City Council — April 28, 2026

All right, welcome everyone to the annual goals meeting. We're gonna call order. Will the city clerk please call the roll?

This is the time and place for public comments. Speakers are requested to state their name and community of residence for the record. Two individuals have requested to speak and pursuant to council standards speakers are allowed three minutes. You have a yellow light displays when you have one minute remaining, thank you.

All right, and if I'm... I'm not seeing my list of speakers.

I'll call the first one, Richard?

Thank you. This is a nice change-up isn't it? It really is. All right, Richard, you have three minutes and we start getting close to the end. You'll have the light so keep an eye on the light.

So my name is Richard. I've been a resident of the Thousand Oaks since 1974. First of all, I'd like to thank every one of you council members for all that you do, the service that you do, the dedication they have for such a beautiful city that we live in here. Thank you very much and really appreciate that. Watched this city grow quite a bit since 1974 and done a great job.

I'd like to also mention a little bit of my background. I've served our country four years in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War era, and I think it's worthy to mention my dad. My dad was a World War II veteran, actually a Purple Heart veteran so I got a little patriotism built up in me right? Matter of fact that flag right there when we Say the Pledge of Allegiance, it really kind of gets me going patriotically too when it says one nation under God.

That's one of the reasons, that's the main reason I'm here today to let you know that my support in God We Trust put up in the City Council Chambers here so that's why I'm here today. It's just a nice segue I thought to mention the military background I have and segue into In God We Trust So that said, I brought a couple of nice pictures of other city council chambers that have already done this and no projector today. So I believe you have pictures in front of you?

Great wonderful like we're doing the old-fashioned way again aren't So that said, the first one you're looking at is a – I'm looking at my notes now. A little off because I can't look at it myself. The first one you see there is a picture of Fillmore. If you look at it closely, the picture of Fillmore, you'll see In God We Trust and it's right It's Which I thought was kind of a, I didn't like the picture itself. It was a little off. It wasn't quite, it didn't do it justice. The last one that you see that you have on your desk here or she's showing over here thank you is the city of Anaheim and if you take a look at that one it's my favorite.

It's a beautiful rendering of In God We Trust over the insignia and then it's got the American flag Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it.

Next up will be Stella.

Good evening, Council. I have a dear friend named Richard and Richard and I see things very differently politically. He is however a dear, dear friend and occasionally reminds me of this one truth. Stella, we have more in common than we don't. So I come here in that same spirit. We have more in common than we don't Weeks ago, I was here listening to concerns about ice One person that spoke shared the locations of ice and the information as to how to report ice in your area My question is, do you think it would be fair to say that the reason for this is to potentially try and block ICE from doing their job? During that meeting I also heard the words love thy neighbor several times as if potentially blocking ICE is truly loving our neighbors.

The thing we have in common is that of course we feel empathy for any good, decent human being that has come here illegally and now has to be deported. There are people that have come simply trying to escape horrific circumstances. That is a given. Wouldn't you say though that when the intention is to block ICE from doing their job, that the risk is at people like Robert Joaquin, who came here illegally and beat a woman to death with a hammer may not be caught. This happened just this month and as we know is one of many many examples so I ask you is blocking ice really loving thy neighbor? I can't imagine that anyone on both sides of the aisle want people like this on our streets That is something we also have in common. There is no easy answer, however the fact remains that the people that are being deported, no matter the reason, are here illegally and ICE is trying to make our streets safer.

I also heard some very dangerous rhetoric at that same city council meeting where a person referred to detention centers as concentration camps. As we all know this is an untruth. As we also all know this is dangerous rhetoric has the potential to get into the hearts and minds of the wrong individuals. We have already seen this, Tyler Robinson in the killing of Charlie Kirk and now just the other day the attempted murder of our president yet once again these individuals believe they are heroes that they are doing society a favor by taking out these Nazi-esque like individuals It all starts with what is going on in their psyches, so please I beg you let's be more careful with our words.

Abraham Lincoln said we have forgotten God look around you that is evident please consider placing the words in god we trust in our council chambers here after all it's about connection never separation thank you

Thank you, Stella. And next up we have Paul Johnson.

