UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:03 – 0:1412 turns
Good evening everyone. Just want to call the meeting to order for the Alton City Council for Thursday, April 30th 2026. Madam Clerk may we have the roll call and posting of the agenda please?
Councilmember Peralo here. Councilwoman Perez here. Councilwoman Rodriguez present. Councilmember Starr
here.
Mayor Pro Tem Teran
here.
Mayor McArthur
here.
The agenda for this meeting was posted at the kiosk at City Hall, the Oxnard Public Library, the city administrative offices and on the city's website on Thursday April 16th. Thank you.
Thank you Madam Clerk and I'm delighted to start with this appointment item first. This is Oxnard College's 50th anniversary presentation and for that I'd like to invite up Oxford College President Cynthia Herrera to make the presentation and this is a live presentation Thank you, Chancellor. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Before I get started, I'd like to introduce our chancellor, Dr. Rick MacLennan. Would you like to come on up and say a couple of words?
Thank you. I'll be very brief. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for letting us have some time on your agenda this evening. It's wonderful. First time for me being in the space actually. I don't know how that happened. I'm just about finishing my fourth year in this position. So obviously I should've been here sooner than today We're really excited about what's happening at Oxnard College and throughout the Ventura County Community College District. Celebrating 50 years of service to the community is a pretty big deal, and you're going to hear a lot about some of the events and things that are happening around that and some of the initiatives that we're working on.
I wanted to just let the council know that our district has been in earnest and actively engaged in strategic planning and a district-wide way over the last couple of years. And we're gonna start seeing some of those things roll out, but one of the most important things that I want you to know is that while we have Oxnard College, and Oxnard College is obviously an important institution in this community, part of our planning work has been to look at the collective energy of the entire district in all three colleges and the programs and the resources that they bring or should bring to our entire community. So irrespective of a student's zip code, we believe they oughta have equitable access to dual enrollment opportunities. When we look at work economic and workforce development, we now have five baccalaureate degree programs that we wanna make sure they're available to students throughout Ventura County And so we're really looking at collaboration, both within our organization and certainly with our community partners in business and education.
Not the least of which is Navy Base Ventura County, which is right near our backyard here. We've been engaged with them in earnest for the last several years. And we're starting to see some programs and student engagement internships and co-op experiences and things like that. We're excited about what's happening annually. We'r serving about 42,000 students in Ventura County We've been doing it for a long time. Ventura College turns 100 years old this year, and of course Oxnard turns 50. So that's all I wanted to say is just thank you for having us here. You get to hear from the Ventura County Leadership Academy Educator of the Year celebrated today, Dr. Cynthia Herrera.
And she has a big title but I think she's the Vice Chancellor of Awesomeness.
Now you know why I let him talk first, huh? Thank you so much Mayor McArthur, Mayor Pro Tem Turan and council members as well as city manager. We really appreciate you allowing us to come and give you some information about what we've been doing over the last 50 years. There's a lot of excitement around Oxnard College and tremendous opportunity. So we'll start with the impact that Oxnard College makes on education. I believe that there are three individuals on your council that actually graduated or participated in Oxnard College, right? And then we have a City Councilwoman that actively works. She's a superstar with us so you know the quality of her work so we're really blessed to have her on our team.
We'll start with the building, the workforce and the economic mobility of our students. We know that 69% of our former Oxnard College students work in the field related to their studies. We know that former students had a 37% median increase in income upon graduation and that Ventura County workers with an associate degree earn 18% more than those with a high school diploma And over a lifetime, if you are transferring to a four-year university, you make $233.4 million more over your lifetime. If you're a certificate earner, $293.7 million and an associate's degree is $312.8 million. Imagine that type of economy that we're creating through Oxnard College When we're looking at what drives economic growth, we know that student spending generates a measurable economic impact in our region.
$73.5 million contribute to the total economic output generated by our Oxnard College students. It supports 286 jobs regionally, and we generate $6.4 million in state and local tax revenue and generate $5.7 million in federal tax revenue. So good for us, huh? We are very strong in our partnerships. One of the things that we recognize is we're not in this alone.
When we're looking at workforce development, we collaborate very closely with partners as the Chancellor alluded to. We have a strong partnership with Naval Base Ventura County, all three commands. In fact, at Oxnard College they actually co-wrote the logistics pathway courses with us And actually the engineers from the base are teaching that. So it's an online course, courses that are available to people throughout the county.
We also have a partnership with Ventura, with Oxnard and Camarillo Airport. We work with the Ventura County Economic Vitality and at that division and we've created the Area 805 Hive It's, we're creating technologies for autonomous unmanned vehicles, air, land and sea. It's a huge partnership, multi-million dollar opportunity partnering with Fathomworks, the Navy base, the K12 system, the four year system, CSUCI and ourselves. And that's a huge opportunity for future emerging industry.
We are also working very closely with Leuna, the trades. They have developed a strong partnership with us that we now have a trade center at Oxnard College and adult learners can go and get their certificate or their skill upskilling that's needed for positions in future trades. We also have strong K-12 partnerships. One of the things that we're working very closely on is, we recognize that college readiness is enforced when we have dual enrollment where high school students are able to get college credit in high school for free, no charge and they can do it during the school day or after the school day and we refer to that as CCAP and non-CCAP.
However, the important thing that we're doing is we're also partnering with CSUCI, Ventura County Community Foundation ourselves and the Ventura County Office of Education. And we are offering master's degree program pathways for high school teachers in math and English because we know as we expand dual enrollment and college readiness, we're gonna need more faculty to be able to teach college math and college English And so that program is just kicking off in the fall, and that'll be an exciting opportunity for us to build the workforce within our own region.
I forgot I should be moving these forward. We also partner with our foundation. We have the Oxnard College Foundation, which is a wonderful partner for us. They have offered 357 scholarships over this past year totaling $273,000 and that's huge for our students who come from lower income families and can really be supported by this. They have also offered us $125,000 and invested in Oxnard College programs such as opportunities in athletics. We have a lot of activities I hope some of you were able to make it to our family festival that we had this past weekend.
several thousand individuals present, so it was a wonderful event. But those are the types of things that our foundation helps us with in addition to the scholarships they've also contributed to our library and learning resource center we have a lot of parent and family orientations and of course our school of STEM So I'm going to turn it over now to Dr. Josefa Baca, who is our acting vice president of academic affairs. But before I do that, I want to recognize James Schuelke, who's sitting over there to my far left. He has been very inspirational and very supportive throughout my tenure there at Oxnard College. And I just wanted to recognize him. That's great.
0:14 – 0:2711 turns
Good evening. So I get the best part of this presentation where I'm going to talk to you about the demographics associated with our students, but it's the demographics actually capture something that I think is even more prevalent and important that I want you all to know about our students at Oxnard College and that's that they are resilient, that they are hardworking That they are the kind of students that are going to show up in this data, and I'm going to show time and time again that each data point shows you a story of students who have a plan for the future. Who are the future of Oxford and Ventura County but that it's through their hard work determination and dedication that we're watching their success stories. So with that, I want to tell you that we serve over 12,000 students.
That you can see that we're in a state of growth and that's one of the most beautiful stories of Oxnard generally. We have a lot of young people and they are coming to Oxnard College. You can see that we've grown 9.45%. This is exciting for us, and it means that we are doing what we've been trying to do for our community. And that's conveyed that there is an opportunity at Oxnard College, that the community college can offer upward trajectory. We think that this is proof that it's working.
Additionally, we are what's called an HSI or Hispanic Serving Institution. You can see that our demographics are veering about 71% Latino and we are so proud that we are a Latino serving institution. I think that it says quite a bit when you see our demographics This story right here that it's telling us is that we have a lot of work to continue, but that we have a beautifully diverse student population that is currently studying at Oxnard College.
Oh, what happened here? I think I went from... Am I good? All right, thank you. So resiliency, hard working. We have about 10,000 over 10,000 students and they're part-time students so what are they doing with the other time? They're working, they're taking care of families, they're contributing to our economy and I think that tells that data point alone tells you the kind of students that we're serving. They're the kind of students who understand how to balance both And I think that you'll see the trend across California with respects to community college students. We see more and more students working part time as well as going to school part time.
Some people will would say like let's make them all just full time students. I think that's one way to look at it but I think the other way to look at it is this data point right here, this tells us what our students are capable of right? And so many of you who maybe also went to community college, myself included. I also worked and I went to school and I know that that taught me a lot of grit. And I would like just say this is... I like to commend our students because this always tells me that there's a special population that we serve.
We're really excited about our PACE program, but also our ESL program. It's one of the highlights to our campus and to the service that we're offering the community. ESL in particular, we're partnering with our local grade schools where we're offering ESL courses on site and we have seen a growth of 35% with these programs. And so a lot of people are engaging with our ESL program.
Connectors, right? Because when you provide these kinds of courses to the family, you'll see that oftentimes their children will come and see that they can come to Oxnard College. They themselves will come to Oxnard College and it's one of the many ways that we're able to bring more of our population to the college. And so we're in a growth pattern. And you can see also here that our growth is continuing, that our dual enrollment headcount is increasing, that our PACE program is growing and our ESL program is growing. So there's so many positive growth factors at Oxnard College and we're really excited to see that.
You can also see that our students are completers. So that hard working, it ends with them completing their degrees, attaining certificate and all of those types of metrics are also in a growth pattern. With that I'm going to bring back Dr. Herrera and she's gonna talk to you a little bit more about the services that we offer at Oxnard College.
Thank you Dr. Baca. As I was talking about the foundation, I was remiss in acknowledging two individuals who have been very foundational to the success of what we're doing at Oxnard College, Councilwoman Rodriguez and City Manager Alan Inouye. Our have been foundation on our foundation board of directors for years and really instrumental in making sure that our students are served. So thank you very, very much for that. We appreciate that.
So as we're looking at our students, we want to make sure that we have really wonderful wraparound services so that they are successful and we meet their needs. And we have a CalWORKs program, we have the EAC program, the EOPS and Rising Scholars. In addition, we have financial opportunities for our students. We have served 7,383 students and we distributed $32,189,371 in the fiscal year of 24-25. And so this distribution really helps our students stay in school and be provided with the necessities needed to do that because many of our students are working parents They have children that they have opportunities that they are distracted by and so this really helps them stay focused.
And we had this wonderful bachelor's degree program in dental hygiene which launched in fall of 2025 It's a provisionally approved program in applied advocacy and organizing. We have been approved for that bachelor's degree program, and we are underway with the planning process. And then of course we're working with transfer institutions And our favorite is CSUCI because they are local and our students can stay local, continue on with their family work and then also enjoy the luxuries of living in our county. And we have 36 transfer programs and our top five transfer degrees are business administration, biology, psychology, anthropology Thank you very much.
I'm sorry, missed it. We have college education opportunities too. We have 20 programs and we are continuing to grow our top five career education programs are business management, early childhood studies, dental hygiene Computer Networking Information Technology and Culinary Arts. I don't know if any of you've had the opportunity to eat our bistro on Thursday nights, it's a wonderful dining experience and it's our students that serve and prepare the food from beginning to end so they're learning how to operate a restaurant as well as work in a restaurant so it's wonderful opportunity.
Okay So that ends our overview of what we've been doing over the last 50 years, and specifically what we've done in the last year as far as our student success and opportunities. And we'd be happy to entertain any questions.
Wonderful. Absolutely. We'll start with some questions. Go ahead Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you. And thank you very much Dr. Herrera for the information and Dr. Vaca. As was mentioned I'm certainly an alum Oxnard College, and I fly the flag anytime I can to promote it and let folks know what a gem of an institution we have in our own backyard. And the opportunities it offers as was seen by the slides that were shared here including the demographics. Just one clarification on this and believe it's on slide two they're not numbered. It's the one building workforce and economic mobility I'm wondering if the bullet points we have at the bottom there, those are lifetime added earnings generated by Oxnard College graduates. Is this what Oxnard College graduates generate to the local economy? Is that what is represented there?
Correct. This was from a study done by Dr. Demouie from Cal Lutheran University and we specifically commissioned him to assess the value add to our community and to themselves.
Okay great thank you for that. And that's my only question. I appreciate all of that. It's certainly validating to see who we have at Oxnard College, I think that intuitively many of us know who is attending and is going for any number of reasons. I know for my story which is not unique, Graduates from high school who barely graduated from high school and had no clue what I was going to do next. And I didn't have the grades nor the planning to go to a four year university, and I could've gone to work at The Port which would've also been a great career or I could've gone to Oxnard College. I chose that path and it was my first introduction to academic success.
And it really showed me that I could perform with quality and I understood and could learn differently probably needed in more comprehensive high school settings, but it really was for me to connect the dots that I learned in high school into how I could apply that in an academic setting and young adulthood. And so I just, I credit so much in my career and the opportunities I've been given and the things that have happened for me because of my time at Oxnard College. And that's why I will always refer back to it and let folks know that it is a great institution for what it gives to folks who are in my situation, which again my story is not unique. That's why I always have some kind of representation you know no matter what it looks like when I go places so thank you again for the presentation much appreciated.
Thank you for those kind words
Mayor
Pro Tem.
Absolutely Vice Chancellor thank you so much for this comprehensive presentation and I'm really I tell you I'm really appreciative to see Chancellor thank you for being here Mr. Herrera Dr. Vaca and James I mean it means a lot all of you are here for this presentation. I'm a graduate of Oxnard College myself, he gave me the launch to my career. My son is there now, he graduated last year from Oxnard High School and he entertained transferring to a four-year but he and I talked and I am a fan of Oxnard College so he's here now. I know Councilwoman Rodriguez sent me a text message that he made the Dean's List Excited to see that. And I just, you know, I tell you, if anything, I would just love to see Oxnard College continue to grow.
It's situated in the southern part of our city which is more and more becoming just that much more dense. There are pockets of some of our poorest in our community and I just certainly would love to see it I think it affords tremendous value to our community that most needs it. So thank you Vice Chancellor for being here. Absolutely, go ahead Councilwoman.
Thank you so much for the extensive presentation I had not seen this and I really appreciate everything that you shared especially in the demographics when we're talking about the age and the genders of folks you know over 450 students are over the age of 50. And I think, I love that statistic because I always tell people my youngest student is 12, my oldest is 82 and you know folks are surprised many times that it's never a bad time to go back to school or try something different. I would like since we have a few minutes left because I am in the world, I love Oxford College and I've been working there for almost 11 years now but I know what CalWORKs EAC ELPS Rising Scholars is.
We would be remiss if folks didn't understand, like 113 of our students are going back to school as rising scholars. Those are formerly incarcerated students. We have students who are single parents we have students so can you just tell folks what that slide and if Diego if we could move forward in the slides I think it's a third to the last slide where um it says 151 students are served through our CalWORKs program.
0:27 – 0:3619 turns
special needs or an IEP in their high school. And they come to us and we provide accommodating services, or technology, or wraparound support so that they can be successful. And as Councilwoman Rodriguez said 1,019 students were served just in one year of 2025 And what that does is it offers them the opportunity that they may not have in other college settings to be successful and graduate.
For the extended opportunity programs and services, we serve 903 students. And those are individuals who are working with us and have workshops and strong support counseling to help them with their daily life and their life experiences so that they can be successful at Oxnard College at a pace that works for them. And same with CalWORKs. We have 151 students that have served, and the Rising Scholars as Councilwoman Gabby Rodriguez said is for justice-involved individuals. And we also work with the Goodwill Industries partnering with the Workforce Development Board with WIOA funding to help support Individuals who have been recently incarcerated and working through trying to get a job. And so they come back to us while they're working at goodwill, and continue on with their education.
Thank you so much. I'll just say because I think Veterans Resource Center, a lot of folks know like dependents of veterans or family members but students come from all walks of life. And that's really why I wanted to make sure that folks understand what all these acronyms mean. Thank you. Thank you.
Go ahead Councilwoman.
Thank you so much for the presentation. I too am a product of the community college system, was also part of the EOPS program. My counselors were Robert Trabato and Tim Sewell, so they definitely planted a seed in me to continue the work and give back. And I think one of the things that I often think about is something that I struggled in The education system at least or my time there was trying to find a job after I graduated. Oftentimes, there are particular skill sets that are required and as mentioned, a lot of us did have to work multiple jobs as we're I appreciate the highlight with the partnership with the trades and local union pathways.
prepared and have the skills needed to be able to apply and be successful in getting jobs here locally.
Thank you for asking that question, Councilwoman. We have a career center also on our college campus and the Career Center helps foster that connection, that bridge to employers so students go to the Career Center and through that process we identify opportunities in our community either through apprenticeships Internships or job placement. We also, I'll put on my other hat as the Vice Chancellor of Institutional Effectiveness from a district wide perspective we are creating what we call a workforce development ecosystem and that ecosystem is partnering with all of our non-profits our educational four-year and two-year, and our 12-year partners.
All the businesses and our elected officials in our governing bodies to try to create a cohesive approach within our county for that partnering with our employers. So we're in the process of refining that system from a district wide perspective at Oxnard College. We have a career center And we also have advisory boards for each one of the career education pathways that business partners participate in and give us feedback and help us with that process.
Great,
thank you so much. Any other comments? Go ahead Council Member.
Thank you very much for the comments in the presentation I want to thank Council Member Rodriguez for asking the questions it drew out more information for the public. I just have a question on the second to the last slide. You mentioned the Culinary Arts Thursday night, you have an opportunity people may rebroadcast this watch it and wonder little more about that can you tell people how the public could take advantage of it?
Sure. Possibly
improve your standing with the students and everything?
Sure, we have a couple. We're getting near now to the end of the semester so because these are students who will be graduating I think we have two more dinners left and it's on a Thursday night and it's The Bistro and you can come to the community college and you can walk in or you can call the culinary arts program and you make a reservation and you wine and dine with us until 8 o'clock
Thank you very much. Years ago, the Culinary Arts Program that was there at the time, I partook of it with some residents in the neighborhood from that area and from the north end and we were very impressed and appreciate that it's back in business. Thank you.
