.

Next area of observation was accounts receivable. There are two findings. One has been completed. One is in discussion. The accounts receivable findings were having a segregation of duties for mail opening. That has been completed. And then reviewing the aging of accounts. In other words, looking at our listing of what's in accounts receivable and getting It caught up so that everything's balanced. That is in progress. It's being assisted by some of our new software implementation, but I don't see it completed yet, so I didn't give it a gold star yet.

Budget management. We had one finding. We have one in progress. I want to say that I think the city has made some really strong decisions on its new finance staff, and they're working. Everyone's working really closely together. The oversight is coming together, and I think you're going to see real growth in this in the next year, but it's in progress. Claims process. There were two findings.

One is the documentation of repair costs, and while they are documented, we haven't yet fully made it so they're in one repository, so everybody has the costs and a formal claims process. We are meeting with CJPIA, our insurer who works with Carl Warren, to handle the claims process for the city, so they would be doing the billing for any An example would be if somebody hit a stop sign in the city that needed to be repaired. We'd bill the insurance company.

This would be handled by Carl Warren. We are in process of getting that set up. It's just a matter of getting that finalized. Digital security, there was one finding which has been completed, and that has to do with enhancing the logging and retention of our data. Employee management, two findings. So better audit reports for payroll, we are limited by the reports that are provided by our software, so we are still working with our provider to get the reports better aligned with what information you need. And then the frequent employee list reviews, while that has been started, it's not a task that's being done on like a certain regular basis. And some of these tasks, I'm purposely not saying what that regular basis would be because Then we'd be telling everybody what our internal controls were exactly, and we don't want to detail all the details.

Employee separation, one finding, that is a checklist to go over all the steps when we have an employee departure. I know that is being worked on. It is in progress, but I haven't reviewed it for completion. Grant management, staff has completed a centralized grant listing, so that's been completed. Grant tracking improvements, that again deals with our general ledger management, and staff is working on that with some upcoming changes just to the way they're laid out within the general ledger for the next budget cycle.

Hiring process. We had one finding which has been completed and that has to do with updating our background checks. Staff has already implemented this. Mail receipt and distribution. The finding there was to centralize the mail handling and that has been completed. Physical security, there was one finding, it has to do with securing the check stock storage. This has been partially implemented, but is officially in progress because we have one more step that needs to get to the completed box.

Positive pay, I don't know if you're familiar with positive pay, but it is a way for businesses, when a check goes through, you're able to say who the vendor is supposed to be and what the amount is supposed to be. So if I write a check to bin, or the city writes a check to bin for $100, the system would say that's supposed to be check 1234, and we tell the bank it's written out to Benjamin Harvey. If somebody else tries to present an altered check for a different amount or a different payee with that check number, the bank flags it as a problem and staff would deny that going through.

We did have some positive payee in place, but we didn't have all the security in place. Now we fully have that in place. We, again, this has to do with the standardization of our data entry within the general ledger system, and this is something that finance is working on standardizing so that it makes it easier to find the backup, and this will just take time to get it, get staff trained so that they enter things in a format that is standard for every entry.

Vendor management, four findings. New hires are completing in key positions, are completing our conflict of interest forms. We are working on a master vendor list maintenance. This is going to take some software review, system generating onboarding. That, again, has to do with some more software and some training that we've got to put in place. And then once we have those conflict of interest All together, you had a total of 23 comments. Staff has worked in the last few months to get you up to date on everything.

The city should be very proud of the progress made in the short time that we had. Staff is working together to improve the internal controls, bring the city in line with the findings. The next quarterly update should be in the August time frame, and I'm going to bet that it's going to show over 50 percent of these tasks are completed and only a few remain in discussion. We'll have a few more that are tasks in progress.

Thank you for the support. And are there any questions? I'm happy to answer them.

