Public Safety Commission - Regular Meeting

But they had an old Thomas Brothers map book out. So the concept of the design of the beacon box that it supplies detailed maps for incoming engines into into a large fire it's not really developed for the local fire department because those folks already have great maps and I know that because I ran the GIS department for Ventura County fire as we were building all that kind of stuff so this is this is just kind of being able to give them some insight as they come into an area they don't know So it's just the beacon boxes are very easy, easy to understand information. I'll go through all that kind of stuff. Basically, we do a lot of work on the back end, and we're using AI machine learning. We identify the area that we're going to map first on, and then we start digging into it. So it's a multi-format access. We have 11 by 17 drawings.

So I'll turn this around so everybody can see it.

So the base map in there, the basic map, is 11 inch by 17. They're all laminated. You can mark them up, do whatever you need to. We also have a large map that is that same map, whatever neighborhood we're mapping. We're creating a 22 inch by 34. It just gives you the opportunity to have a few people around that map to do some analysis, tactical stuff. We also have a QR code in there. All these maps are stored on our cloud. And the firefighter can come up, take a picture of that QR code, and download the map to their device. We don't care what type of device that is. It could be Apple, Android, whatever. The beauty of that is the fire, actually public safety, uses a free program called Avenza PDF. and it essentially creates a moving map. So in our GIS, in our mapping, when we export it, we can say, hey, let's make this PDF a little smarter, and it includes all the geometry of where it is on Earth. So now the user, when they pop it open, they have a little blue dot that shows where they're at. And again, this is just to give them their footing, a better footing of where they're at. So if that doesn't work, if the cell coverage is down, QR codes aren't going to work. So then we have that row of USB drives that are in there. So now they can just pop in that USB drive and get the maps locally. Works great. Go ahead. So each box has two locks on it. It has a lock that sits up on top. So the actual combo lock goes on the top, and there's a wire lock that goes through the bottom. The firefighters will come in with their key that opens all the locks. They'll just break that. If they can't figure out the combo, they'll just pop that thing off and get the maps and the data that they want inside. And then we have another lock that's hanging in the interior of it that they can relock the box.

In the Palisades Franklin Fire, we had 11 boxes that were accessed.

We're not sure how they were used. Some of them were stripped clean. Some of them just had a few maps that were removed. The utility companies did get in on the game. It was helping them as well. So this is basically what I just told you, the interior of the box. So we have the QR code, laminated prints, 11 by 17, the larger one, and then all the row of flash drives. And one of the drives you can see in the bottom of the box has four connectors to it, and that is essentially, it has both Apple connectors and Android. So irregardless of what type of device you have, you're gonna be able to download that data. Next please. All right, so this slide is just kind of talking about how the maps are organized. This is a map that was done up in Beverly Hills. So the primary things that we get in there is the road network. We want to make sure that all these roads are connected or they're dead end or there's a gate there. We want to identify that. We're putting in vehicle turnarounds. So, again, using AI, figure out what that turnaround is, and then we identify that. So if an engine is driving up into an unknown area, now they know at least they can turn around. Not that they're not going to go up there, but this is all about giving them better information so they can make great decisions. So we also have vehicle turnarounds, hydrant locations, all the structures are identified, various hazards. One of the big things is the pool locations. So now if your engine can suck water out of a pool, now you know where all those pools are located. critical highly curated just easy to use when Shea was putting this together he actually reached out to 12 fire agencies across the state and figured what they and got with them to tell us what they need what they wanted on the map and that's where we've gone okay And that's just a detail of that same picture. And you can see that there's that red line in there with the number 22. Beverly Hills wanted their station sectors put on. So we have our base layers that all the maps get. But if there's something unique that you want to get on that thing, we can do that.

OK?

So this is just bringing that critical information, just trying to kind of drive this in a little bit. It is bridging that gap between the local firefighters and the incoming units.

That's good.

And another detail. This is where the rubber meets the road for me. So this is an actual IEP map, fire map, if you will, of Point Doom during the Woolsey fire. So we've probably all seen these things before. It's essentially, you can see the blue lines, that's a rough road network of the area. The red line, the perimeter of the fire. So imagine you're coming in from Arizona, San Diego, Napa, and you get to that fire and your task has been to go find out what's going in Point Dune. We don't know what's happening down there. We need you to go and do a survey. And they give you this map. You're gonna do your thing, but it's harder to do it. So if we go to the next page. So this is what we have created. So that's that same area. And you can see along the top, you've got all the red boxes. The reason there are so many is that we wanna make sure that whatever direction you're coming from, you're gonna run into a box. So if you came from the west or if you came from the east, you're coming up 101 or Highway 1, you're going to see all those different boxes. And you can see the center of the drawing is dark. And then the other road network is shaded in gray. That's because of that lower right box there. And I've got some handouts for you here in a minute. To me, that's what makes this thing sing. So in that infrastructure box, it says there's 776 structures. How does that really fall? I mean, that helps the firefighter, but it also helps sheriff and highway patrol who do evacuations. So if you just took a rough number, multiply by three, now you got maybe 2,100 people you might have to evacuate. That's good intel as well. so then it goes down to how many turnarounds hydrants draft hydrants pools and then the beacon box locations and again the the firefighter can load this map right onto their phone and drive right around okay detail. So you can see all the buildings located, all those W's are pools. They're littered with pools down in Malibu, for sure. The road network and those little tiny lines that are coming off the major roads, those are driveways. So we go in and actually map all those driveways, because you could be driving right down with all the privacy hedges we have now. You could be driving down the road and not even know there's a house there. So we're trying to, again, create some energy for that firefighter. And this is just showing how it's locked. He's cutting off the lock on the top. Again, it's that universal lock or bolt cutters that they have. So this is our proposal for the city of Ojai. It includes seven boxes. There is a larger project for the whole valley, but we're focusing right now just on the city. And so these boxes, they'll cover individual neighborhoods. And the placement that we have right now, that is not set in stone. We've had the most success when we've gotten a group like you folks and Chief Cleary to get that fire department input saying, man, I don't want the box right here. I'd rather have it up a block. That's fine by us. We're just making that first lunge at it to get the conversation going. OK. So the benefits of the box. Malibu really hit this where they put this stand in their city council or in their government building. And so folks could just come in and see what the heck is going on with that. And I think that's what we're going to do with this one here. so it really shows the um it's a physical thing that somebody can walk up to and say well hey the city's doing something they're doing these things for us so it even if they hopefully it never gets used but it still builds goodwill if you will So data is not just for firefighters, utility crews have access to the maps as well. Again, the beacon box is designed for incoming engines, not for local agencies, really. Tablet command has come up a bit. And I am not a pro on that program at all. But I spoke with a couple folks that are actually developing the data behind it. And Chief, if I go sideways, let me know. The way I understand it is Ventura County, their mapped area, let's say it covers the county and then goes out a couple miles or five miles or however that is. But when you come in from, let's say, San Bernardino, you have tablet command also, but your mapped area is different because it's San Bernardino. So when you come in, you don't have all that rich data that Ventura County has. And so there is a process to upload. They do a... So it's run, I don't wanna get too deep on it, it's run off the web. If they lose connectivity, they can bring in a local copy and continue on doing their things. So from what I understand, it's moving that copy to folks that can come in and help with that way. But we're trying to figure out how we can help that. This isn't the end all, be all. This is just another tool in the box to make a response happening. we're actually talking with the tablet command folks to import the beacon box maps into their product so we can we get it out there as well fills the gap anybody can use that okay I think that's it so this is where we have boxes now started in Malibu we got Beverly Hills Chatsworth 21 boxes went in there Bell Canyon we're not sure that's going to happen that Ojai Valley or excuse me on Yolanda was just delivered today in Ventura Deer Creek is in place. Yellow Hill should be done in about two weeks. Matillehaw, which is the maps that are gonna be inside of here, will probably be delivered in a week or so. And all those gray boxes were the initial analysis we did of covering the entire valley. And I think, well, there's 44 of them, but we're just focusing obviously just on the city right now. But that's the grand plan, if you will. And here is Napa. So we've launched into the winery folks up there. It's a little bit different because everything is so spread out. It doesn't have real tight communities like you would have here. So it's a different type of mapping. Okay. How about questions?