Thank you. Madam Clerk, are there any public speakers on this appointment item?
Mayor and Councilmembers, we do not have any public speakers in person or virtually for this item. Thank you. Wonderful.
And I'll just conclude with this Dr. Herbst make it real brief and thank you Dr. McLennan for Having Oxnard College act as a community hub, I see more and more events being held at Oxnard College bringing people together from the community fostering a sense of belonging. So I just really want to commend you for that not only for the sports groups that are utilized in your fields but also the various festivals from Dia de los Muertos having the, I know the school district uses that site to showcase their science projects and I just think it's so wonderful to have those kind of community events And the college stack is a hub for that. So I thank you, Chancellor, Dr. Rivera. Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor and James, thank you. Make a
quick comment. So first of all it's very heavily weighted on the dais tonight of Oxnard College graduates. So first of all just want all the students to know that if you succeed at Oxnard College you can also become a city manager. But I would like to make a few comments and repeat something that I've been saying, I think for at least five years now. Which is and you saw the evidence here tonight that Dr. Herrera laid out for us especially with regard to who the student body is in our demographics.
I've been saying this for five years that of all the civic institutions in this community during this time Over our history, you have City Hall. You have all the school districts. You have the hospital. You have the non-profits and on and on. And again, you can see it in the student body for this time and perhaps for a few generations to come I believe that Oxnard College is the most significant and important civic institution for the Oxnard community And that's one of the reasons I serve on the Board of Directors for the Oxnard College Foundation.
And I'm just grateful that everyone is trying to work and support, and help the college, and have all the collaborations. But the better our community does at Oxnard College, the better our community does as a whole. And it is again, of all the civic institutions This one is the most significant, the most important and we should all rally to support them. Thank you.
Absolutely thank you. And just one last thing Dr. Hurd this last week several of us were in Washington D.C., and one of the key points was to advocate for the partnership to continue to be strengthened between the college, Oxnard College specifically with this relationship to the Port of Hueneme and the naval base, to strengthen that. So there were 10 of us that were there advocating for that strength. Just wanted to share that with you.
And again, I was remiss. The Port of Wainimi has offered Oxnard College $250,000 in scholarship awarding for our students related to the logistics and electrification of vehicles for their new charging station that'll be off Rice Road. So that strong partnership is already proven very successful and we are very appreciative of the Port of
Wainimi. Thank you, Mr. Hora.
Thank you so much for your support and your time. We really appreciate it.
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At this time I just want to call the meeting to order for the Oxnard City Council for Tuesday, April 30th 2026. Madam Clerk may we have the roll call and posting of the agenda please?
Next is the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence for all that it's occurring across our country.
And I will turn this over to Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you, Mayor. We have Allison Garcia from Vista Real Charter High School who's going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and then she will share with us a little bit about her journey so after the pledge you'll be silent for a little bit and when the mayor says thank you then we turn it back to you okay?
Face the flag, please. Put your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin!
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one Nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all
Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Allison for being here. I'll turn it over to you, OK?
Hello, everyone. My name is Allison Garcia. I come from parents who immigrated from Mexico to the United States. I couldn't be more grateful for that because my parents took very little they had leaving their families and their life in Mexico behind to give me and my siblings a better chance at life. And although living here has definitely Thank you. be better at everything we do. And it gives me that push of hope that I will be something big in life one day, not only for myself but to make them proud. I have always used the hardships that come in life to better myself. For example, in 2024, I lost my best friend being my big brother He was shot and passed away a few hours later at the Ventura Hospital at the age of 17. It was one of the most hardest things I had to overcome, but instead of bringing myself down, I used this to lift me up.
My brother always wanted me to do the best I could do in school, and at that time, I wasn't. And my teacher could be a testimony of that. As of now, I'm trying to lift myself and do better in school. Not only for me but to keep my brother in memory and make him proud. I am currently trying to get myself on track with my credits and as I do that, I've taken a dual enrollment class and will be onto my next class of child development this semester coming. My hope is to work with kids one day to help them through difficulties as I went through hardships as a kid being raped at a young age and bullied up until middle school I can definitely say I've overcame that. I don't see myself as a little girl who was always afraid. I am now able to speak for myself, laugh with anyone and talk to anyone to make everybody feel welcome.
I hope to one day be successful so that I can donate to anybody who needs it because my goal in life isn't to just have everything I could ever dream of. It's that I could help the community that has helped me so much. I hope to make an impact, a bigger impact in our community. As for now, I'm solely making an impact in my church guiding and leading young girls to a better relationship with God. I am proud to say I've made so many friendships and relationships because of that as well. I serve with the kids in my ministry during service and I'm able to say I grew such a big love towards all of them which makes me so happy because I am able to give them a love that they might have never received from their family. And although All of this comes with difficulties, like being unmotivated one day and then another feeling like I can't do it.
But I've learned that no matter how I feel, I have to keep pushing to get where I want to be. And every day I will keep going till I reach where I wanna be. And I'm so grateful for the school I was placed in because they gave me such motivation encouragement to keep going no matter what. Thank you guys for this time you've given me to speak on my journey so far. I hope that one day you guys will be able to see that I really did make it
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Thank you, Allison for sharing such an inspirational story and discussing and talking about your lived realities. It's inspiring. And also for highlighting your parents that are working so hard as you stated to give you the right platform for you to succeed in launching on your way, right? That's what most of us at our parents want for our kids is Think about them first before ourselves to give you the best opportunity to have a great future.
So that's wonderful, you highlighted them and it's my absolute honor before I turn it over to Mayor Pro Tempte to present you with this certificate because this is why we do this. It's to start on a positive note and to highlight the tremendous talent that's here and somebody like you to talk about your resilience. And I have no doubt that you're going places and you've got a wonderful future. So thank you for being part of this community and us, we want to get behind you and be as supportive as we can for you.
Thank you so much. And
just real quickly, Allison before you come up here do you want to introduce the adults who came with you this evening?
I have my supervising teacher Mr. Sigmund and an office lady at my school Miss Paulina.
Thank you. And before you come up here, I'll just share with my colleagues in the public Vista Real Charter High School is a nontraditional or alternative education opportunity for young people and I had mentioned it during the Oxnard College discussion that I was probably a student who would have benefited from non-traditional learning opportunities and so I'm glad that we are offering within our education system in our community Different ways for different students to learn in the way that is best for them. And as we heard from Allison's story, she's faced a lot of challenges but seeks to overcome every single one and has done so thus far and I look forward to what you do next. So hope you're super proud of yourself because I think everybody in this room is really proud of you.
So thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you again, Allison. Thank you. We will now
move to the next item on the agenda. This is for public comments for items not on the agenda. Madam Clerk, do we have any public speakers for this item? And we'll go to a virtual speaker that's been on hold. Let's start with that.
Virtual speaker, if you can press star six to unmute and you have three minutes starting now.
Hi this is Eric Andrus would you please play my video?
This is Eric Andrist. I want to talk tonight about how we fund this city and whether we're doing it fairly. Right now, Oxnard relies heavily on sales tax. On the surface that sounds simple. Everyone pays a little every time they buy something. But here's the reality. One, people hate the word tax just on face value. It feels like a punishment instead of people participating in the upkeep of their own city.
Second, low-income families, large households, single parents, people whose entire paycheck goes to buying basic necessities end up paying a larger share of their income in sales tax than wealthier residents. A family of six buying food, clothes and supplies pays far more into the system than a high earner who simply buys less. That is not equity. That is the opposite of it.
I'd like to propose a different model, one already working in other California cities. Something I call Resident City Services Fund. The idea is straightforward. Instead of a sales tax that quietly punishes people for buying essentials for their families, every household pays a required city services charge scaled so that those with more resources pay more and those with less pay a minimum but still contribute. Everyone has skin in the game. Nobody lives here free, and nobody gets squeezed just for taking care of their family's needs.
But here's what makes this different from just another tax. A portion of that fund would be resident-directed. Each year residents would designate part of their payment toward their priorities. Streets, parks, libraries, public safety, youth programs... Think of it as your community maintenance vote. You're saying keeping our shared home livable. A big complaint is that the south end of town gets improvements at a lesser rate than the north end. With this program, they can have a say where their dollars go right into their own neighborhood. This is not a new idea. Vallejo California, a city our size that went through bankruptcy launched this exact kind of program in 2012 Residents directed millions towards projects they chose. City trust improved, civic participation increased, projects got built.
What Oxnard needs is not another sales tax extension sold through fear-based mailers by a city manager incapable and or unwilling to cede decision making to the actual people of this city. What we need is a transparent, fair resident-driven funding model that treats taxpayers as partners, not ATMs. I urge this council to explore the Resident City Services Fund Model. Cities that have done it are better for it. Ours could be too. Thank you.
Thank you Mr. Andrus for the video. We'll next go to Lindy Levin. Ms. Levin, you're going to be followed by Ronald Reckle
Hi, there. So I come to you today on behalf of Jeff Davis Child Development Center located at 601 West Hill Street. So they've had a problem for well over a year. I remember talking with Tim Bean before he left the Oxnard employment about funding for I guess it's called a CIP Capital Improvement Project So it rained two weeks ago on a Tuesday. The water, apparently according to Ray Chervino there's no gutters but there's needing to have construction. It's $5 million. It would be like a mile worth of construction but there's no funding and they're saying next fiscal year.
But so the project is just so dangerous. The parents are carrying their children on their shoulders and the water is muddy And if a child falls, they got a delivery from Vons two weeks ago as well on that Tuesday. The car that delivered the food had to drive up on the curb so they couldn't get the food out of the car because the water was so bad. It didn't rain that hard but the problem is it's been let go for so long.
So before something happens, if somebody gets hurt or falls or hits their head or whatever, he could be a lot more than $5 million in a lawsuit and Oxnard is fully liable So there you go. So I have two friends that work for the school and they tell me about the situation, and I think this is ridiculous. And it's gone on well too long. And it's in Ms. Rodriguez's jurisdiction there in your district. And I know you're going to have a meet-and-greet on Saturday?
I think it is so I guess we'll speak a little bit more. But anyways, it's a precarious situation that needs immediate attention, not being like a ping pong ball for everyone I've talked to. So I spoke to your city engineer. I didn't speak to him, actually he left a message but it sounded like he just was gonna kick the can down the road hence my being here tonight. I think it's just too important to ignore. It's really precarious.
Alrighty so that's it thank you.
Thank you.
Thank
You Ms.
Levin
thank
you Thanks Ronald
0:52 – 0:587 turns
Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, staff and the public. My name is Ronald Aruejo and I'm speaking as a Vice Chair of the East Village Neighborhood and on behalf of the INCO Executive Board. Oxnard has 200,000 people, Ventura County has over 800,000 and Oxnard one of the ten cities of Ventura County makes up almost a quarter of the county's population So I wanted to give this as a foundation for the rest of this presentation.
What are we trying to do on May 11? We're having a candidate's forum, which I believe all of you have participated in some form since 2022. This is an... For the public who doesn't know it is a focus event at which we can learn more about the candidates who will be on the ballot. It enables us as voters to make informed decisions and compare and contrast candidates on a neutral venue.
Oxnard, like I said is the largest city in the county and no other city jurisdiction that I have been able to see in the past five years provides an avenue for candidates to reach their counties, reach their voters at the county level other than the League of Women Voters which is actually having one right now in Thousand Oaks Just a preview of since COVID that we have had three candidate forums. Every time Oxnard has had a general or special election, the INCO has been able to hold candidate forums for the voters and they have been very good in moving forward and adding additional positions that cover Oxnard, like the UWCD candidates. And this year will be, like I said, the first time that we have on the countywide level and at least one candidate from four of the five county wide positions have accepted as of this time to participate in our candidate forum.
So I just want to provide a little bit of opening of what we do before. This is a couple months process getting the approval of the INCO, emails and letters sent, a call by myself as managing that candidate forums and then questions by the residents can be submitted and then we can ask that of the candidates. That's a screenshot of the candidate forum link And questions are normally done in a categorization or position basis and they come from the public, my own and from news sources.
And the actual event has a series of rules that everyone all the candidates are aware of. And I just wanna thank Samantha Shapiro, the INCO executive board and the city of Oxnard for allowing the resources to hold this. Thank you mayor.
Thank you very much, Ronald, for this presentation. Mr. Stein?
Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good evening. Members of City Council, the audience and people at large. I've been a resident of this city since 1982 or thereabouts I've been active in the neighborhoods for 92, probably 90. I first ran for public office in 1992. I've been running for public office for many, many years. If I cannot run anymore, I can only walk. I apologize for that.
The issue I have right now is the fact that I make public record requests for information. For example, I asked for a public record request to see all Good evening, everyone. I want to start this evening's discussion. One survey was released out of three. The city does not seem willing to comply with the public records act. Many times I talk about issues that seem to be ignored.
Tonight's agenda item talks about items that are going The budget plans and priorities, it's not going to impact the budget. I mean is the city manager just going to listen to you and say I'm going to do my own thing? That's the impression I'm getting. That's the impression I get from staff. Public construction elevators have been broken for over two years. Has it been fixed? No.
We have water facilities where we can save water. We spend $24 million a year on infrastructure for water We have not built the wells that would cost $10 to $20 million at one time. College Park has a pool that City Manager promised will be built by 2026. Promises are empty because promises cannot be legally, has no legal value. A political promise has no value.
It's only one's word. College Park we spent money buying, well people bought homes in College Park and who paid When developers come in there, the developers pay the city fees to impact certain structures. In this particular case a park and fire station. Money was spent by the developers to the city and developers got reimbursed when they bought the homes. The city got the money but it had no park.
They had no park since 1992 That's when INCF got, well that's when the plan got developed. So anyways, the homes got built. Fire station was not built. The fire station was supposed to build a 50% build out. City got paid for the fire station but the fire station wasn't built. City was paid for the park, the park was not built. What else is the city doing spending money without the authorization of the actual approvals? Thank you very much for your time. Absolutely.
Thank you Mr. Stein. Madam Clerk does that conclude the speaker portion?
Mayor and council members, yes that concludes our speakers in person and virtually for items not on the agenda. Thank you.
Thank you We will move to the next item on the agenda this is item I This is a report from the I'm sorry it's item H Forgive me. I was jumping over Our city manager's report. I'll turn it over to you Alex. Thank you.
I concur let's jump over
0:59 – 1:078 turns
We will move to item I. This is a report of City Council members.
My report for tonight, just wanted to share out that Councilmember Rodriguez and I had the opportunity to meet with Superintendent Degenna as well as the principals within our district what young people are navigating within our school system and opportunities for collaboration. I've mentioned it in several City Council meetings that one of my biggest priorities is also doing some outreach to community members that typically may not be present at City Council or at neighborhood council meetings And the best way to do that I think is reaching out to our alternative schools, looking at folks that are homeschooled and also even within our education system. Many times schools hold ELAC meetings as well as school site council meetings And that's exactly the place where parents and families often are to really, you know, connect City Hall to what's happening at our community level.
And so I wanted to thank all of the high school principals, elementary school principals for taking the time to connect and meet. I also will be joining a May Day event tomorrow and really appreciated the conversation I had with Harrington School, which is in the Cal Giesler neighborhood in my district and looking forward to continue to expand that partnership. I also had the opportunity to join my colleagues as well for the Casa de Carmen grand opening to really ensure that we help chip away at some of housing concerns in our community and know that there's much more work to be done there, and it's just the beginning.
And look forward to, as mentioned, continuing to engage with our community members and wanted to just make that formal announcement that if anybody within the city or within District 6 would like to connect, share out some of their areas of improvement or offer recommendations My door is always open for that feedback, and I think tonight's meeting is just a perfect opportunity to kind of digest and kind of hammer that out a bit more. And that is my report. Back to you, Mayor.
Appreciate it Councilwoman Perez. Thank you. Councilmember?
Thank you, Mayor. I had the opportunity under the invite from the Oxnard Elementary School District Superintendent met with her took a witness with me There were four principals from the school districts within my district, from the schools within my district. I had the opportunity to attend the arts event that was at the PAL facility and I did also have the opportunity to send the opening of the homeless facility across the street.
All of them were good events, thank you.
Thank you Mr. Morello. Mayor Pro Tem?
Thank you mayor. I also attended the Arts Gala that Councillor Perlow mentioned, and I want to thank our rec staff and all of the volunteers and the young people who created all the artwork. And it was a great event. And anyone who got to go, I don't know if you had a chance to hear but they had a small model of downtown Oxnard with Plaza Park and the Carnegie and the City Hall building in the parking structure that is created by a second grader And it was very well done and, you know, wasn't fully to scale understandably but she did a great job with it and had toy cars and little cardboard buildings. And I just appreciate it but the fun fact that I want to give for folks who saw it was that that wasn't originally part of the gala as I understand that they came across it at the after school program and encouraged her And so they, as a last minute effort were able to get that in there and they created a small acrylic like protective box for it.
And I just want to give a big shout out to our staff for that who created the box but also encourage that student to submit this great piece of art that she had created. So hope folks got to see it if not there are pictures of it. So did that, and then Sierra Linda Neighborhood Council was great as well. And I appreciate we had Corporal Weisan who updated the Sierra Linda neighborhood on the recent arrest in the case for the homicide for Mr. Nijja, who folks may remember was a...we had a press conference couple weeks ago. It happened in that neighborhood, in that park and the residents were able to get A good comprehensive update from the corporal who was on the Major Crimes Task Force previously and had some really good information, was able to answer questions that they had.
And so I want to thank him and thank the neighborhood and their chair Mr. Garcia. And I also attended the opening for the Casa de Carmen facility that we have just across the street here And I just want to thank everybody who was involved in that. It was quite a bit of effort on the part of the developers and on Mercy House, and I know that city staff worked very hard and in tandem with them to pull it off.