You answered one, which was by the time the next report is, but that 50%, that seems like quite a task in the midst of a new budget and a new fiscal year. That seems reasonable for you,

though. Well, if we look here, we've already completed 30 and we have 26% in tasks in progress. So I have faith that those tasks in progress in the next few months, because I know where they're at, that we're going to be able to move forward on those. Some of the tasks in discussion, I have to admit, are, it's a lot. Staff is, it's a lot of change and a lot of training, but these are super important.

And I know that Ben has directed us to all focus in and get this together, so I have faith.

Do you anticipate by the next fiscal year that the other 50% would be completed, or what do you think of that?

I do. And if there's something that we have to work together with, then we'll report that

out. Any questions? Thanks for all the hard work.

I don't want to belabor this, but for the hiring and the departures, is that for finance specifically, or wouldn't that come under HR? Yes,

in the role that I'm serving, I am not working just with finance on these projects. I'm working in the direction of the City Manager's Office, so some of these are public works, some of them are HR reporting to the City Manager's Office, so I'm working across departments. I've switched up my role from what you saw me in the last time, and now I'm helping to get these in place so that a lot of them are finance, but many of them are cross-state.

I would gladly give you each of you a gold star. I appreciate the support. I think that the city I I've seen a lot of growth in the year I've been here, and I really appreciate the support that you're offering to

the

staff.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it greatly. OK, our next presentation will be from the Green Valley Project and the crew tree planting presentation.

Hi, everyone. My name is Tara, and I am the program director of Green Valley Project. Green Valley Project is a program of the crew. Can you guys hear me in the microphone? Okay, sweet. And basically, we have youth council programs all across Ventura County. We have one in Thousand Oaks, we have one in Oxnard, and we have one here in Ojai. And the kids today are representing our Ojai Youth Council group, and they basically, each session will come up with an environmental issue that they are concerned about, and they will create a community service-based project and try and solve that environmental issue. So they're going to tell you guys more about their tree project that they're working on in Ojai. Thank you.

Thanks.

Hello and good morning, council members. My name is Duane Small. I'm the president of this year's Green Valley Project. Yeah, I'm only 13. I have a great goal for this project. This is a youth-led initiative based here in Ojai. Our goal is to reduce heat distribution by replanting native trees so that there's less temperatures in hotter areas. We are very passionate about wildfire prevention, replanting our local ecosystems, supporting mental health, and uplifting our local communities.

Thank you for having us.

Hello, uh, I'm Celeste. I'm also a part of the Green Valley Project. I'm on the, what was it? Activities chair. Um, I'm a part of this because I really care about the local environment and like protecting it and enhancing it for everybody. And yeah.

Thank you.

I'm Cadence McCall. I'm 19. I joined Green Valley Project because I want to be able to help our community and our people and also help distribute heat. And I'm part of the activities chair as well as social media.

Thanks.

Who are we? As I already explained, we're the Green Valley Project, a program of the crew located in Ventura County. We're empowering youth to speak out against environmental justice. Our age limit is from 13 to 20, and we love working together to support communities and help others know problems in our society. Why trees matter. Trees are essential for life on Earth, providing critical benefits such as combating climate change, improving air quality, supporting biodiversity, and enhancing human well-being.

Why oak trees? That's the kind of tree that we're aiming to plant more of. This is because they're native, safe for the environment, and will help pollinators and local wildlife. They also provide a lot of shade, which is a part of the goal for this because we're going to be planting in areas that are like urban areas that are known to be really hot. A small summary of our project is we're working to better understand where heat gathers in Ojai.

So what we did is we created a map of Ojai that shows all the major hotspots. And then we went we went from there to figure out where to put the trees.

So here shows our Ojai urban heat islands over here. So the red spots, as you can see, is where there's extreme heat. And we actually made this map ourselves during a workshop. So we had a full workshop to understand GIS mapping, which really helped us pinpoint specific locations that we're going to introduce to you that we're looking to plant trees. So the project summary, after identifying these hotspot areas, we selected about several or more potential locations where we're wanting to plant trees that could help our community reduce heat.

