City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody to the Tuesday May 26th regular City Council meeting of the Ojai City Council roll call please yes Mayor Gilman here Mayor Pro Tem May here Councilmember Rule here Councilmember Lange here Councilmember Whitman here would you lead us in the pledge please absolutely thank you honorable Mayor Council members of the community ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the

Thank you, Mr. Montgomery. Any changes to the agenda?

Mayor, staff would like to request Council consider removing item number 10 from the discussion section.

Removal of the City of Long Beach modular connect shelter units. Yes, please. Any conversation? favor that okay removal okay that would be removed any other changes to the agenda second any objections okay all right so our first item tonight is we have a proclamation and it is honoring our historic preservation month and I'll read two very three very short lines and The City Council of the City of Ojai hereby proclaims the month of May 2026 as Historic Preservation Month in the City, and that the City Council encourages all residents, businesses, and community organizations to recognize and celebrate Ojai's rich history, to participate in preservation activities, and to support efforts to protect and enhance the city's historic resources for future generations, and that the City of Ojai reaffirms its commitment to thoughtful stewardship of its historic and cultural resources as an essential part of the community's future, and that is done in such large part by the Historic Preservation Commission, so I would invite them all to come up and receive something very small from us, and maybe we could take a staff photograph, but this is a proclamation saying this and more, so please do come up, and let's, shall we go to the front and get a little shot? Thank you.

Can you turn this thing on?

Just stand with me for a second. I just want to thank the City Council and to Mayor Gilman who was so helpful in getting this forward so timely. Nationally May is Historic Preservation Month and so this acknowledgement will allow us to have a better focus when planning upcoming years for community events and educational opportunities to make sure that May is included as a good time to share the knowledge and history of Ojai. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Your work is greatly appreciated. Mr. Montgomery, any other commission reports?

No, Mayor. None received.

Thank you. And we'll move to the city manager's report, please.

Hi, Mayor. Just really briefly, a couple of finance department related items. One, we're very pleased that today we had our new accountant start work for the city. His name is Matt Hutchins. He has a CPA. We will bring him down to introduce you all to him in person. We didn't feel that was fair on his first day to do that, too. Also, along the lines of finance department, we are going to be having another finance and budget committee meeting on Tuesday, June 2nd. It is at 2 p.m. It is in the historic council chambers. This is picking up from where we left off from our last meeting. This is in advance of the budget coming to you at the first and second meetings in June. So I just want to make you and the community aware of that as well. Thank you very much.

Okay, we'll move on to public comments, and those will be items not on the agenda. So I have a few cards here. I'll start with Annette Reed, then Larry Steingold, then Randy Haney. Now, if these are items on one of the agenda items, then wait for that. Okay, thanks.

Hello, my name is Annette Reed, and I am a volunteer with Cycling Without Age Ventura. And I'm here just to give you a real brief description of what Cycling Without Age is all about. And to begin, Cycling Without Age is a worldwide organization, nonprofit, that aims to provide joy and vitality to elderly people and people who are mobility-challenged through the magic of a bicycle. I will begin by telling you one of my favorite stories. I had the privilege of taking my mother, who I recently moved down to the Gables from the Bay Area, And in February, it was her 93rd birthday, so I got to take her out for a try-out. We went up Daly Street and then up North Montgomery, and it was just a beautiful day. And we noticed an elderly woman with a walker walking. And when she looked up at us, we got the biggest smile, and we just had to pull over and talk to her. And she was just so pleasant. She was just out for her walk. And after a while, I asked her if she would like to go for a ride with me sometime. And she said, oh, I would really like to. So I gave her a card with my name and phone number. Nine o'clock the following morning, I get a call from her. I couldn't wait. I'm really looking forward to going on a bicycle ride with you. I hope I didn't call too early. So we arranged a ride two days later, and I got to take her all around the community that she had been part of for 30 years. She worked, her name is Shirley, and she worked But our first stop was in the park, and we stopped and listened to an opera singer. And then we hear a woman call, Shirley, Shirley. And it was Sousa. And she's like, oh. So they got to interact and talk. And then I got to take her through her house that she used to live at. She, afterward, when I dropped her off, she said that was one of the nicest experiences that she's had in a very long time. And... So for me, it's just as rewarding for me, the pilot, as it is for the person who's experienced the ride. And I've had the privilege to be riding passengers in your community for five months, and I've realized that the joy and vitality is not just for the riders.

I hope we can get a larger presentation at some point to get all the details. Thank you so much. Mr. Stengold, I forgot to mention one quick thing, which is this dais that's right here. Wow, you might remember when we looked at options, and I want to thank Mr. Hahn and the whole staff for bringing this to pass. It's really incredible, and hopefully it'll work out really well. Yeah, Mr. Stengold, thank you.

I'm also a driver for Cycling Without Ages, so we're looking for riders. Well, both. I haven't taken anybody yet except for people to get trained. A couple things. Thankfully, this is Historic Preservation Month. Maybe we can solve the problem with the walk-in freezer and make it look like it's part of the arcade and make the other parts of it so it will become historic also versus a massive lawsuit. I would like to see if you would propose on the next agenda coming discussions regarding video-enclosed meetings and having other biweekly meetings for conversations between residents and the city council instead of like a back and forth or something. Because that was proposed or discussed during the election campaign of two years ago. and it would be nice if at least you would put it on the agenda to at least have the conversation and vote on it yes or no and all the reasons, also for videoing closed meetings. Other than that, keep up the good work.

Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. Video or audio recording?

Both, both, any and all. Discuss each one separately or together.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stengel. Randy Haney, please, and then Chelsea Satula.

Although these things are beautiful, this place still reminds me of the cafeteria. I don't know why you left City Hall. But that's for another day. I'm here with my Chamber of Commerce hat on. June 28th, it's a Sunday, between 12 o'clock and 5 o'clock, we're going to be having an event called Boots and Bluegrass, and it's a live band event. It's barbecue, chicken, and fry tip, and all the trimmings. Later on in the year, in October, we're going to be putting on as a fundraiser Ojai has got talent. Now, we're not sure if it's going to look like the one you see on television or there was an old one a long time ago. Remember that one guy that got up and it was just going crazy? I forget the name of that one. But we know and we recognize there's a lot of talent in Ojai. Look at this room. And in the last thing, I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but two of your esteemed employees, Vicki Hollinsworth and Stacey Pergson, have been nominated for the Ojai Living Treasure of Ojai. And they'll be receiving that award this Thursday at 5.30 at the Ojai Valley Museum. So let's give them a shout out. And if any of you can make it there, I think it'd be wonderful to share in that moment. Those two women are, if someone says they bleed something, what color, Ojai gold, Ojai blue, whatever. But those two women exemplify what a city employee looks like. And they're just two outstanding members of our community. Thank you. Thank you very much.

What time is the event? Thank you. OK. Hello.

Hello, Mayor, Council. Thank you. Chelsea Satula, Sesame Creek Collective. I just wanted to give a little quick update about cannabis. Things have been moving at the federal level. You might be aware that it was rescheduled in April. And we're still waiting to hear some guidelines from the IRS on what that actually means for us and what a path forward might be. In the meantime, I think it's fair to say that the shift in general at the state level is going back to reconsidering the importance of medical and not, oh, recreational. We were medical only for the first year when we opened. And that was stifling a lot of people. It's a chore to get a recommendation. It's extra steps, extra paperwork, extra expense. That cost has since come down. But one thing I'm asking the council is to revisit the three percent gross receipts tax exemption for medical Right now you have it so that only people that have gone the additional step and registered with the state as with the county card Through the MMID program. It's another 50 bucks for them. It's not it's just another bureaucratic step in my opinion it provides no value for either the patient or the state or the It was meant as a tool for law enforcement to quickly say, oh yeah, I'm a patient. I think that has really gone out the window. And I would ask you to consider changing that 3% exemption to include all medical patients, not just the card-carrying state-registered ones. Then separately I have talked to councilmember rule about my interest in Looking at lounges you guys said we could do it a couple years ago Everyone was excited people still ask me when we're gonna get a lounge Financially that hasn't made sense up until now with the rescheduling so there's There's a reason for me to revisit that and what needs to happen is that city manager needs to just do a couple little Regulations Worksheet building and I understand I mean, I think that we set it up so that it's a separate license I would have to apply for a lounge license So whatever that means, hopefully it won't be too complicated And that's it thank you, thank you very much

Okay. Anybody online? Yes, Mayor. We have one raised hand from Stephen. Stephen, you may unmute and you have the floor.

Thank you. My name is Stephen Colomay, a city resident. This is a brief announcement. The U.S. Forest Service and the Trump administration is currently in the process of rescinding the roadless rule making 4.4 million acres of old growth forests, rivers, and wildlife in California open to industrial logging, mining, oil drilling, and road development. This will threaten 600,000 acres of our own Las Padres National Forest. Rescinding the roadless rule would devastate our national forests, ecosystems, and wildlife. Everyone is invited to a town hall on the roadless rule tomorrow, May 27th, at the Sane Living Center at 316 East Matiloha Street in Ojai. The meeting starts at 6.30 and is sponsored by the Los Padres Forest Watch and the Sierra Club. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Colby. That's all, Mayor. All right. Okay, moving on to the consent calendar. There's a few vacancies and an inaugural vacancy that I would love to highlight, not necessarily take out, but anything that anybody wants to take out of the consent calendar.

So you're pulling the... Yeah, just so we can acknowledge them?

Yeah. Okay. Yes? Wonderful. So it'll be item number four and five, correct? Yes. Anything else? Wonderful. Can I get a motion to accept one, two, three, and six?

I'll move to accept the rest.

Wonderful. Okay. So let's do a roll call on one, two, three, and six.

Yes, Mayor. Roll call. Council Member Lange. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem May. Yes. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Thank you so much. So item number four, confirm reappointments to fill term-ending vacancies on city commissioners. And we have here a historic preservation, Gina McHatton, Craig Walker, and we also have from the Arts Commission, Carolyn Wagner, if she's here. Well, we know that Gina and Craig are here. We just want to acknowledge your service. If you want to come up and say anything, feel free. Or not. You already did. Well, I know. Any comments from the council?

I just want to thank you for your service. You are so loyal. And Chair McCattin, you have really stepped into the role beautifully. And so I'm thrilled that you've decided to take on another term. So thank you very much.

Ditto that 100%.

Yeah, I'll comment. I say this when I act as liaison for our commissions. It is so important that we have these commissions and the sacrifice and the support that the city government gets from the commissions. And the level of thought that goes into the commission meetings that I've happened to attend is fantastic. And so I really appreciate it. Anybody who wants to get involved in our city government, highly recommend that you seek out service on one of our commissions. Thank you.

All right, so a motion to approve the reappointments?

I'll move to approve.

Thank you.

Is there any public comments?

Oh, any public comments on number four? Thank you. Wonderful. Okay. Roll call, please.

I heard a motion by Council Member Rule. Who was the second?

I seconded.

Thank you. Roll call. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Mayor Gilman. Yes. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem May. Yes.

Council Member Lange.

Yes.

Thank you. And is Jim McEachin here? Jim McEachin. Oh, please come up. So this is our second inaugural appointment to the Public Safety Commission. So I wanted to give you a chance to say a few words.

Sure. Thanks, Mayor. And hello to City Council. I don't know many of you, but I do know a few. My name is Jim McEachin. I moved to Ohio with my wife 22 years ago. And like all of you, I've seen a lot of changes over those years. And I've cast my fair share of aspersions at city governance and um and as we uh imagine when we get the opportunity to do something we think that we're going to do better maybe that's an illusion but that is my intention and i hope to serve the city and the council on this commission which i think is very important so thank you for the opportunity thank you very much we appreciate your service very very much

I would move to approve the appointment.

Is there any public comment?

Any public comments on that?

Okay.

Not online, Mayor. All right.

Roll call. Council Member Meng. Yes. Council, sorry, Mayor Pro Tem Meng. Council Member Lange.

Yes.

Council Member Rule. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Council Member Whitman. Yes.

Thank you so much. And we are moving on with the rest of the vacancies and we hope to have a full commission by June, sometime during the month of June. Okay, we are now on to the discussion items. So we'll look at our first item, consideration of the city's ability to shift to at-large voting.

Yes, thank you. Thanks. For the record, Bethany Burgess, city attorney. Thanks. So the purpose of this item is to present information to the city council regarding the city's ability to shift from electing council members by district to at large. As part of this item, staff in the city attorney's office are ultimately looking for direction from the council as to whether or not you wish for us to return at a future meeting with an agenda item considering a change in the city's method of electing members of the city council. So to be clear, this will not be, the direction you provide tonight will not be to change the voting system itself. It would be to bring back a future item or not. As background the city shifted from at-large elections to by district elections in 2018 Following receipt of a letter from Shankman and Hughes alleging that the city's at-large voting system violated the California Voting Rights Act and threatening litigation on that basis The city's first bi-district elections took place during the November 2020 general election and have continued with the 2022 and 2024 general elections. As you all know, the mayoral position is still currently elected at large, which means today you have a hybrid system. and in november 2022 the ohio voters approved measure m by 55.84 percent of the voters which authorized council to take action to shift from by from by district voting to what is known as a rank choice method of selection um of candidates that are are come from an at-large segment of the community so the entire community and um it but it it arguably required that that would need to be implemented starting with the November 2024 general election. And so despite the support for Measure M, our office initially looked at that question. And it's our conclusion that it would be unlikely that the city could make a shift from bi-district to ranked choice method of selection based on a determination from the California Secretary of State's office with respect to another city that general law cities may only elect candidates by what they call plurality voting. And what that really means is that the candidate who receives the greatest number of votes wins the election. But under a ranked choice system, the way voters rank candidates, the winning candidate is the candidate who receives the majority of first choice votes. And there are scenarios where a candidate may receive the greatest number of votes overall, but still not receive the greatest number of first choice votes. So that voting system does not meet the California legal requirements for plurality voting for general law cities. as an alternative to rank-choice voting and by district voting the city may consider a return to at-large voting and at the April 28th council meeting council directed city attorney to request completion of a demographic analysis that might be Considered as part of a decision to move to at-large voting And I do have Doug Johnson with the National Demographics Corporation here tonight to present the results of that study. The staff report mentions that he would be here to present this if we returned in the future with an ordinance. But after preparing the staff report, I was able to confirm with Mr. Johnson that he could be here tonight. and thought that might be helpful information for the discussion tonight. A high level summary of his conclusions is included in the staff report, but I will let him talk through those in more detail after I conclude my remarks. The other thing I would mention is that, so there are a few other things, but I'm almost done. Our office has evaluated the city's ability to return to at-large voting, and we believe that legally this could be accomplished either by adoption of an ordinance by city council amending or repealing the ordinance that was adopted in 2018 that established your by-district voting method, or you could also potentially send a question back to the voters for voter consideration, which, if approved, could also potentially modify the voting system. And so I want to note that while we believe that this is legally possible, it's really important to know that at this point in time, no other general law city that made a shift from at-large voting to bi-district voting has shifted back. And so this is important because our office did receive, after the first meeting and discussion in April about this issue, our office was contacted by Kevin Shankman and I did have a phone call with him and he made it fairly clear that he believes that there are some procedural issues with moving back to an at-large system under either of those two methods. And I think based on my conversation with him that there's a high probability that The city would face a legal challenge from Mr. Shankman or potentially from other voting rights activists if the city attempts a shift back to at-large voting. The other big thing I would note is that there's a perspective in California that if one city makes a move to out-large voting, the other cities will follow. So in addition to the procedural concerns that Mr. Shankman mentioned, he did mention that from a voting rights standpoint, his firm has been working in this arena for more than a decade, and they have a strong interest in seeing that cities that shifted to by district voting remain that way. So the other thing we don't know, and this has become a bit more murky following the US Supreme Court's decision on April 29th, one day after our previous discussion on this topic, So the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Louisiana v. Calais, which has been a long-awaited decision related to establishment of district lines and districts in Louisiana. And as part of that, I've included some more information about that decision in the administrative report. But the reality is that that decision likely calls into question the validity of the California Voting Rights Act, and we don't really know, sitting here today, exactly where that stands. There is pending litigation involving the city of Huntington Beach that you know We expect to be decided at the trial court level within the next few months Our firm is actually handling that litigation And that involved a challenge brought by mr. Shankman against the city for its based on its refusal to move to buy district voting and alleging racially polarized voting, but we will not likely have a decision on that for a few months. And then, as often happens with these kinds of cases, that will likely be appealed to the Court of Appeals and maybe the California Supreme Court, and it may go beyond that. While I think our firm, it is our opinion that this is legally permissible, I think in light of the fact that there are some unknowns, we can't give you a certainty with which we would be able to pursue defense of a legal action if one is filed against the city. With that being said, I will take any questions and then I'll hand it over to Mr. Johnson.