I have a couple of questions. One is the granularity of the information. Can it be improved on as time goes on and other layers added? I think you mentioned that. Because the reason I'm asking is because people now have pool pumps, which would be useful for fire services to be aware of because they don't have to dedicate an engine to that area. or roof sprinklers. There are some homes now that have roof sprinklers. And then are other states, so there are fire companies coming from other states, are they aware of these beacon boxes?

We're pretty new. So first, again, coming out of the Woolsey fire, which is 2017, I think it was. So the first box wasn't in place until 22, and it's starting to roll.

So if an organ company comes in, so do they know to look for these?

No, it's getting the word out. That's why we're planting these in the neighborhoods. And those boxes that were identified or used during the Franklin fire, that's how the word is getting out. People are seeing it. It's just easy to use. It gets the information out there.

Okay so just to follow up on Commissioner McEachins how often will these be updated as far as the information It depends how much change is happening in the community I would think

Well, imagine Ventura, and we've got maps on, let's say, East Ventura, and then a new track goes in. You're going to want to have that new track put in, right? But if there isn't a lot of change, we don't really see the need to update them unless there was, you know, so we got reached, a guy reached out to us that has a pool pump, and we're Working through it now of actually identifying, you know, we had that W symbol for water for the pool czar. We're thinking of coloring it a different color, making it a different color to show that there is a pump there, which I think will help quite a bit.

I think in the Palisades, they not only had pumps, but they actually had a flag or a marker they put in front of their house before they evacuated and left the pump in the driveway or something like there was a process that was communicated with the community. So everyone was participating. I know that's probably outside the bounds of the beacon box per se.

That's more of a- Always looking for stuff.

But is there somebody that's an advocate for this that can come to you and say, we think we need to do an update in this particular area?

So primarily our customers are fire safe councils and HOAs. And that gives us a point of contact. So I just dropped the box off and on Yolando. We're gonna, you know, we've got to set that thing up. So now I have someone that we actually, I would just reach out to the fire safe council.

And a couple of other questions so the beacon at the top does that go on at some point or when it's nighttime?

Yeah so it has a solar cell on top of it it can be a solid light or it can flash and it comes on at night or really heavy smoky conditions And what about the fire safety of this box? We had one burned up so we started putting we were willing to put the boxes on anything we really didn't care and there was one down in malibu that was put on a wooden fence and then that wooden fence burned up and so we've got the box it's all singed and everything um with with the two by four on the back side but so we're not going to do fences anymore but um Yeah, if it's taken direct heat, there's more issues we have to deal with.

And what about the cost?

Costs are $3,950 for the box. That's typically a box and one mat.

The cost is $3,950 for the box includes one map but there's a caveat to that in as I've as I've come in here

I'm really concerned about doing the right thing we you know we're a company we want to make some money but this is from the heart if you will that we want this this out to save our homes and I lost my train of thought Oh, yes. So if we go into broader areas, like when I was showing you Napa, if we're in those areas, it's not taking us as long to build the maps as a congested area. So in that case, we can maybe put two maps in each box. It's all time and materials. And that's working with the customer. How are we going to knock that out?

Does that cost include all the thumb drives?

Let me add a little bit to that so the cost that Jim is giving you is the hard cost for the box okay need to be added on to that is the pole that it's going to be mounted on the hardware as well as the costs of what I'm calling soft costs which are for every neighborhood that these are going to go into we would be doing training and education and meetings with the neighborhood to let them know about the boxes and per agreement with Chief Gardner we would make these meetings as much about fire prevention as about the beacon boxes themselves so you know don't don't shoot me and don't hold me to this but I'm going to say roughly the cost is by the time they're in the ground and all the work's been done probably around ten thousand dollars a box and that includes the cost of all the training materials and everything else so I just want to be transparent on that I appreciate that Randy

So our basic cost or what we provide is the majority of the cost is all the time it takes to make the maps. That's where it sits. But you get the box, all the thumb drives. We have different mounting brackets depending on what it's going to go on. And that's part of it as well. And it's just the cost of a pole.

Is there a, because you're on the cloud and you're updating this, is there a monthly cost to this?

No, we absorb that.

Okay, if you go out of business, is there some way to- Shh. Well, I mean, there are too many people who, you know, they buy stuff and it goes. I understand. Is there any other way to upgrade anything or will the fire departments have access to changing the maps and adding to or?

That's probably a great question we haven't really gone down that road yet but and just let you know everything that we create we'll give to all to the fire department so if they want to shove those in with their regular tacticals that's fine Is that red light on all the time or just when there's a fire Just at night When it gets smoky And it can be turned off as well. There were a couple folks in Malibu that just didn't want it on. So they turned it off.

And the light's unique in that it broadcasts the light down.

It doesn't really shoot it up. So if you have a light ordnance, it helps with that.

So to clarify again it comes on at night and also will come on in smoky conditions If it gets really smoky for sure If we put the box in what kind of and this is for the out-of-town firefighters what kind of training do the local population need

I think it's it's more education as to what the boxes are for and what their purpose is as well as making sure that for instance if they have a pool and they are adding a pool pump that may be something they want to pass on to the fire safe council so that we can pass it on to Jim and flame mapper But again, I do want to add that a second purpose of these neighborhood meetings would be to go over fire prevention, wildfire prevention in general, with members of VCFD present at those meetings.

Just looking at the box, we've got The led by 17s that are sitting in here and here's the 22 by 34. They're just samples right now because they're done. The only thing we did have is I brought the Matilla. So this is showing how you can get a feel of what it's going to look like. It's kind of unique. We've never done this before where you have like these leaders. because we're actually going to put the box pretty far up into the canyon where we would normally have it out on the when you first entered but there's no homes or anything in here and so it's as you know i can pass this around right Okay, so essentially it's just a booklet showing it's got a street map and then a photo map on this page here. When we tried to do all the addressing of these homes out here, these are giant lots. And it's got one address. And so we do an on-site visit. We worked with the coordinator that's out there and did a drive-through and picked up all the stuff that they wanted. So we would do the same thing here. If there's some unique addressing in there, and I'm sure there is, we would pick all that up.

Chief Cleary, does our department, Ventura, have the same information? In the same manner?

Yeah, on our CAD system, so again, I'll put some of the stuff for Tableau Command. So one, when we have the Sandy Fire, Tableau Command has the ability for incident sharing. So anybody who has the Tableau Command customer, and we currently share it now with Santa Barbara and L.A. County, so we can see all their CAD information, all their mapping. And as an incident occurs, we have the ability to share that information with the populace, any mutual aid that's coming in. and a lot of departments i was just in washington are going to this is like the standard now just because of the price and the capabilities of tablet command for our mapping system and jim worked for us before we have stuff called wildland tackles and we have stuff called pre-plans and we have all that stuff available on our computers in a pdf form that's geo-referenced that we get that in ventura county all the agencies because we dispatch all the agencies ventura city ochsner fillmore fedfire they have all the same information we have on our cats would you want one of I would say, again, we rely on technology. And since 2018, it's drastically changed, right? It's significantly better. Going from Thomas Brothers, our thing was called Geo Maps. We used to call them Geo Lost because you had to flip through a bunch of pages to get to places. The abilities and even just on your phone, the stuff that you have, even with NFC and what they're doing with just mapping in general. I can look throughout the whole country on this device right now and see all the maps, drop points, water locations. But again, we rely on connectivity. Luckily for our agency, we have star links on most of our vehicles, so it helps us with that connectivity. But if you ever were to lose some of that stuff, like he talked about, you have to have the offline versions which you can download. You have to have mobile map packages uploaded. You have to have it saved on your phone. So I think for a neighborhood, if there's something specific, any redundancies, that's what we're always trying to look for, whether it's generators, extra water, all that stuff is important. So it would be up to the neighborhoods what they thought was important. I will say, though, technology has definitely drastically changed since the Woolsey fire significantly for the better.

Yeah. Absolutely.

The Malibu has 44 of them?

I think it's 47 So are they paying $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 for each one?

Does it include the same thing or more? Yes

Malibu, they just went and bought them because they could. And their mindset was the taxes that we will lose off of one of those multi-million dollar homes would pay for those boxes, would pay for all of them. And, you know, it's all about prevention. You know, just how aggressive you want to be and can be. Aggressive is good. Yeah. So, yeah. Anybody else? Any other questions?

