City Council - Regular Meeting

everybody to the July 14th regular meeting of the Ohio City Council roll call please Mr. Montgomery Mayor Gilman here Mayor Pro Tem Meng here Councilmember Rule here Councilmember Lange here Councilmember Whitman here and would you lead us in the pledge please Mr. Montgomery thank you thank you Mayor Honorable Council members of the community ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

Thank you. Any changes to the agenda?

No.

Great.

I'll move to approve it.

Second that. Okay. No objections. Wonderful. We have two presentations. First, members of the Ventura County Fair's Junior Fair Board to present the 2026 Ventura County Fair announcement and poster. Please come up.

Hello, my name is Shayla Valena, and I'm a 12th grader from Santa Paula.

My name is Carson Bell.

I'm a senior at Santa Paula.

We are members of the Ventura County Junior Fair Board. The Junior Fair Board is an organization for high school students throughout Ventura County focused on youth leadership development and community engagement. During the fair, we put on classic games like waterman eating and karaoke. We are here on behalf of the Ventura County Fair to present the official 2026 fair poster. Over 300 young artists submitted their artwork for consideration for this year's youth poster contest. We have seen a remarkable increase in submissions over the last few years and can attribute that to the elimination of any fee to enter the competition. The incredible artwork created by Ventura County youth never ceases to amaze us. Submissions were judged by a panel of community partners and fair team members. The winners are announced as, in third place, Simone Shapiro, a sixth grader from Simi Valley. In second place, Micah Sanchez, a 10th grader from Ventura. And this year's winning poster was drawn by Annalise Cohen, a ninth grader from Camarillo. We are excited to share that the Grandstand concert lineup for the fair is July 29th, Bush, July 30th, Marshmello, July 31st, Arishan, August 1st, Jake Owen, August 2nd, Herencia de Patrones v. Banda Maguey and Banda Toro, August 3rd, Ashanti and Bow Wow, August 4th, Switchfoot and Hubshink. August 5th, Nate Smith, three days of rodeo, August 7th through 9th. And we will have special admissions days on Wednesday, July 29th, $5 before 5 p.m. Friday, August 31st, Youth Day. Tuesday, August 4th, Senior and Persons with Disability Day. Wednesday, August 5th, VCCU Member Day. August... 6th, Community Heroes Day, Friday 7th, Food Share Day. We would also love to see you at the Junior Livestock Auction on August 5th, I mean 7th, where myself and Carson and hundreds of other Ventura youth exhibitors will be selling our livestock projects. We hope to see you all at the fair.

Thank you so much. Wonderful.

Mayor, we'd like to invite the council into the center of our horseshoe here, where we will accept the poster for this year for the city. Thank you. Okay. Wonderful.

And don't get too comfy, because our next presentation is a proclamation honoring July as Parks and Recreation Month and the Parks and Recreation Commission and the committee. So just a few words. And it really almost goes without saying, the role that the Parks and Recreation plays in our community, that it has a coherence, that it brings people together. It's physical, emotional, mental. It sustains our natural resources, protects our habitats. And so we would like to proclaim that this council, on behalf of the city, hereby proclaim this month of July Parks and Recreation Month in the city and extend recognition and gratitude to the Parks and Rec Department and the Parks and Rec Commission for their dedication of service to the community. And we have Christy here to receive it. Can we please get? Oh, do we have a commissioner? Oh, perfect, Sage, come up. Oh, please, come up, come up. Thank you, I didn't see. Please come up, yes. And one more picture, guys, if you're willing. Yeah, let's do it.

Everything you do.

I just want to, I was at Sarzodi this afternoon and it was incredibly hot and it was wonderful to see people just sitting and sort of half snoozing in the shade. You know, probably they don't have cool places to go and they bike to the park and they just rest there and it was a beautiful, it was a beautiful site, it was a beautiful park, so I was much appreciative that it was there for our community.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. Wow, that's fun.

Is there any commission reports for tonight?

None received, Mayor. Okay, then we'll move to the city manager's report.

Thanks, Mayor. Just on the topic of trying to keep cool, I wanted to piggyback on what Councilmember Rule said. This room is open now as a cooling center. We're keeping it open from 8.30 to 5, but we will extend that if the weather does require that. We're kind of taking it one step at a time to see who is in here, who needs it. But just so everyone is aware, there was information in the newspaper. There's been a social media post, so spread the word. Then I just have a couple other items from the weekly update I wanted to mention. Our aquatics program continues to go swimmingly. I just want to give you some numbers. Let's see, attendees, June 28, 33. July 5, 42. July 6 20 July 7 37 and July 8 39 so we're we're holding steady and our staffing levels have proven to be suspicious efficient so thank you council for your support I also want to mention that we are moving forward through our federal lobbyists with on a pathway to secure a $25 million grant for storm drain funding. So this is going to be a process, and we'll continue to keep you updated. But it's now going through committee, and things are looking very positive, which would be great for us because we have a lot of storm drain infrastructure improvement need, as you know. And I think of one more thing I want to mention. Yes, I'm seeing at least a couple Public Safety Commission members in the audience. Our inaugural meeting is Monday, August 3rd at 1 p.m. So yes, it will. Yes, it will. Yes, and it will be in the historic council chamber, just like all of our other commissions. So come on down. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. We will move on to public comments. These are items not on the agenda. And I will start with Mr. Ron Silarzano. Thank you.

Ooh.

All right. Okay, well, thank you so much, members of council. I am Ron Solorzano, the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley. And this is probably the last time I will stand in front of you before the closure of the Ojai Library. The library is gonna be closing for renovations as of July 31st. That'll be our last day open. We'll close at 5 p.m. that day. The renovations that we're planning are gonna be lasting, projected to last between six to eight months. So we'll be opening sometime in the spring of 2027. And we're gonna be looking at a whole bunch of new updates. We're gonna be having new flooring, new lighting and electrical. New paint, shelving, and furniture. We're going to have a new hydration station replacing our old water fountain, so a bottle filling station. We're going to have some electric fireplaces to take advantage of some of that ambiance from that beautiful building. And we're going to have nice new refurbished and ADA compliant front doors, which we're very, very excited about. The renovation, for anyone who isn't already aware, was made possible largely in part by a bequest from the late Anne Crozier, who had served as the Ojai librarian from 1975 to 1997, one of our longest serving librarians here in the city. While the Ojai Library is closed, the Miners Oaks Library and the Oak View Library are gonna be two of our closest locations. Some of our staff are gonna be at those locations helping serve some of the overflow folks who will be helping out there. And while the library itself will be closed, we're going to try to make sure that some of our most popular items, some of the things from our library of things, the leaf blowers, the sewing machines, the book club kits, we're going to try to make sure that some of these are available to continue to circulate while our library is being worked on. As well, we're going to have the mobile library that currently comes out to visit the Ojai Community Farmers Market once a month. We're going to have them come out once a week to do story time, and the details on when exactly that will be will be forthcoming. So that's the major news. The only other thing I'll plug here at the end is we've got a couple of weeks left in our summer reading program. So if you still want to participate in either the adult or the youth program, there is still time to do that. You can reach out to us at the library or go on our website at library.venturacounty.gov. And that's all I have for you. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Larry Steingold, please.

GOOD EVENING. I'M NOT SURE HOW I DO THIS. I'M NOT SPEAKING AS A CANDIDATE OR I'M NOT SPEAKING AS PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSIONER. WELL, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. I'M DOING THE BEST I CAN. I RESPECTFULLY REQUEST THAT A COUNCIL MEMBER SPONSOR A FUTURE AGENDA ITEM TITLED DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION REGARDING THE CITY COUNCIL AGENDA PUBLICATION TIMELINE. At present, agendas are released too late to meet our only local newspaper's print deadline. This effectively creates a huge digital divide, limiting participation for residents who do not rely on or have access to last-minute online notifications. Civic engagement should not depend on constant digital access. We can't rely on Facebook or Nextdoor or the ability to monitor updates in real time. The council has the authority to direct the city manager to change this. By ensuring agendas are published well in advance, the city could move beyond the minimum standard and demonstrate a stronger commitment to transparency and public participation. The council inherited this tried and true well-known political tactic to avoid political engagement with James Vega, I believe it was Wednesday. And the same city council pushed the public speaking back to the end of the meeting, and that thankfully didn't go through. Take this opportunity to change the agenda time. This change would help ensure that residents who do not use computers, social media, or email should have a fair opportunity to stay informed and take part in their own governance. I ask that you formally sponsor this discussion and help establish a standard of good government that includes every member of the public. second topic Cabrillo is going to be breaking ground now for up to 249 people. There is a acre lot almost an acre adjacent to them That would make a great park There's going to be supposedly up to Cabrillo what they said 75 kids if you want them running all over Bryant circle and And up and down Bryant and Fulton and everywhere else, make sure you don't have a place for them to go. Okay? Because kids being kids, they're going to be there, and it would be nice to have a park. It's on the market today. Make them an offer. Tie it up. Have control. Make it subject to a discussion, a vote, whatever you want to do. But get control of it so at least you can have the opportunity to say no. That's all. And I'm sure the broker would be more than willing to take a flyer on it, maybe the owner too. But that's it. Control it. Discuss it. Vote no. Vote yes. Come up with reasons. Find a way to do it. Maybe they'll hold paper. Who knows what they'll do. But we need a park there because that's going to be a huge population for the city. And if you don't take care of it, somebody else will, and nobody's going to like it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Carol Smith, please.

Good evening, council, mayor, staff. My name's Carol Smith. I live at 23 Tarmina Lane in the city of Ojai, and I had the pleasure to be on the council for 12 years, being elected three times. I want to talk to you tonight to encourage the public to run for office, to run for city council seats or mayor seats. Running is the same. We have, let me tell you what benefits you have as city council that the general public may not realize, but it adds a lot to the sweet package of being on the city council. Number one, the salary, it's not great, $12,000, I agree, but the benefits are fabulous. You get a terrific healthcare benefits, you know, platinum level, you name it. You get terrific eye care benefits, eye cams, glasses. You get, believe it or not, dental benefits. Last time I looked, the package of benefits for city council, and this is many years ago, cost the city $21,000. for every council member. Is that still the case, or is it more than that? It's probably more. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that add that up with the $12,000 in salary, add that up to the number of hours a week you work, if you are a diligent, hardworking council member, And that's not bad compensation. It comes out to about $33,000 a year for, I would estimate, a 29-hour period. a month job, and how did I figure that? Two meetings a month, four hours for the meeting each, that's eight, and then another eight for preparation, reading the packet, talking to constituents, et cetera. Maybe you have another meeting that's two hours, let's say a special meeting, because it's one topic. So that's another two hours. Then you attend and just kind of watch city commission meetings once or twice a month, and then you bring back a report to the council. You also attend a county commission meeting, maybe Ventura County Transportation Committee or whatever, and that you have to drive to, but you get reimbursed for your driving. I added up these totals, and that's what I came to 29 hours a month. So honestly, I think that we need to let the people running know that the package that a city council gets is not as bad as they think. It's darn good. Now, if you work, if you're self-employed, or have your own business, and you've been paying $20,000 a year or more for your healthcare benefit, you can drop those.

Thank you. I appreciate that. We do want people to run. Clay Creasy, please.

Mayor and City Council, I'm thrilled to hear what a great compensation package it is. I don't believe the 29 hours for like, maybe 29 hours per week. So, okay. But, you know, if you're not making anything at all, then that's still pretty good. Anyhow, a couple points. Number one, very recently the budget committee was informed or updated with regard to the timing for various financial reports. The two big financial reports that the city does annually are for the California state controller, what they call the financial transaction report, and then the one that we're all familiar with, the audited financial statement that our accountants put together. The bad news is that both of those are going to be much later this year than they have in prior years. According to the finance director, she's expecting the California financial transaction report to be done by the end of this month. which will make it 181 days late. And according to the state statistics, only 2% of the cities are that late. So we're kind of like in the, not in the good spot there. So hopefully that'll get better. With regard to the audited financial statements, the city manager updated the committee that he expected that not to be done until sometime in October. And last year was done in May, and so October is a pretty big delay compared to what we've had in the past. I will say, parenthetically, the school district, who we all know is challenged on various levels, somehow they have a magic wand, and they got their financials done in December of last year. In fact, that's the second year in a row they got it done in December. So something's working over there at Matilla. Anyhow, the reason I'm bringing this up is I did volunteer to help Brenda with, in some way that I might be able to, with talking to the audit firm.

No, you're good. I was trying to ask Carol not to speak because we can't hear well.

Anyhow, so I did volunteer. It's a question how much help I would be. I have done many, many audits over the years. I've worked with auditors. I could potentially accelerate a few things or understand where some blocks are. I'm not heard back from Brenda, so I'm in the public saying, Brenda, wherever you are, if you want me to help, I've got time, I won't get paid that minimum wage, but at least I might be able to help. Thank you.

Thank you. And then Starchild, please.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Hello. Tonight's not a night for politics. This morning, I think you might have all awoken to the news of the ice raids in our valley that one of our community members was taken for Miner's Oaks, at least one. Perhaps you saw the reporting in the Ohio Valley News where there's a video of a store clerk at the hardware store who's too scared to leave his store, seeing the ICE raid happening right outside. You might have seen another video that VC Defensa put out in Ventura of a monitor being stopped in the freeway exit ramp by an ICE officer who parked blocking the way, then exited their vehicle, walked towards that monitor who was reversing, and then sprayed at the car, battering that monitor with their pepper spray. and then waving the monitor forward, I suppose, towards the ramp that was blocked by that ICE officer's vehicle. These injustices, these crimes in our community are not acceptable. They shouldn't be tolerable to this council or to any of our community members. They shouldn't be tolerable to our chief or to our sheriff. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that we need to work to try and find one. And so I want to invite everybody to our meeting of the Ojai Valley Democratic Club this Sunday from 4.30 to 6.30 so that we can discuss what can be done in this valley. Whether you're a Democrat or not, whether you're part of our club or not, whether you believed in any of our other resolutions or not, I think there's something that we can do and I'd like to figure it out. And so I hope that you'll work with me and that anybody in the community who cares about this issue will work with us to find a solution.

Thank you.

Yes.

Yeah, I just wanted to mention that I think it is going to be the first town hall that we're having as part of our goals will involve exactly this question. What is happening? What can happen? With ice and with you know enforcement. We're gonna have the chief. We're gonna have the sheriff Potentially, I would like to have the DA as well to find out, you know more deeply about what laws there are Anyway, that is August 22nd as I am pulling this date out of my brain hoping it is the correct one But the city is aware of this the city we're It is an important issue that the community needs to discuss. We need to get clarification. It ebbs and it flows. This is just another example, and I think it's a community-wide discussion that we need to have. It has been agendized for a town hall. So I will invite everyone to come. The correction is August 26th. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

So it's the 26th, and it will be a community discussion on just this issue. And we will be asking as well for questions that you would like to have discussed. So perhaps I will come to your meeting on Sunday and get a sense of what the community is talking about right now. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And then one more, Sudip Montepali Rao, please.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. City Council members and staff and community members. I'm here to share. Oh, my name is Sudip Motubelli Rao. Thank you. I'm here for two things and two reminders to the citizens of Ojai. One is an insurance workshop, insurance for wildfire-prepared homes. And I have extra flyers in the back for anyone that would like that. This is, of course, funded by the residents and also approved by the city council. This is an important insurance workshop, insurance for wildfire-prepared homes. So it's not like the traditional insurance companies that have just stepped back and said, we are not going to insure you. This is actually insurance companies that are saying that we want to assess what kind of changes and risk mitigations that you've done, and we want to give you a premium on your discount. So this is the new world of insurance. So we are actually asking them, come prepared to speak to our residents about, and this is going to be facilitated by the Agora Foundation. Thank you, Andy. The date is Wednesday, August 5th, from 3 to 5 p.m. And the panelists are Tom Pratt from Delos, the insurance company, Andrew Engler, CEO of Rock Rose Risk, representatives from Mercury Insurance and Farmers Insurance, and also our executive director for the Ohio Valley Fire Safe Council, Christopher Danch, who's also there, So we are bringing some new opportunities for residents to insure their homes and be prepared. So this is a good workshop. The next one is on August 17th and 18th. It's a two-day workshop. for those who would like to become familiar about everything about home hardening and home ignition zone, fire escaping your yard. So it's, once again, free. This two-day workshop is also held at the Ohio Valley Woman's Club. I don't know if I mentioned, I apologize, for the insurance workshop, The insurance panel is going to be held Wednesday, August 5th, 3 to 5 p.m. at the St. Thomas Aquinas Church at 185 St. Thomas Drive. So I apologize. The two-day workshop is going to be held at the Ojai Valley Women's Club. And the sign-up information is here. We will also have it on social media. But I thank you to the City Council and also the citizens of Ojai for supporting this. So please come, sign up. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Mayor, we've had no raised hands during this general public comment meeting. OK, thank you.