I'm glad I finally made it. It was a little torturous path, I didn't get the memo. I'm Paul Johnson. I live in Moore Park. I moved to Thousand Oaks in 1972 so I'm part of the neighborhood. I think we should have In God We Trust as our motto shown everywhere to keep focus of what our creator is and the benefits that derive by his providence I support ICE. I think sanctuary city is illegal and it condones crime, so don't do it. But my main reason to be here is I want to bring to the attention of all present if you don't already know what's going on in Riverside County last year 2025 we had that Prop 50 special election and turns out when they look at the numbers they have 657 000 votes But only 611,000 ballots. Which it should kind of be matched.

So Chad Bianco decided he should... Looks like there's a problem here but the Attorney General Rob Bonta said oh no don't check those, don't investigate that people might have less confidence in the elections. Well Rob what are you trying to hide? Yeah there is a problem with confidence in the elections and that's kind of why I'm here The current Ventura County clerk is not doing a good job at allowing citizens to look at the process and it's been going worse over time. It used to be, the community came together, we had an election, the citizens counted the votes, turned in the votes but now we've passed it off to a corporation And the city clerk, you know, doesn't even participate. There's some Chinese fellow shows up and runs the whole thing.

So I think there needs to be a change. Think there's a problem with the elections in Ventura County? And the solution to that problem is me. I'm running for Ventura County Clerk. I am going to ensure that the elections are fraud free and error free, I'm gonna get people kicked off the voter rolls who don't belong on the voter rolls. I go door-to-door and last year leading up to the election, I was told my friend who hasn't lived in California for 10 years Didn't get a ballot in 2024, but she got about 2025 and she cast the ballot. She doesn't even live here. This is going on too much needs to be cleaned up and I'm the new sheriff to clean it up. Thank you very much.

All right, next up is gonna be our study session. City Manager Drew Powers will begin the presentation which will also include an overview of the community attitude survey done by True North Research President Dr. Tim McClerny.

Thanks so much Mayor Taylor, city council, community. Before we begin tonight's priority setting discussion I wanted to take a moment Recognize what I believe has been a very, very strong and productive year for the city of Thousand Oaks. And as we sit here as some of the speakers mentioned this is a fantastic setting I want to credit our cultural and community services And I just want to acknowledge the team that put this that put this together along with TV this takes a lot of work to move off site out of our chambers and just a beautiful job.

goal setting with us, 37 years with our organization. He's retiring this summer in July and he took measurements to get everything calculated in case we want to come back here again next year as a level of detail and precision. We appreciate Carl so much and that team. Over the past year we have continued to make meaningful progress across a wide range of our important initiatives.

And I'm extremely proud of what has been accomplished by this organization in partnership with the City Council. That progress is a reflection of a great deal of hard work by staff across all of our departments, strong collaboration with our community and partner agencies and most importantly a high level of alignment with this city council as the city's policy setting body.

That alignment matters. It allows us to move forward with clarity, to stay focused on the issues that matter most to the community and to make steady progress on day-to-day service, deliver strong strategic priorities. I believe our accomplishments this past year demonstrate that when the council and staff are working from a shared understanding of priorities, the community benefits We've also strengthened the organization itself over the course of the past year. A number of outstanding senior level hires from across multiple disciplines have joined our team, they weren't here with us at the last goal setting but they are this year and those additions have enhanced our leadership capacity, they brought new energy and expertise into the organization and they really positioned us very well for the work that lies ahead I'm very optimistic about the team we have in place and the city's ability to continue delivering at a very, very high level.

Tonight's discussion is also especially timely because we will be hearing results of the Community Attitude Survey. I view that survey as an important report card for the city, it gives us valuable feedback something that's been part of our city's history for a very long period of time and it gives us feedback on how our residents see the organization, the services that we provide in the direction of the community overall It is encouraging to have that perspective as we begin this conversation tonight.

With that, we're gonna begin with some updates from the team on last year's priorities. We will be grouping these in batches to allow a bit more dialogue along the way rather than waiting till the very end of the 10 updates. I'll open it up for questions at some intervals along the way. And then following those updates, we'll hear our presentation on the 2026 Community Attitude Survey results and then we'll conclude with our priority setting exercise. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Assistant City Manager Ingrid Hardy to kick things off this evening.