I just have a question. My law enforcement cynical brain just thinking about this up here. If those get damaged, vandalized, stolen, is there a warranty? Does the company come out and get contacted by the city, Public Works, and they replace them? How would that work?

We certainly would help with that. And so we've got 200 boxes out. We've only had one vandalized, and that was, oddly enough, in Beverly Hills. and it was interesting because if somebody broke into it and they took everything they took the QR code and what they're gonna do with that stuff I don't know so I think we just replaced one in Beverly Hills And if we came down to it, it would just be the cost. It would just be our hard cost, you know, and printing. So you're not having to pay for all that recreation anymore. It would, yeah, it would be a thing.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Sure.

But just to clarify, to follow up on Chief Abbott's question, you've got 200 boxes out there, and out of those 200, you've only had one that's been vandalized. Yeah.

Okay.

That's a pretty good track record.

So I understand this correctly though, it's primarily to benefit out of state in a major fire event like the Thomas fire when we had crews from all over the west coast of the US and back east. So that's what it's primarily for though.

Jim Crookman if I'm wrong and Chief Cleary I think it's that and it's also just another layer of redundancy I mean like Chief Cleary said you know their technology is particularly with the new tower that you're I shouldn't bring that up with the new tower that you're putting up and Starlink but again if for any reason you know Iran hacks Starlink okay and you lose communications This is just another line of defense.

And it's for those incoming engines, and it doesn't even have to be out of state. There's plenty of people that are not locked in with tablet, especially small agencies, I think of tribes as well, because they have crews that will respond as well.

Well and another key factor and this is something that Chief Gardner wanted me to make sure and I might mention Chief Gardner has a matching grant of a hundred thousand up to a hundred thousand dollars for if we can find the grant for the 37 that are going to go in the valley he insisted that utility companies had the ability to get into these boxes utility companies wouldn't have tablet command so again it goes beyond just fire first responders Would the utility companies be willing to chip in to help purchase I say yes If it's going to help every utility or anybody

So far as the funding mechanism goes and maybe I'm jumping ahead. What would the funding mechanism be? We can get that.

Okay Okay, any other questions for Jim Jim's gonna leave this box here mayor Lindy I'll let you decide where you'd like to put it. But the idea is that the public can come in and see it Touch it feel it know what it is. I Okay, so I appreciate you doing that, Jim.

Sure.

And I appreciate you being here today.

All right, I'm glad to be here. Okay. Oh, I got something else here. Okay, with that, we will move on to public communication.

We would need public communication and not having to deal with a public agenda Sorry, my mic should be on. This would be for communications not having to do with a specific item on the agenda. And the first person I have, which I believe is a general comment is Timothy Williamson.

Thank you very much. My name is Tim Williamson. I live on Persimmon Hill. I've been a resident of this city for over 40 years. The roadway that is planned to have access to the Cabin Village right now is off Montgomery, as I understand it. Montgomery is a very busy street. There's even talk about putting speed bumps on it right now. I think it would be much, much better to have the access to Cabin Village off Signal, which goes straight into that area. I think if you start looking at the traffic on Montgomery, you're going to find that it's very dense at times. At times you can't even cross the street. um so i would consider that you would change or look at the proposal of doing a roadway into cabin village off the end of signal any questions no sir thank you thank you mr williamson okay next i have um kitty i can't read the last name kitty win thank you

I wanted to address the bumps or humps or whatever you call them I live on Grand Avenue and walk my little dog and I run into other run into wrong word but I meet other people walking their dogs in the morning and we have no Really, we have to go out into the road sometimes to get by. So I'm really here to say that that street in Summer are a real problem for people who like to walk with their dogs or by themselves. And I also am here because several years ago there was a gentleman, very nice man, who lived at the Gables and had an electric wheelchair that he got around on. And we used to wave. I didn't really know him, but very nice person. And one day I was coming back from the East End And I saw his wheelchair over to the side of the road just before my block, which is the last one before Signal. And he was being put into an ambulance and taken away. And there was a car there and a young woman who was being questioned. He died. He was within his proper place. He was over on the right-hand side. that gentleman died and I've been thinking about that ever since because I've wanted to I've been thinking about well maybe if we had speed bumps and because it seems like that street and summer is kind of the way to get out of town and the way to come back into town if you don't go on Ojai Avenue and so there are some some people are extremely courteous but then there are the others that know are not so and um since we don't have sidewalks i hope you think hard about putting the bumps in on those streets thank you ma'am thank you i have a question for lindy is that fatality accident noted in our accident days okay thank you we're all aware of that okay uh next i have marianne williamson

Public Safety Commission Mary Ann Williamson I live at 460 Buck Board Persimmon Hill and I walk on Montgomery a lot and so I've been for two years going to figure out who to talk to about speed bumps or speed humps because people get to Creek Road take Montgomery and then they start speeding so I'd really be interested in that area and if Dignity Moves goes ahead with their plan and we're going to use that Montgomery entrance then we should have some kind of I don't want concrete sidewalks but some kind of sidewalks and possibly later on a crosswalk some kind of crosswalk those are my issues thank you

So I should note that the speed hump or traffic calming policy is a separate item on this agenda, but you don't need to come back up and speak to that item again. Thank you. Next, I have Richard Kerner.

I'm not sure if this is, this is kind of a similar issue, but I live at 206 West Summer, right by the corner, Summer going this way and Kenyatta going this way. And I'd assume you're probably aware that you make that right onto Summer, and as you get to Blanche, coming north on that corner, there were two accidents within either two or three days. You may recall that a few weeks ago. So the first one, it was a two-car accident and kind of bad. It sounded really loud. I live across the street. And either the next day or two days later, it was bizarre, so close together, it was a three-car accident. at that intersection so uh... as some may have been addressing that people use that summer street as a through street as you kind of come from the circle at signal and as you approach canada so uh... i'd love to know if if that's being looked at or addressed in my my suggestion is is that probably uh... on ventura is the name of the street past blanche that there could be a stop sign in both directions because people coming from signal they just cruise through and get to canada and make their turn or if they're coming up canada and come on summer they just accelerate till they get to signal so my the evidence of two and three car accidents within either 24 or 48 hours is pretty significant. I'm assuming there have been others. So my question really is, has that been looked at at all? And could something be done about that?

Thank you, Mr. Kerner.

Are there any questions? No.

No, thank you.

Thank you.

OK, next I have Bob. I'm sorry, I can't read your last name. Oh, sorry. I didn't see you back there.

My name's Bob Daddy. I've been here for 30 years. This is not a safe town at all. You take a look at the rates that we pay for insurance. We're the highest in Ventura County just because we have so many incidents and so many people. Is some of that from the tourists? Some of it. Not all of them. I'm a state farm agent. I've been here 30 years. We have a lot of issues here that need to be addressed. Excuse me. Yeah, we have a lot of issues that need to be addressed and they need to be addressed now. It's not traffic calming, it's safety. We have a lot of young kids that like to ride on the sidewalk. And as they ride on the sidewalk in front of Bank of America and some of the other areas and you hit the grocery store. They come flying down and people come flying out of the driveway and we're getting hits on bikes. we really need to consider removing all the vegetation along ohio avenue and along maricopa highway between the y and the school simply because the kids are hauling buns on those bikes and the people are coming out of those strip malls too fast Doesn't make sense to have that doesn't do anything. It doesn't block anything. It doesn't help with anything Just a water waster. And so we really need to mitigate those our corners when you pull out of the market here and you're on the road across from the old bank and You have an eight-foot hedge you can't see, and the people are flying down. Now, I proposed 15 years ago that whenever we have an injury accident in the city, that we have our public engineer, we have one of our people from our sheriff's office, and we have one of the people from the council or the mayor go out and take a look at what happened to that intersection, figure out what we can do to mitigate it. We don't. So we had 10 accidents, two critical injuries at, I'm not sure if it was Aliso, it was Matillaha and Foothill. After 10 serious accidents, we decided to put a Sign it we put stop signs in there It took eight years and susa francina finally got it through For us to put those stop signs at signal I went out with complete streets took 20 or 30 photos of not a single car Being able to make that s turn and stay in their same lane. They were all in oncoming lane At speed we have a number of those areas in the city And we need to look at those the city has equipment that can can you yeah can count the amount of cars we have and the speed i think you start with that see where we have our hot spots thank you bob appreciate it okay um chris did you have a general item or did you want to speak on a

okay then that will conclude any anybody else for public comment on a non agenda item anybody online nobody online okay thank you in that case we can move on to discussion items the first one being fire mitigation funding strategies and we'll start off with a staff report from Lindy Palmer

So good afternoon all. I will be brief on this staff presentation and then turn it over to discussion. But this is very appropriate to our presentation we just saw this evening, this afternoon. And so in this year's fiscal year budget, the city council appropriated $1 million in Measure C funding for fire mitigation efforts, fire safety, a variety of things. And speaking with the city manager, He and I talked about this and I know there's been a lot of ideas being thrown around how to further parcel out this funding and what to do. And we saw this presentation this afternoon on these beacon boxes. But I wanted to open it up for discussion amongst the council here, the commission, you folks, and see if we can come up with some other ideas or some possible ways to present to council. Perhaps they may want to approve for spending this million dollars. So I would just give it to you for a discussion or if you have any questions.