And actually, Tara over here visited these hotspots and took some pictures for us. And we're right now evaluating and trying to speak to these areas and see if it might be possible and if it can actually help our community.

Okay, our next steps. Our next step will be to present our findings to the Ojai City Council and Ojai Trees. Obtain permissions to plant trees on these various properties. We hope to lead three tree planting communities events in mid-fall 2026. We will work with the crew to maintain and water our trees until they are established. These are our identified hotspots.

We plan to reach out to these local businesses to ask if we can plant trees on site. Adams Towing, it's a huge lot full of cars, and we noticed around the plot, we can add trees. It'll also help with the air because of a lot of cars there, carbon, I can go on. But we thought trees could maybe support the health in that area. Another area we saw was Ojai Valley Inn. There's a huge piece of land that has no trees, and maybe locals or even people visiting Ojai, they would love to have shade.

We also saw Ojai Self Storage. The tops of the buildings aren't covered necessarily, and it is hard to plant trees on top, but we find it as a possibility so we can limit heat. One last spot was the community hospital. It's just a huge area. It seems it's really hot, and we just felt like we could put trees there.

This is our project timeline. So in the spring, we're looking to determine locations, get permissions and gather resources. And then by the fall, we're looking to start planting the trees and hosting community events so that people can help us with that. And then the end goal is to decrease urban heat density or just to make it so it's less hot. There will be more shade and cleaner air and more nature in Ojai. Yeah.

I just have a quick update since the group created this PowerPoint. We were able to talk to the Community Memorial Hospital already, and we are going to be working with them in fall, planting about six to eight trees on their property. So we're already starting somewhere, and that's really exciting.

Three quick questions. One is, so they're all private property, so you're going to work with the private property owners for permission, right? And if you run into any resistance, then you may come back and decide on different locations. Am I getting that right?

Yeah, we're also hoping that we can offer like a variety so they're able to pick what they actually want. At least we're able to plant trees and also help benefit their community as well as the rest of Ojai.

And then just how, what was the method by which you pick the hotspots? Just curious.

So we actually, each one of us, we, because we actually were members, but we each spoke about what we thought the hottest places were in living in Ojai, because a lot of us grew up here, and so writing all of those specific places down, and then also just kind of looking around on hot days, and people we know as well, so, who recommended really hot spots.

And then just the last question is, you're going to come back to us soon with a proposal. Okay. That was my question.

So we recently had a town hall on trees for our tree ordinance, and some of the things that, for instance, Con Edison spoke about was, and I think the whole panel probably spoke to it, was the idea of when you plant, understand, and you probably do this, and I didn't understand, understand how big and how the tree is going to grow so that it's protected as it, you know, as it grows and when Con Edison, you know, comes in to do the trimming that they inevitably do, it's best to have planted so that it grows in a way such that Con Edison doesn't Thank you very much.

And then also, one of the other things that we were thinking is the oak trees would be primarily for spaces that have the space for oak trees, because we know that oak trees get a lot bigger than some of the other trees. If we're doing street trees, we're going to be working, hopefully, speaking with Public Works and kind of deciding with them what types of trees work the best.

And one final question, I'm sorry. Where are you going to get the trees?

We're going to be working with Ojai Trees, and they'll help us to kind of get some of the trees. Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Appreciate your work. Go ahead. So if the goal was to pick a project that the community would love, you guys did a great job.

I know this is like the best part of the night, probably, tonight, right now. Thank you so much. And look forward to seeing the proposal. Thank you. Yes, thanks. Thanks. Well done. Oh, I know. We've got to break down a rule for that one. Okay. Commission reports. I do not have any. None received, Mayor. Okay. And then City Manager's report. None tonight, Mayor. Okay. Public communications. I have a few cards here.

Ron Salarzano, please, William Wyrick, and then Larry Stengelt.

