City Council — August 25, 2026

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I'm now going to call this meeting to order. Will the clerk please call the vote?

Councilmember Adam?

Here.

Councilmember Newman?

Here.

Councilmember Gutierrez? Here Mayor Pro Tem Engler?

Here

and Mayor Taylor?

Here Next is closed session Mr. Ram will you please announce tonight's closed session

Thank you, Mayor. There are three items

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Thank you. All right, we are gonna get started everyone. If you can take your seats. We are now back from closed session. Mr. N is there anything to

report? Yes thank you Mayor. All the council members were present and able to participate in all items in closed session this evening with regard to item 3B possible initiation of litigation the City Council unanimously approved initiation of litigation at this time no other information is required to be reported however once formally commenced additional information regarding the litigation will be available upon request With regard to the other items, there is no reportable action at this time and that concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you sir.

I know every single person in this room knows exactly where they were when this happened on September 11th 2001 it'll be a day forever remembered both for its tragedy and for the unwavering spirit of the American people As our nation was violently attacked by terrorists, heroes among us emerged. Among those who showed true courage and sacrifice were the New York Fire and Police Departments.

Their response to the tragedy reminded all of us the importance of our first responders and their commitment to protecting us. On this, the 25th anniversary of those attacks as a tribute to these brave men and women. We are proud to introduce our community's fire and police honor guards. Join me in standing placing your hand over your heart. Honor guard. Join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Ready? Begin.

All

right,

quick march.

Please be seated. All right, item number 10A, the public hearing on the appeal of a planning commission decision has been continued to a date uncertain as requested by the appellant. Next is our special presentations. Our presentation this evening is from the Museum of Ventura County, a center of arts history and culture. It is the largest repository of history in Ventura County and we are grateful for their work. Here to present on their behalf is the CEO Alina Brokaw. Welcome.

Thank you so much, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members, city manager and city staff. I am very pleased and thankful to be able to be here tonight to talk about the museum. So thank you for the wonderful intro, Mayor Taylor. For those of you who don't know we are an art history and culture museum. We have four sites, the main campus in downtown Ventura along with an archeological museum in downtown, The Agriculture Museum in Santa Paula and offices in Camarillo And as the mayor said, we have the largest repository of history in our county.

We are guided by the wisdom of an incredible board of directors, four of whom are here tonight. Our immediate past chair Bill Kearney, our secretary Al Lowe, our treasurer Mike Sedell and our board member Diane McKay. Thank you so much for being here. And over 100 volunteer advisors. These people who provide our strategic direction come from all over the county. So that's who guides this museum. As for what the museum does, we collect and protect art archives and artifacts that represent our region's unique identity.

We provide rotating exhibits in our six galleries at three sites and present about 30 programs per year. Accessibility is very important to us, and we just reinstated free admission which has about quadrupled the number of visitors we've been getting this year. And here's who's coming to the museum. About two-thirds of our exhibits are from Ventura County. Of that, about half are from Ventura and the rest from other cities in the county. Twenty five percent are from elsewhere in California and then eight percent are international and national visitors.

In education, we have school tours for second and third graders. Tours and buses are entirely free for all Title I schools, and we serve over a third of the districts in the county. Our school tours are given by college interns, all of whom are paid a living wage which allows low-income students to have jobs that support their career goals. These collections, exhibits, programs, and education all serve the museum's foundational principles which are these Our mission is to engage participants in meaningful experiences and our vision is to build community and connection.

Now, that mission and that vision have changed a lot over the years. But what has not changed is our core purpose which is to preserve and protect the history of our region. I want to go back to our collections for a moment. I didn't really talk about the numbers there. I don't know if you can see this in the audience but under archives we have about 800,000 items in our archive so we are taking care of almost a million objects, pictures, slides, maps etc.

And we use those source materials to produce publications, exhibits and programs. And our historical journal alone which hopefully some of you get has published over 600 originally researched articles all from our collections. So using these collections which is what we do I would like to share a little glimpse of what our museum's historical archives tell us about the community of Thousand Oaks.