Thank you, Drew. Good evening, Mayor Taylor, members of the city council Excited to be here to provide you with our first update of the evening. My update is on homelessness and More importantly the measurable progress we are beginning to see your policy direction To invest in local coordinated solutions has translated into meaningful on-the-ground impact The Thrive Grove Navigation Center is approaching its one-year anniversary on June 9th.

And in that relatively short time, it has become a cornerstone of our local response to homelessness. The facility has maintained full occupancy with referrals continuing to outpace the available beds, an indication of both the need and the effectiveness of Thrive Grove. Importantly, those referrals are being well-coordinated across key partners including our Police Department, the County of Ventura, Mini Mansions, 211, Harbor House and our operator Hope The Mission.

While the facility is still in its early stages, we are seeing tangible outcomes on how the navigation center's beginning to meet its intended outcome. To date there have been four positive exits, three individuals have been placed into permanent housing and one individual has secured full-time employment as a live-in caregiver. These outcomes are not incidental and they reflect the strength of the Navigation Center model.

The wraparound services provided at Thrive Grove are stabilizing individuals prior to being placed, their streamlining access to critical services, their strengthening coordination between interim and permanent housing providers to ensure that there's a warm handoff And they're bringing individuals indoors so they're not waiting for housing while living on the streets.

Importantly, the availability of a local resource has also had a direct impact on encampments within our community. With the viable indoor option and coordinated outreach individuals who were previously living in encampments now have a place to go allowing outreach teams and law enforcement to more effectively engage resolve and reduce encampment activity. As a result, we are seeing fewer and less persistent encampments in key areas reflecting a shift from unmanaged outdoor living conditions to a more structured and service-connected approach.

The local progress is also reflected in our broader trends. Countywide homelessness has decreased by 28% since 2023 with unsheltered homelessness down by 34%. Notably Thousand Oaks has experienced the largest reduction in unsheltered homelessness in the county with a 46% decrease since our last point-in-time count. These results speak to what is possible when policy direction, local investment and strong partnerships are aligned.

The opening of Thrive Grove combined with the dedicated work of our nonprofit partners and the continued commitment of Thousand Oaks Police Department has made a meaningful difference in our community. And so at this time I'd like to turn it over to Chief Perez for his updates on homelessness and public safety.

Thank you Ingrid. Mayor Taylor and Council Members, as expressed by Assistant City Manager Ingrid Hardy we are proud to have made significant progress in addressing homelessness in 2025. As you're aware in 2024 we improved upon our homeless intervention strategies by supplementing our two full-time vulnerable population officers with patrol officers that were collaterally trained to help them in their duties. What this did is it's helped us really speed up the process and with all this stuff, Thrive Grove has been a huge addition to it as we were kind of behind the curve a couple years ago on homelessness, we're now in front of it and able to address things much more efficiently, much more quickly and we're having a lot better outcomes.

It's exciting to see Thrive Grove's impact not only on the homeless population but on my deputies just to express the gratitude from them where that can be a frustrating job for them as they're dealing with the same people over and over again. And to have a spot that allows them to see positive outcomes are seen makes a big difference to them and to them being able to do their job. So thank you for that. In 2025, the Sheriff's Office completed its second year of using the FBI's new national incident-based reporting system.

We saw an overall reduction in crime of 8% compared to 2024 But with only two years of data under that new system, we're not ready to make any determinations about long-term trends at this time. I can tell you though in several specific categories reports of burglary robbery and rape were all down in 2025. We had a 39 percent reduction in commercial burglary which is just incredible and we only had 51 reports of residential burglary in 2025 That's 16% reduction from the year before, but more importantly this is our third year in a row of having record low residential burglaries. Something that just a few short years ago was really plaguing our community.

One area that still continues to be a problem is domestic violence. That's driving an uptick in our aggravated assaults. I am hopeful though, that the city support of an East County Family Justice Center will bring some much needed resources into town that will help address that problem and give our residents a place to go to get some much needed resources.

Traffic safety continues to be a key focus of Thousand Oaks Police Department. In 2022 and 2023, we had a large spike in traffic fatalities that were almost exclusively related to UIs After adjusting deployment of our traffic unit, emphasizing DUI enforcement with our patrol forces and educating our alcohol serving establishments. We try to take a holistic approach to it. We have held traffic fatalities only two per year for the last two years in a row.