All right. All right, good evening, members of council. My name is Ron Solorzano. I am the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley. I'm here today to just give you an update on what we have going on at the library, and I have big news for you today. We finally have a start date for the upcoming renovations to the Ojai Library building. So we've worked with our contractors, library administration, and on feedback that we've gotten from the community, And we've settled on August of this year to begin our construction. So that means that the library is going to be closing to the public at the very end of July. So we will be open for one more full summer, including a great summer reading program, before the work itself begins.

So we've been advised by the contractors that the work is going to take anywhere from six to eight months. That's a little longer than we had thought, but it will likely be concluding in the early part of 2027. In the meantime, library staff are going to be able to continue supporting the Ojai Valley community at the Miner's Oaks and the Oak View libraries, and we're going to be bringing in the Ventura County Mobile Library to do some regular weekly visits to Ojai to deliver story time, deliver books, anything else that we might be able to do with them.

During this time, the Ojai Library itself is going to be receiving new floors, new lights and electrical systems, new shelving, furniture, and paint, a new hydration station, two electric fireplaces, and new ADA-compliant front doors.

Love it.

Yeah. The architect has also helped us to make sure that we maintain a character that is consistent with the Ojai feel that is so important to us library staff as well as the community. So the building will continue to be something that we can all be proud of. The renovation itself, it's possible due in large part to the incredible generosity of former Ojai librarian Ann Crozier.

Ann was a passionate and devoted librarian who worked as the head of the Ojai branch from 1975 until 1997. This tenure makes her the second longest serving Ojai librarian since the branch first opened in 1893. Anne's contributions to the library and the community were many, and she made an incredible impact on those around her. It is a bequest from Anne's estate that has made this library renovation a reality.

In the next few months, we will still be open, and we still have so much happening over at the Ojai Library. We have our ongoing poetry readings, we have a number of talks by local authors and academics, of course our weekly story times, and our upcoming summer reading program. So for details on any of these programs, you can always drop by the library, talk to me, talk to our staff, or visit us online at library.venturacounty.gov.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. I had a call from Ryan Blatch today over the lot we've always talked about as the AT&T lot, which is street address 111 West Matillahaw Street, at least according to Bing Maps. And he was noticing it, though his law office is right there. It's zone PL, I believe, still. And it's part of a CUP that is decades old. The institutional memory that Ryan and I and a city attorney worked on quite extensively back in the day was to look at that CUP, which was intended to say, okay, you're going to improve that one project there on Blanche for the AT&T building.

You're going to have a lot of trucks there. Part of the CUP is you're going to maintain a public parking lot and park your trucks in that parking lot. Well, AT&T liked to forget that they had a CUP. They liked to forget that they were responsible for maintaining the parking lot. I was glad to see that the parking lot was getting some attention, but then I saw that it's listed for sale.

And the listing says commercial property suitable for commercial land, parking lots, garages, automotive properties, retail properties and spaces, and general commercial real estate. Saw that today. That's not what the CUP says. That's not what Zoning PL says. And I'm hoping That the city enforces these terms of use with the property and does not get into letting this thing get out of hand again where then it becomes litigation and God knows what else.

And hopefully what our dream was back in the day was to enforce the stipulations of the CUP and the responsibilities for when they weren't taking care of the parking lot and say, hey, you know, Let's do a creative little piece of donation to the city here, give you a tax break, get a parking lot without paying a whole lot of upfront money. I believe they're asking over $800,000 for the lot, which I don't think that is market value if the city enforces the terms of the CUP, which although archaic, is there, and the PL zoning. It's PL zoned because of the CUP. So I thought I'd just bring up Thank you.

Fellow residents of Ojai. I actually wrote this, so it should be good. A few weeks ago, our city manager, Ben Harvey, appeared on Ojai Talk of the Town podcast, which is very nice. Brett does a great job. In that conversation, he referred to dedicated citizens who regularly attend meetings and speak up as the same ten people. I had thought, when I first heard this, that was a compliment. Gee, that's a, it's a good thing. It's nice to have people who show up, and I do appreciate that. However, The same 10 people he said in a way that many of others have found dismissive and even mocking.