Thank you, Lindy. I believe I have one public comment. Chris, you're on.

Thank you. I'm Christopher Danch. I'm the executive director of the Ohio Valley Fire Safe Council. And I just want to stress to this commission and to the city generally that a lot of work has been done on planning for projects to be done. We have a comprehensive community wildfire protection plan adopted by the city in 24. Has hundreds of recommendations what to do. The data that and the expertise still here that put that all together. And so the fire chief council can help to identify and prioritize work a million dollars is a lot of money But also nowhere near enough to address all the issues that are there it is a real opportunity for the city to take decisive action because doesn't have the uncertainty and the delays and everything else that comes with the grant world which is becoming increasingly difficult for the average fire chief counsel to know that they can do that because there's so many applicants for this money used to be grants been under subscribed now they go over subscribed on a regular basis so we've also just you know we have a lot of the spatial risk and hazard analysis data it's on our dashboard a new version that's coming out I believe Nick has seen it and we also have as a fire safety council invested in building a AI driven geospatial database for the valley which can also assist in the insurance world but also in identifying and prioritizing projects and of course we are regularly do ongoing community outreach work so we're in a position to be at homes with our assessments whatever and help identify those which are most in need so I just want to keep in mind that Firesafe Council is an asset that would be good to utilize in the utilization of this money.

Thank you Thank You Chris any questions Okay, I'd like to if I could start with some suggestions and actually let me pass these out to My fellow commissioners and I believe I have enough for three of you if Linda you and Jackie can share one so I have four items I'd like to at least throw out there as possible suggestions for this funding one would be is working with the Ojai Valley fire safe council to fund the purchase and installation of seven of the beacon boxes within the city Next is to fund a comprehensive citywide vegetation management program to include among other initiatives brush clearance and hazardous tree removal with a knowledgeable and experienced provider either through an RFP for those services or by contracting with a local non-profit such as the fire safe council or another non-profit with the expertise do the necessary work however the city proceeds i think a requirement needs to be boots on the ground as soon as possible my next one would be to purchase the appropriate tools that would be dedicated to a tool lending program which residents can check out and use for fire mitigation on their property not necessarily relying upon the tools that the city owns but these would be purchased and dedicated specifically for that program and then finally to purchase a to be determined amount of 1 8 inch galvanized steel mesh to be provided to residents for use in fireproofing their homes this would be used a program that would need to be developed and that would address among other aspects how it's provided how much is provided and how to process a process to verify its installation and I'm sorry Commissioner I probably stole that from you irregardless of what suggestions are given here I do want to make a have it make make a reminder and have it kept in mind that the fire safe council will shortly be bringing to the city council um about 26 27 proposal which would be the next contract when this one expires and i believe that the cost for that proposal if it was approved by council would need to come out of this one million dollar set aside i may be incorrect in that but i think that that was that was you know intended to be part of that so whatever it is we're saying we're going to spend i just want to make sure that we're keeping in mind that that that money could be needed if the council decided to continue with the fire safe council that's it for me

I've been here since 2017 with the Thompson fire and most of the people I've talked to a lot more recently all want to see action they've heard the studies they've seen the programs they've heard about all the initiatives and from the county from the state from fire safe from us from here They just want to see things happening. They want to see the city removing brush. They want to see homeowners trimming their trees above their houses. They want to see the fire embers because we've been hearing all about fire embers ever since the assessments from the Camarillo fire. it's just a question of action something and it's maybe the city can start removing stuff from their own property which I'm sure they're doing but just in general it's just the it's the attitude of enough studies already we already know what the problem is now let's translate that into having homeowners whether it's the the quantity of galvanized steel ember screens just something and a date certain like okay the ember screens will be here november 1st come pick them up get a reimbursement here's a voucher however it works just people want to see action you're on

Yeah, I was just going to ask a couple of questions. The vegetation management brush clearance, that would be all in city property? Is that what you're talking about, the brush clearance? Well, I think as far as- What are subsidies for people to brush?

think as far as what the you know the the council would want to fund would be throughout the city okay but yes primarily on city property okay but but clearly you know there could be funding in there at council discretion to assist individual homeowners with doing that but part of that will also be the tool lending library where they would have the tools to be able to do that themselves

So I remember a while back when we were in a water conservation mode, serious water conservation mode, there were subsidies for homes to take out lawns. And it was a stipend per square foot or whatever. and I'm just wondering if there and it helped you know create some cash to do some of that mitigation is there a program like this you're talking about a 26-27 plan would there be something like that that you've imagined or I'm just curious if that's something you guys have discussed at all or if it's just spreading it too thin so I don't want to be the spokesperson for the fire safe council but Chris do you want to can you address that perhaps

Again, I'm sorry.

Well, I don't mean to steer this off topic. So I just was curious kind of where the beacon boxes sat in the total allocation of the million dollars. What percentage is being, do you plan or see being allocated to beacon boxes and what it goes to other mitigation, brush clearance, other things like that?

I can pop in here a little bit too. And what we're sort of trying to discuss tonight, and I've heard it already a couple of times, is we're looking for some tangible things we could do to not only show the community that we're taking moves, or making moves, but actually doing something. Tangible, beneficial moves. So I think the fire safe council would stand alone on this. And this is more about sort of trying to carve out, and I understand there's a big overlap going on here right now. But when I was talking to the city manager, we were talking about coming up with maybe a short list of recommendations that we could present to council along with

the additional just to enhance what the fire safe council is doing yeah and and my intent my intent was not to call out the fire safe council but part of what jim had asked was about i thought i heard him saying was about assisting individual homeowners on on doing brush clearance and things like that and And that would seem to be most relevant on the fringes and the edges that border the- Right, and that's the reason I called Chris up was not so much because of what the Fire Safe Council was doing.

So the council has discussed subsidizing tree trimming and Commissioner Steingold has mentioned that at council meetings and council has talked about that. spark resistors over chimneys, etc. So there has been some discussion. So I'm sort of hoping if you all have any ideas and a brainstorm on things that haven't already been discussed. Because there's been a lot of things already discussed and under consideration.

Chris I think we're fine thank you yeah so again my intent was not to put a dollar figure on these I think the the the intent was to come up with suggestions and then they can be costed out and rolled into all the other things the city might be looking at doing with that money I agree and there's obviously a finite pot of gold and so and there's lots of pools on it so what we're trying to do is just provide some input if we have any

Well I agree with with Larry and you know the I think the ember screens are very important that's one of the ways the chief can speak to that but that's one of the ways that a lot of fires get into houses and I don't think that would be a terribly expensive program but one that would be very very useful as a first step the other thing I'll comment on is just you know I drive around in the city fairly often and I'm struck by how many trees are not trimmed they really need pruning not just the city's but everybody's and From my perspective, I have to have my personal house trees trimmed every year in order to maintain my insurance. So I've already been on that road for a while. Now, if there are people that really need to have their trees pruned and can't afford it, perhaps part of the fund could be used to subsidize that. and I think the other thing is just how much education does the general public have I know this has probably been discussed a lot in the fire safe council but you know how many people in town really know what the importance of mitigation is and how to do it and so I don't know if there's funding part of the funding should be set aside for that or whether it's already there I think there are a lot of resources online but again some people don't go online so they don't know about these things

