City Council — April 20, 2026

I haven't done a test but can you guys hear me OK?

Yes, loud and clear.

Thank you.

I think so. I think it's in our script we gave her.

Mayor, we have the year proclamations set here so Council Member Lopez will be reading Arbor Day and Council Member Perez will be reading Earth Day.

All right, just checking to see if you guys can hear me. Yes. Okay,

thank you.

Yes we can hear you

So it is 6 30 are we ready to get started? Yes, we

are ready.

Thank you. Great, thank you. Madam Clerk can we get a roll call?

Muted.

Sorry, I just had to unmute myself. Good evening everybody. As you might know and for the members of the audience who might not know, I'm in Washington DC on an advocating trip for regional defense partnership along with the mayor. And I thought while I was here, I would take an opportunity to talk about The United States Constitution and what it really means to local officials.

So I will begin with, um, what it means to support the constitution and say, uh, I hope that before I start when I say that, I hope that this resonates with our city council and those of you who serve on on our local boards. So supporting the Constitution for local elected officials is more than a ceremonial oath. It's a day-to-day commitment to govern within constitutional limits and protect residents' rights while delivering services. In practical terms, it usually means put constitutional rights first in local decisions, meaning uphold freedom like freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, petition and equal protection especially when it's unpopular or inconvenient. Follow the rule of law and due process. Make decisions using fair procedures like making public notice, providing the public an opportunity to be heard, and impartial application of rules in consistent enforcement such as zoning code enforcement licensing and disciplinary matters.

Respect limits on government power Local government can't do whatever works. Actions must have legal authority and must not violate constitutional protections, including property rights, protections against unreasonable search, seizures or denying one's rights to due process. We honor checks and balances and transparencies supporting open Government norms, lawful meetings, accessible records, clear votes and avoiding back-channel decision making. This sustains legitimacy even when outcomes are contested.

We avoid conflict of interest and self dealing. We serve the whole community even those who didn't vote for you. The oath is to the constitution not a faction that translates into viewpoint neutral processes equal service delivery and non discriminatory policies We put constitutional rights first in local decisions. I mentioned earlier speech, religion, press, freedom of assembly petition and equal protection especially. Oh, I think I'm repeating myself here.

We follow the rules of law, we respect limits on government power. I'm sorry, I think I just already said those and in the end, In the end, the Constitution is only as strong as the people who live by it. If we want liberty to last, we have to practice it by defending the rights of others, insisting on fair processes and remembering that citizenship is not a spectator sport so maybe may we honor we the people not just with our words but with our choices today and every day thank you that concludes my inspiration

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. We'll now go to public comments and these are public comments not related to our agenda items each commenter will have three minutes. Madam Clerk do we have any public comments?

Yes, Madam Mayor and first I'd just like to note that we received a written public comment that was received and was provided to City Council prior to this meeting. In addition the comment was posted to the city's website and included in the agenda packet binder that's available in front of the council chamber for the public's review. And for your awareness we do have six general in-person public comments so the first one is Janice Burke

Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, staff, neighbors. I'm representing tonight the Hueneme HOA coalition and these are my two co-chairs Jeffrey Scarberry and David Scribner and we have a few members from the coalition here would you please stand? I want to thank them for coming. Yes, thank you. We're here tonight to present a resolution of the Hueneme HOA coalition thanking the City of Port Hueneme for a successful four-year partnership.

Whereas the Hueneme HOA coalition represents a partnership of homeowners associations committed to improving the quality of life within the city of Port Hueneme and whereas for the past four years the City Council City managers, city staff have fostered a transparent and collaborative relationship with the coalition. And whereas the partnership has led to significant accomplishments including updating the city trees and landscape policy addressing significant public safety issues at Mandalay Village Shopping Center and Hueneme Beach Park Collaboration on traffic safety concerns citywide. Fundraising with Reach for the new police dog.

