City Council - Regular Meeting

You've probably seen a lot of art just so this is a self-portrait of her.

Hi, good evening everyone. Just want to call the meeting to order for the Oxarn City Council for Tuesday, January 6th, 2026. Madam clerk, may we have the roll call and posting of the agenda, please? Uh, council member Paralo here. Councilwoman Bettis here. Councilwoman Rodriguez present. Council member Star here. Mayor Prompteran here. Mayor MacArthur here. The agenda for this meeting was posted in the kiosk at city hall, the Oxn public library, the city administrative offices, and on the city's website on Tuesday, December 23rd. Think 2025. Thank you. Thank you, madam clerk. Uh, prior to close session, we will take public comments on the close session agenda. Uh, can the city attorney please provide a statement prior to close session?

Thank you, mayor. The city council will recess to a close session pursuant to government code section 54956.9 subdivision D1 to confer with its attorneys. The matter being discussed is Sera versus County of Ventura at all. Thank you, Mr. Fischer. Madam clerk, do we have any speakers for public comments prior to close session? And mayor and council members, we do not have any public speakers in person or virtually for close session. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The city council will now recess to close session and at 5:00 p.m. We will begin with an appointment item followed by a regular council meeting. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. The uh city council has just uh emerged from close session. I'm going to ask our city attorney for any announcements to make. Thank you, mayor. There are no announcements out of close session.

Thank you, Mr. Fischer. We'll move to the appointment item. The next item is uh it's it's the appointment item from the housing authority. Um the subject entails a department workshop, housing community development department presentations, the recommendations that the city council receive and file an update report from the housing director and the community development director concerning information related to functions, priorities, challenges, and anticipated future needs. I see Miss Brenda Lopez here is here, our housing director, along with Mr. Jeff Bengilly, who is our director for community development. Before we start, um I'll ask any council members if they have any questions before we start. If not, we'll just move right into the presentation.

Okay, go ahead. Miss Lopez.

Hey, good evening. Brenda Lopez, director for the housing department. And this evening, I'm also accompanied by our entire management team that is nervously sitting here in the public third to last seating rows um in case there's any specific questions that they can help answer to give a better overview of the programs and services that we offer to the community. So, I'll go ahead and get started. As we mentioned, we're going to be providing an overview of the housing department and the various divisions. So, first start off um just with the overall uh setup of our housing department. We have a total of seven divisions. And in this seven divisions, we have exactly 68 employees. Something that is a little bit unique to the city of Oxnard is that our local housing authority is actually embedded or part of the housing department. That is not unique across the United States, but at least here locally, most housing authorities are a standalone if you will. Um, but in our case, which is very helpful, we are part of our housing department. And so both uh departments have worked together, but they do have separate budgets. So in the case of the housing authority, the programs are funded directly by the department of housing and urban development which we call HUD for short and um the housing authority has a budget of about 40 million and again these funds come from HUD. Under the housing um authority we have the housing choice voucher division better known as section 8 and then also public housing. Both divisions focus on providing subsidized housing assistance to families. Then we'll go into a little bit of detail well into the presentation. Then we also have our rent stabilization, grants management, economic development, affordable housing, and our homeless services division. So first start off with the section 8

division. Um again part of the housing authority programs. Um through this division, we provide subsidized housing assistance to lowincome families. We currently have approximately 1587 apartment units, single family residence, condos in this program and we're housing about 3,695 individuals. We release approximately 30 million in housing assistance payments on behalf of uh the clients. So tenants pay 30% in rent of their monthly gross income. these program um or programs under this program focus on helping the extremely low to very lowincome families. What that means is that their income levels are at 50% or under of the area medium income level for the county of Ventura. Some of the programs that are managed through the section 8 include what they call specialty or special purpose vouchers. Um and here I won't go into too much detail, but we have the emer emergency housing choice voucher, homeless set aside. We have a VASH program which stands for veteran affairs supported program mainstream and family unification. On these programs uh the clients get a voucher. They look for a unit of their choice in the city of Oxnard and they're able to rent there where there's also what's called a project based voucher program. Little bit different in that the voucher is tied to a specific unit. So if a client gets what's called a project based voucher, they are required to rent a unit wherever that voucher was awarded to. And the functions that our staff uh play in this department, we have a couple. So in the section 8 division specifically, we administer all of the waiting list for the housing authority. Our staff is responsible for verifying the families are eligible for assistance. All units are in the program must be inspected at least once every two years. And we do have an in-house inspector and an outside inspector that

helps us with this role. And then our staff has to do what we call as case management. Basically means that we reertify the families on an annual basis. If there's any in changes during the year, we also reverify eligibility. We verify if there's any change to their portion of the rent. Um and if not, then we reertified on an annual basis. And again, that's um for the section 8 program. I did want to give a very simple example. If you have a family of four, the maximum income that you can make on an annual basis for this program will be approximately a little bit under 75,000. So that kind of gives you an idea of um how the f the families are doing financially. Then the other program that we have under the housing authority is what we called as public housing. Now public housing is a little bit different and that the housing authority operates and manages these units. So here the housing authority staff serves as a landlord if you will or for lack of a better word. We have a total of 523 units in our program. These vary from studios all the way to five-bedroom units and we are currently housing,412 individuals in this program. The income limit here is still considered low but it goes up to what they call 80% of the area medium income. So, the example that I provided previously, family of four could be making close to 120,000 and still be eligible for this program. We also have a couple of units. Um, we have specifically 17 apartment units that are owned by the housing authority. The difference here between public housing and non-public housing is just the funding source. So, the units are still rented only to low-income families. they are just being subsidized through other programs such as the community development block grant or some other federal state agency that might have awarded us the funds. staff in this division similar to section 8 must verify eligibility uh collect

