City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call the March 11th, 2026 meeting of the Camrio City Council and the Camrio Sanitary District to order. If the city clerk would call the role, I'd appreciate it. Council member Santangelo here. Vice Mayor Martinez Bravo here. Council member Kildy here. Council member Trembley here. Mayor Tennyson here. And with that, I will ask the city attorney to read the items we have on close session.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor and Council. We have uh three items on close session. uh one is existing litigation under government code section 54956.9D1 which is the OPV coalition versus Fox Canyon. And then we have uh two matters under anticipated litigation subject to government code section 54956.9D2. And if there's any reportable action, I'll make that report. Thank you. And with that announcement, we will recess to close session.

Good evening. I'd like to reconvene the March 11th, 2026 meeting of the Camrio City Council and the Camrio Sanitary District to order. Let the record reflect, as I lose my voice, that all council members are present. Vice Mayor Martinez Bravo, would you lead us in the pledge? Sure. Please stand. Your hand over your heart. Ready? Begin.

I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Are there any changes to the agenda? No. Hearing none, we will move on to the next item, a presentation. And the vice mayor is going to read it for me.

Sure. Um we are doing a 2026 Las personas community academy recognition. Uh tonight we have the pleasure of recognizing a special group of community members who have recently completed the 2026 Lasersonas community academy. The community academy is an interactive program designed to educate and engage residents on the roles and responsibilities of the city of Camaro. It provides a behind-the-scenes look at how our city operates and empowers participants to become informed and involved members of our community. Tonight, we are recognizing the third graduating cohort of the annual academy. So, at this point, if the academy can come up and please join the mayor. All right. Well, welcome everyone here. And on behalf of the Camaro City Council, we are proud to recognize you for your participation in Las Persona's Community Academy. Each of you dedicated your time to learning more about local government. From how decisions are made to the services that impact our daily lives, your involvement demonstrates how much you care about Gamaro. It's a mean it's meaningful initiative toward building a stronger more connected community. We hope this experience has

inspired you to stay engaged with your city whether by volunteering, attending meetings, or simply sharing what you've learned with your neighbors. Congratulations and thank you for your commitment to the city of Camaro. So, did you elect a class validictorian?

She sent us a letter. Um, would anybody like to say anything? Just say a few words about your experience. Um, I very much want to thank Shantel, uh, your passion and your patience with us and, um, you made this experience 100% worth the time of going in on Mondays. So, thank you.

Well, again, uh, the vice mayor stated it very eloquently. Congratulations. We love an involved and committed group of Camaro residents because that's what makes the city click. So, thank you very much. Congratulations. Don't be strangers. And madam,

let me try again. Madame clerk, with that we'll go to public speakers on items not on the agenda.

I received five requests to speak. If you'd like to speak but haven't submitted your name, please see the clerk staff in the foyer. Each speaker is limited to three minutes. The city council will receive general public comment for an initial per period of 20 minutes. Speakers who sign up during the initial 20 minute public period but are not heard within that time will be given an opportunity to speak following the completion of action on all other agenda items. Your time will be displayed with the video on the displays. When your time is up, the microphone will be muted and we will move on to the next speaker. When I call your name, please come up to the po public podium and state your name. The first speaker is Joseph Dubzinski, followed by Spencer Richie.

Good evening and welcome.

My name is Joseph Dubzinski Jr. I'm a resident of Camaro and I spend my mornings outside the ice field office tracking raid activity. Uh as of this morning or this afternoon, uh 1,00 at least 1,732 people have been abducted in the tri county area. 857 of those were in Ventura County and 459 were within Camaro. Uh more disturbing is that yesterday uh ICE agents out there uh hit Leo for a third time, Leo Martinez of VC Defense, and then lied about it again. um violated his first amendment right to follow, observe and report on law enforcement activity. Violated his fourth amendment right by searching his car and taking his lap his uh uh tablet. And then uh at the hospital, Los Robles uh failed violated his sixth amendment rights to not allow counsel to see him while he was under uh arrest. Um all of that led to him being let go at Los Robas after having his car towed. Um, and this is just more incidents of ICE lying about what they're doing out there and using it to target people in the community. Um, in addition to that, someone uh was seized up in Santa Barbara uh uh and beaten in the process of getting into being thrown into the back of a Pathfinder. They were driven all the way to Cortez Circle before EMS was called for a split tongue and then he was uh denied access to a hospital chaplain at St. John's Community uh hospital. Um, we report this and what we're told often by a Venta County Sheriff's Office is that these are just folks trying to do a job, but they're doing it by breaking the constitution over and over again. Um, and it's sad because we can't even get the sheriff's office to investigate the personal vehicles of the folks who are out at the Icefield office, uh, coming in constantly without license plates, without having their lights on during the, uh, evenings and any number of other violations that happen out there.

um the undocumented community and its advocates can help explain the situation that's out there. We just can't do it three minutes at a time here during public comments. So, I'm asking once again to please create an immigration stakeholders committee in Camaro so that you can hear from us on a regular basis and we can have dialogue about what we can do for the immigrants that are in this community, not hearing constantly what we can't do. Thank you. Spencer Richie.

Hello. Hello.

All right. Um, okay. Hair looks fine. Um, hi. I'm Spencer Richie and I noticed that you even though that this appears to be the first city council meeting where people can look up like basically have live Spanish translation, it does not seem to be the first city council meeting where there's closed captioning. So that's why I had to take my mask off to come up here after already having to take my mask off for the photo cuz I want my face to be visible in my Lost Persona picture. But and but and my preference would have been to keep wearing a mask up here. But especially but there's no captioning which which sucks because I notic that you know count you know Kild's wearing a mask which he almost never does which might indicate that you know he might be sick or something cuz that seems but whatever. And also Mayor Tennyson is is his voice is all off which normally happens when you're sick. So yeah, that was that's why I can't wait for closed captioning to be a thing in these meetings so that you know I can wear my mask when I'm up here um without screwing over everyone who needs to rely on lip reading in order to make out what I'm saying. Um but yeah um that that's my main topical concern of the day. Um, another concern is again the lack of dollaride coverage for um, especially for in the afternoon. Once again, I'm in the position of not being able to make a dollar ride home so far because like after my work shift tomorrow because um

again the root bus does not go anywhere near my house that late and also there's again d ride is swamped and then and then in the past few months I also had an incident where like the dollaride basically the the vehicle got way too cramped for me and I had a panic attack and I had to get off you know and you know it had it was a whole situation trying to get home because again does not have enough buses. it is being way it's there's way too many people it's expected to to serve and you know it's not you know I'd be happy to be able to take a dollar ride home. It's not my preference to take the root bus home instead of a dollar ride for reasons but you know I would love to have you know that backup of the root bus when I for when I go home from work. Thank you. Have a nice evening.

Yeah. Thank you,

Sarah Wilzinski, followed by Bev Dancefelt. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson, city council, city staff. My name is Sarah Weski. Um, I'm angry today. I am angry that a family member had to shout over a fence with a bullhorn in order to communicate with their loved one who was kidnapped by ICE. I am angry that we are seeing kidnappings every single day still and I'm just exhausted. Um, I want to thank you guys for actually taking a step and Mayor Tennyson and Council Member Trembley and attending the Oxnard uh, immigration stakeholders meeting. That is appreciated and I hope you guys had some insightful conversation and learned a lot and I hope that you guys will be forming one here. Uh, I appreciate your time. Thanks.

Thank you Bev Dansfield. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson, Vice Mayor, Dr. Martinez Bravo. Um, I'm here just to express gratitude. Um, Sarah already shared, Mayor Tennyson, Council Member Trembley, um, I am so gracious that you came out last Monday um, to Oxnard to um, observe. I understand you are just there to observe but I think um it is important that we give thanks when you um when you honor requests when we we ask you to come out and and to so that others know it. I know individually I have thanked you but I think publicly expressing that thank so that people know the work that you're doing um behind the scenes in your council roles. Um so uh I know and as Sarah had mentioned you know um being able to see what happened in that meeting and seeing how powerful it is across um different agencies of every level of government from local to federal. Um also just knowing that more park has taken steps that they have they're establishing theirs hoping that this movement continues across Ventura County that um you know Oxnard led the way. I've um given them gratitude as well. Um we a lot of the 805 uh undocument community has gone out there um last year during Oxnard to say thank you um you know doing what we can where we can um that it takes all of us. So uh thank you for your time.

Thank you. The last speaker is Sithart Moro. Uh good evening mayor, council and neighbors. I am Sadhart Meotra and and I am here because I agree. You have heard what Joseph, Sarah, and Bev have said and I agree with it. I also disagree with it. I disagree with any suggestion that it's enough. It is only the beginning. And I do hope it is a beginning, not an end in itself. I hope it is the beginning of a great many more and indeed swifter steps to rid ourselves of this unwanted occupation. Poor occupation I think we can call it without hesitation. We have been under it now nearly 2 years. We have seen in people mistreated in every imaginable way and some we do not dare imagine. We have seen a child's ghost story come alive of fiends on the street snatching them away to arts unknown, locking them away into dark corners forever. We have seen a nightmare come alive and we are sick and tired of it. So I too commend you for taking part, however small a part in an effort, however small an effort. But I say again, we must not rest on this laurel, this single leaf of laurel in our future triumphal wreath. I say we must go on. We must take more

steps and more toward and freeing our city and county from this gross violation of the ideals of Republican democracy and all principles of compassion which say truly I think it is wrong to make people wait a lifetime and punish them for waiting to be counted part of a nation which has inspired their imaginations and those of their parents and grandparents before them. Let us not forget what lies before us to do. Let us not forget our courage though we find matters like yesterday so disheartening. Let us save ourselves and prove as good an example to the world as we have been a bad example until now. Thank you. Is that it? Thank you for your comments. We will now go to item D and I will invite up Chris Valenzuela from the Camaro Ranch Foundation for the annual report. Chris, sorry. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson. Uh, council members, thank you so much for uh, allowing me to be here once again. My name is Chris Valenuela. I'm the president of the Camrial Ranch Foundation, and I'm here tonight to, uh, provide a annual report. Uh, this is going to be a a highlevel uh, general overview. I give you a quick snapshot of 2025 and and some things that are going on in 2026. Um, I'm also joined by our treasurer Helen Fall and past president

