City Council - Regular Meeting

I'll just add that it was a pretty detailed discussion before we selected one of the multiple proposals that was in court in front of us. I know we can't go into details about what that was. I was not going there, but it was a very thorough conversation.

Even right up to when I left. It's on right now for me as well. It's on now? Yeah.

Thank you. I would say that we're relatively aggressive and confident about pulling things off if we have things to say about the item.

I'll move to approve one, two, three, five, six, and seven.

Just for the record, it's two, three, five, six, seven. Two, three, five, six, seven. Yes, two, three, five, six.

Actually, I just wanted to start because I wanted to speak to Renee Roth's comment about the request to recuse myself. And I just wanted to outline that for the, per the FPCC rules, if we do not have a financial entanglement, there's, my friend, I have a lot of friends all over the town. We have a very small town. I'm very social. I have a lot of friends. um and uh you know if i had any kind of ethical dilemma about voting on this i would absolutely recuse myself but there is nothing according to the fpcc rules that would that would have me do that in addition to that it's actually the tennis

and i have actually been very balanced on this issue i have voted in ways that my friends on the neighbor's side have not agreed with uh and so i mean i think if anything council member rule who is a pickleball player and a part of that club would have more right more reason to recuse herself than i would So I take offense with any...

Yeah, I wasn't saying that you should. But, I mean, so anyway, so that's all I wanted to say. I just wanted to clear that for the record. um and you know this is something that we talked about when we decided to build the courts at seoul park we talked about having the the tennis courts be designated for tennis only and so this is not this is the next natural step in that process um this is something that the parks and rec commission at that time established as the best practices. There was a whole sound study that happened. The tennis players spoke hours and hours and hours. We spent the firs

And I'm saying I do not have a bias. And in fact, my voting record proves that I do not have a bias.

so um i just want to make a few yeah comments because i've gotten to live through this for most of my time on city council and you know my first exposure to this was getting the report from the parks and rec and speaking specifically of soul park The ad hoc committee concluded that the sound generated by pickleball on the Soul Park courts was not conducive to residential and how close they were to the courts. and they looked at mitigating the sound from the courts and decided that there was no feasible way to actually mitigate the sound. And so they told city council, go look for other places

I can't support that unless the tennis community, the folks that are investing in the service and making sure that they would have the ability to weigh in and say, this activity will cause no harm and therefore it should be allowed, or this activity could cause harm and you've got to change it. So I would like them to, if there's going to be an exception created, I would want the folks who are actually investing all the money in having this kind of semi-pro caliber courts be involved.

I would want the tennis. You want the veto from tennis? At least the input and the recommendation as to whether, I think it should go through them to make their findings as to whether this is potentially hazardous. I'm all for that. I agree with that.

So what if so you say more than I was, I was going to propose that we have staff meet with the tennis tennis group to refine the language of the ordinance, and then bring it back for our consideration.

That they establish with staff the parameters around which it could be used for Ojai Day.

I would second that. Yeah. And then just for clarification, God forbid that this review process happens and there's some upset or disagreement, I assume that the way things would work is that the permit would be issued for Ojai Day.

and that would be appealable if somebody had a big problem with the permitting I just wanted to make sure that that was we could even clarify that we move forward with the ordinance provided that it has to come before us for a second reading anyway so that we move forward with the ordinance and direct staff to work with the tennis group to modify language around Ojai Day?

It seems to me like we've agreed or there would be a majority vote to allow a permit application using the tennis courts on OID, just the upper courts. and that the only thing that's missing is a process that allows the tennis knowledgeable people to say whether the use is going to be damaging or not damaging to the court. So it seems like if that's all we're trying to get interjected and we don't have the precise language,

I had assumed that it was because the courts aren't being used because it's Ojai Day at the upper courts, but the courts potentially are being used for tennis at the lower courts. Are they closed?

I don't think I want to subject future counsel to ongoing fights. I'm fine with that. Knowing what we've been through the last four years, I'm grateful for all the conversations, and I think we're probably all good.

yeah I have a question somewhere in the staff report was a statement that we already prohibit fireworks and but we didn't there wasn't like a reference the ordinance or what the ordinance says so I'm asking I can pull that up in just a moment

And the grand jury report is not about the public. It's not about the public. Display of fireworks.