So you all know the recent history very, very, very well. So I'm going to go back in time and I mean way back in time. I'm gonna give you a short history of 13,000 years for those of you who've forgotten your fourth grade history. So as you know this area has been home to the Chumash for centuries About 500 years ago, the California coast was quote-unquote discovered by a Portuguese sailor who claimed it as part of New Spain.

About 250 years ago in 1769, the region was colonized by Spain and was under Spanish rule. About 200 years ago in 1822, Mexico gained independence from Spain and this region declared allegiance to Mexico. The Mexican-American War was done, and what we now call California joined the United States of America and became a state in 1850. So tonight we're going to start our story—I don't know if my pointer will work but anyway—in that middle area in 1769 when this area was part of New Spain.

I will not speak for you, but I had forgotten or maybe I never even knew how much Spain had colonized the world. So this is a panel from our current exhibit called Parallel Histories and all of that yellow was claimed by Spain as colonies. But even though they had claimed this area as theirs, they didn't have any Spanish citizens living there. Meaning it could be seized by another power like Russia or England very specifically in our case.

So to protect it in 1769 The Spanish king sent forth an expedition to establish missions and presidios throughout Alta California. And in January 1770, that expedition passed right here through the Conejo Valley. And what you're seeing is an excerpt from the Historian's Journal. And I highlighted El Triunfo. That's where that first comes from. That's what they called it.

After this expedition, the Spanish government aggressively recruited people to move to the area. Specifically they wanted married men with families and they wanted those married men to bring as many unwed female relatives as they had to marry the soldiers that they had set up in those presidios. A lot of people didn't want to stay, so to encourage those families to stay the government awarded loyal citizens with land called ranchos.

And between 1790 and 1848 the Spanish and then the Mexican government awarded 19 ranchos in what would become Ventura County. And as you can see those ranchos roughly I swear you'll be able to see it. Yeah, they roughly correspond with our current city limits not exactly but roughly Rancho El Conejo here's a close-up was the 11th of all of the over 500 ranchos that were eventually awarded in this state And one of the largest. The Spanish government gave about 49,000 acres in 1802 to Jose Rodriguez and Jose Polanco. And again you can see how roughly it corresponds with Thousand Oaks today.

Jose Rodriguez and Jose Polanco didn't live on the rancho. They had houses in LA and Santa Barbara. From afar, they used the ranches to raise livestock. They did build an adobe for when they went there for very seldom family visits and things went on like that for about 50 years. The only landowners were absentee landlords. Ranch hands took care of the property. Livestock business was good.

When the U.S. won the Mexican-American War in 1848, the ownership of most of these ranchos very quickly changed hands and many were purchased by people who had migrated from the eastern US. In 1862 two such migrant Americans bought half of Rancho Conejo. That was John Edwards and Howard Mills. I know many of you have heard these names. They continued to raise livestock and began to plant wheat and barley. And they also began to subdivide the ranchos Their rancho, sorry.

And here's an ad from 1874 from the Ventura Signal which advertised parcels for a dollar an acre. Kind of expensive at the time if you can believe it. The community grew quickly. The Ventura Signal later in 1874 declared that the Conejo Valley was destined to be the great wheat field of our county and farming families flocked to the area. The Stagecoach Inn opened.

Invalids moved here because of the climate and the elevation So, everything was good. Now it's hard to imagine from where we're standing right now in this thriving city but after this boom the Conejo Valley's growth and prosperity came crashing to a halt and stayed that way for over half a century So what happened? Well, first of all we can see that this is an excerpt from a journal that we published. This was the sixth journal we ever published in 1957.

The article is The History of the Conejo Ranch and it was written by Joe Russell, a name I'm sure you also know whose family bought land in the Triunfo area in 1880 And his article published about 70 years ago compares the land value in 1957 in the Conejo Valley to the Santa Clara Valley, Santa Paula and Fillmore unfavorably. And this is very specifically what he says.

In 1957, at one time I have heard that the land here was valued equally with that in the Santa Clara Valley. And he's referring to 1874 when Rancho Conejo was the great wheat field of the county but just two years later a few things happened and first there was the devastating drought of 1876 so it started in September of 1876 and lasted a year From January to September of 1877, there were less than two inches of rain. People lost everything. Mr. Newberry who had established obviously Newberry Park had to leave because he couldn't pay the back taxes.