What was great, about the work that went into it and also what's to be expected of that facility and the programming they have there. But the last speaker was a resident of the facility and the program, young lady named Crystal who shared about her many challenges that she had faced on how programs like this are the type of opportunity she needed to make that change that she so desired for so long but couldn't find a way to get over that first and second step to get there. And so I anticipate there will be many, many more crystals going through that program and it was a great tangible reminder to everybody that these are real people who are struggling in our communities and these types of programs actually do help people and they actually are effective and not only the data shows that but we hear it from the people who are experiencing it now So I appreciate that, and I'm glad that we as a city didn't just take the stance to just move her somewhere else or send her to be struggling in some other city or on the outskirts of town.
So I appreciate that we had those programs for her and those who will follow her. And lastly, I did also get a chance to meet with Dr. Degenna and the three principals who have schools in the Oxley School District and District 2, and thank all of them for taking the time to do so We had a good conversation about the many challenges that our students and families face, and that our educators who work with them directly have to navigate as well. And where they as a school district, and the city as the local government entity were where we have overlap in goals and interests, and how we can move forward on that so this is my update thank you Mayor.
Absolutely, thank you Mayor Pro Tem. Councilwoman Basuah? Thank you.
I have a few updates. I also attended the grand opening of Casa del Carmen that was for me very exciting because it's been years and years and a lot of work from staff so I want to congratulate everybody that was a part of that. I will be meeting with Mr. Jenna and her staff tomorrow morning so I'll report on that next time but finally I had reported that there is a semi-professional women's team here in Oxnard and they're going to debut on Sunday at 6 p.m.. At Del Sol so if somebody wants to come out and support our local team, please do so and that's my report
1:07 – 1:134 turns
Thank You councilwoman Good mr. Sir yep,
so I attended the La Colonia neighborhood Council meeting recently and I just want to say that the presentation by, it was a great presentation made by our traffic engineer Miguel Guillen. I think he's a superstar. Very well received by the residents attending. I'm hoping that they'll be able to give similar presentations to other neighborhood councils as well.
There were some residents that did ask me to bring up some concerns here that they had there. They are definitely concerned about a recent uptick in crime. There's issues with double parking and folks parking blocking driveways and And there's an issue on Cooper Street where we have some signs that limit parking. It's like I think they're green colored curbs but those time limits are apparently not being respected or enforced so the The residents were telling me that they would like to see more patrols in the area. Maybe we can address that, knock some of these behaviors down a little bit.
Another issue that residents brought up is I don't know how it came about but apparently some residents were pretty displeased about the process for selecting an artist for a mural that's going there. They felt like they were kind of left out, I don't know if that's really the case but apparently there are some hard feelings there so I'm hoping that maybe somebody on staff could address that neighborhood council in the future and see how we can address that, maybe work together more closely with them so that they feel like they're really a stakeholder in the decision making, I think that was important to I received a communication from a gentleman by the name of Gabriel Esp.
He's disappointed with the city, he tells me, concerning a severely uplifted sidewalk in the 200 block West Woolley which apparently has existed for many years but it was brought to the attention of the city seven months ago and the 3-1-1 app by this gentleman. His concern is that he's only now being informed that this is scheduled to be fixed on June 15th, and he's concerned about safety. And I'm certainly concerned about safety and liability issues here. We've had issues where people trip on our sidewalks, and it not only doesn't harm them, it harms us as well.
What I was wondering—and maybe staff could address this at some point in the future—is I was wondering how these repairs are Are Could be more aware of what the issues are. Maybe we can make better plans in the future for that and that's my report, thank you.
Thank you Mr. Stark. Councilwoman Rodriguez?
Yes, thank you so much I know that several of our reports overlapped so this was a busy week. I know I too attended the Casa del Carmen and Casa Aliento open house it was great to get a tour of just the remodel of the vagabond now Casa Aliento By Oxnard Boulevard next to Denny's and so I'm really excited about how we are prioritizing trying to get homes for people who need them.
I met with Supervisor, I'm sorry Superintendent DeGenna. Thank you Councilwoman Perez for allowing me to join you in your meeting that was scheduled and I look forward for opportunities to collaborate understanding that we also have our role as a city in partnership with our educational partners So I look forward to Co-collaborating and working together and making sure that we do our part.
I attended the VCLA luncheon today, and congratulations to Dr. Cynthia Herrera who presented to us earlier for getting educator of the year but there was a lot of different nominees and folks being represented for the Ventura County Leadership Academy so shout out for their work that they do just trying to highlight different leaders in our community also last week I was I attended the Latina GDP. Actually, I was the hostess with the mostest at the Latina GDP and there was a UCLA report in collaboration with CLU and it was presented at Oxnard College. There was a preview but it's really talking about the economic impact of the Latino community throughout the nation as a GDP if it was a country, it would be number four in the world so it's talking a lot about the investments that we do In our kids early on and there's a lot of good, a lot of good information.
The report will actually be released on May 5th but I just thought that was a very impactful statistic that I didn't know about. I am having my office hours at the library this Saturday that's coming up so if anybody would like to connect with your councilwoman I'll be there 11 to 1 but I am scheduling some meetings one-on-one with folks who wanted to meet with me one-on-one and not in a group setting.
And I attended the Art Walk at the PAL, and earlier this week, I attended the No Limits for Deaf Children annual dinner that they have. And if you're not familiar with the organization, they do a lot of good work for folks who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. So again, shout out to all of their good work. And yeah, I think that's it for now but I look forward to folks joining me at my office hours next Saturday. So three days from now, two days
1:13 – 1:183 turns
Thank you Councilwoman Rodriquez. Just a couple of reminders, tomorrow the Oxnard Warriors football and cheer is having an open workout from 6 to 8 p.m., also Lemonwood School is having Day of the Child, Day of the Niño, so the community's invited to go to Lemonwood School for that. Also I will be, thank you Councilwoman Basu, for the opening of the semi-pro women's team that will be playing at Del Sol Stadium. So I won't be there for them, and the community is invited to attend as well. There's also on Saturday gonna be a Cinco de Mayo event happening both one at Plaza Park and Councilwoman Rodriguez, Oxnard College is also having in collaboration with Radio Laser, right? Yeah. The
foundation.
The foundation, thank you. So invite the community go out for that I just want to share with those listening here in the audience, too. Last week I went to Washington D.C., alongside fellow members of the Regional Defense Partnership, otherwise referred to as RDP. This is a community organization from Ventura County comprised of political business and military leaders.
RDP was founded to foster constructive dialogue with state and federal legislators in agencies related to the Department Supporting Naval Base Ventura County. Naval Base Ventura County is a critical asset here in our region, safeguarding our nation and it plays a significant role in our regional economy contributing an estimated $4 billion annually here in our county.
As the largest employer in Ventura County, About 24,000 jobs across high-tech engineering and defense sectors. The base also encourages local business growth, contracts workforce development through partnerships with our local college as it was mentioned here with our Vice Chancellor Dr. Herrera. And I also know it's been stated here how vital Casa de Carmen is to our community and the uniqueness of it, and the heavy lift done by our city in partnership with Mercy Housing.
And others to make sure that got constructed. It offers 55 units of permanent supportive housing including one manager's unit situated atop a 110 bed emergency shelter operated by Mercy House. It's right here 241 West 2nd Street The shelter is also known as a navigation center, has succeeded the previous shelter located on South K Street. The facility features amenities such as an outdoor podium and rooftop decks with barbecue area, dining tables, lounge seating, a community room with a kitchen and large gathering space, computer workstation, community garden beds, several office spaces that will also be available for private case management and supportive services This facility is situated right here in our historic downtown, directly across from the library.
The police station's centrally located providing convenient access to various amenities including medical clinic, pharmacy, grocery store and senior center with the nearest bus stops just one block away. And I tell you this is something to be really proud of that exists here in our city providing this type of housing for our most vulnerable. I see a lot of police officers here As you know, I came from policing and being a police officer is one of those professions that gives you a front row seat to see the social ills that plague our city. From drug addiction, mental illness.
Here at the shelter, at the navigation center, I saw those whom I've arrested, those whom I had 5150'd at some point. Those who were students when I was a police officer at Oxnard High School. Those that I went to high school with at Channels High School And as we know, there's a number of reasons why people end up homeless. Whether it be health crises, whether it be the severe absence of affordable housing, the income inequalities that exist.
But I think it's upon leaders to look at those in those situations with heart and compassion. I'll tell you when I was on the police department opening the front door and seeing somebody asleep right outside our door, it breaks your heart because no human being should live in those conditions. And it's upon us to help. And much like the Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, Crystal Montano who gave just an inspiring account of her lived realities and what it means to her to have a lifeline in having a house right with the dignity and to be able to care for her children that were living with her in her car. So I'm just so proud that Oxnard is leading that effort in our county to provide I have one question from comments that have come up, but I would also like to compliment you on your concerns about the you're addressing about the homeless shelter.
1:19 – 1:3510 turns
If anyone gets to watch a presentation of that. The head of Mercy Housing made the compliment to the city of Oxnard that most agencies move these facilities to the very edge, the borders of a community. Ours is in the center of town. He gave us a lot of credit for that sticking up and the management of the city fighting to get that. The question that I have Mayor is we've stated we're gonna have a soccer, semi-pro soccer team Sunday. Is there admission? If people are watching this if they go, is there an admission charge It just so they would you know
oh yeah, thank you for that question. No there's no admission Thank you very
much,
and I said I'm glad you brought that up to conclude. I also have the opportunity go down to the Dignity Health Sports Park down in Carson and met up with Mayor Davis Holmes from Carson who I got to know fairly well as well as the Councilwoman Rojas up there And it was for the unveiling of Kobe Jones statue Those that like me, I know the Councilwoman Basuah is too.
We're just a big fan of soccer so it was wonderful to go up there and I'll tell you to my surprise when they announced the dignitaries, I wasn't expecting it but they made an announcement that I was there and only share that with you because the applause that rung out not for me but when they said Oxnard because many of us know here that Oxnard has I mean, we are a sports house particularly when it comes to soccer. So many of those fans that were in attendance there to see Kobe Jones and the unveiling of his statute were from Oxford and from this region. So he just made me so proud to be there. And Kobe Jones has done so much for the development of youth in our community. So it was my honor to be there supporting the unveiling of his statute now.
He's the third one along Landon Donovan, David Beckham to receive a statue at the Galaxy. So thank you very much for that and now
we'll move to the next item on the agenda, and this is from the city manager's department. We're going to move straight to that subject is setting in adopting the City Council's 2026 through 2030 five-year priorities. The recommendation is that the City Council set it adopt its 2026 through 2030 five-year priorities And I will turn it over to our Senior Manager Alex Nguyen. Go ahead Thank
You, Mr. Mayor if I may introduce this and then turn it right back over to you So let me start with something that I'm probably going to have to repeat several times this evening This is a public policy session To set the city's priorities. This is not a budget session That will happen in a little more than a month and it happens in Oxnard every year. So again, this is a public policy session to set the city's priorities for a five-year window but it is not a budget session so we will not be talking about dollars and numbers and all that I understand why people would
I don't
think that we have to do that, but it's actually not a budget session. Now, cities across certainly California, but I'm going to guess that across the country do this every frame of time. Some cities do it three years and we do it five. What it does is it provides The City Council, but also requires the City Council to align their public policy as best as possible.
To reflect the broader community's needs and this public policy document then informs us all of us each time we do have a budget session in again in Oxnard it's each year And it provides for me and the administration a clear roadmap. There are like in all communities, and this I can almost guarantee in all communities across this entire country there are many, many urgent needs.
There are many things that are considered important And there are lots of things that people want and desire. I think that's just the way it goes across the land. What the council's job, what your job is to weigh and balance that as rationally and as fairly as you can because there are competing interests while across our community in the different areas in the different neighbourhoods, there are many commonalities but they're also some differences in what people need and want, and sense is urgent.
But it's on the elected officials here to weigh and balance and make those choices. So the list is long, right? If you just think about all the things that we know we have to have Some of these are obvious because they have to do with safety. Some are required by the rules set upon by the state or the federal government. Some of those things we refer to as unfunded mandates, they just set rules and all cities and counties have to comply one way or the other.
And then again many that we would just like to have what I would consider things that are more aspirational so However you line that list up, it's a very long list. And it is always more than any community can achieve in one year or one window of several years. And that's why you have to choose and you have to prioritize. It's on you to determine what ends up ultimately at the top of the list knowing that there are many things that will not make it onto the list. Again, and that's for this particular window over the next five years.
And that requires for all of you to have to reach a certain level of abstraction Right, so we're not going to go into nitty gritty microcosm detail here. Public policy priorities require a certain level of abstraction. So for example if we determine which would make sense to me that Firefighting services is a priority. That's what you determine. This is not the time to get into, well does that mean three fire trucks and five firefighters or five fire trucks and two robots? So we're not getting at that level tonight. It does require some abstraction.
Now as it stated in the staff report, we are a municipal government. We are a city And we only do those things that cities do in California, which means we don't provide the services that other institutions do such as public education, medical health care, mental health care, social services. We don't run the airport. We don't run the harbor. We don't run the port.
We don't have anything to do with the 101 highway. We don't run transit, we don't do the trains, we don't do the buses, we don't do the railroads and so on. So it's municipal responsibilities as vast as they feel to us who work for this city. They also have four corners in a box. So that should make it easier that we're not going to go out of that box certainly hope not I say this example in jest, but it's...I think it makes the exclamation mark. We hope that you don't tell us that you want us to establish a municipal ostrich farm.
Now, I raise that because there is an ostrich farm north of us, but it's privately run. So again, the five-year priorities is not about this very next budget or any single budget. This is a public policy document. It is important though as we look to the next period because I know in addition to all the things that we know that we must do, that we need to do and that are important, I know there are always things we also want to do So keep in mind, Measure O is expiring in a couple of years.
And so your priorities need to be consistent and realistic. Now, a few closing comments before I hand it back to you Mr. Mayor. But even after we get through tonight, actually mean everything is written in stone. And I think we all learned this lesson not long ago with the COVID-19 pandemic because we had established priorities before that, so those are the kinds of things that you cannot plan for.
So understand that The world outside of City Hall is not static. It doesn't just freeze and get out of the way once City Hall sets priorities so that we can do everything exactly as we wish. The world around us is constantly changing, be it social economic or political. So not only did we have the pandemic, we had the ensuing thankfully brief recession. We also experienced I think the Weather Service categorized it as a once in 10,000 year rain flood here in Oxnard. A one-in-10,000 year incident that we had to deal with.
So we do our best to establish a public policy roadmap But understand the world can sometimes interfere with that, which means things can be either deterred or deferred. So just keep that in mind. But once again, this is a public policy session. This is not a budgeting session. So with that I will hand it back to you and understand that we have a lot of our city's management leadership here who answer any questions you may have later during your deliberations to help you through this process. Thank you.
Appreciate that very much, Alex. Thank you for providing some very valuable content. We have a number of public speakers but before I open it up for public comment, I'd like to just gauge with my colleagues here where we are as far as individual impression for our five-year priorities. Start with you Councilman Perez if that's okay?
Yeah, of course. Thank you Mayor. I first wanted to just start off by thanking the public for submitting your responses. I think surveys are a really good opportunity to assess feedback, understand areas of improvement and really get a sense of what is working and what direction we could be going into. I think I'll be speaking more as one of the South Oxnard representatives I often look at, I've read every item that has been submitted for the survey responses and I think of it as more of what is the biggest trend that I see as a representative from my district. And one thing that is quoted in the survey response that I take very seriously is the need to clean up however that individuals define And so that's kind of The way that I interpret some of the common themes that I've seen around the need to clean up South Oxnard.
I did want to highlight maybe some higher level points, not just from what I've seen as trends in the survey but also contacts and communications that I've had with community members through community meetings, out at community events. And the biggest things that I wanted to kind of bucket into was really the need around our public works which is prioritizing flooding Increasing storm drainages, which I know that is something that is well on the way.
As well as addressing the need for alleyway cleanups, dumping increased landscaping particularly within our vacant properties working in collaboration with our property owners to make sure that dumping and landscaping is continuously maintained, as well as fixing our potholes, parks specifically with restroom maintenance, public safety speeding within the community, as well as issues around disaster preparedness.
One that I want to kind of tie into is parking, but also with the notion and awareness to the public that I often see the issue of parking as an issue of affordability, of housing conditions in our community. And making sure that we understand that oftentimes multi-generational families are living in these households thus creating the issues around parking.
really kind of wanting to share an overview of what I've digested and seen as some of the patterns, as well as the need for business rehabilitation and investing in programs particularly around the Saviers and Oxnard Boulevard corridor. And so I say that out loud to just give you a summary of what I have digested and read and also have heard directly out I would like to share not only the feedback from community members, but to also share with you that for the communities that have submitted their comments, that I hear you and looking forward to planting the seed, but also recognizing that we are tonight going to be setting our five-year priorities and wanting to keep all of these comments and suggestions and recommendations in mind. And those are my comments.
1:35 – 1:395 turns
I
want to thank everyone that took the time. Videos there would be things to see that we're looking at right now for those of you that haven't seen The documents if there was not a measure M. That had been approved by the voters You lose an opportunity unless you've followed up and Go along with what's presented I can't Overtake that but I want him to know that there's a tremendous amount of work this made available to the public If you take advantage of finding it There may be need some outreach and how to make sure everybody can find the thing so when they come to these meetings, there are at least prepared versus wondering why are we talking about something that they can't even see?