And that's the last card. Wonderful. We will move on to the consent calendar. Does anybody want to pull anything out of consent?

I'll move approval.

Yes.

I'll second. Yes.

No, I was just making sure everybody was good.

Okay.

A motion and a second. Are we sure? Okay. All right.

Roll call, please. Roll call. Thanks. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Meng. Yes. Council Member Whitman.

Yes.

Council Member Lange. Yes. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Well done, agenda report people. Good job, thank you. Okay, so we'll move on to the first discussion item. That is number nine on the agenda. Approval of resolution adopting the 2026 City of Ojai City Hall Campus Landscape Master Plan.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. And I think I'd like to call Kathy Nolan forward. Kathy, we're going to give a presentation, I believe. So let's cue that up. There she is. We'll start with the presentation. Council questions afterwards. I'm happy to answer any questions as well. Thank you. You all set, Kathy?

I think so. OK, very good. First of all, I want to, Kathy Nolan, I'm here representing the Ojai Valley Green Coalition. And the Ojai Valley Green Coalition actually produced this master plan. But I wanted to thank city council, the staff, all the community members in the valley who participated in us putting this document together, the support, and providing pertinent information. So here we start. I'm calling it an ecological hub in the heart of Ojai. And this is the Ojai City Hall Campus Landscape Master Plan. And I just wanted to point out the photo was during one of our site tours, obviously in the winter. And what I've done tonight is I, well, first of all, I'm hoping you had a chance to read the 101-page document. I didn't even print it out tonight for myself, because it was too many pages. And so I'm going to be sharing as I go along. But I don't have it in front of me, except for the preliminary cost analysis, which I thought somebody might ask me a number. But it's so small, I hopefully can read it. So anyway, so let's get started. And so we started off here with Imagine. Paths and trails to access nature. Children's nature-based play areas and programs with local education. Nature-inspired offerings, including talks, workshops, classes, and more. Revitalized estate and demonstration gardens, creekside habitat, and other open spaces. Preservation of a wild urban wildland. Excuse me, can you read my last word there? I think it says threshold, thank you. And rehabilitation of a historic landmark building, and that would be the, what's often known as the carriage house or the Hobson Barn. But basically, that was a lot of the input that we received generally from the community and what kind of drove this project. We started with an executive summary. I'm not gonna read the entire thing, but I wanted to point out that we had key goals and we wanted to align with the city's goals, the city's policy goals, and we met seven of nine of those in addition to the goals of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition And then if you look to the right under the photo, which was one of our workshops that we held, we have the master plan goals and objectives, which included valuable resources, community activity, park management, which we think is vital to the longevity of the project, and of course, ongoing stewardship. We also looked at future benefits, like why would you want to do this? And basically, there are a lot of benefits, but it becomes a guide for the next 15 to 25 years if it becomes adopted. And it's a master plan, so it's the big idea, it's the big vision, and there's more work that needs to be done, but it can be broken up into projects, and it's something to potentially guide the city, not only for approving a project or bringing a project folder, but how much is it gonna cost? What are all the ramifications? Oh, lovely. Thank you so much. I was going, oh, what if they ask me something and I don't have it in front of me? I was going to say I'll have to get back to you, which I might have to do too. But so anyway, risk mitigation, cost efficiency, and then also community cohesion and sustainability, and then regulatory clarity and consistency. I also want, I mentioned this when I started, but a big part of this, excuse me, part of this project was the outreach. And this, yeah, we're not gonna read through all of this, but it's just a sample from the document. And I, the city, or I should say, we started off in 2022 by receiving a community service grant that the city offered at that time. They no longer offer that. And I actually met with James Vega, the city manager at the time, and we talked about this. And interestingly enough, and I'm just going to throw this out there, we looked at the value of start to finish. What would the estimated cost be if you hired a consulting firm to do this project? And it was somewhere between $280,000 and $380,000. So I wanted to say we bring some value, because we did the entire project for just about $100,000 and a little over $100,000. We think we gave you a good deal, but it was a labor of love and commitment from us. So it's a gift. We wanted to mention that. But in our outreach, we reached out to community members, including our Chumash elder, Matthew Vestudo. Of course, all of the staff, the council members were possible. We took many of you on a private tour of the property. And then we invited the public in. We did a series of workshops, not only with that community service grant, but even when we got the contract to do the master plan. And at the end of 2024, we continued to do workshops. We had online surveys. We did site tours. And then outside of our contract, because we're so committed, we did volunteer days along with some of our partners, like Pax Environmental and the crew. to do maintenance, keep things fire safe as possible, and to educate the public. So basically we gathered all this information, collected the information, tallied it, and then that was the drive for the project. The emergent themes generally were to keep the campus, essentially not to overbuild it, but keep it exciting as an educational resource, and to restore the historic gardens, the demonstration gardens, and that would be like a nature park. We would consider maintenance and expansion of the Middle Stewart Canyon Creek Restoration Project, and a natural sanctuary and place for workshops, events, and gatherings for all ages, including children. And so that was our drive. And you can see a couple of photos of our workshop, our open house we did on the left, and then one of our site tours in front of the carriage house or the Hobson barn. I HAVE COME TO YOU IN THE PAST WITH A CONCEPT PLAN AND A LOT OF OTHER PLANS WHICH WE INCLUDED IN THIS FINAL DOCUMENT SO YOU WOULD HAVE IT FOR THE RECORD. BUT THIS LAST SCORE RAN, I WOULD SAY THE LAST THREE OR FOUR MONTHS, WE ACTUALLY STARTED PUTTING EVERYTHING TOGETHER WHAT WE WOULD CALL A MASTER PLAN PACKAGE. Starting with the here's one of the plans. This is a historic landmark elements plan. I did end up giving tours I met with privately with Historic Preservation Commission commissioners Presented to them at the Commission got feedback and of course went the Planning Commission got feedback and there was definitely a desire to To the best of our ability Consider all of the historic elements that are on the site and There's still some confusion. I went through a lot of the documents over and over again that the city has, and I still find myself having some question marks, but that could be resolved. But the entire site is landmarked, including vaguely some of the historic elements, which of course include, I think I've got it on the next slide, but the carriage house or the Hobson barn, Of course the City Hall building the tennis courts which are now the pickleball courts and then there's an arbor our picnic area Which is actually number 17. There's an old badminton court Remnants of a miniature golf course and even some old historic a sidewalk and a wedding Arbor So those are all identified And so the considerations that we had were the valuable resources, once again, the community activity, park management, and stewardship for the entire site. I have a lot of photos in here just because I thought the photos were so beautiful and really depict the community interest and the beauty of the site. And you may not remember this, but when I was here probably in October and in January and presented, we identified what we call kind of four sectors. And up at the upper left of that plan or map is the Discovery Corner. That's where the carriage house or the Hobson Barn is located. But we're looking at that concentrating and being an area for kids where that structure, if down the road we can use it and we're not sure yet, could be a living museum for children and a small little amphitheater for reading stories and playing music, pollinator garden, and a place to do outdoor classes. On the bottom left is the big circle, and that's the restoration area. And as you all well know, the restoration project took place, I think it started, I believe, 2019, but went to 2024, although we're still doing volunteer weeding and planting in that area. But we're looking at that area can be expanded. The area up on the hill to the west could certainly have a trail system, a bridge to cross the creek, which we know is not an easy thing to do because you have to go through regulatory agencies, but it's doable. And then also replanting with and extend the native planting and, of course, the ongoing maintenance. And then up on the upper right, the historic gardens. And that's part of the original estate. I actually talked to historic preservation commissioners. I went to the museum. And then I thoroughly went through those photos the best that I could. And I was able to identify some plant material that's here now from the original estate, even before they retrofitted it. So we have that listed in the document. So we did our best to do that and then to kind of figure out what was there in the past. And it's changed over the years, but there are some things that could actually be rehabilitated or to some, I don't know if I want to use the word restored, but close to being restored. And then on the bottom right is the workshop hub. And then that's the area where the present demonstration garden is. And that would be a new entry into the site off of Ventura Avenue with a little bit, but a small amount of additional parking, including an ADA van space and potentially up to two to three parking spaces with a new entry. And then what we're proposing is a new structure that we're calling the garden house. Of course, it could be renamed. But it seemed appropriate. We've got Little House and Oak Tree House. So the garden house felt appropriate. But that would be an area basically where it could be rented out for a wedding or other events. It could be rented out to local organizations for workshops and labs and films and what have you. So it's a gathering place. We did include a small commercial kitchen and a restroom and then kind of a covered shade area and terracing. So it would be adequate. And then within that area, we also have a small orchard and community garden, and then a whole series of native plants, including fire escaping. So once again, it becomes an educational. Actually, the whole park becomes educational. Because we're also looking at doing, or proposed rather, not only directional, but educational signage throughout. And then this is our actual, what I would call the master plan sheet. There's several sheets involved. But this one plays off the concept drawing that we had shared earlier. And it just kind of gives you the general layout of all the items, and they're all listed there. And I pretty much went over them when I just showed you the previous slide. Another real key element, and I did meet with the community development director, and we spoke about this. Presently, this property falls under the Libby Park master plan. The master plan not only includes what we know as Libby Park, but it includes the public works property, or a portion of it, and then this city hall campus, and it was called Area G, this section here. and so what we did here is we compared the recommendations that was done in 1993 and then the recommendations that we have for 2026 and the thing that i wanted to share is that there's a lot of overlap like and some of it's because it's just obvious like where do you put the paths pretty much in the same place they had recommended to do a parking lot where the tennis court is So basically, now it's a pickleball court, which is OK. And that's what we said. And then basically, I think the thing that we really looked at was we brought the 1993 plan forward into present time. They didn't have anything about a restoration. They did have a bridge to cross the creek. But now we're really expanding on native plants, climate appropriate plants, fire scaping, and expanding and maintaining the canyon and the creek. All right, and then back to this is a little bit more on the historic structures. And the picture on the left is the old badminton court. And so throughout the document, we went out and did thorough site analysis many times. We walked the site. And so for instance, at the badminton court, it's a great space, but the concrete is broken. And so we made a recommendation to either resurface or replace that, but generally to keep it as it is. So all the stonework, unless there's stone that's fallen and needs to get minorly repaired, but not to rebuild it. And so once again, it becomes a new usable space because it's safe and more functional. Here's the carriage house just for fun. And I wanted to say, I don't know if anyone's walked back there recently. But the fence on the left has come down. That was part of Tent Town. And actually, there were a lot more weeds there just a little bit ago. But the crew actually went in and did a cleanup. I think they're finishing it up. So you can actually see that wonderful carriage house. And here's the back of City Hall. And you can see the historic steps, the plinths with the planters. Those are all from the original state. Yeah, pretty cool. Of course, those would stay. And then just a look, this is just looking to the south. I'm awed even just looking at the picture, but every time I walk there and I walk down the trail where the restoration is, I turn around, can't see City Hall, I don't see a single building, and I just go, oh my gosh, I'm in downtown, and it's absolutely gorgeous. And I do want to say, since the restoration, the water's still running down there. And it's amazing to see how much the plant material has grown in. And of course, the wildlife count has increased. And then the other thing we looked at was circulation. So this is a circulation plan through the site. Ideally, we wanted to make the main pass ADA accessible. I think that's really important for somebody in a wheelchair or sight impaired or even a mom with a stroller or a person with a walker could actually go through the site. But what we did is we color coded. I'm not going to go through each one. But on the right, it's color coded, whether it's a primary access and what the materials would be. And then you see there's a P, a big yellow circle with a P. Those are what we call primary entry or exit points, where people could come in and there's signage and generally parking nearby. And then secondary entrances, and we have bike parking, et cetera. I'm going to go back because I don't have it on here and I didn't include the side, but we also did like a parking analysis because we're not, other than those few spaces on Ventura, we're not proposing new parking. So we did a count, we did observations, we came out at different days of the week. You know, how could this work? And the hours may need to get regulated if there was an event because of that and the timing, but we did make note of that. So we just wanted to let you know because I know that's always, an issue in Ojai. And then we get to maintenance. And it's like, why maintenance? We're just presenting a master plan now. But the maintenance is the key to longevity of any, especially outdoor landscape project. And this shows the trail that goes down into the restoration area. But we bring it in, and we reference the earth-friendly management policy that the city adopted, and what could happen here, and who could do it, so to speak. But just how important it is to not, when you're considering a project, and even though I didn't include long-term maintenance in our preliminary cost analysis, which we'll get to, I want to emphasize that it's vital. The other thing is programming. I mentioned earlier that the community and staff and the commissions weighed in amongst other people. And generally, it was a nature-based park where the people want classes, they want education on the site, nature-based play for children. what I would call more like a passive park. So we're not saying we're putting in soccer fields. This is a place where somebody could just, they could go and do yoga by themselves if they wanted to. Or the Parks and Rec Department could have a yoga class there. But I have a list of things of some different possibilities and partners, of course, the City of Ojai Parks and Rec Department, the local non-profits and organizations and community partners, how it could work, community stewardship partnership, And then, of course, that the city of Ojai could actually rent different areas for different events. So there's different opportunities for different types of weddings, for instance. So it's kind of fun and cool that there's a lot of choice. And then funding. So OK, here we are. We've done the master plan. And hopefully, we'll see what happens at the end of my presentation. But the next step is there's more design work that needs to be done. And I just wanted to point it out that this isn't the end all. The next step would be design development, where you actually put together, the city would have to do a request for proposals, like an architect, landscape architect, civil engineer, structural engineer, arborist, and other consultants. But it's where you take this master plan, which we hope we've provided enough really good solid basic information to take it to the next level, but they take it to the next step, and then of course after that is construction documents, which you would need to go out to bid and to install. Let's see. What did I do? I'm just looking to make sure I didn't miss something. I'm kind of doing the overview and then next steps Once again, I just mentioned about the next step would be design development and of course, we're hoping the city Has some interest in doing that and we would if you want to talk to us about any of it Of course we could but we know it would go out for an RFI and I'm just looking real quick here. Give me a second. We have things about further visualization, cost estimating and budgeting, contractor collaboration. And then, of course, the decisions made for design development would go into construction documents ultimately, which I mentioned earlier. We did do a preliminary cost analysis. We didn't break it up into phases. We did the entire site. We spoke with local consultants, contractors, some items we gave an allowance to. And if you did the whole thing right now, potentially, because it's preliminary cost analysis, this is for budgeting purposes, it's a little over $6 million. Now, we have a bathroom included at the garden house. And I forgot to mention earlier, but we have another public restroom that we located. So what we did do, let me see, did I include that slide? No, I didn't. Sorry, maybe it was back here. Well, I'll just say it. Oh, let me go back. I'm trying to think where I did it. Or maybe it was here. But what we did do was we looked at, and they're just recommendations of how the city wanted to move forward, and you wanted to break it off into phasing. How would we do it, or what makes the most sense? And we provided some examples in the document. And for instance, sometimes you have to put infrastructure in early on. If you know you want to do something, and maybe it's not going to happen for five years, But it makes sense to do it early on because you're going to be tearing up the site and doing grading and what have you. So we mentioned a little bit of that as well. But there are ways to phase it. And I also wanted to point out, for example, with the restoration area, there are grants available to do some of that work as well, as well as grants for probably some other areas in the park. So just for example. And then, I SHOWED THIS SLIDE BEFORE, BUT WE JUST UPDATED A LITTLE BIT. I HAD THIS IN MY LAST PRESENTATION. IT'S BASICALLY A SAMPLE TIMELINE. AND SO WE'VE JUST COMPLETED ON THE LEFT THE COMMUNITY AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT. AND OF COURSE TONIGHT WE'RE PRESENTING THE MASTER PLAN, THE FINAL DOCUMENT. SO NEXT STEPS INCLUDE LIKE ENGINEERING REPORTS AND LIKE A PHASE ONE TREE REMOVAL. SO SOME OF THE ITEMS LIKE THE CARRIAGE HOUSE OR THE HOBSON BARN AND SAY THE picnic pergola, they are in a state of disrepair. And they need to be looked at by a contractor or a structural engineer to determine, can we do something? What's the status? Is it worth it to do it? That type of thing. The design development, as I mentioned, the RFP. And then in the next phase, and of course, this is just a recommendation, construction documents, the RFP for contractors, project management, and then ideally, construction starts June 2027. But we did want to just include it as a timeline just to give you an idea of what could happen. And then I think this is my closing slide. And this is one of those beautiful slides that I was mentioning earlier where you look out to the south and it's kind of like, where am I? It's absolutely gorgeous. And I think that was one of the drivers. The beauty of the site and the love of the site and the Green Coalition wanting to and the willingness to work with the community and commit to the city to help you meet your goals as well. And that was our driver. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Yeah, go ahead.