Then the barley market was decimated by oversupply and back to that wild comparison to Santa Paula and Fillmore in the 1860s and 70s new settlers there created water districts from the Santa Clara River and they started growing high value products like citrus trees So, according to Mr. Russell starting in 1875 and still in 1957 the Santa Clara Valley had outstripped Conejo as an economic power.

Still he says the Conejo has its compensations so clearly because despite all of those disasters in the 1870s families stayed but there was not very many of them and growth stayed flat in the valley for decades. So here is the county directory from 1910 We have these in our library for every year. This is a list of all of the heads of the household, all men, in the entire county in 1910. It's about 350 pages and it's just a list of names.

And that one on the right, you in the audience, the right column there is everybody who lived in the Conejo Valley. That's it, it's 38 families living in the Conejo Valley. Clearly things changed. The Jans family was instrumental in the development of the community, you all know this. They bought their first property right after this was published in 1912 and then in 1922 two land developers came to develop housing.

People from LA started buying. This is when the name Thousand Oaks first appeared. The developers had a contest and it was won by a student at the Conejo School that named Thousand Oaks Still, growth was gradual as you can see from this aerial photo from like 1960 which shows where we were and that's the new Jans Mall in the foreground. And then, things sped up.

So I hope this will work. This is a tool that we created using census data which shows the growth of the cities. Now it starts in 1910. You'll see Thousand Oaks is there at the bottom and Thousand Oaks is gonna be pink in what you're gonna see. You don't see the Thousand Oaks start to appear until 1960 because of the census but then look at it go. But it's still fairly slow. And then 1970 when the population almost doubles, and then 1980 when it grows by 50% again as much begins to slow down gets outstripped by Oxnard.

Our data stops at 2020 I think Simi might be a little bit bigger now. I'm gonna stop my history lesson there I want to say again that everything I used to develop this talk was found in our Thousand Oaks-based community collections, which include journals, photographs, maps, articles and much more. And I'm about to close but before I close I want to thank Thousand Oaks for its support of the museum, specifically for your grant of $5,000 that we received to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Ventura County. Thank you so much. And I also want to highlight our work here.

Back in 2023, we installed an exhibit here at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center. We have many residents of Thousand Oaks in our En Foque exhibit which is up in Santa Paula In October, we're going to open an exhibit on Jungle Land for the 100th anniversary. We partner with quite a few Thousand Oaks organizations. We're extraordinarily thankful. We provide school tours for your schools. We have interns who come from here. We provide scholarships for students here and we actually have given out grants to Thousand Oaks organizations and individual artists.

So, there's a lot more though that we could do. And tonight I'm actually here not only to share the history but also because I have an ask. So, I was able to share with you just because of the museum. It's been around since 1913 history that helps us understand how things have drastically changed and our job at the museum is to ensure that over a century from now people can look back and see your actions of today and how you and all of us not me I don't live here all of the community residents impacted whatever the city is going to look like then. And we have a lot of ways that you can partner with us, very specifically I want to talk about a project that we've just started which is our oral histories. We just relaunched that project. We focused on Thousand Oaks residents and this last year we've taken oral histories from among others Joni Young and Chuck Cohen who may be watching tonight So their oral histories, now that we have them in our permanent archives along with ephemera from them, photos etc., will inform people for generations to come not only of what they did to influence this amazing community but also who they were as individuals and as part of a greater whole.

And we will be celebrating them in two weeks and two days. I'm so happy to be able to say for the very first time ever, we have taken our annual Taste of History Gala. We have always done it in Ventura but we're taking it out on the road. It's gonna be at Sherwood Country Club this year on September 10th. This year we are celebrating a silent movie era in our county and we're gonna be talking about that history and where better to do that than where Robin Hood was filmed way back when And we will be honoring Chuck and Joanie that night too.

We have exhibits at both of our sites, Parallel Histories is about what was happening on this coast 250 years ago to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As I said they're free. I hope you will come. I hope residents will come and thank you so much for letting us come here and talk about the museum tonight.