I can take a lot of abuse. I'm married, three kids and six grandchildren, so you can abuse me all day long. It's okay. All right, I've got it fixed again. But let's be clear. These people are not a problem to be managed. They are the backbone of civic life. Look at the people who show up tonight. Even if it's for the one thing they like, But they show up. You want people to show up.

Otherwise, we have dictatorship, we have run amok, we have whatever. They're not involved. In communities like Ojai, where most residents are busy with work, family, and daily life, it's normal that only a few committed show up month after month. My wife works, thank God. And I'm retired. I have time. I actually like coming here. I like you people. I like... It's fun. It's interesting. We live here.

Okay? They read the agenda, study the budgets, ask tough questions, and hold us all accountable. Without them, important issues would slip through the cracks and transparency would suffer. So please, let's put videoing, closed meetings on the agenda so we can have a conversation, even if it's voted down. At least bring it out in the light of day. San Francisco has the Sunshine Act. Even they record, which is bizarre, but that's okay. The solution isn't to belittle those who participate. The solution is to make city government more accessible, more transparent, and more welcoming, so that the 10 can grow into 20 and 50 or more. I know that means three minutes, maybe, and it takes a long time for democracy to happen, and that's what we need.

Maybe if there's a lot of people, depending on the issues, start earlier, because a lot of people here go to bed at night. It happens. So, the city manager to all, let's stop mocking the people who care to show up. Instead, let's thank them and do real work in inviting everyone else to join in, because a healthy democracy doesn't need fewer voices, it needs more.

And we just need more. So, please. I realize I was gonna be sarcastic and say something snarky, but I'm not. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Steingold. Anita Cram, please.

Good evening, everyone. I would like to thank Larry Steingold and Bill Miley for being here at times when no one else could because people have to come to City Council. And if it's always the same people, then thank you to the people who show up because it's better than no one. So thank you to those 10 people who show up all the time.

Thank you. Leanna McNeely, please.

I wasn't sure that the STP comment was made in a derogatory manner. I actually think it was made to thank people for showing up, because our input is what gives direction to the City and to the City Council, and STP is a badge of honor, and I think that that's probably how it was meant to be conveyed. Any other person thinking otherwise? Oh, well.

Thank you. Anybody online? Yes, Mayor. We do have

one raised hand from Mike. Thank you. We have two raised hands now. Okay. First, we'll have Mike followed by Starchild. All right. Mike, you have the floor.

Tonight, I'd like to speak about three things. Respect, waste, and hate. First, respect. I once told my Nordhoff High School leadership students that the world revolves around respect. Give it, and you usually get it back. Four years later, I wrote a book on leadership and told the story about a man tragically shot in the neck, a story centered entirely around respect.

At the end of the story, I mentioned Jackie Robinson's famous quote, quote, I'm not concerned with you liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. We all need to provide more respect in this world and more is needed from City Hall. The next topic is hate. I don't like to use that word, but most Americans hate two things, taxes and wasteful spending.

Our citizens work hard, they grind and they grind, and they pay and they pay. The double stinger comes when the hard-earned money is spent inefficiently and ineffectively. This often leads to waste and abuse, waste, fraud, and abuse, three words we hear all too often. I never thought I would witness blatant abuse of the Ojai City Municipal Code and other critical city processes.

I'm shocked to see our contract bidding process for accounting and other city services abused. I'm also shocked when I see we might spend $20 million over 10 years for 30 tiny units previously known as Cabin Village. And we can't even get that right. That is a big number, $20 million. The 22 residents, 22 neighbors currently living in Tent Town need help. There is no doubt there. And let's provide it, but let's do it efficiently and effectively.

We need to reboot Cabin Village Project responsibly. On a side note, I want to flag my suggestion two weeks ago about getting air conditioners or better coolers for Tent Town. I've already volunteered to help raise funds. Who wants to help? Back to the main topics. I'm also very shocked to hear a city official dismissing our citizens on a recent podcast. Ojai residents are, by and large, deep thinkers and take pride in their city. To hear the city manager agree that the citizens who attend meetings because they are bored. Yes, bored.