So one of the things that the grand jury asked us about was whether we were oriented towards social post liability and I didn't think this was really kind of clarified or spelled out but a social post ordinance would say that if you invite people to your property and one of them lights off fireworks and causes damage, you're liable whether you knew that was going to happen or not. on your own property if it's on your property and you invited them to your property you're responsible for what they do vis-a-vis fire i think that might be a little harsh for this community given the fact that there

I could be wrong, though. No, normally, well, I defer to the attorney, but I do practice in this area a lot. Normally, you would have to establish... that the homeowner did something that a reasonable person wouldn't have done in the way that they managed the property. So just as an example, if you lend your car to somebody, you're typically only liable for their bad driving if you had reason to believe that they were going to drive poorly. Understood. So... This, so passing a social host ordinance wouldn't prevent, would allow somebody to sue, you know, have property damage covered or whateve

the city of Ojai this is last paragraph of finding F05 says the city of Ojai prohibits the discharge of fireworks and supports regional public education that's a good point so what it probably should say is that the discharge of fireworks is prohibited within the city of Ojai it's it's not a prohibition by the city of ohio it's a prohibition by the ventura county fire protection district that applies to the city of ohio so so maybe this the statement should be that we that we enforce and adhere to the county prohibition i've got the ordinance right here too if we need it so i tell me if i'm wr

So if we take the hypothetical of the parents are off in Europe on vacation and the kids, the teenage kids invite their friends over and are lighting off fireworks, would the parents be liable or would it require a social host ordinance to pick up that light?

I would say that the ordinance as written probably does not imply strict liability so to have that we might need a host that's a situation where potentially the homeowner would argue I'm not negligent because I didn't know what was happening and then there'd be a legal issue about whether they nonetheless had responsibility for overseeing their kids, which I don't think is a very clear, it would go back to a negligence standard. So if we wanted to, we could create a strict liability

is you start a fire. And that could be anything from a quarter acre to thousands of acres. I think very close to where I grew up, there was a fire, I forget the name of it, but kids were lighting off fireworks in mailboxes, and it burnt from Koningstein Road and Upper Ojai all the way across Nordhoff Peak.

I'm sure it does. So the grand jury is asking us to consider the adoption of a social post. But that just means that we're agreeing that we'll bring it up at some future council? I think we probably should, not that I would say I would adopt it, but I think we ought to let the community come in and weigh in.

Yeah, that's fine. Just say that we've decided that we're going to take it up at a future council meeting.

Okay and then we're in that finding or the response to finding F05 that first sentence of the last paragraph is going to be modified to say something about us enforcing the county prohibition

does that make make it ai generated entirely no um partially yes i see yeah no that's probably what most of us are doing in some fashion i i think that it depends on what you're presenting how much you know detailed review is required i know that i cannot use chat gpt as a reliable source to write a legal brief so i can't say this is the law because i got it from chat and i and and the same applies to facts and so you know if you're if you're presenting uh you know if you're doing a a memo for an agenda item and you you're relying upon AI, you have to independently verify that either the rules

So I don't see that being a problem if you're using AI to clean up a memo so that it reads better. But I think it's important that we use AI responsibly if we're asserting, you know, facts and rules.

No, not right now. Yeah, like I said, I think it's a distinction if you're just having AI help you phrase what you're trying to say, as opposed to if AI is helping you, you have a big question, you go to AI, it gives you an answer. and now you're gonna present the answer, I wanna make sure that there's adequate training and vetting of the source material.

Yeah, but it lets you in those, um. Those citations are only valuable if you take the time to click on them and read them and see if they say what the text says. And I think that's one of the risks.

So does this policy apply to a staff member using chat GPT?

I was actually, when you were guiding me through the system that we have, I was pleased about that just because I've known about the legal challenges. And also, I mean, copyright infringement, I mean, there are a lot of ethical and environmental issues. with AI as well that aren't even a part of this discussion, but I think the way that it's here to stay and if we can do it responsibly, and it sounds like with transparency and with protecting our own systems and equipment and everything, I think this is the best that we can do.

I agree with that sentiment, and there's part of me that would say AI is evil, and it's going to replace human jobs and all that kind of stuff, but it's way too powerful of a tool to ignore it, and so the trick is to use it responsibly.

yeah so it can be used for any public records request or for full transparency of what we're looking at here so the city has all kinds of confidential records mainly employment records but also potentially healthcare records.

And then some of the AI tools Send the info to the cloud where it gets processed by AI and the cloud Our system is not doing that.

They don't have it. And everything that's loaded into the system is a public record that anybody could get if they sent a request to the city saying, I want this record. Yes.

That's the, that's the point. But then. I mean, whenever, when we get to that point, I think you have to say, you know, the conclusions have to be independently verified with, the planning department because there are so many circumstances in the law where you can read, okay, this is the law, but there's some case that says that that law doesn't apply. So a disclaimer would clearly appear. So there would need to be some type of a disclaimer that says you need to verify this. Yes.

you haven't done the training yet but i'm looking forward yeah i've used ai a ton yeah and you know so for you know my work there's like a there's an ai for doing legal research that's been you know vetted for attorneys at that level and you pay lots of money to use it um but you know then i use chat um to sometimes just to figure out what questions it is that i need to ask all right well i would move to approve the ai policy that's the vote

I just wanted to remind everyone that Thursday night is the chamber mixer. And so everyone can come even if you're not a member. And, and it's a monthly event. And it's a great community event as well.

But I recall when we were talking with him that he said that he would refuse himself if those decisions came before. I remember that being part of the conversation, and so I don't know if that's changed since they've done the investigation, but he did say that.