We also need metrics on how much how are we doing when it comes to removing trees adding members ember screens where is the money going how is what's happening to it is it worth what we're getting The ember screen thing, most people will say, hey, you own a home. It's $500. You can afford it. It's not a question of affording it. It's a question of doing it. And it's a question of having people do it. And if you give people, here's the voucher. Here's something. Go get it done. We can reimburse if it's done. Or maybe it's income-based or whatever. However we do it.

people need to start getting it done and it's that that's the problem I think it's not that people don't know what to do Right and you know that that holds true for private residents as well as the city we have we have a budget appropriation for our tree management and we are spending every dime of it and beyond and so I would love to see personally from where I'm sitting from the city's perspective is to start managing our own trees a little bit better

you know and we're trying so I think I would love to see some of this million dollars go towards a tree trimming and fuel reduction for city trees And I really envision that in the comment I made about vegetation management and tree removal was you know most of it being on city property

And the other thing, it's interesting because we're talking about fire right now, and we're also looking towards a pretty significant El Nino this winter. So we have a two-fold, we have a summer problem and we have a winter problem. We all remember our storm January, our wind storm, wind event January 9th-ish, and we had trees down all over the city, all over the county. And so we're worried about fires. the summer and actually we're worried about fires all the time and we're worried about this the storms that are upon us in the winter they create a lot of problems too let's hope El Nino mitigates problems for for fire we'll see We got to get through it first. OK. Any other?

Just getting back to beacon boxes, since that's what we were primarily talking about, what are we being asked to, apart from having a general discussion about it, are we having a discussion about an introductory number of these to start the process off and recommend?

So the recommendation I made, which is a suggestion for the million dollar set aside, is that the city purchase the seven that are planned for the city. Right.

Okay, and then the others would the other 34 Some of which would surround the city would be taken care of that would be a recommendation to City Council It would so what I would hope to produce from this item on the agenda from you folks today is getting a short list Half a dozen items maybe not even a half a dozen items But a couple of items that we can that I will be taking back to City Council in September

approval and discussion for the City Council that's what I'm looking for today Regarding the boxes so if a box is 3950 call it 5,000 filled up with all this stuff the other 5,000 would be for installation no the other 5,000 is for education fire knowledge the community getting to know but isn't that part of it And it's installation as well

you know hardware yeah because because the box the the price that Jim gave you in the box is just for the box so so maybe one question how much to install a box complete soup the nuts finished

so it really depends on the community okay because I'm just talking about how it how it actually gets placed in the ground so if you're going up typically from a private property you can put the box where you want you know you get everybody's buy-in but if you get on public property then it just changes the city depending on what city you're you're dealing with they have different um standards of what what has to take place for a box to be installed so like malibu it was 600 bucks for them to install because that's the way that the city operated where we're in private we can just you know it's 100 for the poll and you're good to go so if you have a box that's fully

I think maybe to kind of streamline this today we don't sort of get down into the weeds and the minutiae and rather just say you know our recommendation would be that the city purchase and install

to seven boxes at a location to be determined price ranges between five and ten thousand dollars That was my intent was to again make the recommendation for the number the cost to be determined and then factored in into what the city can afford I have a question regarding five to ten thousand all right five thousand for the box some money for education for training

it can't be how much is it going to cost to stick it in the ground a thousand dollars right okay I think I don't know Malibu six hundred I'm saying is that so that's fifty six hundred or five thousand and then it's four thousand for education and what have you right because that's the five extra I don't know what the four thousand for education I'm not sure what you're referring to That was the number that was mentioned I thought it was 5,000 Yeah but it was 5,000 for the box but it's another 5,000 for education and neighborhood Well I'm not familiar with No you're not but you mentioned

So again, I'd like to not focus so much on the cost. I think it's safe to say, let's just say between 5 and 10. And that's something that can be worked out if the city council wants to move ahead with it in conjunction with the fire safe council, because they have a role in managing and administering the program.

OK. So can we make a recommendation, a movement, that seven of these get installed in the near term? Do you have more?

Well, no. I think that what Lindy's looking for is kind of a comprehensive list. So I heard seven beacon boxes. I heard, oh, you know what? I'm sorry. No, I didn't. The creation of a zone zero demonstration area on City Hall. The comprehensive citywide vegetation management program okay purchasing the appropriate tools to be dedicated to a tool lending library for homeowners to use and then the 1 8 inch galvanized steel to be purchased to be allocated to residents and what was there something else beyond those five No so that you know if that that's acceptable i would be looking for a motion to say these are the things we'd like to move forward i'll move that okay those five items on your list moved by i'm sorry i just want to clarify i see four items oh i'm sorry you're talking about the city-wide vegetation yes yes okay that's five items can i ask a question or is it too late

Okay is there any way to allocate you know $200,000 a quarter of a million now?

Again I think what Lindy's looking for is just suggestions and then the cost of the items may rule them out depending upon what the other priorities are There are a lot of competing wishes to spend this funding so all we're doing is coming up with a list to present to Council then City Council will decide how to divvy out the million that's what we're looking for I have a motion from Commissioner Sims and I'll second it second by Commissioner McEachin I guess we can do a roll call on the I'm sorry

Can you just take one step back? So I've got your list here. Right. And there's six items. No, I think you got one.

I think you may have gotten one that had the reader boards on it.

OK. OK. OK. So. It's actually.

Which you already have.

It's the first five.

So.

The sixth one is just about the reminder about the fire safe council needing to be in there. okay so we've got the beacon boxes we've got the zero zone right we've got the vegetation management right um the tool tool barn right um and then the galvanized steel and and and just a reminder that again you know it that there needs to be some consideration should the council move ahead with the fire safe council of course okay thank you i just wanted jackie to be clear on what we have a motion in a second do a roll call

Vice Chair Steingold? Aye. Chair Coggin?

Aye.

Commissioner McEachin? Aye. And Commissioner Sims?

Aye.

Okay, thank you very much. Hope that helps, Lindy.

It does, thank you, I appreciate that.

Okay, so we'll be moving on to discussion item number two, and we'll start off with a staff report on that.

Okay, so we are back here. We had our inaugural safety commission starting with this item. Then an ad hoc committee was formed between Commissioner Steingold and Commissioner McEachin. Staff also met with the two of them. We kind of ironed out a couple of things, came up with something we thought would be a good place to start. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time. I'm assuming you guys would like to present what we arrived at for talking points?

Yeah, I think so. I want to provide a little bit of context for it for all of us here and whoever in the community is interested for what this is. And what we were hoping to do is to Can we have one second?

I'm sorry. I was remiss. I need to go back and take public comment on item number one. But actually, I don't have a card.

Can I just raise a point of order also? Sure. Were there minutes from our previous meeting? Yeah, we didn't approve minutes. Because those should be approved and it's not on your schedule or on the agenda, so.

This is a special meeting, so we don't have to take them to the special meeting.

So that was for the next regular meeting.

The next regular meeting. For the minutes from the 3rd and the 24th will be on the 21st of September and you'll approve those then.

So you'll need minutes from this meeting and the other special meeting. So three sets of minutes to do.

Bob, I only have a card from you on general discussion. Did you also want to? Well, it evidently disappeared, but come on up. I'm sorry, somebody has it.

I was chair of the building board for years. We didn't do everything exactly as we were supposed to do. There was some discussion and we lost 23,000 structures in Paradise, 23,000 structures. Less than half of those are built seven years later, and that's what we look at. When you have a fire, they don't get rebuilt, we're done. I think the most important thing when I was the agency manager with State Farm when we lost Malibu, November 2nd of 92, and we lost a number of other units, and we lost the Witch Fire in northern San Diego County, we had the fire department roll up. They were there, they were in time. Then as they rolled out the winds came up the embers were in the roof and under and They billowed up and we started losing structures behind the fire departments What I think is the most important thing we're talking about doing this and doing that The screening I think right now is the number one thing number two thing is if we have rain gutters they either need to be covered because that is a city ordinance or they need to be removed and i think what we do is we do what i did with the sanitary district you're going to buy a home you got to have your camera done you can't sell a home in ohio without getting your lateral done that didn't take that much issue What I would like to see is a list of items that have to be brought up to standards prior to anyone being able to sell their home. I would like to see a list of standards when there is an appreciable amount of permit done to a house. They should be bringing that up. That's what we need. We don't have that much brush. Please don't do anything to the trees. I'm for cutting like crazy, because that's what we demand. We won't insure your house if you got a limb over. I don't think that's the best thing. I would ask you to please do nothing and make no recommendation on trees and all this stuff. Because Forestry just voted on this thing Wednesday. The standard got put in. It's an interim, temporary, preliminary standard. And it won't be finished until the end of September. So please, don't take any action on things that you don't know is going to be in cement. So I would ask you to not do that. As far as giving people mesh. I've had two fatalities of us seniors following off of roofs, cleaning rain gutters. I really don't think it's a good deal to try to give people mesh to do their own work on the side of the house or on the roof. You need somebody that's qualified to do that. I think the city should press as hard as they can to get some grant writers. There's hundreds of millions of dollars of fire mitigation money out there. and let's get some grants so we can come in and do some of these things and get professionals to do them. But I think we need to change the codes. The other thing is if you go to some of the buildings around here, you'll see a foot, two feet, and I asked the vice chair to go by, stacked on roofs.