I just have a few things that constituents have wrote in and asked you. One question was, they said originally they thought that you were going to have the Children's Memorial. And they said by looking through the packet, they don't see that located in here?

The Children's Memorial is actually existing. And if you're familiar with the picnic pergola is on the site, actually just right on here. The Children's Memorial is just to the north of that. And that's where the boxwood hedging is. And there's a plinth with a sign there. So we're not proposing to remove it or anything. It remains and it's there.

Perfect. Thank you for that. And then the other issue was with the amphitheater neighbors were concerned with the noise.

Right, and I think I've realized this later, like amphitheater sounds huge, you know, like the Hollywood Bowl or something, right? And we're talking about something probably no bigger than the interior circumference of this dais that would basically be for... non-acoustical events like story reading for children, you know, if anything, somebody's playing a guitar. And then I will say, too, that the park hours, which we mentioned in the document, the park would close at dusk unless, you know, kind of dawn to dusk unless the city was having a special event or somebody had a, you know, permit to have a party or have a meeting in the evening. So the sound would not... Potentially be an issue.

I mean we were trying to avoid that and I appreciate the question And then one more thing with parking they said and I don't know correct me if this is incorrect information It's passed on to me. They said there's like three spaces and only one is ad a Is that correct?

Yes, or if I could ask the question no, yes, I because I think it's the right question so with the construction and the let's say that beginning in June 2027 and the assumption is that the parking lot over here is available for it. Where Tent Town is now.

Oh, yes, absolutely. And I should have mentioned that, too, when I, because I didn't put the parking slide up there, and I probably shouldn't have included it.

No, no, no, but that's contingent to the rest of the work.

Exactly. The Tent Town, that parking lot stays, I think there was maybe one parking space that potentially, you know, once again, this is just in the master plan stage that maybe would be lost to make an entrance going to the the carriage house, but that's still to be determined, because we were trying to not lose any parking, and we did realize, you know, we weren't building a parking lot. Yeah, so, and as I mentioned earlier, we mentioned about potentially if you had a group of kids, you know, maybe limited to certain days of the week, certain hours, certain times, or even event, you only could do it on a Saturday when staff isn't here, because you would have more parking, for instance. So all of that needs to be considered, but we realized and know that we didn't add a lot of parking.

And then one last thing, and I'll pass it on. With some of the buildings, you said that they haven't been kept, and I understand that. And my first thought is Rick from HPC. He's so smart, and with construction and all of that, have you reached out to see if he could give his input?

I certainly did. As a matter of fact, I did two side tours for within the Brown Act, by the way, with the commission. And then several of them I actually met privately out here. And I spoke with Rick. I think I did a private one with him as well. And he concluded, too, and I even took the community development director. He and I walked out there. um look at if you go inside which we got to do thanks to brian akins who's i think behind me he's got has went got the key from the public works department numerous times and we were able to let people go in and take a look but if you go in there you can see that structurally it needs to be looked at and and rick agreed uh to i think pretty much the whole commission did But they would like to see that it get repurposed. And you would maintain the integrity of the design, of course, on the outside per the Department of the Interior guidelines. And then, of course, on the inside, you could make some changes. But it needs to be looked at. And in addition, and we have this in the report, the slope right behind the building, you could tell over the years it's been eroded. And so a structural engineer should look at that as well. Does it need to be reinforced? Or maybe it's just fencing, just to keep people back right from the edge in that location. But all considerations.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Kathy.

Yeah, thank you. Those are all great. And I guess I want to ask what I think you said to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. What you're asking for tonight is that we receive and accept the master plan generally. We understand there's so many decisions to make along the way, but you're taking this step to then go to that design phase where you're now mapping out some projects for that design part two? Tell me.

I would just say tonight we're asking you to adopt the master plan. Yes. And then we would want future direction not in tonight's meeting. You could ask for items to come back, but we wouldn't be looking to... to dive into.

Understood. I meant to, I should clarify what I was saying. I just need to say, the proposal is to accept this plan, period. That's right. And then the next phase is this design development phase not to be discussed tonight.

Right, and I do want, yeah, and I wanted to just mention, and just to be clear if I wasn't earlier, so the Libby Park master plan stays in place. The only part we're talking about upgrading or replacing would just be area G, which happens to be the city hall campus.

Understood.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Other questions? Wow. Okay. What an incredible packet. But let me go to public comments. I have Brian Akins, please. But Kathy, please stay close by.

Okay.

Thank you.

Hello, everybody.

Brian Akins. I guess multiple hats.

But somewhere in the years that it's taken place, I became the liaison to the Green Coalition from the Historic Preservation Commission. I first started looking at this property about a decade ago when I heard they were going to put buildings on it. So I grabbed my camera and my phone, whatever it was, and hiked the hills and took lots of pictures just in case. I want to compliment Kathy and Lauren and so many others that have helped this report be put together. It is amazing in detail, amazing in the answers that are there. I was there at the early meetings where they had big maps and lots of PENCILS TO DRAW ON IT. I PUT A CIRCLE ON THE HISTORIC PART, BUT PEOPLE WORE THERE AND THE AMOUNT OF PARTICIPATION THERE WAS WONDERFUL, BEAUTIFUL. I DID LIKE THAT KATHY MENTIONED THE WORD REPURPOSE. WE'RE ALWAYS LOOKING AT LANDMARKS FOR what they bring to us, but also how can they be better used by the community, and there were so many great ideas when you're talking about the horse barn, and that slope that goes off into the river. Rick Bisacci, by the way, told us that his scout house used to be on that property, and it disappeared with the floods, along with about 40 feet of dirt, just in case you're wondering. But truly, truly work. When I was going through the report, there were 100 something pages. That report will be printed out. It will be comb bound and it will go to the museum to go into their library. It'll also be recorded digitally so that we have that because this is a document that people are gonna come back and look at decades from now. Truly, truly a blessing. The tours were fun. Lots of fun. Taking people around with Kathy and with Lauren, with others, and giving them some insight into how key and how important that property is. But again, I ask that for your full support on this. It has my wholehearted support, and again, has been touched, as you heard, by many of the people within the historic preservation in looking at that. So again, thank you very much for your support on that, and a big thanks to Kathy, Lauren, and the many others that put this together.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Adkins. Leonard Clay, please.

Good evening, everyone. Leonard Clay. I live in the city of Ojai. I urge you to vote yes on this proposal. The amount of work that was done is astonishing. The amount of public input was substantial. The report is I read legal documents all day long, and this is as clear and concise and complete as you could, far more than anyone could expect. So bravo to the Green Coalition and their friends and all the work that was done in putting this together, and it is a vision for the city of Ojai. So vote yes, please.

Thank you, sir. And then I have Sudeep again.

Thank you, Council Members. I am here to support the resolution to adopt the 2026 City of Ojai City Hall Campus Landscape Master Plan. Having attended a tour of the space, thank you Kathy and the amazing team of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition. And also, and also Brian, it was really informative. I believe that we are really utilizing this space in a good way. And this sets the vision for that. Having seen the Huntington gardens and library, and also the Santa Barbara botanical gardens. Those are treasures that visionary citizens preserve for posterity and so this is one way for us to also take good care of our lands and with wonderful people who are using their talents and skills and Their intelligence, they've crafted a beautiful master plan, so I urge you to support it. Thank you. I'm saying this both as a citizen of Ojai, but also as a member of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council, because they're really taking into account, and we work with them very closely, and we support their monthly meetings. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Anybody online? Yes, Mayor. We have two raised hands. First, we'll have Bill, followed by Rene. Thank you. Mr. Miley, you may unmute.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

The comprehensive plan has been developed with multiple opportunities for community input and review. I started promoting this area for nature over 10 years ago. I support the plan with one key correction, one land-based suggestion, one key ADA recommendation, and a negative opinion. On page three, there's a paragraph on site history. It says it was deeded to the city in 1917. That was wrong. Hobson gave it to the city in 1972. On the site diagram, it shows the southernmost portion of the property, hilltop south of Stewart Creek as number 28, a viewpoint with a bench and number 32, a restoration trail. I have been on the site several times years ago and find it has great potential, as one can almost see 360 degrees from the hill. Excellent for nighttime stargazing. It needs more than a bench with a view. For parking, there appears to be three spaces on South Ventura Street. No disagreement with protecting nature, but there's only three and one is ADA. I use ADA. Anyway, the parking lot next to the city will be really good. And likely the ones on Ventura Avenue will be taken over by pickleball players. The pickleball court is not a tennis court. And on this side is a disgrace. Personally, they generate noise personally, strictly for their own selfish benefit. This is designed as a passive part. Pickleball is not a passive sport. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Malley. Next, we'll have Renee. Renee, you may unmute.

Good evening, everybody. And this is Renee Roth. Oh, hi. I guess I am going to start by taking exception to what Bill Miley just said. And usually he and I agree on a lot of things. But what he just said about the pickleball courts was factually incorrect. They're not a disgrace. And I do play pickleball in those courts occasionally. And really, it's more for senior citizens and it's barely nobody's down there on Saturday and Sunday. I don't know if you've been down there to watch the number of participants, but nobody goes down there. And in the summertime, it's too hot. You can't really enjoy playing on the courts in the summertime. So it's used for maybe an hour and a half in the morning. That's it. So I really hope that someday we can we can adjust how we look at things factually and base our comments on factual statements. Because I think this is really important moving forward. Okay, now to my real comments that I wanted to say. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you for your team who put together this beautiful, amazing document. I am so over... overwhelmed by what's included in there. You've got the historic stuff. You've got all the parks and the Libby Park plan. There's so much amazing. You've got water catchment. You've done it, Kathy. You've got a lot of information and a lot of data. It's beautiful. It's really well done. The only thing I want to say is that since you started this project, of course, 10 years ago, the McCray property right next door is now part of the city's inventory of property. It's right adjacent to this. And I think at some point, the highest and best use of that property might include having to do with... maintenance of this property and having a site where you can do maybe have a live in person who's a maintenance person who is assigned to live on that property. I think that would be a beautiful coalescing of public uses for that property. The last thing I want to say, I really, really hope I've been hearing about it for 10 years. The carriage house has a need for a seismic and structural engineer to evaluate the property. Would you please do that now? That will impact the future designs and bids and anything else you do with that property. Please do that. The city manager can do that. And just get it done. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

No more raised hands, Mary. Okay. On to discussion. I'm overwhelmed by the document, too. It's incredible. As a master plan, it's the best one I've ever seen personally.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you. And I want to just let you know that as a member of the council, I support this master plan 100%. And we'll vote yes on this. The plan exists because of you, the Green Coalition, and your outreach to the community through surveys and open houses and workshops and countless conversations held in person and online and among yourselves and among the community. you have shown up and you have allowed the community to show up. And I think that that is just interwoven and integrated into this master plan. You walked the property, you walked the property with us, you gave the community the opportunity to speak up and to walk the property as well. And you didn't just answer questions, you shaped the questions that we should be asking through the World Cafe and with Betsy van light who you know We need to acknowledge obviously and the plan that stands before us tonight is is really a document that you know was handed down from above really that's the way I look at it and To you guys, you know, it's been your steady partnership. It's the backbone of this effort your expertise is really unparalleled in ecological restoration, the advocacy for the native habitat in the Middle Stewart Canyon Creek Corridor, and your willingness to sit through meeting after meeting to get the details right and to reach out to the Planning Commission and the Historic Preservation Commission individually and as a group and present to everyone to bring the community along. It is just a prime example of a best practice in my mind. And I think that you have done exactly what we hoped that you would do. And for me, it's exceeded all expectations. You have given us a master plan that we can work with, that we can use. And I agree with Brian that it belongs in a museum for the future, for people to look at. So, and I just, you know, in closing, I just want to thank you very much and to let you know that we are mindful that the work doesn't end with this vote. The work begins with this vote. And I am in for that. work with you and hope that you guys will be in for that work. One thing that we do know that these kinds of projects that are successful start with a nonprofit organization like yours that is embedded in the project from the beginning. And so I hope that that is something this council also finds. So I want to thank you, thank the community. It has been, since I got on the council, four years of working through this. And it is, in my mind, a wonder to behold. So thank you.

Yes, please.

Yeah, I'll just piggyback. Ditto to everything that Councilmember Rule said. But I think back to those first workshops that you had, the World Cafes, and sitting in those tables, creating with art, everybody drawing their visions for what this could be. There was so much heart and so much intention that went into every step of this process. And it was driven by the community, by people of all ages, all backgrounds and experiences coming together and sitting in this room. dreaming. And that kind of visioning, I think, is a model for what government can be. So the master plan, it blew me away. I found myself reading and taking deep breaths and thinking, wow, that you've thought of everything. And just all the intentionality that went into it, including just acknowledging the history and working with the HPC and their involvement. And just thinking about what is going to work, not just in the next five years, but that this is going to be something that we can pass on for generations to come. And so I want to thank you for all of your tireless efforts, the entire Green Coalition, and for all of the hard work that you put into this, and like you said before, the volunteer hours. as well as the hours that were covered underneath the fund. It's just... And yeah, I think about Betsy VanLight's legacy, too, and how much a part of this project that will be. So it's really... I mean, I hope we do something to acknowledge her through some kind of... bench or something like that, you know, a tree because her fingerprints are all over this design. So thank you.

Mr. Whitman, anything?

I agree that it's a very impressive document and I did have the pleasure of touring early on with Betsy van light had a very enjoyable afternoon with her. I am. much more of a less is more type of a person and I have a great concern when I see a six million dollar price tag and what things are we not gonna do for the community I mean those are things that we have to talk about I know that we're not actually deciding to spend anything um but you know the parts uh that i support up and have always supported especially the restoration uh of the creek um and the idea of making the property more accessible to somebody who wants to take a walk in nature. It's a beautiful campus. And I support the idea of removing hazards. But, you know, I can't. I also support the idea of restoring something similar to the restoration garden that we used to enjoy. But it gives me great pause when we talk about building additional buildings when we haven't really kind of you know taken an inventory of all the buildings that are public access buildings and figured out you know where things fit in so not sure exactly where I'm gonna go on this vote because I do think it's a great document and Voting doesn't mean we're spending money, but I'm concerned that we're creating a plan to spend money Anything you want to add?

Mayor Mrakas, yeah I in conclusion. Mayor Mrakas, When I looked at this plan, I thought oh it's not often that you get a chance to say here's going to be. Mayor Mrakas, Another one of the great things about Ohio the greatest things and I see this thinking when people name their top 10 things this is now going to be in their top 10 list of Ohio firmly believe that so. Mayor Mrakas, I would make the motion that we accept the master plan as presented the Lance man's the landscape master plan is presented.