I believe it was eight in 2022 and nine in 2023 so significant reduction there. An emerging traffic safety issue which we're all talking about is the proliferation of e-bikes and in particular e-motorcycles, which are illegal to ride on any of our roadways. We have worked with both Conejo Valley School District, Conejo Valley Recreation Park District on community educational outreach on e-bike laws and we've heavily increased our enforcement particularly of e motorcycles.

We're towing those when we find them on the roadway We're also talking with County Board of Supervisors and our state legislators about effective regulations to help curb that problem. The support of the City Council has been invaluable as we invest in technology that makes us more efficient. These technology investments have paid off and the reduced crime statistics shared earlier, our license plate reader system recently helped us identify locate and arrest a registered sex offender who committed sexual battery at one of our malls against an 18 year old female.

License plate readers, body-worn cameras and even updated data management software have helped us solve crimes and secure convictions against perpetrators. Very soon I hope to bring to council a proposal for a drone as first responder program for the City of Thousand Oaks. This program would place pre-positioned drones throughout the city that would be remotely piloted out of our dispatch center in Ventura. These drones have the capability reducing our response time significantly, resulting in gathering valuable information for responding deputies making it safer for them and increasing the probability of solving the crime Maintaining the city's status as one of the safest places to live requires the support of everybody who lives here.

Whether it is a Coffee with a Cop, the Disability Fair, our yearly station open house or meeting one-on-one with residents we make a concerted effort to be available to hear the concerns of our residents These concerns we then incorporate in how we do our jobs. And one of those examples is the Blue Envelope Program, this is something that came out of a coffee with a cop that we did in partnership with the Autism Society and it's now a county-wide program helping those with disabilities who are drivers clearly communicate their conditions to officers who pull them over.

Thank you for your investments, your making in public safety and your continued support of the women and men of the Thousand Oaks Police Department in our shared mission to keep Thousand Oaks a wonderful place to live. And with that I'll turn it over to Ryan Roman

Thank you, Jeremy. Good evening Mayor Taylor, council members. I'm pleased to share an update on our efforts regarding emergency preparedness and wildfire mitigation priority. Over the past year the city's worked closely with TOPD and Jeremy's team, Ventura County Fire, and Ventura County Office of Emergency Services to strengthen public safety with a clear focus on mitigation and long-term resiliency. And that work will continue in the coming year.

As part of this effort in February 2025, this council approved an MOU for the East County Family Justice Center committing up to $2 million towards acquisition of the property. Staff is collaborating with the county of Ventura currently and plan to bring an item before you in the coming months. Over the past year, staff partnered with multiple agencies to produce home-hardening content that garnered tens of thousands of social media views.

Our strategic communications team delivered quick tips and clear information to help residents harden their homes and highlighted our efforts to mitigate risk by removing invasive palm species citywide. In collaboration with Ventura Regional Fire Safe Council, the City co-hosted several home hardening workshops During which dozens of homeowners gained actionable insights to protect their properties from wildfire. Just for reference, Thousand Oaks currently has 11 firewise communities.

To better target these outreach efforts staff also incorporated emergency preparedness questions into the community attitude survey In collaboration with TOPD and Ventura County Office of Emergency Services, this data will help us assess awareness, refine outreach, promote VC Alert which is the county's emergency communications system and drive measurable improvements in resident preparedness.

You'll be hearing from True North Research shortly after our updates with a overview of the community attitude survey results. Beyond outreach, a key focus has been strengthening infrastructure resiliency, particularly ensuring continuity during prolonged power outages. This council reinforced this priority through the most recent capital improvement program budget adoption, dedicating millions of dollars towards this effort.

Citywide we maintain 136 traffic signals. All equipped with battery backup systems lasting six to 10 hours. We also have 36 portable generators to extend operations when needed. Currently, 71 intersections or approximately 50% have permanent generator connectors. The remaining intersections are scheduled for completion by the end of this fiscal year. In addition, 96 intersections which roughly 70% have been upgraded with yellow reflective backplates to improve visibility during outages.

The remaining installations are planned for completion in fall of 2026 in the next fiscal year budget. We're also making major improvements in water and wastewater resiliency. While Public Works will be providing some details on the infrastructure during their infrastructure update, key efforts include reservoir hardening, backup power systems, interconnects, SCADA upgrades and disinfection improvements.

