City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, hello everyone. Welcome to the Tuesday, August 11th regular City Council meeting. Roll call please Mr. Montgomery.

Mayor Gilman. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Banks. Here. Councilmember Rule. Here. Councilmember Lang. Here. Councilmember Whitman. Here. Mr. Montgomery would you lead us in the pledge please? Of course. Thank you. Honorable Mayor, Council, members of the community, ready to begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. On the agenda, I have one change I would like to propose, and that is I would like to move up number 14 to be our first discussion item, so it will come in front of number eight, just so that our Chamber of Commerce representative cannot stay on the line for hours and hours, if everybody's okay with that.

I'm good with that.

Any other changes to the agenda? All right, no objections. We'll go forward. Any commission reports? None received, Mayor. Okay. City Manager's report.

Mayor, just a couple of items this evening. First of all, I just want to thank all of our public safety folks, first responders who participated in the National Night Out last Wednesday at Libby Park. It was a great success, well attended. We got some great footage, thanks to our own Christian ,, which is posted on social media. So just thanks, Chief, for everything that you did to make that happen. Great event. Secondly, this is just a little item that maybe a lot of you are aware of. Mayor, you and I met with the representative from the governor's office on Friday of last week, and during that meeting, he let us know that the state is pausing the Zone Zero implementation for the time being. and he didn't have a lot of details about that. He said this was in light of public comment and concern received, so we're gonna continue to monitor that. I asked him for, is there a position paper or news? No, there's nothing yet that's come out. I searched around, couldn't find anything. So we'll keep you posted, but that's something he wanted to share with us. Thank you.

Thank you. So public communications, these are items that are not on the agenda. And I have a few cards here, and then we'll go online after that. Ron Silarzano, please. P.S., check out this new podium right here. Look how beautiful it is. I was checking it out. Thank you, James Hahn. That's amazing. Yes.

All right. Well, thank you, members of council. My name is Ron Solorzano. I am the regional librarian for the Ojai Valley. And yeah, so as of this month, as of the first of the month, the Ojai Library has closed for renovations. We are doing some packing and taking care of things to make sure that we're ready for construction to begin At this point in about a week. They're gonna be coming in so a couple of things I wanted to highlight with that going on the first is that as of this Thursday the 13th the mobile library will be visiting the Ojai community farmers market every week on Thursday at 3 o'clock and There will also be a story time at 3.30, and you can utilize all of the regular mobile library services there. That includes getting a library card or checking out items that they have there. You can talk to the staff there about other things that you might be able to do with the mobile library as well. So that's going to be every Thursday, 3 p.m., at the Ojai Community Farmers Market. The other things I wanted to highlight is that if you're going just by distance, the next closest of our library branches is the Miners Oaks Library. And that library, in addition to, again, having all of our regular library services and some of our staff out there as well helping out, also has something that is a little less common, which is express hours. There are express hours at the Miner's Oaks Library every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you are a library user who has updated your card to an express card, you can use your card to scan in and enter the Miner's Oaks Library on Saturday during those hours. The library doesn't have library staff present at that time. It's a security guard only. But you can, again, pick up holds. You can check items out from the library. Anything else you might need to do, just get in from the heat. You can do that at the Miners Oaks Library with an express card from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. That's all I have for now, and thank you all so much.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. I'd like to just add something, which is I just learned that maybe it's more out in the public than I'm aware of, but in addition to the library remodel, they're totally reimagining the courtyard in front of the library. They're going to do native plant installation and cultural aspects to it. It's going to look totally different than it does today.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Stay tuned for more information on that project as it develops. They're going to be looking to get the word out a little more soon.

Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Next, I have Nicholas Wiseman and then Candice Mennegan. Thank you.

Good evening, city council members, Mayor Gilman, and city staff. My name is Nicholas Wiseman. I'm the president of the Ojai Film Society. I'm here tonight speaking on behalf of our volunteer board to help ensure that this 38-year-old valley institution can continue presenting free summer films at Libby Bowl for our community. As you may know, the Ojai Film Society began programming at the Bowl coming out of the pandemic with the simple idea to make use of the Ojai beautiful summer nights and create a place where community could come together for outdoor films. At the time, former Parks and Recreation lead Renee Peace and the city generously invited us to use Libby Bowl as our venue. Now in our fifth year, the summer series has grown into a meaningful tradition for all ages, with 27 screenings to date and an annual attendance of over 3,000 people. You can still attend this summer. We're showing Arrival on August 20th and Jurassic Park on August 27th. The reason we're here tonight is to request that the new Libby Bowl management agreement, and specifically the challenge date system within it, be reviewed by the city council in the September regular council meeting. The Ojai Film Society is joined in this request by the Ojai Band, also known as the Ojai Summer Band, which has been performing at Libby Park for 35 years, the Ojai Pops Orchestra, now in its 10th year, performing on Sundays at full, and the Ojai Storytelling Festival, which has served this community each October for 26 years. All of us with deep roots in Ojai and long histories of creating accessible cultural programming for thousands of members of the public for reduced costs or free. Under the current challenge date system, community organizations cannot reliably confirm dates far enough in advance to properly plan, fundraise, contract with artists and vendors, promote events, and serve the public. Under the current Tier 1 process from May to October, a date may not open until 60 days before their event, followed by an additional 48-hour right of refusal time, which puts most organizations outside of the city's designated window for fee waivers. Prior to this new system, organizations could submit their dates in September the prior year, giving them 9 to 10 months to plan. Events at the scale of the Libby Bowles capacity require months of advance work, and the uncertainty created by the new challenge date system makes responsible planning extremely difficult. We believe the experience of these four organizations is exactly the kind of community feedback that is relevant for the city council members to review this ahead of the November 15th deadline. so our request tonight is straightforward we are asking the city council to begin that review now rather than waiting until november to reconsider the challenge date system that the community organizations can request and secure dates with enough lead time to plan and to consider recognizing the ohio film society the ohio band the ohio pops and the ohio storytelling festival as legacy ohio organizations with consistent annual dates and and fee waivers. This would equate to 20 dates of the total 180 days available in Tier 1. All right.

Thank you. We got it. And you submitted a good document that's detailed. So we have that in here. OK. Thank you. All right. Candice Mennegan, please. Thank you. And then Randy Cox.

Good evening, Mayor Gilman and City Council members. My name is Candace Minigan. I am on the board of Friends of the Santa Clara River and Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources. Friends of the Santa Clara River is a local nonprofit that protects and does natural resource protection and conservation, as well as cultural resource protection. across both Ventura and Los Angeles counties. We are also a member of a larger group called the Biodiversity Working Group, and that has developed a community vision and policy platform to support biodiversity across California's Central Coast. And really, I'm here today to say thank you, because I believe a few weeks ago, the city actually did adopt a biodiversity resolution. We started with the adoption of these resolutions in the county of Santa Barbara, and we really are now focusing on Ventura County, and we're happy that you have been early adopters along with the city of Fillmore. And I just wanted to say that we heartened and we are looking forward to working with you, what you said about the nature garden in front of the library. It's these opportunities by adopting policies like that that we can really embolden and mainstream biodiversity into city planning on a larger scale, but also on the smaller scales. And so I'm just here today to say thank you on behalf of those 50 organizations across the Central Coast that are doing this type of work. to protect our biodiversity during a biodiversity collapse and during global climate change. And so the action that the city took was really a big one and a welcome one, and we just are very grateful. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, thank you. Yeah, that's very nice. Randy Coggin, please, and then Pat Tumamite.

Good evening, Mayor and Council and staff. While I previously sent you an email to each of you, I'd like to read this into the record for the benefit of those that are here tonight and those watching online. There are significant concerns that are being raised in the community regarding the lack of information about evacuation planning for the city in the event of a evacuation-level major emergency such as a wildfire, earthquake, flood, or the like. As you know, evacuation planning is the responsibility of the Ventura County Office of Emergency Services, OES, which is a department of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office. While actual evacuation routes cannot be determined until the time, type, and location of the event are known, there are some actions that can be taken that I believe can alleviate some of the community's concerns. Accordingly, I'd like to make the following recommendation to the city council. One, the city contact the sheriff's office and as part of the city's contract with them, request that OES perform a scenario-based evacuation planning for the city. If this has already been done, then OES can simply share this with the city and it can be shared with the residents. With proper caveats, the results of this scenario-based planning can then be shared with the city's residents to illustrate that the city is being proactive in this regard. I also sent you some information about C-SAFE. And C-SAFE is a comprehensive framework for developing emergency evacuation simulations to enhance pre-disaster preparedness. This isn't rocket science. A number of organizations are doing it. Two, that the city acquire and test message boards can be deployed if any of the four primary evacuation routes to the city are impassable, providing directions for evacuees to passable evacuation routes or temporary refuge areas. I believe that in completing these steps along with the city, hopefully due to Ben's efforts, obtaining the grant to install the two planned warning sirens, This will go a long way in alleviating the community's concern about evacuation planning for the city of Ojai. And in the couple minutes I have left, I just want to make a comment to what Ben said about the state and Zone Zero. Those of us that are close to it knew this wasn't going to happen. The state's going to probably be two or three years from doing anything. But a reminder, and I don't see anybody here... fire tonight because Nick, I think, is on the Fox fire up in Washington State, but the county has its own zone zero. So even without the state, there is the county's own zero to follow. And again, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Coggin. I appreciate it. Pat Tumamite, please, and then Kara Martin.

good evening council mayor Andy Glimm the reason why I'm here tonight is to have a grievance about this consultation list that the city has with Native American people such as myself and my sister Julie Since we were, since my sister and I have basically left the Barbarino Venturino Band of Chumash here in the valley, the new chairman has asked the city council to remove us from the consultation list of the city. And beings that were local residents and people who have the experience and the knowledge of the valley were surprised It's really beside us that we're not involved. We no longer receive any notices of projects that are deemed sensitive to cultural resources in the valley. Some of the work that's being done now, especially this one dignity project that's going on, they're having problems with finding native people to do the monitoring. We had one person that they were able to contact, a relative of ours, Frank, and because he's not on the list, they couldn't hire him. So my sister and I, they certainly aren't gonna hire us because we're not on the list as well. And it's not like we're not involved. We're definitely involved with the goes on here in the Valley. You know, and I find it really biased and actually hypocritical of the situation because it's funny that I received this award of preservation in 2024. For what reason, you know? Was it a going away gift? No, I'm still here. We still exist within the city of Ojai. And I feel that, you know, the non-residents that don't know this valley don't know it like my sister and myself. So it's besides me to feel and think that the city would follow within a policy that basically doesn't involve your most important expertise with issues of cultural resources and archeological sites and knowledge of the history of the valley. You know, Ojai is a native Chumash name, and it represents our people. And I would certainly like to see change come within the city and address this with, you know, with this group, the Barbarian Venturino Band of Chumash Indians. And, you know, ask Matthew to...

Thank you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Kara Martin, please. Yes, did you have something? Oh, go ahead.

No, no, we were looking at each other.

Because I'm just, when did this happen and why and how?

And can we have a discussion about this would be my request to get information.

Yeah, I would recommend this could be a future discussion. There is a city council resolution that governs how the list is established and the city coordinates with the chair to establish the list. So we can put this on a future agenda if you like.

I would much appreciate that. Yes, I think it's a discussion worth having. Thank you. Great.

Thank you for bringing that up. Karen Martin, please. Thank you. And then Russell Spinney.

Good evening, Mayor Gilman and members of the City Council. My name is Kara Martin, and I am director of Performances to Grow On, the nonprofit that produces the Ojai Storytelling Festival. I'm here tonight to talk about how the city's contract with Ojai Valley Music has affected our organization, specifically our ability to plan the Ojai Storytelling Festival and hold it at Libby Bowl, where it has taken place since 2000, the year 2000. Putting on an event like this takes extensive advance planning. We book performers of national and international standing, arrange their travel and lodging, build out our marketing for months ahead of time, sell tickets, line up volunteers and vendors, pursue sponsorships and grants, and commit funds long before the festival itself begins. This year as we started marketing on our usual schedule I learned that another nonprofit had been given permission to use the bowl the same weekend that we have used it for years Ojai Valley music had granted the use of the bowl for a fundraiser without following the standard standard application process required of everyone else as a result we've had to relocate our Friday and Saturday night shows but there's a deeper problem the city's agreement with the Ojai Valley Music allows it to deny any groups except those with legacy status the use of the bowl up to 60 days before a scheduled event from May through October That means nothing can be finalized until 60 days out. We had already begun booking performers for 2028 when we learned of this rule. Instead of planning confidently several years in advance, as we used to, we now can't even count on a full year. Not knowing our venue or expenses early enough creates a cascade of problems. It delays when we can contract performers, apply for grants, approach sponsors with a real budget. It pushes back our advertising and tickets. It makes securing housing for the performers harder, and it undermines our ability to make sound financial decisions. For international performers, it's a deal breaker. 60 days simply isn't enough to apply for and receive a US work visa. A simple solution for all of this is to grant us legacy status, along with the four organizations named in the contract, Ojai Music Festival, the tennis tournament, the Lavender Festival, and Ojai Day. The Ojai Story and Telling Festival is a local nonprofit that has been part of this community for 26 years. Every dollar we raise goes straight back into producing the festival and supporting Performances to Grow On's arts education program. We recognize the city has a responsibility to manage Libby Bowl well and love what Ojai Valley music has brought to Ojai. But I hope the city will take a close look at the unintended impact this agreement has had on longstanding local nonprofits events. and work with us so that organizations like ours can keep planning with confidence and remain part of OI's cultural life.

Thank you very much. I would say to Ms. Martin, but also to Mr. Wiseman, it will be something that we will be bringing forward, just so you're clear. Russell Spinney, please, and then Scott Weiss.

Thank you, everybody, for this opportunity. It's my first time to be able to speak here. Welcome. And in support of Patrick Tumamate, who you just heard speak, and his candidacy to be re-added to the consultation list along with his sister's candidacy and other local Native consultants. Who am I? Very quickly, I'm a PhD in modern German history. This is my 30th year of teaching at 11 different institutions, universities, high schools, in places like Baltimore, Santa Fe, and here. It's my eighth year here in Ojai and at the Thatcher School, I'm the head of the history department and the global studies program there. In these eight years that we've been here, lots of local connections working with coaching my own kids in the AYSO program and volunteering for OIS when they are in that program. but particularly more recently with the Women of the Valley Project and the indigenous work that I've been doing along with other work with Matthew Vestuto, who I've worked with before in our science program, and Patrick and Julie Tumamate in history and ethnobotany with Lanny Kaufer, who will speak here later in a few minutes. where we have now opened up Thatcher's classroom as a native classroom for Lanny, for Patrick, and for others to work with people, to work with people in our community to learn more about native history, ethnobotany, and other things. I do not know why he was removed from the list. He's asked me to speak on his behalf, and so I have a few things just to share, both historical and personal and professional. In my work, I've worked in Santa Fe, where I started working with indigenous communities and developing indigenous studies. So at Thatcher, I've continued those things. And what I've learned along the way is that historical exclusion of indigenous peoples from democracy is a long result of all this. And I've seen divisions in different native communities that I've worked with, like the Pueblos, and I sense also here in the local Chumash band. So I was surprised to learn that the Tumamates are not on the list for local cultural preservation work. Also, there's that history of divide and conquer and working with one group of native leaders at the expense of others. And because of this, it is something I think that is very important to be very aware of and be mindful of. And I also want to support all indigenous efforts in those ways. And with the two inmates personally, I have spent the last few years getting to know them, meeting with them for coffee in the park, to build trust, to listen to them, and to support their efforts. Both are cultural knowledge keepers. Their father, Vincent, there's a trail named after him, and there's long, deep roots here. And I know of Patrick's recent award from the city for his experience in cultural preservation, and have seen him doing that monitoring work at Thatcher. And with Julie, as many of you may or may not know, she is a cultural resource in the valley for the Chumash world, especially for children that she reaches out to and works with a lot. And she's even been recognized, and you can find her in a National Geographic a few years back where she was representing Ohio indigenous work here. and I speak with passion, and that's coming forth, and I apologize for that emotion, but it reveals, I think, the importance of this, and so I just ask honorable council members that you would consider this history, and you consider these people in your work. Thank you, sir.