Canine Gator, assisting in developing and revising community benefit fund processes for CAC as well as council adoption. Collaboration with the city to help create a new short-term rental policy which I know we still need to work on and hosting successful City Council candidate forum last year and ongoing involvement with various port of Hueneme issues Whereas the proactive engagement of the city officials in coalition meetings has strengthened the relationship between residents and local government. Now, therefore be it resolved that the Hueneme HOA Coalition does hereby recognize and thank the City of Port Hueneme for their exemplary partnership and dedication to the community. Be it for the resolved a copy of this resolution will be published presented to the City Council and be entered into public record Passed and adopted on the 20th day of April 2026.

Thank you very much

Thank you, and thank you to all the HOA representatives in the room tonight, thank you so much

mr. Greg Ross

Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, esteemed City Council members. I have said it before but I'll say it again. I've lived here in Ventura County since 1970 and Port Hueneme since the early 2000s. I love this city. I have one little Suggestion and then I want to go into a small speech about Why I like this city why I love it. So We still have an issue at the pier in the parking lot, and I've shown you this before But I'll do it again These are the doughnuts that certain Perhaps they're bored. They just don't have a good life. I don't know why they're doing it but they're doing it a lot of noise And a lot of burnt rubber on that parking lot.

It wouldn't take any man hours to fix this, all it would take is some parking concrete bump stops so that they don't have a place to do this. It's pretty simple. I don't know how much it would cost but not very much. So if you can put your mind to that. But now I wanna talk about Ventura County is such a great place to live More than any other city that I've ever lived in, Port Hueneme listens to its residents.

And when we ask for something almost always y'all deliver and we so appreciate that. This past week we had Fire Chief Joe Williams show up at our HOA to a small group but he was marvelous. He laid it out for us so we could understand what we do for in an emergency especially as relates to any issues from the port. He was great and this is the sort of thing that I never get tired of because it's genuine, it's from the heart and he loves his job and he did a great job and he spent some time with us. It was perfect.

I see the same thing from Chief Federico's group. There's a black and white parked right at the front gate of the port down on Hueneme Road, and it's slowing the truckers down. It's helping traffic, and this is what the city is doing for us, and we so appreciate it. We so appreciate you, and thank you.

Thank

you. Joan Tharp?

Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members and staff. My name is Joan Tharp and I'm here on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation Ventura County Chapter. I'm proud to share what our community has accomplished together since January. First our beach cleanup efforts since the start of this year 233 volunteers have given their time and energy to care for our coastline Together, they removed over three tons of trash from Ormond Lagoon. That's just since January.

Three tons that I looked it up. That's the weight of a full-grown hippopotamus pulled out of the waters and shorelines that our community depends on for recreation, for wildlife habitat and for our quality of life. And while I know that is not within the city boundaries mostly, it does affect our city greatly. These are Ventura County residents, neighbors, students, families who show up because they care about this place. We have people that come from Moorpark, from Simi Valley, Porter Ranch all over really the county and outside the county too.

I'd also like to share some very encouraging policy news. The California State Water Board is moving towards developing a TMDL. It's a regulatory tool that sets a legal limit on the amount of pollutants that can enter a water body This is a significant step. It means that protecting Ormond Lagoon from trash pollution will no longer rely solely on volunteer effort, it will have the force of state regulation behind it. Surfrider has been advocating for this outcome for four years and we are grateful to see it moving forward.

Finally our coastal dune restoration project continues. Restoring healthy dune habitat along our shoreline is a long-term commitment And we are staying the course. While we've had to cancel a couple of events this year due to high winds, we did not lose momentum. We contracted with the California Conservation Corps to put up wood post and rope fencing to protect both existing vegetation and newly sprouted seedlings as they take root. We're also continuing our work to remove invasive non-native species, including ice plant and European sea rocket which outcompete the native plants our dune ecosystems depend on. Every acre we restore builds more resilient coastline for decades to come.

We are committed to this community and to the long-term health of our coasts. The work happening at Hueneme and Ormond Beach in Ormond Lagoon matters ecologically, economically, and for the people who live here. We are grateful for the city's partnership and continued support and we look forward updating you again as this work progresses. Thank you.

Thank You.