David Slaggin. And I also recognize some volunteers uh that were participants in the academy this year. So, it's uh very good to be here. Here's some uh topics we'll touch on very quickly. So, I see some familiar uh faces in this picture, but um you guys are obviously familiar with with the history of the ranch uh when the city acquired the property. uh now 4 and a half acres, right? And and so the Camrio Ranch Foundation um has played a major role since then in in educating the public and and putting on community events and a variety of different things. Um there's been a lot of changes since uh the pandemic, right? So the scope of the foundations change and and our focus and charter is much focused on education and and so um that is what we do and I'll give you uh an idea of the team. So here you have our board members and we have 45 dosent our dosent are pivotal in the success of the ranch operations and our board members are again all volunteer. We don't have any uh paid staff or anything like that. uh we are able to have up to 15 different board members. So you can do some math there and see that we do have some vacancies and that is a major focus of us right now. We are actively recruiting uh new board members. What's not mentioned are uh also general volunteers. We have some folks that are not necessarily dosent or or board members but they do help us out. 2025 community events. So, here's uh some some events that we did in 2025. These are uh recurring and this is what the public has come to expect. So, Throwback Thursdays is a very popular last Thursday of the month in the summer, food trucks, uh classic rock band, Adalfo's birthday, uh you see Mayor Tennyson doing the piñata, uh

council member Kildy, we had uh council member Tennyson was our or Tremley rather was doing the cake and the barn and appreciate everybody's help. Santa nights. Uh that's a very popular event. We have a Santa Claus in the house. Uh Christmas carolers, fake snow, hot cocoa. It is uh become very popular and so we are trying to see how we could accommodate the the growing uh turnout for that. Right. So maybe in 2026 we think we'll start a little earlier that way. Um kind of helps with the lions a little bit. So um in addition we had a exhibit on the cameo white horses much like the Reagan library that has exhibits that come and go uh we try to uh put on temporary exhibits to bring people back and educate them on variety of topics. 2026 uh you see additional events. So we are going to be doing a third throwback Thursday in August which uh in my experience doing this since 2019 the only complaint that I'm getting these days is why don't you do more of these which is very good. So, uh, we we heard the request and we will be doing an August one. There's again talks about Santa nights again probably going to start earlier rather than adding a third day. Isabelle Camaro, that's our current exhibit. I encourage uh everyone here and the public to uh come by Saturdays and Sundays and and learn about uh Isabelle Camaro who was the wife of Adalfo Camrio. So, that will be on for the remainder of 2026. Here's some of the organizations that help support us in our events. And so when you come to an event, you have uh food options, you have uh entertainment, uh you have house tours, little bit of everything. We also have a section where the other uh community groups um put up tables and and they and they promote their causes or they um whether it's Kitstream or Pleasant Valley uh parks and wreck uh or the library um

activities. So the uh CAF commemorative Air Force Museum, they have a paper airplane uh contest. And so the idea is to get multiple groups from the community involved and and it's uh something for everybody at our events. Switching from events to school tours, this is a very important part of what we do. Uh we focus on third grade students. It is zero dollars. It doesn't cost anything uh for students to attend a field trip. Uh we try to make it very interactive. Uh they make butter. So there's supplies that go into that. They do some roping uh with the calf. You see a picture there. Um, every now and then a school may reach out and say, you know, we want to go, but uh uh there's an issue with funding and we don't have the bus. We will step up and provide that bus for that school so that they could come. Again, I touched on the exhibits and this is the last three. Again, Isabelle Camrio is the current one. Uh we had one on the architectural history of the house. Uh I really enjoyed the Juan Camo exhibit. It was something um I was I'm sad to say I didn't know a lot about Juan Camo until that exhibit and now I think about him every time I drive by the chapel. House tours uh 11 to two $5 admission and then again children 12 and under are free and you see the um the guests there about a hundred every month. Right now, we're working on um like an Apple Pay option because it's cash at the moment, but we're trying to do some card reader or Apple Pay. I touch on some uh financials. These are our revenue streams. This is how the Cameo Ranch Foundation makes money. Out of this list, I would say the community events are um the most profitable for us. And again, we don't charge for community events. It's free. But but uh it it allows us to put on the event for the public and then make a little money to do it again. Here's our balance sheet as of December 31st. So I'll let you

look at that. And while you're looking at that, just uh very thankful to the city. Uh we we get a lot of feedback. We have visitors from all over the world that come by and they just marvel at the beauty of the property. Um, a lot of people also comment that they're a little envious that their community doesn't have anything like that. We recognize that we are part of living history. So, um, it's I mean it was a real house that uh, a real family lived in and unlike other museums, right? We this is living history. We try to promote it as such. But again, very thankful for all the support from the city, uh, Mitchell, Cameron, Carmen, everybody. You guys are amazing. Any questions?

Any council member have a question or comment? Vice Mayor.

Uh, Mr. Valenzuela, thank you so much for the presentation and thank thank you to you and to all of your team for everything that you do. Um, all the love that goes into um, putting time and making our community a better place through this uh, historic house. Um I had the opportunity to play the role of uh Carmen Camaro uh through woman in history through AAW. And one of the things that I learned was that Mr. Ordon uh Camaro, he absolutely loved sharing his culture and sharing his home um with so many people and enjoying fiestas and parties. And so I guess I'm one of the one of the the constituents that would say we would love to see more and I'm glad that you're you're doing some of that. Um, of course I'm sure that takes uh time and dedication and so the question that I ask for you is if there are people who are interested in being a part of the board, how would they go about it?

Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. And uh I think you came into my daughter's classroom and she talked about you for a week uh when you were um we have uh active social media. So our Facebook page and Instagram page which is cameranch foundation u is a good way. Our website also has um options to reach out to us which is cameranch.org and then the email is office.org. So, those are multiple ways that people can get in touch and and we would be interested in any feedback and and we're also entertaining some other uh event options. We've talked about a time capsule, uh a movie in the park type of thing, a fashion show, a scavenger hunt, and so we definitely want to add some more uh things. Obviously, the events that we've been doing are very popular, but we'd like to mix it up a little bit, too.

Thank you. Yeah, go ahead, Kevin. I'm losing my voice. Um, thank you for what you do and all the board members. Um, but can you drill down just a little bit about the time that it takes to be a board member,

please? Thank you. That's no that's a good question and and um and you you guys know all the here and it is um it's it's kind of up to the person and and so the it is the first Wednesday of the month 5:30 to 7:30 is the board meeting that is the minimum requirement and and then other than that it is kind of up to you how involved you want to be on different committees uh with events I can vouch for all of our board members they they all roll up their sleeves and spend hours and hours a week. Uh we have like any organization, you always have certain people that that do a ton of work and I countless hours, right? Uh but but it's but we try to tailor it and we don't want to intimidate or scare people off uh because people have families or they work full-time and so there's something for everybody.

Thank you. Okay, Mr. Trimley, comment. And so thank you, Mr. Mayor, Chris. Thank you. Nice to see you in this setting. We see each other all over town. I know how busy you are. Um the Camrio ranch is is a treasure and I want to like my colleagues express my thank you to you to all the board members to all of the dosent and to all of the volunteers. It's it's a labor of love. It's time inensive and it um it just demonstrates your and all of your all of the volunteers board members do alike, etc. Thank you. uh the love of community and and our community specifically and and and our heritage and so thank you for everything that you're doing. Appreciate.

I could have just said ditto, but I decided to say a few more words. So, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Then I'll say ditto. Um I just wanted to um echo um my colleagues and thank you for your time. Thank all the board and thank the dosent. Um, it really is a wonderful home and it really is part of our heritage and so all the time and commitment that you have to that helps our community grow and helps it grow us grow into the future. So, thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Appreciate that. Ditto. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Chris. Mr. City Manager, could you introduce our new staff member for me? Yes. Uh Mr. uh Bradley Tolbert um is our new community development director. Um I will let him tell you a little bit about himself, but he comes to us from the city of Glendale. We're very excited to have him. Went through an exhaustive search. Um he came out on top. Um with that, I'll I'll hand it over to Bradley.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Ramirez. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm very excited to be here. I was instructed to keep this very brief earlier. I think I'm already over my word count, actually, so I won't give too much of a background. Um, but but I am very excited to be here. Um, I have received a very warm, gracious, uh, humbling welcome from staff, uh, from those in the community that I've been able to talk to since I've arrived. Um, and I'm very, very much grateful to be to have the opportunity to work on the, um, really the tremendous opportunities this city has. Um there's a lot of ambitious uh uh possibilities here that I know that Mr. Ramirez and others here have communicated to me uh and a lot of things to be very excited about and I am very excited to join this team to be a part of this staff and be part of this community and I just like to express my gratitude and appreciation for that.

Welcome aboard. Welcome Benito.

Thank you. We will now move on to consent. Uh items E through J. Madame clerk, do we have any or first off, do we have anybody that Pardon me? Excuse me, mayor. Oh, council comments, please. We're gonna go through the consent. Are there any request to pull an item from consent? Seeing none, are there any comments? Move consent. I can second. Do we have any public comments on consent? No comments.

Now council comments now. Do you want to go with the council comments? Yes. Yes. I'm trying. Oh, you're talking. Anybody? Yes. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On February 26th, they attended a meeting of the regional water quality control board Los Angeles. On February 27, uh I had a Metroink uh board of directors meeting in Los Angeles. On March 2, uh I was an observer at the Oxary Community uh immigration stakeholders meeting. On March 6th, had a meeting of Ventura County Transportation Commission. And then uh last Monday on March 9th, I was uh privileged to attend as as a member of the Camrio Rotary uh Viva La Kamita uh which is a wonderful community dinner. I think it's our I think it was the 56th annual dinner if I remember correctly. So anyway, that's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um on February 26, I attended the economic development and land use committee meeting. Um, and right after that was a mobile home rent stabilization ad hoc committee. Um, and then on March 5th, I attended the CPA board of directors meeting. And that's all I've got. Thank you.

I can go next. Uh, February 26th, uh, I attended the mobile home land rent ad hoc with council member Santangelo and also on that same day, the economic development and land use committee with council member Santangelo. Uh February 26th, I also attended a farmers meetup conference right here at the McGrath uh family farm. And so it was really a great reminder of how important it is to support our local economy with agriculture being such an important factor here in Ventura County um and to continue to support the farmers and the farm workers who sustain uh our community. Uh McGrath actually operates a family or a farmer-owned hub serving all of Ventura County and they host an organic market uh every day from 11 to 4. It's called Farmavore, so you can look at it at it online as well. Um but they had some delicious uh fresh and locally grown products that I definitely recommend. I also had the opportunity to meet several local farmers and learn more about the work that they do to keep our agriculture very strong in this region. And I, as mentioned, I think supporting our local farms helps strengthens this economy and preserves our farmland and ensures access to fresh, healthy food. And so I encourage everyone to go and check them out. Um, on February 26th, I also attended the forum on tobacco and cannabis held at the Ventura County Office of Education. It was a very uh informative event for students that were there. There were a lot of children there. Um, there were uh policy makers uh and families. And I'd also like to thank uh council member Mr. Gapan for moderating uh that discussion. And on March 9th, I also attended the

Viva Laaka Comida event along with my fellow council members, Mayor Tennyson, Kildy, and Trembley. Um, and as many of you may know, it's a fundraiser for the Boys and uh Girls Club, um, organized by the Lions

Rotary, uh, correction. Um, uh, thank you so much to all of the volunteers and all of the organizers, uh, that put it together. It was a wonderful community gathering in support of the Boys and Girls Club, which truly gives so much back to the city of Camrio and beyond. Um, it was really great to see other elected officials there, too. um from the PVSD directors uh Doug Carlos McDow and Becky Kramer, a representative from Supervisor Long's office, um and Thousand Oaks Kaneo Recreation and Parks District uh director Ashley Orosco, and thank you also to Council Member Trembley for uh serving as our MC and making the event a successful one. We appreciated your dad jokes. Um, and the evening also provided an opportunity to recognize our fire department for their extensive work with a mountain fire. And as many of you know, sadly, uh, fire season has become a yearround reality for our region. And so we are deeply grateful to our firefighters for their dedication and courage and commitment uh to the service of our community. Thank you so much. Mr. Kildy,

not much tonight except I did attend the Viva Lakamita. That's it. I'm not going to go through my list. But I have to say a shout out and happy birthday to my wife since I can't be with her tonight. So honey, if you're watching, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Okay, let's try consent right now, shall we? Anybody want to pull anything? Did we vote? Move. We didn't vote. I'll call a roll call vote. Okay. Council member Santangelo, yes. Vice Mayor Martinez Bravo, yes. Council member Kildy,

yes. Council member Trembley, yes. Mayor Tennyson, yes. That passes unanimously. Ne next we have item K and I believe uh senior planner Paul McLaren is going to present.

