Ojai City Council Regular Meeting

Okay, Mayor we are ready for our next agenda.

Thank you Well first off thank you for your patience for waiting us to finish with the closed session I appreciate that welcome to the Tuesday June 23rd regular City Council meeting roll call please

Thank You

Any changes to the agenda?

I'll move approval.

Any objections second that all right no objections we will proceed and we are going to start off with a presentation from the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council providing their quarterly update hello Mr. Danch welcome

good evening Ready to go. Yes it is. Where do I point this thing?

At it? You don't have to point it anywhere. I

don't have to point it anywhere. Council members, this is our one of our quarterly updates on the professional services agreement. As you recall that the cadence of the reporting is monthly updates to the city manager's office and then a quarterly to the council And the scope of work range between two main areas of community outreach and education and wildfire risk mitigation.

In the months since this has been in action, we've made some steady progress towards more wildfire preparedness and community resilience. We just finished last month a two-day NFPA certified course in home hardening assessment so that's like train the assessors. That was well attended. We had a full course and that was very successful. We have another one planned for August The home hardening, we are 50% of our annual assessment target set in the PSA.

We have 62 pending and our job is to get them done before the end of the contract period. And we continue to build our partnerships with agencies like the Forest Service. We have a new one actually with the National Forest Foundation, which is looking to help us work in the community defense zone that surrounds Ojai. Hopefully that'll be successful. They've given us a small grant to get us going on that and the Ventura County Wildfire Collaborative is moving toward a large scale regional fire grant from Cal Fire. It's a $30 million block grant So we're working on that with our lead Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council and then we're moving towards getting ready for the round two application for the Community Resilience Centers.

This is a ten million dollar round and again it's highly competitive in its It's proven to be quite a stretch for us in the sense that the program received severe budget cut. They dropped five million of the available funding, which we're kind of counting on but we'll make it and they added a lot to our plate to be ready for round two because they removed a whole phase of the, it was a three-phase grant program now it's a two phase so we have to make up now between now and September what largely would have done in the phase two aspect With, of course obviously no additional funding to do that.

But we have an excellent chance of getting this. We're doing really well and then we have other parts of our scope of work are in development. Just some stuff that you've seen before. We've given a number of presentations, we have really talked to hundreds of people about wildfire preparedness and home hardening and the importance of that. And we recently had our Wildfire Resilience Festival which I believe Councilmember Lange showed up for. I hope you enjoyed that.

And plan to make that an annual event. And in Ojai day, we're joined by Mayor Gilman. I know this is outside the quarterly update but it just was a lot of participation and we've given continue to give workshops that are well attended usually standing room only which is good Here's some plotting of where the home assessments have been done. And we're looking at bringing in some contractors to complete the assessments, so that we can focus on the Firewise development.

That takes a lot of time to do that. So we're hoping that is, we can focus staff person on the Firewise aspect because we've learned quite a bit doing these assessments and talking to people So, some scenes from the Wildfire Festival in case you missed it. There's a little film. Mm

hmm.

Sands the music that goes with it.

Yeah, looks great.

I have to ask people how it went because I spent my entire day inside the gym giving presentations. I missed the whole thing. And a lot of community support putting this on. Well done. As I said, we have another two-day course coming up. That'll be advertised and encourage people to come to it. You'd learn a great deal about home hardening and defensible space enhancement and things like that. And this is certified under NFPA. That's the National Fire Protection Association.

It's really good. Here are some scenes from that training So, focus for the remainder of the time is to obviously complete our deliverables as set forth in the PSA. We do have two insurance panels coming in July and August. We're setting those up now and we obviously have the new training coming as well. We're making progress on what we call the Urban Core Initiative That's looking at the block of homes that in this center, the core of the city targeting the single risk of an urban conflagration.

We're in the process of being ready to launch the webpage for the city linking and complete our wildfire readiness assessments. Just moving on the Community Resilience Centers project we think this is a very important project for the valley and our community And we'd like to have, find out how the city could be more involved if they'd like to do that. And would welcome the city's participation.

And we've had a good turnout. We had, I don't know who attended the town hall that we gave in January that was standing room only you were there and I think it showed that people are very engaged in what we're trying to get done here. Great. And we've had some focus groups and some other meetings which these photos represent. And if anyone wants to study where we are with this project you have extensive timeline of what we're up against doing this And we continue to work with all of our partners, maintain our active partnerships.