Cassandra Villarreal

Hello, I'm sorry. I'm really shy. So so hello. Good evening. My name is Cassandra Villareal and I'm honored to share. I wanted to come tonight to be able to invite all of you to our reopening of our veterans shelter. So I am the new senior manager of Ventura Salvation Army Hope Center located in downtown Ventura. We are having a grand reopening of the center on May 13th And I wanted to invite all of you guys out to be able to come and attend.

It's going to be where you'll be able to come in to view the shelter, I hate to say shelter, the transitional center. You'll be able to meet my team at the Ventura Resource Center right now we have the GPD which is the shelter. We also have homeless our SSVF which is our Homeless Housing Team and we also know how have employment services there so we are One veteran provider under one roof and we also work alongside the VA. So I just wanted to come tonight I did provide flyers for all of you for our services and also open house. Oh, you guys are my invited guests. So thank you

Thank you

Thomas I'm sorry there is one question what time is the event?

And if you can RSVP that would be great

Thomas Morris.

Madam members and fellow residents I'm here tonight to basically plead for some help We have a problem at the corner of Ventura Road and Hueneme Road. I've been here for 25 years now, and I have personally witnessed four accidents. I work for Juan Elias, and three of the accidents actually involved my fellow Co-workers, people are seeing the green light and they want to make the left turn and they come right in front of their oncoming traffic. We had a terrible accident last month where two of my co-workers are still in the hospital.

Marsha has a crushed chest and Veronica is going to have to complete up her work with her upper teeth. They got basically shoved up into her, almost into her brain but I feel that if they can put a light there, a red arrow For the people that want to turn left until they have the green light, green arrow. I think that would save a lot of problem because I really believe Time will come when we lose somebody at that intersection.

So I just pray that we can get the city manager or public works people, whoever handles changing the light system to put a red arrow there. Thank you.

Mayor, if I could just briefly note there. The council had asked staff to look into the costs of putting in a left turn signal there and just for residents who weren't here we brought back our report and the cost is significant. I think that in excess of $750,000 which I know when we had that discussion at council I think everybody assumed it's a lot cheaper than that. And so, I just wanted to note that the council had asked for that estimate. We provided that estimate of $750,000 which we currently do not have budgeted. So there would need to be some future conversations about adding a large project like that and what we would cut to be able to add something like that.

Great, thank you. Greg Camarillo? Greg Camarillo?

Yes.

I just want to bring attention an issue I have with my property. I live at 136 West C Street. I am currently, from what I've searched and I think I probably emailed a few of you people that I have no access to my front or my side gate. I'm the only person in the whole area that I could find that doesn't have access to his backyard. As I said, it will not come out to my electrical panel because we need three feet of clear and free access. And it became a civil issue because the current person that is doing the code enforcement didn't do their job.

My neighbor built onto my property when I was no longer living there, had to get my property surveyed and they made them tear it down finally after six or eight months. So I'm pleading with you guys for help. I don't know what else to do. Like I said, I have no access to get to my backyard. It's a fire hazard, it's a safety hazard and the only way to my backyard is either turn on my front doors or turn on my garage doors.

And I'm asking you guys what can I do? Or what can you guys do? Because so far everybody seems to seem to say it's a civil issue. It only became a civil issue because the current person before or the current person right now has not done their job and I cannot build a fence because there is debris, bricks just a whole mess of stuff in my way and they cannot find the property line but I got it surveyed by obviously I paid for them But no one seems to want to enforce the property line. So now again, it's a civil issue when I got a picture of Google Maps that shows pretty much it's close to where the surveyors' line is.

And again, I cannot walk along my fence. Unless it's maybe that wide, I cannot get to my backyard. I have a gate that I cannot access and I just don't know if you guys can help me because everybody seems to refer back to the civil issue and I'm pretty sure I've emailed some of you guys that have commented saying I think the code enforcement is handling their job but which she hasn't done.

It's just a mess, like there's rodents back there. And again, there was nobody checking on him. He has open Romex wires exposed and the garage is already burned down once on that side of the property. So like I said, I don't know what to do. And I know in certain parts where I need me, there's a three-foot minimum setback and I do not have one inch of setback right now.