And just to be clear, it would be a motion to approve the resolution.

Motion to approve the resolution. Adopting the master plan. Thank you.

Yes. I'll second.

Thank you. Any more discussion? Okay. Roll call, please.

Council Member Whitman. I'm going to pause. Council Member Lange.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Meng.

Yes.

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

Thank you all. Well done.

Thank you.

Way to go. You're all welcome to stay, but you're also welcome to leave if you wish, who have come for this. I'll give them one second. Okay, we'll move on to item 10, which is the County of Ventura Civil Grand Jury Report regarding Ojai Permanent Supportive Housing.

Mayor, the next two items will be led by the city attorney.

Okay.

All right, so the item tonight, number 10, related to the Civil Grand Jury Report provided by the County of Ventura Civil Grand Jury. The purpose of this item is to seek council direction for the city attorney to prepare a proposed response to the Civil Grand Jury Report.

We'll give them a little cheer moment here.

that would be brought back to the city council in August, ideally no later than the August 11th meeting. We do have a special meeting on August 4th, so if we have everything ready to go, I may end up recommending that we try to tack that on for an initial discussion with a follow-on discussion. the August 11th meeting as all of you know on June 25th the county of injura civil grand jury released its its report regarding the permanent supportive housing project as part of their report they made certain findings related to the process that was used to select dignity moves to be the development manager for the project and the approval of the development management agreement As with all civil grand jury reports, the civil grand jury, they perform a very important role in providing government oversight, but the way that the response is expected to be produced is they want a response and it's prescribed by the penal code. where for each of the findings we either agree or we disagree in whole or in part. We provide explanations for anything that we disagree to. And then they also would like us to provide a plan for how we will address or not any of the recommendations in their report. In this report, the civil grand jury included a number of findings and they included 18 findings and six recommendations. And again, it would be our recommendation to the city council that you provide direction for me and my office to work on a draft response that we would present back to the city council in an open session meeting where we will go through each one of those responses one by one in order to determine whether there's council consensus to accept those proposed responses or modify them, and if the direction is to modify them, then we'll bring those back at a later meeting.

If I could just add one item, if that's okay? The intent would be you have two items in the end. You have the civil grand jury report and you have the city response. And then it would be our intent to publish both on the project landing page without any type of statement, just have folks be able to read both and form their own opinions.

Questions? Yes, please.

I do have a question so essentially the process would be that your office you or your office would respond to each of the 18 findings correct and then would in some way also respond to the recommendations the six recommendations and that would be the way that we would respond

correct but with a caveat so if you look at page 208 of your packet which is page 15 of the grand jury's report yeah they specifically identify which findings they would like responses from the city on and some of them for some of them they would like a response from the ventura county executive officers so For findings, for basically the list of findings that are under either the city council or city manager responses, we would provide responses to those and the same with the recommendations. Got it. Thank you. And we would recommend sending a single consolidated report from the city instead of a report from the city manager and a report from the city council. Okay.

Right. Okay. Great. And so you would make those responses and then bring it back to the council for us to deliberate or ruminate or... And if at that time it's council's desire, we can go through every single one.

If there are specific findings that you want to discuss, we can kind of play that by ear depending on how council feels about the proposed responses. But And conceivably, for some agencies, when you get to that stage, we might go through every single one, which can be painstaking, but it's an important part of the process. Right, and we will figure that out as we go. Yeah, absolutely.

And I just want to ask about, in the spirit of your analysis, you're going to be asking, is it legally sound? Does it fit with the ordinances as we have in place? Tell us about the process of how you evaluate.

I will say the way that we will evaluate it is some of the findings that the civil grand jury has made are based on their analysis or understanding of the law. In full disclosure, there may be some of those that our office disagrees with. And if that's the case, then that would be noted in the draft response. There are others that I can tell you sitting here today that I do agree with. And so, you know, as far as the recommendations go, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about that in the next item. But, you know, there are some things that I think the city can do to improve its procurement processes, starting with, you know, updates to your purchasing ordinance. So we will address all of that in detail in the proposed response. But I would... I would be less than fully candid if I said we're going to probably agree with every single finding. There will likely be findings that we think, you know, are a bit more nuanced than perhaps they perceived it to be.

Thank you. Did you have, oh, sorry.

Okay, yeah. So our options would be, if we didn't approve this, that either we vote not to respond or we vote to assign somebody else other than your law firm to respond?

Yeah, there would be some other options. I mean, first of all, the providing a response is an option. It's not a legal requirement. It is something that we would recommend because it demonstrates to the civil grand jury that we take their concerns seriously. But, yeah.

And when I asked that question, it was primarily because my thought is, well, it seems really obvious getting a draft from our attorneys about how we should respond is a first step. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something. Yeah, that's correct.

But you could also assign staff to prepare a draft response as opposed to legal counsel. You know, conceivably the city council, it would take some time for us to do that. We could sit down as a council and we could work through every single response. That is an option, but obviously it takes a lot of time. It would be a big commitment from the five of you, and I think your time may be used more effectively if we provide you with something to consider and we talk through the legal analysis, if there are questions, as opposed to trying to do that on the fly in a session of the entire council.

I'm not saying that this is gonna happen, but if we're presented with a proposed response, and some of us like the response, and some of us do not, Do we just go with the majority, or do you provide a dissenting position, or is it just what the majority chooses to do?

Ultimately, we would go with the majority position, because that's really what the penal code prescribes. You agree. So if we disagree in whole or in part, I think there might be... It might be a bit more nuanced, but generally the way this would be handled is we would look for a majority vote to say we agree with that response or not. And the reason for that is because it's a response from the council acting as a body.

which is standard procedure is that the council acts as a body and I suppose someone could say well I don't want my name on it but the City Council still approves or doesn't approve as a majority deliberative body That's what the DA told me. When he gets stuff back, that's how he looks at it.

That would be correct. And of course, what we would try to do is find a compromise response if the council's not entirely aligned. I think I would want to find a response that all five of you can join in on, but there's definitely the potential for...

But that's why you're bringing back a draft. Exactly. That will be reviewed. And in other cities where I've been, the council has appointed subcommittees and done that work that way. It just depends on how you want to do it. But this is more expeditious.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I mean, it's all hypothetical until we get the draft back. I did have one other question, if I could. I just wanted, do we expect that the county of Ventura, as you mentioned, is going to respond to the ones that are relevant to them?

I would expect they will. As a county body, they are a bit more answerable to the civil grand jury than we are, would be my opinion. But I would expect them to provide us with that.

I'm going to see the assistant CAO and maybe the CAO on Thursday of this week, and I'm just going to ask Mike or Savette if they're going to do that.

Right. And yes, it also specifically calls out the County of Ventura Community Development Division as well. But I mean, that has nothing to do with us, really. I just was curious if we can expect the County of Ventura to take this as seriously as we will or, you know. I would expect them to.

More questions?

Yeah, we'd get a draft back in roughly 30 days or something like that.

My hope is that it will be less than that. If we're talking about the first meeting in August, it'll be less than 30 days. I am taking time off next week, so you won't get a version back probably until I've returned. from my vacation, but my hope would be that if we were to schedule this for August 4th, for example, we would include the draft response with the agenda for that, so it would be publicly available, and we would certainly make sure that every member of council received it.

Okay, I have one public comment. Clay Creasy, please. I have two comments.

Okay. City Council, on this matter, I, as you all probably know, had a role to play in getting this matter adjudicated by the grand jury. When I worked at target, I had a boss who told me the only mistake you ever make is the one you don't learn. And I think we can have lots of debates as to whether procurement law number one or number two applied, or whether digging move was really selected on day one or day two or day 100 or whenever. But the key thing for us as a city is for us to learn from Last year, we heard the city manager tell you guys that the DMA required Dignity Moves to deliver this project for $9.5 million. And if the bids came in over $9.5 million, Dignity Moves was going to lose money on this. Now, we've heard the city attorney much more recently correct that and tell us that, no, that's not the case, which we all now know because This project doesn't have landscaping, doesn't have a garden, doesn't have gates, doesn't have storage, yada, yada. All the things you had to throw out to bring it in at $9.5 million. So back to the original issue of what did we learn from this. If we had a fair and competitive selection in day one, what are the chances that dignity moves would have somehow caused us to believe that they were going to cover cost overruns but not actually have it in the contract? competitive fair processes produce both good bids and clarity on what the deal is. We didn't have that because from day one, Dignity Moves was in our hip pocket and there was practically no question that they were going to do that. Now, they were cited in the original application as the developer of the original project, which was supposed to be done by January 15, 2025 on the parking lot of Kent Hall. Clearly that project changed very quickly. It was no longer prefab units trucked in overnight for a couple hundred thousand dollars. It was the grand thing that we've got now. So for us to grandfather dignity moves in as the development company when the project changed magnificently was a mistake. That's the mistake we need to learn from. Now how the response will come down is up to you guys to figure out. But it is clearly the case that more transparency, more competitiveness early on is the lesson here. And I don't know how much money we lost by virtue of not going that route, but it's more than a little bit. I will say finally, I've looked back the last 12 years, only twice has a grand jury cited a jurisdiction as having broken the law. Us and one other school district one point in time for a big, for a Brown Act file.

I was a bit appalled by the suggestion that you would not respond to the grand jury's findings. It's the law, and even though there's no consequence to not doing it, you should follow the law. It's something I try and teach my children. It's something that goes with good character, and I can't imagine this council wouldn't do it. So I think you should respond. I don't think that you should employ Ms. Burgess to go through the findings one by one and justify what happened. I think you should agree with all the findings because at first glance they appear to be true and secondly because it's not worth the fee of the city attorney to try and nitpick and say why what you did might have been okay somehow. You should accept the recommendations and you should work to improve the process going forward. This is an opportunity to learn. Another thing you should do is congratulate or thank Mr. Creasy for blowing the whistle on this possible, well, malfeasance, as far as the grand jury found, and for helping you find a better way forward. I think it's important to remember that good intentions require sound process, and you should tell the grand jury we're committed to putting those processes in place. Furthermore, the grand jury asked specifically for the city manager to respond to certain findings and certain recommendations within 60 days, and you should instruct him to do so. You should look at the draft that he makes, maybe you submit it, maybe you ask Ms. Burgess to change it, maybe you change it, but you should want to know what he has to say for those recommendations and those findings, and you should use that as part of your performance evaluation of him. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody online? Yes, Mayor. We have one raised hand from Mr. Miley. Thank you. Mr. Miley, you may proceed.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

I read it all. Okay. The grand jury presentation says the city was right. There's no competitive bid due to price requirements. but was required to do so for qualification and competency of contractors. How can a city not want to have qualified and competent contractors? This past grant process was fast, congested, anxious, and hopeful. never to happen again, process-wise, I hope. As I read, are you hearing me?

Yes.

As I read the grand jury conclusion, it says, in the future, the city shall agree to follow the competitive bidding law requirements. It does not say the city has to re-bid this project. Of their six recommendations, five have the ending phrase, quotes, in all cases moving forward, end quotes. And they detail four options for responding. Thus, the city likely, in my opinion, should select number two, response option. Quote, will be implemented in the future with a timeline. End quote. Thanks.

Thank you. No more. Okay.

Well, in the questions, I heard more or less the discussion around tasking the city attorney to have a first response that we can then come back and look at in detail. Did anybody want to add to that?

I just had a quick clarification. So, Ben, you said that you would take your responses and include them with the council's responses? It wouldn't be two separate documents?

What we're suggesting is having one document, right? And we're having the suggestion before you, we can do whatever you want, of course, is to have the city attorney draft the responses. If you want me specifically to write certain responses and then pass them to Bethany for review, that's fine. Whatever the council wants is fine.

So I just have a couple of quick comments one is that the so the first time I read through the report I think I sent a text to city manager and commented on the fact that I'd had no numerous conversations with Bethany over the past several months about the idea of improving the city's procurement policies and in a very general sense, not specific to this. So my comment to Ben was if they're asking us to improve our processes, Bethany's already worked. My other impression, and this one isn't as nice, but I read through the report again this morning, and Dave Kuntz, It it caused me a little bit of concern because what you know what what struck me was that we were awarded the. grant. And then a 13-month period went on where the city council had very little involvement. And then we were presented in March with a report that says, you've got to approve this now because money has to be spent by June. And that just caused me to have a little bit of deja vu is maybe not the right, but I You know, it seems like this happens fairly frequently where an issue has sat fallow for a long time and then we get a staff report that says, we need you to do this and we need you to do this now. And I'll kind of bootstrap what Mr. Steingold said earlier, which is that We really need more time as a city council to deliberate. It's important to us to conduct good deliberations, to have that time. And it's also important to the community that they see stuff with sufficient time that they can ask questions. I mean, I'd love to have three or four business days where I can be asking questions about, you know, both of staff and community members, and I really wanna see us improve on that whole, our ability to digest and receive, digest information. and at the same time give the community that much more time to receive and digest. Yeah, I agree.

It occurs to me, you know, there's a thought that it's, you know, it's cross-discipline. So if you want to understand everything, if you want to learn everything, you study the Civil War. There's so many factors in the Civil War that can teach you about everything as a case study. I'm thinking that this as a case study, if we want to go down that road as a case study of the ways in which decisions are made, the amount of time, you know, what's actually told to us. I mean, there's so many things that we could really use this as an example to pull out of what worked, but certainly what didn't work. Because I think that it embodies a lot of it. It embodies a lot of the dysfunction or the processes that aren't in place, and dysfunction, quite honestly. So I'm not suggesting that we do that, although I'm suggesting that it is something I would like the council to consider, that this be a case study on process improvement. Because it comes right down to, at the highest level, we've never had a case study project of this complexity and that's true but you know if we're thinking about for instance you know the eco hub here in a six million dollar sort of expenditure and I'm not saying that that's what we're going to do but to understand how a complex project finds form it might behoove us to deconstruct one it might behoove us to deconstruct and to look at all facets around this you know Starting you know departments everything it would be it would be a very good case study if the council was so inclined to pull it apart I appreciate that Yes, well to I mean to that point.

I think it makes sense. I would be supportive of having the city attorney Come up with the findings like give us a report on the findings and also make some recommendations and And that could be the starting point for us analyzing the process and knowing also that the processes that we have in place now are very different than what we had in place when a lot of the movement for the ERF grant was taking place. So I would actually make a motion. Please do. to have the city attorney come back, prepare a draft response to the report for further consideration for us at a future meeting.

Second that.

And then are you clarifying it would be the council and then separate?

I would like to see that.

Wait, what do you mean? With responses to have it separate, and then maybe if we decide as a council that we can incorporate and come up with one, but I'm just curious to see what he's going to hold himself accountable for.

I would suggest waiting until we get the responses back.

So Mayor Pro Tem, in my motion, my thought would be that That the city attorney and T and our team would include the city manager would include all of that background in the finding and that the staff report wouldn't would have that as a discussion as a point of discussion in Now in the analysis of the findings, is that correct? Would I be corrected soon? I

so what I will say is that some of the findings pertain or relate more to things that would have occurred at the staff level and some of them relate directly to decisions that might have been made by the City Council so you know what I think we would want to do is we you know if we agree with the finding the response is that we agree with the finding but if we disagree with the finding and we are providing an explanation I think what we would what I would do because I wasn't here when a lot of these acts took place as I will You know, I will talk with staff about you know, what what occurred? What is your understanding of what occurred? But I think we would condense that down into you know again a brief response for consideration by the council with one consolidated response, so I don't I don't know if that answers that question.

I have I I I see it a little bit differently and here's So they're asking us specific ones that they want us to respond to. They've spelled those out. And then if you go down to the responses that are invited but not required, they spell out a response from the city manager. And so I think we are going to get city manager specific responses. And then I would also say that I that any one of us or any employee of the city who's responding to important legal document would have advice of counsel so I think that to the extent Ben is going to answer those that he would work with Bethany or any other legal counsel that he wants to get assistance from.