I want to also address. When the last five year study was made, the situation at that time was much different than it is now. We've come a long way with that last five years. Not everything is done as planned as our city manager has mentioned But one thing that happens, I do represent a district, one of six in the city of Oxnard. There are certain things that are very important to the people in that district but I'm also an Oxnard City Council member representing the entire city of Oxnard willing to work with all the other council members on the priority for the benefit of the city of Oxnard going forward.
We have made a tremendous amount of improvement. We're looking to make more improvement and this is a great event The issues that specifically in the neighborhoods that I represent have to do with water. One about the Edison Canal, the quality of water and the other one about seawalls but there's another issue that comes up citywide they're talking about the opportunity to have water drinking water how is that going to impact us?
The issues that are finding not just in my district the ability to find a parking place Complaints that people that are parking on the corners when we do have rules in place, and we're not citing them there Some people will say we're paying too much money for law enforcement others saying we expect them to do much more There's going to be a median in between there I do agree with a lot of the things that Council Member Perez said about certain areas of Oxnard. But it isn't just my area that I'm looking for the priorities tonight, looking for the benefit for the city of Oxnard. There's no telling if I even wake up tomorrow morning whoever sits in this seat going forward is to do the best thing they can for over 200,000 people living in the city and I cherish the opportunity to do that and am privileged to be in a situation That's all I
got. Anyone else want to go before we get to public comment? Mayor Pro Tem? Okay, any other comments? We'll start with public comment. First is Emmanuel Arroyo followed by Adriana Diaz
Hello everybody, my name is Emmanuel Arroyo. I'm a sophomore at Winnie Mee High School and a member of the Voices of Oxnard Youth. The Voices of Oxnard Youth is a collaborative working group of students from all around Oxnard. By working closely with city officials we've been able to gain a deeper understanding how the city makes an influence policy There are two groups in the Voices of Oxnard Youth. The Flag Committee is working on drafting up an official city flag by allowing people to submit their own flag designs, and the Priority Committee is looking to give the City of Oxnard a perspective of what the youth of the city wants to happen.
We are in the Priorities Committee. To better understand what matters most to young people in the city we created a survey containing potential priorities that we came up with along with the opportunity for people to share what they want in the city but still prioritize. The survey also contained questions regarding priorities that we came up with as a group, including youth wellness, street maintenance, climate change and natural disaster readiness.
To promote it, we reached out to local social media pages, community members and schools. We promoted it on the 15th of April and have gotten 70 responses since then. My teammates will now go over the data and summarize the findings. Thank you.
Thank you.
1:40 – 1:479 turns
I'm currently a junior at Channel Islands High School as well, as a member of voice of Oxnard Youth on the Priorities Committee. And I'll be talking about our survey and the responses we got which consisted of 29 like no 70 responses and 29 of the participants voted on youth wellness that focused on helping and supporting youth aiming to create a safe space for them With the second most votes was 24% of responders wanting the city to prioritize climate change awareness, to ensure a safer environment. To go along with climate change natural disaster awareness was voted the third most popular with 25% of participants wanting to ensure that they were ready for in case of any disaster because when asked many didn't really have like A clue what to do in case like anything happened and we are.
We are in an area where We wanted to make sure that people knew what to do in case of an emergency. I want to start by saying thank you to all of you for being here. We saw some similarities like From our survey, we asked if there were any other priorities council should prioritize when creating the five-year policies. And two key components we saw multiple times was creating community events for citizens especially youth wanting to do family activities and doing something to combat the homelessness issue and thank you.
And Zane will be concluding. Thank you.
Thank you Adriana very much. Zane Romero?
Hello City Council and Oxnard citizens. My name is Zane Romero. I am currently a junior at Del Sol High School and a proud member of the Voices of Oxnard Youth Priorities Committee. To conclude our comment, the youth The youth in Oxnard most commonly want to see support for youth mental health, creating more ways to support youth's mental health could lower depression rate along with helping youth learn to cope properly with stress and anxiety along with many other things such as autism, ADHD, OCD just to name a few.
Street maintenance was another popular concern many youth, including myself have been hurt due to road conditions such as potholes or bumps in the road. Not so long ago I fell off my electric scooter trying to avoid a pothole ended up hitting another one. I was almost run over by several cars because I couldn't get up Community events is another thing people, youth wanted to see. Examples of this would be concerts or movie nights.
This would give families and youth something to do other than play video games or per se scroll on TikTok. Another thing youth asked for was more frequent public transportation along with cheaper prices. With increasing gas prices and lack of jobs, and some parents just not allowing their children to work, it's not easy to pay for the bus on a daily basis. I urge you to listen to us. You make the decision but we are the ones who have to live with it. Thank you for your time. That's
very good. Thank you Zane. Thank you, yeah. Ray Blattell? Mr. Blattell, you'll be followed by Sylvia Robles.
Mayor, Sylvia donated her time to me, is that okay? The City of Oxnard sent out
at least four mailers, I think Mr.
Stein said three, I thought it was four asking
for
public feedback and suggestions On the council's five-year priority list, according to the response to a Public Records Act request, the city spent over $35,400 on printing and distribution for these mailers. And that's a fact. If it's not a fact, it's the city's fault. It's their number. The city did not provide a cost for staff time but is reasonable to assume that the total taxpayer expense was well over $50,000.
for total, for these mailers. These mailers function less as a neutral request for input and more as a sales pitch, painting a grim future for the city if the major old sales tax is not continued instead of honestly seeking residents' priorities. The existing priority list will not truly change. At most items will just shuffle. Public safety will stay near the top and continue to consume a large share of the budget regardless of what survey responses show." That's not a bad thing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Well, on a safe environment.
I've seen what I believe is the list of survey responses. It was from a PR request. Mr. Stein shared it with me. There were 891 items on that list and fewer than 10% related directly to public safety. If the city actually respected those results, public safety would have to move down the priority list. That will not happen. Public safety is essential The point is that the city asked for input, received it and will ignore it when it conflicts with what staff and council already plan to do.
Many respondents also ask for better enforcement of illegal fireworks which shows I am not the only person in Oxnard who's tired of this ongoing nuisance. They also well you guys already brought things up like Carnegie Hall street maintenance cleanliness things like that a whole bunch of stuff There are many other constructive ideas and some residents clearly stated no more taxes.
These are real concerns from real people who took the time to respond. The city may face reduced revenues in the future all of us are seeing our costs rise while our salaries, our pensions are stagnant or only slowly increasing Residents are being told to tighten their belts. The city needs us to do the same thing. The city spends on the order of $50 million a year on employee benefits in 2025, roughly the same amount it expects from Measure E. That's a fact. Measure E is effectively absorbed by employee benefits alone.
When times are tight, private sector companies typically control internal costs before asking customers to pay more. The city should follow that example. I suggest freezing all employee salaries, raises and benefits for five years then reviewing where we stand after five years of disciplined budgeting and real data the city can return to the public and if truly necessary make the case for any future sales tax increases. Thank you. Thanks for extra time.
1:48 – 1:544 turns
Thank you, Sylvia. Marilena Saldana followed by Gloria.
Good evening Mayor McArthur and The initial presentation, Mr. Nguyen thank you for how this meeting was to be run what to say or excuse me, what to expect? What not to expect and I am here to share and I know there will be no responses. I can understand but I just want to make a comment in reviewing in the city's 2021 24, 25, 26 five-year priorities of the past. I noticed that there are very similar priorities that were shared and were presented back in those respective years compared to what now is being presented. However, I noticed a noticeable absence And in the 2021-25-26 priority, it shared like I stated public safety, homelessness et cetera quality of life.
And in the quality of life sector was the reopening of the Carnegie Art Museum So I just want to pose the question, I don't expect an answer. I would like for those of us that are promoting the reopening of the Carnegie Museum and for those of us that are aware of the precious jewel that we have here in the city of Oxnard the historic Carnegie Art Museum that was donated to the City of Oxnard back in 1906, that I posed the question to the council, to the respective city manager.
What is the reason that it is not on the priority list even though it wasn't part of the survey question? And my passion for the Carnegie Art Museum is that Many of our students, primary elementary secondary university college students have been denied the accents since 2019 of those awesome beautiful paintings that have been stored in the Carnegie since 2019.
over 1,500 paintings by international artists and possibly 35 to 37 of our local Chicano Asian other ethnic groups who are represented in the Carnegie Art Museum. Thank you.
Thank you Ms. Saldana. Thank you Ms. Cheney.
Members of City Council, Administrative Staff, Attorneys and City Clerk. Good evening my name is Gloria Masichina and I have a Master's in Public Health and Public Administration. I'm a resident of the city of Oxnard for the last 47 years in the 93035 ZIP Code. I wear many hats in the city of Oxnard But today I'm wearing the hat of a resident volunteer. Some of my professional experience is doing five-year plans with St. John's Community Benefits and Santa Clara Church.
I'd like to address directly to the city manager's office. First of all, I want to congratulate you for taking the risk of knowing what our city is like too. I also want to congratulate your staff. They're awesome! Thank you very much for that. I also like to let you know that I like being part of the conversation and being part of the public policy, so thank you for that.
i appreciate your office as asking me to input the priorities. I also like to let you know that how I found out about this survey was I was at the Colonial Senior Center I was just doing a routine check and just getting part of the services. Your staff was there, did an excellent job. It was difficult to complete but nonetheless they were excellent. I never received a survey 93 or 35 zip code so I made a point of completing one when I was visiting one of the city meetings I also wanted to let you know that others that received it did not know the purpose of the survey, and unfortunately they threw away the survey because the survey was in English.
So the Likert scale which is the ranking from 1-9 use is a very complex way of using for the population that has a third grade to fourth grade level of education It's a great attempt, but also the survey was in English and the majority of the services it was hard to get in Spanish. I just found out that this is a new card that came about so thank you for doing that because it is in English and Spanish.
It is a great attempt in us joining the conversation, and I'm glad that you are asking us how to rate that. I want to thank you and I want to thank the City of Oxnard and city council members and the city clerk's office and all of you for giving us the opportunity to be part of the public policy. Thank you very much, and you have a great night.
1:54 – 2:005 turns
Mr. Larry Stein? You're always scaring us here, Mr. Stein. And then Sarah, you'll follow Mr. Stein, okay?
Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good evening. Members of the City Council, staff, audience and the general public. The concern I have The fact that you're supposed to set priorities. What's the cost of these priorities? Oh, it's the same manager said we're not going to discuss costs. We're not going to put a thousand cents. But how can you just justify a given project or give an approach if you don't know what it's gonna cost you?
I don't know, I'd have to know what it costs before I rate priorities. Is this going to cost me $5? Is this going to cost me 10 million? How much money do we have to spend on the budget that was never disclosed so must have no ceiling on a budget and we just can spend all we can because there's no priorities on the budgets because we can spend all we want to spend.
What's reality how much money can we spend Because that should be the number one question. How much money can we spend? Now, I went through 40 pages of response to questionnaires the other day. Forty pages! The number one concern was traffic and streets. I know that our neighborhood has not been resurfaced or dealt with in 30 years. I'm sure I'm not the only neighborhood that had this problem, but streets were the number one concern.
The number two concern was homelessness. What are we doing to address homelessness? And there's no easy solution, but what did you hear about two weeks ago? See what it do with the Homeless Commission. I mean, it's a number two concern from the survey I saw. We want to do away with Homelessness Commission to help resolve the issues because there's not one solution for homelessness from my understanding. I'm just a humble bookkeeper. I don't know too much of too many things but I just see what I can see and read what I read and we do have more than one homeless person in this city from my understanding. We might even have three or four homeless people in this city. I don't know but the problem is in this budget promises were made by prior council members We're supposed to build a bridge to our happiness, building a pool.
The State Council approved a $13 million pool and the state gave us $5 million. The city manager then spent $5 million in consulting fees and ended up with this plan for a 65-million dollar pool, but no money to build the 65-million dollar pool. When we had the money to build a 50-million dollar pool. I've talked about the fire station numerous times, Fire Station 9 at East Village, West Village in the Northeast Community School. Money was given to build that fire station, but the city spent that money somewhere else How many meetings have we had on Sports Park? I've known, I've been to at least five meetings on Sports Park. And how many park master plans have we had? We have many park master plans but the city's not spending any money on park master plans.
Where is the money going because we don't know and the city manager isn't spending the money. Thank
you Mr. Stein. Sarah Wilczewski thank you followed by Alicia Purcell
Good evening, Mayor, City Council, city staff. My name is Sarah Wilczewski and I'm here to talk about three items that I noticed on the priorities. The first is a small asterisk including a modest and incremental implementation of security cameras. I hope this is done with transparency Privacy of the data collected in mind, especially after the breaches in Flock that were discovered this year.
The second is I noticed there's nothing on addressing climate change. That's going to be one of the number one issues coming up in the next few years and it has been an issue for a long time. I think we need to prioritize addressing climate issues And finally, the safety of our immigrant neighbors. ICE has been terrorizing South Oxnard this week especially every day, every morning this week and we need to continue to stand up for our immigrant neighbors and continue to make sure that they are safe in our community While the news cycle may move on, this will not be an issue that goes away in the next year or two. This will be an ongoing issue and I encourage you guys to make it a priority.
Thank you.
Thank you Sarah. Ms. Purcell followed by Angela Wycombe
2:00 – 2:064 turns
I want to say that I think this agenda item is a largely meaningless exercise, and that's for several reasons. It may make you feel like you made a decision that had some meaning though you mostly didn't. First in a few weeks when the annual budget comes to you, the resolution that you're going to be asked to adopt only asks you to approve the grand total You won't even be deciding how much to allocate between the different priority.
You're adopting one number, that's it. You won't be allocating the categories that you're discussing here today. A lot of money has been spent to send these citywide mailers that others have talked about inviting people to take the online survey but the design of the survey makes the results Mostly meaningless. When you get to the survey asking how to set the priorities, the answers have already been filled in for you. You're being told what the priorities are and you can rank them relative to each other but you can't add one to the ranking You know, there was a list about 10 subjects that were pre-populated.
It asked the public just to rank those options. We only get to rank someone else's priorities that were given to us. The participants had no way to rank something else as a higher priority than the ones that were already pre-populated. There was a text box at the bottom And that's, you know, the 40 pages of comments that you got came from that text field I presume. But you can't rank those ideas relative to the pre-populated ones. What if none of those would have made the top 10 if people had been able to rank other things relative to them?
So when you look at slide 57 and 56, you have no way to merge those together. There's no way to say, well would any of these on 56 outrank the ones on 57 or vice versa? You don't know because you couldn't do that and it wasn't an option on the survey. And none of these rankings abroad categories are really as meaningful as a listing of specific projects and specific costs. That would be more meaningful rather than just I like paving streets, no dollar amount attached.
So just keep that in mind that there are limitations to the usefulness of the data from this survey.
Thank you Ms. Parcell. Good evening everybody, thank you for hearing me out. I'm going to kind of focus on parks and art.
And I'm going to say this, it's a priority of mine and it fits into a lot of categories. The parks helps with mental health issues. It provides a place of refuge for our population exercise and they need to be clean safe and the bathrooms need to be open. And to do that, we need to get rid of our old bathrooms that are not safe and do something like a Portland Loo where they're clean, safe and easily maintained.
They cost a lot less than what we currently have or building something from the ground up. I would really like us to focus on the arts. It's also good for our mental health in all ages. Everybody needs an outlet for creativity, it helps us when we're going through trying times and it helps inspire us to be better human beings. So I would really like you to focus on the art. You're gonna hear this from me every single time, please open up The Carnegie, please, please, please, any way you can find possible and get that art that we have out into the public Make that a priority in any way you possibly can.
The Pagoda is big for me, you know these things are on our cities it's everything that we brag about. We brag about our beaches, we brag about our downtown. Well we need to make sure those places are welcoming to our environment I also would really like to have lifeguards on our beaches. We have very, very dangerous waters with the undertow and the City of Oxnard does not have lifeguards. So all of... With climate change, I don't know what that's going to do with the...I'm not a climate scientist.
Exactly how the currents are going to change and what that's going to do, if it's going to make it better or worse. But it's definitely something to look into but we need to plan for the future and empty garden should be empty lot should be filled with community gardens that are clean and safe and we need to plant more trees in parks so that our Play structures are in shade. You could spend a lot of money on a play structure with a shade cloth thing or you could just plant a couple trees and give the kids something beautiful to look at, bring down their anxiety levels, help the birds, help the bees, all of the above. Just plan smart when you're repaving the roads Plan an area for bicycles with e-bikes becoming more and more prevalent, and it's going to become more dangerous.
So we need to have a policy around that. We need to have safe spaces. Oxnard is flat, and it has perfect weather. Bicycles should be the way we get around town. Thank you.
Thank you Angela. Mr. Abel Magana?
2:06 – 2:114 turns
Good evening Mr. Mayor, members of the council. My name is Abel McGuire and I'm the Executive Director for the Downtown Oxnard Improvement Association. Briefly, just first of all thank city management for putting together this whole process and engaging the community taking the long view over the next five years. Although it seems like you know we were just here yesterday that's that seems like a long view it just moves so quickly. So I want to limit my comments just to a couple of items here on the list stay focused on things like the quality of life in the economic development categories We talked about the item of focusing on 4th Street, on the corridor.
I know that project's been moving along quite nicely and in fact we've been in contact with Morgan and his team, Abe, on the details of things like street standards, the street light standards crosswalk art, all that stuff is moving along nicely. So it seems like we're almost at the finish line on that one. I would suggest maybe we can broaden that item, that priority to encompass all of Oxnard Boulevard from 2nd Street to Five Points.
For a variety of reasons, it's getting darker out there. One is the lights of businesses going out, changes in zoning all for the long haul again good things to convert uses there along garages that have former automotive garages and have closed down. How can we reactivate those spaces? Maybe that's an economic development Priority that we should be looking at as well as also the lights in the public space The ones that were all in the median, they're all gone now. They were falling apart anyway They were all mid-century anything and they're gone now so Looking at things like that and the landscaping there's in the presentation I know from the city manager There was a it was one slide where it was all these planning documents which were references to this So one of them I think that was missing was the Octip, which is a great program that actually produced a document that was a roadmap literally for remaking the boulevard.