Do you have other cities that you are working with right now that are asking the same questions we're asking?

We do. We have a, you know, I don't want to disclose which cities those are in a public meeting, but there are a number of cities that have inquired, you know, regarding the impacts of the decision in Louisiana v. Calais and have also, you know, asked questions about whether a shift back to outlarge voting is possible in light of that decision. And so, you know, I suspect there will be similar discussions taking place in other communities.

And then my other question is, even if this body were to decide they wanted to do at-large voting in November 2026, hypothetically, If that were challenged, it seems to me it's not clear, but this is a question. What would happen, might we have to revert back to district voting if there were a legal challenge for November 2026?

So I failed to mention this in my opening remarks, but we did include as an attachment to the staff report the county's elections calendar. And so this is the calendar that they provide to all of the city clerks. And if you look at that calendar, and that's on page 67 of your packet, obviously once the council adopts its resolution calling for consolidated elections, You know, there are a number of timelines or there's a timeline that's triggered for things like nomination of candidates, argument and rebuttal filing periods, declarations of candidacy. and kind of other things related to the elections process. So what we don't know, while courts often will take up elections cases on an expedited basis, we don't know exactly what the court's timeline would be to resolve litigation, if it's filed, We don't know if perhaps Mr. Shankman or others were to file suit, if they would include a request for injunctive relief. That might affect how this plays out. And so there are some potential concerns regarding impacts on this particular election if council were to move forward with adoption of an ordinance that took effect immediately for the November election.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Yeah. So you called Mr. Shankman? No, he reached out to our office. He reached out to our office, and he said, I've heard that you are considering this, and if you do, I'll sue you.

Those were not his exact words. I mean, he first sent an email. He reached out by email initially and just said he had some concerns and asked for a conversation. He didn't really articulate those by email, but then I had a phone call with him. And, you know, without saying I will sue the city of Ojai, he said, you know, he left me with the impression that litigation would be likely, that we should at least expect a formal threat of litigation.

Okay. Is it your... Do you, in other words, how, is Shankman looking at every 8,000 population small town saying, you know, I mean, in other words, why did he reach out? I mean, do you think, you don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know exactly. I mean, I know, you know, there was some public discussion following that initial meeting. council agenda item on april 28th i think a lot of people are looking at this issue and so you know he i know he and his team follow follow these issues very closely and and so i i mean i expect that any community that has a serious discussion about shifting back will probably hear from He has a Google Alert or something. Very possibly. Very possibly.

Yeah, I'm sure he does. He probably does. And so my final question is that what I understood you to say is that Mr. Shankman believes this to be a procedural issue as opposed to a content issue. That is, it's not racially polarized. He couldn't make that case. I mean, he could try, but...

So we don't know exactly. So my conversation with him took place a few days after the decision in Louisiana v. Calais. So I suspect that there are two reasons he didn't mention racially polarized voting. One is I believe he hasn't seen our demographic results because those are being presented tonight.

Mm-hmm.

But the second reason is likely because, you know, there is a legal question right now with that Supreme Court decision and what that means for the California Voting Rights Act. And so, you know, that won't be resolved for some time.

Mm-hmm. And one final question. If the Supreme Court, the National Supreme Court, were to make a decision, would the California Voting Rights Act have to agree with that decision? In other words, do you foresee that legislation would change? I mean, you won't know because you don't know what the decision is, but...

I think we would have to see how that plays out. I mean, right now the decision in Louisiana v. Calais is really focused on certain situations involving discrimination in voting and more egregious situations. So it didn't conclude that all systems that try to address racial discrimination in voting are illegal. And so that, if it had, I mean, perhaps that would, we would have... Wasn't it intent? Yeah, it was, I think it, and so I'm just looking back at my notes. You know, what they basically concluded is that let's see, that the Voting Rights Act must be confined to using racially based districting only in cases of intentional discrimination. So that is the standard by which the Supreme Court evaluated that particular case. So that may result in a narrowing of the CVRA, we just don't know that yet.

Okay, and it did not deal with procedural issues at all, like definitional issues of what your particular law said? Yeah. All right, thank you.

Any other questions? Yes, go.

So if we were to move forward with at-large voting and a firm like Kevin Shankman's were to come after us, what would we be looking at in terms of our, number one, the potential costs associated with it, but number two, what would our likelihood of succeeding in those legal cases be?

So if the city actually adopted some sort of ordinance or change to move to at-large voting and then we received the challenge, we would arguably be able to fall within the same safe harbor provision that the city relied on previously when it moved to district voting in 2018. And I believe that includes a limitation on attorney's fees of approximately $30,000 if the community agrees to shift to bi-district voting. I know there's at least one example as I was researching or preparing for this item where a community recently settled with Shankman and Hughes for around $800,000. to resolve pending litigation that he brought against the city. So I think it's my impression that these cases can be very expensive to litigate. But again, I think we would probably need to see, it's just unclear exactly how that would play out from a timing standpoint. And depending on what the status of the law is at that time, that might affect that evaluation.

Do you think that because the first city is going to be in the spotlight for going back to at-large, do you think that would pose more of a challenge for us than if another city were to go first?

I think from a legal standpoint, I think the benefit of seeing how something like that might play out is that we would at least have another example of how it played out judicially for another community. while we believe that there's strong arguments for either adoption, that the city council may adopt an ordinance or that you could refer a question to the voters, we don't have other examples where this has happened. And so if another community does it and we see that the courts uphold that, I think that obviously informs what we believe the likelihood of success in litigation might look like. or the likelihood of even receiving litigation. So we just don't know that yet.

Any other questions?

Sorry to belabor this point, but for the city that decided to sell it for $800,000, were they working, to the best of your knowledge, were they working on a procedural issue which is really definitional, or were they working on a racially polarized

The allegation that I believe that was brought in that situation was one where the city was – I believe it was Mr. Shankman, that they were alleging that the voting system was racially polarized. However, I would note that that was the same argument that was made in the original letter to the city of Ojai. So again, while we think there will be legal defenses to that based on the demographic analysis, that may still be an argument that gets raised as part of that litigation.

Right, but now we have intent that is in the game. All right, I think I understand pretty well.

Mr. Whitman?

Yeah, so correct me if I'm wrong. Prior to 2018, if you wanted to change, if a city wanted to change its method of voting, it had to go to the voters.

I don't recall exactly when the government code section was adopted, but prior to the California Voting Rights Act and the special safe harbor provision that was added to the government code. Yes. In 2018. Yeah, I don't remember. I don't know exactly which year that was adopted.

The provision that said that you can move from at-large to district voting by resolution was adopted in 2018. And the city of Ojai chose to take that path. My understanding is that the language of that specific safe harbor provision states that you can move from at-large to districts, but it does not explicitly state that you can also move back via resolution.

So what that section states in its government code section 34886, it allows a city to adopt an ordinance requiring by district elections without submission of the ordinance to the voters where the change is being made in furtherance of the purposes of the California Voting Rights Act. So as part of that decision, if council were to adopt an ordinance, you would have to make findings as part of that ordinance that a shift back conceivably is also in furtherance of the voting rights act. And I think to do that, there would have to be some arguments based on the fact that it would increase voter participation We'd have to think through how that might work in terms of those findings. But as I noted, so in the staff report, There is a government code section in the same article as the government code. It's section 34873 that allows for ordinances adopted pursuant to that article to be repealed or amended in the same manner. But as I mentioned before, no city has used that section to amend or repeal an ordinance that was adopted pursuant to the other government code section 34873.

So there's no guidance on how the two different ordinances will be interpreted, excuse me, statutes will be interpreted together?

Correct.

So a ripe area for a lawyer to spend a lot of time making arguments?

and and that is one of the procedural arguments that mr shankin made is that that section allows councils to adopt an ordinance that goes one way but it doesn't provide authority to go the other way

Is that the only procedural argument that he had?

His other procedural argument was that by adopting this section of the government code that the California legislature effectively eliminated the authority of the voters to approve such a shift by ballot measure. Now, going into the analysis of those arguments in detail will be a topic for a closed session. I'm not going to provide an in-depth legal analysis of his arguments in an open session. But those were the two arguments he made.

Those are his two procedural arguments. Okay.

Any more questions? Mr. Johnson, please. Thank you. Thank you.

And as he's coming up to the podium, Mr. Johnson, as I previously mentioned when we first discussed whether council would like us to retain him to do the demographic analysis, Mr. Johnson was previously involved in supporting the city of Ojai on its move to districts, and so he was familiar with the demographics of the city of Ojai. I believe they have changed some, but he can talk more about that. He does expert demography work on behalf of communities who are litigating these cases. He's worked with the Rose Institute, which is a leading expert on demographics on these issues. So we are very fortunate to have him here before other communities started following the Louisiana v. Calais decision.

Thank you very much for being here. My phone, as the phones at Elsham Winder has been burning up lately with questions about this, because this is a hot topic. And it is my pleasure to be here. I consider myself lucky to be back in beautiful Ojai. Thanks. And yes, it was our pleasure to help the city through this process back in 2018. We've actually helped about between 80 and 85% of the cities that have made the shift to district elections. We've been their demographer. But as was also mentioned, we're also the expert witness demographer for the cities that are fighting. So we're here to serve the cities, whichever direction you wish to go. So it has been an interesting road. I will mention one thing to be aware of in terms of a potential lawsuit, too. One of the challenges Mr. Shanklin runs into is he has to find a local plaintiff to actually sue. to actually file the lawsuit, and that might be tough in Ojai, but you should be aware, and Alshon Winder has a notice about this, there's a bill pending that Mr. Schenck helped write that would remove that requirement, where he could sue on behalf of Southwest Voter and not have to have a local plaintiff. And it's a huge rewrite of the law and everything. So something to be aware of. CalCities has not yet taken a position on that bill, but it is out there and will make it much easier for him to sue. The other piece to keep in mind is one thing he does, I think he's done this in every case, is if he sues because you make this change and he will, he almost always, can't be sure what he'll do, he almost always tries to cancel the election. So in Palmdale, they actually canceled the upcoming election and then held a special election after the case was resolved. It was interesting. The appeals court upheld the judge's right to cancel it, but in a great footnote, Pointed out that that election was guaranteed to elect either in Palmdale was guaranteed to elect a Latino or an african-american There were three seats open just one white guy So that the appeals court wrote he has this power. We don't understand why he used it in this case But it is that is a danger out there Yes, yeah, okay, so that's a little bit of introduction, but let me jump into Ojai and Just say this is as you just highlighted in your discussion This is a gray area So what we're doing is diving in and doing the best possible look we can. Nothing is definite, certainly, in this realm. So what we did is we dug into a whole bunch of data, because all these cases involve crossing different data sets and merging different data sets to try to get a read for voting patterns and what's going on in a given election. So we're looking at 2020 census data. We're looking at more recent what's called American Community Survey data, which comes out from the Census Bureau every year. We're looking at the county registrar's statements of the vote. And then there's a group called the California Statewide Database that are funded by the state that actually go through and gather the registered voter lists and the list of who actually turns out in each election and does a surname-based analysis of it. And of course, for an individual, looking at their surname is a really lousy way to figure out ethnicity. But when you get a pool of 300, 400 people, then the errors both ways start canceling out. So it's still a ballpark estimate, but it is better than it first sounds when you first hear a surname. So using that data, and that is the data that are used in all these cases. But as you just heard from Bethany, Louisiana v. Calais has thrown a huge spin into this, and we really don't know how it's going to play out at the state level. And actually, the main goal of the bill that I mentioned is to rewrite the California Voter Rights Act, because the current law has a whole bunch of mentions of the federal law in it. And so they would remove all those references to the federal law and try to just write it as an independent state law in an attempt to protect it from Louisiana v. Calais. They also do the interesting thing of saying, under this act, you cannot take the action to federal court, which is a creative way of trying to say you can't exercise your constitutional rights. But there's a danger there in that because cities are a creation of the state, cities may not be able to go to federal court. It's a wild bill. So that's kind of what we're diving into from as we look at this. So let's go to the next slide. I'm not gonna go through all this data, but we do look at a lot of data. On the left-hand side is kind of your racial and ethnic data, both at the total population level at the top, which is the 2020 census data. The next category is citizen voting age population, or CVAP. That actually is the data that's most often used in redistricting, because it's as close as we get, according to the courts, to an eligible voter count, citizens who are 18 and above. It is a ballpark number. As you know, the census doesn't ask about citizenship. But the American Community Survey does. And so it's data from a survey rather than from an individual count. And as Bethany mentioned, this has actually gone down in the city. When we did this work in 2018, the city was 13% Hispanic. It's now 11%. We had a huge caveat. You mentioned the small size. In a city this size, the CVAP margin of error is significantly more than 2%. So our estimate has gone down 2%, but it could be the same. It could be in the same realm. And then you get the California statewide database data from last November. It's the most recent, the voter registration. It's a little interesting. You see the two numbers there. The Spanish surnamed is 11% of your registered voters. We also include Latino. The Census Bureau did a little study to say how close is the surname list data to self-declared data in California. And they found that there's about 10% of Latinos are, there's about a 10% undercount Latino. So we include the actual state data, Spanish surname to 11%, and then we use that statewide estimate from the Bureau to give us a second number of 13%. But somewhere around 11% to 13% of the registered voters are estimated to be Latino in Ojai. And then you get down to turnout. You can see November 2022, the gubernatorial election, Latinos were a little lower than their registration at 8% and 7%. whereas in the presidential election in 2024, Spanish-renamed or Latino voters were about 10% or 11% of the voters. The other socioeconomic data is more we included. It's in our runs. If you're interested, you can compare that to what we gave you in 2018, but it's not really tied to whether you have to be bi-district or not. It's more for when we're going. we go to the next oh oh sorry I almost forgot the box to the left so when you mention such a small jurisdiction and this is an issue you know we drew districts in Solvang and Buellton and if you know tiny little Bradbury in LA County Bradbury's actually had districts since it formed as a city in the 1930s for reasons having nothing to do with the California Betterment Act And we are currently drawing districts for Capitola in Santa Cruz County, which is about 9,000 because they got a letter from Mr. Shank. So he does go after the little ones. And we have school districts with less than 200 registered voters that have gone to trustee area elections. Those little tiny ones rarely get a demand letter, but everyone around them gets a demand letter, and so they move out of protection. Because as you heard, it's $30,000 if you send you a letter, and actually this bill would more than double that to $75,000 for every letter he sends that he goes along.

And just so everyone in the audience knows, we will have the presentation posted on the city's website with the agenda materials after the meeting.

What you can see on the left, you know, in a small jurisdiction, these are the numbers for Ojai, you get an average across the four districts. On average, each district has 1,913 people. I'm sure you've seen this in your elections. And talk about door to door and shaking hands, because there's so few registered voters in each district. It really comes down to, in a presidential year, you're looking at about 1,130 total voters per district. Some districts will be even less than that. Some will be more. That's an average. And in a gubernatorial election, 950 average registered voters in those districts. They're really small numbers. Go to the next slide. So one of the big things we look at in terms of liability under this law or under federal law is, is there a geographic concentration of a given protected class? So looking at Latino, again, citizen voting age population, CVAP, this is your eligible voters. The purples and blues are less than 30%. The reds are where Latinos are a majority of citizen voting age population. But keep in mind, as you're thinking about this, the residential density of the city. I don't know if you can see the little numbers, but the big red area in the southwest, you can see the little six.

It's the Ojai Valley Inn.