I guess if I may, Mr. Mayor, some of these responses, there may be a separate explanation that is reflective of counsel's position on the response and then additional information from the city manager. I'm not saying those two are mutually exclusive, but it would be woven into a single response.

To me, if you look back on that page that we're referring to, 208, the following responses are required from the city council, and you see all the numbers, and the numbers are identical. The following responses are invited by the city manager. So it isn't that there's a group that's separated that the city manager is going to answer, not that anybody was suggesting that, but to say, I think the answer finally is coming from us. This body has to respond finally in the end to say we agree or disagree.

So what I would imagine is that we would have the initial statement, if you look on page 212 of the packet. So that's the page that kind of shows what the responses, the form that the responses take. So if we agree with findings, we would have a simple statement at the beginning that says the City of Ohio City Council agrees with the findings numbered, and we would list those. And that's all we say about the findings that we agree with. For the findings that we disagree with, we then provide an explanation for why we disagree with the finding. And I think, again, what I would recommend is that we would have the response from the city council, and if there's anything additional that the city manager would want to add based on advice of legal counsel, that we would add that in the response. Don't know that there's value And having two separate responses because at the end of the day The city manager is not going to agree with findings that the City Council disagrees with or vice versa. He's going to accept the findings of the City Council so if City Council says we agree with the finding and I would not recommend to him that he disagree with the finding, because it's really, we speak as one city, or one city government.

So what's the purpose of inviting a city manager to...

So I find it a bit unusual. I mean, so here's what everyone has to know about the Civil Grand Jury. This is a voluntary body that decides to come forward for this purpose. They are overseeing, but the oversight is loose from the county. It's from the courts. There's usually a presiding officer that reviews their work. It's been my experience that there's not a lot of It's a soft touch given to the report that is drafted. So if they're asking for something in general, that's usually what comes out. I've been involved in other civil grand jury reports. I've been the subject of one before. But it's always been the city is asked to respond. I've never seen it where they're separating somebody. And if you look, I was reminding myself of some of these findings and observations. I'm calling them observations, but they list them as findings. Some of these they're asking me to respond to specifically for a time period when I wasn't here. So, you know, I'm going to have to talk to the city attorney about that because I was not present when the application was submitted. fact my my start date i think was the 29th of january or something like that it was after the application had been turned in so i'm going to do my best to curl almeda was in charge of this project for some fortune he was but you know also i know it was a chaotic time when this was going on from what i've heard the report says that you know reviewed from the tapes i mean you know

So I would, just to sort of clarify, we understand what the civil grand jury is. We understand it's a soft touch. The question is not that. The question is they are requesting that the city manager ask these, answer these questions. It's not, that's the question, not, you know, I wasn't here, they got their facts wrong. The request, and we understand they're, We understand who they are. We understand how they come about. We understand what their findings are. And we understand their lay people. We understand all of that. But the question before us is, they have requested that the city manager answer these questions and before this body is how do we plan to answer that do we say that we're going to combine them we're not going to have a separate or we're going to have I mean that's the question before us and I think I understand I was just trying to respond to the council members question I just was pointing out that it is a bit unusual to ask me to respond to something when I was not in office at the time that took place no and they understand I mean you know

I don't know that that is understood.

Well, if I might respond to you, Star Child, please, if I might respond. So I'm imagining that we get a set of suggestions from the city attorney with the city manager here, and that's the opportunity, and I would like to take that to say to press, to ask questions, to clarify, and we can decide what we want to say and what we want to learn from this. And I love your idea of a case study, too. So I guess I'm imagining this happening then.

Yeah, and I'm fine with that. But I think what I'm having trouble letting go of is that this is the perfect case study. This incorporates so much of how we function or dysfunction, and it is a perfect time for us to reflect back, although we all may be leaving. And if I may.

If I may, one recommendation perhaps is that, again, we draft the response. I intend to draft a response for the city council. If the city manager agrees with that response, there is no reason to have a separate response. If the city manager disagrees with that response, then I think that there might be room for the city manager to provide additional input. But as with even the staff report for this item, while it's reflected as being submitted from the city manager and me, I drafted it, he made no edits to it because this is really a legal issue. And so while I would wanna make sure the city manager has an opportunity to provide input, My intention is that we will review these findings. We will evaluate the legal arguments and our understanding of the facts, and we will either recommend that we agree or we disagree. And, again, we'll discuss all of that with you. It's not – from my perspective, the law is not always black and white, but there's – You know, there are some findings which are more legal in nature. There are some findings that are more conclusory in nature based on their review of the facts. So the responses will be a little bit different, and they'll be tailored to that.

If I could just add one thing. So I think in our discussion of the recommendations, there's the case study. because some of the recommendations include a reevaluation of policies and procedures. And so if we are going to learn from this, then the discussion about how we move forward as a result of this will inherently include a dissection of the process and a reworking of it so that we have better processes moving forward.

I would like that. I agree with the idea that if we go through this process, it is going to be a case study. And, you know, my only other comment is that somebody mentioned this earlier. I mean, Maybe there's no, maybe there is a reason that the city manager would provide a separate response and maybe there's not. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't, I feel the same way. I mean, I think when you put it in these terms, the city manager is going to agree or disagree with what you say or that's fine. I think that the place for understanding this whole process is the case study, but that only happens if you go deep. So if we're writing a four line response to each finding, that is not deep enough to do any kind of case study. It may be a starting point, but to assume that these responses would be deep enough for us to actually get any kind of information around And what didn't happen correctly, I think, is it's a chance that doesn't happen.

It might just be a roadmap first. Yeah. And that, too, for further study. Yeah. Agree?

Yeah. Okay. I'm fine with that.

There's a motion on the table in a second.

Could I please have a clarification of the second, Mayor?

I was the second.

Thank you. And the motion I understand it now is the recommendation language from recommendation number two.

Correct. Thank you.

Ready for a roll call, Mayor? Yes, thanks. Mayor Pro Tem Meng? No. Council Member Whitman?

I got to go back and read two.

Yes. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Council Member Lange. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Motion passed.

I just wanna say that I think, I know, I never give it up. I just think that there's so much that the city manager can, it only lives with him, this process, because, and so that's why I think that he's an integral part of this, is that part of the process will be we were given these options, not understanding how we got to them. And that's why I would say that it's really integral that the city manager is part of this case study process, not because I think that he needs to respond to the grand jury in his own sentence or two. So I just want to be clear about that.

Thank you. We'll take a five-minute break. 212 listos amigos okay i'm just trying to be multicultural okay we're gonna start fellas okay we're moving on to number 11 municipal code revisions all right thank you

So as mentioned, this is also gonna be delivered by the city attorney. Thank you, Ms. Burgess.

So the purpose of this item is to seek council direction to kind of set our office loose on making some updates or working with staff to make some updates to some of your code sections that we've identified issues with. and you will see first on the list is your public bidding procedures and also the city's purchasing ordinance this is an area that you know in my opinion it's ripe for review it's ripe for updating there are some provisions that are a bit unusual for general law cities that we would like to kind of clean up and propose some recommendations As as the city manager knows this is also kind of in concert with other efforts that we are making to improve the city's purchasing practices including The rollout of new contracts earlier this year, but we are also in the process of with the city managers direction working on development of new contract solicitation templates to help ensure that we are following best practices when it comes to the city's procurement efforts. Other items on this list, some of them are here because we need to review and revise those provisions of the municipal code in order to bring it up to date with current state law. Some examples of that would be your accessory dwelling unit ordinance, And the number eight on the list the affordable housing incentives and density bonus sections of your code Those sections of state law have been updated and pretty significantly in recent years And so we would need to bring the city's code into alignment with current state law Some other things on the list that are kind of interesting and would be so I guess I should know there will be a slightly different process depending on which ordinance we're talking about so For the purchasing ordinance, that's one our office will take the lead on. There are going to be other ordinances on the list that may originate with staff and would then be sent to our office for review. So the accessory dwelling unit is one of those. There are other ordinances on the list, such as adoption of objective design standards, where a lot of the work may be done through a combination of staff and planning commission work. So for example, there is already a planning commission ad hoc committee that's been created to help develop some recommendations for objective design standards another item on the list that may fall into that same category would be the ordinance related to parking and loading standards that may be another one to get the planning commission involved in A couple of the other items are things just that as we've done work in the city over the last six months, we've observed that there are some places where the code doesn't necessarily say exactly what I think staff and even some of your commissions believe that it says, and it doesn't always do what people believe that the code does. And in some instances, that ends up creating enforceability issues, and so For those, I would probably put the signed standards and the code enforcement liens both into that category where we've observed that there are some provisions in the code that may not be legally enforceable and we want to review those and bring back some recommendations to help ensure that the requirements you have are enforceable. um the last one i wanted to mention directly is the historic preservation ordinance i think this one would probably follow kind of a different process altogether i think you know what i've observed and this is after listening to a handful of your historic preservation commission meetings um you know working with staff some some discussions that have occurred here at city council that there may not be full alignment within even just the city family about what this ordinance does or what it should do. And so this is one where I think, kind of much like the process you followed with the tree ordinance, that it may make sense to begin that review process by workshopping it with the city council, getting input from city council bringing in and working with our commissioners on the Historic Preservation Commission, and ultimately coming up with something that maybe better reflects the council's intent and the commission's understanding of what their role is. So with all of that being said, there's a lot here, and some of them are things that may take a few hours of work, like the well permit ordinance that was included. I mean, that one was probably an hour of work.

Mm-hmm.

We don't necessarily feel the need to come to city council and get prior authorization to do an hour of work. But some of these may take more time. And so before we just jump in head first and start working on revisions to the code, I felt that it would be appropriate to bring this item to the council, make sure we have your support to move forward on these. We won't be working on them all in tandem, so I don't wanna give you a specific timeline by which we're gonna have everything on the list completed, but I will say that the first priority is gonna be the purchasing ordinance, and we will plan to have that back to the city council in order to meet the timeline for implementation that the grand jury has recommended in their report. So that would be much more near term. I guess with that, are there any questions about any of these? I appreciate it.

It's super clear, and I like you have a starting place, as you say, right after item number 12. So thank you for that. I have a public comment card that doesn't have a name. OK, come over.

You've got to love ordinances. So set them loose with staff. Sounds great. Please remember that these are written by staff and the city attorney for the resident. They will apply to us and not to staff because they don't live here, unfortunately. It doesn't apply to the attorneys. They don't live here. It applies to us. We need an opportunity to review, provide input, and argue changes prior to them getting to city council where there will be discussion. But at least you will have obtained stakeholder engagement and seen their suggestions. While described as administrative or housekeeping, I know ordinances need to be changed. Hundreds of years, they build up. They need to get changed, purged, rewritten, straightened out, more efficient. Got it. Understand. Many of these are direct real-world impacts on us. Property rights and the use of public space, ordinances related to accessory dwelling units, encroachments in the public ways, parking standards, code enforcement liens, purchasing are not merely technical correction. They are public policy directions. If encroachment permits were permitted willy-nilly, they would have gotten one for the freezer. There are public policy decisions that shape how our community functions. When a comprehensive set of revisions is initiated through the city's office, it's inherently significant. These changes deserve the same level of transparency, deliberation, and public engagement that we would expect for any other policy initiative of this scope. This avoids creating dictates without civic input. I'm particularly concerned that the current approach risks prioritizing administrative efficiency, making life easier for everybody else, over public understanding, participation, and buy-in. The stakeholders in this process are not internal. They are the residents, property owners, businesses who must comply and live under these rules. You want us to live under them? We've got to be part of the process. to strengthen both the process require plain language impact statements for each proposed code revision, clearly identifying who is affected and how so. And they don't have to be interpreted by multiple attorneys. I really don't want to have to call my attorney to understand an ordinance. Shouldn't have to. Establishing a public-facing Phase review process, including study sessions prior to formal adoption for high impact. Rate-specific items. Maybe they go to planning. Maybe they go to public safety. Code enforcement. Direct staff to create a publicly accessible web page where draft ordinance language is posted. Red line. Bold. What are the changes? Why are the changes? Relate. Thank you, Mr. Stengel.

That's the only comment card I had.

Nothing online, Mayor.

And I assume, I mean, I think I know the answer to this, just to say any single one of these that would come forward would obviously be publicly voted on. And as you point out, there's some workshop opportunities.

Everyone would have at least two hearings. I would expect that the more significant revisions would come back for at least one concept review first. Some of them might be more than one concept review, depending on the input we receive.

On the historic preservation, that workshop model sounds appropriate for something very large like that.

yeah I mean I don't like on that one I don't even know what council's direction or appetite to make revisions would be I think what we need to do on that one is come back with a presentation identifying here the concerns that we have and and get your input because I wouldn't sitting here today I wouldn't I wouldn't suggest that I know what the policy direction so is everybody online and I don't want to cut that off nobody on okay on to discussion thank you

Thank you. Thanks. The subject matter of each of these categories, it's a little bit difficult to predict what's going to go into those changes. So I would be interested in And I'm concerned about a process that would have staff and the attorney's office work these proposals and then bring them to us without some degree of city council and community input. So I guess I'm interested in... getting kind of status reports about we're talking about these issues with this so that we could potentially provide input on where they're going.

We can do that. And another point that I should have mentioned is that Every one of these items that touches on Title 10 of your municipal code will have to go to the planning commission first. So it would not come to the city council for consideration. Maybe we have a workshop or a work session, but it would not come to city council for a decision until after you have a recommendation of approval or not from your planning commission.

So an added thought to what you just brought up, Mr. Whitman. So the first two that you suggest working on sounds perfectly correct. I think at that point when we have this kind of status check, then priorities can be set or maybe ones added or we'll be able to do that queue then.

um you know and for example i mean some of these are very minor changes for example the zoning clearance ordinance i know exactly what change i would recommend that helps create the clarification that ensures that you know staff has clear direction on you know when it's appropriate to use a zoning clearance that's not going to be you know a significant effort to put that together i mean i've I've read through that. I know where I think it needs to go. Some of them, like the purchasing ordinance, are going to take more work because we need to make a lot of updates. The code provision there is pretty outdated and there's stuff that's missing that's just not in your code at all.

I do like the status check-in idea. That makes a lot of sense.

And we can do like a periodic, you know, just... Status reports, city council items.

I like that. Any other thoughts? Wonderful. So how about this? What if we propose that the, so this is the motion, but I want to add what Mr. Whitman suggested. I'm trying to think how to say it. We task the city attorney with the list of code revisions to come back to council with status reports about next steps. Something like that?

Yeah, and I guess I wanna, I didn't mention this, but I meant to. If any of these, so let's take the purchase order. ordinance or collection of ordinances is you've mentioned it's gonna take a lot of time I and you know we have a fiscal impacts report which really doesn't it tells it generally there will be a physical impact but doesn't really tell us what it will be I think it would be good for anything that is gonna take time for you to give us an estimate of, you know, so in that kind of status report thing we're talking about, I'm anticipating this is going to be, you know, 20 hours of staff time. That's important to know.

And I will say for that first one, I would expect it will be, you know, depending on how much work is involved, it may be, I would say, 10 hours of legal time. And, you know, depending on revisioning, it may be a little more. But I don't see that being, you know, it's not going to be 30 or 40 hours of legal time. It's going to be... Probably 10 to 20.

So then I would just modify what I proposed. That's the big one. Yeah, with time estimates. So it's a status report with time estimates. Is that clear? Yes, it is, Mayor.

Ready for roll call?

Do we have a second? Pardon me. I'll second.

Thank you.

Roll call. Council Member Lange.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem May.

Yes.

Council Member Rule?

Yes.

Council Member Whitman? Yes. Mayor Gilman?

Yes. Thank you. I loved seeing this one, even on my notes. I said, absolutely awesome, great. We really appreciate that. Okay, concept, we're on number 12, concept review of contracted services.