And not to say I know it's going to cost a lot capital but maybe we can prioritize staff looking at Thank you so much.
Thank you, Ms. Magana. Does that conclude the speakers? Mayor and council
members we actually have a virtual speaker. Okay. Virtual speaker if you can press star six to unmute and you have three minutes starting now.
Hi it's Eric Andrus. You know not many cities have a historic district in them. Oxnard does but the way the city talks and the city manager ignores it one wouldn't think so And to look at how it's decaying now, it's clear that the Historic District isn't and has never been a priority in this city. And Angela Whitecomb lives here in the Historic District and even for her, it's not a priority to be put on this list.
I just started a nonprofit to hopefully revive the Historic District and the city is already throwing wrenches into me trying to get an FUP to make this nonprofit work and to start raising monies to not only fix the Henry Levy House, which I can't do on my own. But to also fix all the other houses that need it in the historic district. This is a priority. You guys wanted a historic district here. It was voted into this city to have it here and it was voted in a similar way in that The categories were, and oh you know that's the other thing. You know the park, the campus park thing? The same survey that was done for that was done exactly how this one was done with pre-populated categories that people could choose from so this is an ongoing way that the city does things when they want to steer a survey the way they want it to go You know, it was that what's that game that they want to put in at the campus park?
Nobody really wanted that. That was a pre-populated category in the survey and I've got all the documentation on this but back to the Historic District. I would like for the City to help me make this nonprofit successful so that we can revive the Historic District since the city doesn't seem to care about it. It's decaying have you all driven through here other than Christmas Tree Lane and seen the houses that are falling apart Help me. Help me with this new nonprofit so that we can make it successful and I, through my nonprofit if the city won't, will try to bring back the historic district. That's a priority. It should be a priority for this city and it's not even on the list and even Angela Whitecomb doesn't bring it up. Thank you.
2:12 – 2:259 turns
Just to confirm, Madam Clerk, does that conclude this
public speakers? Mayor and council members, yes. That concludes our speakers in person and virtually for this item. Thank you. Okay.
Thank you. Is there any questions of staff or at this point I'll entertain some discussion on the item? I tell ya, I will go first on some of my notes certainly for For me, police is fundamental for our city and that should always be a priority. When you have a protected city it drives businesses, it makes our community thrive, it ensures the residents' well-being and also encourages economic growth because it brings in new businesses. And also if you look around our city we've got Four new hotels, doubling our occupancy here in our city.
Oxnard is in tourism is only second to To AG is to the economic value that it provides. So, to be able to continue to attract tourism you need to have a protected city. Also it certainly enhances the quality of life for all of us and it retains people to stay here open up their businesses here and to live here in our community so that is of utmost importance.
Thank you for
that. I have a couple of areas
just based on the staff report, based on the survey results
and
certainly on the comments we had here this evening.
A lot of my notes tend to have items that overlap between areas. So I'll just start with public safety, which these items are going to bring up overlap with quality of life and actually let me just preface by saying what was mentioned in the staff report and in the prerecorded presentation for staff recommendations, they make sense to me as a good baseline. I don't see anything there that we shouldn't have.
And I also would like to point out that the completion of the NAGPRA process and compliance with that for the Carnegie is in there, which would ultimately lead to the reopening of it once we get through that process. So that is there at least as a basis but going back to my list here so public safety and quality of life I see that we have disaster preparedness on there in the public safety section And I see there being a absolute nexus between disaster preparedness and climate change.
And our ability as a city to not only be resilient as an entity, but also encourage and support our residents to be so as well because If and when the time comes that there's a large natural disaster or there's something that requires them to be self-sufficient, I think we need to continue down this road that we've been on in helping them understand the importance of that and how to get there themselves.
And when we look at climate change I anticipate that there will be additional swings in weather and the thousand year storm that the city manager mentioned. Well, what are the odds of getting two of those within a decade of each other probably a lot more than it would have been the previous 1000 years. We can't pretend that's not going to happen. We can't roll the dice and hope that it doesn't within our lifetimes because we saw what happened with the previous one, and that was something that our infrastructure just was not able to absorb but more so the people were affected by that.
How were they prepared? What could they have done? And what could we have done as a city? What could we have done as neighbours to help each other be prepared for this? So I think there are lessons learned in that in how we could be better the next time something like this goes around. That's a storm as an example. There was a tornado warning that same evening.
So I'm just throwing these things out here. This is not me wearing a tinfoil hat or being a climate Scientologist. I like that one, Ms. Whitecomb. This is just speaking from observations of what we're seeing and what actual data showing about climate change. So I see that part with public safety as well and also overlapping the quality of life. It was brought up about parks and the quality of life and the public safety nexus here In the experience that people have when they visit our parks.
And there's certainly a hygiene part to that when it comes to our restrooms, I think we need to stay the course and what we're doing in replacing or renovating restrooms that we have and looking at what are some Some other alternatives we can do for restrooms that are going to be a lighter lift on staff, but not so much the XLU. You know, fancy, I shouldn't say fancy, but they're the strategy we've used with them and the offerings they have in those facilities and everything in between. But that's that part of it. But also for quality of life in a previous parks manager when I asked him what is something you think that would have the most impact on our parks?
And the statement was a park ranger program. And I'm just throwing this out here to you, this group because while it may seem like an investment in another layer of public safety similar to our code compliance people that falls under public safety as well and we have a separate track for that. We have our animal safety. We have our TSA's or Traffic Safety Assistance I think a park ranger program could be something we bring in that would take off of our police officers, the need to respond to things that happen in parks that need to be addressed in a reasonable timely manner.
But more so it takes off our park staff. Our park staff shouldn't be charged with enforcing rules or things that are happening when they're there for a maintenance role, or to be able to fix the irrigation or the bleachers or whatever the case is. They shouldn't be charged with behavioral issues that are in the parks and so I think that's a piece we have there.
Then for quality of life and economic development, I appreciate the comments that were made by Ms. Wilczewski And I'm trying to think how can we address this, and I'll just throw it out to the council if they'd like to have further discussion. But for our immigrant populations, I also think about the many vulnerable populations that we have in the city of Oxnard who are affected by not just current federal actions but also past decisions in how this city or how this county was going Fund services for them, not just infrastructure but behavioral health services, mental health services.
How this city has to play catch up in some areas of town where we had a number of areas of deferred maintenance. But beyond that for helping folks who are in these populations, this is the overlap of economic development and quality of life. I think we need to stay the course with finding services and partnerships in the community to offer job training, job skills building and the ability for them to level up their employment. That's what truly gonna get these folks into the next level and help the next generation that comes after them.
And my last area here Mayor is regarding infrastructure and this is overlapping infrastructure and quality of life And number one is brought up about the lighting. I applaud the mayor for his direct efforts, as well as this council to improve the beauty of our city during the day. Our city should also look beautiful and be safe at night. And lighting is something that it seems like that is a simple item, low hanging fruit that we can do in the places that need it most where we can improve not only the aesthetics but also the feeling of safety within those areas The last part of this infrastructure and quality of life, though, is around biking infrastructure. And I'm hoping that my colleagues up here can think three-dimensionally with me on this.
I heard it brought up by at least one speaker, by Ms. Whitecomb. I believe that we are at a place right now as a community and also as a society where Technology and personal transportation, like with e-bikes and e-scooters. This is something that is going to change the way that people get around in local communities. This city, like many in Southern California was not designed around that primarily and cars are the main transportation but that is shifting. And with that shift I believe we are at an opportune time here as a community See, how do we make it safer and more inviting for people to choose that mode of transportation who have that choice? Because as I say every time we talk about this there are plenty of residents a significant number who do not have that choice.
They have to transport themselves by bike to go to work, to go to appointments, to go to school and we owe it to them as a council and as the city that they can do it safely So I'm hoping as we, one thing that we can add to this, that we can entertain adding to this priorities list is around biking infrastructure. And when we look at repaving of roads or redesign what we're doing right now, we currently have class two and class three bike facilities which are essentially painted lines for a class two and a class three is a shared road. If you see a share row with Where like on C Street, there are portions where the bikes share the lane with the cars traveling in the same direction.
I hope that whenever possible we can look at where can we place class one which are fully separated like you see on Oxnard Boulevard from Gonzalez going towards Colonia or class four where there's a physical separation between the roadway and the bike lane but there is a bike lane on the road way an example of this which is a legacy one is along northbound Ventura Road between 5th Street and 7th Street, if you want to see what that looks like. But it's literally only those few blocks.
So I bring this up because I hope people can... This is the thinking three-dimensionally part on this It's not just for fun. It's not just so we can get more exercise. I truly believe this is going to be a way that many people in many cities who invest in this are going to choose to travel instead every person on a bike every person scooter every person chooses to walk as one less car with a single occupant in that vehicle taking up space and our lanes and by that we can reduce traffic if we encourage it to happen.
So I hope you all think that one through and We can entertain a discussion about adding something like that to the priorities list because as Mr. Stein mentioned, one of the largest things I saw in a trend there was a concern for traffic and about streets and about safety. And I think this is one way to do it. Think back to when we went from dirt roads to paved roads. There was a time when cities had to decide are we going to do this? Yes or no? Is this car thing gonna stick around? Is it gonna be a trend?
And I think this is similar where we are right now with biking infrastructure. If we make it safe, more people are going to choose to do so. Those are my comments. Thank you Mayor.
Thank you and I'll just finish up with my first priority which is policing. Sarah brought up the question about our immigrant community and I am very proud of our police force. We have a professional police force that is committed to fostering trust with our community members You know, we are led by a community policing model that really enhances and fosters cohesion in our communities. So I'm always going to advocate for that.
And also we have to look at making sure they have the technical capabilities with now adopting potential more AI tools to be able to do their job effectively not only for police but also for the fire department as well. And so with that I'll yield and let someone else speak if they want to chime in on something
2:25 – 2:419 turns
Yes, just looking at the survey results. First and foremost I know it's quite the lift to try to get so many folks to participate. I was even looking at the timestamp so it seems like batches of people were trying to answer At events, I saw folks answering the survey in English and Spanish at like the Easter extravaganza thing. There were some themes that seemed a little similar when I was asking folks about what's the difference between prioritizing this area and the other area? But regardless, I really appreciated having the written responses from folks because that gives folks the opportunity to really tell us what they think And some of the things I saw were like the infrastructure, right?
Potholes, alleys, sidewalks, streetlights. That seems like low-hanging fruit to me that should not ever not be a priority. That's a double negative. Should always be a priority to us. Public safety, I saw some tension so some folks you know say we need more other folks say wait timeout but at the end of the day folks are highlighting things like illegal fireworks speeding parking violations all of these things matter to the people on the ground and I think that's really important homelessness was brought up I was really proud to see the work that has happened to get us to where we are At the grand opening yesterday at Casa del Carmen and Casa Aliento. So those are all creative ways of stepping back and thinking outside the box when I look at the five-year priorities, I really am reading the bigger picture and And it seems to me like we're tightening our belt.
We are concerned you know there are budget cuts state federal there are You know changes happening to what? You know we see in the horizon. I also see another trend with parks youth recreation arts and I think that just looking at this, I think the section that potentially is taking the biggest hit is a quality of life section because I see a lot of strikethrough and a friendly recommendation that I want to do. I did see that complete the NAGPRA compliance for the Carnegie and continue the PAC with Council's direction. I really appreciate that but for me, I really want to see complete NAGPRA compliance So that we reopen the Carnegie, you know flat out if that is the intention because we're looking at the next five years This is not just you know in the next 18 months 24 months I think that's a friendly amendment that I'd like to to have the council consider Just call it flat-out.
If that is our intention That's where we're headed then say that because that I did hear that from a lot of people not just here tonight but Ever since I launched my campaign and it's in my district. And again, I know everybody is taking a hit in different districts so I'm looking at Oxnard as a whole. I just see this as I read the bigger picture. It's really tightening our belt and it's unfortunate because it seems like there's things we can't afford to tighten our belt in right?
Safety, wellness health of our community. That's how I see this Just hearing the feedback from Mayor Pro Tem when he's talking about the bike safety I'm looking at infrastructure and natural resources bullet point four when they're talking about Continue to repair alleys and again. I know is not talking apples and bananas And expand bike safety maybe that could be us planting that seed for you know the next 10 years the next 20 years Because it's not a light switch. And just looking at the bigger picture as a whole, I'm really proud of like the status of things that we've completed and look, we've been able to replenish the city's financial reserves. or invest in staff training and development. All of these things really matter to the bigger picture, and I just hope folks look at where we are prioritizing things, trying to invest in the long haul and not just in the here and now.
So those are some of the themes that I saw, and I think for me, Gabby Rodriguez, one of the friendly amendments that I'd like to propose is if our intention is to reopen the Carnegie, and maybe in the next few years, I'm not saying now. I know NACRA's important, and you know, if we have human remains, I want to be respectful of getting those back to their original peoples.
If the intention after NAGPRA is complete is to reopen, then call it that. You know? I think those are some of my thoughts off the top of my head but those are some of the things I saw when I read all of these and I just want to thank folks for all the efforts because it's not easy to get people to show up to a community meeting and have conversations or you know, it's easy when they're at an event and they're excited about the event but it's a lot harder when we're asking people to give up their dinner time with their family to come and share their thoughts. Thank you.
Mr. Mayor, if I may make a quick clarification. So first of all with the strikethroughs our intention was not to just get rid of that entirely. We still believe and recommend that having this framework where you have five major categories and then you have five priorities in each so those would for example in quality of life number four we know that's not going to happen but that's an open line for the council to add something or to raise something up, or change something. So it doesn't mean we're recommending that there are only three items in that column.
Thank you for the clarification and I did see in the other slide where you had just a blank notes but that helps just for the bigger picture. And again, I appreciate folks stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of the infrastructure. What needs to happen when health and wellness of our community should always be the priority?
I concur. And just to add to your statement, Councilwoman, for all of us quality life is so darn important for just to enhance everyone's experiences here in this city and to have people stay here and live here. For me a priority is I'm a strong supporter of youth and so for me it's critically important to make sure that we have our parks nicely maintained as you know pushing Meeting with various community groups, going to various neighborhood councils and pushing to change our policy. To be able to install lights in parks so that those parks especially after it gets dark at five o'clock when we did the time change as opposed to individual youth groups and others going out there taking their charged lights or generators et cetera because still illegal to do just that I would like to see Delso will probably be given a priority as well so that we can continue to enhance that part because I think we're losing now.
As I stated, Oxnard is the hub of soccer here. We saw Delso High School for example only three years made up completely mostly a freshman team and just how they dominated went all the way to CIF and State but with that you see a number of tournaments happening But Oxnard is unable to host some of these tournaments because we don't have the space or facilities for it. So they go to Kimball or others, and speaking with our leisure industry, the hotels, that's money that they're losing now and that's money that we as a city are losing now. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the public. I want to start by saying thank you very much for your support through the occupancy tax because we don't have the facility so I would push for that to be a priority for us to prioritize Del Sol Park in the stadium and other parks as well and also to support those youth groups that are providing the gaps in services that are so important It's important for me to What she's indicated, I think more and more we're seeing a significant difference between the south end and the north end of our city.
And I think it's critically important for us to continue to invest in the south end whether it be to prioritize certain paving projects, parks in that neighborhood, lighting in that neighborhood. I'm so happy as you know, I'm a strong supporter of beautifying our city. We're doing at the police station what we're doing here at the library right here at City Hall At committee this past Tuesday, we approved the maintenance of our trees. So now we'll have the trees properly maintained. If you go down up and down all the principal streets in our city, you'll see beautiful canopies, properly maintained palms. And others, I'm personally making phone calls to a lot of commercial districts asking them themselves, private managers and owners to do what we're doing, and you're seeing a response to that.
If you go down and you see St. John's Hospital for example, they've hired an arborist to make sure that they trim their trees in the palms. Sam's Club, Costco, The Auto Center, Smart & Final, they're responding to our efforts, and I think collaboratively, we're making this city beautiful which is so important. I think Angela, you mentioned all of the health benefits but actually it just shows pride in our city But it's not just the aesthetics of it, but then you look at what the police department is doing by ensuring the police cars are clean. Our fire department, it just shows pride in our city and so I'm a strong supporter there and I want to see that continue to be a priority for our city. And also on Tuesday if you watch that committee one of things that I push for is to make sure that on the parks as you see we're having new playground equipment at these parks but one thing that is absent are canopies right?
To make sure We want to make sure that we support our community development department so that we are as efficient Successful, whether it be through being efficient in our permitting process. And so I'm committed to do what we have to do to make sure that that department is supported so that we in turn can support our business community so the permits are facilitated as efficient as possible.
Thank you. Go ahead Mayor Pro Tem.
I had just one addition, but if someone else wants to speak, I can save it unless everybody's okay with that. Without objection, I can... Okay. I want to thank Councillor Wynn-Rodriguez for her suggestion on the Carnegie. I made a note. I absolutely back that as well. We can just clearly state... Let me go back to it. Clearly states complete and accurate compliance at the Carnegie and reopen the Carnegie or...
To open?
To open the... Yeah. Absolutely fine and actually support clearly stating that that is the intention, which it is one request I'd like to make through this discussion. It came to mind for me for quality of life for numbers one and two about maintain youth programs and maintain senior programs and build a council approved new Senior Center. I'm hoping that for the youth one, if we can just shift the language a little bit on that to have it now read maintain youth development and wellness programs. Because there is actually a distinction in youth development programming where it is evidence based and informed on how they're the best ways and practices to work with youth especially And I think our staff already are great at that and our recreation programs.