Exactly. According to the census, there are six people in there of whom over half are Latino. Six is not a geographic concentration that would drive districts. And keep in mind, despite the big giant red, your most Latino district is District 1. in the middle because those light blues actually have concentration of population, so they're higher numbers. So don't be misled by the giant red. You don't have geographic concentration of Latinos in the city. So that's why those in the top, for those that look at this later in the top right include the number of the numbers or the note. The numbers shown are the total population of each census block. So what we're really looking for is are there 50 or 100 people in that block that is majority Latino. If it's six, the district is still going to be overwhelmingly non-Latino in that one block. Four of the six people might be Latino. So the other protected class that has a relatively large number in the city is Asian-Americans. So similarly, we did the same purple to red theme. In this case, you actually do get a bit of a geographic concentration. You can see the red, the yellow, and the green, and light blue in the southwest. There are some significant numbers of people there. That is definitely a notable concentration compared to the rest of the city. But even when that's all drawn together into a district, you see the note at the bottom, District 4 that they're all in is still only 12%. So we're not getting anywhere near a majority district by any means. So and then we got a couple little floaters of red ones that have 10 or 12 people in them. So we'll go to the next. So here's the specifics. That same population and registration data by district. I won't go through all the numbers, but I've highlighted District 1 because it's the most Latino. So as you go down at the top section, you've got total population. You can see it's 28% Latino. It's the most Latino, but even in total population where Latino numbers are highest, because they tend to be younger, non-Hispanic whites, listed as whites here, outnumber Latinos 2 to 1. And then as we go down into total voting age population, and really when we get down into the citizen voting age population, we're down to 13%. Interesting, District 3 is actually higher at 14%. That's just margin of error stuff happening in the really small districts. But by the time we get to the eligible voters, the citizen voting age population, even in District 1, the non-Hispanic whites outnumber Latinos by 5 to 1. So 13% versus 81%. And it's similar when you get into the turnout numbers in 2020 and 2022. The other thing we look at when we're looking at possibilities of could districts help is, is there an area where turnout drops way off? In particular, in gubernatorial elections, is it going to drop more? Looking at the bold November 2020 total turnout, if you go across the right district by district, you can see 87%, 90%, 91%, 90%. The turnout in presidential elections is essentially the same. Same for the 2024 line, 79%, 86%, 83%, 83%. Those are essentially identical turnout levels. In 2022, the gubernatorial election, You get 74, 73, 71, 70. Actually, District 1 is the higher term. rate than the others do. So we're not getting a district where we get low turnout voters. One thing that we can do in districts is isolate the low turnout voters so they're not swamped by another high turnout neighborhood. You don't want to put low turnout parts of Los Angeles in a district of Beverly Hills. Because even if the numbers are even, the Beverly Hills voters turn out at 90%. So they'll swamp them. But you don't have that going on here. You don't have that drop in turnout going on. So, and just the last point noted on the left, we talk about District 1 as the most Latino, but as we look at the Latino share of citizen voting age population and we go across this 13%, 8%, 14%, 9%, that's essentially within that margin of error for such small districts. So, we talk about this being the most Latino, but they're all pretty much the same. Go to the next slide. So that's a big picture. Districts have not really enabled us to draw a heavily Latino district that would show that districts were paying off and achieving the goals of the California Voting Rights Act. But I want to dig as well into elections. This is your election history. This comes from the state, compiles the data for each election for every jurisdiction in the state. So going through the color, each color changes a different election. So if you look at the area column, the fourth column tells you just area four, area one, two, three, four. And then where there's nothing in the area column, that's your last citywide election, 2016, 2018. And so looking at this, we're not seeing Latinos getting elected in any of these elections. And I wanted to go through and dig in a little bit more detail to District 1, because that is our most Latino district. So if we go to the next slide, and 2022 are dug in, there are three precincts in District 1. And this is really what we will look at for polarized voting is, as districts get more Latino, do the what we call Latino preferred candidates do better? So as a precinct, if one precinct is 5% more Latino, does the so-called preferred candidates vote go up by 5% and so on? So looking at this and trying to figure out who might be the preferred candidate, Michelle and I'm I don't know in your arrow Michelle Pinheiro finished first in precinct 12 with 50% of the vote and as you can see in the blue numbers at the top that's the total election result so she lost 49% to 46.5% so it was close but she did lose but she won precinct well And then she lost, she came in second in the other two precincts. And so if Precinct 12 was much more Latino than the other two precincts, we might say, hey, there's polarization going on here. And that would be a sign of concern that a potential plaintiff would use against you if you went back to that large election.

Precinct 12 was 17% Latino amongst turnout.

But Precinct 26 was 9%, and Precinct 44 was essentially identical at 15%. And the percentages are moving a lot, from 50% to significantly lower in the other precincts. So it's not tied directly to the Latino percentage of those precincts at 17, nine, and 15. Now, someone might claim that 17 is higher than 15, but with the margins of where we're talking, that's not real. Doesn't mean that they can't claim it in a lawsuit. Like I said, this is all very gray, and we don't really know where it will end up. But pretty safe to say that this does not show polarization. And then that leads to the bottom point, which is it's not showing polarization. And having districts did not lead to the election of the one candidate who might be argued to be Latino preferred. Even if we disagreed about whether or not it showed polarization, if she had won, well, maybe the district elections is why the Latino preferred candidate won. Even with districts, she didn't win. So the district system is not helping to elect the Latino preferred candidates. And as I'm sure you've all have heard and thought about, of course, district elections does have a downside. If you only get to vote for one council member and the mayor, you don't get to vote for the whole council. So, if it's not helping.

Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. Why would you assume that Michelle Nero was a Hispanic preferred candidate?

Definitely not. And what I wanted to do is dig in and say, does the data indicate that she might be?

Okay.

I think my conclusion looking at the data would be the data does not show that she is. But as I mentioned, that difference between she did better in the 17% precinct than she did in the 15% precinct might be something a plaintiff might try to make a case based on that she was, but it's a real threat. But yeah, she's as close as anyone comes. And this is as close as anyone comes to being a Latino-preferred candidate. But no, I don't think she's Latino-preferred, but she's as close as anyone comes to someone that might point it.

But she is Latino. No, she's Portuguese. No, Puerto Rican.

Yeah. It's actually an interesting... I mean, these cases go bonkers. It's part of the reason they're so expensive is that... The law gives more weight to elections that have a Latino running in them, if it's a Latino plaintiff. But then the test actually is just who did the Latino voters support. It's not who is the Latino candidate. And the Gingles case says we'll give more weight if there was a Latino candidate, but that part of the Gingles, the federal ruling that started all this, is actually a minority opinion. It goes wild in these cases. In the Santa Monica case, the judge actually admitted a DNA test of one of the council members to decide whether or not he was Latina. Yeah, that's why that case took a month.

Yeah, that's what you would have to do, actually, I think.

Well, and technically, that's not actually supposed to even matter. But these are the twists and turns that these cases take that are the reason they get so dang expensive so fast. But no, it's a good question. I'm not saying she was a Latino preferred. She's just as close. If a plaintiff was going to make a case, she's as close to a case that they could make. And even then, the districts didn't help her.

Yeah, I was just wondering if the assumption by a last name or what actually would qualify as a Latino preferred candidate. But you told me it was whoever won in the heavily Latino, the heaviest Latino district, whoever won, then you would assume they were Latino preferred.

Yeah, we're looking for which candidate does better as the precincts become more Latino. And in an ideal world, like when a big city's fighting over this, we have some precincts that are 2% Latino and some precincts that are 90% Latino, and it makes a really nice chart. And all of us kind of agree to it. It's in these tiny jurisdictions that we have. Like I said, there are three precincts here, so we have three data points, and we're trying to estimate this. In the cases that set all this stuff up, You know, like L.A. County, they had hundreds of data points that they were looking at. You know, in the South, in the 60s, dozens or scores or hundreds of precincts as well. So this is all a little bit gray. And you're catching on to that. I did also look at the mayoral elections, similar analysis. We'll go to the next slide.

Again, your clerk and treasurer elections have always been unopposed going back to 2016, so I didn't look at those, obviously.

Look at your mayoral elections. The only one that kind of offers something to look at would be, again, Ms. Pinheiro ran for mayor. This election, I will note, was not close, 64.2 to 35.8%. But even when it's not close, we can still look to see if we're getting that pattern. So if we go to the next slide. Um, looking at the 19 precincts citywide and I zoom in because, um, uh, precinct 16 in this case was in this current district, uh, one of the 19 precincts. She only won in one of them, uh, precinct 16. And actually she only got 40 to 45% in four of the precincts and all the other precincts. She was below 40%. Makes sense. He was 35% citywide. So then picking out the three precincts in District 1 to say, OK, as we're looking at the Latino percentage, is she doing better? Precinct 16 had 18% Latino. Precinct 5 had 22% Latino. And Precinct 2 had 17% Latino. So actually, Precinct 5 is the one that's most Latino. And that's where she lost 60-40. So there's not a direct connection between the Latino percentage and her percentage. So again, we're not showing dilution. We're not showing that there was polarization in that election. So it is, I should note, she did get a majority in one precinct. She got 40% in another precinct. Those are better than her citywide numbers. So maybe they'd try to make something out of that. So it's not a slam dunk, you win on summary judgment kind of thing. But this is not data where I'd say you have a problem and you need to switch two districts if you were still at large. Go to the next slide. So, again, just the points I made. Even in the most Latino district, after going to bi-district, the number of voters casting ballots, non-Hispanic whites, still outnumber Latinos five to one. And this is the question. Are Latinos better off as a voting block in a polarized situation or allegedly polarized situation? They're better off being 16% of one precinct. Are they better where they can vote for one council member? Are they better off being 12% of the whole city, or 10%, whatever it is, and being able to vote as 10% of the block for the whole council? There's no right or wrong answer to that. That's a policy question. But that is a question that the courts try to wrestle with. So, again, as I hopefully have shown as much as can be shown in this very, very gray world, the switch to bi-district voting has not improved the Latinos' ability to elect their preferred candidates. But it does, of course, prevent Latinos and all voters from voting for the whole council. And then always keep in mind, as noted here and mentioned at the beginning, Louisiana v. Calais is a huge wild card that we're still trying to figure out. Actually, Elsham Winder is filing a brief in the Huntington Beach case, I think on the 2nd, June 2nd, on the applicability of that ruling to the California Voting Rights Act. And of course, that's in a superior court. So what, as you heard earlier, what really matters when it gets up to appeals court. It'll be quite a while before we know the answer to that question.

Is the opposing counsel also putting in a brief as to why it is applicable or not applicable? I mean, both sides are making a case.

The court requested supplemental briefing from both Mr. Shankman as well as the legal team for Huntington Beach.

Right, right. And then you'll have the added twist of if this bill passes, and it's about to pass the Senate and go over to the Assembly, so we'll see where it goes. So Mr. Schengen's both trying to argue it doesn't kill the California Voting Rights Act, and he's trying to rewrite the California Voting Rights Act so that we might win this year and lose January 1st when the new law kicks in.

It's going to pass the Senate?

Yeah, it's passed out of Senate approves. It's going to the floor. It's part of the 200 bills that they do at a certain stage. And so it looks like it's coming out of the Senate or the Assembly. We'll see.

I do have a quick question about your, I'm going to ask for your expertise. Yeah. So if you have, say, I'm District 1, so that's why I'm so interested and I do understand the data. If you have concentrated in my district, let's just, I'm going to round numbers because it's a theoretical question. You have 10%. and 10% is not going to allow you to elect a Latino candidate, if you have 90% that's other. But if you have within the city, You know spread out among the other districts a total of 25% Right. So it seems to me that in fact the situation is flipped because you have When you have districts only you don't you're not able to use all of the population Because the population now has to vote, you know, they're split artificially. Do you understand my question?

Yes. Yes and

So to me, it just seems like it's antithetical in a way, because if you have 25% of your population is Hispanic, but only 8% is within one district, or 10% is within one district, you have to rely upon that one district, which you can't rely upon the other districts to be able to add to that total.

Right, and that actually, is why Mr. Shankman and others and many cities have looked at these alternative voting systems of cumulative voting or as the voters here looked at ranked choice voting, they would empower people regardless of where they are in the city to kind of band together. As you heard, not only is the statute say, have words that the Secretary of State has said general law cities can't switch, there was actually a bill that would have said general law cities can do these alternative systems, it passed the legislature and Governor Newsom vetoed it. And so it's pretty clear that the cities cannot, yeah, essentially he comes from a ranked choice voting city. And so he kind of was like, I don't want to do the state what's been done to San Francisco.

That's because nobody understands it, even in San Francisco.

Right.

I'm from San Francisco. Nobody understands it.

Right. And we actually do do work with cities that are looking at changing their election system. When Palm Desert, for one election cycle, went to... um the system that albany uses a single transfer will vote rank choice voting um uh we work on implementing that and it is very very complicated um and expensive too um so that idea that you're talking about is is definitely talked about a lot mr shangman himself and and other advocates of empowering these It's going to sound weird saying here. In some cities, they are disenfranchised. I would say Merced, when Merced got a letter, they actually agreed within six hours to make a change because they knew right away. They actually couldn't vote. Merced's a big city. They couldn't vote on a zoning issue because four of the five council members lived within 500 feet of the parcel. Right. That's funny. So they're like, yeah, they immediately admitted that they had a problem and made the change. That's a great example. Yeah. That's what the law was intended for. So in your case, yes, you could use one of these alternative voting systems if you were a charter city. They would then empower if Latinos were a disenfranchised block to vote as a block.

And I'm just going to ask one final question. Is this all racially... Because you can segment populations by other factors outside of race, like all kinds of things you could do. But this specifically only speaks to racially... specific districts. Maybe I could ask it this way.

It's a good question. If the spirit of the act is something like to address unfair voting maps that weaken the voting powers of communities of color, that's one way I've heard the Voting Rights Act expressed. Is it limited to that? That's another way of asking what I think you've asked.

This is a big twist in the Calais decision, too. So in all the federal acts that came out, they looked at that. And the early cases involved, it's not race, it's education, these kinds of things. But these cases were all in the South, and all those things are very tightly integrated. African-Americans were low education because the schools weren't bad before Brown v. Board of Education. So what the federal court said is all those other factors of education, income, they were all proxies for race. Back in the 60s and 70s, they were. And that's unclear. That connection is much less now. And Huntington Beach is an issue because the median income of Latinos is $20,000 less than whites. Well, the median income of Latinos on Huntington Beach is still $109,000 a year. So this is not Alabama. And what Kalei said is, one of many things Kalei said is, you do need to separate that. And you have to show that it is race that's driving the vote, not partisanship, for example. So that's going to be a, that old assumption from federal case law is no longer there. And we don't know where it will go.

I was talking more about protected classes, to tell you the truth. More things like whether it's, you know, it can be ethnicity, it could be religion, it could be gender identification, it could be all kinds of things. Right. Whereas you will have a critical mass in a city, but you will not have a critical mass in a district. And so really you can't, if you are part of a protected class, you can't really protect yourself against that. And that to me is also something to consider. Thanks for clarifying.

Yeah, definitely. And there are protected classes under other laws, housing, gender, those kinds of things. What we're talking about here, the protected classes under the Voting Rights Act is only race.

That was my question. It's only race. But when it comes down to a city deciding one way or the other, it's not just about the race decision other than outside of the potential litigation. But when you're trying to decide how you want your voting to go, you have many things to consider.

oh yeah I know we've been doing this work since 1979 and California Voter Rights Act just kicked in in 2001 so mostly what we did was cities arguing on their own should we go to is it time for us to go to districts and those kinds of questions exactly came out back then other questions what a great presentation thank you amazing thank you that was so cool my pleasure anytime it's always fun to come to Ohio thank you if we're ready we'll go to public comments all right so we have

Larry Steingold, please. William Wyrick and Christine Golden.

Good evening.

Hi.

For all the reasons that Shankman, one size fits all. And Ojai is, in my view and most of the demographics view and most of your views, not like other cities like Merced or Providence, Rhode Island or any other places. And to be afraid of a lawsuit where we spend money, thousands, hundreds of thousands on lawsuits that probably shouldn't be taking place, This is an important one. The cost, maybe we can join other cities. What do they call it, a joint powers act or something where other cities join in and fund this? Because if this gentleman was hired for information to help us, he's also hired for information to hurt us. So maybe he will give us all the ammunition we need if you just pay him. More. Just an idea. You're working both sides of the fence. I don't know if you can do that, but... Okay, hired guns is good to go. But the idea of having it for one at-large voting is where we should be. Put it back to the voter. If the city wants to go and spend the money, let the voter decide to spend the money. Vote yes tonight, but put it to the vote, because we're the ones that ultimately have to live here with you. Maybe next year, maybe not, but you're here as a citizen. And what is the right way to go for Ojai, not necessarily for other cities? And that's where I'm at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Steingold. William Wyrick, please, Christine Golden, and then Randy Haney. Evening, everyone. Hello.