Wasn't that great? Thank you so much. What a way to incentivize families, huh? Give them land come here get married have babies free land. I love that it worked and the dollar an acre. All right back to reality now we have our public comments will the city clerk please announce public comments

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

Thank you. I'm gonna call all in-person speakers first and then followed by Zoom but I'm not seeing in person. Can you call in person for me? And then when they're finished, I'll call Zoom.

First up, we have Henry and he will be followed by Jack.

Good evening council members. Citizenship in a Republic is a significant speech delivered by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910. In this address, Roosevelt emphasized the importance of active citizenship and the responsibilities that come with it in a Republican society. He argued that true citizenship involves not just rights but also duties, particularly the duty to engage in public life and civics.

Roosevelt famously highlighted the value of the individual who strives valiantly, thereby coining the phrase The Man in the Arena which celebrates those who take action rather than merely criticizing from the sidelines. He stressed the need for citizens to uphold founding principles especially in times of challenge. From his 35-minute speech here is the famous quote known as The Man in the Arena It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming but who does actually strive to do the deeds Who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions and who spends himself in a worthy cause.

Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat Now let's not be cold and timid. Let's get our national motto posted here at our city council. Thank you.

Thank you, Henry. All right I've got my list back up next is going to be Jack and after Jack was will be Scott Bell

TOTV will have stuff to show.

All right, good evening council. Now did you know that we became a nation in the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit? Take a look at this.

There we go.

Okay, this is the 1783 Treaty of Paris and it's on display in Washington DC. On the left you see that there are four signatures. The top one with the ribbon is David Hartley who was the British ambassador then you have John Adams Benjamin Franklin And John Jay. Now we all know who Franklin and Adams are, but you may not know founding father John Jay. John Jay was the original Supreme Court Justice appointed by George Washington. He was also one of the three writers of the Federalist Papers with Hamilton and Madison.

Now this treaty is a document that ends the American Revolution, brings peace between us and Great Britain, secures America's independence from Great Britain, establishes America as a free nation, and made America a nation in the name of the most holy and undivided trinity. This is the first time Great Britain actually recognizes America as an independent nation. So when people are like, no we're not a Christian nation. They clearly have not studied the founding fathers that well or have not read any of our founding documents. When people say that were not founded on biblical principles ask them what document are you basing that on?

Now here is a famous painting of the First Continental Congress kneeling in prayer Their first motion was to open with prayer. That prayer lasted over two hours. Think about it, why on earth would secular non-religious people even mention God let alone the God of the Bible by using the words Holy Trinity? These were not secular guys at all. These were people that knew that if God was not part of the equation we were never going to succeed as a nation.

And as we're celebrating independence this 250th year, remember that we became a free and independent nation in the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now having in God we trust in our city hall makes perfect sense right? Thank you and God bless you all.

Thank you, Jack. Next up is Scott Bell and following Scott will be Heather Hamilton.

Do I start? Honorable Mayor and City Council, I am here before you again in person this time to discuss what has transpired since last month's meeting in regards to the Airbnb in our neighborhood. According to Anne Brannan, the City Code Compliance Supervisor in the Community Development Department, there are no rules, regulations, ordinances or laws regarding Airbnbs in our city at this time. In my research, I found that California Senate Bill 346 can help with reporting and tracking to aid cities in the regulatory process, but the onus is on the City of Thousand Oaks to enact ordinances pertaining to said regulations.

I brought with me a letter tonight signed by every neighbor in our cul-de-sac. The general consensus is there's not a single family that wants this unregulated business in our neighborhood and we're tired of dealing with the plethora of issues it has created Nor do we feel like it adds value to our quality of life or our property values. After speaking with many other people that we know in Glenwood Park area, I could have had 50 to 100 more signatures of people that are against this.

As stated in the letter by the neighbors, we're looking forward to working together with you guys to come up with something. I have a whole stack of things that other cities have done I'm more than happy to meet with the City Attorney, the Planning Commission, whoever I have to meet with. As you can tell, I am pretty emotional about this because last month both of our vehicles were damaged in a hit and run scenario.