Scott Weiss, please, and then Clay Creasy.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Gilman and city council members and city staff. My name is Scott Weiss. I've been with the Ojai Summer Band since its inception 35 years ago. I'm the co-manager, trumpet player, and one of the conductors. I'm also the founder and musical director of the Ojai Pops Concert Series and the Ojai Pops Orchestra. This year will be our 10th anniversary season. There are four longstanding valuable community organizations before you asking for legacy status. We're asking to include fee waiver and priority scheduling for our events as part of the legacy status. The Ojai Band has been creating free Norman Rockwell-like concerts in the Park Bandstand for the last 35 years on Wednesday nights. This Wednesday night, the concert will not take place. It was preempted by the Gypsy Kings, an Ojai Valley music event. This should not happen again. The Ojai Pops concert series has been waiting for the 60-day window for our October 4th concert date to be released. It was released on August 4th, 60 days before. But the problem with this is we have an event in the end of September. So we actually have only 26 days to do our booking of events, to do our marketing, to do our planning, and it's just an impossible way to work, basically. It'll be very hard to get anything, ads in the newspaper, let alone get all of the groups booked. We've brought a woodwind quintet, a professional woodwind quintet up from Los Angeles. We have a French horn quartet that comes from Santa Barbara County. We have the Pops Orchestra's about 45 musicians with singers and we have jazz groups that have presented as well. In 35 years there have been numerous city council members, city managers and city attorneys. We hope that these organizations will outlive all of you and all of us. You have the opportunity and responsibility to shine and to provide for a vibrant future for these four organizations by providing legacy status to these organizations. We ask that you pass a resolution to provide legacy status at your next city council meeting I've provided Weston with a document that has a draft resolution that I'd like you to look at and also a draft section E of the contract challenge system. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Weiss. Clay Creasy, please, and then Lanny Copper.

Mayor and City Council, I've shared a document that Weston has taken and it shows the pacing of financial reporting that has happened over the past several years in Ojai going back to 2018, 2019. If you look at these numbers, we have two major financial reports that we issue, one to the state of California and one published generally the financial statement, audited statement each year. As you can see from this report, for the first three years in my charts, from 2018 through 2021, we were pretty much publishing on time. After that, what you see is an accelerating pace of late reporting. The State of California report, they call it Financial Transaction Report, or FTR. We used to be on time, which is January 31st, back in the good old days through 2021. But since then, we were 48, 62, 74, now 181 days late. So the last four years, it's been late and getting later. And we owe the state a relatively small fine when you're late. And frankly, I don't even know for sure whether they assess it or not. But in theory, there is some financial consequence with being late. The financial statements, the audited statements, have also been later in an accelerating way, your policy, the financial policy that you adopt, as well as the state guidelines say for each fiscal year, you should have that statement published by the end of December. So year ends June 30th, you've got six months to publish. We are still in a state where we haven't even published the audit from the year that ended June 30th of 2025. So you're over a year late with that. I'd love to point fingers and find villains, but the truth is I think life is just getting a lot more complicated. And this accelerating trend predates your new city manager. It predates all your finance directors. And by the way, you're on your fourth one now in the last 17 or... 15 months, excuse me. So my recommendation, if I was CFO of this city, I would have two job requisitions in now, one for a financial planning manager and another for an accounting manager, because you're obviously understaffed. Maybe in the old days, five people was the right number. Now it's obviously not. And if you go four years and it gets worse every year, at some point, you can't blame turnover anymore. You just have a basic structural underengineering of this staff. And the final notion is if there's a job that takes five people and there's only four people to do it, those four are going to be pretty stressed, and one or more is going to drop out. Then you've got three and you've got two, and the whole thing falls apart. So add two people to finance is my message. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Lanny Cofford, please, and then Delaney Labar.

Hi. Hi. Mayor Gilman, council, thank you for this opportunity. My name's Lanny Coffer. I have been leading ethnobotanical interpretive walks and hikes in Ojai since 1976, so celebrating 50 years this year. I first moved to Ojai in 1969, so I will never be able to say I'm a native. But I've seen a lot here. And because of the nature of the work that I do, ethnobotanical work, I'm here on behalf of Patrick and Julie Tumamayat. I knew their father, Vincent. In fact, there's been discussion about legacy events in the bowl. My brother, Michael Koffer, and his friend, Kerry Sterling, co-founded the Ojai Bowl Full of Blues, which occurred here for 25 years. And they started a legacy tradition of asking Vincent Tumamite to lead a Chumash blessing to open that event. something that's become almost a routine thing when you see city events, nonprofit events, private events, this interest in acknowledging that the Chumash are still here and asking their blessing on the uses of our land here. So continuing that tradition, all these years have been Patrick and Julie Tumamayat. And as Pat said, there's nobody that knows this valley, that knows the Chumash culture and traditions, that's trained as archaeological monitors, as cultural consultants, the way that they are. So when I learned that they had been removed from the consultant list, I was shocked. And I just had to come down here and find out how that happened. So I was hoping I could even get an answer tonight, but I know things have to take their time to work out. But I don't know what's going on within that organization. And that doesn't really concern me. What concerns me is these are the two most qualified people who have given of their time and their lives to this community and to the Chumash people. And if anybody should be at the top of that consultant list, it would be the Tumamites.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. And then just to be clear, not removed by us. But we'll figure it out. Delaney LeBar, please, and then Larry Steingold.

Good evening, mayor, council, staff, one and all. Delaney Labar, I live here on Blanche. And just a quick thing to get on the radar. I don't know how many of you might be aware that the flock cameras are taking a lot of heat and communities are dropping their contract. There are other companies who also do the same thing, but Flock in particular has an extremely bad reputation. And you may have seen the article in the LA Times this last week that, meaning no disrespect to our law enforcement here, but 50 Police officers have been arrested for abusing the system and stalking women, ex-wives, cute gals they'd like to get to meet, whatever their thinking is. So I don't know if we have this contract in place. Word on the street is there's a camera in Miners Oaks or in Oakview. I don't know. But I think it's something we want to be aware of and think about whether we want this. Because especially with the immigration, it's a real problem because it's getting the license plate. It's getting the picture of the person behind the wheel. And it's just more data collection on private citizens who are simply driving to work or taking their kids to school. So I wanted to bring that to your attention to consider whether or not we have one contract, that is, and perhaps we don't want it if we have it. At least you would wanna go with a more reputable company at this point. Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Larry Steingold, please, and then Leanna McNeely.

I want to thank the mayor for the assessment meeting we had at St. Thomas. where we had a good crowd, people from the insurance companies. And the mayor made a suggestion that we should waive fees for fire hardening, fire trimming, anything related to fire. That's something you can do today or next on the agenda meeting or however it works out. I know it's not a lot. It may be a lot to somebody, but it's $225 for me for each time we had to redo the tree. And I think it's something that will be helpful. It shows immediacy. It shows something is being done now, and it doesn't amount to a lot of money in the scheme of things. After listening to the people regarding the theater, the Playhouse, Libby Park, maybe it's time to re-look at the contract to see how we can make it better, make it different, make it more acceptable for the legacy for other groups, for new groups. And one last thing. Please move the agenda to Thursday. Just instruct the city manager to make it happen. Because when we have a Monday holiday, they still get it out on time. So maybe we pretend a week, and he gets it out on Thursday. I mean, it shows transparency. You want engagement. You want people here. I mean, not everybody can read the agenda on their phone. And it's really no fun. It's actually nice to read it in the paper occasionally. And then you have to follow up. But it gets people here. So please move the agenda. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stengold. Leanna McNeely, please, and then Elena Rios.

Good evening. My name is Leanna McNeely. And I'd like to begin by thanking the mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and council members for their service to Ojai. We know you don't have to be here. And you deserve our respect, our gratitude, whether we agree with you or not. With this administration, this council, Building on the work of past councils has achieved more than any council I can remember in the last 40 years. You deserve thumbs up for the work that you've done. You've done good things, you've made big commitments, and you've made me proud to live in a city that worked so hard to make life better for all of its citizens. Tonight I'm speaking as a member of the Ojai Rotary Club of the West. We've supported the Ojai Summer Band program since its inception. The contract signed with the promoter, as you've heard, Ojai Valley Music gives them priority over 164 calendar dates. Everyone understands that booking groups to a small venue is no easy task. And anyone who's paid attention to the recent concerts is happy to see a more vibrant group of performers than we've had in the past. Also, as you've heard, this agreement impacts multiple longstanding and cherished programs. the Ojai Pops, the Storytelling Festival, the Ojai Film Society, the Summer Series, Ojai Band Concerts, and many other worthy nonprofits. These groups deserve legacy status and protected dates for their programs, not because these programs have been around for decades. Mere existence does not earn a right to legacy status, but because they represent the best of what Ojai is. Most of the impacted programs are entirely or partially free to the public. They build community, and they reinforce what makes Ojai, Ojai. These programs represent the inclusionary ethos of our town. Not everybody has $150 to see the Gypsy Kings, but people can afford a $0.50 balloon for their child to carry in the balloon parade. And I'll bet that tomorrow night, The night that would usually host the band concert, you will see people of all ages, many with children in tow, confused because there's no band concert and no balloon parade. Ojai is a welcome oasis of small town values, evidenced by so many of the events that the city celebrates, whether our parades, our public concerts, Ojai Day, the list is long. The city needs to support the organizations that bring value to all the citizens of the valley by giving them the protection, these groups, the protection of legacy status. Thank you.

Thank you. Elena Rios, please. Hi.

Council. My name's Elena Rios, and I'm an auxiliary battalion chief with the Chumash Fire Department, Santinez Band of Chumash Indians, where I've also received training as a cultural specialist from tribal elders and archaeologists, which has really enhanced my perspective on what it means to be in relationship to land and place. I'm also a nature connection guide and a cultural practitioner myself. I remember when Julie Tumamaya created the nonprofit that is called the Barbareño Ventureño Band of Chumash Indians about 20 years ago. I've been living in this valley for about 30 years or so. And so I think it's worth mentioning that the BVBMI started out as a nonprofit. And as a nonprofit, all of the descendants of Barbara and Juventud and Chumash Indians did not necessarily join the BVBMI. So it's important to note that the BVBMI doesn't necessarily represent the views of all BVBMI members, as all are not members of the nonprofit. So this invites us to think a little bit more deeply about what it means. Also, in my work in the fire department and as a board member of a nonprofit called Sacred Indigenous Preservation, I've learned a little bit more about some of the things that we're talking about. And I know that the nonprofit that Julie started helped the BVBMI gain state recognition from the California Native Heritage Commission. And so I understand some of the parameters of that. But I hope that because I know Julie and the Tumamayit family are true locals here, that the city can come to a conclusion that is fair for all native cultural consultants, especially ones so deeply tied to this land like the Tumamayit family. Thank you.

Thank you. I have no more cards. Anybody online for general comments?

Yes, Mayor. We'll move on to Zoom. OK. First, we have Eric. Eric, you may unmute, and you have the floor.

Hello, Mayor Gilman and members of the City Council. My name is Eric Cardenas. I am working at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and like Candace Mennegan before me, who's in the audience there, I just wanted to come on here and appreciate, offer gratitude a couple of months after the fact for your recent passing of your biodiversity resolution on June 23rd. It was something that, as Candace mentioned, we have been pushing and promoting throughout the region to really start to uplift the importance of biodiversity to highlight the fact that we are in a biodiversity crisis and that there's a lot of really really important work happening throughout the cities and the counties on the south central coast to address some of these issues and really uh try to try to have some positive impact so um your leadership in elevating this resolution and adopting the resolution a couple months ago is really, really important as we build a movement and we continue to build a conservation movement in support of biodiversity. I am the chair, the current chair of a biodiversity working group, which is made up of 50 organizations, including the Ohio Valley Land Conservancy, the Ventura Land Trust, whole sort of organizations throughout the tri-county region and if the botanic garden can offer any resources particularly around native plants which i've heard referenced a couple of times at this meeting already we would love to be a resource for you our other colleagues who have spoken before and who i think may speak after me are also here to support their expertise however they can so thank you for your leadership we really appreciate it and let us know how we can help in the future thank you

Next we'll have Brie. Brie, you may unmute and you have the floor.

Hello and thanks for your time. My name is Brie Slyker and I'm the Director of Grants and Engagement at Farmhand Foundation here in Ojai. We're an agricultural nonprofit with a demonstration farm in Miners Oaks at the intersection of El Roblar and La Luna. I'm here as a member of the biodiversity working group as well, and we are a network of like-minded organizations across Santa Barbara and Ventura counties working in advanced solutions for protecting and enhancing biodiversity in our communities. And this collaborative working group, we bring together our collective expertise and fire wildfire resilience wildlife and habitat connectivity. And in our expertise as farmhand foundation agricultural and agricultural landscapes and so i'm here, representing with Eric and candace who spoke before me. in thanking the city council for your leadership in adopting the recent biodiversity resolution and this is just a critical state and going forward to elevate biodiversity and how we plan manage and invest in it in our communities across the central coast and we are a local partner here in the valley who are involved in this effort and like eric offer our assistance and expertise in any projects going on throughout ohio thank you all and have a great evening

Thank you. Our current last raised hand, we have Martin. Martin, you may unmute and you have the floor.

Good evening. Good evening, Council, Mayor. My name is Martin Fleischman. I am a partner of Ojai Valley Music. I've been listening with interest to previous speakers. And I think it's no secret that the Libby Bowl concert season used to consist of not much more than Journey tribute bands. Now, Ojai Valley Music has brought world-class artists like Laurie Anderson, Mavis Staples, Jacob Collier, and Big Thief to the Bowl. And as people pointed out, Tomorrow night, Gypsy Kings. There's still a few, just a few, very few tickets available, if I may plug. And it's no coincidence that we have Ani DiFranco on Friday either. It's not something that can happen if our booking process gets unnecessarily cumbersome. We've worked with the petitioning organizations, among others, over the last two years, waiving our contractual rights to accommodate their needs. We ensured that the Ojai Film Society got their six dates by mid-February, leaving a full five months ahead for planning for their series. I did hear the gentleman from the Film Society say that it takes months of planning for his events, and I agree, and he had five months, so that's... To me, that seems like months, plural, more than two. We have also done the same for the POPs, although I have to concede that we did hold off for a while on a few of the requested dates. We ended up booking artists on several of them. And the last one, yes, we granted two months out, and that speaks to the process. My questions for the petitioners, especially the OFS, are what aspect or aspects of this year's process need adjusting? How is the series negatively affected by this year's process? And if there were indeed issues with this process, why was no attempt made to reach out to us to resolve issues before coming to the mayor and council? Our booking process requires flexibility. We hold blocks of dates for artists, sometimes in a week or two weeks, and have to wait usually several months for the artist to decide which of those dates works for them to route their tour. And if anyone needs further explanation, I'd be happy to sit down and tell them how this actually works. There's also our productions, which need lead time of a day, sometimes two days. And we have potential solutions that we'd like to bring to the table and explore further in a non-political and neutral fashion. At this point, for us to get locked out of 20 dates at prime time is not going to serve anybody well. So let's talk about this further.