documentation admit families but here again we do function as a landlord so we do take care of any repairs that are needed to the property we also enforce lease if there's any lease violations um we need to make sure they cure those violations and if not then unfortunately we have to take the next steps our public housing does have a capital fund division capital fund division staff is responsible for applying for a grant so that we can continue to improve our properties through the capital fund grant funded by HUD as well. We also have a maintenance team. Our maintenance team is responsible to respond to work orders and to maintain our properties. And last but not least, our public housing staff. They're responsible for what I refer to as case management, which again is working with the families, make sure they're eligible and also to make sure that we process any changes in their income that might affect their portion of the rent. And our staff here too um ensures again ongoing compliance and we are also responsible for inspecting our units just like in section 8 except here the department of housing and urban development does do inspections. they come independently and they inspect our properties. We got to make sure that they are in good standing. If they're not, that impacts our ability for future program participation and also it impacts how often we get audited. Okay, I'm not going to go into too much detail on the next slides, but these are just our sites. Our 523 units are located amongst 11 different sites in the city of Oxnard. We have units all the way out to Questa Delmare and in the northern end more by Athea Court. Most of our sites are either maybe 10 or 12 units except for the larger ones which in this case in the image on the screen will be Squire Centrainho which has I think like 102 units but other than that they're smaller projects and again on this next slide just a couple more images. These are a little bit outdated

in the painting. Most of them have been painted since then the pictures were taken. But again here our larger sites would be uh Palm Vista and Juanita and Felicia Court. Those three sites have at least a 100 units. Um the other ones again are a little bit on a smaller scale under the housing authority. We also have a different program. We don't consider it a division but we felt it was important to highlight it. It's our resident services initiative program which is operated and based out of the multi-ervice center at 1500 Camino del Soul Camino del Soloul or the 1500 building is owned by the city of Oxnard but the housing authority staff operate the building. So here we work with nonprofit or organizations that offer services to the community. At this point in time, we for example have new dawn counseling. We have CDR catalyst which provide child care um and early education services to low-income families. We have future leaders of America. And then we also have the extension of the public library uh which we call the Colonia uh public library extension on site. Our resident services initiatives also offer access to a computer lab and we also apply to a Ross grant. Um, RAR ROSS stands for resident opportunity self-sufficiency grant. Basically, it's funding that we receive so that we can have a a coordinator on site. The coordinator coordinates with various agencies to bring programs not just to the Colonia neighborhood. They're open to all the community, but basically things such as um workshops on obtaining your citizenship, getting your GED, job fairs. Um, we also put together a food share. Once a month we have food short distribution and we also bring other services such as helping with financial aid applications for students. We have a mural project um that takes place in back of this building and again

all of this is through this Ross program. The coordinator I'll go into the next slide as well but the coordinator also works with our financial self-sufficiency coordinator um for the FSS program. This slide I'll spend just a couple minutes on. It was a question that was brought before us um by council in the past and that was if we could share a little bit more information about the financial self-sufficiency program. The FSS program for short is offered to our public housing and our section 8 program participants. So it is limited to them. Right now we're at what they consider capacity. We have 126 households participating. Uh the way this program works, it's an escro account savings account. So basically when a family improves their self-sufficiency if their income increases the rent increases that increase in rent um instead of uh being you know put back in our operating budget we put it aside for the family in an interest bearing account and we continue to hold it there once the family graduates from the program then we release the funds back to them. This is a typically a five-year program. Um, families can improve their self-sufficiency various many, many, many tools. It could be improving your credit score so that you're not subject to predatory lending. It could be consolidating your credit card debt. It could be uh learning about home buyer home buyer or home buyer education so you could purchase your first home. So again, financial self-sufficiency means different things to our families. So success is measured depending on their goals. Once again, they participate for about five years. Um, we did pull back our data just to try to see if we could get a little bit of statistics. So, we went back to 2010. Um, since then, we've had 96 participants that completed the entire program. We dispersed a little bit under 1.6 million to those families. And out of the 96 families that

graduated, a total of eight did purchase their first home. I personally met one of the participants. They did move out of state, but they did purchase a home free and clear. Um, right now with the economy, that is obviously going to be a little bit harder, but that is a goal that the family can set for themselves. Both the the Ross and the FSS coordinator also co-lead a PCC committee. Um, the PCC committee is a program coordinating committee. We have 50 agencies participating in the county. We come together once a quarter where we talk about the various programs for low-income families and we share best practices again so that we can help um and meet our families where they're at. So that's a little bit about that FSS program. And now we'll move over into the services provided by our homeless services division. Our homeless services division has two staff members. Um again we say small but mighty group and some of our efforts include encampment response efforts. Again, this comes back to a grant that we received close to four million from the state where we were able to work with community partners and be able to respond to the encampments on McWain and Fifth Street. We did two things. One was to come in and assist individuals where they were at to get them emergency services. And then for those that were able and willing to work with us to become ready to be housed, we also then uh set them up in non- congregate shelter. You've heard about it as programs or as developments have come to fruition, we've been transferring them out. We had a total of 44 participants go through this program and they have all been successfully um placed at either like Casa de Carmen, Central Terrace or Casalento. So, uh, we're very excited to have seen families be able to get back on their feet. In addition, our homeless services team also does street outreach via two efforts. Um, twice a month, we