But in stating that, I feel that it'll be clear and intentional about the type of youth programming, youth development programming that we're doing with our young people in Oxnard. In stating that, it may also open us to grants in the future that have to do with youth development. If we're already going down that path and we've stated so as a high-level policy this is the way we work with youth I think that can serve us well and will ultimately serve youth well but I wanted to add wellness to that because there is an overarching effort around wellness within our school systems And in communities and it is a norm now in the city of Oxnard for elementary, middle and high schools to have a wellness center on campus.
And this is a center where they know they can go as a resource if they're having challenging times, they are struggling with something Or if they just need to be somewhere where there's a lower level of anxiety or someone to talk to about their anxiety, or depression, or things that are happening. And this is normalizing for these young people accepting feelings, coping with feelings, processing feelings and talking to people about that rather than bottling it up as may have been the experience of many my colleagues here growing up in Oxnard when there were many challenges You face as a young person in this city. So anyways, maintain youth and youth development and wellness programs with a wellness component being built into what it is we do intentionally.
And for seniors same thing senior wellness programs I think we do a lot of great stuff but adding the wellness there will make it clear and intentional that our work we're doing with seniors even socializing there's a wellness component to that The physical activity, there's a absolutely physical wellness component to that. But having open conversations and allowing open conversations for our senior population about mental health and mental wellness and feeling of isolation, loneliness, depression, things that may not have been regularly or openly talked about previously for them making it okay for that by using wellness as part of the work that we do with them.
So thank you for the extra time on that Mayor. Those are two things that came to mind for me in that category.
Absolutely. Good, that's my problem.
I'd just like to address the thing on the wellness. I am all for youth, seniors and in between wellness but I will share as I mentioned at my beginning comments at the beginning of the city council meeting, I had a meeting with the superintendent of the elementary school district. Four principals from schools in my district and one of the statements that she made, she made the statement and I took a witness with me That she wanted the city to help her with mental health issues for the school.
And I explained to her, the city doesn't deal in mental health that's a county responsibility. So along with the same issue here if we start to get into some of the wellness and I gather physical wellness and mental health may cross together do we want to get into the mental health thing? And I'm not saying we don't But I want us to have a clear understanding of what we would be opening up if we start to get into mental health. And will we have the city responsible for the mental health? Or will we have the county responsible, or are we going to decide to cut the baby in half on that one particular issue? Mr. Mayor, if I can jump- That's not a challenge. You just want to share that.
2:41 – 3:037 turns
If I could jump in here because I'm very careful about Which which branch of government does what work and I think that the actual distinction here council member is social wellness programs versus medical clinical or medically mental health services so I want to be clear we are not in a position to get into the clinical medical side. but I think for these other programs, the social wellness side is in the purview of the municipal government. But there is a clear distinction there and we should not bleed into the clinical medical side.
Thank
you. And thank you for that council member and city manager. I think it's an important distinction to make, and I would at the same time point out that when we have intentional space and efforts around wellness there's a broader sense for it but there's also the opportunities Partnership for those who provide those services to come to our facilities to offer just general talks about mental wellness and strategies around that, or even provide services and looking at our education system again the Wellness Center is that.
are based at these schools. They don't necessarily employ clinicians for mental health. Some of them, some of the counselors may have that certification or that experience but more often than not they bring the county or bring community-based organizations to the Wellness Center to provide those services because they are needed by those students and might not otherwise get to access those outside of the school setting. So it's just another avenue to continue this consistency in making it normalized and okay, to evaluate one's own wellness and recognize when you need additional support and how to access that. So I appreciate those comments and it's an important distinction to make
If I can add one more thing, there are models in other communities for example where the county will send their clinical workers or their social workers to the local jurisdictions library as a form of expanding their service area. So there are models out there so if this is our priority one of the things we would do is to prioritize pursuing those partnerships and those models in addition Thank you.
Thank you, Alex. So far I've outlined for me priorities being policing, to continue to maintain and stand on course with paving of our streets. We're really doing really well with it and I'd like to see that continued as a priority. Youth programs and with that also being very intentional to what we want as a community and we want the Carnegie Open I know Councilwoman Rodriguez mentioned it.
I'm certainly a proponent of getting our Carnegie open, it's so important and I think Ms. Saldana mentioned that there are generations that are not being able to enjoy something that we are so proud of. You know, we wear the Carnegie on our badges and it's just vital we keep going in the direction necessary that we open up the Carnegie. So I'm a big proponent of that and also along those lines, we are an arts community as well.
We have been designated in an Arts District in the state of California. We received that distinguished recognition thanks to the effort We're pushing for the 2 And we'd like to see that come back sooner than later, so that we can push forward on that and support our community. So I want to make sure that we stay in course of that and make that a part because that is part of the quality of life that is so vital for us here in this community because we are an arts community.
If you see the committee meeting we had on Tuesday, it came before us to be able to have, I think it's 150,000 appropriated so that we can have artists submit Thank you. Sure.
First of all, I want to say that I really appreciate the people that have been participating with the surveys and folks coming here to share their voice, their views, what they want us to know. I'm persuaded by those who are saying this is a meaningless exercise. It feels like this is just a wish list. I mean, we all have unlimited wants. There's limited resources and it's really hard to determine priorities when there's no price tags associated with it. In life there are trade-offs and it's hard for us to hear in this forum be able to say oh well this is better than this. The reality is that you know depends on how much What do you have to give up in order to get this? Some have argued that really, this is just when it comes to the budget that we approve.
We see a listing of departments and this is how much we want to spend for each department but in the end, we're voting for a grand total number. We don't really dictate policy here That's something we've given to the city manager. And maybe folks are happy with that, maybe not. I'm persuaded by those who are suggesting that really this is just all meant to manufacture consent for a permanent extension of sales tax.
You know, we're talking about budget cuts and combined with all these needs. And it's like well we're going to have to increase the sales tax or extend it in order to make all these things possible is the argument that could be made. But to kind of give you a perspective so during the fiscal year they ended in 2020 We had a general fund. We had general fund revenues of one hundred fifty five million and we don't have the most recent year yet I don't know what's the status of the act for I just know that's late but for the most recent year that we have for ending two thousand twenty four were two hundred sixty five million in the general fund so we've got one hundred ten million dollar increase in our revenues and that's a 70 percent increase and most people haven't experienced a 70% increase in their income in the last four years.
And I'm not convinced that we've seen a 70% improvement in services, so... But if you want my priorities, I'll tell you what mine are. Focus on the basics. Number one, police protection. We gotta have folks patrolling neighborhoods, especially where there are issues. I mean, I was mentioning the La Colonia earlier today where we've had issues where they're very concerned about the uptick of crime and some of the lawlessness that goes on with double parking and blocking of driveways and that sort of thing.
So I think we need to really focus on those basics. We need to focus on the maintenance of existing infrastructure Because sometimes we talk about, let's build this new and exciting thing. But then we neglect to maintain what we already have. I think of for example the pool that we have in La Colonia right now. I'd much rather fix that than get a brand new pool somewhere else that we're not going to maintain either. I think my last priority would be attracting more business to the city.
We have a horrible reputation, deserved I think for making it difficult for folks to open up a business here and that's denying people employment opportunities. It's denying businesses the opportunity to expand and make our communities better. And it is what's gonna help us expand the tax base in order to pay for all these other Wishes and wants that we have in the end.
So I would take care of those first, and once we can resolve those then let's talk about all the other wonderful things we want to do. But right now I'm just looking at it from a totals and I gotta wonder where with an extra $110 million in revenues coming in each year versus a few years ago I don't know. I think I'm more inclined to give people tax relief at this point because even with a $20 million decrease, let's say if Measure O weren't extended we're still well above where we were even a few years ago because of Measure E.
So Mayor those are my thoughts and appreciate that others may likely disagree.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think the point of tonight's meeting is trying to establish a starting point and then through the budget process we certainly can assert what we consider to be the most important based on the money we allocate for those priorities. Any other discussion or comments? Yes, Mr. Perlow, go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much. And as I've already said, I appreciate everybody that's taken an opportunity to have their input here. On the five items, public safety. Public safety is number one not because there's an opportunity bluntly because I believe that I've heard some things on the last speaker that sound like political campaign. Public safety is number one not because I can get an endorsement from a fireman or a policeman but public safety is number one so that when I go home I have a chance of making it home and that my home is still there.
The same for every resident in the city of Oxnard, public safety and the things that public safety has done for our community with respect to combination with public works, streets, the ability to get from point A to point B, the response times, the inclusion of the paramedic issue Drone issue the things that public safety is doing. I don't believe our budget busters more than they are Trying to get a better deal for the residents of Oxnard with the funds that we have the If there was something to push for that public safety, I would do it would be more red light cameras.
I Off I am retired So I have more time to drive through the city of Oxnard during the day than maybe my fellow council members, but I can tell you there isn't a day that goes by that I don't see a red light or a stop sign blown. And I'm not saying that there should be a cop at every corner so we can get them, but if there was a way to improve that it would be beneficial.
The public safety issue with the bicycles I shared with Mayor Pro Tem the issue of a 13-year old kid that was hit by a train. He's on an electric scooter, could have been an electric bicycle or I believe it was a scooter. The issue of getting more individuals on bicycles and scooters to get from point A to point B because of the economics or the way society is going to be, if that's what will happen, create its own life and it will create its own thing. But we need somebody in public safety to get the guys that are going through stoplights and red lights, the same as they would with a car.
The issue with the restrooms, it was mentioned about restrooms. I'm in support of having first class restrooms. I am in support of having restrooms that are not vandalized as soon as they're opened up I'm also in support of when we make obligations the people are going to rent sports fields Southwest Park for those of you that don't know that. That's what it's called the park by the airport on 5th Street When we have hundreds of people there, and there's not one toilet They're supposed to be toilets prevent presented by the people that are running these fields and running these obligations I Know that we've the mayor and I have talked about that And we're you know trying to make sure that that happens but I represent the neighborhood called Sierra.
I've had a lady complain that the people when they have to relieve themselves go in the bushes by her own She's not too much concerned about what she sees she's concerned about what she smells We can't have that in the city, and it's not just in that park if there are restrooms They've got to be maintained and If they're maintained Enough said on the restrooms. On the lighting, improving the quality of life. The lighting mentions have been made about the improvements in light I wholeheartedly agree.
Someone can check my record. I do a lot of 311s on the street lights and to the credit of the public works staff and the management staff it turns out these lights are not all owned by the City of Oxnard. It takes an act of God to get Edison to take care of the lights that they own I had a meeting today with the developer on a project and that meeting, the individual had to say that he had to get political clout to get Edison to move on a project. It's almost as if we have to get political clout to get Edison to fix the lights.
On Vineyard Avenue, the fire station in front of the Vineyard Avenue there were four lights that were out for months. They were Edison lights. I don't know what it takes to make Edison get on the dime In my opinion, I'm sharing this with everything that Edison's got going about the responsibilities for fires down south. I would think that they'd be very inclined to step up but they haven't.
The infrastructure and natural resources, the street paving is a big deal in life. I appreciate that that's in there. But if anyone takes the opportunity, and again we don't have Measure M and we can't show this. And they look at page 70 of the staff report and they take a look at all the items that are redlined. Those are bondable items that we could've been doing more but we have a council member in his organization that stopped the ability for the city to get the bonding.
And we lost the opportunity to get low interest payments for our bonds if we woulda put them out. Mr. Starr thank you very much for that The issue with the adequate water supply. We've had a presentation here from United Water talking about their dam and the need for making repairs on the dam if there's a problem with that dam. These are real things, people.
They're talking about removing the amount of water that Southern California can get from the Colorado River. There is a issue, Mr. Stein continually brings up about how the money has been spent for water projects. I believe we're doing the best that we can with what we have. The seawalls, the alleys, all these things are important but they impact the city of Oxnard if those things go down, the amount of hit that the city of Oxnard will take specifically seawalls in my district but bluntly if the seawalls go down Property base will go down the 17% of every property tax dollar that we get will go down It will impact the entire city of Oxnard. Not just district one The issue about you know the quality of life, and we have two items and we could add one the Quality of life maybe we're going to put Carnegie in there But I will say this now And tomorrow, whatever we do with the Carnegie and the fantastic artwork that is claimed to be inside.
This city is not in the business of running a museum. We got into the problem that we are at the Carnegie because the management or the people that were involved did not pay attention to business and it became a hole. The equivalent of owning a boat which is commonly referred to A place in the water you pour money into. And then, we have management of that organization that accepted stuff they should never have.
So we have, as you can imagine, relics of your family. Somebody dug up the bones from your family and they're exhibiting in a museum. We're stuck with that to the credit of this council and the management. They've come up with a way to try to accommodate and ameliorate what has happened but The Carnegie, the assumption that we're gonna open it up and it's gonna be great and it won't be a hole in the water we pour money into. I think when we do with whatever we are gonna do with the Carnegie or any future council they need to look at the realistic how are you gonna pay for it?
How are you gonna take care of that? The economic development is still on the list number three Revitalize wine Amy Saviors Road Pleasant Valley Channel Islands quarter a Tremendous amount of that property is private property How do we get those individuals with private property to want to invest in their property? Do we make sweetheart deals with developers waive fees?
Waive taxes wave different things I Don't support that. I don't support that but I know that those areas have to be fixed, but it's a The priorities of the City of Oxnard, the last five-year priorities we've come a long, long way. I think that the heads up that we've gotten about the financial future going forward, we're fortunate to have some people that are giving us a heads up what we're looking at.
They could be wrong. They could be wrong but I support most of these things. The things that have been mentioned I agree, and I need to say this. As a resident that lives in a community facilities district neighborhood, LMDs, CFDs they are some form of ownership that requires you to pay an extra fee. Some are large, some are small. But when one end of the City of Oxnard is pitted against another end of the City of Oxnard because it looks good, I can tell you as a councilman in District 1 who lives in the South Bank neighborhood, it's embarrassing how often I see landscapers cleaning up certain areas of North Oxnard.
It's embarrassing because I drive through the entire city and I imagine what people think. All the money for the City of Oxnards going up on the north Those people are paying extra for those services. Those services are extra above and beyond what the costs are throughout the City of Oxnard. I believe my fellow councilmen understand that, but some of the comments from the responders, I don't think they do understand that.
Mayor, that's my feelings. I understand your point about restoring the soccer, the stadium. I can go along with that. There is nothing that has been suggested that I'm anti but the one thing that Mr. Starr, I do take to heart when you mentioned that we had X millions of dollars and where did it go and where is that? My first interaction with you, Mr. Starr was when I was on the council and you were one of the ones complaining about fixing the sewer plant and those infrastructures that had been allowed to deteriorate over years, those infrastructures had to be fixed because when I flushed the toilet, I wanted it to go somewhere where it's treated safely and put out to the public in a safe manner to the system not that we just wait for it to fall apart.
Mayor, those are my comments.
3:03 – 3:1010 turns
I appreciate that, Mr. Perrello. One thing I know you mentioned traffic cams. My response to that personally is I'm not a supporter of red light cameras in our city. There's a lot of mixed reviews with the efficacy of red light cameras in cities. If you look at academic research that's come out there is some indication that it reduces T-bone collisions but it actually increases rear end collisions And also you wonder about the vendors and monetizing that. If anything, I think traffic cameras for red light cameras, the goal is to change driver behavior.
I think a better investment would be utilizing AI, for example, or traffic engineer to determine The number of cars, travel speeds et cetera to inform decisions on whether or not you need to increase the duration of yellow lights et cetera. So I'm a big proponent of supporting our police department with more artificial intelligence and to have that technical ability to continue to be progressive in our law enforcement.
Any other questions comments? Yes go ahead Mayor Pro Tem.
Just a quick question, I apologize if I missed it for my notes. Did we land on discussion for a fifth item for economic development? Because I see that we have a strikethrough on the Socolow and South Oxnard. And the idea was to have five categories, five components each category. And so I'm just...I heard some discussion around economic development but I'm just wondering if we landed on something that would go into that strike through
So I did hear the mayor share some of his ideas for that, and I think something that stood out to me was somewhere around the lines of planning department and all of that. But I don't know if we have to get into the weeds or there's a better category to lay out there in terms of the fifth bullet point because just looking at the bigger picture, I'm not trying to start something brand new or create a new project or task people with more work. You're welcome. I'm just teasing.
Think that what I heard from him was somewhere around the lines of the permitting and You know just the planning department, and it
sounds like continued improvement in our Processes is that correct continue to improve any enhancement.
I mean I make a suggestion because it like some of these items they Overlap main del Sol Stadium because when you're talking about The semi-professional team that leads to professional teams if the quality of the stadium is good. Tournaments, hosting tournaments. That's not a non-economic development idea. So that could go there. Yeah. Thank you. May I ask quick questions just for light and load? For the police chief Are you running for office?
I didn't recognize him either. Who is that back there? Yeah, I kept looking at this sharp-looking dude in the back. I didn't know it was our police chief. Thank you. He does look good in a suit by the
way.
Absolutely Council Member.
Thank you, Mayor. I know I gave an overview of kind of my overall priorities but kind of wanted to make some additional recommendations and some modifications of language but also some additions. So I think in starting over at economic development number two curious if we can change Oxnard employee pipeline to Oxnard employee pathways Pipeline just seems to be a little bit more public works infrastructure based, and I think pathways is a little bit more easily humanizing to things. In terms of infrastructure and natural resources, I'm wondering if we can also add some language around storm drainages?
Flooding is just a big issue. I mean, I've seen it walking outside of my own front Porch flooding is just it just gets really. It's impossible for many community members to just get to and from locations. For the back-to quality of life, specifically around maintaining youth programs, agree with Council Member Tron about incorporating wellness but also wanted to offer consideration considering we a couple of weeks ago had report results given to us about the cost of living how much it costs to purchase a home in this area, and also the increased population of young people in our community.