Altogether this represents approximately 20 projects and a $23 million investment currently underway or planned in the existing budget. Additional resiliency and public safety improvements include a microgrid and backup power system at the Municipal Service Center, ensuring continuity of first responder operations along with EV charging and emergency power for the MSC fleet and Thousand Oaks Transit.

The city is also investing approximately 20 million over the next two years to strengthen the city's wastewater collection and treatment systems, ensuring reliable service even during power disruptions. In total the city and this council have committed more than 45 million dollars to resiliency projects either currently underway or planned in this 2-year budget cycle Thank you. Those are concludes my updates

Thank you, Ryan. We're going to take one of our pauses here and give the council an opportunity to ask us any questions or any comments you've got about the items you've heard so far.

Anyone want to start? Looking right at Bob. Bob,

do you want to start? Thank you Mr. Mayor. Sure I'll get the ball rolling in a little bit. Thanks. I can always count on you.

I'm just trained now to look at you and go, all

right buddy. Lots of good things going on and I appreciate the reports there's...I don't think the general public realizes the amount of work that's going on just underneath the surface and actually that's a good thing because When things are going bad, that's when it gets the attention of folks and things are going well. So with that, Ms. Hardy, the Thrive Grove location has been in service now a little less than about a year now.

design that and built that for additional units as needed. Where are we on any determination of the need there for completely building it out?

Thank you Council Member, or Mayor Pro Tem, my apologies. So yeah as you stated the Thrive Grove it's built for 50 beds we currently have 30 beds right now the referrals are outpacing the beds available so we have updated numbers from our contractor in case there is a decision to move forward with the expansion Our operators also keeping their eyes on the needs there and we've also been in constant communication with Thousand Oaks Police Department as well as the county.

So, the need is there and it's a matter of timing and when the City Council is prepared to do so.

And we've had four people move off that location. Is that a function of them being ready to move or is it simply a function of there's no available

locations for them to move to? It is a function of them being prepared to move. So when an individual enters into the navigation center, the case manager works with them on becoming housing-ready So as a result of those wraparound services, they've been able to place for individuals And of course that's also going to depend on the availability of housing too

Thank you. I have other questions

Maybe if I'll add as well, um, you know, we're less than a year in on me on the first year of operations We're in careful discussions not just the council member there is an operational expense with building. There's also the ongoing operations at the site and so dialing that in is something that Ingrid and Melissa and team are working very carefully with our operators to have a good handle on understanding, not just the brick-and-mortar of the facility but the operations at the facility because once a decision is made to expand that's not going to just be the cost to expand Also the annual ongoing expense associated with expanding and adding those additional beds attached to it. So when we come to you We're gonna want to have all that information Holistically, that's

good. Let's cut yours

Thank You Mary Taylor and I'd also like to just ask a question along the lines of Councilmember Engler here. He almost asked my question um, I remember there was a six-month time frame that we were hopeful for right like ideal or Where are we pacing towards that? Like are we seeing it longer or shorter? I'm sure it's all case-by-case, but of the very exciting four positive exits What were the timelines on those?

So for those exits well first let me take a step back and say that just countywide We are seeing that people are staying in temporary housing longer than the 180 days. So for those individuals, they've been there less than a year and we are right around that between those individuals that are leaving on their own or individuals that it's just not a good fit for them there.

It's been less than a year so anywhere from seven to eight months that they're staying housed there

I appreciate you calling out the positive exits or when folks are self-selecting. Is that the same time frame they'll give it a go for the seven, eight month period and then decide? Or is that happening sooner? And my only interest in learning more about that is the turnover and availability because the need is so great.

It really depends on the individual. So the housing case managers are working with them to explore all of their housing options and what is the next best step so I can't say like it isn't absolute like seven or eight months stay really depends on the person.

So in both cases whether they are positively exiting or self selecting an exit

correct.

OK thank you. I have one more question. related to wildfire preparedness. Well, I'm very proud that we have a lot of firewise communities. I know that Drew shared the most in the county and one city so very proud of that I imagine those communities are homeowners, where they have a lot more autonomy and say in the hardening that happens in their spaces. And I wondered if there was any conversation or city support to speak with current residents Development owners or just our current renting, leasing property management entities, HOAs even to promote this type of collective hardening.