I'm sorry if I have a lack of enthusiasm in my voice right now. I am coming off a medical condition so I'm recovering from that and don't have a huge bundle of energy like I usually do. Thanks for being here. Apologize for the uninspired delivery. And we continue to add to these partnerships, and they're really what allow a very small nonprofit do a lot of work are these partnerships.

Are there any questions?

It's very impressive what you have done so far.

Thank you for the work that Fire Safe Council does.

At some point, I mentioned this to you before but it would be great to show this body and the community of the dashboard when it gets to that stage because I'm enjoying being a part of that but it's amazing to see. It was

better than before too.

That

would be fun This is what the mayor Gilman's talking about, you know we created a dashboard that is the data portal all the risk and hazard mapping itself We did for the community wildfire protection plan while working off the coastal Conservancy grant. We have taken that vulnerability assessment and gone countywide with it And then so enhanced the dashboard which now is hosted by Ventura County fire So that transition has been done in funded and We're going to launch it pretty soon. That project's due to be done in September, so we'll come and make a full presentation because it's actually looking really good.

Okay, well thank you. Thank you so much for

all your hard work and I see several members of your board and staff here too So I just want to give you all a shout out We've seen you at our meetings and we've seen you at these events and you really are Doing great service for the community. I

don't wanna say me an excellent choice choice for the Safety Commission

with

Thank you, thank you very much, mr. Dance appreciate it yay Now, I want to make sure I have a speaker card correctly. I have one from Jason. Was it speaking on this item or something else? Do you know what it was speaking on? It says Item 1. The Item 1 was what he just did. 11. Good enough. Okay wonderful yep okay great thank you very much moving on City Manager's Report please

Thanks, Mayor. Just a couple of things really quickly. Some of you today may have received the Ojai Outlook, our summer quarterly newsletter in your mailbox. If not I have copies for you here and there might be some back at the end of the room as well so look forward to getting that out to the entire community. Mine got in my mailbox today! Excellent Secondly, I just wanted to let the council and community know that we convened the Disaster Council on Thursday of last week.

That is a committee required by the code comprised of the mayor himself The assistant to the city manager and the police and fire chief We may be bringing recommendations for additional members To the Commission to this body council has to review and approve that if we do decide to add some We are going to be meeting again in July. This first meeting was really just a starting point. We will post and notice that meeting so that everybody's aware, thank you very much.

Thank you. I missed one thing which is any commission reports? None received Mayor. Okay, thank you. Now go to public communications. I do have a few cards here. Sorry for mispronouncing anything. Linda, is it Dumos or something like that? Yes please come up and then I have Clay Creasy and then Brian Akins. Linda? Okay, then Clay Creasy please. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. I want to talk a little bit about the decision quote-unquote that was announced in the paper last week to go ahead with the construction at the maintenance yard location without involving the Department of Toxic Substance Control as had been mandated in the motion that you approved last August when the Rincon contract was let.

That motion and that action last August specifically called out that the DTSC involvement was going to be mandated. The actual admin report, which you all accepted lists DTSC 13 times in that report up to and including getting the letter of no action Now recently we have heard that the DTSC has informed us that it will be an 18-month process, potentially that long to do it. And apparently the City Manager has unilaterally made a decision that he's just going to not obey that important part of the motion that you passed last year.

Mayor Gilman, last year I'm going to quote you when you were discussing the topic of how decisions can be changed that the council has made. You said and so as a council when we vote on things and there's a majority approval on that, that's what we end up doing. Now there's a few exceptions if two-thirds of our council wanted to bring something back two-thirds would be four of us then we could do that That would be the bar that's set. So it's a very high bar to bring back in action.

So the obvious question is, in what world does the city manager have the right to materially eviscerate an important condition in the council's approval Especially within the context of a scenario where all you would need to do to avoid this problem is call a special meeting, agendize this very item, revisit that issue and decide as a council whether you need four votes or three is somewhat up in the air but the council would have to decide no longer to use DTSC.

It is a governance issue. Whether or not you agree with the decision to use DTSC is a separate item, but right now what you have is in essence a mutiny by the city manager to completely trample your authority as the governing body of Bohai and I for one citizen think that's a terrible precedent that you should resist 100%. Thank you.

Brian Eakins please and then Dennis Colbert.

Hello, I'm Brian Eakins. I am trying to figure out can have lots of hats on maybe tonight so On Sunday, I was sitting at Casa de Lago with all of my family enjoying the food when all of a sudden the fire engine came screaming by Quite louder than I'm normal and quite faster going through that intersection there at the Shell station I wrote it off Family went home, my wife's checking on Facebook and she said oh there's a fire in Ojai.