Why?

We shouldn't have that.

Thank you, Bob. I apologize for not getting your card.

That's all right.

Okay, actually, I do have another comment card on number one from Council person rule.

Thank you. My name is Leslie rule and I am here just briefly as we move forward with potentially recommending of ember casting on as a recommendation to the council. I recently attended the wildfire resistant construction and landscaping today. workshop, which was fascinating. And I did ask the expert there if ember casting, if the city were to just blanket approved funding and ember cast every house in Ojai, would that be a good use of our money? And he said that would be a good use of your money only if you were also to take out all of the flammable stuff that will be around the house as well. He said then that would be a fantastic use of your money. But if you have pine needles and leaves and those other things that also are susceptible to embers at the base of your house, having the venting... He was kind of non-committal about that. He was very clear. You also cannot have flammable stuff from embers at the base of your house. So I would just look at that as a full-fledged recommendation rather than just ember casting on your vents. Thank you.

Thank you, Congressman. Okay, I believe we're done with comments and one now and we can return to item number two I don't have any online comments. Thank you

Okay, I was starting to give a context to the commission here and to anyone that's here that's interested for this traffic calming policy that we've put together. So I can get to it here. The context that we wanted to come, rather than just deal with a speed bump policy as such by itself, we saw that as one possible solution in a whole range of solutions. And we wanted to provide a methodology for how that determination would be made and in what order it would be made. What things would be done first, what mitigating steps could be taken immediately, which ones would require traffic studies, and so on. So we tried to organize it in a way that made sense. We used a scorecard and a pyramid, which I think Lindy and the city staff really hates. But we wanted to do it so it was understandable to everyone in the community that comes to the traffic department or the public works department. usually they come with a solution, not necessarily a problem. Well, a problem, but they already have their solution, as Kitty mentioned, the speed bumps. And that's a common request across the city. I live on El Paseo and Cuyamas, just a block away, and we have a problem over there as well. In any case, we wanted to come up with something that didn't require the city council to take a position on every single policy. We wanted something that was automated, was a process that would take place in a specified order and wouldn't require costly traffic reports until things started to escalate. solutions that did require deeper study. So I wanted to kind of contextualize it that way. And then I think one of the things, I do think we're going to ask for a vote here today on a couple of things. And one is on how we're weighing qualifying factors for taking action. And also the order in which our solutions are placed. And are they in the right order? When do we have to go to city council? And I think the staff sometimes would like to have the support of city council for things. We would prefer not to have to go to city council, and this is subsequent to our conversation. I've been thinking that, and this is just my thought, it's not in the report here. that maybe city council gets involved when there's a request for remediation for something that people don't like our decision and they can petition city council to review it or petition us as the safety council to review a decision that perhaps you guys make. So I think If there's decisions that are made that people aren't happy with, I think there should be some way they can bring their grievance perhaps to us first and we can then make a recommendation to council. But that's not on here, it's just a thought I had and we can discuss it further, but I wanted to make all of you aware of it. So with that, I'd like to answer questions and I do want to get to this, coming to some agreement about how we weigh different traffic problems. So I'll just open it up.

let me just comment on on what you were talking about you know people uh wanting to appeal decisions were made under this i may be wrong but it seems to me that um that's something that would need to go to city council because correct i think that's right if not we would almost be becoming a quasi-judicial

Commission right Planning Commission and I don't think that we want to go there so this is an advisory Commission right to the council and there are certain things that having worked with this council for a number of years now there are just things that they should have to do okay that's fine that's fine So I think the other note worth making is we wanted to make this- But may I just, let me add, there are some items that we discussed that are strictly operational. Correct. That I would not be taking to council in terms of site distance clearing, etc. Things like that. If there's stop signs, if there's new signage, if there's new striping, those are decisions we can recommend and advise. Correct. That's what this body is for.

Yeah, that's right. But I think we want to make sure that we've got the level at which it gets escalated to city council defined correctly.

The other thing I think we need to do is decide what level it gets escalated to you or just stays at staff level. For example, site distance. We're going to go out and trim some plants, if we can, if they're ours.

Correct. And I think again, and this is just a general public comment, we wanted to make this as objective, although there are subjective evaluations in here that could be arguably thought of as subjective. But we wanted to try to make it as objective as possible. At least it defines a process that we go through to determine what mitigating actions are taken. So with that, does anyone else want, do you want to add anything to that, Larry?

is there is there any public comment before we can get to let me let Larry speak to that and then I'll yeah one second actually you're going with your staff report right

yes yes and I think I think that you got you were just kind of delving in a little bit deeper so I think so so yes have it have an opportunity then then public comments yeah so I I'm treating Jim's comments as part of the the staff report

and I do have one public comment and I don't have a name on it but Mr. Coburn was this from you on number two okay I have a card here that somebody wants to speak on agenda item number two but no name okay not here not seeing anybody and I don't have any public comment online okay now on to discussion

So a question for Lindy, was this report, this draft, has it been available for public scrutiny? It's been on the website, okay?

Yes. Thanks.

So the main idea that we were trying to accomplish is what Jim was talking about is as objective as possible because the goal is to basically have the citizens of Ojai look at the program, they see the street, they make a complaint, they talk to Public Works. Public Works checks on the quantitative scores and says, based on this and that, you get this and we can justify it and this is how. Or we can't justify it and we need more data or different data and the goal is to try to keep it out of the political realm and pressure and just try to avoid anecdotal comments and information. But the goal is to try to make everybody safer with the least amount of aggravation.

So go ahead, Randy, if you want.

So I was just going to say, I feel pretty comfortable with the level one, two, and three in that order. And I think the rationale that are given for them are correct. I could see level one, yes, it could be administrative. But I could also see where Lindy, as our city council liaison, may come to us with some of these items that are under level one and say, what are your thoughts? not that she would have to but the other two because they are cost impacting and disruptive that that hierarchy seems to be pretty correct okay and it's kind of a they kind of follow a line of mitigation that goes from less to more to most

The idea is that at the top of the inverted pyramid are the most common solutions, and then as the pyramid levels at the bottom, the speed bumps and speed limit changes would be the more exceptional actions that would be taken. So that was kind of the idea of that. And then on the scorecard, so you all know, I kind of broke it into qualitative scoring, which would be things like Is there a traffic accident or injury? Is the street in a school or a special designation zone? And then other contextual conditions like missing sidewalks, as Kitty spoke of, crosswalks, high pedestrian activity, impaired sight lines, things like that. Those are not objective, but they are judgments, and they're usually, I think, pretty easy, relatively easy to agree upon. I think the quantitative scoring, which is speed and traffic volume, does require some kind of analytics, some kind of metrics that are made. Studies that can measure the volume and speed of traffic. And that can be as expensive as some of the solutions. So we'd like to prevent doing that as much as possible. We originally, when we wrote this, we weren't particularly impressed by the speed and volume studies we've seen in the past. I'm speaking for Larry and I at this point. And so we really felt that, and we understand that the city has to have their own contractors that they go to to do these speed studies. But I would like to be able for us to agree upon what they're going to count, how they're going to count it, what the time frame is. Because I think that would be more useful specifically to us than just coming up with some generic observational report that they come up with, which to me is what we saw. Which is not a criticism of anyone or their efforts, it just I think it would be more useful to have longer-term data and I know we have the counters here in the city we just don't have the personnel to operate and collect the data so we'd have to contract that out actually but I would like to put a paragraph or a section in here where we can define the data that's collected rather than taking a generic report and we can discuss that offline when we do that but that's the one other thing that I wanted to make a comment on on this and I'd like to open it up for other comments