Yes. Thank you mayor. Uh good evening mayor. Uh council members. Uh this evening, the council is reviewing a modification for IPD 412M1 within the airport north specific plan and associated projects as well as a SQA addendum for the reduced project. The site is surrounded by a highway 101 to the north and the Camaro airport to the south. There are commercial uses to the east and existing industrial development to the west. The site is a vacant parcel that's approximately 46.88 acres. And uh on the map here on the right hand side, you can see the the car wash that's part of this is in this location here and the uh auto dealership would be up in this location. The rest of it is industrial. IPD 412 was approved by the planning commission in 2024. The applicant now proposes a reduced project that redistributes development into additional buildings while reducing industrial square footage by nearly 100,000 square ft. There are no proposed changes to land use designation in the general plan, the airport north specific plan or zone zoning. The reduced project is um is a total of approximately 664,775 square ft of non-residential development across auto uses, industrial research and development space and an independently operated car wash. The project continues the coordinated campus design approach with heritage compatible architecture, unified materials and integrated landscaping and the auto center um building serves as a freeway visible anchor while remaining compatible with the heritage zone the and the airport north specific plan. The brand elements of the dealership are incorporated into the heritage zone style through materials quality and architectural detailing. The tenative map included in the project subdivides the property into seven lots

to align with the revised building layout while maintaining shared access and utilities. The project does exceed the parking requirements and provides internal circulation designed to serve all lots safely and efficiently. The project will be served by an exist by existing public infrastructure and includes storm water treatment consistent with current standards. Additional roads will be built and maintained by the applicant along with utility infrastructure which will be included and constructed with the tracked map. And if you look on the map here, the the blue here is the internal roads that will be built and maintained where the infrastructure corridors as well. And then there will be an additional traffic signal added on here that will be turned on when warranted. The car wash is an allowed use in the limited manufacturing zone with a conditional use permit. The car wash includes on-site queuing to avoid uh avoid traffic spillover uh which as you can see in the pink here. U it's got a reuse system to reduce portable demand and the operational conditions that will ensure compatibility with the zone to include like these are vacuum here but they are covered by a wall with that you see from the street which you can actually see in the upper right here. Uh this would be the wall where the vacuums are now hidden behind the wall along Ventura Boulevard. And so this architecture is reflective of the Spanish Mediterranean style which is consistent with the heritage zone guidance. The reduced project remains consistent with the general plan and airport north specific plan by maintaining a coordinated employment campus in quality freeway gateway to the city gateway to the city and the project advances multiple city goals related to design quality economic development placemaking and resource efficiency. An addendum was prepared pursuant to SQA

guidelines. It confirms that the reduced project remains within the scope of the previously certified environmental documents and it requires no additional EI based on the staff analysis. The project supports all the required findings for the IPD modification, the conditional use permit and the tenative track map. The proposed actions were reviewed by the planning commission on February 3rd, 2026 and recommended for approval. Staff recommends approval of the proposed actions subject to the conditions of approval. And that ends my presentation. Thank you. Council questions. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I'm going to try this poll. Um, is the uh reduction of 100,000 square foot in industrial is that market driven? Uh, I do believe I mean I honestly I would probably ask the applicant who is here tonight to to address that specifically as to why they chose to do that but I do believe that that is the case so they can give more detail on that. Okay. Thank you. Uh I actually had questions more for the applicant as well. Okay.

Well then we'll allow the applicant to come up right now for questions. Vice Mayor.

Good evening, Mayor Tennyson, members of the city council. I'm Dennis Hardgrave, part of the applicant team for this project. Um, as you know, I've been before you many times before on Airport North. um spent a career working with implementing this plan and uh specifically tonight I represent the owner on land use issues on the umbrella land use issues more than the specific site planning and design details but I wanted to let you know that uh we've coordinated closely with staff and the airport north specific plan update if you recall we did that several years ago we did the update to this to the specific plan to address these particular needs. And um additionally, I can confirm to you from my perspective as a private practice planner that this does comply with all the standards that were set out. It's actually a less intensive project as has been stated. Um, I would say that uh in response to uh your question, Council Member Kild, the smaller building size would tend to be more attractive in the not only the current marketplace, but probably the longer term and would tend to result in the kinds of users that you're looking for within your economic development strategy. Again, the focus here I completely support of being good paying jobs. You'll hear tonight from union representatives who are in the room. Uh and that we see that this is a positive in the overall framework of what we've long long term wanted to see happen over 30 years if you think about it with Airport North. So this would be uh a real milestone in completing that project. Um with that I'm supportive if there's any policy or other questions I might be able to answer.

Sure. Um my first question was similar to council member Kild's and I believe you answered a portion of it but if there's anything you'd like to add uh it's do these modifications help to ensure that the project is marketable uh to the life sciences and innovation companies uh so that cameo can remain competitive in attracting those high quality jobs. I think it does and I would tell you specifically why um and other people are more an expert in this. This is observational from my time both in the county and working with Santa Clarita and other cities that some of these technology companies that we're trying to attract uh need scalable uh sizes to work from. And so working with a smaller building type allows them to expand into multiple buildings over time. If you look at probably our greatest current success being Misner Filtration, they are all over the place in that neighborhood. They would probably given a chance to do it again like to be within a single campus instead of spread up and down uh Flynn Road like they are. And so this I think hits that need. It also creates a buyer opportunity which a lot of industrial parks only want to lease you a building. So my understanding is that there would be an openness to allowing those users to own their buildings which is very important for stock held companies.

Okay. Thank you so much Mr. Hardgrave. Uh the second question is if the modifications are approved uh what is the anticipated timeline um for attracting tenants and moving toward construction and occupancy which is the fun part for Yes. Uh all I can speak to is what I perceive as the plan check process. My understanding is they would go into uh construction drawings immediately on this. Uh fortunately at this site the backbone is already in the site, right? The surrounding streets and everything else are there and Darren can address the other issues regarding their timing. Thank you.

Oh, perfect. Thank you. Uh Mayor Tennyson, council members, my name is Darren Embry, uh representing the applicant tonight. I live in Los Angeles. Um, just going to kind of echo what Dennis said. Um, as far as flexibility, responsiveness to the marketplace. You'll see that we have more, you know, diverse sizes of buildings now in the in the layout in the planning. As far as the timing, um, we want to kick this project off focusing on the auto center and then the off-site developments. The access point at Springville, I think, has has been a gamecher. you know, everything that you're seeing tonight, what that we're bringing forward is with the intention of expediting us getting started. So, CDs, we're going to start working on those within the next 30 to 45 days if we are fortunate enough and receive your votes of confidence tonight.

Thank you. And Darren, last question. Um, is I see some familiar faces in the audience. Is the project going to be built on unionized labor and if so, which unions? Well, Launa, our friends are here tonight. obviously in great numbers and uh we're working with Ultman's as our general contractor and they are a wellrecoognized union shop. So, okay, great. Thank you so much. I have no further questions. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, this is an advertised public hearing, so we will open it up if we have any public comments.

Yes, we do. We have six speakers. The first speaker is Michael Shanklin. Please come up to the podium.

Good evening, council members. Mayor Tennyson. Uh my name is Michael Shanklin. I'm the executive director of Kidstream Children's Museum, and I would love to speak in support of this project. There there are so many elements of this that I think are important for our children in our community. Where where you see a car wash, I see chemistry. Where where where you see the car wash uh recycling water system, I see an opportunity to educate children on the importance of wise water usage. Where you see a dealership uh that that sells vehicles, I see an opportunity to teach children about engineering and design and creativity. So, uh, as we've been getting to know the principles, there's an a tremendous amount of enthusiasm about the project because we recognize that we can leverage this incredible opportunity for the city with educational opportunities for our children. So, I urge you and uh hope that you will uh vote in support of the project as we move forward with Kidstream. We also look for every opportunity in the community to leverage resources. So, thank you for your consideration tonight. Tom Leonard. My name is Tom Leonard and uh thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight. I have been a member of this community for 82 years and 35 years ago in 1985 I spent a lot of time in this room uh developing the factory outlet center. The issue there with the city council is Cambrio was divided by the freeway and they thought the north side of the freeway was the infill section to concentrate on and the south side of the freeway was open space agriculture

uh non-income producing. By developing the factory outlet center, we know that that is really the emphasis or part of the emphasis that drives city economic structure. It's the leading provider of income to the city through their sales tax. It provides they're the largest provider of real estate taxes in the city. Also, it created a further emphasis where the Target center came in. After that, the Home Depot Center came in and now we see Costco. And if you add all that up, I'm not the expert here with the city, but I would imagine that's your lion share of income. Now, why I'm here to speak about this project, the first time I've been back to the city council in 35 years, it is on the south side of the freeway. It's an important interchange and what's relative about it is the projects that I've just described have reached a point where they are plan plateau in their income uh stream to the city. The city has needs uh every year and they get more expensive. Labor goes up, gasoline goes up, vehicles go up. your whole cost of running a city goes up. So you need additional income to support that and this project will do that. It has a large component of retail sales and then you have an executive business park behind it. It's a very smart development. It's also the last open space in that chain in the south side of the freeway. Uh which is relevant. It helps uh

pay for that very nice interchange that you have there. I think that's the nicest interchange in the state of California. It's wellmaintained and you know that cost city a lot of money and now you can uh recapture a lot of that income with the development fees you get from that project. Also, it continues the role that the city plays in maintaining the city. I think the city has the nicest roadways of any city in Ventura County. It has the nicest public landscaping of any city in this county.

Excuse me a minute. Our clock disappeared. You've already passed the three minutes, sir. All right. Well, then I'll I'll I'll conclude and I hope you vote favorably in this project. Thank you. Thank you.

The next speaker is Dave Rand followed by Jose Garcia. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson, Vice Mayor uh Martinez Bravo. Uh thank you for the and council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Jose Garcia. I'm a lifelong Luna member, Labor's International Union of North America. We are here in full support of this project. And just to go off the educational thing, I think our role in this is very educational for our kids to show what skilled local labor can do in our community and bring to fruition things that make our city money, you know, and on the educational side, this will help our apprenticeship because people will come and be apprentices on this program. And another thing, our union provides scholarships for our children to go further in education. So, we're in full support of this project. When developers like this infuse private money with skilled labor, it's a win-win all the way around. And we're ready to deliver you a worldclass project for the city of Camaro. Thank you so much. The next speaker is Jacob Angland, followed by Andy Connley.

Hello, Mayor Tennyson, council members. Thank you. I hope you're able to get my documentation. I had emailed it in and and send in copies yesterday to the city clerk. So, I won't read through all of it, but I want to touch on a couple points of my formal objection to the land. As I look at it, I believe that there's some conflict with the vision of the recent sustainability master plan that was in 2023 compared to the 1986 initial north airport plans. And even looking at this the SEIR development, it was originally saying that even in this 2016 documentation that the state located that as farmland of local importance, not state importance, but local importance. And I know it's been sittingow, they say, since 2013. But with the sustainability plan, we've been approving that we would create regenerative spaces, places with native plants, uh, a better ecosystem, getting carbon neutrality by 2045. And the 5,300 metric tons square tons of carbon emissions that this is citing I don't think captures the full loss to paving 60 uh 46 acres uh of land is like we've heard this is the last available slot and it's strategically located next to the airport. So we already have emissions from the airport the new other Costco gas developments. So this is a key place to actually plant native plants and carbon sequestering plants. And even though there's no current irrigation, you could create sustainable practices of swailes and digging that the water actually moves through the system uh catching all of the nutrients along the way. And you've even got that dump site at the bottom. And so this could be developed completely different. And I know that would require some reszoning, but that's what I'm proposing is that this would be formally objected and that there would be a plan to maybe relook at that land of how that could be strategically used. And so you can see

from the the sustainability plan, there's several points um MW1.4 uh MR2, MR 1.2 to with the urban greening initiatives, uh, actually creating community gardens, the partnerships and community partnerships. I love the fact that there could be education, but what type of education could we actually do if we were creating a regenerative landscape? I had the opportunity to go to Davis this last weekend and tour a place called Village Homes that was established in 1970. needs a 70 acre sustainable living plot. And so I'm not necessarily recommending housing in this, but there's a way to design the land together for edible landscapes that we can just think about local food, not necessarily exporting our food out. And so while I won't go through again all of these list by list, you can you can see that I really believe that we need to not just think about the the local income, but what loss could happen in creating that resilient future that we've laid out that we desire with the sustainability.