Yeah, so we have a tremendous organization in this county, the Ventura County Regional Fire Safe Council. And we've been not only one of their kind of chief supporters but we've actually been funding via Costco, funding that entity. It's a non-profit and In fact, Mayor Pro Tem Zingler's significant other is on the board over there. And so we really stepped forward after council's conversations last year to bring them more center stage here and we actually hosted a number of workshops in this library that were specific to bringing all groups and there is something for everyone within here.

Whether that be an emergency preparedness basis, understanding evacuation routes, understanding the small things you can do around your home. But a lot of the work on home gardening is geared towards single family and duplex type residential because it is about mitigating wildfire spread. Inherently our multifamily home locations In the rental stock that we have in this community are safer from wildfire because of where they're generally located and a lot of them are newer construction in many cases, and most importantly they don't have the Some of the things you have in a single-family home that would cause more danger But we can absolutely continue to engage with them and put that as a priority To add more outreach and information to that sector

I Was just gonna add to on the Ventura County Fire website There's a there's a whole page dedicated to how to get involved with the firewise community So just want to make sure the public knew that was out there.

Thank you

Mr. Adams

Mayor, if I may, my apologies. I do want to correct one thing. I'm looking at a report on your question, Council Member Gutierrez. The average length of stay-to-date is 121 days. So that's less than the six months. Thank you for letting me make that clarification.

Well, I must say these numbers that I'm hearing tonight are the decrease in homelessness and The city and Thousand Oaks are very encouraging. I mean, they're not incremental at all. Some cities counted a victory to decrease homelessness by a few percentage points and here we are anywhere from a third to a half? That's just really very encouraging results and I'm so glad that the encampments David and I visited Thrive Grove together, and it was just incredible to meet the people there. They were so grateful to be in Thrive Grove and not some broken down RV somewhere trying Trying to get by and I was just very, very happy to meet those folks.

And would you say that, I mean, I guess generally Thrive Grove is full almost all the time right? Correct. We're filled to the brim okay well hopefully we can do that expansion and I'm sure it would be used Do you think that when the Family Justice Center is finally created, do you think there'll be some connection between Thrive Grove and the Family Justice Center in some way?

I can say that. Yeah absolutely there will be. In our experience in dealing with that population Absolutely benefit from the services that are coming. You know, any services we can get closer to help is going to make a big difference. So yes for sure.

Yeah I could see that. Most of the people we met at Thrive Grove, maybe not most of them but the ones we met were older folks But I can see where maybe kids might be there someday, you know depending on the familial situation. Oh and since you're up here So what did you we're gonna get a couple of drones? You're looking to get some drones

Yeah, so we're looking at a drone as first responder program as they call that we have a drone program already That's that's patrol base. So every day any time of the day We have a deputy that has a drone in the back of his unit so that he can use that on calls Obviously, it's much cheaper than flying a helicopter over to do kind of the same work. The drones first responder puts those pre-placed so and what we do is we take a map of our calls and our serious calls And we look at those in position them What we're aiming for us to get to those calls in like under two minutes like 90% of our priority one calls right now Our average is you know almost just under seven minutes So you're looking at that That difference there's some other tech coming on to that probably will come later where we can dispatch those even earlier potentially before the calls even entered into the CAD system.

So there's a potential in the future that we could be on scene with the drone before the call even goes out on the radio because you know, there's just minutes that go by as things are getting entered

So the drones could get there first? Oh,

wow. That's interesting. We've done a lot of research on this. The capabilities are really neat. They fly autonomously to the location. The pilot just has to kind of make sure there's nothing that the drone is not seeing that's an obstacle. From there it's very simple. It's point and click. It'll follow cars. It will zoom in license plates. It is pretty amazing technology.

Yeah, I could see where that would be a safety issue as well. Look at the scene before the deputies arrive.

Yeah, that's one of the big things is you can get a lot of intel for the deputies before they even get there. The colors of clothing of suspects, things like that really help whether it was weapons or not. All those kind of things can be seen ahead of time. Oxnard has already started a drones first responder program. I think they're six or eight months into it so far. So we're consulting with them too to learn from what they've learned.

Anything else on your wish list?

No, that's the big thing. We're good with the drones. It's not going to be super cheap so I'll tell you right now it's gonna make a big improvement but it's not gonna be super cheap.

Will you let us know?