Yes, thanks, Mayor. This item is something we've talked about for some time, and it's a comprehensive list of the primary contract services the city uses to deliver service to the residents, the visitors, the businesses in town. Ohio is a contract city, a contract city under the Lakewood model, which was born in the 1950s after World War II as a way in which cities could more efficiently and effectively deliver services rather than providing every single service in-house. Primarily, the Lakewood plan relied a lot on county services under contract, notably sheriff, building and safety, and others. And from there, it kind of evolved. In fact, a cottage industry was born of companies that provide municipal services, which wasn't always the case. There's actually an association in California called the California Contract Cities Association to help contract cities and to steer that vision of effective and efficient delivery of services under contract. This council has talked a lot about potentially bringing contract services in-house, and that's a policy decision. And we've talked about that in onesie-twosies, if you will, recently, looking at cleaning contracts and other types of things. And so what we tried to do with this list was just give a preliminary estimate. You know, the service provided was one that we could, in theory, bring in-house. And some of them are large, large, large efforts. So for instance, if we decided that we wanted to revert to our own municipal police department, well that would be a large effort, clearly. Could it be done? Absolutely. But that would be with some major consideration on behalf of this council. What we're looking for tonight is your questions, your comments, your direction for those services that are being provided that you would like us to perform some analysis as to really what's involved with bringing it internally. What's the cost? What's the timeline? What are the considerations that need to be made? What's the impact in the service delivery? Et cetera, et cetera. There are some logical low-hanging fruit items, and one is one we've talked about a lot, which is code enforcement. That contract is coming up for renewal soon. We would recommend that as part of that effort to bring that contract back, we bake into that a comparison of what it would look like if we were to bring that internally. There are others in that list, too, that you will see. um i want to thank norma who put together this list i want to thank all the department heads for for working with her on this there are some notable and thank you there's a list if we need to refer to it there are some notable emissions we don't have franchise agreements included in there we don't have subscriptions we don't have software services because those just quite obviously are things that we're not going to probably take on but anything's possible we could provide refuse and recycling if you really wanted to it would be enormous i wouldn't recommend it but we we could so with that um i'd ask for your questions um and direction thank you yeah and i'm presuming thank you for this big list and i like seeing that the contract renewal is forthcoming to the city council um

So I'll save the comments for discussion, but I like seeing that kind of variety of services, especially even things like help of Ojai that we, the rental assistance program, that's interesting just to at least see that as an option.

Well, and thank you for bringing it up because we really, we went back and forth on some of these and we, We just felt that if it was a significant contract, we would put it on there. But some of them really aren't necessarily municipal services, and that would probably be one of them. But in theory, you could provide that if you had a housing department. You could potentially provide that, and some cities do.

Okay, any questions before I go to public comment?

Okay, I have one card. Larry Stangle, please.

Good evening. I wasn't going to say anything on contracted services, but in lieu of review of ordinances and things like that, review of contracts, requests for proposals so that they're so tailored that the focus is narrowed down to one contractor or two contractors or three for whatever benefit. And I think it's great that we contract out because hiring more employees creates a bigger family. It creates bigger pension demands, which quite frankly now are because the CalPERS is at like 80%. I guess we don't have to put as much in. But we need to fill those pensions because we're in deep with insurance and with payroll, future benefits. So financially, down the road, you hire a contract for 400, and like Ben was saying, you want to hire employees? No problem. They just become part of the landscape and you're swapping employees for outsiders. But it's very difficult to get rid of employees. Those are families, those are people. They stake their lives on working here. So whereas a company, it's part of life. So be cognizant of hiring more people when we have a budget that's seemingly high, that's based on tourism, That's based on sales tax with an economy that's going up and down. And until it stabilizes, we probably should stay with, I mean, in my view, stay with contracts because at least then you can cut them back, get rid of them, do something different. But employees, I mean, it's a family affair. I mean, they become part of the fabric here. And, you know, you hire somebody today and we got a problem, we're going to lay you off. I don't know what it is here, first in, first out, whatever it is. And it becomes a problem. So I would think that Ben's right. Whatever you want, you get. Sure, you want to hire people? That's fine. But the downside is you get more control also. So that's a positive. You can give more direction. But it's a balance. So please be cognizant of that in ordinances and contracts and specifications. Thank you, sir. Anybody online?

Yes, Mayor. We do have one raised hand from Renee.

Thank you.

Renee, you may unmute. You have the floor.

Good evening. Rene Roth, I am part of the Budget and Finance Committee, and I am glad that our City Manager is bringing this item up for discussion. I do feel like this is kind of above the City Council's knowledge base on what's a good idea and what isn't. I would really suggest that since you have Ide Bailey, at the city doing work on budget and finance policies that you consider developing a procurement policy. The whole thing that happened with the grand jury report could have really been addressed if you had a procurement policy that said, If a contract is for this kind of service, or that kind of service, this is how we're going to bid it based on the size of our city by some, the staff of our city. And you have professionals. Who make recommendations on what they think would be the thresholds that you would go out and bid those things out. And I don't think the city council probably knows what those answers are. so bringing it to the city council might be a little premature it might be better to have or an option another option to discuss is having a policy a procurement policy that talks about how you go about it and how you decide and then you approve that procurement policy that some professionals in the field have developed thank you very much thank you mr no more thank you

Well, I have a suggestion that we we had talked about the just as a kind of a case study when we see that the contract renewals forthcoming. And we had talked about code enforcement with will Dan that it is a higher ticket item in comparison to some others. And it's something that we it's individuals doing things that are here a lot. I'm just throwing this out there to see what you guys think. We try, we look at a comparison of Will-Dan as is compared to an employee or employees, and just it seems that gives us that kind of a comparison as a sort of a low-hanging fruit, that one that needs to be decided soon. That's just an idea throwing out for you guys.

Yeah, my thought, I don't know how this exactly fits in with what you're saying, but rather than deal with this issue in mass, I see it more logical to maybe group similar types of services and contracts. And just a reminder that the reason this topic has come up and we're discussing it is because there has been a concern that if we Contract too much out. We just don't have institutional knowledge as as an institution and So the idea is to have more I I also, you know like the idea if I'm now I'm spending some Amount of money that I might actually be able to support somebody who lives in Ohio And so You know, I think all of these are like these cost-benefit issues that we have to look at. And I'm not comfortable with the idea of saying, yeah, we're going to move towards more contracting or we're going to move towards less contracting. We kind of have to do it on a topic-by-topic basis. I mean, then you can you know, weigh in on this, but I'm thinking that maybe you can group so that we're not handling one per meeting and then they're addressing, you know, these contracts aren't addressed until, you know, three terms from now. We try to take a chunk of them back.

Yeah, so if I understand that correctly, Councilmember, we'd be kind of dividing this list up. Oh, and by the way, there could be a contract that's missing from here because we were parsing out so many because it just didn't really make sense to have certain contracts in here. We might have inadvertently chopped something off on the editing room floor. Okay. So if you do see an omission, we'll throw it in. It wasn't intentional. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we can do some grouping. And I'm looking at Norma. Norma knows where this is going. And so, for instance, there's a real logical one coming up, right? With WILDIN, building and safety, and code enforcement, we could bring them all back together. Those are all within community development departments. That would be a real logical pairing. They work together as functions, right? You need code compliance and building and safety. And engineering. And engineering. Thank you. That's good. That's why the director's here. But, yeah, we'd be happy to go through and parse this up. And then I also would say that some of these just flat out don't make sense. So, for instance, and you know that. I'm not. I'm not trying to be insulting. You know this, right? But with the TOT hearings, when you have to have somebody besides a city attorney there, you need a separate attorney that has no connection to the city whatsoever. So you're always going to need a contract or something like that. I know you guys know that.

I would look to maybe clean this list up to remove items like that I had I like where this is going I had similar thoughts and and one of them being we you know is there a way to combine maintenance services like the detailing so these are these are taking from some of the conversations that we've had so you combine you know facility maintenance with car detailing or things like that. And so I would also be curious about grouping some of those maintenance activities when it makes sense. And one other thing that we did discuss previously was the security, the encampment security, and looking at whether or not it made more financial sense for us to bring that in.

So that's another one that's coming right back. Yes. And that's a limited term contract, as you know, because the thought is that OTT will only be there for approximately one more year. That's okay. That still could be an internal employee.

And it could be an internal employee that would then transfer to... Could. Could. Right.

So we can do that. We can even take that as direction with each new contract that comes forward to automatically include... So in addition to the grouping, the combining, the consolidating, take it as direction to also just include that option within the contract renewal that comes back before you.

If that's not too cumbersome, that would be interesting to see.

No, no, it's not. It's not. And if it does require some additional time to be more thoughtful, we'll just tell you, look, this contract's now going to be expired two months, but we think it's worth it if you give us that extra time to just provide this analysis so we can bring that back to you. I'm going to offer one more thing, and we can do this too. It's just a bigger effort, and I'll tell you why it's a bigger effort. But again, I know you know this. There's been a lot of discussion in the time that I've been here for like a review and an overview of options for the public safety contract. And the chief knows I'm a huge fan of the sheriff's department, but I'd be happy to provide that type of look-see, if you will. But if I did that, I would want to spend a little more time because what I would have to do, and I would want to definitely involve the chief because you guys know this. I mean, I'm I'm the cat herder. I wouldn't call myself a subject matter expert in law enforcement. I've hired police chiefs, I've had police departments work for me, but I don't always remember every single thing that's involved with doing that day to day. I would also want to look at like size organizations that have police department around here i mean i guess santa paula might be one i would logically look at um i would look at other cities in the state that are around the same size with the same needs but we're a little unique and this is where the chief would come in you know we don't really have a parking enforcement component some do so there's there's some nuances that have to be worked out we'd be happy to come back with that that would probably be a longer term thing and i'd be happy to do that and i know that this is a request that you've received and this was also part of the genesis for creating this list and if you look at that particular item you know that contracts been in place since 1977 and that's in place countywide this is the contract that the other contract cities have in place and there is no there is no interest from the other contract cities in reopening this contract just because and I could talk to you about that as part of the analysis there's a lot of that the sheriff would want if we reopen. But that could be part of the discussion. There's no secrets. This is not anything hidden, but that's part of the discussion.

I think it's worthwhile to do that because we do get questions from the community. Can't you do this? You know, more cost-effectively if you brought it in-house or I've heard people ask us to look at, you know, partnering with Santa Paula or something.

Or just looking at the contract just because it's the biggest contract we have, you know, so just an understanding.

So I wouldn't necessarily want you... you know to spend it do that but I think we should be yeah acting from a position of having information and I think the same analysis go into the idea of deciding to hire a city attorney to be a staff, you know, city attorney. Well, can I jump in on that one really quick? I could do the report on how that's not going to make sense because the contracting out is going to still happen and it's going to be expensive.

Well, you'll note on that one I put office because when Norma and I started talking about it, we're like, wait a minute. You need a city attorney, assistant. You may even need a deputy. It's not one person. You've got a paralegal. You've got a secretary. You know, it's going to be just as, you know, the city manager's office is about a million dollars a year. You guys know that. You adopted the budget. There's a lot of people in that office. It's not just me. Same thing with the city attorney's office. It's not, you know. But yes, and then in the end, you would probably need to go out for things because how would you have one person who knows all this? But anyway, on the police matter, yeah, we would only, we wouldn't, we, if we're not looking to jettison the Ventura County Sheriff's Department, but I would want to still, to your point, I know you get a lot of questions. I get them too. I would just want to kind of walk through what we hear and kind of explain and identify the components and, again, talk about some other agencies that are similar. And you have options. Not only could you create your own, but you could, like you mentioned, you could contract with another municipality. You could do that.

I just have a thought, and I don't know if it's going to be a big thing, but in my head, I'm thinking like restructuring. So we have employees that are here, see what their duties are, and maybe we have a contract that we spend $100,000, say, a year for. But the basic stuff that they do, somebody could put it on their plate with their existing workload, and we could pay $50,000.

and then we're building institutional knowledge they're earning more money so perhaps they could afford to live in ohio i i know it's a big i i the only the only my we could certainly look at that my only initial thought is um uh i whip them pretty hard around here i'm just i'm kidding around but everyone is pretty busy wearing multiple hats

Joking around.

Just step on their feet. No, but in all seriousness, let me just give you an example. Right now, Norma, how many different hats are you wearing? As you're hiring your new transit supervisor, you're also doing that. Emergency response. Yeah, anyway. But I get what you're saying.

But I think what you just said, Rachel said in a different way when she was, you know, the same concept, which I agree with.

Not everything, you know what I mean?

Well, I'll tell you, I'll give you, for instance, what you could do.

It is possible that we could reorganize to consolidate.

So in the trades, I've done this elsewhere, sometimes you can provide incentive pay for certain skill levels. So let's say that you are a carpenter or you are a plumber or whatever. You know, in some instances, if we had enough bandwidth, you could have somebody who's like a maintenance worker two or a three, you know, you increase the family ladder, and you have a person who does that more skilled work. The maintenance worker classification, you know, it's very broad. You could be one day doing some wiring on a building and the next day digging a ditch just because that's the gamut. But if you expanded the family a little bit and, you know, Lindy might, I see Lindy's online. She's checking my words here. But if you had steps, you know, one, two, three, or senior or whatever. Yeah, exactly.

Even something as simple as changing the title of the position could open up a whole new.

We could certainly look at that too. Mm-hmm.

Just as a for instance right now, we do have an employee who was talking about getting his arborist certificate. Now there's a lot involved in that. You have to go through, do the classes and all that, but that could potentially.

But it would be nice to invest in somebody to do that.

I agree with that. So, yeah, so we just wanted to kind of have this out there. We also wanted to give this to you just kind of as a tool. I appreciate it. People ask me this. Like, these are all the ones that were. But, again, please tell me if we chop something off we didn't mean to. It could very well have happened.

Well, is a next step to take that kind of grouping principle, at least to look at what was just brought up to say, like, the code enforcement, engineering, and also safety. Yeah. and say that would be our first instance. I think that's a great one.

And I like your idea that as... We have these items coming up to us. So let's do the one that we have to look at renewing the contract at the same time that we look at some similar. I think that's a good idea.

We can just build that in.

We'll take that as direction just every single time. We can even add a little section right before fiscal impact. Ability to bring this internal. What are the considerations?

And then what was just said here, that hybrid, it's going to take some creative thinking to look at a couple of contracts or whatever, or an employee doing something and say, oh, we're paying for these two or three things. Could one person do them? And now, again, Mr. Stengel is correct. Bringing somebody into the family is obviously a big commitment. It's a creative way of wondering about possibility.

He did bring up some valid points. I mean, city employees have tenure in their positions. Lindy needs to talk. OK. Lindy, do you want to say something really quick?

Yeah, I do want to say something really quick. To the point about talking about the public works maintenance crews, every time we have a vacancy in the department And we're hiring a new public works maintenance worker. I have a conversation with Juan, who is our public works superintendent. And we talk about some of the needs of the department. And for example, we have some guys who are really good at pouring concrete. We have others who are good plumbers. We have a couple who are really good electricians. So if somebody has left, we look to fill those positions with somebody with a similar skill set or a skill set on some of these jobs. sort of in quote trades that we're looking for and that we're sort of lacking in the crew. So we're already doing that as we have an opportunity. And again, like Ben said, We have one staff member who is very interested in becoming a certified arborist, and I'm very, very supportive of that.

But also, I think this, thank you, Lindy. I also think this is consistent with council direction, potentially expanding a job family. It's a bigger discussion, but we could certainly look at that. And I think the maintenance worker one is one that's very, that's a logical one to look at.

Well, also, we've been talking about increasing code enforcement in many ways, so then it's also trying to take what is part of our conversations and sort of build that into a consideration about what an employee would be like. I know you will do that, but that seems to be part of the equation.

Yeah, the other, I mean, this will be part of the discussion, too. Even thanks to council action, we pay competitively. However, it is sometimes still a challenge to find employees. We are a little further away. And, of course, you know, never a guarantee that somebody is going to end up living here. We want that, of course, but not always possible.

Thank you. Of course. Yeah. So what kind of, how can we frame our direction for you going forward?