I just have a question for you so as a policy this is something that you would be taking to counsel for approval at some point in time I guess one of the questions I have is So we address speed humps in here but what's missing I guess on any of these is what was in the original proposal which is the application process you know the who why's and how's the adjoining streets and all the things that we discussed previously

I see this as a multi-phase process here we've got to come up with a policy and then we would come up with the procedures or procedures manual that goes with and those are both things that I would take to counsel it happens regularly if you take a procurement policy to counsel you also have a manual that goes with so staff knows how to implement the policy as objectively as possible

Okay so this wouldn't be a standalone you would wait until those other items were developed okay so we're basically at an interim step here This is higher level this is just higher level

And then what Commissioner McEachin was saying was is that if he wanted to have or if there wanted to be a set of criteria that we would want a traffic engineer to follow when we asked for a speed survey or a volume study that would go in the procedures manual That would be identified in the manual

we want a week and we want it from this time to this time well whatever the specific so that would be a apart from the policy that would be a separate procedural manual yes we don't have to go into that level of detail right on a policy okay so just and that may because that may change over time as well sure policy isn't as living as a manual right that makes sense

so just just from my standpoint as i mentioned i think to to you jim and to you lindy i mean i feel really good about what's here uh i think that from what was here before this is understandable it's logical it's something that the lay person out there can look at and say, OK, here's what's going to determine what's going to be done. And I think from that regard, my compliments to Jim and Larry for putting something together that actually is understandable. So if you're looking for a motion to approve a policy,

Well, I think we just wanted to kind of understand in this scorecard, because I think at some level we have to be able to prioritize streets. Are we weighting things correctly? So we did this out of points, a score of 100. Are we putting the right? weight on safety and collision history? Are we putting the right weight on the lack of sidewalks, things like that? Is this weighted correctly? And that's what I think we wanted input from everyone, including the community for that matter. So that's kind of, this is sort of a placeholder. We put these in because we thought they made sense. I think obviously accident, a traffic accident is an important thing, metric to take note of. A traffic accident with injuries is even more important. That's an additional ten points. vulnerable zone designations school zones and so on are very important missing sidewalks is another big one and so I just want to make sure we have these weighted correctly and then speed is is one you know 20% of the score and volume another 20% is that correct and that's what I'd like to get your feedback on

Well I just had a couple of questions so I think you answered one about the safety and collision history traffic accident is that any traffic accident that occurs or is it more than one? That was the thought yeah And traffic accident with injury for clarification you know I mean if you're gonna score traffic accident as 10 traffic accident with injury I'd say 20 for that or say add ten so it's clear that it's not just ten and you know it's not one or the other it's if you have an accident with an injury that's a higher score Right that's correct The other one I had was just on the speed I would just clarify and say fifteen percent or more of total vehicle vehicles five

Or more, yeah, that's right. We were trying to avoid the 85th percentile thing, which is confusing to some of us. I mean, I get it, but it just seems easier for comprehensibility for the non-policy person. Okay, so 15% of the cars have to be violating the speed limit by five miles an hour. And that would be great to have input from you, Sheriff, I mean, please, Steve and Tyler.

Yeah, first of all, I really like the direction and nothing overly concerns me with the directionist policy. There's a couple things. I would personally like a little more time, if we could have it, to kind of get in the weeds of this a little bit. Myself, some of the operational stuff. A couple things that stood out to me when I was briefly kind of scanning this late Friday. I think the scoring system needs a little clearer criteria. And I think each collision needs some context with it as well. Because say you're evaluating a street with three different collisions. Let's say one of those collisions is a DUI driver, and that was a primary collision factor. They were so intoxicated, they screwed up.

It's not relevant?

Yeah. But let's say we're evaluating the street for speed. Right. For speed, for example. So you got a DUI, you got someone backing out on the street, and you have another one who's inattention on their phone. So those primary collision factors have nothing to do with the problem we're trying to solve. Right. right that's where it gets a little nuanced and I think we need some context or the ability to have context within the matrix the chart mm-hmm so that would be something I think we need to kind of polish and fine-tune a little more or the Commission should probably that's just one of the big ones that kind of stood out as far as that

Well, I mean, perhaps you can be, when we sit down and go through this with Lindy and Jackie, maybe you could join us and offer your- Absolutely, yeah. Feedback, it would be great to get that.

I'd like to have my motor officer with us too.

Yeah, that'd be great.

He's doing it every day and in the real world doing it, so he'd be able to give some good context.

I think this is a good starting point we're having some good dialogue today I believe that there's going to be many more iterations this is not going to council next month and probably the following month this is going to take some time but we are working through it to get a good product here

I know what I would like to see is a test fit for example if you gave us five streets with 15 accidents and we ran the numbers and we said okay based on what the accidents the traffic the pedestrians the bicycles the schools the whole bit this street

sets a we need this based on this and then then you can look at whatever subjectivity well the context for this scorecard was originally i had i can't under candidate streets i had specific streets i was aware of in town grand was one el paseo kuyama summer all the streets that have been discussed today um so we we left those out but yeah i think a great test case is to see how do those score it and does this have does this feel right um are we are we waiting the right the right things um does this kind of square with reality or are we just making it i completely agree the framework's fantastic yeah built out i just like i said maybe fine-tune it a little bit so i think what i'm hearing is that um we're going to use this as a starting point i you know

i'm not feeling any angst in the fact that that this isn't going to come back to council considering the fact that this started out as a speed hunt policy that they asked us to look at and it's now become a traffic calming policy which is much more comprehensive and if it takes a little bit longer then it's certainly worth the effort. So I think if you all can get together before our meeting next month and kind of fine-tune this, then we can just take that next step forward on this.

Is it reasonable, and this is for Jackie and Lindy, is it reasonable, you think, for us in the next three weeks to come up with something that's votable, or is that too ambitious?

I believe that's rather ambitious. Okay. We have the remainder of this week and then one of us, not me, will be on vacation for two weeks. Okay. So that's going to be a bit difficult. But we can still meet within the next three weeks. We can include the chief in this conversation and we can continue movement. right yeah we can report back on on progress and that's about it for the next meeting and you know i can there's two council members here so they're hearing this conversation but i can also give an update a brief update we're still working on it this is how it's sort of we sort of pivoted from we know the direction was speedhump policy the commission this commission decided maybe let's look at things you know um a little bit more com holistically but including the speedhump yeah

And again if it you know helps at all not to be concerned about the time frame it's not just the time that the Commission needs to finish its work but just knowing how packed the the agendas are for future council meetings you know we'd be lucky to get it before to them you know by November you know maybe October I think a good policy is better than a fast policy Okay.

Agreed.

We good? Yep.

Can I also suggest too, when we do meet individually with the ad hoc, we can start to look at procedures too. Yeah, I was going to ask that. We can start to suggest and recommend, okay, we talked about a speed hunt policy and we did talk about the different criteria and warrants, but we haven't really drilled down on what we all agree on.

Is it possible from the police department that we could get all their accidents I'm actually working on that right now to try to help Public Works out to get them basically online access to our traffic reporting system that way Public Works can log in and get all that We can see all the streets where we've had the accidents and why we don't need names just like DUI And we plan on putting a pin map together too so we can just see the whole city if you see a cluster or something with the details of and regarding the fire department is there like while we're looking at all these traffic calming things practical reality from your point saying gee this is a great idea but our engine's never going to make that right hand turn or something like that

you know things that we need your input because certain yeah and there's maybe we talk i talk with lindy in fire prevention there's there's county policy regarding speed humps and speed bumps but that typically it doesn't really affect the fire engines the way they're designed and would not slow down our response

and that was one of the major reasons we when we originally brought this item to council this the draft speedhunt policy is is used by using the county's policy as a starting point they've already bought into it there's no reason to reinvent the wheel okay on everything okay right good any other discussion on this item

OK, let's move on to future agenda items. And I guess I have one, although I don't know when we're going to get to it. Lindy, I'll ask you just to prioritize these as we can. One that we've got to get to is the safety element of the general plan. That was referred to us by the Planning Commission.

This is the evacuation plan?