Just to kind of hone in on all aspects wanting to also include workforce development and skills training I think that when we're thinking about partnerships with our community colleges and our education system, I think preparedness and readiness is definitely a key component to making sure that we address some of the issues so that people can actually have a good job. That'll pay them a livable wage thus allow them to be able to afford Staying in our communities.
I did also want to offer a recommendation, I know we are striking through creating a new Zocalo and South Oxnard. One of the biggest things that I've also heard from community is perhaps having it within our city five-year priorities to also think about the city building and investment in the city building that's there. And so maybe that might be a consideration and agree with Folks around the importance of arts and reopening up our Carnegie. And the last thing I wanted to mention, I think Mary you highlight it highlighted a bit that we are a big agricultural community and I think considering our five year priorities The direction that we're going into, perhaps maybe adding this and incorporating it into the quality of life but making sure that our agricultural workers and community members who contribute to our community also have programming and services available to them in that way.
And those are my modifications and recommendations.
Councilwoman, just as a clarification, were you saying the city building on Channel Islands and Saviours? Correct.
Thank you very much.
3:11 – 3:166 turns
Also in addition, Councilwoman Perez's items not clear on where to put them. So if we can circle back to that after the drainage.
And I think Councilwoman Perez, I support that. So just the verbiage right instead of pipeline will do pathway easy okay?
Councilmember
Perrello.
Councilmember Perriello. Thank you for bringing that up. I think it's timely and Councillor Perriello's question is a good basis for that. I was hoping to ask something similar if you can speak to what is already coming down the pipeline as we just talked about here. What we have as far as drainage because I do believe
Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, Michael Wolff, Director of Public Works. Let me start a little bit of a reminder I think we've had this conversation before about the way storm drains are designed so when you look at storm events and intensity we talk about that from an intensity standpoint how many inches of rain per minute per hour the way that the system is designed is that The 10-year intensity goes in the ground, in the pipe underneath the ground.
The rest of it up to 100 years is supposed to be in the street, in the curbing gutter. So when you see rain and water in the gutter, that's supposed to happen. It's not all supposed to go down the storm drain, it's not supposed to all go down on the pipe. It should actually be in the street. That's how the streets are designed. a geometry such that it creates those pockets along the curb and gutter.
When we get the 10,000 year storm event there is no way for us to design and construct pipelines to address that unless you want to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to do that and I don't think that's the request So when we look at storm drain and storm drain design, we start with what's called a master plan of drainage. And this goes to Mayor Pro Tem's question and Council Member Perrell's question. So we are working on, we already have hired a consultant to do a master plan drainage update that's actually in the CIP.
That is a process by which we identify places that either are deficient and or don't have any storm drain at all. And then we work from there. So we already have a master plan drainage I'm blanking on it and I think it's, actually Ty probably knows. Is it 15 years old? 20 years old! So the master plan drainage that we currently work off of is pretty dated. So that's the first step. Now specifically projects that we have in the pipeline for good pun is Yucca Street. We're doing some Yucca Street.
85, 90% done with design. Yucca close to Savers in that area there. We have a project, the one that was mentioned tonight, the location that was mentioned tonight which is Hill. We already have a project that's already in preliminary design for that but I will tell you, I'll give you a little sort of perspective of those projects. The one on Hill Street's $11 million dollars. That's the current estimate so we're not talking about A couple of small contracts to do improvements. We're talking about some major design and major construction work.
The Yucca Street one I think is in the seven or eight or nine million dollar range, so we're talking about some large dollar amounts for those things. So those are some of our most active projects. Yucca Street, Storm Drain Hill area. We have along Oxnard Boulevard, South Oxnard Boulevard and I forgot the name of that street again Sutter Place, thank you. We have the drain, the earthen channel that runs along Oxnard Boulevard that's on the outside of the backside of those homes.
There's been some compromise with the footings of the wall there so we're addressing a storm drain project that would line that earthen channel with concrete address the wall and the foundation. That's I think right now an estimate about two-and-a-half million dollars worth of project So those are some of the storm drain projects that we have. But I just wanted to emphasize that Oxnard is flat, Oxnard was constructed a lot of it was constructed many, many decades ago.
So the fixes aren't easy cheap fixes and to try to address what we will probably see going forward, the intensities or the rains different than we have in the past, you're talking about quite a bit of improvements that are necessary to do that I hope that answered the question.
3:16 – 3:2211 turns
Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.
Thank you Mr. Wolf and if we can add to that a little bit, I've had conversations with members of the public around this for drainage and it's pointed out well you all just keep building new homes and houses and shopping centers and what used to be fields and open space now is paved over but is Correct to say that when those developments happen, drainage is part of that design and making sure that this is something that is going to be properly done versus the second point I'm about to make after Mr. Chow's done with what he's gonna say, I think.
Good evening, Council Member, Mr. Mayor, my board chair, Tai Chow, Assistant Community Director and City Engineer for Land Development. When it comes to storm drainage for new development we have extreme stringent requirements for many of the areas. We require stormwater detentions up to 100-year storm event which is what? Which is unheard of for the older portion of Oxnard which did not have that requirement. In some cases we even require storm drainage to be contained within the pipe up to 100-year story event.
invest a significant amount of storm drainage infrastructure to make sure that all these storm drainage are addressed via the development. The one most key component to a lot of our residents to understand is that their single family home improvement, their flat work in the backyard, the front yard each of them contribute a significant amount and each drop are then collectively added to our infrastructure. So when people improve their homes via through formally or informally, please be mindful create a little rain garden in your front yard, little backyard those single drop that I'll capture are going to be tremendously helpful especially in the area that are having deficient amount of storm drain infrastructure because they were constructed 75-80 years ago.
Thank you very much,
Mr. Chow and I'm glad you said that. That was going to be my second point as it pertains to the priorities discussion here about drainage and flooding and where overlaps with other areas. I brought up the development part because there are standards, there are requirements that are placed on a developer as far as drainage goes along with all the other things they have to navigate But individual property owners who over decades, we have a house here, a house here essentially half a neighborhood, bunch of a neighborhood who pave over their yard. They're soft scaping and now have concrete in front of the yard with no drainage built into it that water has to go somewhere and it now goes into what was previously going to be soaked in the ground now goes into our storm drainage to our gutters.
And one house with a front yard and a backyard that's paved over with little to no drainage It's got to go somewhere. That's one house, but now imagine that multiplied many times over. So is it accurate to say that that is another thing that is something this city and communities like it have to take into consideration when we talk about drainage as well?
Yeah, and I think I'm probably not the right person to talk about this, but in general there are standards in terms of how much you're allowed to pave your property versus how much you're supposed landscape standpoint. So there are standards across those that the Community Development Department checks if a person's coming in to get a permit to do that work, if they're not then obviously that's not a check and balances
error. Thank you and the last thing I'll say about that Councilwoman and Councillor Perallo is when this and the previous council adopted the pilot curb cut program Permeable concrete or pavers were a requirement of doing the driveway for this reason to allow drainage, to have it be able to not be sending so much stormwater runoff onto the gutter. Instead it is trying to offset what would have been hard concrete, hardscaping and no drainage having drained somehow back into the water table. But again on this Councilwoman I appreciate you bringing up Possibly having a discussion about drainage and where it might fit in these priorities.
I'll certainly turn it back to the council, I think it's an interesting discussion because it is important and it does overlap as I mentioned with climate change and what we're facing now. And thank you Mr. Wolf for that dollar figure, I think we spent $11 million on Gonzales Road to pay from Rice to Victoria, is that correct? Yes
close to it yes.
Wow
thank
you. Mr. Perrella go ahead.
I greatly appreciate it you pointed out that Oxnard's flat If anybody has had a pancake and they put syrup on it, it doesn't go exactly where you wanna go but water and gravity rules slope. But the issue that Mayor Pro Tem has raised with respect to the paving there are certain neighborhoods I think one in mind and I don't wanna out them right now but this specific street were tremendous amounts of people have paved over the front yard And there's multiple cars.
And I get requests from areas, how come the city of Oxnard does not make them take out the concrete? And I don't know how that's gonna work its way through the city of Oxnard but with a limited parking which gets into an area that affects parts of district one as well as the rest of the city more and more people are looking for opportunities to put a car or method of transportation somewhere on their property.
I don't think I have any questions.
3:22 – 3:2813 turns
Everything that everybody was said, I read the comments online. I have the City Council five-year priorities up on the screen and I've been taking notes as far as what the priorities are of the council. Some of them were already within the five years. Others like we wanted to add wellness, I heard bathrooms, Carnegie, bike safety, lighting, red lights But there's also additional five-year priorities on here that we haven't discussed. So I'm not sure if it's the desire of the council to take those off and replace them with these, and one of the things I did not hear was ensure adequate future water supply so I'm not sure if we want to go through the list and identify if some of those priorities should stay or should I mean, or I have a list going down as far as if we want to add remove.
We can do that it was my impression for example when we talked about ensure adequate you know future water supply because there was no discussion it was my impression that we were supportive of that staying in there
okay so but I guess I get my question is then the items that are important How do we want to continue with the five? We have five and five in each category. So, do we have a desire to increase those five?
Please no.
Okay so...
I think the way I interpreted it and why I gave my friendly amendment was based on the strikethrough and the changes so instead of restore it says maintain You know, continue to repair etc., etc. So based on that I was giving my recommendations. I know I heard something about the bike safety so I was trying to add that to infrastructure bullet point four but I think if we go based on what is being proposed unless you want us to read them all by category maybe similar to the worksheet that was in the presentation?
Yeah, so I was thinking of going by category And add those keywords that are important to each category and determine what needs, what does it need to be there anymore? And keeping the five items.
So I think it is keeping the recommendations and we've been adding so when I heard Councilwoman Perez share instead of using the word, I forgot. Purple line. Yes. So like it was amendments to what has been recommended by staff.
Right. So I see one, maintain youth programs. Two, maintain senior programs and build approved new senior center. Continue to address homelessness in Oxnard. Build the aquatic center is crossed out. That is my question. I understand why it's crossed out but like Mr. Larry Stein said we did receive $5 million from the state. There has been planning And if we can just get an update on that. I mean, there was a plan to go out, get a bond, built it. The bond rates were great at that time.
They're not great right now. I totally understand but there is $5 million that has gone into this already. So if we can, I know Mr. Wolf is here or maybe community development can just give us an update on that or Ashley
So the five million dollars, the majority of it almost all that was spent on the design plans. They have gone through the planning process and they're in for building permits. They're just not advancing through the building permit process at this time because there is not money to build the actual aquatic center so we did the community outreach. We did the designs went through all the approvals I wouldn't say it's just sitting in community development, but there's little effort to prioritize that above the other projects that we're moving through when we can't build it. But the money didn't go to waste. Those plans have a shelf life, but without bonding and the rates aren't there to bond, it's not going to move at a clip.
So as far as the shelf life, at what point does it become an obsolete design?
I'll have Jeff kind of address the, or maybe Michael. They're going to tag team this on the building code side of it. So
I'll start with just kind of the general comment about being obsolete that they're not going to ever be obsolete. They're just gonna potentially if you go through a code cycle change, they just need to be updated and so I think Mr. Pangeli can talk about that cycle but sometimes I have seen plans being put on the shelf for several years. You have to bring them back off, make sure you're meeting the current code requirements which costs a little bit of money to update the design. So there's a funding cost when you put it on the shelf and don't build it if you go through a code cycle. You have to make those changes and I don't know if Jeff wants to talk about code cycles but sometimes that's fun.
3:28 – 3:4129 turns
Good evening, Jeff Mangeli, Community Development Director So the plans have been approved through the entitlement process, which is a big milestone. That entitlement approval is valid for three years plus a one-year extension we will readily grant. The plans will need to be updated if they are not executed and committed to the plan check process this calendar year, they'll need to be updated to the current building code. But unlikely the funding issues will be worked out this calendar year so we anticipate there will need to be a code update to the design drawings. It's not a start from ground zero it's just tune up compare the old code to the current code and refine those parts of the drawing that needed to be refined. So we have time.
Okay I... Council Member Perrella?
Just if they would the we're going five years in the future with this These plans would be dead before that five years expired or we would have the opportunity Or do we need to write something in this? We do come back and revisit and update these plants I don't want him to go
did There's two different aspects. There's the entitlement approval which can be active for up to four years If that I believe it was. Two years ago? No, the entitlement was just the end of last calendar year. Okay. If that is running short on time we can just take it back through the entitlement process, relook at the CEQA to make sure nothing has changed but it's not starting from ground zero.
So it's my desire obviously this would be in District 5 and it's I would like it to remain on the list.
And I'll say like as a response to Council Member Basuah, there have been many people. I know people are interested in defining what an aquatic center looks like and getting into the logistics of that but there have definitely been community members at neighborhood councils in communities saying that they would like for public safety reasons to have a pool in South Oxnard.
The entire Council approved that also at that time.
We did, right we did get the entire council to approve it and we had you know support from Monique Limon who granted us five million dollars at the time so I would like for that to remain and then obviously we're gonna do the Carnegie Museum Councilmember Perez in regards The initial thought process for that was to Something you know that the mayor has talked about. That's what the intent was there, it wasn't about owners cleaning up their area, it was about us maintaining what we have.
So I would also appreciate if we would keep that there. The public safety, I'm okay with as it is and just the infrastructure I would like And hearing my colleagues, I would like to add and have bathrooms be on that somewhere. So if we can find a way to add bathrooms maybe continue to repair alleys and bathrooms. I mean, I'm trying to get creative here so I would really like to see that. Those are my comments.
Thank you. Just to go back to the quality of life, Alex maybe you can provide some direction. If Councilwoman Pascua wants to keep the Aquatic Center there as a five-year priority can we add You know, I've proposed to have taken the lead and I've had some conversations with our district partners to establish a joint use with the school districts so that the pools that the district has be made accessible to our community like the Juan Ymi High School pool, Oxnard High School and the one that's going to be constructed at Channels High School for example.
Maybe along those lines is some of the effect of continuing those conversations to essentially realize a joint use with them in whatever that it turns out to be. What are your thoughts? So maybe adding that as part of your priority?
I think that would be amazing and much more sensible
And if I can have two for,
I'm sorry go ahead. No but I'm just thinking through just how timing would work so with the Aquatic Center it's really at this point a question of when could we go back out to the markets in the future and right now it just doesn't look on the horizon or you know Pardon me, but some ex-spouse of a billionaire wanted to give us a grant. It seems to be happening around the country here and there, and we could look into trying to pursue that. That'd be great.
So that's going to take some time anyway, but maybe if you can commit to the next 12 months really pursuing Opening up the school district facilities for the community. I think that could, that'd be great. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that doesn't happen overnight either.
Correct.
But I think you can slip in there the timing of those so perhaps those can be combined. Okay. Keep our opportunity open for an aquatic center but simultaneously the mayor as our ambassador will For lack of a better phrase, open up the existing pools that are on public schools campuses.
Correct.
That'd be really great. On the building at the corner of Saviors Channel Islands, right now I can't think of our ability to move on that in a major capital project way. However we are working... I understand that our cultural services department And they'll have to partner with Public Works. They're working on a way to surround that with murals and just to overall improve the aesthetic quality of it for now, but I don't see us having the ability to do a major capital project there.
Can I just add also Alex really quick on the quality of life? Can we just may polish up the language on number five I think we are, I mean, I've heard others here say, I certainly do about moving to the direction of opening up the Carnegie.
Yes,
we'll make
that, I have those notes.
And then also with a PAC making it clear that
we want
to have a two contract and pushing that to be as soon as possible. Okay. Perfect. And I'm sorry Mayor Patten go
ahead. To your point, Mr.. City manager looking at economic development item number three Revitalize the wine Amy Saviors Pleasant Valley Channel Islands Corridor Would it be acceptable? to Councilwoman Perez's request for channel as corridor to add an elaboration on that including You know, the city-owned building on corner of Saviers and Channel Island. Something along those lines so we can memorialize that or is this statement do you think? Is that fair because that would include that property as well Councilwoman?
And the building
right?
And if I can, I know I've mentioned this previously in public meetings around that building to whatever degree Can utilize it. I know, it's being used in some ways that are non human resource facing. The dispatchers, for example in their current setting in the police department. If there was any way to even find a ability to do a capital project on like one story there to house dispatchers there because there wouldn't need to be public access for them to go visit You know, in their own space. And I know we have antennas already on that building that relay across the city. So I'm not saying let's do it tomorrow but if there comes the opportunity that that's something we can do, that would certainly get them in a much larger space and also free up space at PD.
But I see the Public Works Directors going to the podium. Mayor?
Go ahead Mr. Wolf. Yeah, just a couple things to think about from that perspective. In order for a building to house public safety it has to meet essential facilities requirements and that building does not meet the essential facilities requirements so you can't just do a tenant improvement on one of the floors. You'd have to actually do some very significant utility and structural improvements to that building which may be cost prohibitive in terms of the useful life for that building left after you do those improvements. So things like dispatch, things like police headquarters, you have to think about building code requirements which is an essential facilities requirement.
Thank you for that Mr. Wolf. I'll just say if it helps for the safety of employees there if the elevator is not safe to be in then nobody's going to want to go in there and bother the dispatchers right? If they don't feel safe going up there. I'm just kidding So thank you for that extra info. That makes a lot of sense as far as the cost for that and what is needed to bring it up to inhabitability.
Anyways, that was my piece there Councilwoman so just something that came into mind for that.
You know Councilwoman if you're open to some ideas too though we can look at some creative initiatives with some direction from our executive leadership staff. I know there's been some discussion for example with One of the things that we're looking at with the mobile car wash groups that typically line up west of Saviers road is potentially we could have a discussion about allowing them to utilize that parking lot during the weekend, for example. It might be an idea that essentially addresses the issue License and as long as they've got the catch, but it might be something that It gets utilized as opposed to just being Abandoned there.