That's insulting, disrespectful, and disturbing. It's 2026, people. I have a newsflash. People in power should not be labeling Labeling people, labeling those, quote, same 10 people, the people who speak up and question you in meetings, calling them STP while laughing at them. Those are the people you're supposed to serve. And it's unacceptable. In closing, I say we need more respect, less hate and less waste. It's that simple.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Next, we have Starchild. Starchild, you may unmute and you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to provide the city manager an opportunity to reaffirm his dedication to public comments, his appreciation for the public that worked to make the city better, and to apologize for any offense his comments may have given.

Are you still talking? That's all.

No,

that's

all. Okay.

Thank you. That's all, Mayor. Okay. All right. Okay, moving on to the consent calendar. We do have our Parks and Rec Commissioner here just to say a few words, but anybody want to pull anything out of consent?

I'm going to pull four.

Okay. Anything else? Any public comments on any consent items that we don't have? Okay, so let me actually ask Mr. Bailey to come up and say a few words, please.

Hello, sir. Hello, my name is Jim Bailey, and I take it that I've been nominated or voted on to become a member of the

Parks Commission. You will be confirmed after this vote we're about to do.

Okay, excellent. Well, I just wanted to say that, you know, I've been teaching in Ohio for 25 years, and for the last part of that, I've moved over into the positive youth development sector. And in that work of providing enrichment and support for kids, I've had some opportunity to work with the Mayor's Youth Council. And in a project that we did with young people and the Mayor's Youth Council, we identified that young people felt, the teens in our community, felt they didn't have a place to be. And I was, you know, I was so affirmed that our Parks and Rec coordinator, Christy Rivera, when she heard that said, come to the Parks and Rec. Department, and let's find a place for young people to be there. And I saw, it was kind of a bit of a light bulb, that indeed our Parks and Rec Department is a heartbeat of positive youth development in our community.

And the research shows that that's how we help all young people thrive. So I'm really honored to play my part, to listen, to learn, and to see if we can support all young people to thrive in our community. So thank you.

Thank you for your service.

Thanks.

I know. Yep. So could I have a motion to approve 3, 5, and 6, please?

I'll move.

Yay, thank you

so much. And welcome to the commission. Yes, thank you,

Mr. Bailey. Thank you for your service. Yay, yay, yay, wonderful. Okay, let's go to number four, the city warrants, please.

Yes, and if I could ask Ms. Cho if she's president. Thank you, there she is. If she could just join us, give us one moment, please, thank you.

So, yeah, mine is just a comment which actually predates you, Ms. Cho, but thank you for coming up. On page 30, second from the bottom, is Meyers Knave, a professional corporation, for an amount of $7,681.10. And I just want to point out that this has now This settlement and my indemnification cost is now up to $257,000 and counting. So we're at a quarter of a million dollars. I know that they have been, that they are no longer involved, so I'm assuming that this was their last invoice.

But to see it again is quite a chunk of change, and I think that we all need to realize we're at a quarter of a million dollars for this. That's all.

Okay, no other items. Any items for anybody else? Okay. Can I have a motion please to approve number four?

I'll move to approve it. Okay,

I'll second that. I'll call Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Rule. Thank you, Ms. Cho. Sorry, who'd you call? Council Member Rule. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Council Member Lang. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Mang. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes.

All right, on to our first discussion item, the Ojai Permanent Supportive Housing Project Dignity Moves Project Bid Affirmation City Council Direction.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Give us a moment to call up a presentation. While I'm doing that, I want to advise the Council that I'm going to be asking Dignity Moves to participate in my presentation. With us from Dignity Moves this evening, we have Mr. Jeff Gattas, back in the front row, Mr. Dylan Johnson, and I see Mr. David Grunwald. Is it Grunwald? Am I getting that correctly? Okay, thank you. In the back with his wife as well.