go out there again with community partners. We work with the Oxnar Police Department liaison to determine what areas maybe they've seen a little bit of more individuals gathering around. We try to come to them and encourage them to seek services and connect them to services. We also participate in the one-stop clinic at the Salvation Army. That's once a week and that's walk-in. So, anybody who needs help can is welcome to stop by and get services whether it's connecting them to health benefits or a food pantry or emergency housing. [snorts] And then also our homeless services program coordinator is responsible um for the fall weather shelter. So, we usually notify all of our community that the shelter um is in place. We notify individuals how to seek for help. We activate the shelter whenever uh it's going to get below 40 degrees Fahrenheit or when we're expecting a lot of rain. So last week um I believe you guys heard us announcing we're activating our shelter, second activation. Usually we activate two to three times depending on how the weather does. So again, homeless uh services division is in charge of that effort. And then um of course we help any community indiv or any individuals from the community who come in and seek assistance related to emergency housing. Just a quick um highlight for our homeless services team. We also serve as the lead contact for the city of Oxnard. We work along the continuum of care for Ventura County and the point of con point of count. And just a little highlight that we always like to share is that in 2025 we did see a decrease in the number of unhoused individuals for the city of Oxnard 15%. Um and this is the second year that we've seen a a decrease. And obviously that's not just our division but it is thanks to all of the efforts and all the programs that we have brought forward to the community to help house individuals who aren't housed. And I'll move on to our grants

management division. grants manage management division is in charge of administering the entitlement grants that the city of Oxnar receives on an annual basis. We receive three major grants which are the community development block grant or CDBG, we receive home and then ESG as well. These programs are all focused in different areas. CDBG usually we fund um public services or programs that improve the quality of social services available to the community through home. We usually work with developers to be able to help them bridge any financial gaps when uh new developments are coming online for affordable housing projects. And then ESG really focuses on programs that are geared at addressing or preventing homelessness. Our grants division is responsible for monitoring the grants. We also accept applications from internal and external organizations. We review the applications. We make funding recommendations. We are responsible for monitoring any agreements and then responding back to um to the HCD which is the entity that monitors these grants on how we're doing and if we're we're not able to perform, why we're not performing. And again, that's the grants management team. And then our rent stabilization division um is responsible for enforcing and monitoring our ordinances that were uh put in place. the the most recent one or will be the anti-harassment but the just cost um evictions and tenant protection ordinance which we refer to as just cost for short and we also monitor the rent stabilization ordinance. What we do here is we take calls or walk-ins from the general public, questions from landlords or tenants about their rights and whether or not a proposed change in term or rent is within the ordinance that is

here in the city of Oxnard. We'll review the information provided. If we identify that there's violations to our ordinance, we will work alongside our city attorney's office to determine if there are um violations. If they are, then we issue citations to the landlords. Under the rent stabilization ordinance, there are focus is to ensure that rent increases if a property is not exempt, do not exceed 4% and if somebody has been asked to relocate, that they've been provided the relocation benefits. Uh if this has not taken place, we do contact the landlord and we don't issue a citation. Our first step is to encourage them to work with the family obviously reduce the rent and if the family already paid an origin rent that they get reimbursed for any original rent paid. And here just on the graph um on average right now in 2025 we did see an increase in calls and walk-ins. Please keep in mind not all of these become a case. This could be general in nature but at the end of the day we do do our best to either assist them or connect them with uh services. But we had over 2,000 calls and walk-ins uh related to our rent stabilization or just cost ordinance. We also um are monitoring or will be monitoring our anti-harassment ordinance. This one this ordinance was just passed at the tail end of last year. So we are working on recruiting the staff that was approved by city council to help us manage this uh enforcement. So, so far we still are under recruitment for the investigator that will be working for the housing department and on our city attorney's office. They have already uh brought somebody on board that will be dedicated to assisting us to respond to anti-harassment um claims. And then last but not least, our team also monitors the mobile home rent civilization ordinance. This applies to about 20 mobile parks in the city of Oxnard where we basically

monitor rent increases and we also facilitate any appeals. um on if there's a dispute on the amount of rent increase for rent space. Our affordable housing division and economic uh division here we are we do a couple of things for our economic development team. Our team was dormant at least in the housing department for about a year while we recruited a staff member. So our manager just came on board and our supportive staff. So in 2026, we will be revamping our efforts on assisting businesses to launch, grow or start their business here in the city of Oxnard. And then on our affordable housing uh division or team, we have a couple of responsibilities. One is the loan servicing and monitoring of units and affordable development projects that received some sort of uh either assistance from a funding perspective or perhaps a density bonus. So, our team will monitor, ensure that they're in compliance with any covenants or deeds or restrictions on the property. We currently have 642 units. Uh, these are owned um in the community by Oxnard residents where they received some sort of assistance. This could have been to rehabilitate their property or down payment assistance. So, we're responsible for monitoring those up to 30 years depending on when they got their their loan. And then we have 3,63 apartment units that we're monitoring uh which are all under 47 developments in the city of Oxnard. And again here we ensure that any did restrictions are being abided by by the developer. Just wanted to share a couple of projects that the affordable housing team assisted with via funding and um helping them identify sources of funds for any gaps in their finances. In addition to that, all of these projects have project-based vouchers tied to