So I'll respond. I don't know if it sounded like maybe there's a technical issue but so since this isn't on the agenda, the council is not able to answer any questions about items that aren't on the agenda because of the Brown Act And we also cannot comment, as you said, about a code enforcement issue between you and your neighbor. So if you can leave your contact information, we'll have the community development director reach out to you

and follow up.

Those are all the public comments, Mayor.

Okay thank you and just so you all know I can't hear, I was looking at the screen and I could see the numbers tick down but i couldn't hear the bell or anything like that after the three minutes. Okay thank you okay great thank you. So now we'll move on to the agenda approval for the City Council may I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda?

Move to approve.

Second. Madam Clerk please take roll.

motion passes unanimously

great thank you so council members do we have anyone with a conflict of interest for any of the items that are on the agenda this evening If not, we'll move on to the presentations. First we have the Museum of Ventura County as it celebrates its second century for the first presentation. We're going to welcome Elena Brokaw, the Chief Operating Officer from the Museum of Ventura County to the podium.

Hi, everybody. Thank you so much Mayor Pro Tem, council members, city managers, city staff, everybody else who's here it's a pleasure to be here. My name is Elena Brokaw I'm the Barbara Barnard Smith CEO of the Museum of Ventura County. So I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about the museum at Ventura County for those of you who don't know we are an art history and culture museum We were founded over 110 years ago. We have four sites, two in downtown Ventura, one the Agriculture Museum in Santa Paula and offices in Camarillo and we have the largest repository of history and culture in Ventura County.

We are guided by the wisdom of an incredible board of directors, and I want to say four of the board are here. Our past chair Bill Kearney, our vice-chair Al Lowe, treasurer Mike Sedell, and board member David Fukutomi. So thankful to all of them for all they do. They along with this group of over a hundred advisors come from all over the county of Ventura to guide the museum.

So that's who is leading the museum, and here's what we do. We collect. We collect art. We collect archives. We collect artifacts from our shared history. Our point here is to make them as accessible as possible. Do I have a pointer? Oh, I do. It's kind of slow, but I just do want to point out right here, we have over 8000 items that are available from any computer or your phone anywhere available to anybody at anytime because we want to be able to share our history as much as possible. We provide exhibits and programs, we have rotating exhibits through our six galleries over our various museums. We do about 30 programs a year.

We have gotten grants to make our museum completely free which is about quadrupled our attendance and this is who is coming to the museum. About two-thirds of our attendees come from the County of Ventura, about 25% come from the state and then 8% nationally and internationally Education is a huge part of what we do. We provide school tours for second graders and third graders. Tours are free for all Title I schools. We serve 39% of the districts within the county, including Hueneme Elementary.

Thanks to a recent grant, we can provide bus subsidies for every Title I school that needs it. So every Title I school gets to go completely free and we also recently got a grant so that we are able to provide paid internships to college students. So many of our tours are given by college students who are first generation learners who cannot afford to do a free internship They're giving the school tours and it's a great pathway forward for them.

And here is where our education and engagement is happening, as you can see a lot is happening here in Port Hueneme with our school tours and our art scholarships. So these collections, exhibits, programs, and education all serve the museum's foundational principles which are these. We engage participants in meaningful experiences and we encourage compassion to build community and connection. Connection is what we're all about, and one way that we build connection is to highlight our shared history. And to that end tonight I would like to use our collections to tell the story of Port Hueneme's very early origins.

So I want to note that all of the information in photos that I'm going to share with you tonight come from our archives and our collections And I want to start with a really quick history of 13,000 years. It's really going to be fast. OK so before pre-recorded history this home was, this place was home to indigenous people including a thriving Chumash village. In 1542 this area was discovered by Spain and they colonized it along with Mexico up into Oregon other states. This was called New Spain. In 1769 they began to build the missions Spanish people started moving here In 1822, the Mexican people revolted and they won independence from Spain. And what is now California was part of Mexico for about a quarter century until the Mexican-American War when we became part of the U.S., and ultimately became a state.

So when Mexico had governance of this area was when the ranchos were established. Here in Ventura County, 17 ranchos were created. And this is how they correspond to the cities now and you can see Port Hueneme, well you all know where Port Hueneme is. Port Hueneme was part of a huge rancho. Can I go back? Yeah, a huge rancho called Rancho El Rio de Santa Clara o La Colonia. I'm going to start calling it Rancho La Colonia just for short. This was almost a 50,000 acre rancho that was awarded to eight Mexican soldiers in 1837.