Thank you, sir. No more raised hands on Zoom, Mayor.

OK, something I want to depart from the usual just a little to say this. Sometimes we have comments on consent calendar items that don't get pulled. Sometimes there are comments after they're pulled. So want to try something, hopefully you'll agree, is open up just public comments for consent calendar items to the public. They can speak on any of them they wish. Then we can decide whether we want to pull them or not. Does that seem OK to everybody? Any objections to that?

Mayor, I just have one comment. Before we embark on that, there were a number of comments during public comment. You touched on some, but I think it's important maybe that I provide some input to the council on some of these items. We are bringing a discussion item regarding the legacy events pursuant to the OI Valley Music Contract back, and that's pursuant to contract requirements. It requires it before November 15, 2026. We will certainly do so. It won't be at the next meeting. And it might not be in September, but we are going to bring it back as required. It's important to know that the city receives the cultural monitoring list from the tribe. We do not establish the list ourselves. And I understand the issues, I clearly understand the issues, but I just think it's very important for the council to know that's how we obtain the list. We do not create the list on our own. And nor does the resolution the council passed back in, I think in 2018, allow us to do that. We can certainly revisit this as a topic, but that's what you need to know. There are no flock cameras in Ojai. There are flock cameras in the unincorporated areas outside of Ojai, but none in Ojai. And pursuant to council direction, we are going to be bringing back a concept review item on agenda timing and just a general agenda management that will come to you in September. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Any comments? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely don't want to get into a discussion, but at some point, I think to figure out how we move forward with the contract, you know, it would be very, very helpful. I think it was mentioned, I think everybody wants to come together and figure this out. You're talking about OBM? Yeah, OBM. So I mean, this isn't a discussion item, but potentially we need to have a discussion item to figure out the best way to broach this so that no one feels like they're being told from above. There is, I think, a cooperative solution here that we should all work towards, and I'd like to figure out what that process actually looks like. Agreed.

I think we all agree with that.

Yeah.

Okay, don't go, please. I also think I appreciate the city manager's report on the flock camera situation. I think it'd be useful at some time just to get a presentation so that we understand it is a big issue among the community and that concern. I've received... I was planning to ask to put it on the agenda tonight. If we don't have flock cameras, then we don't have to go through an action item, but I think it would be good to have an informative presentation so that the community hears where we are.

I'm looking at you, Chief.

If I might suggest, I would also broaden it a little. We heard a little at that night about some new technology that some communities are using. It's a technology update and a privacy update.

Yeah, absolutely. I can put something together for everyone.

Yeah, no problem doing that. Thank you. Thanks for bringing that up. Okay. So if anybody in the audience wants to comment on a consent item, please give Mr. Montgomery a card. Mr. Steingold, you have three. Can you consolidate them into one comment item? please try thank you okay for city warrants

Number two, thank you, okay, for making a column and putting that all into groups so we can see exactly what's what. Is it possible for the next month, next agenda, to have a rolling total on each one? So now we have a separate column that says 30,000 went to this attorney this month, and then we gave them another 30, so that total will be 60. And we'd see a rolling total of every spending item, which would make it easier for you And it would make it easier for us. Number four, the Ojai Municipal Code, putting something on, I guess, they wouldn't call it a zombie ordinance. You're just putting it on the shelf and temporarily. However, you might want to talk to your attorney or how they're suggesting it because Laws on the books that are not enforced chill people. They chill things. People look at it and go, well, it's there. When are they going to put it back? I don't want to get caught in between because somebody sent me this information on Petaluma and regarding the... gas reach code, and there was a lawsuit that they put it on the books and put it on the shelf. And it's unenforced, but it's still there. So the Department of Justice sued them, and Petaluma took it off. So now it's not there, and one other town does. OK. Last one, number five, the MOA. I sent you letters on this. It is not the amount of money that I'm concerned with. It's the justification that city staff says just pay it. It's the attitude. It's our money. It's your money. And it's like, oh, just pay the bill. Don't look behind the curtain. Don't look at how much it costs. Don't look at why it's going up. Don't look at anything. Trust me. Just pay it. And my guess is they're probably right. The cost of getting a new number and all that, it may be cost more, not worth the effort. But you have to justify it to us that they're saying to you, just pay the bill. Don't look. I mean, if this was your home money and somebody said, oh, just pay the increase, don't ask why. Just pay. And I think that's the wrong attitude. You're stewards of our money. You're stewards of the city. Good, bad, or indifferent, we've got to live with what your decisions are and the attitude. We don't have enough money to spend for everything, but every dime is precious. Oh, one last thing. The cash investments, great, $1.4 million. Looks like, is that for a yearly number, or that the number for we've earned so far on the warrant, the amount of investment? I'm sorry, the cash investment. Sorry, and that would be, anyway. OK, thank you, sir. Anybody online for consent items?

Double checking there. No, no raised hands.

Okay. Moving on to the consent calendar. Does anybody want to remove anything? Yes, go ahead.

I'd like to just pull five and six.

Okay. Okay.

And I'd like to pull two.

Okay. Anything else? Okay. I'll move that we approve consent items one, three, four, and seven.

I'll second that.

Okay. Any discussion? Roll call, please.

Yes, Mayor. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem May. Council Member Rule. Yes. Mayor Gilman. Yes, thank you. Council Member Lang.

Yes.

Okay, so let's look first at number two.

Yes, so this is just very brief, and I'm just pointing out something. It's on page 35, which is our total legal expenses are $194,000. $41.57 this month, I'm assuming, or is it this warrant? If we were to put that out, let's just up it to 200,000 and times that by 12, and you will see where we are at costs on legal expenses. And that's not to say that these legal expenses aren't justified or aren't needed. They're just really high and I would caution the council about moving forward with being able to bring these down at your earliest convenience.

Am I correct in, I'm seeing on the warrants that we see some items that are listed twice and I made an assumption that that is because of our break.

No, Mayor, that's correct. This is for matters related to the TOT. Well, sorry, one's related to the TOT hearing, right? Where's the twice under the legal that you're seeing?

Well, for example, I'll use one example. BKS Law Firm, and I see that there's two items for BKS Law Firm. Am I seeing that correctly? Hold on one second.

Oh, it might be two payments, but I'm looking at the disbursements by category.

I was seeing two payments because I thought we were, I'm seeing May and June here payments, so I just made the assumption that since we did not meet.

And we have Ms. Palmer on the line. Ms. Palmer, can you hear us?

Hi, yes, good evening. Thank you. Yes, Mayor, your assumption is correct. It's because we had the break, so the warrant is a little bit lengthy this time. Just to kind of catch up from that last meeting. So yes, we have multiple months within this one warrant.

For example, there's two sheriff items in the warrant.

Yes, correct. They're not duplicate. We just have two invoices.

So I was hoping that the large bottom line was for that reason. Not to say we can't do better.

I think we would have to go back and actually tease it out to say what time span it actually was because sometimes we don't get bills. We get one bill every two months. So in that case, it wouldn't be a double time span. It wouldn't be the same time span, only we just got the bill. So it's clear to say this time span may be over two months, but we still may have only gotten a bill for one month in that two-month span.

I hear what you're saying.

Okay. Okay.

So I I would say that We can't devise a plan for reducing our attorneys fees unless we Understand on kind of a comprehensive basis where they came from why why we incurred them and so I'm would be happy to get a report from our city attorney to address, you know should we expect this going on and adjust our budget or are there ways that we can you know create efficiencies and we may have to make some decisions about things but that that's the right way to approach if we're concerned that our attorneys fees are excessive

And I will just say that there are other totals here that are also extremely high that we might need the same understanding for. I was looking at the attorney legal fees. And Bethany, I love you.

It's not personal.

We're happy to bring back our report.

But I like the suggestion, and I like the sentiment, of course, and I want that too. So I wonder if we can... bring that forward to say we may ask the firm, does this look like a trend? Do we need to look at this again? Or how can we mitigate our course?

Thank you. Anything else on number two? Just want to make sure, Mr. Montgomery, you caught that as a potential. Thank you.

That was all for me.

No, thank you. Okay, so motion to move consent item number two.

I'll make the motion.

Okay, second that. Should we just do them as they go through?

Yes, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem Meng. Council Member Lange. Yes. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Council Member Rule.

I seconded it, but I can say yes.

Roll call.

No, voting just yes or no, I guess.

Oh, okay, so seconding, it doesn't assume a yes. Correct. Okay, yes, Susan needs to say that. So given all of that, I'm gonna abstain.

Okay, yes, for me. Okay. Okay, all right, now on to number five, the ratification between the county... and the Sanitary District?

Yes. I pulled this because I actually toured the Sanitary District and learned about the algae, the new regulations, and about their entirely new equipment that they use to clean the algae. There's been a lot of upgrades there. And so I wanted to just speak to the public comment about the fact that those were two of the reasons, and correct me if I'm wrong, but those were two of the reasons why we have the additional amount. And this particular algae, from what I understand, is really hard. You have to have UV. You should see these processes. It's like I was so blown away and in awe of how much goes into cleaning our water. But particularly this algae is difficult. So you have to have all these UV lights and all of these. All of these non-chemical processes and vats full of bacteria and bugs, it is the most interesting science experiment that I've ever seen. And also I will say that the sanitary district had, they received $30 million grant, I believe it was, to build all these new facilities to keep up with the regulations from the state and from the Los Angeles water basin. And Ms. Palmer, feel free to correct me or to jump in here. But it so there there was a lot of grant funding that went into these facilities and unfortunately with the regulations related to PFAS the forever chemicals and this kind of algae and Really the environmental changes with our warming climate these are unfortunately costs that we are going to have to incur and

Anything to add? You did a great job.

No, but I would like to add to that. We have Haley Luna on Zoom today, and she's the Deputy Director of the Watershed Protection District at the County of Ventura. So she can speak to anything technical, and I can speak to the process if you have questions. But the reality is I know that the public comment stated this went up like 80%, 90%, some crazy number. It's gone up 10%. over the last four year term to this next three year term. So it's only gone up 10%, so not a significant amount. This is an MOA between the City of the County of Ventura City, Caltrans, OVSD, Sanitary District, and the City of Ventura. I think I got it all. And this is just, this is a mandatory, this is a required by state law that we cost share in this. It's not required that we cost share. We could go out on our own and do it, but that's not probably the prudent decision. So the county has agreed to administer this program for us and for these agencies. So there's two parts to it. One is... and Haley would be able to speak to anything we have in terms of this, but there's actually two parts to this, and one is the monitoring cost, and the other is the sampling, so taking the samples. And these are all required in terms of our MS4 permit. So I can answer questions if you may have some, and Haley's online as well.

So I was gonna pull this item also, and coming from just a little different I was struck by the idea that we're paying the same amount that Ventura is, and I'm not saying that there's not a rational basis for that, but I don't get it out of the staff report, so I want to know why we're paying the same amount when we're a tiny city and Ventura is a huge, massive megalopony.

And of course, this is the first year that I've been involved in this. This was originally, it goes way back, 15 years or so. And in 2020, there was a negotiation of this MOA and it was prior to my time here. And then it was, then we're at the last, we're at this three-year term that we're looking at right now, so in 2025. And of course, those are questions that I had too. I'm like, well, that doesn't seem right. But our MS4 is divided that way too. It's not population-based. It's each agency is equally responsible, is what it is. It really is. It's we're equally responsible. It doesn't seem fair. I understand that. I don't know if there's a way to negotiate that or not. but perhaps Haley can speak to that, but that was something that I thought was interesting, but again, our MS4 permit, the stormwater stuff is, it appears that each agency has just this equal responsibility in doing the testing and all of these things.

And I guess my thought is that on an agency by agency basis, that seems fine, but that means that our resident taxpayers are paying for this at a rate of about 10 times that residents of Ventura are paying for this.

And I don't disagree with that.

I guess if we have an agreement in place, I'd like to see us at least look at doing some, bringing the issue up in the future.

So I guess what I could add to that, the agreement tonight it's a three-year term and so this we're in the second year term and we will be renegotiating the county will be going out to bid um next year for proposals for a new three-year term so i think that would be our opportunity to bring this matter up okay

Right.

Yeah.

I was just going to add anything to add to that, that, that kind of, when we come back and renegotiate, we, we would want to look at some kind of proportional sharing if we

Hi, Haley. Hi. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. When we reopen the MOA to negotiate the next term, we're definitely open to concepts. The way that it's been structured in the past is that we've equally cost-shared those receiving water costs because they're not based on a number of samples per jurisdiction. We're sampling in the river. And from that perspective, you know, Ojai is in the upper portion of the watershed, you know, so Ojai theoretically influences most of the monitoring points that we have along the main stem of the river. But ultimately, the monitoring program was established by the TMDL requirements that the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted. We're required to conduct this monitoring. It's a requirement of our MS4 permit. And so we've, in the past, equally cost-shared, but when the MOA is up for negotiation, we're open for all ideas and willing to discuss any points that the city has.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I think the spirit of Mr. Steingold's request was simply, we wouldn't have to have this entire conversation, but a few lines to explain the cost increase would have been sufficient if I understood. So that's easy enough, we can do that. Okay.

Okay, I'll move to approve it.

Second that.

Roll call. Yes, thanks. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Council Member Wood. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Meng.

Yes.

Council Member Lange.

Yes.

Mayor Gilman.

Yes. Thank you. That was good. I appreciate that. Okay. Now, number six, the interagency agreement with VCTC.

Yes, for this one, I brought it forward just to draw everyone's attention to it. And also, we are receiving an award of $877,000 from VCTC. I am the liaison on the board. And I just wanted to give a huge thank you to the agency, to Martin Erickson, who is the executive director and just acknowledge the receipt of this so that it's on record. And with that, I'll move approval.

Yeah, second that.

This is great news. I have a question. I don't know that we can answer it, but it's for rail and transit, and obviously we don't have rail. And so I'm interested in what the transit component of the grant is for, you know, what types of benefits are we going to get?

I'd love to have Ms. Cervantes answer this question.

Yeah, so for this particular grant, we do have the EV trolley that's on order. That's part of this grant. We do have other capital improvements, like electric battery charging infrastructure, operational support, and other operational needs, like a new vehicle for the transit supervisor, things of the sort. uh mostly based on capital improvements like vehicles and infrastructure for that but also it does cover some operational costs do you want to hit on the cost of the ev trolley 581 000.

Right? Yeah. Well, it makes me feel good that we're asking for and receiving funding. Yes. Of course.

Exactly. Okay.

We have a motion and a second. Full call. Thanks. Council Member Whitman. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem May.

Yes.

Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Council Member Lange. Yes. Mayor Gilman.

Yes. Thank you, everyone. Okay, we are moving on to discussion items. And our first discussion item, we are gonna take on number 14, Professional Services Agreement with the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to tag team this item with Norma, and I'm seeing that we have our Chamber Executive Director on the line. Ms. Carla, can you hear us? I just want to make sure we have a good time.

I can hear you, yeah.

Okay, great. She's calling in from the East Coast, so we thank her for being here. um okay uh and normally let's just jump in on this if you don't mind this is a proposal to renew the city's agreement with the chamber for professional services for this fiscal year there is a scope of services attached to this this will become a professional services agreement between the chamber and the city, and this is for continuation of the good work the Chamber did last fiscal year. What type of work does the Chamber do? Well, in summary, they are an advocate for our local businesses. What I mean by that is they are coming to us with their concerns, their questions, their needs, presenting that in a manner that we are able to respond to them, looking out for their interests. The Chamber also actively recruits and pursues things like vacancies and appropriate tenants. On that note, I want to call to your attention a revision to the scope of services that we need to make, and forgive us for this.