Well, why don't I throw out what I hear is what you told me. You can tell me if it's right or wrong. Weston can capture this. So I'm hearing that the council would like us to take the existing contract log list to group, combine, consolidate, and pair where possible so that the listing is further refined and categorized, broken up, if you will. Mm-hmm. Council is also asking that for any contract that is coming back for renewal, especially the near-term ones, you know, the next few months, next year or so, at a minimum, that there's always an option for the council to consider to bring the service in-house and what the constraints may be. Mm-hmm. I'm also hearing a direction to a longer-term effort for me to work with the chief of police and other individuals to try to provide you of an analysis of what it would look like if you were to consider moving away from the sheriff's department, taking what Councilmember Whitman said is we're not threatening to do that. We're just mostly just trying to respond to constituent concerns about the contract and what's involved with it and what our options are. Does that sound like the direction? It does sound like it. Did you capture that?

And I just have something to add. I'm a little bit unclear, and this might be something that we clarify, is a criteria for reviewing the merits. So we talked about a few of them. We talked about potentially you know somebody can live in we can somebody can live in ohio we can provide you know we can provide oh i see what you're saying you know business for ohio and so so when we are actually doing you know evaluating these what criteria are we using to evaluate is it money okay is it you know so having something that we can you know work against would be helpful

Yeah, and one thing that Council Member Whitman mentioned, which I think is this is, you know, there are upsides and downsides of bringing things internally, but an upside is this historical knowledge that you often get if somebody is in the position. So that's a consideration that could be made.

yeah like institutional knowledge institutional there are some things that you know require institutional knowledge and then there's others that don't that's right i like your idea though like almost a checklist for each one where you say it's a pro and con of employee having an employee versus the contractor that'd be a nice thing to see so you can kind of evaluate and we're not starting anew with every you know with every new contract that we do uh some along those lines some of the

The type of work we're receiving, there might not be much of an expectation that we've got Ojai residents that are ready to do that type of work or skilled to do that type of work. And somewhere, we're going to assume that there would be lots of people interested.

that's right and it may be that we have employees that would like to as with the arborist job who would like to so let's add thank you let's add to the motion and also the direction to consider expanding some city job families where appropriate in order to potentially address a contracted a current contracted service

Yeah, and I think that's also something to consider, you know, giving our employees, you know, a way to grow.

It's a career ladder, sure.

Okay, that's great. That sounds like a paragraph motion.

It is, but that's good. I like it nice and detailed, so be clear.

Well, then I'll make that.

I'll second. Okay, thanks. Unless, Council Member Whitman, unless you have a question.

No, no, but it's exciting. It's a great conversation, too. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you. Exciting to see. Yeah, it'll be wonderful. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

OK. All right. We're on to number 13, affordable housing agreement located at 312 West Aliso. Hi there.

Thanks for your patience. OK. And Mr. Seibert and Ms. Burgess will be leading this discussion. Mr. Seibert, do you want to start this off?

Yes. Thank you. Good evening, council members. My name is Lucas Seibert, community development director here for the city. The item before you tonight is actually kind of broken up into two pieces. The first is an affordable housing agreement before this body for 312 West Aliso Street. The second is a third party monitoring being provided to administer compliance for pre-qualifying those individuals to go into affordable housing units. The first in terms of the affordable housing agreement, that's a part of what was agreed with the settlement agreement. And what came out of that is, and this is really only for the two units, the 280 units that are on the second story of the garage, not for the other market rate units. is a couple of pieces. One is we wanted to make sure to include the local kind of first in line provision. So you see those sprinkled throughout here. The second is in terms of weighting the information that came out of the settlement agreement, that is also sprinkled into this piece as well. All of those pieces have formulated the draft affordable housing agreement that you have before you for consideration. If this body is agreeable to the agreement as written, that agreement would be recorded against the property. So each time that the property itself has a vacancy, we would be following those provisions identified within this agreement. So that's the first piece. The second piece is a third-party monitoring provider. And in this, we've identified Area Housing Authority as the model. We've reached out to that individual group as a nonprofit, and they have expressed interest. I had them kind of put together a proposal. That proposal is also included here as well. They've identified three different scenarios that you're seeing here as well. I'm not saying all three. I'm not saying necessarily one. But the idea here is having a third-party professional vet those individuals as pre-qualifying, getting income statements and some fairly personal information to vet them against what the state standards are for qualifying for the affordable housing units. They could also, I guess the other two options would be staff doing it and or the property owner doing it. The idea with the Area Housing Authority is not just tied to this property. The thought is having this for others that are coming down the pipeline. This isn't just a one-shot deal.

If I could ask, just to give me the comparison, if we think of the Cabrillo Vista project that's going to be on Bryant, that's a function they would take on themselves when that comes to

So is that correct or incorrect? They would try to. But the reality is that if we're agreeable to a third party doing that with the, because they will have to go through an affordable housing agreement that would become for this body as well, we would then identify that it's a third party vetting it and then both parties agreeing to that process. But you're right. Cabrillo already does that vetting themselves. I think the concern that I have with each of these, and not to say that they would be inconsistent or out of order, I like the idea of having a third party vet this out. I am not the professional from this standpoint. I learned a lot having Area Housing Authority kind of go through and vet the first individual for this site. Because I really didn't know how to even start from that standpoint. It's not something I purveyed and have gone through before. So learning from them in terms of that process was helpful. But also recognizing that it's not something that the city is vetting. We're obviously accepting or having the property owner do that because there's some potential bias that could be perceived there. And just so you know, we didn't do an RFP with Area Housing Authority, but I'm certainly well aware of the other groups that are out there. I've reached out to a couple of them via phone call. Obviously, the Cabrillo wasn't considered, or even Manny Mansions. They're not necessarily a group that seems to be interested in this when I reached out to them. Cabrillo, I basically wrote them off knowing that the larger project coming forward

Just, and not to belabor the point, the Cabrillo project that's on Montgomery, the one that's been there for a long time, do you happen to know if it's a third party that?

No, they do it themselves. Yeah, the housing element actually identifies that.

Okay. Oh, sorry. Yes, actually.

So the other interesting one is, so for instance, it's used Whispering Oaks, for example, Area Housing Authority. That's those units.

And who pays the 162?

So HUD identifies where the money comes from, but I'm not really sure from, so that's an unknown for me. I don't know if Bethany could chime in here in terms of how that's paid.

And I think the way that the agreement is written in the packet, that that would be a payment that comes from the city to the area housing authority.

Well, you're talking about in terms of what we're talking about here. I think you're speaking to how is that paid out through Whispering Oaks.

Well, it's both. So in other words, I understand that if we initiated this third party, we may have to write that check. And we're not talking about tons of people. I mean, each time somebody has to be vetted, and then they're vetted. So that's not that many people. But I was just curious, I guess.

But it's a per month. Yeah, the per month.

And then they've been vetted and selected. Understood. Just so you know, I'm not recommending the first scenario because that one seems a little bit more daunting from a pricing standpoint.

I guess the question I was kind of getting to is, there's an agreement, there's a settlement agreement that we all understand how it is there. But then to say, oh, there's this now piece that the city would be responsible for in some way, it's just to be considered seriously. Yeah, go ahead.

We already have.

No, the help of OHI contract is specific. Well, there's like three, but one's for case management for OTT and it's very specific as to what the, it's specifically for participants who live here. The other is for the rental assistance. The other is for ADA transportation services. Those are the three that we have. I'm not saying I couldn't maybe do this type of thing, but I have never talked to Jane to see if she's interested.

Yeah, I was just thinking that if we're already contracting with them for rental assistance, that perhaps something like this could fall underneath there.

Did that know that? And I wouldn't want to. I mean, if you counsel wanted to direct me to talk to Jane about this, I certainly could.

So your point number two, I mean, the second example, I'm looking at page 243 of our packet. That's the 250 per file, right? Correct. Yeah, that's the one you're proposing or you're suggesting.

So if they have to go through 10 applicants before they select somebody, the fee's $25.

Right. But here's what I'm noticing is they vet each individual one, and there is a lot of work that goes into it, to be fair, from what I've seen. So the $250 does seem pretty reasonable.

But that's not a monthly fee. They do it once a day.

It's on a per-case basis, exactly, per-application basis.

Yeah, I was going to suggest that potentially we move forward with this, but I did like the idea of potentially expanding out to see if there was a synergy between what Health of Ojai is already doing, what they already know about our community, and the documents that they already have, the connections they already have, and see if it's a possibility that this would be an expansion they would be interested in. But I don't want to hold this up. So and if this is sort of a one off on, you know, this particular unit and this particular file, I would suggest we move forward with with the housing authority and also look to see if help of Ojai would be a reasonable. If they'd be interested.

My thinking was along the same lines of what you just said, more articulately, which was they know all of the folks in the community who would be most in need of low-income housing. and they already have those paper works and they're trying to help them find all kinds of other forms of assistance. So it seems to me like there could be a real synergy there. I agree.

Yeah, happy to talk to them about that.

Institutional knowledge, as we would say.

So I just, we're getting into the, I don't have any public comment cards on this item. That's okay, no, it's my fault. We have one raised hand for Mr. Miley. Okay, let's take them.

Oh yeah. Mr. Miley, we will take your raised hand now and you have the ability to unmute.

there he goes okay okay okay you can hear me right okay yep we're talking about two units two units i don't like any of the three proposed options for reviewing tenant applications They're either too expensive. What's this, $162 per month per unit? Area housing authority? Or owner reviewed? That can't be very fair or transparent.

Is that all, Mr. Miley?

H-S-H-A. Uh-huh. A-A-H should have expanded Whispering Oaks years ago. So I question their leadership. I like the option of using another agency in the county, Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation, as they're building a development next to Whispering Oaks that they could have expanded on, HAA. And they've also managed Montgomery Oaks for years, very successfully. They're the ones that know the need and have the procedures, in my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miley. Mayor, we have one more on Zoom. Okay. Take that now. Yeah, sure. It's either ACCRA or ACRA. You have the ability to unmute. You have the floor.

So this is Anita Cram.

Oh, hey.

And sorry, I think that was just part of my email address.

No problem.

Anyway, I really think third party is a really good idea with this. And if help of Ojai could do it, that would just be awesome. But I think, you know, whatever the best organization to do it is the one that should be chosen. I'd also like to bring up that to remind city council about the vacant housing tax that's been discussed but never acted on. because that could be a direct fund that could help with these low income housing issues. And you're talking about these applications, you know, that the city is going to have to pay for. You could have a fund for that that could accumulate money for just those types of issues. OK, thank you.

Thank you very much. And then we have to start. Please come up.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'd like to associate myself with Anita Cram's remarks that Help of Ojai could be a potential third-party vendor that you're looking for. Didn't we just talk about putting out requests for proposal for expenses when we talked about the grand jury report? Well, here's a chance to amend the previous way we did things. I heard Lucas say that he didn't reach out to Cabrillo because he wrote them off. Instead of Lucas calling somebody he knows and coming up with a number, I think instead we should put out a request for a proposal to the whole community. We should ask Cabrillo if it's true they don't want to participate, ask help of Ojai. ask Habitat for Humanity, all organizations who are doing this work, and we should find the best qualified, competent, kind of least expensive vendor and use them instead of just picking somebody and giving them the contract. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Stengel?

I'm confused, which is probably pretty easy. Blowing off Cabrillo as they're the ones who came to us and said, we want to build affordable housing. They're the ones who are going to get the rent. They're the ones who are going to be vetting the tenants. They're all supposed to be affordable. Why do we have to participate in paying anything?

You're mixing up the properties. We're not talking about Cabrillo.

Oh, I understand that. I understand that. But Cabrillo was brought up. All right. So I'm just following. The two to three units, no big deal. Right. That's fine. But because it was put on the table, we should do what Starchild is, is put it out to bid. And why are we bidding it anyway? I don't understand why we have to pay $162.50. to ensure that people are affordable that's the landlord's issue he's the one getting the rent we're not getting any of the rent so correct me if i'm wrong why are we having to pay just a question thank you okay well um we are just talking about two units of course at least right now here in this property yeah but i'm thinking this is a prototype for a future potentially yeah i get that

I think it's reasonable to assume that these two units are just these two units. I mean, to me, it is reasonable to assume that Cabrillo would not want to come in and do, you know, the background work for two units. That to me is a completely reasonable sort of deduction you know so I do understand the idea about starting a process improvement now but this is such a small project you know and we should just I think we should just move on with it and then work out you know for the larger projects how we would want to move forward Yeah, it'd be great to put it out for an RFP for two units, but the amount of time and energy it would take to do that for two units just doesn't seem to be a proper return on investment. I think you need to evaluate specifics as well as a general policy. And for me, the specifics of two units is the housing authority They're not a gamble, really. So that's kind of my perspective. My perspective remains the same, which is that we move forward with the Area Housing Authority and that we then look to figuring out what might be the best way in the future to move on with with larger projects and ask Cabrillo for their 49 units. Are they planning to do this? Is this something that they contract out as well? I think that this is a very special situation where a third party makes sense just to keep all things separate and all people happy. Once again, it's just not worth the headache that could possibly come to fruition if there was any sort of inclination that this had been unfairly done. We would be in a morass, and it's just not worth it.

Also, if we did go forward with these two units, you would then have some experience about working with them before you came to us again for the next one.

Right. That would be good. The other idea is that we could take this out for an RFP and really kind of vet it out. Move forward with this one, but then do the RFP for the ones moving forward.

I think we should ask... city attorney about the idea of whether this is something that we need to do?

So what I would say is under your current purchasing ordinance, contracts for less than $30,000 or less do not require competition. So if you're talking about approving a contract that has a value of Like $2,000? $2,000 a year or 200. Definitely less than five, yeah. You know, your purchasing ordinance doesn't require that. That's different from the contract with Dignity Moves, which had a value of $9.5 million. Of course. So I think that, you know, I don't think this implicates those same concerns exactly, but I do appreciate that there may be value in identifying your long-term strategy. separate and apart from what you do right now.

I would also, whatever we end up doing, ask Help of Ojai, would they be interested in this work? Just to ask.

I'm in favor of having that inquiry. Yeah. You didn't finish your thought, though. For me, the most important thing that we can do here is make sure that however we do this, our priority is that that city prioritization, the ordinance that we have that says, you know, OI residents, we have criteria are all spelled out, that gets followed. I envision if help of Ojai sees this as something that they can do, being more tuned into that than the area housing authority would be. And they might even be a little bit reluctant towards the idea of where, you know, We're not covering the whole area with what we're doing, but we're doing that purposefully.

If I may ask you, I'm looking at page 228 as one instance. Did anything strike you as not commensurate with that intention on the...

on the preference policy no okay it would see it fit the fit the no i yeah i'm i'm talking about who administers i get and so the priority is somebody who's going to be really good at doing this and we have i'm i'm not going to say that i like this idea but as long as we're talking about things it has come up in the past, and I'm really not in favor of creating all kinds of commissions, but we have discussed the idea of whether we should have a housing commission that would kind of perform some of these kind of administrative review process, almost like an ombudsman. You know. I was just talking to somebody about our tenant protection ordinance, and I'm just wondering whether it's ever been invoked.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would say on average we probably have one a week, and I don't know if I can speak on, can I speak on things that,

That's not agendized.

We should bring that back as a future agenda. There is some things that are in the movement. I just can't... Yeah, they're not on the agenda.

Can we get an agendized report? I'm interested in hearing it.

I am too, interested in what is bubbling up and how it's bubbling up. You know, with the new federal housing law that was just passed because Trump slept through his veto. Um... We now have at least some sort of limitation on private equity buying up single family dwellings. Anyway, all of this is a conversation to have and it has bubbled up on occasion about a housing commission of some sort or someone who can be an ombudsman or speak to this.

Well, at least for tonight it seems to me that the request is one is to approve the contract accrue approve the agreement language and then the second would be. If we wanted to put we can keep them separate or and have the developer manager third party assessment but go with option number two the 250 profile I saw you correctly that's the one you opt for.

seems to be the most reasonable yeah and it would be just for these two units and nothing correct okay and then yeah and then we'd be asking uh and we ask help of ohio if they are interested in performing that service yes

They are. I didn't hear from her. They are? Oh, okay. I mean, I need to talk to her about it. No, she wanted to make clear she's not watching. She texted you? Okay. She told me that they would be interested in talking about this.