The last speaker is Andy Connley. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson, members of the council. My name is Andy Connley. I'm the president and CEO of the West Ventura County Business Alliance, the Chamber of Commerce representing Camrio, Oxnard, and Port Wayini. Our organization represents hundreds of local employers, entrepreneurs, and community organizations who are deeply invested in the future of our regional economy in the success of our communities, including many businesses that operate right here in Camaro. On behalf of the WVCBA, I am here tonight to respectfully urge you uh to adopt the resolutions presented this evening so that this project can move forward. Approving this project would bring three important benefits to Camrio. First, it would create significant economic development opportunities. Established businesses are already interested in making Camrio their home, including this proposed auto dealership. And modern industrial facilities would help attract manufacturing, research and development, life sciences, and many other growing industries. Uh these facilities would also provide space for existing local businesses to expand and continue to grow here in Camaro. Second, it would support the creation of many new jobs as well as all the construction jobs that will come with it. And this would help companies uh move in here to Cameo and current businesses expand. And that growth translates directly into employment opportunities. These would be well-paying jobs with competitive benefits providing valuable career opportunities for the residents of Camaro. And third, this project would be a substantial generator of sales tax revenue for the city. Funding that can support essential services,

infrastructure improvements, and quality of life investments for Cameo residents. Additionally, this project aligns with the area specific plan and the city's general plan is consistent with what is envisioned for the area and fits squarely within the framework the city has established for responsible growth. In closing, a project like this helps ensure Camrio remains competitive and attracting quality employers while continuing to support a strong and balanced local economy. For these reasons, economic opportunity, job creation, and new revenues for the city, I respectfully urge the council to approve the proposed amendments and allow this project to move forward. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Is that the last speaker? That's correct. With that, we will close the public comment portion of the hearing and open it up for council discussion. Mr. I'm happy to start. Go ahead.

Uh, thank you, Mayor, and thank you to everyone who spoke um those were who were in support of the project and the gentleman who uh spoke in um in opposition of it as well. Uh for full transparency, last Thursday I had a conversation with Mr. Darren Enry. Um he's the applicant. He had reached out to me uh to provide just an update on the modifications. Um, so I'm personally in support of the proposed modifications to the fairing pro uh project. Um, I think that projects like this need to be able to adapt to changing market conditions so they can ultimately succeed and I think these adjustments will help ensure that the project is marketable and that was uh made clear today as well. um in addition to uh it being capable of attracting um the kinds of companies that we want to see uh thrive in the city of Camrio. Um I think that this uh development has the potential to bring these high quality jobs uh research and innovation sectors and I think if we want Camrio to remain regionally competitive um with our nearby communities that are also attracting the life sciences and technology uh we need projects like this that create that environment the right environment for those employers. Um, and I also want to acknowledge that the developers have already demonstrated um, some form of commitment to our community because even before they have built, they have been uh, supporting as we heard from Kidstream Children's Museum which will also be such an important asset to our community and they've also invested locally um, as we see also through uh, investing in in workers,

local workers, unionized workers uh such as through Lyuna. Um Lyuna on a personal note uh my father was a farm worker um when I was growing up and my and he could not we could just couldn't afford um health care and it wasn't until he became a union member through Lyuna that we were able to gain access through health care. So when we're thinking about projects like this, we're not just thinking about the economy and that is definitely a part of it, but what's also embedded in it is a true investment in little girls like that we see here in the public and and children and families like mine. So I'm very grateful for that as well. And so I really appreciate the vision behind this project and when ready I I would be willing to uh move in support of the proposed modifications and of staff's recommendations.

Anyone else?

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Uh echoing my colleague, thank you for everybody for speaking uh tonight. I'll note that the initial approval of this project was back in May of 24 uh by the planning commission and ultimately coming to council and that this is a modification uh to an existing approval and you go all the way back and so actually I'm still up on the board. It was a the uh final SEIR for this uh was based on a on a document uh certified in in 2016 and I'm very mindful of Mr. Leonard's comments uh relative to the uh and and an appreciation for all the work that he has done through the years uh in terms of the vision for this area of Camaro. Um uh I I acknowledge the items um that um very were very articulately set forth by Mr. England and thank you. Um, and I acknowledge a sustainability master plan for the city and for city operations. So, I want to make sure that you understand that it's for the city itself in its municipal operations. So, one of the difficulties that I have and I uh won't speak for the rest of council, but sometimes, you know, it's a matter it's a matter of balance and it's a matter of what um we think is the best thing to do based on public input uh for uh for the city. And in light of the anticipated use of this property for for literally for decades uh and in light of its uh economic development aspects which are of critical significance uh for our city going forward um I think as a matter of balance uh I'm in full support of the project. I appreciate um the vision that it's taken. I I think the way I would probably term this modification is more of a right sizing uh based on both I guess Mr. Hargrave

really touched on it both short-term and long-term. Um but I'm uh I am looking forward to seeing this project start soon uh as soon as feasible and I'm in full support and so thank you to everybody for for your comments. Much appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, I was in support of this project um, originally um, for many of the reasons that have already been expressed by my colleagues. Um, I believe that this is an opportunity for manufacturing, life science, and tech to come in and open businesses and create more jobs. Um, I'm a strong believer in union jobs to develop this project and I'm very happy about that. Um, and I think this is a good land use. I think it's consistent with our general plan. Um, and I think the changes, as um, Council Member Trembley said is right sizing. Um, I like that term. Uh, I think that makes sense and I think these are good changes. Um, and they make sense and reflect the market conditions. So, I am too in in support of this. I'll give it a try. Um, excuse me. It's been 30 years uh in the making here and if all of us will remember there's been a lot of adorations uh for this project here. Um I think it's really important that we have highpaying jobs here and one of the big reasons for that it's only going to get more expensive to live here. So, we need to acknowledge that. Um, I want to ditto everything that my colleagues have said here. I think this is a a long range project that's going to really benefit the future of our city here. And um the

modification, I support that. To me, it shows that they're looking at what the market is is uh predicting and saying the last thing we need is another vacant um building here. We don't need any more of that. But they've done their due diligence and I can support it. Ditto. Now, I will call for a motion in a second. I am happy to uh motion to support US recommendations 1 through 4. I'll second it. We have a motion and a second. Roll call vote. Council member Santangelo.

Yes. Vice Mayor Martinez Bravo. Yes. Council member Kildy. Yes. Council member Trembley. Yes. Mayor Tennyson. Yes. That passes unanimously. H next up. Oh, I'm sorry. At the request of a fellow council member, we're going to take a quick 10-minute recess. Sorry, James.

Mr. Fowler will give us an update on the Berry Street Arnneal Road affordable housing project.

Yes, thank you. Uh, as you said, I'll be providing an update for both Berry Street and Arnneal Road. The action itself is only related to Arneal Road, but because these projects have been discussed in kind of a joint fashion in the past, we wanted to take the opportunity to uh give you an update on both. So, with that said, uh starting off with the Arnneal Road project, that's a visual of how it looks right now. Uh the city acquired the property in 2017, entitled the project in 2023 after a zone change, general plan amendment, and some environmental analysis. Uh and then thereafter was looking for grant funding to fund the construction of the project, which we received in 2024 uh with the award of the $7.3 million ERF grant uh 6.3 million of which was earmarked for construction. Uh, a contract was awarded to SL Leonard in October 2025 to provide construction management, inspection, constructibility analysis, and materials testing services. Um, happily, the city's actually been acrewing interest on the grant um, since its receipt in the second quarter of 2025. Um, in total, the city has accured about $150,000 in interest through December 2025, um, with an additional expected $150,000 of interest acrruel by the end of June. Um, and this money must be used to fund grant activities. And in fact, um, thus far it has. So, the city's um, spent $133,000 thus far on the constructibility analysis, preparation of the book specs, which are part of the notice inviting bid. um finalization of the plans and minor site work. So all of that was more than covered by the interest acred. So moving on um the Berry Street project, we have a visual there as well

as a map of the two sites. You can see there they're really just around the corner from each other, which is partially why they're discussed uh jointly typically. Um Berry Streets are a six-unit project. It was previously brought to council for consideration at the same time uh the RF grant was accepted. The projects again very geographically close to one another and both are intended to serve uh the city's homeless population. Uh Berry Street is earmarked more for uh six month to 8month sort of stays uh before uh residents can move on to permanent housing. whereas Arneal Road is meant to be uh a longerterm stays. Um in May of 2024, the city completed the purchase of the tax default property after a a fairly lengthy uh tax default sale. Um in July of 2024, the city released an RFP uh soliciting bids for the construction of the six-unit project or in the manufacturer of the units. Um and the council awarded a professional services agreement to Azur printed homes. Uh we want to highlight Azour is an innovative creator of attractive almost ADU styled uh manufactured units and they utilize a blend of environmentally friendly recycled polymers which are non-toxic and uh VOCC free plastic that's volatile organic compound free plastic uh also fiberglass and concrete. Uh the units are actually in the process of being manufactured offsite uh at Azur's facility in a Gardina and will be delivered to the site fully assembled. Um Azur will prepare the site with water, sewer, and electricity ahead of delivery and installation. Uh all units will be equipped with an efficiency

kitchen and bathroom. And that's in, you know, somewhat sharp contrast to um other projects where potentially they they have shared facilities. So that's something uh we think is a good thing. Uh the project is also grant funded, though it utilizes community development block grant funds. Um and the project plans are currently in the final stages of review by the fire department. Um and permits are expected to be issued in April. So, as far as the city council strategic plan objectives this meet, so um objective one is to essentially uh collaborate with the VC sheriff's department, VC healthcare agency and other agencies to help with homelessness. Um this project is kind of uh working extremely closely with Project Hope. Project Hope will be providing services on site um and will the units will be filled by clients that are working with project hope. So uh that aligns very closely with objective one. Um similarly objective six is to uh develop alternate methods to move forward with housing projects um without traditional redevelopment property tax increment financing. Um, in in both of these cases, the city's uh employing grant funds. Uh, finally, objective 10 is to encourage the development of appropriate infill housing projects that include affordable housing opportunities to help address the housing crisis in our area and uh provide homeless housing. Again, that's quite literally what these projects do. Uh the project also aligns very closely with the city's housing element in that program 18 of the housing element specifically identifies uh the Arnneal road housing project. Um, program 17 was the uh program that our homelessness

strategic plan kind of emerged out of, but it also um identifies uh the need for the city to uh create some housing. Um similarly, uh program 10 is adequate sites uh for our arena numbers and this was one of the Arnneal road was one of the sites identified. So I want to take an opportunity again to um highlight who will be served at these project projects. Um the two projects work in tandem to provide safe and attractive progressive housing opportunities consistent with the specific population needs of the population of Camaro. Um the Berry Street project will provide housing for residents around six to eight months while they gain the skills and resources consistent with living in more permanent housing. The near the nearby Arneal Road affordable housing project will provide permanent housing for those that demonstrate long-term self- sustainability. Both projects will provide professional assistance services to help residents maintain conditions for housing stability. And really what that means is both project hope as well as a permanent um property manager. Uh residents of these units will be long-term Camrio community members, people who have established roots here who are experiencing homelessness. Um and every individual placed in these units will have already been extensively vetted by Project Hope. Um and will be actively engaged in case management services. Uh and once again, individuals selected for this program have been identified as having a strong likelihood of achieving housing stability and long-term self- sustainability. So, as part of these the the strategy for both these projects um and in order

to keep the community informed, um staff have developed a communications plan uh to let the community know about project progress. Uh we'll have a web page dedicated to the projects, social media outreach, direct mailers to residents and businesses in close proximity as well as periodic updates to the council amongst other things listed there. Finally, as far as a fiscal impact, there's no fiscal impact to the actions recommended tonight. Um both projects have been awarded significant grant funding and are not projected to have an impact on the general fund. And finally, the recommendation there um is to release effectively to approve the release of the notice inviting bid bids and the accompanying specifications and plans. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Question questions for James. I don't have questions. Nope. Hearing none. Madame clerk, any public comments? There are no speakers. No public comments, council discussion. I'll start. Okay.