Page 251.

Yes, on page 251, We call out a couple specific addresses, which is incorrect, and also a former business. We'd like to change on page 251. This is item, let's see.

G1.

G1. Continue to research and recruit possible tenants for commercial properties. That's really what the Chamber does, one of the functions that they do. And this should not call out a specific address or a form of business, because they do this throughout anywhere within the city limits. So forgive us for that mistake. That should not be there. The Chamber also answers planning and building related questions. They often come to the counter with applicants, acting on their behalf to interface with our staff to make sure that the process runs smoothly and efficiently. they put on special events, special events that are catered to our local businesses and our local population. So I'm really pleased in the short time that I've been here since we've entered into a professional services agreement with the Chamber. We didn't have one when I came here. It really seems to me like we're more connected with our local business community. I feel like we're able to respond to their needs better. I feel like they have an advocate working for them, and we have somebody that we can go to to make broad dissemination of information or requests seamless. Please, Norma, what else am I forgetting here?

marketing, website improvement. So they are very collaborative with not only the city, but the other businesses in the area. So it is a very important partnership that we have established with them. So and I'm sure that the businesses in the community also feel that.

We'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you very much. Yes.

And if I may, before we jump into questions, one point of clarification I just want to make. When the city provides or enters into agreements like this, and you have several with other organizations, Those agreements, while we require the party receiving the city funding to sign an agreement so that we have something binding that they are required to comply with and deliver on certain deliverables, these types of agreements are really in the nature of what I would call sponsorship. And so the city of Ojai, like other cities, does enter, you do formalize that through a written agreement, which is a good best practice. But I just wanted to make clear that this is not a traditional services agreement where you're Contracting for services. It's really more in the nature of a sponsorship.

Okay So that actually piggybacks on the question I was going to ask because I received a public comment about this About so we don't need this wouldn't be the kind of if we're doing a sponsorship type of contract We don't have to go out for an RFP. Is that is that correct? I

That is correct. And so if, I mean, the city, you could, like, so for example, your arts commission grants are sponsorships that go through a competitive process, but I think historically for other city sponsorships, you haven't done that, and you're not required to.

Okay, thank you.

Other questions for staff?

Yeah, no, I just wanted to say I think that it's a good discussion just to have. So thank you for that so that because of the grand jury report and the sole sourcing, it's good to distinguish what this actually is. As far as other questions, I think I can wait until we get into discussion. Thank you.

OK. OK. I have no public comments on that so far.

and we have no raised hands on Zoom here. Okay, so discussion. You wanna start?

Sure. So I just wanted to say hi to Carla. Thanks for joining us. And so this expansion, I'm very pleased with. It seems like it's a deal for the city, for sure. And I just want to acknowledge that, that what we're getting for $114,000 seems to me to be of great benefit. And we're supporting and acknowledging our business partnerships. and you know I just wanted the scope of the work is pretty broad and it's kind of diffused as well I mean as seminars and business consulting and workforce housing and new events so you know I just want to be clear that I hope that we're not asking too much of the chamber or overextending them. You have proven that the chamber is well able to handle this kind of diverse and workload. So I'm pleased with that. And I appreciate that there will be reports back. I think that that's important just to keep us all up to date. speed on um you know what's actually occurring not only are you doing your job but you know to inform and educate us as to what's actually happening so um you know i i think it i think it's great and i am have confidence that uh this is um something worth uh we're supporting and so i do support it

Thank you. Yeah, I was gonna bring up just one example where it would have been difficult for the city to step into this role, but it had to do with signs in the arcade and in the arcade area, that means behind the arcade and across the street. where what the chamber did was gather the businesses together to talk about the issues, then to work with the staff around at least something interim until we understand there's some possible ordinance, reconciliation or revision that might need to happen. In any case, that was a role where there's an arbiter who is representing sort of the interests of the business wanting to do something that's amicable and compromised. So I felt like we're in the midst of something that could have been very difficult. That's why the business advocacy is exactly what I believe we should be supporting and sponsoring.

I just wanted to add to piggyback on what everybody else said that that that Carla works tirelessly. And so yes, this is a very broad scope of work. But, but this is all what they're doing right now. And so yeah, so Carla, I second councilmember rules, comment that if this becomes too much, we can we can review it. But I've really seen how, how the local long-time businesses in Ojai have benefited from this and from the all the renewed growth and interest in the chamber and I see how new businesses and individuals coming in as entrepreneurs are being nurtured by the chamber and supported for everything from looking for grants to going and getting permits to finding customers and marketing themselves i just i think that the chamber is doing an excellent job and all of the workshops and and events that they've had educational events have been very beneficial for for founders and and anyone who has a small business so i am very much in support of moving forward with this

I have a few comments and concerns. The you know, with respect to the sponsorship versus services issue. I there was in city attorney wouldn't be aware of this. But there was a lot of discussion back when James Vega was the city manager over whether we should be sponsoring nonprofits and whether that should only occur in circumstances where they were providing a service that the city would otherwise be providing. And I think that's why there may have been you know, orientation towards service. And I also have, you know, some concerns because my my first orientation on on, you know, hopefully everything we do is Does this benefit our city residents and and you can't necessarily say it it doesn't just translate this benefits business and therefore it benefits City residents and you know, just it really struck me the idea that that we would be paying for Property owner to find a tenant, I was having a hard time saying, Well, now, how is that benefiting a resident, it certainly benefiting the business. And, you know, they're in going through the long list that we have. And I appreciate the work that was done to do that. But there's there were a lot of items that would fall into that same category where i was trying to figure out and so you know for me i would want to spend more time um probably talking to carla maybe norma and ben as well so that I got a handle on the idea that, okay, this is a benefit that you can tell your resident who's saying, why are you spending our money on those businesses? Spend the money on me. And so I will, in saying all of that, I'll also say that I supported a short-term plan funding because I was very impressed with Carla and Carla and I have had many conversations and I do believe that she has a very strong instinct towards benefiting residents and I think she also has done from what I can see, and I'm not an expert on this, but I think she's done a great job of getting the chamber itself to orient towards that partnership relationship. So I would feel more comfortable if I had time to understand more of these things that were being done and potentially pare down the list to things that I felt were really, I could solidly say, this is good for the residents.

I might offer you two quick responses. One would be, if we use Suzanne's old location as an example, that in a couple of ways, when the business or the realtor is representing, can work with Carla or work with city staff to say, here are the kinds of people who are interested in it. We can see how does that fit into OHI's character and mix and needs? So in that sense, you could say, well, is it time well spent to benefit somebody who owns a property? Not as much as how can we help influence businesses that we think would be good for residents here? So that's where I see that overlap. But the second thing I would suggest, I heard it from two people here, is that the list is very long. So I would encourage her, and I hope she's hearing us now, when we get our updates, when we get these reports, let's understand that we want to have check-ins with you. How is it going? Is this manageable? Where do we need to tailor and and modify I mean I think we're all open to that's where I like the sponsorship idea actually little is that it makes it that we can adjust on the fly a little if we need to based on a need so yeah.

Yeah, I would say that, you know, we are in fact contracting out services that, you know, an in-house sort of business development would actually handle. So I see this as actually contracting out those services that the city normally would handle if we had the resources, if we had the size. And I actually prefer this model where there's sort of an outside vendor. I understand the... The issue around not directly, I mean, I understand what's being said about the issue not directly benefiting residents. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I see the point. So it could also be that Carla hears this and also reports back to us about how this might directly affect I mean, it was the same thing when I used to do outreach. I would outreach to teach teachers how to teach, and the funders would always want to know, well, how does it affect the students? And we always had to say that for every teacher that we taught, there was a recipient, a student, that also sort of received you know the potential for training so I kind of see it the same way it's a one-to-many and how direct that relationship needs to be I I don't know but we can I mean I'm sure Carla heard Councilman Whitman's concern there so they can it can kind of skew that way So that's kind of my perspective. And I do, I mean, the amount of work that they did, given the last contract, I really don't, I mean, it's kind of unreasonable to expect them to, you know, go full bore at that same sort of rate. But I know that they can do it because based on what I saw them do before. They did it. the willingness to do that. And in my conversations with Carla, we have always talked about how we can help individual artist residents. What do they actually need in order to be able to build their little cottage business? Being very open to that. If you're an artist, yet you don't have a high quality printer, you can't actually build your business because you can't actually print your stuff. So I see her to be very open to actually supporting the residents through providing, understanding what residents need in order to build their own little cottage industries, which is something that we've talked about in diversification of economy. So anyway, that's kind of my feeling on the matter. I still support moving forward with this. And I think that I trust that the concerns that have been stated here will actually find form in the work and in the feedback.

Do you have anything you want to add?

Well, I would just, I agree with what you say, but me personally, I would rather get that feedback from her and have it in the document. If we need to scale it down so she can be successful without questions, you know what I mean? I think that's just the road I would like to take. I don't think there isn't a hurry to get it done tonight, just to get that feedback so we can be successful.

I think there is, well, there's an interest in continuing the contract, which will end. And then secondly, I don't think she's concerned about being successful. Yes, to respond.

And I would say, once again, this kind of, I find it happening over and over, is that we push things off, and we put it back into, like, do we truly need the clarity? Yeah, you think that we do. I don't necessarily think that we do. It's just a sort of return on, like pushing everything down the road for another meeting for another discussion when we can actually work through it right here and right now. But it doesn't give you the clarity that you want. But then again, I don't need that clarity. So it's just Yeah, it's just a way to think about things.

council i'd be happy to work with carla and if you wanted to improve it with the caveat that you know there's going to be a revised list returned to you and you know within 30 days we we we're happy to do that thank you so i uh my thought is that i'll probably be voting no tonight but only because of the process that we're selecting because it sounds like we're gonna approve

I will say that I have talked to Ben not at great length about the idea that maybe as opposed to contracting, the chamber we ought to look at retaining Carla and creating a scope of her work that is really you know very much tailored for what you know we want and need and I guess my only other comment is that we way too often don't distinguish between residents and unincorporated area when we're looking at allocating our resources and I feel very strongly that to be sustainable we need to so I'm much more in favor of working with a local artist who happens to be a resident and it's a harder place for me to go to say I should be helping somebody in OCU or using city tax dollars to help a business. So those are my comments. It's not like a condemnation of what we're doing. It's that I...

i'd like to move that we we approve the 26 27 professional services agreement between the city and the ohio valley chamber of commerce hoping for a second i am i'm hearing all of my colleagues concerns okay and um and i um

I think, personally, I do see it benefiting a lot of Ojai residents because when I go to the events, it's Ojai residents that I see there. And I also don't want to see us cancel the contract because it would stop some of the momentum of what they're doing. but I am in support of looking at the list and refining the list and seeing, making sure that we have, that we're getting exactly what we want and what is going to meet the needs of Ojai residents. So I would support, I mean, we're going to have to have a second reading of this anyway. No, no, we wouldn't, okay, okay.

So Ben's offer was to come back with a revised list if you feel that's tailoring it. I guess the reason why I'm, I guess, slightly surprised is that I thought the work that the chamber has been doing this year has been trying to also do check in to say, is this adding value? I personally see huge benefit to residents. I've not seen that issue personally. So I guess there might be a differing of opinions about a business in the arcade that they'll say, yes, during the week it's residents and on the weekends it's tourists. And if they give a percentage like, 60, 40, or 70, 30, is that not benefiting residents? I don't see that argument. If that's an argument, I'm not saying it is, but if it were. So to me, it's, I, James Vega, I remember when he said that, he said, we use nonprofits to offer services that the city can't do because of its size. This, to me, is our economic development engine. So that's why I support these.

Yeah, and this chamber is very different than the last chamber. I agree. It's what she's done to bring people together to recruit artisans people who live here locally you know where their addresses are um but also to do community oriented events like i led a creative economy workshop and and you know it's i i just i would hate to i would hate to to stop the momentum uh with what we have

So, Rachel, I think the mayor was looking for a second. Okay, I'll second. I'll just second.

But I'm really processing. I really want to take the time to listen to what the new information that you brought in. And as I'm talking it through and processing it out loud in front of everybody, I'm realizing that, yeah, I do support this.

Okay. Mayor, we have a motion and a second to approve the professional services agreement. And as I heard it, with a revised list returning to council in 30 days.

Yes.

Is that reasonable? Okay. Roll call. Council Member Rule.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem May. Council Member Whitman. No, for the reasons I said. Mayor Gilman. Yes. Council Member Lane.

Yes.

Council Member May. Okay. Motion passes, three to two.

All right. And Mr. Steingold, I'm hoping that you will put in a card during that portion. Thank you, sir. All right, moving on. We could do, let's see, 738. Let's take the tiniest break and then come back to our first discussion item after 14, which is number eight, grand jury report. So five minute break.

Ready?

Okay. We're back. I know, yeah. We had a lot of people here, it was great. Okay, so we're on number eight, County of Ventura Civil Grand Jury Report regarding Ojai Permanent Supportive Housing Projects.

All right. Good evening. Bethany Burgess, city attorney.

Thank you.

And we are here tonight to present the first draft of the response to the Ventura County Civil Grand Jury regarding the permanent supportive housing project. As the council knows, but maybe some members of the public don't know, in June of this year, the city received a report from the civil grand jury regarding the selection of the city's development manager and primarily focused on the lack of an open and competitive process. In July, the city council directed the city attorney's office to prepare a response for council discussion and deliberation. Tonight we are here with that response and I would just note that while we have noticed this for purposes of the Brown Act as a discussion and approval item, it is perfectly okay, we do have time for this to be a discussion and provide feedback and further direction item. We do have time to go back and make additional revisions to this response before it would be approved. But in case we don't need to make significant changes, I wanted to make sure that we have the ability to approve it tonight, if everyone's okay with that, to be mindful of future agendas. With that being said, before we dive into each of the findings and recommendations, The first thing I will note is that I was not here in 2023 or 2024 or 2025 until December of 2025. And so, you know, I do not have the personal knowledge and history of everything that occurred or transpired in the past. um and while i i will note that the city manager did review this and provide some limited feedback as part of the agenda review process um this is my work product so i will if if something is wrong it's probably me who got it wrong and there's no pride of authorship this is why we're here so you know i just want you to understand that this is this is a discussion item i want your input If you are uncomfortable with some of the responses, my hope and desire is that we talk through those tonight. And at the end of the process, that we have a result that everyone on the council ideally is supportive of. At the end of the day, because we do have a number of findings and a number of recommendations, one recommendation I would have is that while we need consensus on each of the responses, if we reach a situation where there's not unanimous support for us a particular response, I would look to the council ultimately to vote on that response and we will move forward based on a majority of what the council wishes to do. With that being said, I think there is some room. I think there's room for compromise here. If there are things where some members of the council agree and some members don't agree, let's talk about it. Because at the end of the day, I would love to get to a response where we have the entire council in support of sending. So with that being said, I think the cleanest way to start is just to start at the beginning and we can go through... each of the responses and the findings and recommendations. If we need to discuss them, that's great, but if we need to, if there are some that everyone is okay with and we don't need a lot of discussion, that's okay too. And I guess the one thing I would note is before we dive into that, I would love to make sure there are no questions from the council and then we can open it up for public comment before we begin the deliberations on each finding and recommendation.

That the question I noticed in the responses that you offered so far, you, you have some different kinds of responses such as partially agree, partially disagree, agree, and so on. So if I heard you right, let's say hypothetically, there's one issue where let's say three feel one way and to feel another, could we include something like the minority view in the response?

I would like to address that maybe on a case-by-case basis. I think that where the finding or recommendation may be somewhat subjective, I would be more comfortable with that. If it relates to specific facts, I guess those could also be subjective, because on some level, truth is in the eye of the beholder. I would say let's address that as we go, and if there is a need to come up with a compromise response, we can talk through that together.