David doesn't have a speaking role unless he wants, but you'll be hearing from Mr. Gaddis and Mr. Johnson as part of my presentation. Okay, so here we are. We are before the Council this evening to ask Council to consider affirming the project bid for the Ojai Permanent Supportive Housing Project. Next slide, please. I'm going to get into some background in the introduction. Next slide.

This has been going on for some time, so this is going to sound very repetitive to a lot of you, but I'm just going to go through it again. The City received a $12.7 million grant from the State of California. It's called the Encampment Resolution Fund Grant, ERF. This was in April of 2024. And the point of this grant that the state provided to cities and counties on a competitive basis was to transition individuals living in homeless encampments, much like the one we have outside our doors, into safe, stable housing. So that's why the city received this grant on a competitive basis. Next slide, please.

We have looked at a number of different sites, as this Council knows, and as recently as last month, we were looking at another site. I'm conservatively stating that ten potential sites have been evaluated. In fact, there actually have been more that I would call unofficial evaluations, but definitely ten that have been considered seriously for the project.

The City Council, back in May, picked the Lower Public Works Yard, approved it as the site selected for the Ojai Permanent Supportive Housing Project after much deliberation and, again, after reviewing many other sites. And I'm not going to go into all those selected. We did talk about that at length at the last meeting. If you look at the agenda report, there's a link to the landing page for the project, and you can look at all the sites that we've discussed.

Next slide, please. A little overview of the project. Next slide. This is familiar to the Council as well. You may recall that back in September, we went through the design of the project in detail with this Council. It is a 30-unit, hacienda-style, sustainably built project with a courtyard. It features en suite bathrooms, has a community gathering area, laundry, very thoughtfully designed and laid out by a renowned architect, and this council got to participate in that process that got us where we are today.

Next slide, please. Let's talk a little bit about the bid process and budget considerations. The city went through an RFP in order to determine four pre-qualified contractors, the reason being this was not going to be – oh, actually, I'm just going to keep saying next slide if that's okay. Know your limitations. Four pre-qualified contractors and we, Dignity Moves, under the supervision of the City, did this because it was a special project construction that we were asking for. These were not modular units or similar to other Dignity Moves projects. This was a sustainably constructed project with very specific features that we were looking for.

We went through a competitive bid process, and in the end, it was specialty construction from the three bids that were received that was determined to be the lowest responsive bidder. Oh, there we go. Next slide. This is in your agenda report. There you see those who bid upon the project. The construction costs, the hard costs, the soft costs, those are the costs on top of the bid for things like utility connections and other things.

There were two slices of the bid, if you will, one just with everything and one with cost-saving alternates. You are going to be hearing this evening from Mr. Dylan Johnson, who is the architect. He is the most well-versed in this area, so I'm going to ask that if you have specific questions about the bid or cost, that you save those for Mr. Johnson. Next slide, please.

As we were preparing to bring the bid affirmation to you, we received some amazing news from Dignity Moves that an unsolicited donation in the amount of $1 million had been pledged to Dignity Moves towards a project from the Ballet Co. Foundation. And at this time, I'd like to call Mr. Jeff Gattis forward so that he can speak to the Council about that. When Mr. Gattis is finished talking about the donation, he's going to hand things over to Mr. Johnson to talk about the two primary recommendations we have for you for bid affirmation. So, Mr. Gattis? Thank you.

Thank

you.

Mayor, members of the City Council, City Manager, and City staff, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. I'm going to read remarks because I feel this is just an important moment. And I want to open up my heart a little bit because I've been coming out here for two and a half years to this podium and what this project means to me, why this matters.

People ask me why I do this work. The answer I keep coming back to is this. I needed to create safe places because for so much of my life I had not. I needed to become the person for others that I needed on the worst days of my own life. Many people thought I wouldn't make it past 25. I was lost. I felt like the world had given up on me. And here I am, 65 years old, standing before you in full possession of my life.