And then she said in the arcade I not quite as nice maybe I could said get in the car and came up here to see what was going on So tonight I just want to thank those people that were there and worked with us, not aware of the details but aware of their presence. And again going on the reporting that I saw aware of the training that they had been doing for this specific item and every time now I come into town and I look at the arcade I'm gonna say a big thank you because Could have been worse. So, and thank you all for your support of the entities that are protecting and preserving our lovely city and community. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Akin. Dennis Colburn please? And then Abra Stewart

Good evening council members Dennis Colburn, 40-year City of Ojai resident. I spoke with the Disaster Council meeting in regards to the need for a comprehensive plan for the emergency evacuation of Ojais citizens in case of wind driven fire that starts near the city. I was glad to hear their responses and that they will possibly be meeting more than once every three months. I'm also glad to see that the Safety Commission will soon be in place, and I hope to hear soon about how to contact and offer any assistance to these groups that might further the quest for a comprehensive plan that takes into account the quick and safe as possible evacuation of all Ojai residents.

My first suggestion to all involved in the process is discussing how to utilize the Ojai Bike Trail as an extra lane of emergency traffic from the entrance at Vaughan's parking lot to Highway 150. I rode my bike this weekend on this route to check the conditions needed to allow, in extreme emergencies, auto traffic on this trail. I was glad to see that the trail base which had recently been renovated was nine plus feet wide and for the entire distance approximately two miles This is only a foot or so less than a county-approved lane width with decently packed dirt and gravel shoulder.

The only modifications that I would need be done, in my opinion, are the realignment of a few wooden fences at the entrance and at 150. There would be a need for a small portion of curb to be removed and at the trail entrance parking be realigned slightly to make the transition safer. The trail could also be utilized beyond 150 at least to woodland with minor fence modification.

I also would suggest putting reflectors, reflective striping on the trail for better visibility in dark or smoke conditions. Placement of a narrow centerline demarcation with reflective material would also help in enhancing the safety of the trail for daily use. Utilizing the path as another lane would increase the capacity of the emergency egress to another exit route by 50% in just a few weeks time.

I believe that this would not involve Caltrans in any way, just the City of Ojai and the Ventura County Parks Department. I also think that portion of the path running through the city should be considered As a pedestrian fire escape route to the safe areas of Soule Park Golf Course, with minor modifications and creating a gated entrance at the pass connection with the forest would provide the needed retreat for pedestrians fleeing rapidly spreading fire due to gridlock on the highway.

Due to limited time out of the comment period I will stop here. I have many more ideas concepts and suggestions that I hope in the near future they have a way to easily transfer them to all interested persons

Thank you. Appreciate it. Abra Stewart, please. Yeah. Interesting idea. Hi.

Hello, good evening Honorable Mayor Gilman City Council members staff. My name is Abra Stewart and I am a longtime Ojai resident. I'm also the program manager at a local nonprofit called Climate First replacing oil and gas or Seafrog we're a local nonprofit dedicated to shaping a just transition away from fossil fuels to protect our health economy and climate And I am here tonight to share an invitation to the council, the staff and also our community members for a really exciting community event that we have upcoming. It's called the Polluter Pays Central Coast Town Hall, and I'll give a little background on it and would love to see you all there.

As many of you know, for far too long massive polluters have treated our communities like a dumping ground while families across the central coast pick up the tab with our taxpayer dollars. Between rising health care costs and cleanup costs after climate disasters California communities are tired of paying. The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund ensures that big oil companies not taxpayers or small producers Foot the bill for the climate damages they've caused. These funds would be invested directly back into our neighborhoods to build community resilience, support essential workers responding to climate disasters and fund a faster fairer transition to clean energy. There's been a lot of talk about fire tonight.

I myself lived through the Thomas fire had to be evacuated. That was a really traumatizing experience for, I think everyone here. And so it's really important that we do everything we can to invest funds in a way that is equitable into protecting our communities from these issues We are super excited to invite you to the Central Coast Polluters Pay statewide tour, which is coming to Oxnard this Sunday the 28th at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. This is going to be a high energy interactive town hall designed to build power and hold big oil polluters accountable so we're bringing together Awesome educational events. There's going to be powerful stories from panelists, including local elected officials like Steve Bennett, intersectional allies, disaster response and recovery experts, union leaders, youth leaders, really cool stuff.