My other question along those same lines as kind of a process issue is, We don't necessarily have to do that on a finding by finding basis. It could just be that we have an end document and then we're all voting just on the final. I mean, I do plan to make my comments and I think how I vote might I might be convinced to vote to approve of our response, depending on how some of the answers might be modified a little bit. But ultimately, I don't think that the grand jury expects, or excuse me, I guess it's a judge now who's overseeing it, but there's an expectation that we have a unanimous vote to approve the response.

I don't think that they expect to expect unanimous support. You know, again, I think that if we if what I what I wouldn't want to have is is, you know, like a majority opinion and then a dissenting opinion, like in the league, like like when we're talking about a judicial decision or something like that. But I think that where there is a response where different members of the council feel differently. For example, one item relates to transparency, and maybe more than one, but there's one specifically that I think of related to transparency. Transparency is subjective, and what seemed very transparent to one council member may not have seemed as transparent to another council member. So I would not have any concern or consternation with a response that is agree in part and disagree in part and acknowledging that different members of the council feel differently on that issue. We also have the ability to, in the cover letter, there's a draft cover letter that's very simple. And while I don't believe the grand jury expects a lengthy cover letter, we do have the ability in that cover letter to add additional details you know, information about, you know, where we could acknowledge that it's not necessarily the unanimous, it didn't have unanimous support from the entire council, if that's something that members of council wish to do.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions? I have no public comment cards. Anybody online? Nobody online, Mayor. Nobody with raised hands. Nobody with raised hands. Okay.

I would note that you did receive some public comment in advance of the meeting.

We did. So item by item. Is that the proposal?

That would be my suggestion. Just because we need to, I would rather take them in order as opposed to jumping around. Let's do it. So for each one, I don't know that we want to read all of them. length but the findings themselves are pretty brief so maybe we will read those and then we can summarize some of the longer responses okay so for the first one you know the city of Ojai was exempt from obtaining competitive bids based on price when selecting a development manager for its ERF funding or encampment resolution funding grant application And so the response to that was agree, because you are exempt from that. I would assume this one doesn't need a lot of discussion. OK. No discussion.

Please speak up if you want to talk.

Yeah. Finding two, city of Ojai was required by law to conduct a fair and competitive selection process based on qualifications and competency when selecting a development manager. My recommended response here was generally agree. When you read through the report, they refer to two sections of the government code which have slightly differing requirements. One of them relates to selection of certain categories of consultants, professional service consultants, through a qualifications-based selection process. The other provision actually requires an open and competitive process. And so what I would say here is that the city arguably complied with the first provision of the government code, but did not comply with the second one. And so I wouldn't say that we disagree, but I did think it was beneficial to make some distinction in the response. So this one is much longer in case there's some discussion on this one.

I thought that on page 164 where we are, I thought a distinction that was made was The second to last line, the city recognizes that there's included responsibilities, the dignity moves is required to perform, construction management and oversight is required, and for this reason, the city agrees that in retrospect, there should have been a competitive procured, competitively procured the services. So the construction I saw as a content that would have put it in a different category. So I thought generally agree does make sense. We also acknowledged in your language that there are other items that would not have fallen into the cap. So I'm saying I agree with you. Nothing to argue about that.

Yeah. I agree with you too because there were volunteer groups. It was a community-wide effort to find volunteers an organization that could manage this kind of project, but it wasn't a formal process. So I generally agree with your assessment as well.

And I don't think that there was a process that I was part of to determine that Dignity Moves was the only one who could uniquely do this process. I don't know where that happened, and I don't know who was part of it. It never came in front of the council, and I was never part of it. It may have been that it was a ad hoc group of community volunteers who were very invested and made that decision. But that decision never came before council, was never discussed with council. It just appeared in a document that they were uniquely qualified. So I would say that that to me is very problematic to say that, no, we did a deep due diligence. It was a community group. yet it never bubbled up to anything that was formal.

So informal is best is what I heard. I think that's a very accurate summary of what happened.

Yeah, and I'm not happy with that, but that having been said, I agree with this statement to the extent that I do.

So I have kind of just, this is just the way that I would approach it, and I have done this all the time.

Mm-hmm.

Because in litigation practice, they have these things called requests for admissions. And, you know, you unequivocally, my strategy is to unequivocally admit those things that I have to admit and then deny the things that I think have been embedded in it. So a lot of times it looks like they're asking you for one thing, but there's actually two things you respond to. I think in the position that we are in, and I think what both the public and whoever else is reviewing this would want to see is that we are unequivocally supportive of the idea that we have to engage in these open competitive processes. So my thought would be that we agree with an explanation as opposed to generally agree which sounds like we don't totally agree and i think we need to totally agree but there's a reason that we that we didn't

Well, if I can respond maybe slightly differently. If we look at, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, page 169 where we see recommendations, and then when we say is agree in process, I'm looking at that first response. The council's provided authority and direction to the city attorney to prepare revisions for purchasing ordinance, for example. I guess if you said, I'm not sure you were proposing this exactly, but if you said we went through, there's a narrative, and we say here's why we did what we did, and it's, I can't imagine that being short. Seems to me we're saying we agree that there should have been competitive bidding on this part, especially related to construction, and we've authorized the city manager in the recommendation already to do that.

If I may, I think all that, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that all that Councilman Whitman was suggesting is that instead of the generally agree at the beginning of this response, change that to agree.

If that's all, then great.

Which, I mean, I will say it's not factually accurate to say.

I would just strike out the word generally, say agree, include the explanation, but if you're worried they're not going to read, The explanation.

It's an accurate statement that you did not engage in a fair and competitive process.

I think it's 100% accurate that there was an absence of a discussion about the concept of competitive bidding and that the idea that this organization, Dignity Moves, was special and unique, appeared in a resolution that was never really brought to our attention and we never discussed.

I misunderstood what you were proposing, but I agree now. I think I do understand, which is the description that is here and striking generally.

I think that... on all of these where we have kind of an unequivocal agree, we should be unequivocal and provide our explanation for what happened. That would be my recommendation.

So at least on F2, I didn't hear any objection to saying agree and include that. Is that okay?

Mayor, if I may, the clerk's seat is here. I have the document open to scribe all these changes.

Well, the only change so far I'm hearing is on page 164, F2, we're going to strike the word generally.

And I would like to ask through the mayor and to the attorney Burgess, is the five-minute timer okay for this, for each of the findings? And let me know if you'd like anything different. For each finding? Okay. Or each person talking? Each person talking for every finding.

Sure.

Okay.

I don't know that we'll need it. No, hopefully it's like we're having more of a conversation. Yeah, yeah.

If you'd like to disable the timer in the back. Actually, how about this? Try disable for now. Okay. And then we'll decide. If somebody speaks too long, I'll ask you to re-enable.

That disable is with Christian in the back. Thank you, Christian. Okay, thanks.

Yeah, cool. I like how it's going. Okay.

So we have some consensus on number two. Number three, so number two and number three are related. Number two was that the city was required by law to conduct a fair and open competitive process. We said agree with the explanation. Number three was that the city of Ojai did not conduct a fair and open competitive selection process. Again, the recommended response here was simply agree, but also to then direct them back to the rest of the response on finding two. Finding four is that the, oh, go ahead.

Just going back to that, I might say instead of CLECY response and finding two, I might say CLECY explanation.

We can say that.

Okay.

Just a suggestion.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah.

For finding number four, the finding is that the recommendation by the Ventura Community Development Division or County of Ventura Community Development Division did not absolve the City of Ojai from conducting a fair and competitive selection process. My recommended response here was simply agree.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay. We agree to agree. Any objections to that? No. OK. Finding F5, the city of Ojai's claims of insufficient time did not absolve the city from conducting a fair and competitive selection process based on qualifications and competency. My recommended response here is that partially agree. And if you look at the first sentence, it says that the city agrees. that the California government code requirements relating to competitive solicitation for this type of service do not include an exception where there is insufficient time to conduct a full and open competitive process. So that is the first part of the response. However, I would note, and I know that in the public comment, there was a comment regarding these dates, which we can verify. But I did think it was beneficial, because to kind of talk a little bit about the timeframe, because this was before the grant application, so we're talking about November 2023 to January 2024. Generally, an open and competitive solicitation process for professional services takes longer than two months. So, I mean, I think in the best of situations where you have your request for proposals ready to go and ready to publish kind of the day that you become aware of something, You could potentially complete that process within 60 days, but that would be a very aggressive schedule so I do think even though I agree with the finding ultimately that this is not it it is not an a justification for not following a the law, I think it's helpful to have some explanation that this process that's being identified here potentially takes longer than the city would have had at the time.

What I thought Mr. Whitman at least offered was something like if it said I don't know if this is, agree with explanation. Because it isn't that you partially agree with the law, and I understood you. You do agree with the law, but you also want to explain the circumstance. So to me, agree with explanation or something like that is better than partially.

We could do that too.

That would be my preference. And as we're going through these and I'm thinking about will I vote yes for this response, so far where we're being less equivocal or even using words that sounded more affirmative that we agree, you get my support. And I just wanna say one more thing about this item. This is my memory that the first time this came up in city council, We were told that there was a narrow window for the first round of funding. And there would be a second round of funding, but there was no guarantee that there was going to be money in the second round of funding, and that our odds of getting a grant would be enhanced by being in the first round of funding. what i have a little bit of concern about is that just because we're at the midnight hour and there i have a little deja vu on that of you know having issues come to us and saying you only have so much time to do this doesn't mean that we're not expected to use the full-time, even though we're not, you know, so if it was a 60-day open period and we can't say that we couldn't have done this within the 60-day period, I think we just have to say, agree, and provide our explanation.

Yeah, sounds good.

Yeah, I like the way that this is going, because I think that we do need to take responsibility for anything that we can take responsibility for. And I think that there are explanations. It doesn't absolve us from what happened. And I think people understand time sensitivity, right? I mean, we were time sensitive. And for me, this is also a good starting point if we are indeed going to do a case study of some sort, the factors that played into the decisions that we made. The more that we put in the explanations, the easier it will be for us to kind of dissect this or tease apart this and find out what lessons and best practices can emerge from this.

I agree that this is heading in the right direction and I'll just say and I'm not saying this figuratively or anything but as each of these steps were moving forward I kept saying we don't have the information to know the scope of what we're agreeing to do here and I just felt like we had a lack of information And I think that ultimately what won out is the idea that if we got this funding, we would be able to do this thing for the homeless situation And that kind of, and if to get all the explanation and kind of do the long process of understanding it, maybe we're gonna miss out on the grant, but that's what I remember happening.

And what I remember is, yes, that we were pushed into this because we had an emergency. I mean, we had fires happening all over city properties, we had people, on social media, on our emails, saying there are people camping in Libby Park. And there was a group of volunteers who was meeting regularly. Ruth, a man named George, there was Betsy VanLight, several others were meeting with Mark Scott to try to figure out a solution. And it didn't go through the regular, it didn't go through the process that it should have gone through. And it was an unprecedented time before the Supreme Court ruling when we really had no recourse. We couldn't just say to our unhoused, you know, go to Ventura. There was nothing available. And so while we're going to do this better next time and we're definitely going to learn from these mistakes, I just think that we were dealing with, we were doing the best we could with a very real problem.

I agree with that. And I would also say that 2020 hindsight we should have scheduled daily city council meetings to hammer through like five days of discussion to understand exactly what it was that we were doing I mean as it was I remember really long meetings but I never felt satisfied that I knew what the hell was happening.

Right. And then there were also these community volunteers who were bringing Dignity Moves in to panel discussions that weren't city sponsored. And so there were some of us council members who were going to those meetings learning about Dignity Moves hearing these conversations, coming into our meetings with that information, but it wasn't a formal process. And so it was, we piecemealed things together. Hindsight is 2020, I would go back and I would change some of what we did But when we had $12 million on the table, it was really hard to turn that away and say, we still have this problem, and we're still spending a half a million dollars a year to try to address this problem. And I want to just be clear that the problem, I call it the problem, but really, all of these individuals have names and stories and contributions to our community. And so that was the other thing. It was so heartbreaking to go through that recognition of this real need in our community and this real safety issue too, and then here's a solution. Okay, we didn't do it perfectly, and we're changing that now, we're remedying that now.

Council Member Meng, I think you had some comments about this one.

briefly was the email from Mr. Creasy saying that the dates were incorrect, and I don't know if that makes it. We'll verify that.

So that, you know, of course, that came in after the agenda was published, but we'll double check that before we finalize this.

Moving from November 3rd to, yeah. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

I was just going to say the sense of urgency and as you bring back up those times when we had people living all over the campus, fires, it was a very chaotic situation that needed to be dealt with and they weren't going to move to Ventura. That wasn't going to happen. They were going to move further back and up the hill. So, you know, I agree with you. We did the best we could do. And it's like you never know how to do it until you've done it. and we did the best we could do.

Being in the audience at the time, that's how it appeared, and that there were also a lot of staff turnover at the time, so it was a chaotic time.

Yeah, and there were reasons, and there were explanations, and the state was no clearer on what they were doing, so there was no guidance coming that way. I mean, there's reasons, but still in all, here it is.

We have to take responsibility for it. I would say it a little bit differently, because in 2020 hindsight, we could have done better but we as a council we needed the guidance from somebody to tell us this is this is the proper way to go through this process and we really didn't get that and so I I'd modify that we did the best that we could do. We could have done better, but we weren't given the assistance that we needed to do better.

You did the best you could with the information you had-ish.

And I want to thank you for bringing up that point, because if I had any knowledge that we were doing something incorrectly for our own code, I would have, this would have been a very different story, but we were. We would have fixed it. Yeah, we would have fixed it.

We would have done it according to code, but we probably would have accelerated, accelerated. We probably would have had those everyday meetings until we figured it out. So that's what it is.

I just wanted to move on to number six is interesting, related to what we said about number five.

So for number six, it's worded a little bit differently. So, you know, words, there's some nuance in some of the findings that I was trying to acknowledge here. So finding number five was that the claims of insufficient time did not absolve the city of Ojai. And we discussed that that's going to be an agree. Finding number six is that the city of Ojai could not support its claim of insufficient time to conduct a fair and competitive selection process based on qualifications and competency. I provided a disagree response, again, as a recommendation. We can modify that, but the basis for that is that there was a very limited time. So while I think it's, like both things can be true, it can be true that the claims of insufficient time do not absolve the city from compliance with the government code requirements, but at the same time, I personally had a hard time suggesting that the claim of insufficient time prior to January or prior to submission of the grant application was unsupported by the dates.

To me, the key, and at least from my ear, the word was support that I was finding the nuance in. So if it said the city of Ojai could not justify its claim, that seems like a stronger threshold than support. So when you wrote disagree, I thought your explanation in number five was our attempt to support why we had no time. So it didn't strike me as being inconsistent with number five.

All right. So my recommendation on that one would be to say agree. And I'm gonna probably say that on every one of these because I think that is our best way of showing that we're committed to doing this. But I would say, agree. But the city did provide an explanation. Now, I wasn't consulted. I wasn't interviewed by the grand jury, but I do have an understanding that, and it's inherent in their findings, that we provided an explanation for what happened. They're rejecting that that was a sufficient explanation. I think we should just say agree, but the city explained why it we this was done on I would say maybe just city explained why and then refer them to refer them to the response to number five. Because that's, that's where the only substance we're giving them is what's in number five.

Was my, when I brought up the difference between support and justify, is that why you said disagree?