Look at how much more information you have tonight than you had just a few weeks ago. I really, really applaud this council on voting to go ahead with the demographic study because look what it gave you in terms of additional information, additional information, all the while, as your city attorney has so concisely put it, the status of this entire question is evolving almost daily. There were more developments today on this issue legally. So what I would implore you to do tonight is to follow an axiomatic aspect of good decision making. Get all the information you can before you have to exercise a final judgment. Tonight is the decision of whether to draft an ordinance or a referendum. I don't know why you don't do both. Because that crystallizes, that focuses the question. It's going to attract attention from interested parties. It's going to make the question precise and defined. And I don't think there's any legal liability, even all the way through first reading. until you do a final adoption. I believe a city attorney mentioned that as well. So it seemed to me that in the interest of making the best possible decision with the most available information, please vote to at least draft the ordinance and are the ordinance and the referendum to focus the thinking, to get the most available information, and to make the final judgment when you have to. It's a complicated question, a lot of issues on both sides. But don't debate the question tonight. The question tonight is whether you're going to go ahead and get more information. by drafting the ordinances and doing due diligence that goes along with it and watching the evolution of this question nationally and statewide. And so in the same spirit of going ahead with this demographic study that gave us additional understanding, please at least get these ordinances draft so we can focus our debate.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eric. Christine Golden, please. Randy Haney. And then Chelsea Satula.

i get your strategy you talk and talk and talk and now i don't know what i was going to say all right um well one thing i do want to say is i think there are four of you sitting up there that are compromised in making a vote on this because you benefit from districts that's one thing i want to say and you can't pretend otherwise you know that it's harder you If we go to all districting for you to get re-elected, it's gonna cost you more money. So you're being compromised, and yet you're the ones making the decision whether or not to put this in front of the voters. That's one thing. Second thing, I don't care what it costs. My franchise has been taken away. I want every single one of you to represent me and everyone out there in the audience who's a member of the city. There are people out there gonna talk against it that don't live in the city. I want my vote back. It was taken away. I'm angry about it. I don't care what it costs because you'll win. And if you don't, get another lawyer. because it's the right thing. Look at what you were just shown, and you know that you can't lose this. And something else I noticed when I was listening to everybody, there seems to be an assumption that only Latinos vote for Latinos. That was interesting.

I had other things I was gonna say, but I've forgotten them.

But just please, give me back my franchise. It is so wrong that I only have minority, I was only two of you up there. And let's say that I hadn't voted for you, Rachel, then there would only be one of you. Let's say I hadn't voted for you. Where's my representation? I wanna vote for every single city council member in this little tiny town. Make it happen.

Thank you, Ms. Golden. Randy Haney, please, Chelsea Satula, and then Anthony Duarte.

So much to be said in such a short amount of time to say it in. I agree with Mr. Wyrick about more information and more facts. And the only way you gather that is by moving this ball forward. If you end it tonight, you'll never know where we stood or where we stand. So I think it's important that whatever you do, you move this to the ordinance level. And here's the other part of that. We don't know what... What's his name? Schneckman?

Schneckman?

Schneckman. I don't want to lose my time to that guy. But I'll tell you what, we don't know anything what that guy's going to do. And he doesn't know what he's going to do until we do it. So why are we going to live in the fear of it? Why are you going to go back to 2018 when we didn't have as much information? We didn't have the facts. And five of us lived in fear of, oh my God, we were going to lose our shirts to this guy. Why does this guy pick on little cities? Because little cities cave. Because little cities don't have the resources. Because little cities live in fear. This community doesn't live in fear. Ask yourself that. Do you live in fear? Are you afraid what that guy's going to do? Well, I'm just trying to say, you know, if you don't get pissed and worked up over this, there's something wrong. And what Christine just said about being disenfranchised, why don't all of us have the right to pick you? Why do I only have the right to pick two of you? Why? Why? Because we made a mistake. I'm raising my hand. I made a mistake. I made a decision made completely out of fear and lack of information. Don't go down that path. Do what's right. changed this system from what it was. And if you'll notice, we did have Latin representation on this council. We haven't had that. We had Latin individuals running. We don't have that. So I'm just trying to say here, let's just do what's right. And it's not a step backwards by doing a revision of something that is wrong. And you know, I'm going to close with that too. That law that this gentleman stated that you can write an ordinance, but you don't have the right to rescind it. I mean, I'm scratching my head on that one. So what rights do you have? You get to do one shot at it. Once you make that decision, it's history. It's done. You can't go back. That doesn't make any sense to me. Do the right thing, please.

Thank you, Mr. Haney. Chelsea Satula, Anthony Duarte, and then Michael Shapiro.

Thank you, Council. I am here speaking as a business owner. I do not any longer live in the city. I was kicked out by the landlord I was renting from. And so part of my argument here is to advocate for renters. Renters are the major disenfranchised class in this town that are affected by districts. And you can read all about Susa Francina's story if you don't remember it. I also wanna point out, it hasn't been brought up tonight, only 25% of cities in California with populations under 35,000 adopted districts in the first place. Port Hueneme does not have districts. Maybe we can find out their secret sauce for avoiding lawsuits. Shankman reminds me of Rotten Totten, our former DA, and I wanna remind you that 10 years ago, this council, I'm not sure if any of you were here, except for these two, This district attorney sent letters to all of the mayors in the county saying, do not regulate cannabis. You are inviting criminals, you are inviting problems and DUIs and theft and highly recommend you take emergency action to forbid this. And every other city in the county did exactly as Rotten Totten told them except for the city of Ojai. And that is the only reason I have a business in this town and that you have a 3% gross receipts tax to show for it. Because you said, screw you, Totten. We're going to do what we want. You can't tell us what to do. We're not going to be driven by fear. That's ridiculous. We're going to pass an emergency ordinance to regulate it. Do you guys remember that you did that? No other city in the state did that. They all passed emergency bans. You passed an emergency regulation. I just want to point that out as a point of historical pride. I also want to ask if we've reached out to actually any minority groups directly to ask them how they feel. I feel like this is a bunch of white people talking about it and two Democratic clubs going at it, which I find really interesting. I think the demographic study tells you all you need to know. I want to reiterate what he said. Districts are not achieving the goals of the CVRA, and they are not showing voter dilution here. NIMBYs are not a protected class. What matters is race, color, and language group. It's not just race. It's color and language group as well. And that's what the CVRA is about. One other point I want to mention, everybody that lives in the city and needs to find connection with a council member can do it. There are other ways to do it. If I wanna talk to somebody about a specific issue, I figure out which of you is the best person to talk to, because I have taxation without representation here, and I just make all of you my representer. Thank you.

Thank you. Anthony Duarte, please. Michael Shapiro, and then Darlene Kilgore, I believe, yes.

Good evening, Mayor Gilman, council members, and fellow neighbors. My name is Anthony Duarte, born and raised here in this wonderful town, current resident, also Latino, and Chumash. So some of you guys have known my family through our restaurant, Ruben's Burritos, or on my mother's side, our Chumash family named Tumamite. So I can honestly say that this community is in my blood, and that's exactly why I'm standing here tonight. I'm here because Ojai has asked whether to return to at-large elections, and I think we should. Like many California cities, Ojai was essentially strong-armed into the district elections by the threat of costly litigation, not because our community demanded it. District voting was built for places where certain neighborhoods were being shut out of their own elections, no matter how they voted. Ojai is not that city, and it's actually something we should be proud of. We're a connected, we're an integrated community of around 8,000 people, shared streets, shared values, shared challenges. We're already doing that right the first time around. One valley, one community, and one voice. With only 5,300 registered voters split across four districts, each district has roughly around 1,300 eligible voters. That's fewer candidates, less competition, and seats that occasionally go uncontested. When only one person files and no one challenges them, that community never gets a choice. There's no debate. There's no comparison. There's no accountability. You don't get the best candidate. You get only the candidate. And in this town, this small town, that one person in theory could stay term after term. So I know I'm hearing a little apprehension. Not very many towns have reversed course on this and challenged the system that the whole state has been moving towards for decades. But that's not a reason to stay stuck. That's an opportunity in my opinion. Ojai has a chance to set the example be that small town that other towns can look at and say, look it, we've looked at the data, we've looked in the mirror, and we made the right call. Let the other towns look at us and say, if Ojai did it, so can we. At large is who we are, one vote, whole town, full accountability. So I ask that you take us back to that, and I appreciate your consideration and your time.

Thank you, sir. Michael Shapiro, please, Darlene Kilgore, and then Anita Cram.

Good evening, members of the City Council, Michael Shapiro. I've lived in Ojai for 35 years now, and it's beloved 35 years of my life. A minority opinion by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it was published widely just a few days ago, stated that, and I quote, quote, if anyone wanted to rig an election far better than stuffing ballot boxes or gerrymandering, then have your city government adopt a winner take all policy that's otherwise known as at large voting, end quote. You see, that way, instead of running for a specific district where a candidate lives, anyone and everyone of voting age living throughout the city limits can cast a vote for any candidate. Naturally, mounting such a campaign is far more expensive and far more challenging and will favor the candidate back by the biggest money and special interest group money as well. The more preferential method for fulfilling Ojai's democracy is for candidates that continue representing specific districts and campaign for the eligible and registered voters residing in them. If they have to, you could add a proviso that any candidate or any officeholder, while they're serving their four years, is forced to move beyond their own control, as would happen to our beloved Sousa Francita. They could finish out their full term. That would be a very acceptable edit. So I share with you, because the city of Ojai attempts to return to at-large voting, the city would certainly be sued. That's been mentioned here in the discussion so far. Does the city council wish for Ojai to follow the ranks of Louisiana versus Calais, the most recent news that we're all reading about? A move back to at-large voting to intentionally disenfranchise voters, I think, would absolutely provoke such a lawsuit. At-large voting may even be in opposition to the nation's Voting Rights Act, as the recent case of Common Cause versus Louie exemplifies. Finally, the best candidate to serve on the city council come from representing specific districts where they live. where they know their neighbors, where they know firsthand all about specific issues in that neighborhood regarding crime, fire safety, noise, traffic safety, all the other issues that candidates who live in his or her district is intimately engaged with because they live there, they know their neighbors, they know their fellow voters. I urge you to reject any attempt to return to at-large voting. Continue supporting true democracy. It was invented in Athens. I saw a documentary a couple of weeks ago, NPR. They invented this district voting, the Athenian democracy way. Thank you.

Thank you. Darlene Kilgore, please. Anita Cram. And then Carol Avalon. Hello.

Good evening. My name is Darlene Kilgore, and I am going to read a resolution that was adopted by the United Democrats of the Ojai Valley. Resolution to support California democratic platform for political reform as it applies to any action to remove Ojai City Council district voting. Whereas it is the duty of the United Democrats of the Ojai Valley to take a position to oppose the agenda item before the Ojai City Council to remove district area voting for city council seats for the November 3, 2026 election and future elections. Whereas the Ojai City Council adopted a resolution in 2018 providing for city council district voting areas for the 2020 election to align with the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, whereas the United Democrats of the Ohio Valley support the spirit of the preamble of the political reform platform of the California Democratic Party. Quote, we demand transparency and accountability from both our party and government. We will combat voter suppression and election subversion, end quote. Whereas the United Democrats of the Ohio Valley support the California Democratic Party political reform platform statement of the, quote, encourage the replacement of at-large election methods with the adoption of bi-district and or alternative voting method when it maintains the spirit of the California Voting Rights Act. Whereas the United Democrats of the Ohio Valley oppose any resolution coming from any other Democratic club or elected officials to remove the existing district voting areas prior to the November 3, 2026 election. Removing district voting areas three months prior to the close of candidate filing changes the manner which candidates will campaign, including the number of voter contacts and the material cost of running a campaign. Whereas the United Democrats of the Ohio Valley oppose any change of district voting areas, that will leave the city of Ohio open to lawsuits alleging violations of the California Voting Rights Act. The city of Ohio received notice from law firm of Schenkman and Hughes specializing in lawsuits regarding California Voting Rights Act violations. Therefore, the United Democrats of the Ohio Valley stands in solidarity with the 2026 political reform platform of the California Democrats to maintain the existing district voting areas of the city of Ojai. We respectfully ask for the support of the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee and the California Democratic State Party to support our resolution to oppose at-large voting for Ojai City Council. It is further resolved that this resolution to be shared with local elected representatives, Democratic Party leaders at the local, state.

Thank you. Anita Cram, please. Carol Avalon. And then Renee Roth.

Hello. Hi.

I urge city council to reject the proposed shift from district-based voting to an at-large system. There is no clear articulate reason to do this. The staff report states the proposed change is due to public interest. Where is the evidence to back this? It does not exist. Some say the mayor ran on this promise. You cannot equate a minor point in a political campaign to a mandate of public interest. There is no evidence connecting these two points. The staff report also states, notably, however, the city retains an at-large system for electing a mayor. Therefore, the city currently has a hybrid voting system. This is a baffling argument that compares apples and oranges. We elect the governor in California at large. Everyone gets to vote. But we do not use this argument or this fact to shift away from representative elections in our state elections. We do it by district. It's kind of a silly comparison. i've also heard the argument that fear of lawsuits should not be a factor in considering this ill-conceived proposal this is about pragmatic decision making that is the responsibility of city council and city staff to we the community to make sound evidence-based decisions There are very good reasons to retain district voting. Many can be found in written public comments and heard tonight. Neighborhoods can organize around issues. I personally had to do this a lot the last four years. Localized to the area in which they live, they're part of the community. They go to their district council member, who also happens to be a neighbor. I see mine in my neighborhood and get to talk just walking down the street. So they can ask for help to a clear person who holds a defined position of authority and responsibility to them. This is a real need in our community neighborhoods that has served the people many times. Don't take that away from us. It also allows those with less time and money to mount a district-based campaign. Don't take that away from them. You know, and Councilmember Rule made a comment at one of the meetings that she knows almost all the people in her district. That is an excellent reason to have district voting and to not have at-large. You know, Ojai stands to lose a lot of credibility on a local county and state and possibly beyond that if we change this. And there are just so many other things. I'm offended. I want to apologize to Michelle Pinero for her being dragged through the mud tonight. I think that was just appalling to bring her name up like that in this context so many times. I mean, I think the whole city owes her an apology.

Thank you. Carol Avalon, please. Renee Roth, and then Heidi Whitman. Hello.

Well, I'm just beginning to learn about this at large and by district. So now I'm very engaged. I'm talking to all my friends about it and finding out how many people have no idea what's going on. So I'm in favor of at large voting, and I request that you restore that ordinance back. We're a small community, and being chopped up into districts is not fostering the energy of unity in this town. It's a small town. One district can know another district. We're not that separate. And I know that the council can handle any challenge that should occur from changing this financially, emotionally. I want you all to be brave and stand for something new. One more thing. I want to vote for the best person and not be limited to being forced to vote in a way that my district, and I don't want that person, and I want somebody else that I feel is going to be serving Ojai better. I want that right to do that. Thank you. Be brave.

Thank you, Ms. Avalon. Renee Roth, please, and then Heidi Whitman.

good evening council I do want to thank the demographer who did the study I think it was very clear that districts are not providing any beneficial service to the racial minorities in our town it's just completely obvious to me And I think the data proves it I want to thank Bethany our city attorney for Creating all the legal analysis that I think it is needed to restore at-large voting I do believe that just as there may be a Mr. Shankman lawsuit against us, by the way, I understand he lives in Malibu, and Malibu did not get rid of their at-large voting. Just take note. at Malibu would be a good example of somebody who stayed with At-Large, and I think we need to go back to it. I honestly and sincerely believe that the minorities in our town and the disenfranchisement that you were talking about where we don't get to elect all of our council members to represent our interests is a disservice. We're only limited to two candidates when you're all there to represent us. And I do believe that we want to restore civility in our elections. We want to be able to talk about what our greater issues are, what our greater good is, what our greater needs are of the community. And the division and the rancor and the lawsuits do not service. They do not service well at all. It's time to really end that and go back to at-large. The other thing that I think is really important to note, and I wrote it in my letter, if you've got three districts, in order to have a competitive race, you've got to have six council members to run for those three districts. At large, you don't need six council members. You can use four. You can have four candidates. You're limited to four candidates. And with our small town and our small electorate, both are working toward having competitive races with less people who can have to... create broader appeal and broader issues that they want to understand and show that they can represent all of Ojai. I honestly and sincerely believe that we need to do this, that it's very important, and I think you've got the legal basis to do it, and you've got the legal basis to do it tonight. I hope you will do that tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Hoffman. Heidi Whitman, please.

Good evening, council members and mayor and staff. I'm a 36-year city resident, and I urge you not to be the first to go backwards on voting rights in Ventura County or in California. We don't need to be precedent setting on this issue. We do not need to be the first. We are the tiniest city in the county and one of the smallest in Southern California. As a Democrat and a woman who has always fought for equality, I believe it's incumbent upon us not just to look out for Ojai, but also to look out for other communities with more minorities where our precedent setting could affect other things that we're saying we are in favor of. So please don't, please stick to districts and please don't fall for this idea of drafting ordinances. I believe that's how we got Measure M in the first place. The city took it up as an issue. They didn't get people to collect signatures and it made everyone think, oh gee, it must be a good thing because the council wants it. So please avoid another lawsuit. Please stick to districts. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Ms. Whitman.

That's my last card. Anybody online? Mayor, we currently have no raised hands on Zoom. And we just had one raised from Stephen. Okay. And that is the only one so far. Stephen, you may unmute and you have the floor.