We'll have some really amazing opportunities to take action while you're there and a really great chance to connect with other community members who are serious about climate accountability and winning the transformative investments that we all need So the event is going to be this Sunday, June 28th from 12 p.m. To 2 30 p. m And it will be at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and I have a flyer that I will leave in the back in both English and Spanish and we would love to see all of you there and all of you there Thank you

so much Thank you very much That's

the last card I have. Is there anybody on line? Yes, Mayor we have one raised hand. Okay Mr. Miley. Mr. Miley you have the floor.

Hello. Hi. If the arcade fire had been late evening or early morning 2 to 3 a.m., a whole section might have burned down This would have debilitated the arcade and bringing fewer tourists, less DOT. And the reserves might've been gone in two years, several years. We need a new review and planning for fire prevention of and in the arcade. Speculators? What kind of fire smoke alarms?

Are they connected to the fire department? Prevention reviews. Years ago, I researched building ownership. Several of is at least one owner that I remember owns six buildings. Do owners carry enough insurance to successfully rebuild? Do they want to rebuild? How much control does the city have over rebuilding in the pace of restoration? I know we own the arches.

We now have a whole new perspective for the future of Ojai, the arcade and its business buildings downtown. If you want to follow The recent example we had, which is scary. We should work on this to make sure that if it happens again it gets stopped soon and doesn't spread. Thank you.

Oh yeah, okay. So moving on to the consent calendar I know I would like to bring forward number 10 so we can hear from these Commission appointments but anything else to pull from consent?

Yes,

I'd

like to pull number 5 and number 8

Mayor, actually sorry I did forget one thing that I wanted to mention. Okay. I forgot to in my manager's report if I could bring this right now briefly we have our new accountant Matt Hutchins here with us okay and I neglected to bring him forward to introduce him to you so I would like to do that Matt you want to come up just real quick? So we're real pleased to have Matt join us as an accountant. He was the successful candidate we selected in our recruitment, he's hit the ground running and really making a big difference in our department. Wanted you all to be able to put eyes on him and just be able thank Matt for joining our team and for being here. Do you have anything you want to say real quick?

I just wanted to thank you all for the opportunity to work with this vibrant community And just working with Brenda and Leah so far, I've already seen the positive trajectories that the accounting department is going on. Thank you.

Welcome. Awesome. Thank you Matt.

Thanks. I appreciate that. Thanks for bringing that up Okay, so I have five eight and ten being pulled anything else Wonderful, so can I entertain a motion to accept two three four six seven and nine

I'll move.

Second that. Okay, I don't want to move too fast. All right roll call please.

Thank you. So I am the liaison to VCATS, which is Ventura County Animal Services and while I support the recommendation before us to renew our animal services agreement, I support it 100%, I also believe right now we have the opportunity and perhaps the obligation to do more than simply extend that contract in 2024-25 Ventura County Civil Grand Jury report on the Animal Services Commission raises issues that directly affect how Ojai's residents are represented in this regional partnership.

I want to note that this grand jury findings does predate the current executive director, so it is not a reflection upon him or what was done prior to him But the grand jury found that the commission's advisory role had significantly weakened over the past decade. And bylaws were not clear, they were not offered up. So essentially what I'm asking for the city manager to do, I want absolutely to approve this item but I also want to figure out and clarify what exactly as an advisory role we play You know, and I don't need to go into what those particular issues are because I have spoken briefly to the city manager about that. But I would like to work with him and any other council members who would be interested to undertake a focused review of the grand jury's findings and to evaluate whether or not in the last year-and-a-half Things have substantially changed.

Primarily, I would say that it's public input and as an advisory member commissioner, I am clear that the public does not have easy access to participate in any of our meetings. So that's why I'm bringing this forward. I support approving it. But I also support doing due diligence and writing, getting together and figuring out how we can improve the advisory commission. I have had some failings in communication with them over the last year.

Yes. Mayor, I'm happy to take that as a direction. Wonderful. And Mr Montgomery please add that to the report of reports.

Will

do thank

you. With that I will make a motion to approve this item. Second that.

Thank you and then number eight yeah

okay let's do it

The biodiversity.

Yes, correct. That's right. I've got to find my notes here. OK, well,

I'll just sort of ad hoc this. No, I'm not going to actually ad hoc this. I'm sorry because if I did,

it would give me just a moment and I do apologize. Not having this ready.