That is why, because I believe that when you think about Support I mean whether you sufficiently supported or whether you supported it to the status Satisfaction of the civil grand jury is probably a different question, but I do think that there's support With that being said, you know, I don't I mean to your point councilman. I don't know that the civil grand jury is I don't know if they interviewed staff. I know that they, you know, and the city manager may chime in here, but I know that they did request some documents, but they requested very specific documents.

Right. I mean, I think, you know, for the purpose of this discussion, you're not supposed to acknowledge that you met with the grand jury, of course. But, yes, I met with them for a little time to explain the process from when I came on board to current day.

So I'm addressing this idea that they're saying the city could not support its claim of insufficient time. So my thought, I'm just repeating myself, but my thought is that if this was my response to propose to a client, I would say agree, but the city did explain why it thought it had insufficient time. But, you know, we, the reality is, is that, I'm not clear about all of the timelines, but, you know, we've just been talking about the idea that it wasn't even on our radar screen that there was a process we had to follow. So, this idea of, you know, did we have time or not is kind of, you know, moot if, We didn't get that brought. We never said we have to do this process, but we don't have time, so let's go get the grant.

Well, I was just going to say, logically, I don't object to agree if after agree, if it said, I don't know how to say this, because if the synonym was the city of Ojai could not explain its claim of insufficient time, if it said that, I would say we absolutely did attempt to explain. So I'm reading support as synonymous of that, but if we said we agree because we could not satisfy the claim of insufficient time, explanation C above of...

I mean, my thought is that we can say that without saying disagree. And we can say agree and we can provide that explanation. I think that's the stronger way to approach this. How do you feel about that?

I don't have a preference. I mean, at the end of the day, this, again, my, it's, yeah, I don't have a preference as to whether it's an agree or disagree or a conditional agree.

Mm-hmm.

I think their finding is blending the law with the city's effort to explain what we did, and we have to agree with the law. No, you made your case, I think.

I'm okay.

Yeah? How are you feeling?

I'm okay with it as well. Okay.

So we'll say you agree.

With explanation? With explanation. Yeah.

With explanation and finding five above. Yeah, I think Bethany probably needs to work with the language that you were trying to articulate, Mayor, and make that a, you know.

I mean, I think what I would probably do is change it to agree, but then say, however, see explanation. However is great. Yeah.

However solves it for me.

Yeah, yeah, there we go.

Okay. Okay. That's good. All right. So number seven.

All right. So seven is, again, a simple statement that City of Ojai was required by law to conduct a fair and competitive selection process when it awarded the development management agreement on May 27, 2025. Great. and I just said agree. But please see, and we'll say explanation to finding two.

Okay, yes, right.

And the same token sort of hitting on it again, that the city of Ojai did not conduct a fair and competitive selection process based on qualifications and competency when it awarded a contract to Dignity Moves. Mm-hmm. I can agree. Mm-hmm. Then for finding F9, it says that the city issued a series of findings on page 20 of resolution number 25-19 to justify the awarding of a contract to Dignity Moves as its sole source development manager without conducting a fair and competitive selection process. This is one of those that is, it's a factual statement and the resolution does in fact include a series of findings to that extent. And then I included kind of a summary of what some of those findings were. Finding number 10 was that the city could not, again, this is one of those could not support findings, the city could not support its claims in the resolution that Dignity Moves was uniquely qualified and that no other development managers could have been identified. I think this is probably one that will warrant some further discussion based on the conversations we've had thus far. But my recommended response was disagree. And then I just refer back to the resolution, the findings in the resolution.

So my thought on this one is that the word uniquely is what causes the problem here because I think there was probably a general belief amongst the council that Dignity Moves was qualified to do. I know that I went to a League of Cities and they presented on a different model of supportive housing. But I didn't know there was a difference at that point in time. But I think that I would again say agree. But you know that we didn't. We never deliberated on the idea whether of whether there was the possibility of somebody else who could do the same services. And frankly, I would have doubted that they were the only one because I think there were other like other panels during that same League of Cities conference where they were presenting on homeless Yeah, I mean the so this goes back to that volunteer group that we had working on working on this and and

that group was working in partnership with the county of Ventura, the Continuum of Care, and so the recommendation to us from the continuum of care, from Jennifer Harkey specifically, was that Dignity Moves was uniquely qualified. So we were given information as to this is the best in the area, they have a project in Santa Barbara, and so we didn't go out for an RFP, we didn't do it ourselves, but this was coming from the experts that we were working with And so, I mean, if we do, if everybody wants to agree on this, then I would add that explanation, that we were told by the experts in the county that they were uniquely qualified for this.

So what if it said, hypothetically, agreed, however, dignity moves was presented to be uniquely qualified to provide the product and services?

Yeah, I would be okay with that. yeah it was represented to us by yes so presented represented and i i mean no i mean no shade on jennifer hart she was actually helping us everyone all the volunteers were helping and working so hard on this and so i am so grateful and i don't want to throw anybody under the bus i don't see it as she made it possible to get the grant that's how it appeared to be this this is what i remember at that time you know

I'm mostly voting no, but I was paying attention. Dignity Moves had a philosophy towards how these communities should be structured and constructed. and it centered around their kind of courtyard and communal and they were trying to develop not just places for the homeless, but a community with the expectation that that was gonna. So if you look, if you were focused just on that issue, would say they were uniquely qualified but I think what the grand jury is looking at and maybe the law is looking at is this isn't really about philosophy in your approach to things it's about who has the you know, the institutional wherewithal to take a project from beginning to end. And I don't think we could say that they were unique in their ability to do that.

Are you okay with presented, though?

I'm okay with it. Well, I mean, I would once again... let me say agree and give us all the explanations of where we were. I think what Rachel said is really strong as an explanation. And I think I would add the part that I said about, you know.

The trauma-informed care.

Well, yeah, the trauma-informed care and the structure of the community, you know, We were led to understand that this was unique.

And it probably was. It was proprietary, but what we weren't given the chance to understand is this might not be the only way to do this. We were led to believe that this was the only way, the best way, and that was... And that's how you sell your services. Yeah, exactly. We were let down. I guess I'm only asking. Go ahead.

Please go. I have some recommendations for modified language. What if we say agree, however, the city's decision was based on representations from other agencies and experts that Dignity Moves was uniquely qualified to provide the products and services based on its demonstrated experience delivering innovative, dignified interim and permanent housing solutions in California. So basically just changing the first part of it.

That feels fine to me.

That feels good to me too.

I don't know. I have problems with saying that Dignity Moves provides innovative blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah. I mean, I hate to say it, but I do actually believe that.

But we want to put blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah. We're not claiming the fact. We're claiming that other agencies present it.

There were representations to the city. That's it right there.

Yeah. In ensuing days and years, we have come to believe that we were led down the primrose path. But thank you very much.

No, I'm OK with that. I keep going back to the idea that we weren't given the advice that, hey, there's other businesses that you should consider and you actually have a legal obligation to give people an opportunity to sell you on their ability to deliver.

On their model, right? On their model, because Dignity Moves sold us a model that we bought into without understanding there were other models that we could have explored. But that's all water under the bridge.

And I'm enjoying the conversation, and I was just trying to think how to respond appropriately. Yeah, I don't want to slag on Dignity Moves.

But I think if we say, however, we were led to believe by experts.

Well, that's why I say the city's decision was based on representations from... I mean, if that's an accurate statement, even if later your perspectives on that differed, that's, we're looking at a moment. We just read that one more time to make sure we're clear before we leave that question. So really what, up to the words uniquely qualified, it would read, agree. However, the city's decision was based on representations from other agencies and experts that Dignity Move was uniquely qualified and then the rest of that. Great.

Okay.

Had a unique model. Okay, never mind. Because it's only the representation, not the fact. Yeah.

Okay.

All right, so number... Oh, go ahead. I would agree with Council Member Rule that it would be worthwhile to explain that the uniqueness was about... was more philosophical than it was about the capacity to deliver a product.

So the trauma-informed, housing-first model is their philosophy. Well, that's what they call it. But I mean, that's their buzzword. But I'm asking the benefits for our response. Is that true?

I mean, I don't know if that buzzword's in there. We're not branding for them.

No, no, no. I'm saying that we were told that this is the best way to do things. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm fine with that. That's the specific language. That's all I was saying.

And I'm just saying that I'm... i would say i'm okay with what bethany said but i'm error on the side of being more precise usually you guys all suffer but just it feels like content that doesn't inform the response really that much to me personally but it puts something in the record but i'm fine with it just being what it is i really am okay with that okay so then i want to suggest we go on to f11

So then the next one is another one of these the city could not support It says the city could not support its claim on page 20 of resolution number 25-19 that it was obligated to award a contract The dignity moves because dignity moves was listed in the grant application This one was another one for which I've recommended a disagree response and the reason for that is that if you look at the language of the grant agreement, what it states is that grantees will implement the ERF-funded local proposals in compliance with the terms and conditions of this agreement, the notice of funding availability under which the grantee applied, the representations contained in the grantee's application, HCD guidance and directives, and the requirements per the authorizing statute. And so go on to say that by incorporating a grant applicant's application into the final grant agreement, HCD effectively contractually requires grantees to deliver the grant-funded activity in the manner articulated in the grant application. The wording of the grant agreement is what it is. And so I think this is another situation from a hindsight perspective. You might look at it differently. But I would also note, and this is as recent as March when we were talking to HCD about the feasibility of looking at other locations, one of the things they have emphasized over and over again, and they put this in writing in March, is that they viewed these grants as being highly competitive. And so I could see that there might be reticence on the part of the city to have a conversation with the state about changing elements of the grant application that could potentially make it less competitive, because we've been told by HCD that they would not approve those kinds of changes. So I struggled with this one because I do think that just from a strict contractual standpoint, there was an obligation once the city accepted the grant funds to deliver the project in accordance with that application. The flip side of that for consideration is that we always have the ability to request an amendment to the grant. So the city unilaterally could not have changed Dignity Move, and we don't know what HCD would have said, and we probably don't have any way to know what HCD would have said.

Isn't it in the original agreement, wasn't it ?

It was, but they approved an amendment to the grant agreement that allowed a modification to the location or the project site, but as a condition of approving that change, they required, basically it was an example where they said, okay, we'll agree to a change, but it's gotta be a change that comes with something better.

Like more units with closer to services.

So this, this is my thought about this. There's many. I have many examples in my legal career, where there's one statute that says you have to do this. And then there's another statute says you have to do this. And you cannot possibly comply with both. And so when I you know, listen to your explanation and, and read it the way I see it is, on the one hand, we have the law related to the sole sourcing of services. On the other hand, we have a contract with the state that with the state that that has a sole source. And so I almost say, you know, agree, but had we written them out of the contract, we potentially lost the ability to be awarded the grant. I'm not sure that that.

So again, the way that the finding is worded, this is why I struggled with this one. The finding is that the city could not support its claim. that it was obligated to award a contract to Dignity Moves. So I think there is support for that claim.

My response to what you wrote there was that the error happened or let's say the lack of the due process happened in listing dignity moves as the provider and the grant without the competitive bidding. But the grant was written, the proposal was written, and then the grant awarded. So to me, the reason why I thought disagreed made sense here was because what logically follows from the first step, the second step did follow, but I would say if the language were something to the effect of The understanding that the council was working with at the time was that they were procedurally correct in listing dignity moves, and so the rest follows. So disagree seemed logical to me with the explanation.

I agree with that. I agree with the recommendation to disagree.

yeah I mean I I like the idea of I think it's true I think the disagree is is is the accurate statement just you know what was the truth of the situation but I would definitely put in the you know between a rock and a hard place and Once again, we didn't know what we didn't know. So as for explanation, the flip side of that, of course, which has been brought up, is that we did ask for amendments. And we got them. And I know that we got them with conditions, but we never asked for this amendment that might have given us conditions as well. We just didn't do it. So there's that sort of sense of responsibility is that we just didn't do it. We didn't ask.

So if the language was added to say the city did not understand the, we didn't understand the scope or flexibility to come back with changes until later.

Yeah, I think that's fine.

What if we added a sentence that says that the city recognizes that it could have requested an amendment to the grant, the outcome of which may have been uncertain.

I mean because we don't know I mean I don't know So my thought is that none of that happened and what's troubling us is that this is kind of a chicken versus egg question because they're in the grant application that's awarded And so part of me would say agree, but they were embedded in the agreement and we didn't have an understanding that we could award this to anyone else.

That's the disagree logic though, isn't it? on this piece. Yeah, I understand.

And we were told we couldn't. I mean, we were told that Dignity Moves was embedded in this. We were definitely told that.

You were told that, or we were all told, when the questions came up about vendors, The connotation, if not explicitly, was we received the grant because Dignity Moves was in the grant.

Oh, absolutely.

So in a way, it's hard to, let's just say hypothetically, that's correct, hypothetically. Then essentially, it's fixed.

Yeah, and that was our understanding. That absolutely was our understanding. So that is what we were told.

That's what I mean. The problem was prior to that. which was if there could have been a competitive bid prior to the proposal, obviously, hindsight, then it would have been easier because you wouldn't even be having a conversation about changing the vendor.

It did come up also, could we change vendors? Later. Later, exactly. Later it did come up.

You're right.

Whatever seems, I think we have to disagree.

I think it's okay to have a disagree response. It is okay. I understand the desire to want accountability and to hold yourselves accountable. I mean, there were very few, there were far fewer disagree responses than agree responses.

This is also an area where And I know we're not supposed to talk about the investigation process, but if they only talked to Ben and Ben wasn't a participant in how they got into the application, then they're not getting a satisfactory explanation. I'm not sure that Ben could have given them.

Well, I knew enough that if I could just jump in. I had heard enough about what had happened. I did my best to explain how it was related to me, and also for my watching of meetings and things. But on this one, I will just say, because I was the one having conversations with HCD, and that was... And also, at that time, the governor's office had a homelessness czar. And she also... So between the homelessness czar and HCD, it actually wasn't even HCD, it was BCH. Anyway, they made it very clear to me that, like, hey... Don't fudge around with your application unless you're giving us something way better. If you seem wishy-washy, we're going to give this to the next person. This is highly competitive. If you all of a sudden want to go with somebody else, we awarded this because of what you presented. and we're not open to, hey, this location's got less political upheaval, and this vendor is somebody else. They said, no, we approved it based on what we saw.

That's what we did. And I guess listening to that, I'm thinking about the idea that does your desire to be awarded the grant allow you to skirt the obligations on sole sourcing.

Sure, but I'm not talking about that. All I'm speaking of is just what, you know, they were very emphatic with me over multiple conversations.

And I'm not criticizing you. I'm just... I'm just trying to look at it from the people overseeing us.

I think the mayor stated it succinctly. Look, this is this junction in the process, and here you are at this junction in the process. The error was here. You didn't do an RFQ before you submitted the application.

We don't have to belabor this point because it's a little tangential, but I write grants all the time, and You don't want the grant to drive the organizational mission. You want to have a mission and have a grant support the mission, but it happens the other way all the time, and that's not good. Anyway. So are we okay with disagree as amended? I mean, disagree and... With explanation. Yes. Okay. All right. F12. F12.

So for finding F-12, it is that the city could not support its claims in the resolution, that it was obligated to award a contract because it faced a short timeline to spend 50% of the grant due to delays leading up to the deadline. For this one, I recommended a partially agree and then acknowledge that just from a pure number of days standpoint, that there was sufficient time between the date the city received the grant and when the DMA was approved to conduct a competitive selection process. However, again, kind of noting that the city was unaware at the time that HCD would consider changes to the city's consultant identified in the grant application. And in support of this statement, the city had been kind of explaining some of what we just discussed. And then also noting in the second paragraph that during this period of time that the city underwent a significant process to evaluate multiple project sites. Because there were other things happening. What I'm trying to acknowledge is that there were other things happening during this time period. And I think one other thing that I may not have you know noted directly here um but you know i think dignity moves even without having the development management agreement executed continued to provide support through that process um so they you know they were acting as a partner to the city on the on and and furthering the project um even before that agreement was in place um and so it's you know the timing the timing there's a little bit It's not as black and white.