No, the safety element of the general plan. OK. That was the topic of discussion at the Planning Commission meeting. And they referred it to us before they took action on it. So before it can go back to them and go back to council, we've got to go ahead and do our work on it. So in that regard, I would recommend two things. One is there is an electronic version of the red line copy of the changes, which I believe everybody has. okay I would suggest that you use those to make comments on I would also suggest that you go back to the May 20th meeting of the Planning Commission and listen to the the recording of that meeting and you would be able to hear the concerns the Planning Commission had to make sure that we were addressing those okay okay OK. And then a second item would be, and this is for Commissioner Steingold, I believe, would like us to consider an e-bike policy.

Again staff has done some research on those and we have gathered quite a few samples so again no point in you know recreating you know something from scratch so we can put something together for that I really want to stress the safety element because I know Lucas is really concerned because he's way behind when that should be done

so you know like I said we got to do our thing it's got to go back to Planning Commission and then has to go to Council So another item I would also expect to see this this traffic calming policy come back maybe just for just for just a briefing on what's happening I was anticipating that's why I was saying I wasn't sure there actually be time for the safety element but if there is then that's fine at our next meeting

Lindy maybe the way we can structure it is whatever interim thing we have we can distribute amongst the Commissioners and they can ask any questions they have when we have that discussion Okay all right moving on to staff reports Linda do you have anything?

Okay Chief Abbott?

No, sir.

Chief Kaleri?

I'll just do my public safety announcement. If everybody's not aware, we're Extreme Heat Watch, which the fire weather warning was upgraded to a red flag, effective tomorrow at 10 a.m. through Friday at 3 p.m., and it does include the Upper Ohio area. So just something to be aware of. I hope people are getting those notifications, but it's my due diligence to make sure that we're talking about that stuff.

Chief Collier, I don't want to put you on the spot, but actually, one kudos for those that haven't seen the grand jury report on fire prevention in Ventura County. It was an outstanding report. Really praised Ventura County fire, and I'm surprised that there has been some kind of press release on it because we just kind of stumbled on it by accident so kudos to the fire department for that Also, I didn't know if you wanted to mention anything at all, because it was brought up in here about the regs that the Board of Forestry is getting ready to vote on. I know you're getting ready to send out 85,000 letters, which is up from 16,000 before. Do you want to make any comments about that, about how that's going to proceed?

Yeah, so one thing is we have a new fire marshal. She just started about a week ago. I'm trying to see how to pronounce her name without messing it up. But there's an intention because our other fire marshal went to another agency is to have her come around to the cities like we did in the beginning, introduce her, have her do some speaking about Zone Zero. I just got an email because I was answering another community member regarding a bunch of different things. So basically, in September, there's going to be some more findings on how this is all going to work. Right now, Ventura County does not plan to be more restrictive than CAL FIRE, but we really don't know where this is all going to land regarding is it going to be instant citations or is it going to be more education? Are we going to give people time? Because we know that, and the last thing I looked at is CAL FIRE and some of the cities and counties are going to figure out how we're going to get some grant money to help fund some of the folks that cannot meet some of these requirements. So right now, as it stands for Zone Zero, any new construction automatically falls into that. As it goes for the current homes, we're going to have to figure out how we're going to manage that. And it might be a two to three year window. There's more stuff that, again, there was the, I guess you would call it the draft that was put by the Board of Forestry. And then in September, they should be able to vote on it. Ventura County will not be more restrictive. And then we're going to have to figure out, as a prevention agency, how we're going to really, is this more going to be educational in the first couple of years? Because we really don't want to find people that don't have the funds to do all the work we're asking. Is it more going to be, hey, there's more grant money available. Maybe we're working closely with the fire safe councils throughout the county. There's tons of different options here. But again, it's not going to be a punitive thing initially because it's got to be a lot of education on what makes sense. And I think Council Member Rule was talking about, I think it's important that we understand that there's a totality of that whole Embercast thing, right? The vents are one part of it. But again, wood fences, what kind of brush, is it mulch, all those different things. When you look at the studies that are done, it shows that that zone zero is going to protect your home for the rekindle. for the home-to-home ignition for what I just saw in Spokane when I was out there with my incident management team. And so there's going to be a lot more stuff coming out. 85,000 notices are going to be going out as soon as they get a ruling. So that's a lot of stuff. That's going to include a bolster of our prevention unit that's going to have to go out and do some of this education. So not only is that fire hazard reduction, the 100 feet, going to include now, it's going to include the Zone Zero education and maybe some enforcement. So we're going to have to figure out how that's all going to work.

unless liver eggs have changed in the last couple days as i understand it there's phase one which is zone zero five feet and out and that's a three-year period to comply and then phase two which is i guess what they call the shadow which is basically anything under the eaves that's a five-year period to comply So if you're not going to be more restrictive, I guess that's what we could pretty much anticipate. I guess the bigger question is you're going from 16,000 residences that you inspect to 85,000. How are you going to handle that?

Well, part of that, so just right now, even with our fire hazard reduction program, the engine companies do a lot of those inspections. And then fire prevention bolsters their inspectors with some hand crew members that get training on how to do it. It's all done on the iPad through ArcGIS, you know, Survey 123 format. We're continuing to hire, and there's just a bureau designated just for Zone Zero and fire hazard reduction, so... They're continuing to bring people in. We're going to have to leverage the state a little bit. We're going to have to leverage our home inspection inspectors that were trained through CAL FIRE through their fire safe councils. And it might even come down to we're bringing back a lot of retirees that are joining fire prevention just to do some of these inspections. And so that's what they're doing right now.

Regarding the grand jury report Ojai was not mentioned as one of the five cities in the report and it would be nice if we could extrapolate I mean that's the right word put Ojai in the mix and see how we compare to all this and we have 4,000 residents here with all this different cities in Ventura the priority of Ojai versus being in this high hazard versus Port McGill or Oxnard or all of Ventura parts of Ventura where do we stack up as a priority to essentially do more of what you want to do but more the fire marshal wants to do

I would honestly, just to be transparent, we don't have a priority city that we favor. That's why we all have representatives, and we have prevention, and chiefs, and battalion chiefs, and people that are assigned to the cities for a reason. There's not two of me assigned to TO because they're bigger. So we prioritize stuff based on how they come in. If there's a complaint or an issue that comes in a fire prevention, it doesn't matter if it's Thousand Oaks, Port Wing, New York.

Well, which ones? I mean, what I'm getting at is a higher risk.

We look at a lot of modeling. A lot of it has to do with some of the CAL FIRE grants. So we have a lot of fuel reduction stuff that specifies the Ohio Valley. And then there's some that specify the Santa Monica Mountains. And it all depends on which grants get approved. And some of it has to do with, is there any competing stuff we're doing with the Fire Safe Council? Is the grant maybe going through Santa Monica Parks or the National Parks instead of CAL FIRE? It's all those different. That's where we leverage everything. But there's no favoritism when it comes to And when we look at call volume two, and I was going to talk about this potentially at the next city council meeting, we do a matrix and we do a quarterly on, you know, calls for service, medical structures, TCs, wildland fires, brush fire, all those different things. And the city of Ojai, because again, it's not the Ojai Valley. We don't count miners Oaks. We don't count Oakview. We don't count upper Ojai. The city of Ojai itself is our slowest city in our, in our fire district.

It seems to me, in terms of compliance, insurance companies are going to be driving that as time goes on. They're going to make more and more demands about Zone Zero of their own.

And I think the hard part is, and our prevention is very transparent about this too, is whether they use the mapping that Cal Fire produces, they don't. They use their own mapping. They use their own drones. They use their own Google Earth. So sometimes, even though a map might say something, they're going to use their own modeling and stuff because they're a business, unfortunately.

So I think just to add to what the chief said, I mean, education is going to be a major component on this. I just Nick and I kind of conversed about this. I mean, people are going to go out there and read the reg. And if you read it, you know, it says, you know, you live in an SRA state responsibility area and your fire department is Cal Fire. You know, people are going to say, wait a minute, CAL FIRE is my fire department? Well, it doesn't say in there that CAL FIRE contracts with Ventura County to protect the state responsibility areas in Ventura County. So I just, yeah, I mean, I agree. I think education is going to be huge in this and may take a year just in and of itself to educate people. So good luck. OK, anything else from anyone? All right, we are within two hours. I appreciate it. And with that, we will close the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you so much.