Essentially, the question is once again as I have broached before we can have resolutions about protections, about respect for nature, about respect for waterways but as we've seen in the last 18 months of this new administration resolutions, protections all of those can be wiped away so very easily they can be ignored So while I support this resolution 100%, I'm here to advocate for something that is stronger than a resolution. It is in fact, a rights approach. I realize that western jurisprudence does not make this easy but it also does not make it impossible. This is happening in other parts of the country. It's happening in other parts of the world and until we actually have a way to enforce rights We have no ability to enforce any longer protections.

The agencies that are responsible for protections can easily decide that they're not going to protect. Permitting is about permitting how much damage we can allow to happen. Perhaps what we really want to do is have rights that say damage can't happen to these natural waterways, environment, ecosystems, things like that. So I support the resolution. I advocate for something much stronger as you know and I just wanted to bring that up. So, I support this and I'm willing to once again make a motion to pass it.

Just wanted to- No, I appreciate it.

I would second that. No, I understood and that's a bigger issue to bring forward and I'm interested in that too. Yes, please.

Well, Mr. Mayor and City Council and staff I'm Dr. Raymond Sims and I've been a resident of the Valley in the city for 64 years and also medical practitioner for 40 years now retired and I'm very honored to be considered for this position on Safety Commission And hope that those years of experience and going through lots of disasters here will help me in a role to improve the safety of our community.

We're very appreciative of your willingness to serve, thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you very much sir. Yes, and Brenda Furness is actually working tonight. You have her application on file. You may know her from her family long time Ojai people And then finally, we have Ms. Taylor who is a reappointment for our Parks and Rec chair position. So can we take these all at once?

Yes. I would move that we approve all three appointments. Second. Okay wonderful Any more conversation? Fantastic. Roll

Yes I do. Thank you. So the first thing I want to mention for the City Council and the audience watching is both in the council chambers and at home is that this will be an appeal of a Planning Commission decision it's conducted pursuant to section 10-2.3004 of the city's zoning code The procedures for this hearing differ just a bit from the procedures for other quasi-judicial hearings in that your zoning code provides its own procedures for appeal hearings. So, so for anyone who's watched some of your previous council appeals the process for this is just slightly bit different However, there are some similarities. So we will begin this hearing by making ex parte disclosures. I know there has been a lot of public comment.

From other council members. I know there's been a lot of public comment that's been submitted through the public comments I don't know that you need to identify every single one of those but if you could generally summarize the comments that you've received And if you've had any direct contact with the applicant as a party to the appeal, that would be helpful Additionally, before we move into the public hearing I wanted to mention that the scope of review in this appeal is a little bit different because it is also governed by the city's zoning code. So as far as what is on the agenda for consideration tonight is review of whether to approve or deny or approve with conditions A design review permit and a conditional use permit for an applicant located at 242 East Ojai.

I won't dive into the details there, but your zoning code does include review criteria that Council should consider as they are listening to the information that's presented tonight. I did want to point out for reference that the review criteria for the design review permit are included on pages 135 and 136 of your agenda packet tonight. And what you see there, just for reference is that the language that is not italicized but is with the Set paragraphs that are numbered with letters.

It's confusing to say. Those are the criteria, the italicized language below it are the recommendations from staff regarding each of those review criteria and then the review criteria for conditional use permits are included on 137 of the packet. So what council should be considering is the application of those review criteria to the information that's being presented as part of the application The presentation from staff the presentation from the applicant and any public comment that you received tonight Are there any questions for me before we move forward with the ex parte disclosures?

All right, so

Would you like to start mr. Whiteman and we'll just go around trying

to think about Communications I don't think

I have, it's been several months ago myself and Council or Commissioner Craig Walker went and met with Mr. Giano at his place of business

Normal communications that we all received both for and against. And then I went several times to look at the property over the past several weeks, took some photographs just to see how the back was going. I went into the restaurant, bought dessert, had it there. That's the extent of my communication.