I was just going to say, if you take away partially and just have agree, you already have a however in there after the first sentence. I think it's okay. Agree, and you've got your however. I agree. Okay. Because the explanation is clear and detailed.

then for finding f-13 i suspect that you're going to want to also change this one to agree so i've already made the note um that the city's claims of this insufficient time did not absolve the city from conducting a fair and competitive selection process based on qualifications and competency when awarding the contract on may 27 2025. um So I would, based on the discussion thus far, my guess is that you would like to change that to agree partially.

I think so. And eliminate the partially disagree. Yeah, just keep it as agree. Keep the explanation. That would be my preference. I agree with that.

I think so, too.

Then for finding F14, this finding was simply that there was significant turnover of staff and elected officials at the City of Ojai during this process, which contributed to the issues in this report. so we did i mean even though the answer to this is agree um i did think it was beneficial to note that i mean like one of the most significant changes here um is in the role of the city manager um and i thought it was beneficial to note this because we have received public comment on this point but also because you know i mean in talking in my discussions with ben about how we got here you know one of the things he's noted is that if if the city you know if if the city had been more engaged, and I think what I take away from this is that if he'd been your city manager at the time, he might have been more engaged at what was happening with the state level enough in advance that perhaps the city could have done a competitive process in advance. So I think it's important to note that you had a change in the person who was kind of at the helm of the ship in the midst of this process.

I agree.

But in addition to that, without listing them all out, you also saw other significant changes like, you know, the former public works director, the former finance director. There have been some significant changes in key roles. So, yeah. Is everyone in agreement with that? For finding F-15, there was a lack of public transparency throughout the process. And this is the one that I said is kind of subjective. I think transparency is another one of those things that can be in the eye of the beholder. I said generally disagree because you did have 22 public meetings, and that was, you know, the person in my office who was helping with this went back and double-checked that count, which sounds pretty transparent, but I also understand that this is subjective and, you know, open to your feedback on this.

I'm curious because as we discussed, there are some people who firmly believe it was very transparent and there are other people who firmly believe it wasn't transparent at all. So I don't know really what to do with this because we have both, who were fully engaged, so we have both sides of that coin and I don't, How do you discount either one of those views because it is subjective?

I think one way you could is you could that you could turn this into You know a partially agree partially disagree and then include a statement you know that that notes that you know, for some members of the city council and community that the process was sufficiently transparent. I mean, maybe we just say that.

But if my thought is that if you're focusing on the selection of big folks as our contractors, then that wasn't the subject matter. So I would say that we, I'll give credit that we agendized the heck out of this project. And we did, I think, definitely, added meetings with the idea to give more opportunity for public input but if this finding is to say that we weren't particularly transparent about how we selected I think Rachel's already kind of said it was in these informal meeting setting that it was resolved that they were the ones.

And it's not that anyone was hiding anything. It's just, like I said, unprecedented situation. We were working with experts. And so the recommendation came to us without I mean, really, without any, yeah, the recommendation for dignity moves was not as transparent as it could be.

I might suggest saying agree that the selection of dignity moves did not have full public transparency, but disagree that the project as a general concept did not have extensive transparency. I was just gonna say that. But I also, I guess I do agree with the concept There's a wide range of opinions about how transparent.

What about this?

Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, what if we say, agree, as noted above, the city agrees that Dignity Moves was not selected through an open and competitive process. That's what's already there. Then we say, however, with respect to the project more generally, since late 2023, the city has conducted 22 public meetings regarding the process and the project. or just say regarding the project. I'd stop it.

Well, can I just add one word? I guess I like everything that was said, and I would just suggest one thing. However, since late 2023, the city has attempted to be transparent in the process by, I would throw in that word,

Well, I think, I don't know if we want to say process because I think that's sort of referring back to the project. I didn't mean process, I meant transparent. Yeah, transparency.

I think it's important that we repeat that word. That's what I would say.

So because we agree that dignity moves as the selection was not correct, and we've also striven to involve the community over and over again.

and really remedy a lot of the aspects of the process that weren't transparent.

What if we say the city has, so however, since late 2023, the city has endeavored to provide transparency And this, again, is not passing judgment on how effective that was, but we've endeavored to provide transparency through conducting.

Yeah, and the rest. I'm totally okay with that. Is that okay with you?

Yeah, that's okay with me.

Okay. Yeah, we all good?

Yeah, I'm good with the agree, however. Okay. All right.

Okay. 16. We're going to do it. Wow. Okay.

Then finding F-16, there was a lack of alignment within the Ojai City Council and between the city and local residents, resulting in delays that impacted the progress of the project. I'll be very honest. I struggled with this one as well because I think that To the extent that there are delays based on a lack of alignment, it's because we had council members who wanted more information or more discussion. I don't love the suggestion that it almost reads like there should be more unanimous votes on the project. And I think that that's...

not how city councils work i mean it's great when you can get to a unanimous vote but it the process is designed to work without that and so um yeah if the statement is pejorative i would say that it's not acknowledging the idea that that there was we you you can't fault us for not uh Grinding through the whole set of issues with the exception of we selected as our contract So

And this one is not specific to Dignity Moves. This is the progress of the project. The project overall.

I don't get that statement either because the progress of the project is what I guess they want us to have. BROKEN GROUND AND BUILD UNITS AT THIS POINT IN TIME?

OR EVERY TIME AN ALTERNATE LOCATION BROUGHT UP, YOU HEARD PROS AND CONS FOR EACH ONE. I'M EMPHASIZING THE CONS FROM COMMUNITY MEMBERS. SO TO SAY THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE COMMUNITY ALIGNMENT I don't see how you could have a project like this and not have people not wanting it in their area.

And it is the democratic process to engage and wrestle with the question and potentially find common ground or not, and then you go to vote. I mean, it's the process. It doesn't, as you say. So I don't know how we actually couch that to say that this was the process that councils go through normally

come to next steps well and so that's that's sort of where I came to and this is one that I think Ben may have weighed in on he noted that you know over ten different locations were vetted so like that is actually when you look back at what happened between when the grant was awarded and when the development management agreement was approved Most of the time that city council spent working on issues related to the project were related to discussions and evaluations of different project locations. But I do think You know, again, just, so in the response, it's a partially agree, partially disagree. I mean, we acknowledge that the decisions have not been unanimous, with many decisions being approved with a 3-2 vote. Council operates by a majority vote.

I'm okay with your answer on this one, personally.

So I, and I, but I think the way that we've handled that on some of the others is saying agree, however. and provide the explanation.

I just don't know if I would agree that that was the thing that resulted in impacts to the progress of the project. It's that last part of the finding.

Also, I would disagree with the fact that the delays have all been about the alignment of the council, because some of the delays have been staff delays. Some delays have been vetting other properties. So it's not us not being able to work as a team. And I gather that the lack of alignment within the city council, it wasn't that. I disagree with that.

If the finding had ended at the word residence with a period, I would probably have said agree. But I don't know that that resulted in delays. That's the part that I struggled with.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, there was a lack of alignment, but... That's not unusual. It doesn't result in any delays that were any more so than any other deep discussion on things. I don't believe that a lot of the delays were the result of locations.

No, I mean, we had a whole month of delays just on the soil testing.

Yeah, like, I don't, and I still to this day don't believe that we truly vetted 10 properties. I just don't believe that. But, that having been said, I'm not willing to, like, this is once again, you know, not really relevant to the answer to this question, but I don't believe that, you know, that about the 10 vetted properties. were the thing that held us up above, even comparable with the other delays that we've had. But that having been said.

The other thing I would note, and so maybe as we're talking, maybe I also disagree with the characterization of some of this stuff as actually being delays to the project, because the reality is you're still set to deliver the project within the timeline required by the grant. while i know the city manager would love to and other members of the community would love to have the project completed as expeditiously as possible so that we can you know move the the residents that go high tent town into a different facility you're not necessarily delay you're not You're not over the timeline. Yeah, we're not behind time. And maybe you should add that. I think you should add that, that we fully expect.

That we're still on track to meet the.

So maybe we say notwithstanding the council voting history related to the project, the project is still on track to be completed within the timeline required by the grant.

Yep.

So did we agree? Are we saying partially agree, partially disagree? I'm hearing, too, that's the case, but not necessarily.

What this finding sounds like is that it's all the disagreements that have led to delays and that it's all the contention, and that's not true. Yeah. that there are these very tangible factors that have led to delays, but actually it's not delayed at all. So I agree that there has been a lack of alignment, but I disagree that we have delays and that any of the lack of alignment has resulted in delays.

So I think we need to say disagree because that clause is not coming out. And I actually... I mean, yes, that's true, resulting in delays that impacted the progress of the project. But everything that we've done, everything that you do results in delays that impact the progress of the project. Everything that you do. this conversation is impacting. You know what I mean? I mean, there's just nothing that you do that doesn't impact the progress of the project if you look at it in those terms, right?

So your suggestion is you say disagree, and then the rest, the city council acknowledges, et cetera.

Yeah, exactly.

And I would say another way to approach it is to say, I agree that disagreements may have delayed the project to some extent or contributed to delay, but the reality is there's so many other things. that have affected the evolution of the project.

But why would you then start with agree?

Because they want it. I think we can do one disagree.

I think we could do a disagree. That's badly worded. That's badly worded. And the implication is not right.

You only have one other disagree. I think it's OK. I think it's OK to do a disagree, because we can very clearly say that the project is still on schedule.

asked me why it's been, you know, two years since we started this process, I wouldn't say it was because that it was slowed down by disagreement. I mean, there were lots of people who wanted the process to be slowed down, and I don't think they got anywhere with that, you know, with and I don't even think it slowed down, but we did have public hearings on the idea of changing the location to two different locations, two different hearings. I'm not sure that even that slowed down the progress.

Yeah, it wasn't a deep dive into that that was, but anyway, that's not relevant to this particular question.

So did I hear you agree to or disagree, Ben? Do I hear you agree to disagree on? I'm fine with that.

OK. And then I think the recommendations will be, well, at least the first two recommendations I think were pretty straightforward. For the first one was the city of Ojai should develop policies and procedures that support conducting a fair and competitive selection process in all cases moving forward. The response was agree, this is in process, and that council provided authority and direction to the city attorney to prepare revisions, the purchasing ordinance and solicitation templates, and that these are expected to be completed by January 1. As a practical matter, we're planning to bring these back for the first presentation to council in October.

um so i don't want to commit to an october date until it happens they're only asking for january 1st so i'll just make a comment on response number one as soon as your firm was you know awarded city council you began talking to me about the need to revise our procurement laws. And so your response makes it sound like, you know, maybe we did this in July, only I... Well, we didn't seek formal counsel direction until July. One of the first things that I said when the grand jury report came out was I shot a note to the city manager and said, Well, you know, the city attorney has been working on these revisions for months.

Well, what we've done so far is we, and so this is actually, you know, kind of going back a step. You know, the very first thing that we did with the city manager and with Norma's support was provide new contract templates. So that started immediately. We also have started rolling out new solicitation templates. That's already in process. You're already doing that. It's just that we didn't actually begin work on ordinance changes until we came back to council and got direction to do that.

But what I'm saying is that developing the policies and procedures started long before That's July 14th. You know, recommend it.

I mean, I've been thinking about them for months. I just haven't put pen to paper.

And you've been talking about them, and I've been happy to hear that we're doing that.

So we could give ourselves more credit. I think we should.

Well, I'm thinking we should bolster that response by saying that this has been a – you can even mention that your firm is new and has been working on this since – since being retained.

Yeah, I mean, we were assessing the situation. I mean, I think it started, to give the city manager credit, it started with him asking some questions and, you know, kind of beginning the discussion about what do we need to do to clean that up.

I mean, can you say, you could start off by saying agree in process since coming on board and then add some language. We can say since January. And then on July 14th, you can list that, then the council provided authority. Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, in our discussions, it wasn't necessarily focused on this project. Like, in general, we need to tighten up our procurement policies.

So what if we say, since January 2026, the city has been evaluating the need... for revisions and updates to its purchasing ordinance. And then we say on July 14th, the city council formally provided authority. and then for what that does for me that I think is important is it we were working on this before the grand jury report absolutely and then for the next one on the city should implement a plan to improve its public transparency throughout the selection process agree and process As noted in the response to recommendation number one, the city attorney has received authorization and direction to prepare updates and revisions. These are expected to better ensure public transparency in city purchasing and contracting activities. Love it. In recommendation number three... This one was a little bit different. It says the city of Ojai, by January 1, 2027, the city of Ojai implement a plan to gain alignment among employees, elected officials, and local residents before initiating large and complex projects. I don't disagree with this in concept, but I do think that you are already, you've already been working on this, I think, and this is, again, still being fairly new here, but you've been working on this robust council goals and tactics process that I think was intended to facilitate more alignment amongst the city council in the priorities and work that you're doing. That's been a public transparent process. You have actually an update on those next week. And so I think you're already working on this. If there's more that you would like to add or we can do that, but I really was trying to identify that you're already doing this.

I've been advocating for quite a while for the idea that we need greater support on staff, meaning we need more staff, more resources put into our ability to function. I see it to a great degree in our reporting. And I've talked to Ben at length, but I understand that it's not because there isn't an effort to give us reports, but there is such a massive volume of stuff to consume and and and then you know to deliver to us so it it it hurts the way that you know that our ability to analyze and function and then it then it and when we get big projects that you know on the bike we're we're you know we're not equipped like a city of a hundred thousand people to staff at our project because we there's so many other things we have to throw the staff at I shouldn't say throw staff I mean allocate staff to handle our you know the analysis I I think it's a major investment that that we need to make as a council to you know, to get from where we are and recognize that something like this is going to happen again unless we're like really up our game.

Well, and I do think, you know, and Ben can speak more to this. I know he's got some, he mentioned earlier that he has a future concept review he's going to be bringing to the city council to talk about, you know, agendizing things and structuring some of those future items a little bit differently than they've done in the past to try to facilitate that. Mm-hmm.

um i don't want to steal his thunder and you know that's not on the agenda tonight so so it's not for a detailed discussion it's with it's accomplishing the same thing that you're speaking of council member but it's totally the opposite so so with that being said i guess so we're now we're making the reports I'll just tell you, man, I'm looking to go to a report. I just want to say this right now. We're not discussing this, okay? But I just want to say, it's going to be the same meeting twice a month. So a discussion, all the same items.

where we have more concept reviews.

I don't want to drop a bomb.

This is not on the agenda yet. We have discussed that before. That has been on the table a couple of times.

So let's hold that discussion. But I guess the point is that I do think that the city council has taken great strides to try to To try to improve alignment in the execution of council priorities. However, I do include in this response that, you know, with that being said, like each city council, it should have said city council member.

Mm-hmm.

works to represent the many facets. You have a diverse community and you have differing perspectives in your community that you as the city council represent. So to suggest that the city council will be unanimous on all issues when you have dissenting voices in your community I think is not a fair expectation.

I thought the two tree workshops were in some sense an example of what we could be doing. So you had a lot of community input on one and then you had, I would call them like expert witnesses giving feedback where the council was hearing it and we're waiting to come back. So I would say our goal and the workshops that are in our goals moves us towards that. That's how it appears to me.

So I think that's good.