When they had it they used it to raise livestock extraordinarily lucrative business especially during the gold rush but then extreme weather events In the 1860s ended the livestock industry in our county, it was over. And when that happened most of the rancheros had to sell their ranchos and that was the case with Rancho La Colonia. Most of Rancho la Colonia was purchased by one guy Thomas Bard And he then took that huge swath of land and he chopped it up into little parcels, and he sold that to this teeming mass of migrants and immigrants that were coming from the East Coast to settle this new area.

By 1865, he had sold almost half of the rancho that he bought but he retained about half of it. I want to say that this is a time of intense and rapid change in the nation, and here in Ventura County. The industry shifted 100% from livestock to grains. So these new farmers that were coming in they started farming agriculturally and what they were growing was dry crops.

Crops that didn't need any irrigation. And in 1865 about 1865-1880 Barley was the king that farmers barley was exploding on farms all across the county. But to make barley lucrative, they had to figure out a way to get it out of Ventura County. And there are only two ways, right? There's by land and there's by sea. This is before the railroads. Roads are very unreliable so Thomas Bard had the idea to build a wharf on this little port because he knew about the submarine canyon out there.

So he makes a plan. He's going to build a wharf on his land but not so fast There was an issue. So when these ranchos were established, when the rancheros started to have to sell them they had to prove what they owned and the borders were notoriously messy. They all started with these hand-drawn maps. And there was one interpretation of this rancho that said that this entire pie wedge was not part of Rancho La Colonia The courts decided, no, no, this did not belong to Thomas Bard. And what that meant was that it was completely unowned property and therefore subject to the Homestead Act.

So the United States government said hey you can go west and if you live there for five years and put a house on 160 acres it can be yours free. The government says this is not owned by Thomas Bard. Thomas Bard said this is known by Thomas Bard about a hundred settlers families move in and they start to improve their property so we have a conflict, a big conflict and the conflict is between this one man Thomas Bard and about 100 settlers who were represented by this guy William Barnard now William Barnard and Thomas Bard actually had a lot in common. They were both highly educated, and they both agreed that this area was great for import-export.

So Barnard decided that the best thing to do was to build a store in order to get all of this barley that was being raised out, built a store right on the Hueneme Coast And got ships to come to import lumber so that they could start building and export barley. So what this meant is a ship would come more off the coast, they would, to import lumber, they would throw it overboard while the tide was coming in and it would wash to shore. This is how they did it.

And to get the barley onto the ship, they had lighters, lighter barges. They would load about 40 sacks of barley row out to the ship Row back, load it again, row out to the ship, row back. To do a single shipload took about 20-40 trips back and forth in this lighter. Now it took Bard a little bit longer but in 1871 he completed his wharf. First 800 feet long then 900 feet long ultimately 1500 feet long so with this he could moor the ships right on the wharf And that meant that they could load 9,000 sacks of barley a day.

So what they had been able to do in a full year using the lighters and the ships moored out there, they could do in eight days once this wharf was built. During all of this you can imagine businesses booming. There is so much money coming in and out of this port but the town is not growing at all in terms of population and that is because the ownership is still up on the courts.

So while you have a lot of people working here nobody is going to commit to building on a piece of property that they don't know who is going to own it. So while what will become Oxnard is booming, while what will become Santa Paula is booming, while Ventura's booming, none of that is happening here in Hueneme. Ultimately, the courts decided in favor of Thomas Bard. He laid out the town.

You can still see Scott Street, Clara Street on there. You can tell exactly where we are. It was modeled on his hometown from Pennsylvania and finally the town began to grow. By 1880 the wharf at Point Hueneme was the second largest grain shipping port between the Bering Strait and Cape Horn, the entire coast of the continent. And it essentially controlled the barley commodity so if they shipped out too much barley on any one day from this port it would completely flood the market and drive prices down. This port was controlling this entire market But things change.