Several months ago, before this came before us I did speak with Mr. Yano but I haven't spoken to him since we brought this back and I did go into the location as well and I walked around several times in preparation for tonight's meeting and I've also talked to local business owners in that area

Yes, so at the same time as Mayor Pro Tem Meng and Commissioner Walker met with Mr. Yaunao, Gina McCadden who is chair of the HPC and I also met with Mr. Yaunao I went in there, we toured the property and saw the back. And maybe a month ago I went in and bought food for an Ojai basket that I was giving to a friend. Bought some pixie marmalade. Really

good. So I'll add to my disclosure that I have been at the location multiple times Including recently walking through the restaurant, but many times looking at

Okay, we proceed we'll start with our city staff presentation

Thank you. Before Mara, Mara will be going through the PowerPoint presentation but I just wanted to also mention that as a part of the process and kind of the due diligence here, the Historic Preservation Commission provided comments that is provided within the packet as well as the Planning Commission as their denial that you see before you tonight as a part of the appeal.

Aside from that, I'll let Mara speak to the PowerPoint presentation tonight and then I may fill in some gaps as we go through it.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Maura Macaluso. I'm your Principal Planner and I'm going to mostly be going through the PowerPoint and speaking to it specifically. So this is a City Council appeal of Planning Commission denial for outdoor storage and use of an existing walk-in freezer and proposed modifications to the existing outdoor dining area located at 242 East Ojai Avenue, and it's for the Ojai Mountain Farm Restaurant.

And is this there we go? Yeah. OK, thank you. So there was an original approval through the director in 07 for outdoor dining at this location at 242 East Ojai Avenue, and it was for 360 square feet. It included six tables and 24 chairs. This approval was one of, or is one of at this time seven approved outdoor dining permits in the plaza. The outdoor dining areas in the plaza range from 250 square feet at Sam's Place to approximately 1,286 square feet at Magic Hour.

The proposed modifications that were recently denied by the Planning Commission were to increase the outdoor dining area to approximately 580 square feet and an increase in tables up to 14 tables with chairs, 28 chairs. And the use permit, conditional use permit included an outdoor use and location for a freezer and a screen for that freezer. And it also included modifying a boundary for the outdoor dining area to include those additional tables.

So there's a history of outdoor dining in the arcade. The first approval was in 1997 for Rainbow Bridge, and I already said that there were approximately seven out there now that are approved. The most recent approval was for Bonnie Lou's and that was in 2022. The way that the approvals for the outdoor dining occur, there is an outdoor dining approval or an encroachment permit that is processed through the Public Works Department currently And the community development department recently has shifted to a proactive code compliance efforts, which we'll be looking at these existing outdoor dining areas.

And the compliance was previously conducted by the Public Works Department. Let's see. This is the location map. So the existing outdoor dining, oops. The existing outdoor dining area that was approved in 07 is shown here and the dining area is highlighted in red. You should have a plan at your seat that was given to you prior to this meeting, that includes this area along with the proposed area.

So the proposed expansion from the previously approved 360 square feet in 07 is proposed now at approximately, can you hear me? Approximately 580 square feet. And it was presented and denied by the Planning Commission in May of 26. The requests included a conditional use permit for the outdoor storage and use of an existing walk-in freezer, and as I already mentioned proposed modification to existing outdoor dining.

The reasons cited for the denial were based on inconsistencies with the Ojai Arcade Plaza architectural design guidelines and also an increase in the proposed Footprint of the outdoor dining area, which exceeds beyond the originally boundaries. And I'd like to note and as you'll see in the. The plan that was before you when you walked in this evening, the area is smaller than what was previously there for the previous restaurant. That expansion kind of happened over time and most likely during covid when they couldn't have dining inside Part of the plan currently includes a proposed roof plan. What you see here are existing roof equipment pieces, the only thing on this plan that is not existing is a five foot high roof screen that's adjacent to the existing parapet wall and if you look at the plan, that's what's to the right and it's labeled as number two.

So the proposed outdoor dining elevations are up on the screen right now, and they include a 30 inch high solid steel fence that is also a combined planter. An 11 feet six inch umbrella and a metal gate I don't have a pointer, but that doesn't matter. And then also you see here is the existing screening that's around the freezer. However, I'm going to get to another slide in a moment that's going to show you what the applicant is actually proposing to do.

So here are existing photos of on the left, looking west. You see the existing screen and within it you see the oak tree and also the freezer. You can see a corner of it in the center photo. You can see a bit more of that freezer and then again looking east. The table and chairs that you see there are not the ones that are proposed This slide is the proposed screen and it would be the same height as the freezer.

It's described as an overlap lap screen panels. And the posts that would be used would be the existing posts that are currently out there, so as not to disrupt the earth any more than it already has been for the oak tree. It's a lightweight design and again to minimize any impacts to the tree. The color would be painted dark to match the outdoor dining boundary.