them. How does that help us? Twofold. It obviously helps the developer to be able to bridge the financial gap. But for us in the community, it makes units available for our low-income families. Sometimes even if you get a section A voucher, it doesn't guarantee that you're going to find an apartment or you know that it's either that the landlord will be willing to bring down the rents or maybe that you have enough of a security deposit to be able to rent. So whenever units have a project based voucher tied to them, it helps us because then the family uh usually has to jump through less hurdles to be able to secure an apartment. And so here we just have um we have our Omen Beach Villaas, Central Terrace, Casalento and Dolores Wuerta and Casa de Carmen. So all of these projects came online and all of them have project based vouchers. Though I just wanted to put a little shameless plug here. The choice grant is not a division. Um it is actually a grant that the city of Oxard and the housing department uh city of Oxard the housing authority applied for. The choice grant is an initiative from HUD and what we're seeking to do is to come up with a transformation plan that will revitalize five of our neighborhoods here in the city of Oxnard which include La Colonia, Freeman South, Wilson, Hubson Park East, and Five Points Northeast. What we're doing is we're assessing what resources are in the community, where the community needs. We're having focus task uh meetings. We're working with our various divisions in the city of Oxnard and our goal is to come up with a proposed transformation plan and we would like to apply for the choice uh implementation grant in a year. So, right now we're in a two-year uh cycle, if you will. We did receive $500,000 for this work so that we can uh put together the plan and be able to submit it to HUD hopefully at the end of

next year. And of course, all of this is subject to funding. To um wrap up my presentation, we just wanted to highlight a couple of uh challenges and some requests for your ongoing support as we come before you to propose recommendations or your support on in programs. I think just with any other division, we obviously are on standby for changes in federal regulations that depending on what they are are going to have a significant impact on our families. I think at the forefront most of us are familiar with the mixed status family. Um basically what that means is that the government might be changing which families are eligible for assistance at this point in time. We don't know. We don't have an answer. Um so we're on standby, but depending on what at the end of the day is passed by our administration, it could have a significant impact on our families. And also we have um an act that's called the housing opportunity through modernization act. HOTMA for short. It's a change in our laws and policies that govern public housing section 8. This has been on the books for probably a almost a decade and every year we get a different implementation date. So, but what that means for our staff is the challenge of the administrative burden of running our program under two policies. So, right now we have what we call the prehopma, the posthma. And so our staff has to make sure that when they're reviewing eligibility and our clients that they're applying the rules that are in place and not the ones that are going to come in the future. So again, just a little bit of of a challenge. We also of course have the uncertainty of funding. As I mentioned, the housing authority is primarily funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The funding goes away that jeopardizes the section 8 public housing and any housing um authority owned properties. Our entitlement grants are also state funded. So if that funding goes away, that would impact how much funding we

have available to provide or to facilitate for our community uh partners so that they can bring services to the community. Increased cost. Obviously, as rents go up, our section 8 program is able is not able to assist as many families as our per unit cost increases. In addition, if or until such time that the department of housing and urban development passes a budget, sometimes if it looks like a housing authority will not have sufficient budget, they'll be placed on what's called a shortfall status. What that means is basically we can't admit more families into our program. We're on standby, but unfortunately that could negatively impact our next year's allocation as your prior year allocation is taken into consideration. So that's a a challenge that we're navigating through. And of course, when we're looking at assisting our low-income families in becoming first-time home buyers, as an example, layering the down payment assistance necessary for them to be able to afford a unit has uh become very difficult as these units would have to be deeply affordable in order for them to be sustainable for by our families. As always, demand will always exceed supply on our affordable housing units. And I think just like with any other departments, we've had a couple of vacancies. Whenever there's a vacancy, we obviously want to make sure that we bring the best candidate on board. That could take time and in that time it could create a backlog. In addition, a lot of our housing specialists have to have very specific a very specific niche skill set and that could take one to two years to to fill that vacancy. So um again, these are just challenges that we we're seeing um across. And then some of our ongoing needs, we do ask for your continued support with our conversion program. This is called the rental assistance demonstration program or RAD. You'll hear us coming through the year and proposing strategies on how we're going to reposition the public housing program under the housing authority. The reason we want to do that is because if

we reposition, we can set up a platform where we're generating the necessary revenue to be able to cover the deferred maintenance on our properties. So again, we ask for your continued support on this. In addition to the continuing support for rent civilization uh division, I mentioned this division specifically because we are working on a fee study. Um and while we get the fee study up and running and we can generate that revenue, we do ask for the sustained levels of funding so that we can have our dedicated staff and we can continue to respond to the community. In the meantime, the choice grant, as I mentioned here, if you get invited to a meeting or for your input, we agre we greatly appreciate your continued support. And of course, if we have opportunities to assign project-based vouchers to developments, we strongly recommend that uh opportunity because again, it increases the inventory for our families. And then last but not least, uh to please continue funding our efforts on addressing or programs that will address the needs of our unhoused population, whether it's mitigating uh efforts or our response. Okay. And with that, I'll open up for any questions. Mayorful.

Thank you, Mayor. Go ahead.

Thank you. First of all, I'd like to I want to compliment you. Uh I find that you're very responsive and I want to share with the city council a recent incident uh that I that where you were involved. We had a disabled resident in uh my neighborhood uh with two small children who were section 8 recipients and they were at risk of being displaced or they were being displaced from their apartment just before Christmas because there was a sewage was backing up into her shower. So there was no way that she could live under those circumstances. and she reached out to me for support and I knew the right person for me to reach out to was Brenda Lopez and you were definitely on top of it. You had support from your staff I believe Alba Marshall as I recall.

Yes,

Alba. And um I believe you also brought into uh I think you also brought in code compliance manager Andrew Dixon who's in the audience here. And uh I my understanding is I think that um there was a citation uh and I guess a yellow tag I think for the uh particular apartment. So uh I I was really happy that you facilitated a lot of that. Uh you're you've got a good team that's working with for you. And uh just as an aside, I I also want to acknowledge uh uh attorney Barbara Machri Ortiz because you reached out to her and she actually came to the defense of uh of of this person drafting a demand letter to the apartment managers. So I that's why I wanted to start off with just simply saying, you know, very impressed. Uh I I do have a question about the self-sufficiency program. I want to kind of better understand that. So what happens to the money if the participants never graduate from the program? They've got all this money that's going into savings. It's there for their purposes. I I they're earning the interest. Maybe they're to paying taxes on maybe I don't know. But what happens if somebody dies, somebody just can't go forward. What happens?