If so, then that's the end of this item. Well, I guess actually not the end of this item. The question is, does council, so we have two options. Either we can bring back a cleaned up version that incorporates all the revisions for you to vote on at your next meeting, or you could make a motion to approve the report with the revisions that we've discussed tonight. And...

my suggestion would be that we put it on the consent calendar for the next one we see all of the revisions and then consent if there's something worth discussing and that would also give members of the public if they wanted to they see the finalized response and they can come in and talk and that gives us sufficient time for our filing

Yeah, so what we will do is then there's no action needed tonight. We will incorporate the edits as discussed and provide a direction by consensus and we'll bring that and put it on consent.

Great work, guys. That was really good.

That was important. I just want to say thank you, Council Member Whitman, for kind of leading us through this. That's a beautiful moment. Well, I mean, we really did get led through this process by you, and I much appreciate that. Well, and Bethany, but Bethany gave us the skeleton.

I do this for a living. I have to help my clients explain things within their rules.

I found it very helpful. Thank you.

I found it very helpful.

I agree. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I do spend a lot of time with words, too, in my career. And, you know.

And thank you, Bethany. Oh, thank you. Of course. I don't want to. Happy to help.

No need for thanks. Thank you. This is what we do. Wow. All right. So. Okay.

We'll move on to number nine while we still have time. Approval of the amendment to the development management agreement.

Wait, can I ask a question? Oh, what? I think we have a public, we have somebody in the public who might need to, is there an item that you're here for? No? Yeah, yeah, uh-huh. Oh, okay, okay, got it, got it. Okay, just wanted to make sure that we were gonna get to something that you were waiting for, so, okay, then never mind.

Okay, well, this would be one of those, actually.

Okay.

Okay. Amendment to the development management agreement.

OK, yes. Continuing on the topic of the permanent supportive housing project, when the bid selected by Dignity Moves through a competitive process was awarded, council ratified that back in April. You will recall that there was considerable discussion about winnowing down the project amount and, at that time, refusing a donation. So since that time, a couple things have happened. There have been ongoing discussions between Dignity Moves and this potential donor and other donors, and discussions with the city attorney and Dignity Moves attorney about how we could possibly modify the development management agreement so that if we are in a situation where we could accept a donation, How could it move forward in a manner that doesn't require every single potential donation to come back before the council for review and approval? Being consistent with what the council wants to see for this project, of course. And so I think where we've landed with that is what you see in front of you, which is a minor modification to the development management agreement that allows for the acceptance of a donation so long as it doesn't cause an increase in costs to the project. There are a number of items.

Or, if I may, or add additional conditions to the project.

That's critical. Thank you. Yes. So there were another number of items at the time that this bid was ratified that were excluded from the project or winnowed down. What I mean by that is the project currently on the Dignity Move side has a 4% contingency. The landscaping that was included was removed. Other items like the screening around individual HVAC units behind the housing were struck. The gate was modified, on and on and on. We are aware, and this was affirmed as recently as this week, that the $1 million donation that was previously offered is still available. And it is available currently without any strings attached. It's just towards the project. However, there is a reluctance from this donor and from some other donors about having to go before the council each time to offer donations. Donations to the project and I think that this is where we work closely with the city attorney and with the attorney for dignity moves with language that we just discussed that might put you in a position to Allow for that. So this is a proposal. We're here to talk to you about it. Please. Let us know how you feel. Thank you

Questions, we, I don't have questions.

I don't have questions. Okay, any public comments? Nobody online, nobody here. Okay, so I'm looking at the language on page 173 as the critical pieces, I guess, so I'm seeing like 3.1.1.1, acceptance of donations and expenditure of funds shall not result in any additional financial or operational obligations, critical, I'm just saying what you said again, 3.1.1.2, Amendment all other amendments to the development budget that result in an increase to the development budget shall require approval of the City Council in advance and that There should be no donations persuade to and meetings the requirements of this subsection so no donation can add any Requirements to the project or increase in the cost without the council's approval. That's right. That's how I'm reading that

So for instance, if Dignity Moves secured a million dollar donation, and if that donation was used to significantly increase their contingency from, say, 4% to 10% or 12% or something along those lines, and if we were able to add back in the native drought-tolerant landscaping, and if we were able to add in things like screening around the HVAC unit and so on and so forth, I would see those as items that don't cause an operational cost.

And there can't be any obligation about who gets to stay or anything like that?

Right. There's no conditions. Right.

Exactly.

To be clear, whenever it says, you know, it's not saying that there wouldn't be additional costs, because obviously if you add something to the project, there will be a cost in terms of the construction of the project. But what we're talking about is operational costs. Understood. I should have said that. So for example, if- We want to build you a pool. Yeah, something that would incur a significant ongoing maintenance cost or obligation for the city. That's what I was trying to address, because I think if I were the council, you previously approved a project, obviously you also then affirmed a construction bid that included some tweaks to the project, But at the point in time when you signed off on the final plans and the scope of the project, you approved a project. And so as long as it's consistent with the project that was approved by city council, what we're trying to do is add some parameters so that this isn't just, you know, if... someone comes in with donations that require again for you to add a swimming pool, that's gonna be an ongoing operational cost to the city.

Thank you for that.

I can't see a downside to this right now. So I, there's a couple of things. My wife works for a conservation organization and they uh receiving he's involved in you know acquiring donations and the organization has problems people who are associated with degradation of the environment making big donations to their So I think that we have to see who's making the donation and decide, yes, we want this donation. My other concern is, and we had a public comment on this, is that we have a contract with Dignity Moves. I'm very leery about modifying the terms of the contract until we get a strong hold on how we're moving forward. And I know we're moving forward with all of that, but I'm... I in my mind I really want to focus on bringing the contract I understand the purpose is to make it easier to accomplish goals of the contract that have been eliminated but I I'm concerned that we're also creating, you know, almost an out and that we need to continue working with the new moves on bringing the contract in within the scope of what we intended at the beginning. So, I have those reservations about moving this.

I hear what you're saying. I'm trying to think of a way to I understand every like an oil company is what I said like if an oil company wants to donate to the land trust you have hesitancy about that as one should I'm trying to think of a way that someone could be interested in the project and want to donate money to something that we already know we want like landscaping that got cut and not have to make a presentation in front of the council and have us to if I could avoid that I would

Well, and if I could jump in, that's the problem with donors, too. They don't want to offer up a donation and then have to prove themselves to the council that they're worthy of giving the money to the project. That's a problem.

So the one time it came up on this project, the issue was not the donor, it was that they were kind of changing the scope from, and I guess we'd still be considering, that would be something that would have to come in front of us, but I, as opposed to modifying our contract with Dignity Moves, maybe we ought to work with them on a process for, I'm glad that they're soliciting donations, but maybe we ought to work with them on a process for a friendly, safe environment for donors to make those donations. I mean, I'm all in favor of it, that we would get donations, but I'm leery about changes.

Well, not the leeriness of the change, but we could put a ceiling on it to say something really grand might come to us, something smaller need not.

Well, let me pivot to later in the agenda. You have a separate list of furnished by owner items that we are going to need to solicit donations for. That's separate and distinct from us. I want to draw that distinction. I think that's important. But I will tell you that, like it or not, and this is nothing that you don't know, we're all very accustomed to the public process and public meetings. But to those who are not, it's not a friendly environment.

And if somebody, when we get to that item, when we talk about, oh, somebody wants to donate 30 beds, I don't personally want them to have to come in front of us. Well, and that's a separate item. I know. Because that's on the first by hour. That's as a case in point. Yeah.

Well, one thing that has happened when I worked at a nonprofit, A number of years ago one thing that that happened for us is that we did receive a big donation and Found out that there was a problematic that the donor was problematic in some way Contrary to our cause and we gave the money back. I mean that is always That's always an option If a big oil company donates to the project or something else, that's one way that we could handle it. If we don't want to have somebody, a donor, coming into the process of- I mean, you could insert language if you like.

I'm just freestyling a bit. I'm just trying to prevent us from losing- Yep, yep. opportunities here that I think are, I think it's real that we could. And I think this is gonna benefit the project and the community and that's why I'm trying to see if we can make this happen. You could entrust me and the city attorney to review each donor and check that they've got their proper registration with the Secretary of State's office and all the paperwork. We could do a little mini background check on each one if you like and make sure that their goals and missions align with the cities and the project, some type of language like that. But you're right. There always is, and you read about this all the time, there are things that happen along the way after a donation is sometimes made or there's a scandal involved with somebody in that organization. It's something that they didn't know at the time the donation was received. You do run that risk, but I don't foresee Chevron coming forward and saying, here's $500,000 for this effort, just simply because it's not in their charitable contribution.

Plus, you would vet a nonprofit or a foundation through the Secretary of State, but not an individual.

Right, right, that's true.

So I have a question for our city attorney. Is there any danger in amending the contract or changing the contract? I mean, does it open up any other can of worms by virtue of amending a contract?

I think as long as both parties agree to the amendment in, like, there's not, this one, I mean, this is one that I think Dignity Moves is supportive of. It's not like we're trying to make a unilateral contested change to the contract that we're you know, kind of pushing down that they don't agree to. I think they would agree to this. I think, you know, we've had some initial discussions with their legal counsel, and, you know, they agree in, like, they're in agreement in concept. They're still providing their final review of the exact wording, and they wanted to obviously hear how the discussion goes tonight, but I think their primary concerns that we heard from Dignity Moves is that you know, from just a construction project logistics standpoint, if they do receive a donation, you know, there's kind of like from a timing sweet spot when it comes to adding back some of these project elements that are not in the approved or affirmed construction bid, you know, you kind of want to get some certainty around that. So I think one concern we heard from them is that You know if we were to make a change like this, you know, they they would like to have some they would like I think they would like for the city to And I'm speaking for them when I say this so hopefully I'm not getting it wrong But they they don't want us to wait too long because once the project, you know They're still we're still in the process where we're having some of the initial project studies completed. We're not fully mobilized on-site but as the project starts the construction is underway, there will be things or elements to the project that if they're not included, won't be included. You're not going to go back and replace something. But with that being said, I think the primary purpose of any additional donation funds that are received would be funding project contingency. So obviously that goes through the entire project. I think landscaping, which wouldn't be installed until after the project is constructed, though irrigation lines might be. And then I think if there were additional funds that were not applied to the construction of the project, then the city would probably, I mean, I think we would look to having those used to fund those furnished by owner items.

But if you recall the discussion, it was around a million dollars that we, We trimmed, and we happened to have a million dollar donation lined up. I think the other big concern that they have, and I'm speaking for them, is they didn't want to subject their donors to coming back to a council meeting and having to prove their worth.

Well, and donors don't want to go public. They don't want people knocking on their doors. Right. saying, can I have a bed too? They just don't, that's why you always have the option to be an anonymous donor because you just don't want people knocking on your door. But my question is, I'm trying to understand what Councilman Whitman's, what the contract, does the contract become more amorphous? Does it start to breathe in different ways because of this?

In my opinion, it does not. But I do think that is something that you always want to look for when you're considering amendments to a contract. Because again, we don't have authority to unilaterally, or legally under contract law, one party to a contract doesn't get to unilaterally amend a contract. Right, but we have. But they're in agreement with this.

And we're looking at a potential donation of $1 million. Okay, there we go.

So I have a couple of more comments. One is that there was a public comment that said that there's a clause in the agreement that basically says you've complied with everything already or up to this point in time. And I think that's a fairly gratuitous statement to make and I don't know that I can endorse the idea that we, that, you know, so it's basically we're almost like saying, okay, this part of the contract's done, now we have this.

We can remove that provision in the amendment.

But my other thought is that... From a very broad standpoint, we're under a microscope for not being as transparent with the public as we can or should be. And this contract amendment is really about not going through a public process because it's uncomfortable for donors. And I think we're doing the opposite of what what we're kind of dealing with on a really big progress. So my suggestion would be that maybe the right way to approach this is to make a list of items that we'd potentially benefit from donations and create some type of a streamlined process for that. But I don't see a donor needing to come in Well, I don't think they want to. Right, but I'm not sure where the need for doing that is. It's really kind of up to Dignity Moves if they acquire a donor to say, hey, I got this donor.

That's what I was wondering.

Why can't it just go through Dignity Moves? Because the project, the DMA limits the amount of money that may be spent on the project.

So because if you did get this million dollars, then the project would be 10.5 with the extra million. But what was the line that was?

everything that we how much did they cut off it's about a million dollars and you know that's what you know so you have this you have this contract that says very explicitly what you're allowed to spend and here's the the budget that was approved and here's the schedule and and that's what you approve so you didn't approve additional things

But they didn't come in and help me here. So they didn't come in with what they agreed they were going to do. They pulled away from the scope that we were buying.

Sorry, we made many requests that they met some of those requests from the original and then trimmed others that we finally agreed to.

I agree with the idea that we didn't unilaterally. I mean, no, they didn't unilaterally say, yeah, this is going to be more expensive. We did it through planning process, like the planning commission.

I feel like we're off topic, though. Because we're talking about how much the project's costing and we're talking about getting, if we have the opportunity to get more money, how we're going to manage that. But can I ask you what line was it?

I disagree that it's off topic.

Oh, okay. Why not? Or tell me how it's on topic to accept donations.

Because we're talking about a contract that was formed a long time ago and now we're making fairly radical change to the contract. And what I was discussing with the, you don't see that as a radical change.

No, no, no, I said I don't disagree with that part. I thought when you were saying, well, what did they agree to in the beginning that's not being delivered, that part I thought was not what we should be talking about.

So under the development management agreement, the way that it's written right now, Dignity Moves has to submit updated development budgets to the city. Dignity Moves is not authorized to expend funds in excess of the approved development budget without authorization from the city. And so part of what this is intended, so this is trying to address that situation. Because today, if Dignity Moves received a million dollars earmarked for use on the project, they would have no authority to increase the development budget to include those funds, which is then needed in order for them to roll out whether it's a change order to the contractor for adding in something like landscaping, whether it's the increase of contingency, whether that's within or outside of the contract with the construction contractor. But at the end of the day, so they would not be able to accept those funds unless they came back to city council for approval of an amendment to the development budget. I mean, to me, this kind of feels like a no-brainer.

They have a million dollars. They're asking to have the flexibility to accept a million-dollar donation. Our commitment is still the same. We know potentially who the donor is, and we have the opportunity of denying the donor if we find anything out about them that's controversial. But to not go forward with this is basically to say, no, we don't want the landscaping, and we don't want the contingency. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like we're basically turning down an addition to the project that we would that we would like to have.

And I don't understand what the risk would be to us to do that. I haven't heard what the risk is. So except for potentially that clause that says you've done everything that you need to do up till now, I'm not sure I'd agree with that. And I'm not even sure that that's what I heard. It's in the template. That's in the template amendment. I don't know that that seems to...

So is there a timely, I mean, is there a time limitation on when, you know, is this something that can, because, you know, we had a lot of stuff in front of us, and I read parts of the contract, but I can't tell you I understand. So I would like more time, and if I don't,

think we said you know yeah of course we can do whatever I think you're sending a message yeah I'm not I don't want this to come back I just I want it yeah one thing I'd like to add to is I think you know when to councilman Whitman's point about the donations we do have the donation and naming policy where we can go in and adjust how we handle this as a larger process. I feel like this is an isolated incident, isolated donation, isolated opportunity. The donor, if it's the same donor as before, they've removed a lot of their limitations around the funds. And so I feel comfortable moving forward with this.

I do as well.

And taking some of the concerns about this donation and applying them to the next agenda item that we're going to talk about, or if we don't get it to it tonight, about the donations and naming policy. Okay, I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve it.

Approve the amendment to the development management.