Okay.

Okay, so that's the motion.

It's got a direct dial. To the commissioner.

Okay, so that's the motion.

I'll be honest, I was not as clear on the motion. Could I ask Director Seibert to please spit it out, or City Attorney Burgess? Okay.

Well, I'm saying, so what I, tell me if I didn't get this right. So that we are, if I'm proposing, the motion is to accept the rental agreement as written, And the second would be to authorize the third party vetting with option two, which is the per file fee.

So it's approved recommendations number two and three. Okay, two and three. And four.

Okay.

In the staff report. Thank you. But include with number three, recommendation number three, that the city select option number two and also request additional information from Help of Ojai regarding their ability to provide those services.

Okay, thanks. Option number two, or what's referred to as scenario two. Scenario two. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Thank you for the clarification, I understand.

Thanks. We need a second.

Roll call. Okay. Council Member Lange. Yes. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Meng. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Council Member Ruhl.

Yes.

Thanks for being here.

Onward. We are on number 14, the Ad Hoc Committee Formation for a Community Land Trust.

And I'm going to turn things over to Mr. Montgomery for a very brief staff report.

It should be brief and sandwiched in between Lucas's items. So I have for you a report. It came from your May 12th action as a council during our Habitat for Humanity discussion to return separately with an item to create an ad hoc committee. So we prepared a brief report asking you to discuss and select two, and we recommend that it's a six-month term. Any questions?

I think we seem to pick two.

Yeah, I have a question. I did get an inquiry whether it would be appropriate to have any community members on the committee.

My recommendation would be that we not include community members only because at that point it's no longer a pure ad hoc. One of the benefits of an ad hoc is that the members of the ad hoc can work together without going through the full noticing and public engagement process. Not that this wouldn't have its own public engagement. I think the work out of the ad hoc would become part of a fully vetted public process. But I think by adding members of the community, we turn it from being an ad hoc into something different. And if that's council's intent, we can do that. But I think the benefit of an ad hoc is it provides you with a little more agility and flexibility to kind of dig in and do the work.

Yeah, I'm just asking. That's a fair question. Yeah, that's a good answer. Fair question.

Well, before we get into it, is there any comments online?

No, Mayor.

Thank you. Just throwing it out there. Happy to not be selected, but I would suggest, Mr. Whitman, you should be on it because you've done all this work. I'm offering myself, but I'm also open to suggestions.

I was also going to nominate Councilmember Whitman, and actually the mayor being on it makes sense to me.

yeah I mean I had the exact same okay idea the only thing I would say is that I would like I'd like to have some structure to this you know I don't know if it's an outline first but this is I don't know what the ad hoc is going to come back with but this is an in-depth dive I mean there's legal ramifications there's alternatives there's it's not just you know do we want a land trust it's like what does a land trust look like what are the legal requirements of a land trust how would that work in Ojai you know how does it work in other places I mean it's it's a complex question And I don't know if, you know, some sort of outline or process before starting it is warranted. But, you know, if it were me, I would be kind of out there in, okay, where do I even start, right? Because even if I were to do the research, right, what are the questions I need to ask? What are the implications I need to understand? What are the recommendations I need to bring back? Those are complex questions.

So what I will say, I think I have an easy answer maybe or a recommendation. One of the communities that was evaluated in bringing the information to the city council and council member Whitman, you know, did some of the legwork and even gathering or identifying this community. But there's another Southern California community that did go through a process for this. And they actually shared all of their process documents that they went through. So, you know, I think one of my recommendations might be and also in the previous staff report We identified a number of the considerations that the the community land trust would need to evaluate and some of that was taken from those documents so I mean it may be that the first task of the ad hoc is to kind of sit down with some of that information and come up with a kind of a work plan and kind of a timeline for how we would evaluate that. And that could be something that the ad hoc reports back to the council on.

And there's also a state and a national organization that I'm sure would want to nudge us in the right direction. That's nice.

Yeah, so I think there is a guide. There's a model for how to do this. But I think it would, given that the end result of this is going to be something that could be fairly significant for the council to implement and approve. To grapple with. Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense that there could be some interim report outs from the ad hoc committee. Sounds good. Thank you.

Any objections? All right.

Do we need a motion? No, go ahead, please. Okay, I'll make a motion that we nominate the two Andes, Mayor Gilman and Councilmember Whitman, to form the ad hoc committee.

I second that.

Okay, all right. Roll call. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem May. Yes. Councilmember Whitman. Yes. Councilmember Lange. Yes. Councilmember Rule. Yes.

Yay, that's awesome. Okay, last concept review building code options return.

And Mr. Cyber will bring us home. Another one.

This is another one that we've been looking forward to.

I'll keep it brief. The information you have here. So first of all, this is coming on the heels forefront of the action that this body took December of last year. In that, the discussion was they asked to bring back additional local amendments that would work with the AB 130 code freeze that has basically taken place. So the code freeze itself, as you can see in the report, prohibits really any California building code amendments until June 1st of 2031. There are limited exceptions to that and I've highlighted those here. There's about six in total You know looking this over kind of at a high level And I think it kind of went through the conversation just briefly during December was potential home hardening pieces So we took a look at a community that's that's up north the city of Piedmont. That's also identified in here They've done some of those pieces And then we did a little bit of an evaluation as to whether or not the city would actually qualify for some of these pieces. And that kind of litmus test piece seemed to draw yeses, but then one potential no that potentially creates an argument towards a yes, given that, for instance, the most direct one is the adoption of a climate action plan. Well, that's in the works, and certainly we can identify that as a piece that's moving forward. Some of the other pieces that are great litmus tests are obviously the flux path. We already had existing gas lawn equipment bands. In addition to that, there's a gas chainsaw band as well, with exceptions that are pretty limited in terms of what we look at. So there's certainly options and those options from a home hardening standpoint, if we just focus on that, talk about things such as roof and gutters, vents and openings, windows and doors, siding and walls, and then attach structures. So those are kind of the high level pieces for a conversation. This is a concept, obviously. So this was meant to bring back information and then invoke some conversation and then see where it goes from there. Thank you.

My question is, there's a great list here, and obviously home hardening is a big umbrella that a lot could fall under. Is there something that struck you from Piedmont or otherwise that you thought, oh, this would be a great first instance to try to bring something more concrete?

You know, it's interesting. When I was looking at each of these, I thought to myself, which one is, like, the cheapest option where if you were to extend an olive branch to say, hey, we're looking at this as a program. There's an incentive potentially tied to it. The... The one that I was looking at was the non-combustible gutter covers. That one, when I saw that, I mean, the projects that I'm going out and doing finals for have them right now. And obviously, there's many homes that are way before... They don't have, and it kind of gets into that FlexPath conversation of there's lots of homes that are just underserved and highly inefficient. Well, there's lots of homes that just don't have that home hardening piece. This is one of those that just feels like low-hanging fruit. Okay. Right. Pretty low cost. It's something we could probably bring back from a modeling standpoint. Thank you for that. Yep.

What? Is there anything in the FlexPath program that is gonna run into problems with the restrictions?

with the restriction for oh that we can't do any changes till 2031 or no the flex packet path is okay because we took that forward before right so that one's okay good and just as an update to the flex path we have received approval from building commission and we are looking to get that same approval from the energy commission oh great They wouldn't look at it until they got the official nod from the building commission We received that in May and now Energy Commission is looking at that currently Okay Any other questions?

I have one public comment.

I think it must be Larry Because this affects us putting it out on a draft form on a website that shows exactly how it's going to affect us financially, because it looks to be, if I'm correct, between 35 and 135,000 for changes. Am I correct on that?

Well, keep going.

OK. Well, for things like that, OK. We did the other one, I believe, with the electrical, which is 300 feet and 1,000 feet. And that inches us forward 30, 40 homes a year out of 4,000. So that's good for, because that was your number, 30. And so we're looking at 100 years to get the houses and apartments changed. This is, if you spend 2035 on 135, you have to do this and have to do that. This is dribs and drabs. I mean, this is, we'll do it, get it done, get it done, eventually. I mean, again, this is more, to me, more performative and virtuous if you're going to make the town fire-hardened, do it upon sale, do it upon renewal, or just, this is like, And again, it's going to take how many years? I mean, I don't know how many people are spending $35,000 or $135,000, but if it's happening, great. But is it going to be another $30,000 per year? Another $40,000 per year? Fine. Maybe we'll get the whole town done in 50 years. Great. How about incentives to get stuff done now? Reduce fees. Waive fees for fire hardening. You have a million dollars. Spread it around. You want to get grants? Get grants for fire hardening from insurance companies or something. But we can't wait 100 years to fire harden the town. It may not be here next year. Well, God forbid. But the point is we need to do something a little bit more with a little sense of urgency. You know, like, gee, another Thompson fire? That's only been, let's see, nine years? Do we have to wait another nine? So in which case, 360 or 500 houses, 400 houses might be done in 10. But not 40 a year, 50 a year. I mean, we either do it or don't do it, but do it upon sale. I was in real estate. You put it on the buyer. I'm sorry. This gets my house done. This is just the way it is. Code enforcement, fire hardening, fire laws. It takes decades to get this stuff done. I don't think we have enough time. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, it seems like what I heard from this body is the million dollars set aside in the budget for fire mitigation would potentially be used for things like, let's say, screens and attics and all that. So the incentive program or even the purchasing or whatever we end up doing there would be from that. But you're talking about something that's not that, but you're saying, what could we also add that is the low-hanging fruit that you're talking about? Right.

I think you're hitting on the piece that was being mentioned. There could be some sort of a program that could be brought forward. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And, I mean, council's already set aside some money for that, so that totally makes sense. No, I think it would be. And maybe it's more than just the screens. Maybe as we're evaluating this and we come back with a program, it ends up being a menu of options that kind of incentivize it. I love that.

Well, and we have actually on our working agenda on the master list of agendas, that is going to be an item that comes back in August. Is that correct? Or is it August or September?

We have a workshop in August that we let's bring that one forward, though, to say, let's fast track that idea. That kind of incentivizing idea or purchasing idea. Yeah. So you're looking for some direction to say what to do first? I'm looking for some direction.

So if there is an interest in the incentive program, essentially, but there's also an interest in workshopping at first,

I don't know. And I think the item tonight is not so much about the incentive program. It's more about whether council would like to direct staff to bring back a concept review on a local building code amendment. to address home hardening.

That's probably a better way to put it. I think there's also, I'm not sure that I would call it a concept review at that point, because if we're getting direction tonight to move forward with a couple of these items, or at least bring forward a small menu for consideration, it moves into... Because there is still the piece of making the argument because we're going beyond.

I'm just suggesting that we won't be coming forward, I think, after this meeting with an ordinance on first reading. We would probably be bringing it back first for discussion. No, I agree with that. That's probably too soon.

I love the menu of items idea, though. That's really good.

Yeah, I think so too. And I'm happy to make a motion to ask direct staff to to bring a menu of items forward to for council consideration for local amendments to the building code.

Second that

Understood.

This is also really, this whole night has been some things that we've been thinking about for a while and here they are, which is really neat.

Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say, we've discussed this and this is one of our main priorities. Thank you for that. So thank you, yeah.

I think the one clarification on the motion is are we focused right now on home hardening? It sounded like we were.

I think we need to be. I think so.

Yes, because we have the flex path, and so I think the flex path is our climate, meets the climate needs. I think home hardening would be the goal.

Menu of options related to home hardening is how it should be put into the motion, please. Yes, thanks. Got it.

I have it recorded. Full call. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Council Member Whitman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Meng. Yes. Council Member Lange. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes.

all right does anybody that's our last item any council member reports or future agenda items yeah i've got a couple yeah future all right agenda items

I think this is probably on our list, but I am interested in hearing a concept of what is legally viable in terms of a vacancy tax. I know I've seen lots of different types.

We do have that, Councilmember, on August 25th meeting.

good wasn't that the second home tax that was quick well yeah okay second home tax vacancy tax i believe they're synonymous okay correct yep we do have it yeah you don't feel anonymous you guys they might not and i'm i'm also uh gonna regret doing this but i'm gonna bite on what mr steingold said and why don't we come back i'm asking for a uh concept review on whether we could make it a mandatory condition of sale. The employer figured that out, that Ember screens have been installed to each home that goes through a sale. Now, whoever we put that on, I'm interested in all ideas, if it's on the buyer, if it's on the seller. I'm also interested in Some aspect of the home hardening, but I'm a little bit reluctant to say anything about that until the state is kind of more affirmative about what they're going to do. But we could potentially, I mean, maybe start with that.

I like that.

Some of those home hardening as a mandatory condition of sale. Yeah. Once, well, let's just stick with the ember screens. That's a good one.

Mayor, is that a second to his request? Yes, second for me. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

And I'll add one from Mr. Steingold tonight, and that is looking at having the agenda out in time for publication for the Valley News.

Yes, I'd like to point out to Council, we can do that. I'm going to tell you this, though, with what you're just doing here, adding future agenda items, that does not help us in this effort. And I will tell you in June, we had how many council meetings? five six so if you want to do if you want to do something like that i'm going to tell you we're going to go to less meeting and that's just how it's going to happen because we need more time i know we make it look simple and seamless to crank out these reports and the packets but it's a lot of effort guys and well if you want okay i'll retract it i'll retract it we can do it but we have slowed down the pace no no no and i actually i'm i'm

Maybe what we need to do is it's a concept review or a discussion item about resetting our let Ben explain to us what the limitations are and what the ramifications are but I am very much in favor of that and actually this is kind of related but somebody did say something to me yesterday about how sometimes we got people who have shown up for a specific item but they're at the end and they're not there by the time we hear their item and that did happen tonight because we had a couple of people show up and I'm almost certain that they were here to talk about the affordable. And so I think we ought to, I know we always do say is, you know, is everybody okay with the agenda? And I think maybe we need to be a little bit more specific and pause and think about, okay, is there a group of people who have come, and can we move them up so that they can talk and then go home?

We should always, even tonight, we moved up the Green Coalition because we knew that people were coming. That's an example, but we could do it on the fly here and just look out in the audience. We pretty much know who's here.

Right, we could do a show of hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think also, I mean, I thought this, time-specific, like moving things along a little bit quicker, and I think there are ways to do that. One of them, you know, that is done in other places is that you have no decision meeting, so it's a discussion, and people can go away and come back and think about it. So that there's more like a presentation and it gets closer to a time specific. It gives people two opportunities to speak to things. The first time is a clarifying time. The second time is a final clarifying and a voting.

So I think you guys are saying the same thing. I think a concept review item to have this discussion would be very healthy and we can kind of go through different options and what's involved and what's possible. We're happy to talk about it.

Yeah, and time-specific.

You know, I get testy because I just don't want to disappoint you guys. And that's the problem. I don't want to.

Well, I asked you, I said, what would it take to meet every week, even if the alternate ones were workshops, no decisions? Well, I mean, we almost do. Actually, I counted. In 2025, we met 10 times more than the council in 2024. Yeah. That's it. It's true.

It's a roundabout way to get your way.

Well, not intended, but the manager suggested that might be another employee. That's the conversation to have.

But we can thoughtfully have it. We can go through it. And if you, okay, so just real quick, I know this is not an interview. No, it's okay. But if you just had a simple presentation or a very, very, like, you know, just like a workshop, or we're not expected to bring all the information.

I think the future agenda item would be bringing back kind of a concept review on this workshopping discussion. Yes, I think that's good.

Let's do it. And the city attorney and I today talked about the idea that we could have some work sessions where we're discussing in front of the public things, but it isn't so much like a debate, decision-making, but it's fleshing out issues on items that we know are going to take more time and deliberation. and then that would give them the chance to formulate more of their ideas before it comes back for decision. I'd welcome that.

That's great. And that could be part of the same meeting. Yeah, the audience could speak more at length, too, and there's all kinds of ways. Okay, so we have it. Anything else? We're adjourned, and with our break, see you guys in August. Have a great vacation. Yes.