I support this. Um I want to thank the staff um for all the hard work. Um this is a necessary project and it's needed in our city and um it took a long time to for it to come about, but it's going to be worth the wait. So, it's going to be some highquality projects here that fits into the area of our city.

Um, thank you. I I see our strategy with homelessness as this large pie. Um, and we have Project Hope. Um, we have a whole bunch of different ways of meeting people's needs. Um, and this is one piece of that. Um, and I fully support this and I'm very excited about this project. Um, I think it makes really great use of some infill. Um, and I think it is going to serve its purpose to provide some temporary housing. Um, as you've discussed, there's already people that we I I think there's already people that we have that have been not accepted, but that we know in the future would be good fit for this type of housing. Um, so I support this and I'm glad you brought it to us and I thank all the staff for their hard work. Uh this is the point where I say ditto uh to the welltaken comments by by my colleagues and I fully support it and I fully support it as well. In addition to all of the reasons that were given as to why this project is necessary in our community, I will add that I think it is always important to prioritize the dignity of humanity no matter who we are in this community and I think that this project uh is right in line with that. So I will thoroughly support it as well.

Ditto. Do we have a motion in a second? Mr. Mayor, yes. I'll move the recommended items. I can second. We have a motion and a second. Madame clerk, roll call. Council member Santangelo. Yes. Vice Mayor Martinez Bravo. Yes. Council member Kildy. Yes. Council member Trembley. Yes. Mayor Tennyson. Yes. That passes unanimously.

Thank you, James. Next up is item one, the OPV Coalition versus Fox Canyon GMA. And making the presentation is the city's attorney representing them in this matter, Mr. Ryan Bizera. Welcome.

Good evening. Thank you for having me. Um, always good to see you. So, yes. So, what we're doing today is I'm giving um a summary of where we are on this lawsuit. The um Oxnard Pleasant Valley groundwater adjudication. Groundwater adjudications are a lawsuit, but they are a quite unique kind of lawsuit um involving thousands of people sometimes. So, um they're a little bit complex to explain, but we'll do our best this evening. So, why does the city of Camaro why are you concerned about this? And it fundamentally comes down to the fact that the city has relied on local groundwater from what we call the Pleasant Valley basin for decades. And this lawsuit would determine potentially the rights of everyone in the Pleasant Valley and Oxnard Basin all the way out to Ventura on the north at the coast down to Port Wine on the south on the coast um and then back to Cam Rio. Who gets to pump how much groundwater? And so it it intertwines with all sorts of things including the city has used imported water coming from Northern California imported through Metropolitan and Kayagus over time and it it particularly potentially impacts the city's rather unique North Pleasant Valley groundwater desalter where you have implemented a you know a win-win project involving millions and millions of dollars of investment to both remove salts from the Pleasant Valley Basin and produce clean drinking water from pretty salty groundwater. So, all of these things are at play in this lawsuit. So, to understand the lawsuit, you need to um understand what it is we're actually dealing with. So, in California, we

we manage and litigate groundwater largely in what we call basins. And basins aren't all they're not bathtubs. Uh a lot of times in the state they're defined by uh lines on maps because otherwise the they'd be too big to do anything with realistically. So what you have in central Ventura County, you can see it on the map is most of these basins with the various colors are linked in some way. The groundwater flows across the boundary of of the ones you can see on the map. Really only the Aoyo Santa Rosa basin isn't connected in any way. It it's uphill. It's where Thousand Oaks is. So you can see that there's all of these basins and the lawsuit we're dealing with just concerns the Oxnard subbasin and the Pleasant Valley basin. And in fact, the Los Posus basin that's adjacent to the two of them uh just about a week ago the court of appeal in Ventura um issued its decision on appeal in the separate adjudication of that basin. But the water does flow across most of these boundaries you see. So what is this lawsuit and how did we get to this particular place? So, this particular lawsuit is driven um partly by the state's enactment of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which is the first law in California that requires statewide um the organized management of groundwater. Uh, this area is a little different in that Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency was created specially back in the early 1980s to manage groundwater, but what we call Sigma, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, applies rules that apply statewide to all these things. So, in

this case, in 2019, um, Fox Canyon adopted a groundwater allocation ordinance to tell people how much groundwater they could pump. and um a pretty large group of land owners didn't care for how that ordinance worked and so they filed this lawsuit in June of 2021. Um now what what they did here the we attorneys when you file a lawsuit you have what are called causes of action in the lawsuit. Basically what are your legal claims? What is it you're claiming is illegal that someone did. And so in this lawsuit, there are four of these causes of action and they deal with both attempting to invalidate Fox Canyon's allocation ordinance and also litigating every single party's water right to pump groundwater. So in contrast, the city of Oxnard also didn't like some of Fox Canyon's allocation ordinance. So they sued Fox Canyon over the ordinance without going the next step of bringing all of the groundwater pumpers into one lawsuit. So the lawsuit we have this OPV case is as against all pumpers in both the Oxnard and Pleasant Valley basins. So why is this a big deal for Camaro? Well, you're a defendant. uh you're one of the hundreds of defendants and essentially all the public agencies that pump groundwater in the two basins are involved. And so what do you have at issue? Well, Camaro is relatively unique. You're the only city in the Pleasant Valley basin and your land mass is about half of the basin. So you really are deeply involved in Pleasant Valley. As we talked about a little earlier, you historically for decades the city has relied on local groundwater, but you have the unique

situation where as Seami Valley and Moore Park developed and they developed using water imported, as I understand it at least, they developed using water imported from Northern California down the California aqueduct you see along I5 pumped over the Hatches coming into this area. And as that happened and they discharged their waste water as um their communities grew, the salts that accum that were in that water came down the aalos and flowed into the Pleasant Valley basin. And in particular, your historic wells, wells A and B are up in your northeast corner of the city because that's the most uphill place. And so if you have your groundwater wells there, you can flow your water by gravity through the rest of the system. They also are the essentially right on top of the first place where the salty water from upstream flowed into the basin. So you had salty water mound up right at your groundwater wells, which caused them to be saltier than you could really use directly. You know, there are laws about how much salts you can have in drinking water. And so the salts that were coming in the groundwater caused you problems. And essentially the city built its desalter and with $70 million of federal and state and rateayer money to both remove salts from the groundwater and produce clean drinking water again from those wells. And so that's the crux of what is that issue really for the city uh in this OPV case. This also this salts issue flows through your entire water system. So if you have salty drinking water, you end up having saltier waste

water coming out of houses and the city you have to treat the waste water and you do it well enough that you're delivering recycled water to farmers they can actually use so that they don't pump ground water. Um, but this whole s this whole issue with the salts flowing through your water system is both a drinking water and a wastewater issue. So again, just kind of on the um the quantities of how your water system has worked over time as as I understand it at least before the desalter began operating in the in 2023, you were having to use more and more imported water because you had to blend it with the drink with the groundwater coming out of your wells so that you could get the salts and your drinking water down to a place where it complied with law. So you were using more and more imported water from Kyaggas. Now now with the dieselter you have kind of flipped your mix of drinking water sources to be more reliant on your local groundwater as you were historically um and less on the imported water. So, as again, this is a little before my time working with the city, but as I understand it, you did a pretty comprehensive financial analysis and determined that building this desalter to take this essentially desalinate your groundwater was a cheaper and more reliable option than continuing to buy more and more water from Northern California. This again allows you to deliver quite a bit of recycled water to farmers um down at down near your wastewater treatment plant down near Kaneo Creek. So, when you start to dig in and to how this lawsuit might affect the city's water

supplies, probably the single most important thing is that because Fox Canyon has um authority under state law to issue groundwater pumping allocations, as you work through the whole process of determining whether the desalter was feasible, uh you went to Fox Canyon and obtained a pumping allocation. specifically for the dissalter 4 400 acre feet a year of pumping. And essentially what that allowed you to do is to invest in the dsalter with the knowledge that you could get that much water out of your project. Now you don't get in 40 4,500 acre feet directly out of the desalter. There's some loss in the desalination process. you get about 3 3,900 acre feet as I understand it a year. But if you can't operate the dieselter to its full capacity, you end up potentially stranding some of your investment and you end up having probably to buy more imported water, which is more costly, is not consistent with what your planning was. and you end up also potentially in a place where you're having a problem with land owners out there because under California law, the basic rule is that land owners have a priority to what we call native water supplies, water that derives from just natural processes over cities. And to the extent a court determines that the native groundwater is overdrafted, you start to have a problem with some of the land owners out in the rest of the Pleasant Valley basin. So essentially, as I as I discussed, all of the interests you have in your

water supplies end up at stake in this lawsuit because one, you've relied on local groundwater historically as an important part of your water supply mix. two, you have millions and millions of dollars of investments in cleaning up the local groundwater so that you can use it and remove salt. Um, if you have to litigate this case through, you end up having to argue about all kinds of things. So, under California law, someone who imports water to a basin has something of a priority right to the extent that those imports augment the groundwater basin supplies. You might, if this case goes far enough, you might have to litigate whether you have that kind of priority imported water, right? You also get into well what we we attorneys call inlue recharge, which means when you're delivering recycled water to farmers, they're not pumping as much and the basin is higher in its groundwater. As a result, you may have to have an argument about who gets to have credit for the increased levels of groundwater. You know, this gets more and more controversial obviously the deeper you go into this big lawsuit. So, how has this lawsuit proceeded? The initial complaint was filed back in June of 2021. The city wasn't named, the city, it was kind of unusual. The city was actually listed in the document as somebody who might get sued to start with and then it was in late 2022 you were actually named as a defendant. So, we've had a lot of what you might call initial skirmishing about how the lawsuit would be organized, but we really got down to brass tax in the middle of last year. Um, the the case is in Santa Barbara Superior Court and um that court set a trial date for September of last year. Um about a month

before that there were some heavy duty negotiations and other parties negotiated what we attorneys call safe yields which is the maximum amount of water you can pump from a basin. Other parties negotiated safe yields for both Oxnard and Pleasant Valley and the city could not agree with them. So we went to trial in September of last year. uh in October the superior court adopted the other party's proposed decision and we are now in the appeals process and so um we filed what we filed what you might call an appeal um at the end of last year and we filed our opening brief to the court of appeal in Ventura um about two weeks ago. So this settlement who who adopted it? So basically the the list the short answer is all of the active parties in the case really except the city adopted it. I don't think that is as unusual as it sounds given that you are the one city in the Pleasant Valley Basin and you occupy about half of its land mass. I would say people probably shouldn't be surprised that you might not agree with others. Uh but in any case, this is a partial list of parties that essentially agreed to this um settlement value that we did not agree with. So what is it we didn't agree with? Well, the decision essentially adopted two numbers for the Pleasant Valley Basin. It adopted a total safe yield, so the total amount of water available to pump of 13,750 acre feet a year. That was the negotiated number. It then treated about 69% of that 9,500 acre feet as native