My neighbor who's a retired policeman just texted me and said, why don't you bring up the fact that in the last week there's been three families short-term rentals that decided to smoke pot the entire time. He has grandkids as do I. He can't even have any time in his backyard with his grandkids nor even open his garage door. Now I understand that's legal, I get it but it shouldn't be. There needs to be regulations that help our city And I'm happy to work with you. You let me know if you want copies of all this, because I have it. Thank

you. Scott? Do you mind just shooting me an email so we can find some time to get together and go over that? Thank you. Next up is going to be Heather Hamilton.

Hi. OK. Hi, I'm Heather. I'm from Thousand Oaks and I want to start by giving you the local numbers of people who have been taken by ICE and are now caught inside an immigration detention deportation system that I believe is deeply dehumanizing. In the 805 area code, we have 2,527 people. And as this young gentleman said, created in the image of God and I guess our godly country is doing this to these people.

There's been 1,226 people in Ventura County. 63 in Thousand Oaks, 44 Newberry Park, six in Westlake and one in Oak Park. These are our neighbors. They're not just numbers. Across the county we've seen documented reports of overcrowding, inadequate medical care, poor sanitation and degrading conditions in parts of our immigration detention center. And like what would Jesus do? We should bring back those bracelets.

I've spent several months watching friends and neighbors have their rights taken away. They're not worried that someday their rights might disappear, they're watching it happen. Watching marginalized people have their rights stripped away, I hope makes the rest of us fiercely protective of our constitutional rights. All of them for all of us. The Fourth Amendment protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures. The First Amendment protects our speech and assembly.

And California specifically protects our right to privacy. These aren't Democratic rights or Republican rights. They're our rights. So when we're talking about drones, flock cameras and whatever surveillance technology comes next I'm asking for something very simple. Transparency, public involvement and strong guardrails. This technology is powerful it can help keep us safe but powerful technology can also be misused or end up in the hands of people it was never intended for that's why the guardrails matter and look at what happened with the flock data access failure here in Ventura County The public needs to be informed and involved before we enter into contracts involving surveillance technology.

We've already seen the city do transparency really well with the downtown plan. You brought us along, you educated us, you asked us for our input, you gave the community a seat at the table and I think we can do the same thing here. If our input matters when we're deciding what our downtown looked like, surely it matters when we're deciding how our government can watch and track us.

I'm not asking you to choose between public safety and constitutional rights. We should demand both. Technology changes, administration change, people in power change. Our constitutional rights should not. Give us transparency, give us guardrails, and give the public a seat at the table before these decisions are made. Thank you.

Thank you, Heather. Next up is Michael and then following Michael will be Suzanne Duckett.

Hello City Council, Michael from Thousand Oaks. I'm going to start with a briefing then go into my speech so with regards to the local numbers detained by ICE there was over 2 000 i want to give them a round of applause They are not our neighbors if they are here illegally. They had no rights violated since they broke into our country and neighborhoods illegally, and if you are asking for transparency then please vote yes on Prop 39 for voter ID to be required for election integrity.

Now let me get back to what I was going to talk about. Back in July, the last meeting City Manager Andrew Powers had mentioned drones as a possible response to the e-bike mischief. So my initial question is does Mr. Powers have children? That is a rhetorical question you'll have to answer because unless you feel compelled to right. Do you want kids growing up in an environment where they are constantly outrunning UAVs? No.

Mind you, I'm assuming no because yes would be ultra totalitarian and we are not China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba or Iran for that matter. So what's the answer? Parenting is a very important word And appropriate, reasonable legislation. So what do I mean? Parenting have sheriff's representatives conduct a parent guidance town hall at various schools elementary middle high school educate the parents of the increasing problems in our area and that this is their responsibility example dirt bikes. Why are kids running around on e-bikes and not dirt bikes audience anyone want to answer that?