So twofold. Usually our coordinator will meet um at least on a monthly basis with our participants to try to get ahead of them not meeting their goals. We do afford the opportunity that let's just say as an example you wanted to get your bachelors that's not possible. Maybe you want to get your associates. We can modify those goals um through meeting and you know through the five-year time frame. But let's just say a family cannot complete. That's called a forfeite of of that program. We close it out. Those funds go back into a forfeite FSS account and there are made available for programs that will benefit the rest of the families. So it basically goes back into the pool of funding available for us to then bring more services to those families that do remain on the program. Does not go back to the family.

I see. And and do they have any concerns about that when they're participating in the program or they're concerned that hey, what if I don't make it? I paid all this money and I'm I'm now in worse shape than when I started. There could be um I think from my end the perspective I would off perspective that I would offer is that when a family's income goes up their portion of the rent goes up right and that funding goes back to the housing authority for operations. So if somebody doesn't participate in the program their funding goes back to operations here there's this little carrot if you will to incentivize them to try to improve but if not basically we're putting the funds back where they go back to operations. Um, so kind of the family is treated like any other part person who did not participate.

Okay. And uh I I would very much appreciate if you would take the time to introduce some members of your staff. They're here and they're doing good work for you and I'd like them to Sure. You're seeing me smile because they're they're very shy and they were hoping I wouldn't call I promised I wouldn't call them up. Um but we'll start here with Alba, our rent stabilization team. You can raise your hand. She's our supervisor for rent stabilization. Susanna, public housing supervisor, Freddy, our superintendent for our capital improvements uh public housing unit, Lorraine, our brand new grants manager,

Michael, our homeless services manager, and then Alex, raise your hand. Alex is our housing programs manager. Leti is our section 8 program supervisor. Rhonda is our finance officer for the housing authority. And Elsa is our affordable housing manager. And right next to her, our our new economic development manager. That's our our team full. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's that's all I have today. Thank you, Council Member. U go ahead, Councilwoman.

Yes. I had a question specifically about the economic development. I know you said you just hired somebody, so it might be a preliminary question, but what kind of programmings are we offering for folks who wanted to, you know, help their business launch, grow, and succeed in our community?

Um, most definitely. So right now we kind of like I mentioned we've been a little bit dormant but we did start already our workshops. So we are partnering um with EDC and not just EDC but sometimes with weave so with different um business or not businesses with different organizations that help businesses. So we're leveraging our partnership. Um but again we just started so usually what we want to do is bring in addition to helping facilitate connect them to the right departments in the city. We're also bringing um any workshops that will help them improve their business. So depending to give an example we we got mentioned that maybe something like in the financial QuickBooks or some sort of a software that they will find that helpful. So we're doing this through workshops but we just had our first three um and we're looking forward to growing this. We are also looking into um finding opportunities to work on improving education and connecting or increasing the education for our community, our youth. So, we have a lot of uh programs that we're are looking at and we look forward to initiating and getting back up and running.

Okay, great. And when you say weave, you're talking women's economic development program. Economic development and then uh also our partners because we don't do it ourselves. We leverage our partnerships. So, like through nonprofit partnerships and all that. Okay. So, shameless plug, but it'd be great to like connect maybe with the local community college to see if there's any internship opportunities or possibilities for strengthening that. Please don't feel pressured. I was just absolutely thinking out loud. Thank you. Go ahead, Councilwoman.

Thank you um Director Lopez for your presentation and for the work that your staff does. I've had the opportunity to participate in the backpack um outreach as well, backpack medicine outreach and have joined our um Oxnard PD on the homeless leaison aspect. So definitely have seen firsthand um just the impacts of that work and just curious I know one of the slides highlighted the emergency housing vouchers and I'm curious if there's any impacts on funding for those and just logistically the number of um vouchers are that are distributed um for emergency housing. Um yes. So the emergency emergency housing voucher program, that [snorts] program was um made available by HUD when COVID happened as a way for us to be able to respond quickly to individuals who were either losing their job, losing their homes, or they were already unhoused. Um so in a way to prevent individuals from congregating, spreading the virus. The EHB program was supposed to be funded for several more years, but in the later part of last year, we were notified that HUD no longer intends to fund the program. Um, so as soon as we received this information, our understanding is we are funded through around August, September of next year. That could change. That's a difficult thing right now that we anything can change. Uh, but we are funded through the through mo I'm sorry, through most of this year this year. So, we are funded through either August, September of this year, depending on our per unit cost. Um, as of right now, our plan is to continue working with the continuum of care. They've stepped in very quickly to say, let's see what programs are available. Um, and second to this, you I'll be coming before you in about a month or two with our proposed PHA plans for the housing authority. One of the items is a preference for the EHB families to be able to be absorbed into the section 8 program. so that we can avoid

terminating them from the program. So, there's a couple of things that we're doing in house to address to address this um potential. It sounds like they're going to terminate the funding. Again, could change, but as of right now, that's our understanding. So, we will plan to absorb the families into another program.

Yeah, thank you for sharing. And I think the last thing I wanted to highlight really appreciated the work that happened regarding the anti-harassment ordinance and I know the recruitment as you mentioned is underway and just curious for the next report if we can kind of get a sense of numbers similar to the chart that you provided um for the rent stabilization and also just curious if as a part of that process as we think about onboarding if there will be an outreach and education mechanism. I oftentimes hear from community members that they're just not aware of of a lot of the ordinances that we pass and how do we get that information out so that people know what where they can come and and who they can call for support.