water. So the that would be considered water resulting from the processes of nature, not water imported, not water coming in from more park and Seami Valley's use of um imported water. uh they the decision reached that total number the 13,000 by essentially saying pumping in the Pleasant Valley basin bears some responsibility not quantified for seawater intrusion in the Oxnard subbasin at the coast and the decision says the Pleasant Valley basin is overdrafted meaning that in in this as the decision states it there's more pumping going on than and the basin is recharging. Um, our proposal didn't agree with any of those points. It wasn't adopted obviously, but we proposed essentially a safe yield of 17,100 acre feet, higher allowable pumping based on long-term average pumping, and then actually gain in the groundwater basin storage. When you add those two things together, we think it's 17,100 acre feet. We propose that native and non-native water is about equal. Basically, we don't think that the decision accounts for the fact that a lot of the water coming in through a Royal Osposus right to your wells in the northeast corner is non-native water. And we think that the technical analysis shows that the basin is not overdrafted, that it has sustained long-term pumping while not um having a problem. So why why is Camaro appealing? I mean, basically, we think both the total safe

yield and the um what you might call the non-native yield are too low. Uh on the non-native yield, it appears to us that there's little dispute that the um water coming in from upstream is pretty heavily non-native and yet it appears to be treated as native water. And we think that the tech the long-term pumping numbers show that the basin has sustained more than the 13,750 acre feet per year of pumping. And so there's actually more water available to Camaro and all of the other Pleasant Valley basin parties to pump. So what are our next steps? Um as I said, we have appealed to the Court of Appeal. Um because we're in the middle of what could be, you know, years and years more of litigation, it's not entirely clear that the Court of Appeal will actually hear the case now. Uh, as of now, it looks like they might, but it's possible they won't. Uh, so there's various possible results coming from the Court of Appeal, and we could receive a decision at any time, or it could be quite a bit longer before we receive a decision from them. Um, whatever the court of appeals says, the most the next step in the superior court up in Santa Barbara is what we attorneys call phase two, which would be probably at least two years of litigation where all of the parties fight amongst themselves as to who gets to pump how much. Uh, essentially a water right trial involving potentially hundreds of parties. It's would might be very complicated. That would not necessarily be the end of it. Phase three then is scheduled at some point to deal with what we water attorneys call physical solution, which normal human beings

would say is a management plan. You in water in water litigation, you can actually litigate a management plan with all sorts of rules in it. Um it that's why these cases aren't like car accidents or slip and falls. you're getting into some really really really complex um and frankly highly political negotiations sometimes. And so that brings the the last thing. It is quite likely at some point there will at least be a global settlement discussion. You know, dozens to hundreds of parties negotiating settlement. That is normally how groundwater adjudications are resolved. you I I don't know that there have been very many in California where you have litigated everything down to the very you know to the dotting the eyes and crossing the tees. Usually there's some sort of very involved settlement discussion and as you can imagine with a case this complex and this many parties even a settlement disc discussion can take a long time. Um I was involved in one that took about 15 months off and on um you know 10 years ago 15 years ago I'm getting old 15 years ago. Um so that's sort of how these cases proceed and what's at issue here. Um this is a pretty high level summary. Um I consciously avoided using any Latin terms um so that we didn't put people to entirely to sleep but that that's that's where we are in this case. um after you know it's we're not quite five years in and um it's sort of hard to see the end of it but that's where we are now.

Mr. Mayor, two questions. Go ahead. Can I go ahead and and start Ryan? Thank thanks for the thanks for the summary. It's really useful. Can we go back? I'm just sitting here. Can we go back to like slide three just just looking at the basins? And we really have two basins at issue here. One is the Pleasant Valley basin and the other is the Oxnard. Sometimes it's called Oxnard Basin, but it's Oxnard's subbasin, right? Yes. That's how Department of Water Resources refers to it. And and the two are the the if it's my understanding that the two are hydraologically connected as most of the ba as most of the basins in in the West County are, right?

Yes. And that's Yeah. Yeah, it's a common thing in California that water, groundwater in some way is flowing across the legal boundary of the basins as set by the state. And I was sitting here taking notes and I I think it was slide 11 where where um it indicated that you know the Pleasant Valley let's go to slide 11 I think right down the bottom and and Camry's proposal Pleasant Valley basin is not overdrafted uh based on a groundwater sustainability plan analysis. Um, I I guess my my question is I understand that part, but has the Pleasant Valley Basin historically been overdrafted? And and why why does that matter? What you have is so Department of Water Resources, the state uh was assigned beginning in the 1970s to identify basins and give some indication of their status. And over time, Pleasant Valley and Oxnard have appeared as separate basins much of the time, but not all of the time in the state's reports. And the state at times has called Pleasant Valley overdrafted. Uh, and as far as I can tell, it's largely because of the connection to Oxnard with seawater intrusion. Now, what has happened in the last several years is because of the groundwater sustainability act, there's been much deeper levels of analysis throughout the state as to the status of the basins. And the reason we argued this is that when the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency did its plan under Sigma in 2019 2020, they did a deep dive technically and they found the basin's not overdrafted. And it wasn't just a statement that it wasn't overdrafted.

There's a bunch of complicated math that's that quantifies, as I understand it, based on actual data, what the pumping more or less has been in Pleasant Valley since about 1985. And that's about between 15 and 16,000 acre feet a year of pumping. And that same analysis showed that with that level of pumping, the basin was gaining groundwater, not losing it. So that strikes me at least as I understand it groundwater law that's not an overdraft. You know when you when you have a long-term average level of pumping and you're gaining groundwater you're you know you're in equilibrium or perhaps a little bit in surplus.

So there there there's storage and then there's gain and then there's outflow correct to the other aquifer. Right. Uh yeah. Right. when when you have one of these Bolton 118 boundaries, there's usually water flowing over the boundary in some way, right? So, why why does that matter in terms of Pleasant? How how Pleasant Valley has historically uh been operated? Well, in in general, if you have water flowing out of your basin and you're not sucking water into your basin, you're in equilibrium. Okay?

In general. And so what as I understand the trial evidence having been through the trial, the modeling, and this is modeling, it's not measurement, is that more or less 5,000 acre feet a year or so has flowed out of Pleasant Valley into Oxnard across that Bolton 118 boundary. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Kildy.

Yeah. Take a step, Ryan. Um, I think it's also important, Addie, it took us 20 years to get approval for a Dalter plant. It was 20 years. And could you kind of, pardon the pun, um, drill down how many acre feet um, do we need to pump to make our financial investment in an assaulter worthwhile? Well, I I'll say I I went to law school partly so I didn't have to do math. So, I'm not in in entirely clear on the financial aspects of it. But what I do know is that after all that analysis and I I think you did at least one EIR and I think you did a couple supplemental EIS and then you did some more of that. did an enormous amount of analysis to support the dieselter. At the end of it in 2016, Fox Canyon issued you this pumping allocation of 4,500 acre feet a year and that's the rock bottom like basis of your investment. We can get this much water out of this facility. And so you don't get that whole 4,500 acre feet as a water supply, but that's the pumping number the project's based on. And so to the extent your pumping at the dieselter gets constrained below that, it starts to eat into the basis of your investment for the facility.

Thank you, Council Member Santangelo. Thank you for being here, Ryan. Thank you. Um can you explain um what the city is trying to accomplish through the appeals process?

Yeah, essentially there's there's basically two things. One is we think the non-native number well let me go back. We think the native safe yield number was set too high. We think we think the evidence shows that number includes non-native water that came down a royal lous. That is the reason you have salts at your city wells. And so we're appealing because we think the converse of native yield would be non-native yield. We think the non-native should be higher to account for that. So that's that's possibly the most important thing. The second thing is that we just we think the total safe yield is too low and that the basin's not actually overdrafted. And fundamentally, life is easier if you're in a basin that's not overdrafted than if you're in a basin that is overdrafted. And when you get into a basin that's overdrafted now, everybody has to really start sharpening knives for other parties to try to figure out how much you get to pump. We we just we think that the technical analysis, again, this is what we think. The technical analysis shows the safe yield's not that low and it'd be better to live in a world where the Pleasant Valley basin is not overdrafted.

Thank you. Uh Ryan, thank you so much for being here and for providing uh such an infor informative presentation to our community members on this important topic. Uh my question to you is you've mentioned the city of Oxnard uh briefly throughout your presentation. Can you speak to a little bit more in depth as to the role that the city of Oxnard plays in all of this?

Sure. So the city of Oxnard is like the city of Cam Rio. They don't want to be in this lawsuit. I think um they are concerned about its potential impacts on their water supplies just as the city of Camaro is. Um I honestly don't know in in great depth all their water supplies. I know they're it's quite complicated. You know, when you're out at the coast and you may have some salts coming into your groundwater, it gets pretty complicated. and they've done all sorts of things including using imported water and and so you know I I can we don't agree with them right now but I'll tell I'll say that they're doing what they think that is necessary for their municipal supplies. Now, that being said, they are extremely interested, as far as I can tell, in what the total yield of the Pleasant Valley basin is because it seems to be they're concerned that they want to make sure enough water is coming out of Pleasant Valley to help with seawater intrusion. That's a little different than Camaro. Um, but I I think I I wouldn't say they're being terrible. I would say they're trying to deal with their water supply issues the way Cam Rio is. It's just we don't agree with them on some things.

Okay. Thank you,

Ryan. It's gotten somewhat contentious during um the mediation and some of the uh public pronouncements that are going on now. Do you think there's still a possibility of a settlement between all of the players at the table? Yes, I I do. I mean, it's it's the nature of groundwater adjudications that they are highly political and contentious. They always are. Um, in fact, I mean, you get unfortunate situations because every, you know, you're talking about everybody's groundwater pumping, which is, you know, central to how a lot of people do business. You get disputes between business partners, you get disputes within families, they get really contentious, but they generally settle in some way. And the usual pattern is 75 80% of the active parties or maybe 75 80% of the parties pumping ends up in some form with some kind of deal and then there are nearly always some people who can't agree to it and they end up going to trial about everything at the end. I mean, one one thing that's important about where we are is we're nowhere near the end of this. I mean, if this is a baseball game, we're in maybe, you know, we may be in the fourth inning. Um, you know, if when you get down to the ninth inning, there's usually some kind of pretty comprehensive settlement negotiation. I still expect that here. The question becomes, what is the scope of that and does it work for the city of Camaro?

Thank you. Any other questions? No questions. Do we have any public comments? Yes, we have one speaker, Spencer Richie. Spencer.

Hi. Oh, sorry. Um, just a reminder, Spencer, this is on the briefing we just had on the water adjudication.

Okay. Um, a shoot. Okay. Um, so my apologies for not noticing earlier or remembering earlier that there is also an English English language closed captioning option. However, just like the Spanish closed captioning option, you have to scan a QR code with your smartphone in order to access it instead of just there being the closed captioning right on the screen automatically. like is the case with the, you know, county board of supervisors meeting. So, I'm still not impressed. I'm still having to take off my mask for, you know, all the people who need stuff like subtitles and they don't have smartphones that they can get QR codes on. But anyway, um, so I was actually trying to comment on the Berry Street and Aral um, new housing developments there. Um, I do.

We've already ended that one. Well, Spencer, this is on the This is on the water adjudication. We just had a length by Mr. Bazera. And there are no other speakers. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your time this evening. Any other council discussion be before Mr. Bizera leaves? No. Nope. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Can I make another public comment? Not if you don't have a speaker card. Would you like to submit? We will move on to item N automatic license plate readers. Commander Tennyson. Did I miss something? Mr. Mayor. Yeah. Um may I just suggest respectfully to to the chair even if somebody didn't have a a speaker card but still wanted to do a public comment um on this on this item that that the chair consider recognizing them even though they didn't have time to fill out a speaker card. So that would be my that would be my my request.