Two major developments happened, oh this is barley day in 1895. First the train came so again now we have an overland way to export this barley and to bring in lumber. And then the sugar beet factory is built in Oxnard, La Colonia soon to become Oxnard And that sugar beet factory employs hundreds of people. People flock to the area, residents from here move there often taking their entire houses with them because they can't build fast enough there and this town begins to stall And Thomas Bard did everything he could to keep Point Hueneme as a powerhouse. He lowered prices on exports, on imports. He even tried to build a second sugar beet factory but he was unsuccessful. The town began to shrink and in 1906 the Hueneme Wharf Company closed.

But obviously things changed because we're here. In the 1930s Thomas Bard's son Richard Bard of the elementary school had the idea to build the Deepwater Harbor Port. He donated the land for it and it opened in 1940 And, you know, a lot has happened since then. I know you know a lot about that and I'm going to stop there. As I said, I did the research for this talk and got all the photos from our collections. I started by scouring this. This is a we present a scholarly journal.

We did this in 1972 in partnership with the city of Port Hueneme And we are also very proud and thankful to be partners with the Port of Hueneme, who supports many of our programs including this series one of which is coming up on May 3rd in at the museum in Santa Paula. So that's a little bit about our museum and the kinds of stories we like to tell I do want to say I am here with an ask so I've shared some of our history that led to the creation of this community over 150 years ago Now, we need to ensure that 150 years from now this place is going to look different. We don't know what it's gonna look like but it's gonna look different and our job at the museum is to make sure that those people—it's not gonna be us—are able to look back and see the choices that you all made and that the community made to get it where it is So we are actively gathering stories and we would love to partner with you formally, informally whatever it is.

We would like to identify people in the community that we can take oral histories with. We have a number of oral histories from Port Hueneme. We would also like to really... The easy thing is ask people to submit their photos Submit any photo, put all the information about it and it will become part of our archives so that people like me and you can do however they access archives then and get to them in the future.

Thank you for listening to this story. Thank you for everything that you do now and for the future of this

community. It's been a pleasure Thanks great presentation and the history is every time when I hear or go to the museum or hear from you, I'm learning something new about our own city. So thank you so much for putting in the time. Are there any questions? Any questions for Ms. Brokaw?

I have one or two. What's a Title One school?

It is a school that has a predominance of free or reduced lunches. So those are very low income kids.

Okay, and then the time for the event on May 31st?

May 3rd. And yeah every y'all want to know the time I don't know but I will get it to you. I'll email Georgiana with the time on

that event.

May

3rd okay thank you

Any other questions? Thank you so much and thank you to your other board members that are in the room this evening thanks for coming Okay, so we're gonna

Okay, so I am going to read Arbor Day Proclamation Whereas in 1872, J. Sterling Martin proposed to the Nebraska Board of Agriculture that a special day be set aside for the planting of trees and the first Arbor Day was observed With the planting of more than a million trees, and whereas Arbor Day observed nationally in 2026 on April 24th is now celebrated throughout the nation and the world recognizing the importance of trees to our environment and communities.

And whereas trees can reduce wind and water erosion of our precious topsoil, lower our heating and cooling costs, moderate the temperature, clean the air, produce oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife. And whereas trees are renewable resources giving us paper, wood for our homes Thank you, Mr. Mayor. with the community tree planting event on April 22nd, 2026. Now therefore be it proclaimed that the City Council of the city of Port Hueneme does hereby recognize April 24th, 2026 as the Arbor Day and designates April 22 as a local observance of Arbor day in the City of Port Hueneme and encourages all residents to plant care, to plant care for and protect trees for the benefit of current and future generations. Proclaimed 20th day of April 2026.

Thank

you Councilmember Lopez and now we're going to turn it over to Director Camarillo if you have some words you'd like to share?

Yes good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council staff members of the audience uh... as you see there on uh... slide that we have up there that we will be having a tree planting on april twenty second wednesday at ten o'clock uh... over at uh... brand park just outside alongside the creek um... so will be planting one tree for that event it's a london plane And then our city arborist will be there as well. So if people show up and want to know more details about the selection of the tree, you know what it why it was selected those types of things he'll be able to answer those questions and then He's also going to be going and selecting somewhere between five and ten sycamore trees That will be planted throughout Miranda Park. He recently went and he said their selection wasn't that good so they're getting a new shipment in, so he's going to be going later this week to go look at those and get those and our staff will go out and be planting those in locations throughout Miranda Park.