Well potentially we can explore some other initiatives and get creative whether Maybe even art To cover up some of those boards But I think Alex is open to the idea putting that in there and just putting and the old Cedar Bank building Okay In that same item in economic development, are we okay then with putting Del Sol Stadium in there for number five? Because we're going to put and next to Channel Ends Corridor and Citibank.
3:41 – 3:4714 turns
What are your ideas?
And so, and also to encourage the proper maintenance of the field so that it could accommodate tournaments. It would accommodate the girls' semi-pro team that's going to utilize it and also entice more youth groups to utilize it in hopes of bringing in more tournaments coupled with The college fields and Oxnard College, and that would help our leisure industry here at Hotels if we're able to have a tournament but we do need it. We do need to enhance that facility. Yes Mr.
Wolfe? Just one thing to add to that. From a field perspective, in order to have fields like that you actually have to stay off the fields for a certain amount of time. So in order for us to address those kinds of things, the bleachers, the lights are pretty straightforward but the easiest way to make the field better is rest period and we just don't get that type of inactivity so the commitment here would have to be You have to stay off the field for a long time during the rest period timeframe. So while it may be a more enhanced facility, it's less usable from a timeframe standpoint if you want those fields to look like those kinds of fields in the track, those kinds of athletes that want to have fields in certain conditions. I just wanna make sure that that's recognized that means less usage of the fields.
Thank you Mr. Wolf.
Must
be like Kimball Park and Ventura they close it down periods of time
I'm wondering if for item number 5 in addition to all those things,
State that this is something we are recognizing and that's included in natural disasters. I see Miss Mallory's here, she's done extensive work in our adaptation and our CAP plan that we have. And so I know we're doing the work but we are actually prioritizing that we need to stay the course for this and that it is something that will affect everybody in some way or another in this community.
The climate resilience, is that a fair addition to that? Go ahead.
No go ahead. Yeah it seems fair to me.
Okay so that was a suggestion I'd asked for earlier another one I've been working on wording on this and I'll open it to thoughts here is for number three restore neighborhood police program so our neighborhood policing team Without adding an additional item to like a number six, but if we can do an addendum to that. So restore neighborhood police program and establish park ranger program for public safety seeing as those are duties or assignments underneath the police department, the neighborhood policing team. I don't know where a park ranger program would fall as far as public safety goes but again, I believe this is something that will be an assignment that is specific to our parks and if we're investing in improving quality of life and quality of experience at our parks, this would be one way that we could do that.
And I'll point out when folks ask about why are our parks not like such and such cities or such and such park district, when you look at those other park systems they have Park Rangers to address a number of things including ensuring reservations are honored. If somebody is accidentally in somebody's reservation there is a conflict around reservations not just behavioral challenges that face our parks but also the little things that come up rather than calling the police department for that or relying on our park staff to address those things so I'll pose that to the council
If we
could ask the police chief, do park rangers would they fit in the Police Department or would there be something else under Parks and Recreation? Because I can't imagine a park ranger having to just say an event in a park gets going. Sometimes it happens where it gets out of hand and the park ranger most likely would need backup. And if there's one park ranger who is gonna be the backup? It's gonna be Police Department? How would a park ranger work in your mind?
Good evening, Council. Jason Benitez, Police Chief. We'd have to work it out. I would first start with a study of what other agencies are doing to address this problem. Some agencies have their park rangers under police. Some have them elsewhere. So I want to at least start there and go from there and look at the costs of what that actually entails. OK, thank you. Thank
you. Appreciate that, Chief. Yeah, I'm hearing you, Mayor Pro Tem. I just don't know enough about it. I've seen some cities where it falls under the parks department, where they go out to ensure on weekends that the Jolly Jumper is permitted or whether the park reservation is being enforced. But I just certainly don't know enough about it. It's been a long time.
3:47 – 3:5221 turns
Something that happens in parks often is a dispute about space or about the space people are taking up. And we actually have a process, a permitting process for Jolly Jumpers, for example, where there is an actual permitted list of vendors who are able to provide those services in the city of Oxnard at a park for a party. If we go outside of that Well, who's to enforce that? How do we even do that? There is also a limit on the size of canopies that you can bring into a park. And how do we enforce that when we have massive 40 by 25 canopies going in there and maybe we change the policies around the size of those based on the needs and what's common with our residents but as it stands now if we don't enforce it and there's no mechanism to do that or lower priority for those who are charged with doing it, then why do we have those policies at all?
I mean if people just know that nothing's going to happen from it. So I think that was an important point you brought up so thank you.
Yeah and that goes along what I mentioned earlier about the utilization of parks in our antiquated policies where they close when it gets dark and essentially we have youth teams out there with lights that we know are not permitted based on our policy but yet No one's really enforcing that unless there's someone that is bothered by it and essentially I think the call falls to the police department. to have to go out there and essentially end a youth team that's practicing, which I'm not so sure our police department should be tasked with doing something like that.
But that's a good point you brought up. Yes, Mr.?
The mayor brings up a good point. If we have the rule and we don't enforce it, and I would equate that to the people who have concreted their whole front yards. It's the same thing.
Absolutely. Mr. Mayor, can
I intervene for a moment? Because we know what you're doing You guys are turning everything into a compound sentence. So we get this, so it's okay because the policy document is also reflects not just the values but the aspirations. But just remember it's not solely funding but it's also staff capacity and there's nothing in the ingredients of this sausage that I would say is not logical or wrong or anything like that. I think it's all very positive, but just remember you might want to stop here because when comes the budget time, you still have to decide in any given year what can be done and how much.
And that gets back to not everything can get done in any given year. So just remember that so you can make compound sentences here, but you can't make compound budgets
Thank you. Thank you for that, but I'm supporting Mayor Portero putting it in here as an aspiration to do at least the legwork, as Chief Mendez mentioned, to explore that possibility. Okay, we can move to infrastructure and natural resources. And I think Councilwoman Basu, you did a good job of going down the line, and I think you wanted something to do with bathrooms added in there, right?
Alex is there an opportunity to add bathrooms in there somewhere under infrastructure and natural resources So
if I may on that one, I had made a note for number two in that item. That's a pretty long sentence maintain proper maintenance of parkways and medians tree trimming cycle and clean up the gateways to the city. I thought about if we want to do a catch-all for parks in general at the end of that sentence as well to just have in here as far as infrastructure goes that our parks The maintenance of our parks and their functionality are something we're prioritizing as well, which would include restrooms, play equipment, all of those things. Are folks hearing me on that? Is that amenable?
I don't, I don't disagree. I think Councilwoman Basuah was specifically talking about the restrooms. I agree with that. As long as we
call it out.
Yeah
because I mean we've been hearing a lot about our restrooms and up the upgrades and I just want to make sure we catch it.
So would it be fine then to add parks so it would read the sentence as it is? And we'd add and parks and park restrooms? Is that suitable or?
Well, the thing is it says, I mean they're being maintained. There's janitorial that goes and maintains the bathroom. I'm just saying upgrading the bathrooms.
I see. OK.
So a
specific call out for- Rick and
Wolf snuck up in here.
Yes.
Go ahead. I just
want to- I'm remiss if I don't say what council-
Yeah, they are maintaining them. I see the janitors at least I live right next to a park.
3:53 – 4:0232 turns
Digger, you want to take this?
For the recording. Let's add replace microphones. You went the wrong way.
We
need
to add maintenance of the microphones at City Hall. The run-on center, the compound.
So I just wanted to point out that again, we maintain the restrooms on a daily basis. I think twice a day in the morning and in the evenings. And so certainly we can replace restrooms, we can enhance restrooms but the issue is not a maintenance issue. The issue is the vandalism that happens to it, the homeless that address it. So putting an infrastructure is maybe an easy place to put it but that's really not the issue right?
My perspective. Not the issue, it's not infrastructure.
So we need more policing?
OK, wait... OK, the sausage is getting bad. If I can just remind everyone when the mayor went on that delegation to Japan and came back one of the things he reported was this interesting thing that there are no trash cans.
That's right.
So there is an aspect here where we as a local government can't just keep cleaning and fixing things all the time when the users don't have enough value in these assets. So I think there's some other ways to start to figure out how to encourage people to value, hey this is my park, this is my trashcan, this is my bathroom so I think more of a sociological approach as well because we cannot infrastructure this to the point where it's actually going to get better. So I think there is a social, sociological aspect to this too that we shouldn't ignore because we spend a boatload of money on a brand new fancy Exelon and it gets wrecked by people so there is other work that needs to be done that we need to consider Because we cannot keep doing that, because now you're talking about then every new thing is a money pit.
So I think we have to keep that in mind and not disregard that aspect. Thank you. Thank you.
I agree but laughing at me over here. But there are bathrooms and I'll give you an example Beck Park There's bathrooms that really need the new infrastructure regardless of whether or not they're going to get vandalized. I remember when my daughter used to play softball there at Seaside, water was very minimal. It was just like you got drops of water in your hand. So those are the kind of things that I would like to see and I understand people are not gonna take care of things but I think that as As we're setting these priorities, some of these things... I'm not saying all the bathrooms. Some of them we really need to take a look at and really upgrade, repair, do what we've got to do. Yeah.
I concur. Thank you. So perhaps we can add some language in there much like the Mayor Pro Tem mentioned another compound sentence where we can very specifically indicate bathroom upgrades in the parks Lastly, organizational effectiveness.
I was to reviewing what Councilman Rodriguez had suggested about another compound sentence here. I'm wondering if a number one where we have maintained proper street paving cycle, if the council would be amenable to maintain proper street paving cycle and incorporate bike infrastructure
with... Expand bike safety.
Does that work for number one for folks?
Thank you. And if everyone's okay, we'll move to organizational effectiveness. A person okay with all five? We're going to have some discussion on that. Okay.
I would just like to point out on organizational effectiveness, one thing that I would just like to point out is the strength of the city cybersecurity As you know, we have entered a world of technology and I just think that is very, very critical because it houses everything. So I just want to make sure that we support that and our IT department is supported because we've seen the consequences of that not happening.
Can I add Mayor to Councilwoman Basuah's something or some language around data protection? I think there was a public comment that was made around data breaches and wanting to make sure that, yeah, our data is protected and not being shared. And the tracking and monitoring of that.
So we can add strength in the city cybersecurity and data protection?
Yeah. Thank you for that Councilwoman. All right. At this time if there's no further discussion, what's the pleasure of Council? I
have a technical question.
Absolutely, go ahead Mayor Patun.
Did I understand correctly that there was a request to add language around joint use agreements for the Aquatic Centre for Quality
of Life No. 4? Yes. How about if I do my best to try to read this through And if there's no corrections, then maybe you can have a motion. So let's see. Sounds great. Let's see how good my secretarial skills still are. So quality of life. So we have maintained youth development and wellness programs. Number two, maintain senior wellness programs and build the approved new Senior Centre.
Number three, continue to address homelessness in Oxnard. Number four, build an aquatic center in South Oxnard and pursue open use of our high school's swimming pools. In parentheses by Ambassador Mayer.
I'm committed to it, yeah.
Okay. And then number five, complete the NAGPRA compliance process in order to open the Carnegie And continue the Performing Arts Center with the council's direction about the two contracts.
Beautiful,
yeah.
Okay?
All right, economic development. One, focus on business retention and expansion and new business attraction. Two, train and prepare residents for employment at local businesses through the Oxnard employee pathways Three, revitalize the Wainimi Saviors Pleasant Valley Channel Islands Corridor and the city's building at Saviors and Channel Islands aka the Citibank Building. Is that right? Citibank?
Yes. Okay. Number four, renovate 4th Street between downtown and the train station to create a safe connection between the transit center and downtown And number five, make improvements to Del Sol Stadium and that is the lighting, the field and the seating.
Correct.
Okay. Public safety. The only change there is under create building out a modern disaster preparedness we will add at the end and climate resilience
4:02 – 4:0822 turns
Just so we're clear, we're not doing
park rangers in the language. Sorry, sorry, yes. Number three, restore neighborhood police program and establish a park ranger program. Sorry about that. Thank you. All right. So for infrastructure and natural resources, maintain proper street paving cycle. Number two, maintain proper maintenance of parkways and median street training cycle and clean up the gateways to the city and maintain the parks, and make upgrades to the park's bathrooms. Is that the right word? Upgrades? Perfect. Correct. Okay. So originally I heard Councilwoman Perez say add the bike infrastructure to alleys but we were actually adding that to number one maintain proper street paving cycles and incorporate bike infrastructure Okay, so that's that. And then, so now we get to number three, continue to ensure adequate future water supply, no change there, no change to alleys or seawalls.
And then for organizational effectiveness the only changes for number four we're going to add at the end and data protection. What did I miss?
I think the one thing I wanted to incorporate and maybe need to find a home for is specifically including language around workforce pathways for youth.
For what?
For youth.
Can we just incorporate that into... I was thinking number two. Number two, and just add for youth and adults? Great.
That's great. Thanks.
Yes. All right, thank you for that Mr. City Manager. That aligns with all of my notes I had as well. And I ask this question to the city attorney in real time. So we had a change for quality of life number four regarding the aquatic center and seeking the potential for joint use with the high schools given my recusal on any agreements with our school systems For that particular one, I know that into the weeds on that is the development of agreements and brokering deals between the district in the city.
Is there a need here for me to recuse myself from that one item?
If I can jump in first, I think the approach initially is for the schools under their existing policies and state rules is just to open them up for public use, which is different from a joint-use agreement. And we'll see how well our ambassador does. It may lead to a joint-use agreement but at this point I think the idea is just to have open public hours which I believe may already exist as a possibility for the schools to do.
It's still a serious discussion. But I think that's the approach at this point.
That's a starting point here.
OK, is that does that give you a little bit more comfort on that one?
I just want to make sure that from Mr Fisher or Mr Rozelle, just your thoughts on that if there is a If this is a good pathway to look at, if it's kind of open use versus joint use or if I should just be overly cautious on this. What are your
thoughts? The safest bet is always to just recuse yourself from that aspect of it and he's going to bash me for being conservative on that but... No,
no!
I would just say no swimming for you. That's fine. That's fair. And no more school groups coming up either for ceremonial items, you have to leave the room for that. So
along those lines in a recent Public Works Transportation Committee meeting there was discussion around joint use of fields and I'm glad Councilwoman Basuah was the one to bring it up because You know, I can't. But even in that part of the discussion, I zipped my lips and said, OK, well, I'll let the mayor and the councilman have that part of the discussion. But I appreciate your real time input on that, Mr. Fisher and Mayor just to be on the safe side here for this council, not just for myself, for that one item for number four, even though it's open use because it is seeking discussion and possible agreements with the school districts, I'll recuse myself from just that one if we come to a vote. When we come to a vote.
Wonderful, okay. I think we're ready. What's the pleasure of council? Is there a second? Madam Clerk, call for the vote and observing what Mayor Pro Tem has asserted he needs to recuse himself from that specific item.
Thank you mayor and council members if you can go ahead and cast your vote Thank you and the motion carries six to one with, is that the recusal?
Okay
sorry.
So I just want to check since there is a we have a procedural rule that council members do vote on things unless they've got A financial or other required recusal by law.
Because when we're so were you abstaining from?
4:08 – 4:1325 turns
Yes, I think that this exercise is not meaningful, so I'm just I don't want to stop you guys from adopting it and I'm just simply abstaining.
But if I hear Our council is indicating that,
at least that... It's not a recusal. It's an abstention. It's Robert's Rules of Order. We're under Roberts' Rules of Order. It is perfectly allowed so I'm sticking with my abstention. Thank you.
Technically, you've got your council rules of procedure that supersede what you have in Roberts' Rules on this.
I am abstaining. You can do with that what you will.
It sounds like, Mr. Fisher, that Council Member Starr is not going to cast a vote on this. She's not following our procedures.
Duly noted and the rationale for that is that council members are elected to make decisions.
Thank you. We'll move to the next item. Alex, you want to say? Okay. We're going to
move to the next item on the agenda. This is the Info Consent
Agenda.
Absolutely everyone, staff thank you for your time, for being here. Your presence means a lot. Thank you.
I'll make a motion to go past 10 if we need to. I'll second.
Any public speakers for the motion to go past ten o'clock? If not, call for the vote.
Yes. Councilwoman Rodriguez? Yes. Councilman Starr? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Teran? Yes, Councilwoman Basuah? Yes councilmember Peralta mayor MacArthur yes and this motion carries 7 to 0 to go past 10 thank you. Thank you
next item on the agenda is the info consent agenda The only items I see here is the approval of the minutes, and also from the IT department is the agreement with CDW Microsoft. Essentially it's the city council approving and authorizing the mayor to execute an agreement with CDW Corporation in an amount not to exceed $1.5 million for the purchase of Microsoft licenses over a three-year term from May 1st, 2026 through April 30th, 2029 What's the pleasure of council on this particular item?
Mayor and Council Members, just for the record we do not have any public speakers in person or virtually for this item. Okay thank
you. If there are no requests to pull any of these two agenda items from the consent agenda I'll move their approval.
I will second. Mayor and Council Members if you can go ahead and cast your vote Thank you. And this motion carries seven to zero, thank you.
Also before we conclude or adjourn I know that Council Member Starr brought up Measure O earlier and just wonder if I can get some clarification from our city manager are we able I don't know how to phrase it. Are we able to get a report on where we are with Measure O? What are some considerations regarding with Measure O when the sun sets, what options we have regarding
Measure O. Future agenda.
Yes. Please. Thank you. That's my request with that and unless anyone has any further business on the agenda without objection Yes sir, go
ahead.
Going to come back to a full council.
Thank
you. There's no further business or without objection we're adjourned thank you