Refer to my elder statesman this time. Come on up, Mr. Boyce. Thank you for referring to me as the elder. I wasn't quick enough. I wasn't quick enough to go out and get four months. Thank Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Doug Boyce. Oh my gosh. Okay. Doug Boyce. Um interested citizen. Is my question would be Oh, he's gone. Um, is the Oxenard basin overdrafted and is that on the basis of modeling or actual data? That would be my question. See if we can get you.

I think Chief Tennyson went to look for him. Yeah. Hello, welcome. I'm good to see you again.

They allowed me to do a speaker thing. So my question to you is is the Oxenard based and is that on the analysis of modeling or actual data? Uh I believe from what I've seen the Oxnard basin is Oxnard subbasin is considered to be quite overdrafted. Um and I think it's it's both modeling and observation of data. I think the seawater intrusion has been identified for a long time and I think that's sort of with a coastal basin that's a pretty usually considered pretty good indication of overdraft. Basically, the groundwater has stopped pushing the seawater out and the seawater's coming in. Uh there's been an enormous amount of technical analysis as well and I I think that technical analysis has shown an overdraft in Oxar.

One other quick question. I don't think we can. Yeah, I think that's it. That's it. Yeah, you had your opportunity to have your question. Thank you. Thank you again. Now we will move on to item N, the automated license plate readers. Commander Tennyson.

Good evening, mayor, council staff, and Cameroon community members who are attending uh here tonight or watching this meeting. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to spend a few minutes tonight providing this uh council and our community with an update on the sheriff's office and the Camaro Police Department's use of automated license plate readers and more specifically the 25 readers that the city leases from Flock Safety. I'd like to begin by reaffirming that the Ventura County Sheriff's Office and me as your police chief remain committed to transparency, accountability, and maintaining public trust. This item is before you tonight because a proactive audit that I requested early last month revealed that images captured by our license plate readers were available for search by out ofstate law enforcement agencies for one month in the spring of 2025. Our agency has used ALPR technology for more than a decade. It's been around for even longer. It's been a critical investigative tool for us, helping us to locate suspect vehicles involved in major crimes, helping us to recover stolen vehicles, and to aid in missing persons investigations. The readers have directly contributed to significant case successes, including a gun store burglary, large-scale cargo theft investigation, follow home theft, cash theft cases, and multiple homicide investigations. To briefly explain how the technology works, the readers capture an image of a license plate and the car it's attached to, along with the date and time that the image is captured. They do not provide us with any personal information about the vehicle owner's identity, their demographics, their address, or any other personal identifying information unless that information is physically printed on the vehicle itself, like a business name or a phone number for that business. The images are stored for one year and then they're

permanently deleted. We place these readers along public roadways um strategically based on crime trends, the way crimes are committed, and where suspects are known to come from, among other factors. For example, the Camrio outlets in Camrio Town Center are where the overwhelming majority of our retail theft occurs. Our data shows that most offenders we arrest there do not live in the city of Camaro. This is one reason readers are positioned along what we call the theft corridor of Ventura Boulevard from Springville to Lewis Road and along routes into and out of our city. It's a common sense data-driven approach to fighting crime. Months before Camriel began leasing flock information, the sheriff's office made a decision that our readers would not be searchable by any law enforcement agency outside the state of California to include federal agencies. We proactively disabled the nationwide search feature in June of 2023. We controlled our data and we determined who had access. That is what I reported to this council in 2023 when we first began leasing readers and again in 2025 during the lease renewal process because that is how our data was being managed. When the audit from last month revealed that our images were searchable by outofstate agencies, we immediately engaged with Flock to understand the problem. We notified our allied agencies in Ventura County so they could conduct their own reports or sorry their own audits and we reported the issue publicly through a media release from Sheriff Fryhoff. Flock took responsibility for the issue we discovered. Flock in the last few months has implemented the following back-end safeguards to ensure this doesn't happen again. First, California agencies cannot share data out of state or with federal agencies. Second, federal agencies cannot discover or request data from California agencies. Third, federal agencies are

not part of statewide or national lookup networks. Fourth, immigration related and reproductive care related searches are automatically blocked in California. Fifth, every search now requires a neighborsbased offense type as justification for the search. Sixth, any changes to system settings are now permanently logged and retrievable. And last, Flock does not contract with the Department of Homeland Security and does not sell or share data with DHS agencies. Immediately after the audit, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office instituted our own daily audits of the entire system to ensure that no out ofstate or federal searches occur. The Sheriff Ryhoff is committed to suspending the use of Flock immediately if such a search is discovered. We're also evaluating other vendors with a sharp focus on data security and reliability. We've been in contact with our allied agencies in Ventura County and all but one of those agencies have taken the exact same approach that we have. Finally, I want to emphasize that license plate readers remain a highly effective tool in keeping crime low and keeping this community safe. They help us identify criminals quickly, help us make arrests and build strong cases that we can submit to the district attorney. Using every tool legally available to us is what consistently makes Ventura County the safest large city in California. Sorry, the large safest large county in California. Thank you for the time tonight and I'll be happy to answer any questions you all might have.

Questions? I have one. Go ahead. Um I'll try Eric. Um, in your opinion and the sheriff's opinion, is uh flock still our best uh option at this time? Flock is still the best option we have for license plate readers. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Santangelo. Thank you. Um, are we considering other ALPR vendors? Yes, we are. We're looking at other ALPR providers uh as we speak. And what factors do we consider in evaluating those?

There's a number of factors, but primarily right now we're looking at data security. Um obviously with what we discovered last month, data security is at the top of the factors we consider. However, when it comes to aiding us in solving crimes, the analytical capabilities of whatever tool uh we use also has to be a a top consideration. and how the an analytical capabilities result in us I being able to identify vehicles through geographic locations um using you know a a tool called convoy analysis that that allows us to uh search vehicles that might be following a victim vehicle who's later becomes a victim of a crime. Um those kind of tools are critical uh for us to be able to to use when we're doing analysis. And so that's also a significant factor that we consider. Okay. And then finally, would switching vendors interrupt ongoing investigations?

There's a potential that it could. There will be a downtime if we end up switching a vendor. Um, but again, we we owe it to our community to consider other vendors and if we do end up making a decision to switch, we will try and make it as seamless as possible. Thank you. Those are my questions. Uh, so I know this item came to us on October 7th of last year. Um, I had quite a bit of questions then. Um, I wanted to make sure that others had the opportunity to ask those questions. Council member Trembley, I'm not sure if you had any before. Okay, perfect.

Um, so the first question I had is you mentioned that when you found out that there was this um, breach of information, it was in the spring of 2025. Do we know exactly during what uh the the time the time? I do. The exact time frame was from February 19th uh until March 19th. And the reason it stopped in March 19th is because Flock unilaterally made the decision to remove the ability for any California agency to have their data um looked at outside the state of California. And they did that because of Senate Bill 34, which prohibits that.

Okay. And then after that, according to your audit, were you able to find any other uh breaches of information? We did not. Okay. And after you performed the audit, um have you been able to find any other breaches? Because I know you're doing it on a daily basis. It sounds like that's correct. We have not had any other uh searches against our data from any agency outside the state of California. Okay. And do you know if um what specific type of data was involved? Um was it only limited to the license plates and the time stamps or did it include anything else?

So all we know right now is that if you imagine this as a vault full of license plate images, all we know is that the door of our vault was open that other agencies outside the state could look into. We don't know if they got a hit on any of their searches or if any data exchange occurred. All we know is that they were able to look at our data. Okay. And do you know uh which agencies? We don't have that information. We do know which agencies looked into our data. Yes. And that and reminding that included both federal. It included federal and state uh out of state agencies.

Okay. Um, let's see here. I already asked you about whether there were any additional issues. Um, I think the other question was, can you help explain what oversight measures are now in place um, including the daily audits that you mentioned to ensure that this doesn't happen again? I think some of the most significant um things that have been put in place have been the backend audits that uh tracking and safeguards that Flock implemented themselves. Um our data even if we had somebody who wanted to share data with an agency outside the the state of California, we can't go into our settings and do it now. We're just unable to uh check the box that opens it up. So, uh, that was that was done on March 19th of last year and that's why our data was shut off from being viewed from other agencies

and I think that's probably the most effective tool that has been put in place. But the other safeguards that Flock put in place that will block certain searches involving certain keywords. Um, safeguards that require agencies to use neighbors based offenses to justify their searches. So, for example, if someone were to uh search data and search for immigration, well, that's not a neighbors based offense. So, that can't happen anymore. Um, and then I will tell you, our daily audits are really significant. Um, if at any moment there's one search on our data from any agency outside the state of California, we're done. The program will be suspended and we won't be using Flock anymore. Uh can you briefly uh discuss what an NLPR is?

What an ALPR is an NYERS? Oh, NYUERS, I'm sorry. It's a national incidentbased reporting system. So for decades, we reported crime through the uniform crime reports or UCRs. Uh two years ago, we transitioned to reporting to the FBI using national incident based reporting system. And so the offense categories are the different crimes that can occur through neighbors. And so we use NYERS now. and the crime categories to report our justifications for our searches.

Okay. And as you're looking for other vendors, uh what standards around data security and privacy protection and transparency are the most important when you're doing these types of uh research?

Well, well, I'll tell you all data storage now really works in the cloud. And so ensuring that uh any data storage is CIS compliant is important. Some of the biggest vendors out there have been operating in this uh environment for many years and so we look at their past track record. Look, any anybody's data can be breached. We see this happening all over. But we have some entities that have a track record of ensuring that their data is secure, ensuring that everything is sieges compliant with how they operate. And those are the things that we look for and will look for as we look for alternative vendors.

Okay. Thank you. And then you touched on um my last question, you touched on um why this is an important tool for law enforcement and public safety. Are you able to provide us some go in a little more detail on some of those examples?

Yes, I can. I'll just start with with one of the most simple uh things that we use uh flocks AOPRs for, and that is for detecting vehicles that have been reported stolen. So, we get a download um every few minutes from the state of California that shows us any vehicle that's been reported throughout the state to be a stolen vehicle and that's automatically uploaded into our license plate reader system so that if any one of those vehicles that's been reported stolen throughout the state of California passes our reader, we get a notification in our real-time crime center. Our real-time crime center operator immediately checks out the image, verifies that the plate is correct. They run the plate through KLETS to ensure that that is absolutely the stolen vehicle and they report it out to our deputy sheriffs in the field. In 2025, we recovered 47 stolen vehicles just through license plate reads. In 2024, I think we recovered around 40 uh stolen vehicles just through license plate reads. Um those are the simple cases that we've had leads generated or solved. Um, I can say that we had a homicide in Camaro about four weeks ago on a Saturday and it was we were provided by a an eyewitness a description of a vehicle, a maroon sedan, one person said, and the other one the other person said a maroon SUV with a different license plate not from the state of California. Within eight minutes, we were able to look through our license plate readers and identify the suspect vehicle in this case, obtain the license plate, enter it in as a hot list so that any agency could find this vehicle. And in fact, we were able to find the vehicle very quickly. Um, we got in a pursuit with it. We lost it. The CHP was able to pick it up. They lost it. Uh, Los Angeles PD was able to pick it up and and it came to a resolution. But license plate readers

were critical in just that most recent case we've had. Another one from here in Camrio. It's a couple years ago now, but the burglary of the Camrio gun store um was used uh two stolen vehicles were used. One vehicle was stolen in Thousand Oaks and one vehicle was stolen in Camaro. They drove to the gun store in a stolen vehicle. They rammed repeatedly to get through the security door. Four people got out of the stolen vehicle and made off with about 65 firearms from the Camrio gun store. They jumped into a second stolen vehicle that was at the Camrio uh gun store and they fled in that second stolen vehicle. That vehicle was ditched out on Pleasant Valley Road, but they were picked up by somebody. We use license plate readers to check the area in Thousand Oaks where the first vehicle was stolen and to check the area in Camaro where the second stolen vehicle was ditched. And we discovered a common car between the two, a common license plate between the two. ended up in helping us work with the ATI ATF to identify six subjects and make arrests. They were responsible for nine gun store burglaries throughout Southern California where over 300 firearms were stolen. These are bigger cases, but we have leads generated and we have arrests made weekly in Camaro because of the license plate readers. And there is no doubt in my mind that Camaro is a safer place because we have license plate readers to help us generate leads and help us identify criminals. And on that same note, um, do you also utilize that data for children that go missing or people

less children that go missing? And I mean, if we have an Amber Alert and a and a child is taken, we would use license plate readers. If we have missing adults who who are missing and a vehicle's gone, we'll use license plate readers. And we absolutely have had success in those cases as well. Okay. Thank you very much. I think everybody's had a turn. I'm not going to ask any. Uh, Madame Clerk, any public comments?