Sure. My name is Stephen Colomay, Ohio resident. And my comments tonight are going to be very, very blunt. This was, in my opinion, political shenanigans. and a last minute coordinated ambush in order to hijack our city's election. Where did this call to regress back to at-large elections originate? There had been no ongoing public discussion, and despite claims to the contrary by our mayor, this is not an established city priority. This was simply a coordinated attempt at a power grab. Two months ago, during the very last minute of a long meeting, Mayor Gilman, with Councilmember Rule, asked to agendize a substantial change in voting procedures. There was no discussion, no contact, no rationale for this request. California courts have determined that at-large voting is inherently discriminatory. So why would we consider being the first community in the state to regress back to at-large from our current districts? We've already wasted city attorney resources to work on this issue. We've spent public money on a demographic consultant, and we've wasted time in this chamber when there are far more important and ranked priorities in this community. The smaller neighborhood districts have clear advantages A candidate can canvas each residence in their district, not possible in at-large elections. The residents identify with their neighborhood representative to discuss issues and concerns. The fact is that this proposed election change does not benefit residents of Ojai. This is nothing but a blatant, crass, and backroom attempt at a power grab. So why is it being proposed? Likely to enable a citywide slate supported by outside money and special interests. Notice the number of non-residents who have recently emerged from hibernation to call for this change in our election procedures. We should be defenders of voting rights. I encourage you tonight to simply reject this anti-democratic proposal and spend no more time or financial resources of the city on this venture. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Colony. That's all. Okay. Quick check in. We've been sitting for two hours. Do you guys want a five minute break and then discussion?

Five minute break. Okay. We'll come right back.

Okay, welcome back everybody. If you'll indulge me, I'll just say a few words that I hope clarify a few things. One, just again, the purpose of the act. to address some unfair voting maps that weaken voting powers of communities of color. Oh, you want to come? You want to say 30 seconds first. Come, Mr. Johnson. Sorry. I forgot.

Just for the record, I just want to mention there was a concern that we work both sides. I just want to clarify that some of the firms in this field do. NDC only works for jurisdictions. So we never work on the plaintiff side. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear.

We got it. But then the second thing I'm hoping to come back to you, and don't forget to set my timer, please. Thanks. So we heard from the former council that they brought this ordinance under duress. They said that publicly. And then to my mind, Measure M is really interesting in 2022. And even when we were thinking of running and talking about these conversations in 2024, early 2024 we thought the council could still invoke measure m that was the hope but it didn't it didn't do that which is it that was its prerogative but even if there was a technical conversation around ranked choice versus the expression which is is in the measure at large there was a desire for it to change in any system that's proposed in other words even if you want to make an argument about ranked choice there's still a desire to change from the current And so I've had this frequent conversation about this subject, and for those of you who are in the room, many of you were, in September 2024, Mayor Sticks literally says we would like to get rid of districts when they were having a conversation around whether or not Councilwoman Francina should not whether a position would they lose their housing to be able to stay so they talked about it um for three three sessions um one you were absent so you couldn't vote so they pulled it back again so that's literally the mayor saying that so it's not new and we bring things up at the end of the meeting because that's new business we don't debate new business we just see if there's enough appetite to talk about it further so no secrets or anything like that But then secondly, as was pointed out, 75% of cities below 30,000 in California remain at-large. That's not true of big cities, but just so everybody's clear, of those cities, only 36 are charter cities, so it's not even that they're a majority of charter, not even 20%. That's from the California League of Cities and the Rose Institute. So if I think of consequences and I try to, for me, when I think about issues like this, I'm thinking on one hand principle and one consequence, but around a consequence, we saw the council discussions around somebody losing their housing and they voted basically to say, as long as you're intending to look for housing, that's good enough. That's where they landed. But then secondly, we see an example where someone's running in a district that's unopposed, which I don't think anybody would think that's better than having a choice. But this was the real thing for me. And I'm going to throw out some numbers. You might want to write this down or not. I'll just say them. But if you think of the mayor, it has basically the whole city that they're representing, you might say. So my number was a little bit different than Mr. Johnson's, but let's say 5,400-ish, 5,379. And then you think of the four districts averaging 1,364. On the average, that would go up to like 1,471 down to 1,200. So now take the average of 1364. If the mayor, who is representing 5379, and one district, which is representing 1364, now those are overlapping, of course, but that's who their responsibility is to, and three of the other council members from districts oppose them on a vote, 3972 people are deciding for 67 and 43. I hope that can sink in just for a second. We have a system right now where the minority is deciding for the majority about what to do. I'm sorry, that's, no, hold on, hold on. We're gonna get a chance for everybody to talk. So here's another issue about the local neighborhoods. If the person's purview was limited to the neighborhood, I don't think anybody would disagree, but it's not, it's limited from that neighborhood to all the neighborhoods. So again, I would say, you have a situation where you have a minority who's driving a majority with no clear identified class of either a class of a group or underrepresented population that it's serving. So that's not expressed by our report here tonight. So what I would suggest is if we separate principles from, let's say, a path forward or a consequence, on principle, it seems to me I cannot see how we can let this stand this way, on principle. Now, when we talk about how to implement it, that's different. We could talk about when, how, where, fine. It could be not now, it could be later, that's okay. But in principle, I don't see how it could possibly stand because we're living, like we have our Senate system and our House system. Our Senate system makes it so that the state gets to vote in a disproportionate way compared to the population. But we have a House that is also grounded in the population. We don't have that here. I hear what you're saying, but we have a Senate and no House, essentially. So that's the problem that we have here. So I'm done. Guys, guys, guys, let us talk. That part is over. So we'll go on to our next people. So I would encourage, we need a specific group that this act is working toward, and I have not heard that group tonight. I'm done.

Anybody else? Yeah, I'll go. So I think tonight we are being asked to consider the most consequential decision a city council can make. That's how the people elect their representatives. In 2022, voters passed Measure M with nearly 56% support. And that was around ranked choice voting that nobody understands. Basically, they wanted to change. And you can say that nobody wants this, but when I was campaigning, I had to explain to people how things were actually district. And almost to a person, people said that makes no sense. So I am, my district splits Blanche Street. So on the west side of Blanche Street, you're not in my district. On the east side of Blanche Street, you are in my district. Same with Shady Lane. Like, you want to tell me how that actually makes any difference whatsoever? And I would say the districts really, most people that talk to you are about infrastructure. It's about infrastructure. They call you. That has nothing to do with districts. It really doesn't. Traffic, I mean, all that kind of stuff, it is citywide. So I'm finding this hard. What districts have actually produced A very first district election, a city council member was evicted from her rental and couldn't find affordable housing within her district. She took refuge in a friend's shack, a cabin with no shower. For that, she was hounded on social media, attacked in public comments, and reported to the grand jury. That is what district boundaries did to a qualified elected representative in a town where housing costs can change your address overnight. And two years later, and this is no reflection on Council Member Lange, thank you, I mean for Council Member Meng, thank you, but our district seat, this district seat went entirely uncontested. No competition, no choice for voters. These are not theoretical problems. This is district elections not working. I wanna talk a little bit about numbers. Ojai has 5,381 registered voters. District one, we had 1,228. District two had 1,442. District three had 1,331. And district four has 1,380. in an election where 17 votes matter, this isn't even fair. I mean, it's like, There's over 150 differential between how many voters in your particular district. So to me, those numbers are just, they make no sense. I don't know how you can split up these districts within that range. And finally, I do want to talk about the, you know, the California Democratic Party platform and what it actually says. It has that very strong qualifier at the end, which is you have district elections when it maintains the spirit of the California Voting Rights Act. And I can't believe that anyone here, after looking at the demographic data, believes that this maintains the spirit of the California Voting Rights Act. Proclamations, not proclamations.

Guys, guys, please. Thank you. No, I'm sorry, that time's over.

And finally, I want to talk about, I think it's important to follow the money here. Supporters of district voting argue that smaller races cost less and make it easier for everyday people to run. But lower costs don't level the playing field when the same donors control multiple races. In the 2022 election, four individuals donated to two of the three council races and the mayor's race. One couple gave $9,999 to a single mayoral campaign. In a city with districts of 1,228 to 1,442 voters, a few large contributions don't buy less influence. They buy more. Keep in mind, take a look at the filings of who contributed to whom, and you will see who's actually putting the money behind these races. Fundraising in Ojai isn't about knocking on your neighbor's doors. It's about who you know and who can donate a couple of thousand dollars across the board to their favorite candidates. We know that happened. There's no doubt about it. Finally, it's my deep belief that the voters of Ojai do want at-large elections. We saw them here. I've been out. I canvassed. They don't even understand why this would not be that way.

Thank you. Anybody else? Yes.

So I agree with many of the points that you've made and and I have good friends on both sides of the of the issue my concerns with going back to at-large have to do with number one the the benefits that we would have from moving to at-large this election cycle is are far outweighed by the likely cost of litigation. There's a lot at stake for Ojai of being the first city to go back to at-large voting, especially right now. This is a highly politicized issue on the state and federal level. We're seeing all across the country voting rights, we're seeing just them being obliterated in many communities. And while we might not have the racial demographic diversity that other cities do, other cities are watching for the first city to go back to at-large. And I've personally been called by council members, by candidates in other cities in Ventura County who said, that the other cities are watching us and that if we go back to at-large, it could compromise the diversity of other cities. While I'm making this decision for Ojai, and that's my number one priority, I can't help but think that why would we want to put our city in the spotlight for something that potentially is on the wrong side of history? that I think is on the wrong side of history until all of these legal issues work out. A future council can take this up again. I think that there are so many benefits to going back to at-large, but the law is really unsettled. And for now, it's my perspective that we are not, that this is not in the city's best interest to expose ourself to litigation. I'm not making this decision out of fear. I'm making this decision out of being pragmatic with the city's budgetary concerns and also for putting ourselves in the line of fire for voting rights activists all over the country who are... justifiably up in arms right now, wondering how our country could have turned backwards so much and how are we going to get it back on track? And so the very heart of democracy is tied up in this decision. And again, this is my making this decision for Ojai, thinking about Ojai's best interest. And I'm also aware of the ripple effect that going back to at-large could have. so um and i've already been called an expletive tonight so i understand that some people are very passionate about this uh and uh and and i think that there could be a way of changing our policies to say that if someone is elected then and they lose their their housing for some reason other than that that is of no fault then they would serve their term i think there are ways that we could work with our policy but i'm i'm not in i'm not in support of of changing it for this election.

Can I ask the staff a question? I know there's a lot of passion either way. Just to Ms. Burgess, here's a hypothetical. If this council decided to move to at-large elections through an ordinance in 2028, so we set that into motion, does that give even the future council the ability to say, well, by ordinance, we're moving forward in that. You have a period of time for this to be worked out legally. And then secondly, if something were to happen, of course the council can decide otherwise. In the meantime, like in other words, there is a lawsuit, they can reverse the ordinance that was set. Is that, am I correct in understanding that?

I think that that would be legally possible. I think it would be easier if we were doing so under threat of litigation for purposes of... In the future. Yeah. But I do think that if council were to adopt an ordinance, I think, again, a future council could adopt a different ordinance.

No, thanks. I'm not trying to... Please, go ahead.

I don't think this item should have been on the agenda. The city council did not make at-large voting a goal. When we were selecting priorities for the council, changing voting methods received no votes from any of us. So to now claim that there's some type of urgent, most important issue is really disingenuous. The vote on Measure M does not support the claim that there was some voter support for a return or a change in voting. It was a 54% vote for a specific voting method. Nothing about that says that they wanted at large votes. So although the proponents have reached the conclusion that district voting is not working for Ojai, they state no evidence or support for that conclusion. They point to Sousa Francina, who did not lose her seat. So apparently what's not working is that the proponents want to control who is on city council, and they have decided that their ability to control who gets elected would be improved by at-large voting. One person, one vote is a legal rule that's part of our constitution. It's called the Equal Protection Clause. And that means that each person's voting power ought to be roughly equivalent to another person's voting power. And by doing one person, one district, you assure that one person always has the same voting power as every other voter in the city. District voting is based on the simple formula of one vote for one candidate, which assures that each voter has equal voting influence. At-large voting with multiple positions to fill is known to create voter dilution. Voter dilution occurs in multi-position at-large voting when a single voting block votes largely together on a single slate of large candidates. With an organized voting block, the candidates advanced by the proponents of the voting block are likely to sweep all seats on a council despite a larger number of less organized voters preferring different candidates. Voting rights laws were created because of a high frequency of voter cohesion. The fact that our Voters Rights Act in California addresses race does not mean that all of the other issues that are potentially involved are not also subject to being voter blocked out of the one person, one vote concept. As we saw in 2022, a slate of candidates are often preselected by an advocacy group based on the advocacy group's agenda rather than the preferences of the voters. In 2022, the OI Valley Democratic Club leadership was exposed to selecting their slate of candidates two weeks before a candidate forum at which the club advertised they would be selecting their candidates. So Ojai needs candidates with good moral character, common sense, and a goal to protect and improve the lives of the members of the community. And district voting allows you to do that. Instead of voting for a slate of voters Now, I know firsthand that district voting increases the ability of somebody to run for office because I didn't really want to run unless I could meet the people who lived in my district. And I made an effort to knock on every door in my district. I didn't succeed, but I made a substantial effort. By going to at-large voting, no person would be able to go knock on every door in this community. And the cost of publishing a letter and mailing it is four times as expensive. So you're going to dilute the number of people who are willing to run if you make it more expensive to run. And if you make it, and I paid for my own letters. We'll come back to that.

I just a couple questions if I could well I mean what is the one person one vote I just don't know how the at-large doesn't also accomplish that in a more direct way but it seems to me One thing that would be so easy to do is and I would happily sign on to it today, and that would be we elect a voluntary spending limit for anybody running. And we say anything you get over that amount you donate to a nonprofit of your choice, and I would propose oh hi becomes an amazing example to say it's not that's not an ordinance that's a proposal to say. There's all kinds of ways to limit spending.

We would need to bring that back as a future. Sure.

No, no, no, no. I'm not saying that's an ordinance. I'm saying spending can also voluntarily be done. Yes. Go ahead.

Yeah. There were a few things I wanted to speak to. I do believe that incumbents actually benefit from districts. And I don't think it's a good idea. I think when you talk about how has this not served the populace of Ojai, we had an uncontested race. We had two years of fighting with an elected official who, yes, we did not kick her off, but there were people coming every session saying her vote shouldn't count. She shouldn't have been able to vote on that development agreement. And as far as money goes, take a look at the FPPC filings and find out who actually donated to what. And for me, when I think about the last election, people can just simply refuse to engage. Because you only have two candidates, issues didn't even come up, like the development agreement. Only the first day that everyone was elected, all of a sudden, we had a lawsuit. We had all kinds of stuff happening. It never came up in the election. I think if there had been a citywide election, that would have come up. That was never in anybody's campaign material. It was so easy to hide that issue. It was so easy to come in with that issue. And it really comes down to when you look at this council, I won by 17 votes. Renee Roth got more votes than I did, honestly. But she's not on the council. More people wanted her than wanted me. But because of districts, I'm here and she's not. And honestly, yes, I know everyone in my district, but that's because I walk my crazy dog. I'm sure people like to get up and talk about that. Just come on up. That's how come I know people in my district. And basically people contact me based on interest. So Chelsea calls me because she knows I would support having a lounge. You go to where your support is. When people come and talk to me about, I don't want those stop signs on Grand Street, I'm like, I support them. You should go talk to a couple other council members, and you get more from them about that, people who don't support them. In fact, I sent them your way. I said, go talk to Rachel. She doesn't support them. She'd be much more likely to be super, you know. So... None of this makes any sense to me. There was no slate. I mean, you know, there was no slate. I mean, there was a slate, but honestly, be honest about it. Everywhere you saw one of your signs, you saw four of your signs, except for in your district. So this whole conspiracy, this whole conspiracy idea is just offensive. It's just absolutely offensive. If I asked you how many signs did you give to Tom Francis to put up for you, what would you say? You know, everywhere. There was one sign, except for in your own district, right? So I'm just saying, this whole conspiracy thing, you guys just want to... You just want to be re-elected without having to do the work. That's the honest, that's what I believe to be the honest truth. Go ahead, please.

Okay, I'm going to push back a little bit on that because I, first of all.

We can't hear it up here, you guys. I don't. Thank you.

I'm not making this decision. Sorry, will you pause just for one second?

It's hard for us to hear when people are talking in the audience.

Thank you. can I'm not making this decision on any I might not even run you know like this this is not about me making it easier for me to you know I understand that I understand I'm really thinking about the implications for the city big picture also there's one other thing that we know what you don't we the demographics showed that we don't have a lot of diverse ethnic diversity and I'm hoping that changes in the future But what we do have is we have pockets of the city that have a lot of money. And if there was a group from a neighborhood that did not want a Cabin Village project, it would be very easy for them at large to run a whole slate of candidates and kill the project. And so, you know, one great thing about districts is that it does allow for some economic diversification. District one has a lot of renters, you know, their district four has a lot of places where there are larger properties and the the the the demographics there's they're slightly different i understand we're we're a small a small community but i i think that that staying in districts for right now uh it keeps us from having a lawsuit and it also gives us time to work things out when we know a little bit more about the fallout from the federal cases. So I just wanted to add that too.