Thank you for the question and yes, most definitely now that we have our staff in place. We we've also been recreating in the rent civilization team, but our plan is to do more concentrated efforts on marketing and doing more community outreach on the services. Right now, what we do kind of what our council member Star mentioned, as soon as we're notified of any potential relocations or tagging of properties, we immediately have staff go on site to provide education about the various programs that we have in place, but we also want to be obviously proactively letting the rest of the community know. So, that is definitely on our to-do list for this coming year. Great. Thank you.

Any other questions at all? Go ahead, Mr. Proto. Thank you very much for the report and the time you your staff's put into this. A couple of questions. On slide three, you had um there's a title weight list administration. Can you tell us how many weight lists are there for the various products that we have in the housing authority?

Thank you for the question. We have a total of 11 weight lists that we're managing. Out of the 11, four of them are actually housed, if you will, by the housing authority. What that means is that we administer, we open, we close, and we issue vouchers or we assign them to a unit. Um, and then on the other six waiting lists, we also administer, but it's a little bit different. And that on those six waiting lists, they're what they call referral-based. So, for example, for the what we call the VASH program for VA for veterans, the VA is responsible for referring us the clients and we establish the waiting list based on those referrals. or for example Casa de Carman continum of care establishes the ranking of the weight list they refer us the clients so we make that differentiation between but at the end of the day we're responsible for managing all of them

thank you along the same lines can you give us a rough idea low to high how many people are on these various weight lists

so in the four that we are for lack of a better word directly responsible for so think of like your section 8 your beach villas public housing lascortes We have a little bit under 1,500 applicants, but also keep in mind some applicants have been waiting since 2013 and uh the other one since 2019. Uh so we usually try our best a new best practice that we've been enforcing is not to open our waiting list until we know that we're about maybe two years away from being even able to provide assistance. But um they do have lengthy weights. On the other six waiting lists, I really don't have a number because those are tied to referrals and are based on unit turnover.

That's extremely important information for the public and the council to hear. Um I'm just assuming and if you can help me out, the city of Oxnard is not unique probably to that size of a weight list. Other large communities throughout the nation would probably have weight lists if they have a housing program. Absolutely not unique. I I don't know of any jurisdiction so far that doesn't have an extensive wait line wait time. I don't know of many that have their weight list open. That's the other challenge. Um but yes, absolutely. I'm pretty sure across the nation, a lot of us have extensive weight list.

Thank you. On slide number 11, there are there's discussion about the various HUD housing and urban development programs and the things that they're involved with. Does housing and urban development provide audits on these various programs with some regularity?

Absolutely. All of all of the programs are subject to audits. And it just really depends kind of as I had mentioned depending on how your program is performing. That's how often they will come and audit you. But yes, we we can be audited at any point by any of our entities that grant us funding. And um one last question again thank you very much for taking the time to answer. The individual that you showed the pictures and they were the individual was able to get purchase a house. Are there requirements if those individuals are in a situation to purchase a house? It has to be purchased within the city of Oxnard or can they carry that to some other community?

Yeah. No, there's no requirement that they purchase in the city of Oxnard. Um and again like I mentioned earlier, it it's going to become even more difficult here on our area. We're just in a high cost area for for a family to be able to afford, but no, no restriction on where they can become first-time home buyers. Thank you very much. And again, thank you to your staff. It's a it's [clears throat] a part of our community that a lot of the public has no idea what's involved, but when you hear the numbers of people that you're supporting, taking care of, and the number of people that are waiting to get involved, it's a big chunk of our community that's impacted by this. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pearl, for those questions. Go ahead, council me. Thank you, mayor. And uh along with what council member Pllo mentioned, this was just going to be my only comment was thank you, Miss Lopez, and to your staff who are here. Uh it's not lost on me, I'd imagine on many in this room as well that uh the amount of work that you have in front of you and it's very important work. I would imagine each of your managers are would probably uh be uh open to even doubling or tripling the size of staff they have and still trying to meet the demand for for work that we have here. But knowing that um programs shift, programs change, administrations at the federal level come and go. Even with funding changes or funding reductions, there's not a proportional reduction in the need in our community. there's still the families who have the need. There's still the need for housing. There's still these unmet needs for our unhoused population and uh the work's there. The the need is there regardless. And so I just want to thank all of you for all of your work and the staff that you oversee as well. Uh I know that as I mentioned, there's plenty of work to go around.

Uh but we work with what we have and it's much appreciated and we this is a great overview to see just the amount [clears throat] of work you're able to accomplish given the resources. And I hope that with federal changes we can see what we can continue to do with that. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just wonder if you can uh just elucidate a little further on the resident initiatives program and and the number of people with services and just provide more detail on what that is

and then a resident initiatives program. So as a mentioned we have so twofold. We do have a Ross services coordinator. So we do have a staff member that is dedicated to putting uh programs together. This programs vary. We also look for other funding opportunities. So I don't have the number of individuals assisted because for example job fair is open to the entire community. Even though we will really try to focus on marketing there locally so people can come right over. There's we're right in the middle of uh the Colonia public housing site. We do open it. We communicate to our 50 partners. Hey, we have this job fair. can you come and participate? So, I don't have the numbers. Um, but we also even do other, you know, events for the community. We do national night out. We do padas. We do, uh, you know, candy handout during Halloween if they celebrate. Um, toy drives. So, we do do various efforts. And again, we don't really collect how many people, but as far as case management, that program does require that we have at least 50 families on an annual basis that are participating alongside our Ross uh services coordinator. And this is more connecting them to services. So, not necessarily on a five-year plan or escro savings account, but more of showing that we've connected them to whatever resources they needed. So, we do have to show outcomes for the fund for the grant, but I wouldn't have the numbers on that committee.