Yes, we have six speak uh speakers. The first speaker is Joseph Dubzinski, followed by Spencer Richie, and after that is Sarah Wilski. Hi, my name is Joseph Disinski Jr. I'm a resident of Camaro and uh yeah, I we reported on this breach uh back in October of 2025 and it took four months, four or five months to actually take a look at anything it seems. Um, and instead of kind of looking into it immediately, uh, you guys passed 19 more cameras on, uh, uh, consent, uh, after a very lengthy discussion before consent passed, um, which included an education about how Flock works, but we already know how Flock works. Um, what wasn't said in uh, Commander Tennyson's notes is that 299 searches were made for immigration enforcement specifically, which is a clear violation of SB54. Um, if at the wor at the best it is a clear lapse in oversight at VCSO and Flock and at worst it's a wink and a nod for collaboration via plausible deniability. Um, I'm getting tired of coming here and talking about things and being written off until it turns out that it is the case. Um, no amount of surveillance is worth uh the crimes that are being solved at this point. Uh, you could solve a lot of crimes as well by giving us all ankle monitors and setting up checkpoints everywhere we go. But no one would agree to that. No one in their right mind would agree to that. Um, this data is also part of public record because it's used for public purposes. Uh, in Washington state, they've said that all of this ALPR data is accessible if somebody puts in a public records request, which means my uh, journeys around Camaro eventually can be just downloaded and taken through a public records request. Um, hold a town hall about whether we should still have helpers or not. I understand

that they help with that, but see how many in the community actually come out and say that they're willing to trade their privacy for security. And I guarantee you there will be way more people who say shut them off rather than how can we do this safer. Um, in 1755, Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." You guys, like those founding fathers, please heed the words, shut them off, and give us our privacy back in the public sphere.

Spencer Richie, Sarah Wilzinski.

Hi, my name is Sir Wesky. Good evening. Mayor, city council members, we came to you guys with concerns back in October and now we're here. Um, I appreciate this report. Thank you. I hope that we can move forward with transparency on any decision that is made regarding ALPRs and um whether to continue with Flock. I hope that we can have a town hall to discuss whether the community wants to move forward with Flock and continue this. And I would just request that anything decided gets put to public comment and is treated with transparency. Thank you, Derek Porter, followed by D Lassen. Good evening, Mayor Tennyson, city council members. I had some prepared remarks, but honestly, I kind of like what was already said pretty well. Um, I have a lot of practical things I could say about, you know, why the data shows this or that, but um, ultimately I think it, you know, I'm not an activist. This is my second time coming here. I'm just a resident. And I the second I found out about what Flock and just ALPRs do generally, I was horrified. um just the potential that it has, just the the slow creep of surveillance um in our lives as Americans generally like it's just a loophole of the Fourth Amendment. If the government set up cameras all over the all over the city, then it'd be illegal. But because an NGO does it and we subscribe to their data, we get that loophole. And I appreciate the audit and

I um I know the the benefits that it can serve. I had a a friend disagree with me on this as well. He lives in St. Louis where the crime is terrible and ALPR's um I'm sure help a little bit but it like again like what was said already at what cost this just a slow creep in 20 30 years down the the road from now if we don't draw a line in the sand where we are at right now it's just going to get worse and I know that there's country I mean uh cities around the country cancelling their contracts not just that but they're being vandalized and I don't know exactly if we want to think of it from a money perspective like there's a chance that that could continue uh with people vandalizing costing the city money. Uh these cameras once more people become aware of this issue. I know there was a big Super Bowl issue recently where um Ring cameras came out and said they wanted to scan for people's pets and the country freaked out and they they canled Ring canled their agreement with Flock as well. Probably on the back end they still have it. But at least they're recognizing the public um recognition of that nobody wants these. And if you guys represent us, then I would just like to cast my vote in that direction as well. Thank you,

D. Lassen,

Bev Dansfield. Good evening. Um, thank you uh, Commander Tennyson for the presentation and um, I I thank you for taking the daily audit. Um, as other speakers have said, it is disappointing that we have gotten to this point, especially with concerns raised in back in October. My husband Corey I know has written more about this and um, has extensive knowledge in it. Unfortunately, I'm not as educated about it. Um but just on the surface level having many concerns and knowing that it's it's greater than than than what we know. Um I I know this is in place. So I'm trying to think how do we move forward? Um, one thing that I wonder and perhaps this is something for the city attorney and perhaps um, this is at a greater level even at the state level because of these violations that have occurred with Flock, but what are the ramifications that Flock is doing, you know, with the contract and that sort of thing? How what how are we being compensated in terms of the contract that we have with them when this has been broken? Um I know you had mentioned one of the other agencies that has not um taken the similar actions which I believe is Oxnard Police Department which was raised um Commander Tennyson, Council Member Trembley as as you saw in that discussion. They had two instances out of the five million um and OPD opted to uh to suspend their contract because they are working very hard to rebuild or even build the public trust. So that's something I I invite you to have that discussion to to look into that more. I I understand that um having being part of VCSO is is different um since we don't have our own police department, but again it goes back to transparency.

It goes back to previous requests of having an oversight one for the sheriff that has been made as a request to the county board of supervisors and also oversight for all the contract cities um for their negotiate for their contracts with um with the sheriff's department because again this we need accountability, we need transparency. We need that oversight. Um people don't feel heard. You know, you have public comments here. we have people who have come up and they're concerned um and it feels dismissed. Um so again inviting for for the town hall um and I'm glad that Derek brought up the the ring instance. That's something I wanted to highlight as well. Um Flock does not have our trust. Of course all of these things can be breached but it has happened time and time again with Flock. So, if ALPRs are something that the city chooses to move forward with, being very critical of who that vendor is um and and ensuring and again that transparency and making sure that the public is involved and actually heard um and brought forth in that decision-m. Thank you.

No more council discussion. I actually have another question question, Mayor, if that's okay. Um, uh, Chief Tennyson, who who initiated the a self audit in Ventura County? I did. Okay. So, you did the self audit or you initiated it or can you tell me more about that process? I requested that our crime analysis unit conduct an audit of the system. Okay. Thank you so much. hearing nothing else. That doesn't require any action. Did you have something, Mr. Trembley? No, I I Okay.

I just thought it was time to comment. Um, so so I'm going to comment. I I think that ALPRs have a significant role to play in law enforcement investigations. Um, I support their intent. I support their deployment. But that said, the program has got to be in compliance with state law. You know, I I had been assured until midFebruary that there was such compliance and that al ALPR data had never been shared with any agency outside the state of California. And that turned out not to be true and I'm I'm I'm very unhappy about it. That said, the access to the ALPR data last year and the non-compliance with state law appears to be entirely the fault of the vendor of Flock. It is not the fault. I'm convinced it is not the fault of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office. I mean, which which to its credit self-reported, self- audited its own data and its own operations and then reported it to the public. Um, I think the the steps that Ventura County Sheriff's Office is taking um are responsible. Uh, they include the daily audits of the system and they have my full support. But that said, I also encourage the sheriff's office to look at vendors other than flock uh so this issue is avoided in the future. Uh bottom line, the program must comply with state law. And I'll just piggyback on top of what our last speaker said. What our last speaker said as I heard is if you decide to move forward with ALPRs, be critical of the vendor. I agree with that. Uh, in my view, we should move continue to use the AALPRs, but we need to look at the vendor. I'm satisfied with the steps that the sheriff's office is taking right now, and I want to see that continue and look at other vendors in

addition to Flock. So, I just wanted to be sure that I set forth, you know, my views on this. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead.

Well, I'm going to say ditto. I think uh absolutely very unhappy with what happened here. Uh data is very very important and if we if they do look at another vendor that it's got to be done the right way here and what council member Trembley has said here I agree 100% uh with that we can do better and we must do better. Uh, thank you, mayor. So, I too um agree with what was said about the dissatisfaction with Flock and I do acknowledge that the information that we originally received um is different than what we understand now um and to no fault of you, but to that of uh Flock. Um, I think what is important to note as well is that Chief Tennyson, it sounds like you're the one who initiated the self audit and then other agencies um were involved and I think that that you brought that forward. The sheriff's brought that forward publicly. Um, and I thought that is that is indicative of being forthcoming and the intention of our city is also to be uh transparent with our community um on what occurred. Um, I think that trust and relationship building are really integral to public safety. And I understand and I've seen how some of the uh, federal policing tactics have unfortunately contributed to some of the erosion of certain communities, which is why probably some folks are concerned about this. Um, I understand that some members of our community uh may feel that their

trust was impacted by this incident. Uh, at the same time, I also think it's important to recognize the value of this tool um and how they can help provide a safer community. Uh, I heard that they help law enforcement address these crimes um not only throughout the Camaro theft corridor but throughout um in assisting possibly locating missing people and solving other types of crimes. And so I think there are real benefits to that are added to the public safety. So for that reason I do believe there is uh value in using this technology. Uh however uh given the multiple issues that have been raised I think my opinion would also be to explore other options which it sounds like you're already doing. Um and I'm glad that you're already taking this those steps in the right direction. Um because ultimately our responsibility is to balance effective public safety tools with transparency, accountability, and the trust of the community that we serve. So that is all that I have on this.

I'll be short. Um, I think that ALPRs are an important tool in crime fighting and that's regardless of the vendor that we use. Um, I am disappointed in Flock. Um, I share the disappointment with my colleagues um, and yours because I believe that you were disappointed as well. Um, I commend you for the proactive audit for looking into this and I commend you for going forward and VCSO as a whole going forward with the daily audits. Um, as I said, I think ALPR's serve a purpose. Um, and I also hope that you and I I do like the terminology critically evaluate other vendors. That's all I have.

Thank you. I'm going to save my voice. Um, I'm not going to ask any questions. Ditto. Um, madame city clerk, do we have any speakers from the earlier session that did not speak? There are no speaker speakers.

With that, we will come to the end of our agenda. We'll recess back to close session and I'll ask the city attorney if she has anything to report. I guess I'll just indicate uh mayor and council that we did conduct close session on item A uh regarded the OPB coalition litigation and one of the anticipated litigation matters. Um but there's no reportable action on those two items and then we can move back into close session for the remaining item.

And Mr. Kildy has a request to adjourn in the memory of Al Fox. So take it away. Yeah, I'm gonna I'll start off um talking about Al Fox and uh he was an incredible Camearillan and uh Al uh gave back his time, talent and treasure to our city and he was um uh on I believe the Camarosa water board uh leisure village. He had a very successful uh business in uh Leisure Village. uh selling homes and uh uh he was also a special district's representative as well. So um my voice is kind of going but uh he epitomized what volunteerism and is in Cambrio and uh my condolences go out to his family and uh we're going to miss Al. uh to know Al was to love Al and he was a great guy. So uh he had a long life uh in incredibly successful life and uh God speed my friend. Anybody else?

Thank you. Thank you. We are adjourned. Yeah.