Can I ask you a follow-up question? Well, would you support a referendum that would come into effect in 2028? I mean, because honestly, what I believe is I think the people should decide. And I think it was very telling that there was 56% of people who voted to go to at-large, even with the- Rank change. Right, even with ranked choice, which nobody understands. Still nobody understands it. They didn't understand it then, but they wanted to go back to at-large. I don't know if you found that when you campaigned, but I found that when I campaigned.

Just to clarify, you're proposing, if we were to go forward, to go to the voters in November 2026 for the 2028 election.

Yeah, I I don't even want to I don't want to do that right now I don't want to I don't want to I want to wait it out a little bit I again I don't want to be the first city And I also want to see what the Huntington Beach Outcome is I think the dust needs to settle in some of the other states that are going through major chaos right now I just think it's It's a, I'd rather wait and have, you know, a referendum could very easily come forward if people gather signatures and, I mean, that's why we had that first meeting when we were first elected because of the referendum that came from the petitions that were signed for the development agreement. You know if if that was the case then there would be that would be one more layer of Expression of desire from from the community And I think that could actually make our case stronger if we if there if we were going to go to at-large But I don't I don't feel comfortable having this come from the city. I

OK, and just so we talked about it during the referendum is that if it goes to the voters, the only thing that can override it is a vote of the voters. If we were to put an ordinance together, then we can still back it up. I'm just saying.

Yeah, but Shankman's procedure, according to his procedural arguments, He doesn't think that the voters or the city council have authority.

Right, right. I'm not worried about Shankman in this particular case. What I'm worried about is, I mean, I am worried about Shankman, but basically there's two ways this goes. If the city council does it, then we can change it. If the public does it... then we can't. And my guess is that there will be signatures and a referendum.

And if that's the way it goes, then that's the way it goes. I would rather allow that process to happen and us do nothing. and then, you know, see how this plays out. I think in two years, we're going to have a lot more information. I think actually in a year, we're going to have a lot more information. We'll see how the midterms go. And if we do go to, if it does change in 2028, 2028's a presidential election, there's going to be a bigger voter turnout anyway. But I don't feel comfortable doing anything right now.

If it's OK with, I would suggest, if we don't have the votes right now, then let's postpone or not do anything for now and move on. Yeah?

I'm good with that. I mean, I think we require, let's see how it plays out. I mean, if we're going to see how it plays out, we would need to, you know, we need a majority vote now. We need a majority vote later. You know, why wouldn't we?

I'm not saying for this council. I'm saying we go to the election, and the next council can do what it wants to do. So I did want to make a few comments. Yeah, go for it.

I agree with what Councilmember Lange said about not being a participant in a 60-year reversal of civil rights in the United States. I also wanted to say that I haven't heard anybody really, really angry that we elect our supervisor by district. So our board of supervisors is five representatives. We only get to vote for one. And yet there's four other people who are making decisions on our behalf. And that's where I go back to the most important thing about our elections is to encourage the most talented, civic-minded people to actually run and serve. And believe me that it's not my goal to make it easier for me to be elected. Because this is not... this is not like something that you really want to this is something this is something that you do because you feel like you need to do it for your community that's why i did it all of us um yeah i i believe that and so i'd also say that when i ran in 2022 Four of the five seats were held, well, no, three of the four council seats were held by people who had been involved in at-large elections. And I did not get the impression from talking to voters that they were like really happy with the way things were going under that past city council. in fact, far from it. In fact, a lot of people are asking me, are you aligned with those guys? And so there isn't one system that's going to create a better set of circumstances. And I really feel strongly that if We can't make this decision based upon the sample size that we got here tonight. Demography can help us with that. If this is an issue that the people of Ojai want, then it's something that citizens should gather together. Not the city council, because that's gonna influence it. Go out and gather the signatures. And then you'll at least get a sample size of You know, more than 1,000 people will have to sign on to that. I think 1364 will have to sign that referendum. And I think that's the best way for this issue to be decided. And that's what the law was before 2018 in any event. So that would be my preference. You know, go have at it. And while they're gathering signatures, I'm sure there will be a lot of public debate, and that will be helpful.

Is that your motion?

No, they have to go do that. My motion would be to vote no on changing our voting system.

Yeah, maybe just in conclusion, just a wish, I guess, is that For me, I'll work with whoever's here, but it's that the mayor having basically the whole city behind them in that number of votes has the same vote power as the districts here. So to me, I see that as a logical problem, personally. And what I would, if I could have my way someday, we would go back to the old way, which is everybody's voted citywide and the mayor's rotated among the council. That's what I would... I'm saying it publicly, and I've said it many times. That would be my wish. So I hope someday we do that. That would have to be a different referendum.

Of course it would.

I'm just saying, if I could have it the way I wanted it, it would be that. Okay? Yeah, okay Well, yeah, I think we need to vote what vote on what we it's to not overturn If there's no motion That's how I'm

Okay. So we'll go on. So we'll go on. All right. All right. I'll see you in district elections if we actually run. Who knows, right?

Okay, so moving on.

Thank you so much.

Thanks all.

Yeah, we really appreciate it. Wow, super. Just as a going away note, we're actually working on a survey of the state to see all small and medium-sized cities, how many of them are contested and all that. We'll have that at the end of summer. Oh, great. Yes, thank you.

That's good. No, I agree. If people want it, go out and see the referendum.

Okay, so we're moving on to item number eight. which is initiating proceedings for the annual levy of assessments, preliminary approving the engineer's annual levy report, and declaring the council's intent to levy and collect assessments.

How's it going there, Lindy? It's going well.

Right on. Going well, good evening all. Not nearly as exciting as what we just talked about for a couple of hours, but nonetheless it still needs to get done tonight. So this is a bit of a housekeeping item that we do every year. I guess I can wait till everyone's done.

I will let those guys.

So this is something that comes to you every year about this time. What we're trying to do is get of our three.

Let's hold a moment, Lindy, just to get the right presentation up. Just a moment.

Oh, yeah. That'll be the next one, James. There is no presentation for this. Oh, OK. Thank you. There's no presentation. I'm just going to talk.

OK.

So what we're trying to do right now, this is something that comes to you every year about this time of year, and what we need to do is report to the county tax collector's office our annual levy for our three maintenance districts. So we have two, we have three, we have one and three that go together, they're the lighting and landscape maintenance districts, and then we have plaza maintenance district two. So what we are doing is, I'm asking, we're initiating the proceedings, preliminarily approving the engineer's report tonight, and declaring the council's intent to levy and collect assessments. So in your packet, you've got a rather verbose staff report, and I can speak to that, and you've also got an engineer's report. And it's all preliminary. We will be coming back. We're also setting the public hearing date for June 9th. If people want to come and speak to their assessment, we have some good news and we have some not so good news. So I wanted to sort of separate this in two pieces. So we have one in three. our lighting and landscape district number one was first created in like the 1930s. And then it was resurrected in 1988. So that went on for a number of years, 15, 20 years, and there was not enough assessment revenue received to provide the services that the district was going to provide. So in someone's wisdom, they did an overlay of district one which became District 3. And so, in neither one of these, there was an escalator. Usually we see, I've been working with special districts for decades now, and usually what we see is an escalator built in, so we can at least keep pace with inflation. So, yeah, it's usually tied to CPI or something, or maxed out at 3%, whatever the case may be. In this case, there was not an escalator built into either one of them, one or three. So if you go to the engineer's report, there's a table, and I just wanted to illustrate this for you, and it shows that the revenue we are collecting right now is not enough to cover the expenditures. And so at some time in the near future, whether or not it's next fiscal year, we're not gonna run out of money in the next one to two to three years, but it's something we need to consider, and that is to go to a Prop 218 process, so bring this back to the voters in the district. They all get to vote on it. We spent a lot of time talking about voting, but this is another one. So to add an escalator, so we can continue to provide the services, which are primarily at this point the street lighting and the overhead lighting and some maintenance, tree maintenance, not a lot, because we just don't have the funding. So that's one in three. And there's no action to be taken on that for this year other than the three items that we talked about at the beginning. But I just wanted to put that seed out there that we probably are going to need to consider doing something. It's rather time intensive. We would do a lot of public outreach, community outreach, a lot of education, a lot of talking to a lot of people because it's citywide. So that's just something that we'll need to think about in the next year or two. So that's the... unfortunate news. And then we have our plaza maintenance district number two, and the good news on that is that we're able to reduce the assessment on that. So we have been able to build up a fund balance over the years, so much so that we were able to use some of the funding that was in our fund balance to help pay for the cost of the new parking lot at Rainbow Bridge and then the other one, the plaza arcade. So we've been able to draw that fund balance down, and then we found that we were assessing it a little bit high, and not high necessarily, but we didn't have any capital projects planned. So we're recommending a reduction there. We have a maximum assessment that we are assessing, we've been assessing for a number of years since 2017. So we did increase the assessment, went through a Prop 218 process, and there was five consecutive 5% increases for just a five year period. And that ended in 2017. So we haven't increased anything since, their assessments since 2017. And we've got adequate funding there. So we were going to just reduce the assessment and give them a little bit of a break.

Like almost a quarter.

Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. It's not anything super out of the ordinary this year. Questions?

Yeah. Is there something that we could or should be doing within the assessment, what we're legally allowed to do with that assessment money, could or should be doing in that district that we could start using that extra funding for.

And you're specifically talking about the Plaza Maintenance District at this point?

I'm talking about, yeah, number two.

So what we've done is we've got a pretty significant fund balance, and then we've got a line item in the budget, and we just call it capital projects. So we're always on the lookout. We put a fountain in there last year. We've removed some benches that have been used for other purposes, and we've had a lot of the vendors back there complaining about it. So we're always looking for opportunities. We used some of the fund balance when we trimmed the big plant at the northeast corner a couple of years ago. We used some of the assessment revenue when we repainted the arcade last year. So we're always looking for things and ways to spend this money. out there but if anybody has any suggestions just wait for my next presentation tonight because we'll be talking about capital projects yeah so you know we're we're open to we don't have a lot of money there's maybe for little projects that we want to do you know replanting or something like that

In the Plaza Maynards.

In the Plaza Maynards, yes.

So tonight you're telling us about your intentions for the other and then just that you're assessing at a lower rate for number two. Yes.

And it's just the three resolutions that I'm asking you to approve tonight. We'll set the public hearing. We'll be back here in January. Geez, how about June 9th? Let's go with June. And then we'll be adopting it and we'll file and file with the tax collector. Okay.

Great. Any more questions? I have no public comments on this item. Do you have anything online?

No raised hands, Mayor. Okay.

Well, I have a motion to approve. I'll kind of just shorthand and say one, two, and three. Is that good enough? That's resolution. Yeah, resolution one, two, and three. Okay. Second, please.

I'll second.

Okay. Roll call, please. Yes, Mayor. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Meng.

Yes.

Council Member Lang. Thank you.

Yay, thank you.

No, don't go away. I will not. Capital improvements.

James, if you could bring up the slide. Actually, I don't think I have a clicker. Do I have a clicker right here? I have a clicker for you. Thank you.

It's on.

Thank you. So rolling right on into the next matter. So after meeting with the city manager, the finance department, the finance director, what I would like to do tonight is to present to you a draft five-year CIP. So we have gone through this quite a few times internally at staff level, and I'm just gonna launch sort of right in. We do this every single year, and it's a five-year CIP. I'm going to primarily be focusing on the first year, the one year, which is our budget year, next year, 26-27. And I've got a couple of slides up here that you have seen before, but you haven't seen since last year, so I thought it might be worthwhile to just kind of go over real, real quick with you what a CIP project is. And it builds, improves, and preserves the life of a city asset. And we usually use this figure of about 50,000. It's kind of loosey-goosey. It's not set in stone at all. But it doesn't include, the CIP does not include operating costs. So we're not talking about general operating expenditures. The projects are identified and prioritized based on health and safety first and foremost because that's what we do. City Council goals and direction is also a high priority for us. And then asset preservation, extend the useful life, and then of course regulatory requirements is pretty high up there too. And just new expanded services that we hear from you all and we hear from staff, we hear from the community that we try to incorporate if possible. So I should add, too, that this year's CIP is a bit reduced and shrunk down from the one you saw last year due to some budgetary constraints. We worked through a figure that we needed to come up with. Ben?

I wouldn't say so much it shrunk down. It just carries over some commitments already made.

There are that too. And I just wanted to also reiterate, when you hear, I hear from you, I hear from the community on, hey, we'd like to get something built. I just wanted to kind of briefly give this life cycle of a project and just to illustrate that it's very, very time consuming. It's unusual that you can start from the beginning and construct a capital project in under a year. You've got concept design, we're back here talking to you many times during the course of something. So it's a very long process. It starts with an RFQ, Concept design and then you get to a final design bidding construction and all of that and everything else in between That's a long process is all I wanted to sort of really illustrate with this thought this slide just to refresh your memory So we have six categories of capital projects. We have our streets and parking lots, which I just kind of categorize as all asphalt, all things asphalt. We've got parks, and these are also associated with your goals that you guys have adopted. And then we've got climate. We've got facilities, stormwater, and transit. So those are sort of our six broad categories of projects, and all of our projects fall under one of those broader umbrellas. And feel free to ask questions as I go along. You don't need to wait. So here's just a really high level overview of our project summary for the first year of our CIP. So in streets, we have about three and a half million dollars in projects. We have five projects. Parks, we have about 1.1 million. Climate, one million. And I'll talk, I know that you're thinking it was more than a million, and it was, but this is for next year. This is for one year in the CIP. Facilities, eight million. Stormwater, about 250. And transit, about 75,000. So we've got about $14 million in our CIP for next year, for year one. So here's a breakdown of the projects. So for year one, we have our street rehabilitation project, the next one, not the one that you're seeing people out there now, not these ones, but the next one. So that's at two and a half million. In the past, we've budgeted about four and a half million. So we've kind of, that's now at two and a half million. So it would probably cost about four and a half to five million to stay on track with our PMP that we have. So we're probably not gonna get a full pavement project done. We're gonna be splitting it up a bit, just with the funding available.

Just, if you don't mind, so that's pausing to say that the published timeline may have to move a little.

Correct.

Okay.

Yes, yes. So our five-year PMP may now be a seven or eight-year PMP. So the streets that are slated for 2026 and beyond We have our five years on the website, so we have 26 left, 27, and 28 left. We're not gonna get those three years of paving done with that budget.

You're saying it needs to be four and a half per year?

It needs to be about four and a half to get the projects done that are in our PMP. So the message will be out to the community that we've been adhering to this pavement, this five-year plan, and now the streets that we have slated and that are on our map for 27 and 26 are probably not gonna get done in that same timeframe. But we are starting with some design for the following year. And that's what we're planning on doing, but depending on what we can get done, that figure may move around a bit. We've got our designer concept design for our phase two of the ATP, which again is from Valerio to the Y and all the way through town. So that's the second half of the ATP project. And I have asterisked some of these and the ones that are asterisked are not local funding. So they're not our measure C funding, they're external funding in either 100% or in large part, external funding. So this 600,000, we have grant funding for that. And then we've got another grant that we've just recently secured in the amount of like four and a half million for the construction when we get there. So we will be doing other work, you know, if so. And then we got the concrete repairs that we're doing along with the paving project. And then we've got a new category here for speed hump installations. So that's sort of a placeholder. It's about... The price when we put the speed humps in on Drown, which was a couple of years ago now, was about $8,000 per speed hump. So just keep that in mind as we start thinking we want to install speed humps. There's costs involved in that. And I'll be discussing that with you in late June, too, to talk about that. Because there will be a speed survey likely, et cetera. Our next project is parks. So we've got 200, we're asking, proposing 250,000 for something at the Libby Park restrooms, a remodel, something. We need to do some sewer improvements out there. It's not in a good state right now. Sarasote Park, new playground, we've got a survey just waiting to be acted upon on what the community wants to see out there, and a walking path and outdoor gym that would be probably tied into that. And those two are.

You mean you have the survey results now?

We have the survey results, and we're just waiting to kind of move forward with an RFP for that. Yeah, super. But those are both grant funded, so there's an asterisk there.

The RFP is on the agenda for the second, right?