That's okay. And it was just just so our public can hear because I'm certainly a staunch supporter of of the relationship we have with our housing authority. I to echo what the council member said about your leadership and I think it was the greatest appointment we made uh through Alex and appointing you. I think the way you're leading that department is wonderful. I see a lot of familiar faces with Freddy and uh and others that are Susan. [clears throat] I see her back there. But I think you got the right people doing that kind of a job. Certainly I think we get that providing assistance for housing to our community. It's such a such an important role and all the positive outcomes that come from offering housing to our most in need with uh educational, you know, outcomes and health and uh over resourcing or or resourcing appropriately certain neighborhoods. And and that's where my question with the resident is just bringing people together. Um, so I just I just compliment you and your staff for for all that you do for our community. So, thank you. So, this a very well put together presentation. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Absolutely. If there are no other questions, um, Madam Clerk, are there any public speakers on on this presentation? Um, mayor and council members, we do not have any public speakers in person or virtually for this item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Lopez. Oh, sure. And just for those that are arriving, we're going to uh our intent is it was to start at six o'clock. We may just go a little bit over. So, if you just bear with us, we have a a presentation from our director for community uh services that's going to be here presenting. Go ahead, Mr. Pingilly.

Good evening, Mayor Mayor Pro Tim Council. Jeff Pingilly serve as the director of community development. I'm going to do a recap as briefly as I can of our presentation. It's it's posted online. Uh this is an overview of the community development department as part of the workshop series here. If I can get the uh slide back and uh I'll do a quick recap and I'll touch on a few things and I have many of my management staff here as well to answer any follow-up questions you may have. Our department um briefly u is filled by 70 full-time employees and uh the three divisions of building and engineering planning and code compliance. You can see there um real briefly uh building and engineering is unique to our city where it's a traditional building department and a land development engineering combined under the one-stop shop model. Uh we also have in our planning division we have both current planning and long-range planning and sustainability. That team also handles the cannabis program. And we have our code compliance division uh again uh supporting quality of life and the other divisions support quality of life, economic development, infrastructure and natural resources and uh yes those are those are consistent AC across all divisions. how we serve the community. We'll touch briefly on each of the major functions and divisions, long range [clears throat] planning and sustainability. Um does a lot of work more behind the scenes. Most people think of our department as as permitting, dealing with entitlement, squa, uh inspections, etc. And we do that and we'll talk about that. But our our long range planning team looks forward and deals with projects like the climate action and adaptation plan, the local coastal program, the general plan update, housing element update, commercial cannabis business program,

and I I inadvertently left off this list a very important project to the city, the Orman Beach restoration and access program. Uh our sustainability team spends a lot of staff time working on that. couple of projects to touch on. Uh the South Oxard Oxnard Connect, it's a grant-f funed development of a transit oriented specific plan specifically in South Oxnard um that the sustainability team worked hard to to pull together that grant and uh to tailor it to fit this specific neighborhood. Uh the local coastal program program I mentioned before, that's a three-year work effort and um it is a a subset of the general plan update. Um, but it's it's a it's a big work effort, a lot of community outreach, and uh we'll have more back in front of council on that later this year. I mentioned the climate action and adaptation plan again uh for the community's awareness that was adopted by council in 2022 and that's uh to be consistent with state laws regarding greenhouse gas emissions of course and uh one of the components of that is the um EV charging program uh and we are we have just released uh I believe this week the uh an RFP for an EV charging vendor based on a franchise agreement model and we'll be bringing that back in front of council when when a uh vendor is selected. And I mentioned the commercial cannabis business program. Um and again that's been in operation since 2022. And just the uh uh business tax revenue from that has been about $5.5 million to date.

That's great.

Code compliance again how we serve the community. They deal with quality of life issues. um substandard housing, unpermitted construction, short-term rentals, graffiti, illegal dumping, um all those things that that can bring down a quality of life in a neighborhood and other parts of the city, even our commercial and industrial districts. Uh this is a photo of a of a substandard housing condition, obviously, um from Oxnard. Um current planning, building and engineering, talking about how we serve the community. these divisions work together um and enact state laws and and uh ensure that construction is compliant to our city codes and standards. Um I mentioned land development engineering being a part of of building and engineering, but the planning department together with us and having the fire department next door to us provides a true one-stop shop model. Uh we moved into our current facility around 2008 and we were scattered in different parts of the city. It's been a very efficient collaborative uh work environment. As mentioned, we work with fire, housing, public works, and other city departments and as well as outside agencies to ensure the safe uh the construction is safe, energy efficient, and that we permit that we process permits in a timely and efficient manner. Uh there's obviously the Cassad Karman project and the 101 uh logistics stream project on the right there. Just for some uh rough metrics, in 2025 we had over 10,000 walk-in customers we served. Another 2600 served online. Uh over 25,000 building inspections. Currently, we have over 16 approximately 1,600 housing units under construction and another 1,800 in the permitting process. uh regardless of the size of the project, whether it's an ADU or a patio cover or a hotel or or a large project,

our goal is to be uh is to treat all of our customers with respect and and serve them each and uh efficiently. Another function uh within the building and engineering division is flood plane administration. uh maintaining compliance with FEMA standards, maintaining the city's CRS rating to help uh uh prevent reduce or prevent flood losses and uh access uh discounted flood rate rates to residents of the city. Uh you'll see the photo on the left in Oxnard Shores from the the more modern homes built up on concrete piles to avoid um wave impact flood damage. And the photo on [clears throat] the right is the floodgate being built as part of the STR3 levy project uh on Ventura Road.