I will.

Alright doing a great job thank you.

Thank you all.

Mayor, I wanted to follow up on a couple of points Mayor Pro Tem Engler raised regarding Thrive Grove. It sounds like demand is very high. I did a ride along with the vulnerable population officers the week before it opened and they said yeah no problem we can fill 30 beds right now. We've got a list. It's longer than 30. Is it our sense as well that if we are able to find funding to add the 20 units and to find the funding for continued operational budget, is it our sense that we would be able to fill 50 beds as well? The way all 30 are currently full.

Is that the level of demand now?

Absolutely. Great, no problem and I'll just say again the way it's gone it's you know first definitely we filled 30 no problem but there were some people that were skeptics in the homeless community that were nervous about it that's that's gone they you know the words got around that's a great place to go you're getting the help there's the kind of things they were worried about didn't materialize so yeah definitely we can fill it

I'm encouraged to hear that. I mean, I heard personally over and over from folks who said just having a safe place to be was a big step up for them. So I'm glad more folks are feeling that way.

Yeah definitely.

And as Councilmember Adam mentioned as well once folks were there they really felt that their lives were improving and turning around and they were looking forward to a better future which It's not the case for someone living in an area somewhere

true. Yes, it's better for everybody all the way right

absolutely

great

Thanks for thanks to the vulnerable population team very grateful for their

work I will let them know

please do and then the other the other question I had just very quickly is As folks transition through there, is it also our sense that if and this is a big if. If the supply of permanent supporting housing were larger that the rate at which we could move folks through there. I realize every case is different, everyone's an individual has different needs but if there were a greater supply of permanent supportive housing would we be better able to place folks once they and the support team feels they're ready to go?

Yes the answer to your question is yes. County staff actually provided an update to the Board of Supervisors today and currently countywide there are 192 units under construction so that's going to help the county numbers and then units in pre-development there's 875. So you know of course that's going to take some time to build all of these units but as more housing becomes available Countywide then there will be more opportunities to place people into permanent housing

I'm very encouraged to hear there. There will be more options for this because that's that's really the final piece of the puzzle, isn't it?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, there's the permanent housing and then there's also the rental assistance in which the county has been Directing more dollars towards rental assistance as well. So you have organizations like the United Way who has experienced significant success with their landlord engagement program. So what they're doing outside of this county wide framework is they're identifying housing units that are not a part of like the permanent housing network but they're placing individuals and families into these households Providing them with assistance like first and last month's rent that security deposits so that they can become stabilized

So as folks get their lives stabilized as they get jobs As they're ready to move on with their lives. We're finding permanent places for them to go

And to that point it's a great point that folks forget about the difference of a facility Like this is the wraparound services attached to it Once folks are individually assigned a case manager and find out what their individual circumstances are, they may have veterans benefits, disability benefits. They may have family in the Midwest. They may have skills as you heard one of our placements was a caregiver who was able to get placement in a home as a live-in caregiver And so there are all kinds of paths once you're stabilized, all kinds of paths to placement that our team over there is having a lot of success with.

Great. Thanks so much. Ms. Gutierrez?

Thank you Mayor Taylor. I just wanted to, maybe this is for Chief Parris but you mentioned fewer or less key encampments in town and I just wanted again just for the public's knowledge on how we address encampments that are still lingering or just are in still present and prevalent

So I talked to Senior Deputy Battle just before we started the meeting. We have no encampments in the City of Thousand Oaks right now. That really was a function of one, having this resource at Thrive Grove, two being able to enforce the law. We do have some people that are homeless, that are sleeping on city property at night which they're allowed to do and packing their things up and moving around during the day and sleeping in a night. Now the great thing with that is in my experience here being here for five years when we first got here we had some big encampments. We had some serious violence going on in there. We had rodent infestations, pest infestations All those go away when we don't have the encampments that are lingering. And so it's been really important, one for their own safety and health and safety, for the health and safety of the people living around those encampments that we don' allow that kind of encampment to grow.

However, there are some people still living out of cars. That's where we're at now is mostly people living out of cars and we have a few people that are sleeping on city property night and wandering around but we do not have any encampments anymore. I think we had five major encampments five years ago including the one at the 23 in Janss which was our largest by far so we've made a lot of progress but some of that was just changing case law that allowed us to do things