It is, yes it is, yes. And then we've got $100,000 there for a placeholder for some sort of improvements at Club Vista. And again, this is a draft document, and we're looking for feedback and comments for sure. do you mind just going back one slide just to say um just a reminder like the climate is the climate tech it is it is the climate yeah that's huge yeah yeah so um and this is this is these are the expenditures for next fiscal year we haven't i haven't talked about the expenditures for this fiscal year um but they're in they're in your packet and you're looking at it right now um but so we've got um a million dollars that we're spending this year on climate tech And they tell us that they will spend all that this year. So then next year we'll spend another million.

And then we'll be done with the climate.

And then we'll be done.

Yeah.

Yes. And then we'll be done. There it is, this year. And then we've got, so I wanted to talk a little bit about how we have illustrated these costs in this document. So what we try to do in our CIP when we show it, we try to illustrate the level of work that's being done. So I know that we advanced, you all know that we advanced Dignity Moves $5.9 million this year. But I've spoken to Dignity Moves and their level of effort is to the tune of about a million and a half for this current fiscal year. And of course, the vast majority will be spent next year because that's when the construction's happening. So that's why this is eight million and the current year is one and a half million to get us to the nine and a half million. So it's just a matter of how we show it. And it's really based on the level of effort. It's unique because we have cash advanced, which we don't usually see. And then we've got our storm drain video inspection and storm drain improvements. As you all know, I feel like I have a broken record on this, but we're making storm drain improvements along with our paving projects. And then we've got some leftover CMAQ funding from our bus shelter that we built at the Bank of America in front of Bank of America several years ago, and we've got some surplus funding. So we're working with transit right now and trying to figure out which trolley stop to improve. and what to do. So, questions? Okay, so here's some projects that we completed this year. The parking lot, street tree planting, HVAC at police department, video inspection, and some miscellaneous smaller projects. And we've got, we're about to spend a big, big chunk on our this year's pay. But most of those expenditures will be next year. So we'll probably see about a million spent this year, but the other four and a half million next year. So it's all about timing, and the timing just slides and goes across fiscal years, depending on when we get it started. So these are projects that are underway right now, so we're constructing the current project, we're designing next year's, we've got the concept design for ATP, concrete repair, storm drain improvements, RRFB installations, which are budgeted this year, and we're trying to purchase the devices this year. And have our paving contractor do the installation, which would probably be next fiscal year. And I'm saying next fiscal year, meaning July, August, very early in the year. And our citywide energy monetization project, Climate Tech, is underway. And they'll just keep rolling through. And then we've got the permanent supportive housing project. We'll see a huge expenditure. And then trash excluders, which we put in at the catch basins. And then here's just the next step, looking for feedback from all of you, and then we'll draft any revisions you may have, and this gets adopted, this document gets adopted along with the budget, the last meeting in the fiscal year, and we just continue working on the projects.

You had sent out a list of a bunch of sort of wish list projects, right?

Would you like to see that?

Well, I hope you got feedback.

I didn't really. Oh, okay. But here's the list. And we hear from people, and we have. We have gotten feedback. And these are just some things that we've heard about. They're unfunded at this point. They're not prioritized.

That's not the whole list, though, is it?

Well, I don't know. There could be other things. There could be.

I guess the point I was saying, or my interest in bringing it up, is that if we, well, like, for example, hypothetically, the sidewalk between Camargo and Capriano Avenue, if we were to decide as a body, oh, we really want to initiate this, we're going to have to figure out okay, is there something that we want to do less of in your project or come up with the money from some other way?

Yes.

So we should be taking those pretty seriously.

How the pie gets split.

But Clef Vista Park Improvements, you have that?

We do. And I kind of left that there because we were not real sure on the $100,000 or $50,000 or $75,000 or whatever.

So these are all mapped to your yellow.

Yes.

Yes, yes. Yes, yes. I have a few questions. So on Clef Vista, does that include our... Are plantings part of CIP or does that go into some other category?

So what I would envision that the funding in the CIP would be for Club Vista is any sort of infrastructure Does the fountain need work? Does the irrigation need work? Does the pergola need to be rebuilt? Do we need to get a new DG path? The planting could be more, maybe the initial planting would be a part of the CIP, and then the ongoing maintenance, again, would be an operating cost.

Okay.

So...

And then on the feasibility study for the Arbolada pedestrian safety improvements, I can't recall if I sent to you when you solicited projects that I had received a lot of input in terms of an interest in a DG path that would run from essentially from Del Norte to the Foothill along Cuyama. Because it gets a lot of pedestrian traffic, but there's really not any sidewalk infrastructure. Is that what that's talking about? That is. It is? Okay.

And we've sort of had peripheral conversations about this on many occasions in terms of all of the private improvements that we've recently spoken about.

So the feasibility study would tell us a combination of the cost of putting in a DG path including the potential roadblocks from residents who have claimed their right of way. There you have it, yes. That would be the scope of that study.

And we would be back to you talking about how to scope that, but I would expect that that would be a part of that feasibility study. What level of effort is it going to take, and what sort of a position do we want to take as a city, do you want to take as the council, and saying, okay, you've encroached, and now we want it back.

We have a letter written now.

We might have a letter written now. We do indeed. So, you know, it's the same conversation. Yeah.

So some of these are not necessarily next year. They're just you have it on your wish list at some point.

These are items. These are. conversations that I've had with one and all. Just kind of grouped it together.

So on some of these items on the wish list and that you have in yellow highlighted here, for example, city hall roof repairs, museum entrance, stucco wall repair, If we defer the maintenance for that are we in really big trouble next year? Like is it costly for us to not put that on the budget this year?

Um, I don't think we're at a critical place right now But I do believe that we need to start throwing some money towards our facility improvements including those we need to we we've been able to We've done a couple of roof repairs that we thought we were going to have to replace the roof. That bought us 10 or 15 years. I'm not saying that's the case for all of the facilities. And there are facilities that need work. So we really need to start thinking about that.

What is the security fencing at City Hall, page 105?

So Norma, I don't want to put you on the spot. I can speak to it if you'd like. Okay, so this call for projects went out and a lot of responses came back from a lot of different people and there was a request to put in a fence or some sort of structure between Cabin Village and the house outside, just north of it, just right outside in front of City Hall here.

By the easement that's there. Yes.

Yeah. Just for some privacy, so sound barrier privacy for the homeowner that's just up the south end of the street.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Oh.

That's part of it. It's a touchy subject.

Yeah. So, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, so there's a long list.

There's a long list. There's a long list.

So I have a question about ATP.

Sure.

I think we have a different council than the one that said, because we looked at whether we would stop at phase one or try to modify it. phase two, is that a possibility that we would, that we could look at reducing what happens in phase two?

Yes. And yes. Yes. It's a possibility and what I have been working on with Caltrans is a reduced scope. I mean, I was here when that was going on and I remember the conversations and I know what was happening and a lot of the feedback that the city was getting at that point is, Why are we creating this bike path along Ohio Avenue when we have one a block away? So I have been working with Caltrans for many, many, many months and probably years at this point. I've been here four years and I've been talking to them for four years about this. And so what my vision is, and I haven't gotten enough yet from Caltrans, but to create something similar to what we have in front of Nordhoff and just sort of create a wider sidewalk. We don't have any ADA compliance along the sidewalk. along Ohio Avenue in front of the schools, right? Because the trees are growing, and we love our trees, and we don't want to take the trees down, but the sidewalks are buckling, and we can't get...

In front of Matilaha, you mean?

In Matilaha and Ohio Valley School.

Yeah, okay.

So right along that stretch. So my vision is to widen that sidewalk. And And with signage and with safe crossings at the Y, we send people to the bike trail. We get them to the bike trail. And Caltrans at this point seems very amenable to that. And then it becomes a sidewalk project. And also not sending bikes through town. I mean, that just doesn't seem like a reasonable...

When we have the recreation trail as a... A block away. Safer alternative.

Exactly. So some of the concept designs that I'm kind of working through with Caltrans is to have... the wider sidewalk in front of, you know, along Ojai Avenue. And we also had some right-of-way issues, some real, real valid right-of-way issues along the south side of Ojai Avenue. In fact, 22 property owners didn't want to give us any space. So the concept design we're looking at right now is going from Valerio to the Y and creating a bike trail, getting safe passage across Ojai Avenue, and then also up Across Maricopa. And so people who are walking can walk with their children or their smaller children on trikes and little bikes along this 12 foot wide sidewalk. But the real cyclists can go on the bike trail. And then we would have signage once we get into town and saying that way, bikes that way.

I like the common sense approach. I'm glad to hear that you're doing that. Yeah, it sounds good. Because I think it makes more sense to do that.

These original plans I saw in this bike trail through downtown with cars parked and doors opening and... No, I just know.

It's narrow enough as it is.

Yeah. So we've got this lovely trail and... We really think with signage and some crosswalks as well across Ohio Avenue, like at Blanche, we were talking about crossing them there, sending them down to the trail.

So at one point in time, I think I heard that the county had some interest in seeding or selling the bike trail of

Oh no, they would give it to us. They would, yeah.

If we'd just maintain or from like bonds down. Yes, yes.

And I have had conversations and I'm having active conversations as we speak with the county, with county parks and supervisor's office and they would... Love to give it to us.

Yeah. No problem. It's an extended conversation, too, that at some point, if we may talk about Soul Park possibly, but the bike path extending to Soul Park would be nice to see somewhere here at some point.

And there's opportunities. I mean, the best part about that is if we do decide to take over the maintenance and it becomes our bike trail, we've spoken. A couple of us, I've spoken with a couple. We can enhance it how we like. We could have Ojai Valley Inn adopt a section. We could do lots of things. And the beauty is that it was just completely repaved. So it's probably good to go for another 25 or 30 years.

Yeah, that's great.

With some minor repairs. Yeah. But I think that's coming soon.

Yeah, that's great. So today, what you're asking for is just the general receipt of here's the big plan.

Yeah, and feedback, if there's any feedback, if there's anything different. If there's nothing you want us to change, then this will be included with the budget when we take the budget to council for adoption.

I just would add, and we talked about this a little bit during the presentation, if there's a big picture item that you would like to consider, you also have some additional unprogrammed general fund monies for one-time expenditures like capital improvements. That is a logical and strategic use of the funds, depending on what that improvement is.

so that and this I think this is not for this meeting but I'm it's probably more for our budget meeting but I'm really interested in you know I like it's a little confusing where measure C monies are going and where the ERF money is going. And I would like to have a better idea of where they fit into these numbers.

Sure, we can do that. And the ERF grant is only going towards that one item on the CIP. But we can make sure that's still in here.

Mr. Whitman, if you look at pages 105 and 106 and you go down on that, the the large table you'll see that the money you'll see where the money comes out if you look down those columns like if it's measure c for example on the remodel restrooms i'm looking at page 104 on that one so that gives you some guide of where the money's coming from

So in our CIP, so it's about a $14 million CIP, and of that $14 million, about $4 million is Measure C money. The rest is external funding. None of this is general funds. But as Ben just mentioned, you know, there's a general fund reserve, and if there's projects that you have a burning desire to get done, that's a possibility.

Yeah. So there's one point. for the permanent supportive housing that's for the current calendar year?

For the current fiscal year.

And what was that expense?

So those are expenditures, all grant qualified expenditures, primarily to Dignity Moves, primarily for consultant costs, architecture costs, fees associated with the design and development of the property. civil engineering, on and on.

Work that they're doing this year. You know, work that's happening right now. Thank you.

Anything else? I have one comment. Mr. Creasy, come up please.

Just a quick thought, and I will preface this by I don't really believe the world revolves around accountants, but sometimes I get that impression, and this is one of them. When Ms. Palmer was talking about reducing the spending on road maintenance and having to stretch five years out to seven or something like that, I REACT SOMEWHAT WITH ANGST BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T FINISHED THE AUDIT OF LAST YEAR'S FISCAL YEAR. THAT IS 2425. WE ARE NOW LATER THAN WE HAVE EVER BEEN WITH THAT. SO THOSE NUMBERS ARE, YOU KNOW, NOT KNOWN FOR SURE UNTIL THE AUDIT COMES OUT. THE CURRENT YEAR THAT WE'RE JUST WRAPPING UP NOW, WE STILL HAVE LOTS OF LOOSE And so we don't know where that one's coming out either. We do know that during this past year, we have approved several ads to the budget which have swung this year into somewhat of a deficit mode. There is a significant chance that you're going to have a very favorable close to this year. We should know that much more precisely than we do. Right now, it's reading tea leaves with just a little bit of insight. It could be you're $2.5 million favorable to where you thought you were at the last midyear review, which, all other things being equal, is a great outcome. And maybe Linda can put back some of that money she took out there. She can't do it if it's stuck in the general fund. Somehow it's got to transfer out one way or the other, which gets me to the other issue, and we've talked now, I've been on the Budget Committee for over a year, and since day one we've been talking about when are we going to review our general fund reserve policy and actually get a scientific, quote-unquote, statistically driven good estimate of what we need in reserve and understand how much of that is available. I'm not one of these parsimonious guys that says, you know, just put all money in a pile and, you know, throw a blanket over it and never use it. It's there to be used if we can really understand how much we need. The latest estimate that we might actually address the reserve policy per the last budget committee meeting was sometime in the late summer. to me, the day after tomorrow is too late. We ought to be looking at that now so we can inform this budget, the CIP budget, and that long list of good stuff, which most people think those are good ideas if we can fit them in. It all does actually, really does come back to the accountants in getting the jobs done in real time the way they should be so we know where we stand and know what we can spend. So I would urge you to push on that little pressure point so that we can actually understand what we've got to spend.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Just to that point, if we came to some future time, I mean a few months from now, let's say six months from now, and we did find that through the audit that actually we were in that good shape, you can switch gears.

Yes.

One more public comment online. We do. Okay. Yes. Renee, you have the floor and you may unmute.

Yes, this is Renee. I have a question, Lindy, about, and it kind of goes with the same comment that Clay was making, that in the current year's budget, 25-26, I see there's 4.5 million for street rehabilitation. And there's also 3 million for the ATP. And I understand the street rehabilitation. I'm not curious what the 3 million for this year was for, given that it sounds like you're kind of in a state of flux and redesign. And I'm looking at the 26, 27 proposed budget of 600,000. And then ATP moves out to almost 5Million in the following year. So I'm just curious are those like, uh, grant funds that are available and ready to be allocated. You're just looking for the right design. On the ATP, I'm just curious where you're at with the current 3Million. Are you going to spend all that? And what is it going to be for and how do we move that project forward?

So the $3 million that was budgeted in the current fiscal year is not going to be spent at all. We were hoping that we were going to be much further ahead, but this is a project that we're working with a team at Caltrans, and I've spoken about that at length, and we're all kind of living that right now. with Caltrans and getting approvals, et cetera. So what we decided to do, this year we're not spending anything, and we're just hoping for this concept design next year, and then we're hoping in year two, so 27, 28, that we would begin construction. And so we've got $4.5 to $5 million in grant funding sitting there waiting for us, and we have it sort of loosely programmed for construction in 27-28. That timeframe can scoot around and it's flexible, but that's what we kind of have it sitting at right now.

Thank you.

Okay, that's great. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Roth. Wait, did you have something else you wanted to ask?

And what I was also going to say is that, speaking to Clay's comments, that this is just a snapshot in time. If we find out we have an extra $2.5 million and the decision is to throw that towards paving, that's why I'm moving forward with the design on paving. So we can pivot pretty quickly. Okay. You know, I mean, that's the plan. That's the hope.

Yeah.

And this can be amended at any time, just like our budget can.

Yeah, sure. Any more questions?

Was there one down at the end?

I don't think so. Nope. I think you have what you need, right? Yeah, I have what I need. Thank you so much. Wow. Thank you. This is so exciting.

I know, it's great. It's incredible.

Thank you very much. Okay, we're on our last item, update on Aspire broadband agreement.

They've been waiting.

Thank you, Lindy, so much. Wonderful, let's do it. Mr. Holland, hello. Hi.