So we encourage you to show up and help plant the next tree as part of our Arbor Day celebration. Great thank you. Any

questions for Mr. Camarillo? No, no questions? Thank you so much and I think you guys are going to come down and take a photo.

Fred do you want a photo with us?

One, two, three.

If I could note while we're doing that, the photo and presentation actually are helpful because it is a requirement for Tree City USA. And I'll be noting later today in the city manager presentation that we just got confirmation this week that once again were approved as a Tree City USA. Which isn't, you know it shouldn't be a surprise but it's something that we've been trying to make sure we consistently get awarded every year. So so we got that again and this presentation and proclamation will be part of applying for it next

year. Can I ask what is just for the public information? What's the requirement for being a tree city?

It's having a certain portion of your budget that is related to the maintenance and or planting of new trees. And then they have a couple of other requirements, I'm not exactly sure what those are but Nothing

like how many trees we have in our city

I think I thought there was so it's a the amount of are making sure that you're planning for the maintenance and care of your existing Canopy. Yeah, and then I think there is requirement that a certain amount of coverage and And then the third which sometimes seems simple but it's something that gets that cities will miss sometimes is is holding an Arbor Day event, having an Arbor Day proclamation and educating the community about trees and being a tree city. So

those

are all parts of it.

Okay thank you.

It says here maintain a tree border department have a community tree ordinance spend at least two dollars per capita on urban forestry and observe Arbor day. Good job. Thank you

Are you here for Earth Day as well? Director Camarillo

is already there and Council Member Perez is going to read the proclamation.

All right, the Earth Day proclamation. Whereas the first Earth Day was enacted in 1970 and engaged over 20 million Americans to advocate for a cleaner environment and whereas Earth Day is celebrated annually on April 22nd to promote environmental awareness and stewardship And whereas it is understood that sustainability will only be achieved by meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future generations.

And whereas humankind is currently facing tremendous global challenges, among them the need to manage an increased amount of waste. And whereas people of this earth from all walks of life desire to a healthy environment and pollution Whereas, people of this earth from all walks of life desire to have a healthy environment and pollution has been associated with several health issues affecting the general population. And whereas, the city supports projects that demonstrate and encourage energy and water conservation, recycling of solid waste, sustainability and the usage of renewable energy. And whereas it is essential to involve the community in the design and implementation of solutions for pressing environmental issues and reducing pollution.

Whereas, the City of Port Hueneme is hosting Earth Day event on Saturday April 25th in recognition of this important occasion with a city-wide spring cleaning event where residents are encouraged to drop off refuse such as bulky and unwanted items at three convenient locations throughout the city now therefore be it proclaimed That the City Council of the city of Port Hueneme does hereby have the distinct honor of proclaiming April 25th, 2026 as Earth Day throughout the city of Hueneme and encourages all of its citizens businesses institutions to celebrate the earth and promote the protection of our environment.

Thank you

Great, back over to you Director Camarillo. Do you have any words regarding this proclamation?

Yes thank you first of all and as a reminder obviously up there we have our notice for our spring cleanup which will be this Saturday From 9 to 1 at parking lot B at the Hueneme Beach Park, at Bulker Park parking lot and at the recreation center community center parking lot. So we split it up kind of each end in the middle of the city to make it more convenient for everybody to be able to get to a location nearest them You see there, there's some things that won't be accepted.

Tires, car batteries and any type of household hazardous waste like cleaners stuff like that but there is the information there we do have a contract that is with Clean Harbors which is based in Camarillo which accepts all of the hazardous waste materials Residents just need to call into the number there, make an appointment and when they show up they show an ID to show that they're Port Hueneme residents because it all gets tracked. It's part of our existing contract with Del Norte where we take all of our refuse so It's at no cost to the residents, so they can follow up with that if they have those types of items.