Because they know that is a no-no, right? So we as a society have to create the same no-no environment around e-bikes. Problem solved! No drones, right? No increased budget which is unnecessary. No government overreach with unnecessarily expanding societal surveillance. Again, we are not China. Another day we can discuss the fought cameras that was brought up earlier. If you sit in these chairs your job regardless of what the League of Cities may have sold you Your responsibility is to reduce the budget as often as possible, lean out operations and maximize trust from local citizens not to pander to the power hungry public bureau that's residing in Northern California.

In the future, I'll address the lady last time. The speaker that called you all corrupt, hopefully she was wrong specifically about her misguided suggestion about rent control commercial or residential doesn't matter it's a destructive idea that does not actually address the problem merely creates more new problems thank you for your time.

Thank You Michael next up is Suzanne Duckett and then following Suzanne will be Rishi Sikh

Good evening, Suzanne Duckett from the corrupt city of Thousand Oaks. Tonight I came to have you agendize that when a person speaks they must give their name and the city in which they live. You said that tonight, but in fact it does not happen. At one meeting a lot of people came up and said that they were from the club here in town. I would call it a club instead of giving their residence in which they live so I would like to have it agendized that the mayor Remind people when they get up here to speak that they are to do that in fact When the people come in from the city from the Chamber of Commerce and Don't give their residence.

I Assume that they're from out of town and They're here to tell us How we want our city to develop That is that is We want to know where these people live from now on. And I'd like to have you agendize that item. Now, the right to vote is fundamental and I call this city the corrupt City of Thousand Oaks because you did not allow us to vote on the downtown plan The downtown plan is our future.

It's the quality of the city in which we are going to be living, it's the safety of the city in which we are to be living, it is the quality of life here and we should be able to vote on how we want our city to develop Good evening.

Thank you, Suzanne. Next is Rishi Singh.

Honorable council members and audience, thank you for having me here tonight. My name is Rishi Sikh and I am a high school junior attending Westlake High School in California with my city of residence being Thousand Oaks but the Lang area more specifically. I have friends. Lots of them are Spanish speaking, bilingual or simply are struggling to navigate the environment of being able to thrive in an academic system and a community where everything is in English And it's not just me. It's the City of Thousand Oaks. The United States Census estimates that over 25,000 of Thousand Oaks' residents speak Spanish as their only language, that being roughly 15% of our population.

Yet our city fails in being able to provide tangible things to actually support this population, ensuring that they're able to thrive in the very same environments in which native English speakers are. Thus I'm standing here today urging the city to take action through two key ways. First it's by ensuring that city communication is available in Spanish and second it's by ensuring that the resources that they're providing at the Thousand Oaks Library, the Newberry Park Library are available to Spanish speakers On the first point of city communication, the Thousand Oaks website currently has no clear navigable way for Spanish speaking constituents to be able to translate everything that's on their website into a language that they're able to understand.

That's a problem. These websites are essential in providing crucial key information about things happening in our city, ways for constituents like us to be able to engage in such beautiful events like this and so much more unless these Spanish-speaking residents have a way have a way to know what's going on in the first place, there won't be any way for them to actually be able to engage with it. But second, on the point of libraries our city hosts wondrous events for the youth of our community to be able to attend their local libraries meet new people and have fun while they're there Nothing for Spanish-speaking students, though. Why are we institutionally barring so many of our constituents simply because they either didn't grow up in the United States or didn't happen to speak English as their first language?

These people are people. They're people of Thousand Oaks and it's time that we give them the very voice that they deserve and it's time that they have the voice to be able to advocate in their community engage in their community, and be able to take advantage of all of the wondrous resources that Thousand Oaks has to offer its constituents. My ask today is simple I'm not asking you to redesign the entire system or change what's already working. I'm simply asking you to make it more accessible to such a large majority of our city's population because solo porque yo hablo español es mi primera lengua doesn't mean I should be institutionally barred and excluded from participating in this beautiful city. Thank you for your time.

Okay, give me a second to mute. Hey everyone, I'm Dan Tweed. I've run for City Council many times since 2018 but proud to be on the ballot actually for District 4, Cleveland-Pittsburgh Parks and something i think will be very important is I'm a graduate of the CERT class Community emergency response training and I think this is a great outlet for emergency response, some kind of community resilience skills through Rec and Parks. So that's the Extra Planets Ham Radio Imager operator. I would be advocating that and also as well for Services that people can use for auxiliary communications, and I have an example of an app on the phone here as well. What three words?