It helps if you turn on the microphone. Okay, we are here tonight to give you an update on the pursuit of a agreement with Aspire Broadband to provide internet services within the city of Ojai. As you know, at the October 14th meeting, the city council directed staff to explore the development of an agreement and to come back with an ordinance for micro trenching in the city right away. Providing access to broadband internet is a tactic to support the city council's goal of diversifying the economy. Aspire broadband is seeking a non-exclusive Agreement to install fiber network within the city's right-of-way and become an additional ISP that people can purchase service from Currently there's little competition within the city of Ojai and many residences and businesses are underserved with high-speed internet. The lack of competition in the ISP market results in higher costs and lower service levels than what is available in other neighboring communities. Aspire aims to offer a competitive future-proof internet solution to meet the evolving needs of city residences if you're interested you can look at Aspire's pricing plans they can be viewed at www.aspirefiber.com I did look at it it's much cheaper than what I'm paying at my house After the October 14th meeting, a question was raised regarding whether the city has the authority to enter into an agreement with Aspire. This concern was related to the fact that the California Public Utilities Commission oversees franchise agreements with video and telecommunications providers. However, Aspire operates exclusively as an ISP and is not required to have a franchise agreement with the state as either a telecommunications service provider or as a cable digital video service provider. Another question that was raised after the meeting on the 14th was whether the city should initiate an RFP process to invite other potential providers to submit proposals. The idea is that multiple providers could present alternative plans allowing the city to select the most advantageous plan. However, this is not an exclusive agreement, so other providers are welcome to present their proposals at any time. Furthermore, the agreement would not prevent the city from building its own fiber network in the future. I will tell you that our IT specialist today was having a conversation and just asked a company that we were dealing with what would it cost to install fiber between this location and the rec department and that number came back it would be north of two million dollars just for that one connection Aspire is proposing to use micro-trenching technology. Micro-trenching allows multiple fiber ISPs to deploy fiber along the same streets. The RFP process therefore doesn't seem necessary because we are not locked into a single agreement and we do not bear any of the costs for the installation of Aspire's network. Since the October 14th meeting, Aspire has continued to expand their presence in our area. They have already entered into an agreement with the city of Moorpark, and they have started construction and have activated their network. Aspire's current network in the city of Moorpark provides coverage to or has passed 6,500 out of the 10,000 residences in that community, and they already have 1,200 subscribers. Aspire is expecting to complete that network by July of this year. Aspire has also entered into an agreement and begun construction within the community of Santa Clarita. To date, Aspire's infrastructure has passed about 3,500 homes in that community. Other markets that Aspire is currently seeking agreements with include Fillmore, Ventura County, and the city of Ventura. The network that Aspire is seeking to build within the city limits is capable of speeds up to 10 gigabits. This will provide another option for all of the single-family homes, multi-dwelling residences, and businesses in the city. This will be an entirely underground network using microtrenching technology. Microtrenching is a construction... It's actually really cool. We've gone out and seen it. We're talking about a two-inch... saw kerf in the street that is only a foot deep and it's backfilled with a concrete slurry, which is basically just sand and cement and water and capped with an epoxy cap. So it's very non-evasive as far as construction techniques. In fact, the state governments are beginning to acknowledge the benefits of using this type of construction technique to provide broadband internet. Another benefit of what Aspire is proposing is that they are going to be providing at a reduced cost the use of dark fiber between our facilities. As previously stated that's actually a very valuable Connection currently between Here and the rec department. The only way I was able to make that connection is I'm using point-to-point radios which vary with the Time of day and where the trees are We're also The proposed agreement is also will include the access to high speed internet here. Currently we have a fiber connection with Spectrum that is 200 megabits per second and we're paying many times more than what Aspire is proposing. I'm actually going to suggest that we keep that connection as well as the Aspire connection because Literally everything we do today requires an internet access and it's nice to have that redundancy and We'll be able to use dark fiber between here and our city parks so that we can expand our security cameras. We also will be able to provide Wi-Fi access at our city parks for residents who visit the parks. We do have some representatives of Aspire here, if you have any questions.

Basically, if we say yes, please proceed what we'd imagine, tell me if I'm right, we would see this trenching happening in our neighborhoods and all that kind of stuff, right?

Yes, we will, but it will be after we will come back to you with the microtrenching ordinance, which will allow us more control over how it's installed. When we went out and watched how they install it, It's about a three-day process. They come in, they dig the trench, they lay their ductwork, they test it, make sure it's all good, they backfill it, and they're gone.

And then they're, we said all this before, but just saying it one more time. Then after that's in place, then they're basically marketing and people can sign up if they want to. Yes. Okay, and that's it.

The other step that we would that we would do is we would actually have to conclude the negotiations with aspire and then bring their master Okay, and part of the negotiation would be the rates or not We would not control the rate because we're not really serving as a regulator or a regular regulatory agency but we would have authority over making sure that their installation within our streets has the least impact, does not affect other infrastructure within those rights of way, and address other related considerations related to their construction.

And to give you an idea on the rates, currently I'm paying $100 a month for a spectrum at my house. I get 300 megs down, 20 megs up. Their basic, basic tier is starting at $50 a month for 500 megs symmetrical, which is down and up, same speed.

I'm looking at their rates right now for more part.

They're way better. Yeah. And fast. Yes. And when you're dealing with fiber to the home or fiber to the premises, it's a guaranteed bandwidth. When you're dealing with copper to the home, like Spectrum, they use a fiber backbone, but it's copper to the home. It's a best effort, which means I'm sure you've experienced this. You go home, and at certain times, it's just slow.

Mm-hmm.

You don't have that problem with fiber.

Whether an individual decides to stay with Spectrum or go here, at least there's choices. That's nice.

Exactly.

And if somebody else in the future wanted to come and join, like get in our market, it's definitely feasible with microfiber. Any other questions?

Yeah. So last time we talked about the idea that, you know, once the first micro trench is in, whether there's difficulty in a second provider coming in and offering their services. And there was a talk about the ability to, you know, bore under their trench. But what I found out is that, at least in New York City, they have an ordinance that requires that... Any microtrench on a residential street has to have at least four tubes. So the one by the contractor who installs, the three that are available. And I'm just wondering if that is consistent with what you understand is...

I understand what you're talking about. That's more the dig once concept. Aspire, and they can answer the question, what they're proposing is actually a much smaller trench. Microtrenching goes all the way up to four inches wide. They're talking about two.

Yeah, and I think that that's what New York City was talking about too.

And the other thing with New York City, my background is I grew up in a family that does underground construction. We build miscellaneous concrete structures on storm drains. New York City is an entirely different ballgame because if you dig down on the street there, you're literally every inches is filled up. So once they dig in, it's, it's a whole different ball game than here where we might, we're going to have gas, water, AT&T and all our spectrum is overhead for the most part. That's pretty much it.

So I guess that's a question for Aspire whether they have any objections to the idea that they would lay additional tubing for competitors to potentially come in and

So not for competitors, and we have a detail with Santa Clarita that allows double trenching. So what that detail consists of is 24 inches off of our existing trench line, and then the restoration method behind it. So coming back to, I think the question to James was, what would the negotiations look like in our DA agreement? A part of those negotiations is our final restoration, as well as what we can provide to the city, whether that be a revenue share, whether that be service to all of your city facilities, your traffic cabinets, your parks, et cetera. So in those conversations and negotiations is where We kind of come to this point on what is the final restoration look like and what? part of the street is available to aspire for our micro trenching and our infrastructure and So if you wanted a second provider to come in, they would have to, and obviously this is a part of those negotiations, their final restoration method may be different than ours because there will be 24 inches offset of the curb and gutter, and how their laterals go underneath our laterals would be the conversation. So whether they mill and pave two-inch grinding cap, whether you guys allow Maxwell and they give the city a revenue share on top of that is kind of what some of those negotiations look like.

So I also have an understanding that there are at least some jurisdictions that are concerned that micro-trenching has really serious consequences for oak trees.

because of where their root structure tends to be and that the severing of that root structure you know basically kills or makes it susceptible yeah so we gpr every linear foot of our micro trench um so we would identify those concerned areas and we would trench around it we'd cross the street come back around um so there's alternative paths to those to those issues

yeah do you like if you've got a street that's just completely riddled oak you know oak line the whole way yeah we could directional drill that and we can get one of those so if if uh do you ever like for a particular street um you know take your line up into the utility lines of a

we don't we'd like to stay underground and what we do is we would go deeper a lot of the times you could see the roots coming up in the street and once again if you can't we have the technology to ground penetrate radar the ground and figure out and find those voids within the street so we can avoid those tree roots altogether Yeah. The watersheds?

No, it's, we have, I think it's a, I think it's a Tennessee Valley Authority construction thing that is... It's basically a storm drain, but it's, yeah, I mean, it's a swale. They have a concrete line ditch, but it's like two and a half feet deep and three feet wide, and it takes storm water. Yep.

So typically we will pothole those areas. And if we have eight inches of cover, we would micro trench that. Um, if there's not eight inches of cover, we come out of the street and we hang a big bridge attachment on those and come back in.

What he's talking about is next to Signal Street, there's a rock and concrete lined ditch that's open to the surface. And so I would envision that you guys would bore underneath that one side. Yeah, I'd have to visualize that.

There's like five or six other streets that have these.

But this would be part of, I guess, when we're getting an update on the agreement. So part of, I assume, the agreement would be when you encounter routes like this, here's the protocol that you would follow that you agree to and all of that. So that all has to get negotiated.

I'm assuming that Lindy would be part of that discussion. I mean, given that she's the holder of the topography maps and et cetera, et cetera.

Lindy and James have been involved from this from the start. And Bethany has jumped in, too, with her utility background. So it's been a nice cocktail, if you will, working on this.

Yeah. I'm just curious, do any sense of when? I know I realize the agreement will have to be negotiated. Any sense of when we would get an update where we're ready to bring the agreement? Would the agreement come forward to this body?

The agreement will come forward to this body. With the jam-packed agendas that we have in June, my guess is we would be looking at July or August.

And we'll have the micro-trenching at either... I would prefer to do that at the same time I wouldn't want to do the agreement and not have the micro trenching rules in place my recommendation would be that we consider both at the same time typically our catalogs are in those agreements that sounds great thank you thank you very much this is a great update

Thank you very much. All right. Actually, I had Larry Stengold. Sorry, Larry. He had a public comment. Sorry, Larry. No, please come. Come. No, sorry. My fault.

I'm all for high-speed internet. But I'm here tonight to urge the council to pause this proposal until specific concrete conditions are met. Broadband access is important, and so is high-speed internet. But importance alone is not a reason to move forward without full clarity. The proposal would place private infrastructure into our public streets, disrupt neighborhoods, and potentially require residents to pay simply to connect to their own home. Yet we still do not know the actual cost to each homeowner at the end of the day. We also need to address the idea that this is free. Nothing like this is truly free. The city may not be paying up front, but that only means the costs are shifted elsewhere. The homeowners through connection fees, subscribers, monthly pricing, or taxpayers. And those are come on rates, online, you see them scratched off, 50 and next year will be 100, whatever. Free should not be the reason to move too quick in a decision with permanent consequences, even if they're the right people. I'm not saying they're the wrong ones. Just relax. In practical terms, this project brings real impact. Asphalt cuts a newly paved road. Maybe start on the roads that won't get paved in the next three years. Disruptions to driveways and sidewalks, long-term restoration obligations. And when issues arise, it will be the city of Ojai that residents turn to, not the present provider. Once this system is installed and operated by a private company, the city's leverage over pricing, construction timing, service quality, and future repairs become limited. This is not local control. The long-term dependence on a private operator for essential infrastructure, this also costs not fully addressed. a connection fee, oversight and restoration. Utilities will have to dig underneath. The city, the county, the state, they all have regulations about plumbing lines, sewer lines, whatever, that have to dig under. Maybe they'll have to be hand dug. I think that's one . If one provider builds across the public right away, are we discovering future providers? Are we creating a de facto monopoly? The proposal says anticipated affordability, but provides no actual real time. Residents are asked to support a system without knowing the cost. My request is simple and specific. Do not approve the proposal tonight. Clear binding residential pricing and connection costs. Written impact assessments from all utilities and vendors, including public works. Because when they have to put a line in, they're going to have to dig and dig. And if they break the line, it's going to be really expensive. So until these conditions are met, the proposal is incomplete. Full transparency, enforceable protection, and a clear public benefit. And just on vertical clearance, most local codes require... You understand we're not signing a proposal tonight.

Oh, so when you say don't sign the proposal tonight? Okay. Okay. That's what we're proposing.

That's the plan.

That's the plan. Thank you. Mayor? Yes?

We have a raised hand from Mr. Miley, who's ready. Oh, great.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yeah. It's been a long day.

OK. This Aspire Fiber company is a new company backed by a funding company from Dallas, Texas. One company can be a monopoly. I have two questions. Currently, they work in Moore Park in the city of Santa Clarita, as you heard. They hope to expand into Southern California. The key question is what this will cost residents and businesses. I went to their website. They have an introductory price of $60 per residence, but their usual price runs from 100 to $300.50 depending on broadband speed. What can Spectrum do as a competitor? I did not hear that. Again, what's the cost to residents and businesses? There will be no competition to them once they get involved. We will have no control over their prices. It's going up, folks. So I think we need to do what Larry said, is make sure we look at the other key issues, and the issue of monopoly, also the issue of do we have control over the prices as the years go by. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miley. No more, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Any council member reports? Yes.

I have one. I finally went to a meeting with Whispering Oaks. I brought it up some time ago that on their... I'm losing my mind. With that area housing authority, they have Mr. Mason and an open seat. And I had asked some time ago if I could have that extra seat. I don't know. I do go to the meetings. I will say... because I'm not a member or a part of that commission, that when they go into closed session, I've had to leave the meetings. I get there at like three when they start, they go into closed sessions, and at like five, I just say, forget it. So I do have notes. So I went to their... association meeting um the other day i did take minutes so i can share this with you to you know to let you know um what we talked about um issues that they have and what i need to do if i can proceed to do that i'll take that on as an action you have mentioned this before okay and then i'll just share this with you just so you know what we we spoke about thank you And then there was also something when I was there too, so there's a, like it's a question, if you're facing the property, and then they have the wood fence that they put next to the golf course, and there's the trail, I have pictures on my phone, you can't imagine, like from the palm trees and everything, and it's like nobody's claiming, it's not Whispering Oaks, it's not the golf course, but it is like really bad. So I don't know what, if that's something that we can address. We can look at that, too. Perfect. Thank you. I appreciate that. Of course.

I have a report, and it's going to turn into a future agenda item. Three of us attended this local heroes award, and the person who was given the award is at this project, I understand that the two other council people called the city manager to talk about it. And I have raised in the past the idea that, so, The project was the creation or the capturing rainwater by storage tanks. And they had like 400 gallon olive tanks as their project. And I think it would be interesting for us to collaborate with the student and to use our wholesale buying power to buy buy tanks at the cheapest price possible um i think we go to larger sizes than they were proposing for people that wanted it sell them at cost uh sell them to county residents at a little bit of cost take care of administrative fees and whatever but i think it would be But we can do that as a future agenda item. I'm seconding that.

I would love that to be a future agenda item. And just to say the city of Santa Cruz, they had a citywide program where people could get one for free and use it with some training. So other cities are definitely doing it.

Also, I wanted to mention that the student, Marcus, is a new member, a youth member of our Parks and Rec Commission. And so also just congratulations to all the finalists. It was such an inspiration seeing the high school students in our community with such innovative ideas and projects.

All the projects were related to water, the health of our watershed.

because so many of you have mentioned this we already have it on the page and then just one other I think that it would behoove us to take on as a future agenda item the Ohio Mountain Farm Plaza area that I think it needs to come to this body

I agree. And one last. I've been thinking about, you know, especially if we end up having a couple, a million, two million and a half, what it would cost to actually take on fire ember screens for the entire city. Just take the responsibility on. Just say we're going to do it. make it simple and you know people want to donate the cost that's great and if they don't that's fine and it's not means tested it's just let's get this done you know after what we just saw in Simi Valley like once again I believe that fire is the existential threat and you know if fire comes everything else goes so I would like to think about a future agenda item and or some sort of feasibility study to have that done figure out ways that we might be able to do that if we end up even if we don't end up with $2.5 million, if it's a $2 million project, is it worth it for us to do? I'd like that discussion.

I'd like to add to that that we look at grant funding first before we look at

I'd like to do it simultaneously but I agree that you know we can we have the lobbyists now we have salute who's on the Appropriations Committee if there's money for anything it's for fire prevention and we're a municipality so okay thank you

So sorry, could I go back Mary on the Ohio mountain farm item are there was a planning Commission decision this past week, are you speaking to call that action up to the city council.

I am so I guess it's it's basically the well tell me what i'm thinking there's two questions, one is seating outside and the other is the refrigerator.

So those are both items that were included within the application that went to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission denied that. So I would say that if this body wants to consider that, that should be, and you want to talk about it in this method, that's a call-up.

I think I'm calling it appeal.

It would be a council, basically a call-up by council on appeal, and then there's a two-step process. First, we would have to bring that to council for consideration of whether council wants to hear an appeal hearing. So that would be the first step, and then the second step would be a notice of public hearing.

I'm asking for the first step for us to discuss.

Correct. Okay.

Thank you. Okay. All right. We're adjourned. Just one quick question.

In our discussion, we can discuss everything. It's not just this section, that section. You know what I mean? Because like now I notice with the tables and everything, they're bright orange. Why can they have bright orange chairs in the back when they take it away? Things like that. We can talk about the whole.

Yeah, items related to the design review permit would all be part of the discussion. Perfect. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.