City Council - Regular Meeting

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

The Ojai City Council meeting was adjourned due to an administrative error that prevented a council member from participating remotely, compounded by a Zoom outage. The agenda, with the exception of the El Roblar Spa item, was continued to the September 15th special meeting.

About this meeting

Government Body
City Council
Meeting Type
City Council
Location
Ojai, CA
Meeting Date
September 8, 2026

Transcript

12 sections

0:03 – 4:37Speaker 3

check one two ready mayor you ready to go ready council okay welcome to the tuesday september 8th uh city council regular meeting roll call please mayor gilman here mayor pro tem may here council member rule here council member whitman here and council member lang is not present we will have an update on that following our pledge of allegiance thank you and please lead us in that yes mayor honorable council community ready to begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and you have something to read mr. Montgomery yes mayor and City Council there was an error in our agenda posting and we have an update i'll read you an update i have on that so i'm going to tell you about an error in our agenda posting which caused council member ling not to be able to participate and vote tonight as well as our future scheduling that relates to the El Roblar spa public hearing so i'm going to go away from my normal delivery and read word from word for you here regarding tonight's september 8 2006 city council regular meeting agenda an error occurred in the city clerk's office during preparation and posting of the agenda council member lang timely notified staff that she would be participating remotely and provided the address of her remote location for inclusion on the agenda i acknowledged the receipt of that information and indicated that i would take care of the agenda inclusion and remote meeting setup I failed to ensure that the remote location was included on the posting of this agenda as required for her participation from that remote location. I discovered the omission this morning while completing preparations for tonight's meeting and notified staff. Council member Lange will not be able to participate tonight in this agenda as council member and take part in voting because of this error. I want to be clear that this was an administrative error within the city clerk's office. The same error occurred over a year ago. At that time, city manager Harvey had worked with me to establish additional procedures and checklists within the city clerk's office, which I am thankful for. specifically intended to strengthen agenda preparation and prevent omissions like this of this nature. City Manager Harvey considered these improvements completed and in practice, and I failed to correctly follow procedure here. Those procedures were available to me, and responsibility for ensuring that this information appeared on the agenda rested solely with me as your Chief Deputy City Clerk. Going forward, I'm going to add separate verification steps for remote participation requests so that any remote location and all associated participation requirements are independently confirmed against final posted agenda or publication. I run two separate checklists to document every meeting and action of our legislative body, along with many logs and team meetings and things of that sort, an agenda posting checklist and a meeting follow-up checklist. I will also review the existing checklist and posting process with the city manager and city attorney and make any additional procedural changes necessary also i would appreciate any input from you as council members on your user experience with me and the office because we can so i may better improve things following the consultation with the city manager and city attorney this morning staff is recommending that the council continue an entire regular meeting agenda which is the severity of this and we're lucky because we have the September 15th special meeting already scheduled and confirmed by yourself as the city council this recommendation will be addressed tonight after my verbose explanation here recognize the significance of this error agenda preparation and brown act compliance are core responsibilities of the city clerk's office and an omission affecting a council member's ability to participate is particularly serious i apologize to council member lang the full council city staff and the public for the disruption this has caused i take responsibility for this error and do not and do appreciate excuse me the council's time reviewing this as we address tonight's meeting appropriately after this So next step, staff will be recommending that the September 8th, this meeting agenda be continued in its entirety to the September 22nd date with the caveat that the public hearing.

4:37Speaker 4

September 15th, right? Excuse me.

4:39 – 5:16Speaker 3

With the exception of the El Roblar item. Yes, 15th. Okay. September 15th. The El Roblar SPA item and public hearing will not be continued to the 15th as it requires public noticing and rescheduling prior to another agenda City staff today has spoken with El Roblar and the item is currently scheduled for September 22nd and we will complete the noticing properly and we hope that this information is helpful and informative to the public who is very interested in the item and for you as council And that is all, and I do, I would appreciate any input you do have, and I'm ready to answer any questions.

5:16 – 5:27Speaker 2

I just want to say thank you for doing that. I know when, you know, when anybody, myself, when I make an error or whatever, to cop to it and admit to it is huge. So thank you for that. I truly appreciate it.

5:27Speaker 4

So thank you.

5:34Speaker 4

Ditto on that, appreciate the candid discussion, yeah.

5:38 – 6:00Speaker 1

The other thing I would note is that we learned a few minutes ago that there is an issue with Zoom. So even if this had not occurred, we would be prevented under the Brown Act from continuing the discussion for at least an hour. But since we're continuing the entirety of the meeting, the future meeting, that will be a non-issue.

6:01 – 6:22Speaker 4

thank you sir and i appreciate how thoroughly you explained what happened what you're doing absolutely thank you thank you so with that we've heard the recommendation uh it'd be great to have a vote that so we proceed with this agenda to 9 15 with the exception of the public hearing which will move to 9 22.

6:25 – 7:00Speaker 1

So because of the Zoom outage, we actually cannot take a vote. OK. But so we can't take, we have to suspend the meeting itself. But I think, so what it says is that under the Brown Act that if a disruption occurs that prevents members of the public from attending or observing the meeting via the two-way telephonic service or audio-visual platform during the meeting, we can recess the open session of the meeting for at least one hour. I think in this case, we should just move forward with recessing the meeting until next week's special meeting.

7:00 – 7:14Speaker 4

OK. Agreed. Any objection? OK. Great meeting. Meeting adjourned. Are we okay saying meeting adjourned? Okay.

This transcript was automatically generated from the official public meeting video and is presented unedited. It reflects remarks made on the public record by elected officials, staff, and public commenters. Transcript accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.