It's an easy to download free app that basically every- I'm in this 10 by 10 square called Intent Plan Fair Talent It's a database, it takes about 20 megabytes. But a lot of search and rescue teams are starting to use what3words as a way to find people anywhere on Earth, anywhere there is a 3 meter by 3 meter app. So the other thing I'd like people to explore installing on their phones is called BridgePublic which uses your phone's own Bluetooth radio and you become part of a decentralized mesh network Another thing I wanted to announce is some free amateur radio classes that are going to be offered. One is an online class that starts Thursday September 3rd and it runs through Thursday October 15th.

And if you want to sign up for that, that's a great online class presented by the National Electronics Museum. Get get a pencil here's who you should email if you want to register for that. It's Roland dot anders at comcast.net so r-o-l-a-n-d dot a-n d-e-r-s at comcast net and then if you want to go to an in person amateur radio licensing class our own Conejo Valley Amateur Radio Club is putting one on, and that's going to start September 5th at the Sheriff Station they'll do the tech class from 8am to noon the general class will be held from noon to four, and I think my time's about up. But I wanted to say real quick on this date in 2012 two amazing cosmic events happened. Neil Armstrong died and the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed out of the heliopause so it officially left the solar system.

So two great explorers became linked in history. Live long and prosper.

Thank you Dan. Just want to confirm no more speakers? Okay, any questions or any follow-up from our city manager?

Yeah just very quickly. Chief Perez does have the next presentation so I'm gonna have him touch base with our speaker regarding Airbnb and the vehicle damage component tomorrow via phone. As it relates to the speaker regarding the Spanish language translation services on the website and at the libraries programming, I've had both our library community cultural affairs director And Ryan Roman from our city manager's office step out and chat with them about the options that we we do have on both of those Yeah,

it sounds like Dan can you mute him okay perfect Next is consent calendar. Does anyone have any questions or would they like to pull any items? Can I have a motion? Okay, we have a motion in this City Clerk Why am i blanking yep the vote that's what we need

Council Member Engler, can I have your vote please?

Yes.

Thank you and Council Member Gutierrez? Yes. And that motion passes five to zero.

Thank you. Next up we are presenting the item on Unmanned Aircraft System Program is Chief Jeremy Perez.

Good evening, Mayor Taylor and council members. Captain Gibson and I are here tonight to talk about an expansion of our Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program. Our current UAS program began in 2013 and currently consists of a deputy who carries a drone with them while assigned to patrol. Under this current program the drone is not available for use until a scene is stabilized and it takes two deputies operate one as a pilot and one as an observer.

What we're proposing tonight is referred to as a Dronas First Responder Program. Six pre-positioned drones operated by a single deputy pilot stationed in our Dispatch Center. It fills the critical gap between receiving a 911 call and deputies arriving and stabilizing the scene. We are excited about the prospect of lowering our response times, particularly in response to burglaries, CaliConverter thefts, organized retail theft, and other high priority calls.

By having the eyes of a deputy pilot on scene quickly, we can provide responding deputies with critical updates that will improve their safety and ensure we are getting the right resources there. As an example, we recently had a man with a gun walk into a commercial building on Tua Boulevard While we had a quicker than normal response time, the man with the gun still left the building before we arrived.

About 60 cops arrived on scene and for the next two-and-a-half to three hours, we closed all the businesses in surrounding areas as we searched for him. We did eventually locate him and take him into custody. Had our DFR program been in place, a deputy pilot would have had eyes on the scene before the call even went out on the radio. He or she would have been able to direct deputies to the suspect and conclude the incident in a matter of minutes instead of hours.

This expansion of our UAS program is not a surveillance program, as you will hear Captain Gibson relate. These drones do not function as license plate readers, they did not have facial recognition capability and there is no data sharing with other agencies. This is a tool to use in response to calls for service, to reduce our response times and help keep our community safe. With that I'll turn it over to Captain Gibson for some additional info.