That's great.

As far as progress goes, this is one metric. Um and the backstory is that postcoid there was a lot of staff departures and a lot of backlog that had built up. And so if you look at the left side of the graph, um it's a little hard to see here. Uh around the fall of 2022, we started receiving additional funding from council. We are very grateful to uh for that funding and we've applied it um aggressively, increased [snorts] our staffing, increased our consultants, got all of our contracts with our consultants in order. And as you can see the steep drop of the blue curve as we our backlog dropped from 460 479 to a manageable number. Now you can see the red trend line that continues to decline over time. Uh just before the holidays it was about 219. Anything between uh 200 and 300 is manageable. It's about the amount of workload we can process in one month's time. Additionally, uh as far as progress goes, we've had uh what we now call the permit fasttrack program. We've had that in effect uh for we're guessing over 28 years. I've been with the city 26 and it predates me. Uh this is a for businessorient oriented permits whether it's a commercial or industrial business. Uh this is a planch check in 1 hour program by an appointment. It's been tremendously successful. There are no extra fees. There are no pre-qualifications, no forms, no insurance. It's just whatever you would normally submit for a permit package for a tenant improvement, for example. And it can be in heavy industrial facility. It could be Proctor and Gamble. It doesn't matter. If it's something that it's a smaller project that we can reasonably look at in one hour, we'll take a shot at it. If it's larger than that, we'll still take a look and provide feedback in a 1-hour info only session. But again, that's been going for about 28 years. We've added a residential component to that in January of 2025. The residential fasttrack

program that was designed to uh provide some relief to the increasing number of uh residential projects, particularly accessory dwelling units, ADUs. And again, uh that's an plan check in 1 hour by an appointment. Uh no additional fees or paperwork is required. Uh that program is about 85% consistently full. uh the business related one is about 70 75% full consistently. So we have a little more room. So we want to get the word out. Other options uh include the permit simplicity act measure F program. It has been implemented uh diligently and continues to be implemented. However, uh there's not been a lot of interest in that. We've offered eight training registration sessions uh as indicated in the table. Um, we've had some interest, but nobody has followed through and and become an actual applicant to the program. Housing production. Great segue after that great presentation by our H housing department. Uh, we're we issue permits for all the housing construction in the city, whether the city is a partner in that um or it's a a a market rate development or if it's a combination of the above. Right now, we have approximately 6,000 units on the horizon and about 1,600 of those are under construction. And you can see a breakdown there of those that are proposed that those are under construction in plan check. Uh some approved specific plans and a proposed specific plan totaling a little over 6,000 units on the horizon. Uh another uh item to highlight in terms of progress is the um EPL pro uh software program enterprise permitting and licensing. We've been working on that since 2024. Um this will enable digital plan reviews, an online portal for customers to find real-time data on their inspections and plan checks. Um

enhanced reporting for better real-time management of department performance. and I couldn't resist putting a photo on the right of our existing green screen that we love. It's it's bulletproof, but it's uh not does not meet any of the current technology standards. And um we're looking forward to this and we're very grateful for the funding council has provided for that. Uh one more quick uh shot on the right of our of our paper world that we're still in. That's one corner of our plan room. Um, as I mentioned in the presentation, uh, some larger projects, an individual roll of plans can weigh 50 to 70 pounds. They need to bring in six sets for each of the three to five submitts for a large project. So, it's a lot of tonnage coming across our desks each year. Uh, the image on the left is a simple portal for submitting online. It's going to be miraculous.

Fantastic.

So, quick segue to challenges. uh the EPL uh implementation, the software implementation is in itself a challenge. It's a challenge we're happy to take on and I commend staff for the tremendous work they're doing, keeping the gears turning while spending a tremendous amount of time working on this software implementation. Uh currently we're scheduled to go live. This is tentative. Uh don't publish it, but it's tentative March 27th of this year. And we expect there to be some about six months of uh most customers and staff getting used to it and working out the kinks. We will of course have training plenty of training of our staff beforehand, but you can't know all the details until you're running it live. Um and I I do want to commend our our finance director and our IT director for their support and help through this project. Uh another challenge is increasing workload. Uh the unpermitted food v food vendor phenomenon is something that has impacted uh city residents and uh we have been enforcing it through what we've called the hero program hazard elimination and reduction operations. The fire department has taken the lead on this. This is the enforcement of the fire codes and with help from Oxnard, a lot of assistance from the Oxnard Police Department and a lot of support from the city attorney's office, uh we do after hours uh operations to um remove this fire and safety risk from our residents. These are predominantly vendors from outside of this area and these operations pose a fire safety and a health risk. Uh the food they're bringing is uncertified. It's not health department approved. There's no knowledge of of where it came from, when it expired, and there's almost never any refrigeration or ice or anything like that. They're just pulling this meat out of the back of a van, literally, in black trash bags, and serving it to our residents. Uh we do collaborate with Ventura County Environmental Health on these operations

as much as possible. We have a lot of rapport with them. They can't come out every time because they're dealing with this countywide. uh but they have been a great resource. So, we're addressing the fire risk and when possible, Ventura County Environmental Health does join us. Um some of the challenges that residents may not be aware of is that our state has decriminalized unpermitted vending through those uh laws mentioned there SB946 and 972. Uh that's significantly reduced our city and other cities ability to mitigate this hazard to our residents. uh in 2025 again enforcing it through the fire codes we conducted about 50 after hour after hours operations to mitigate this and protect our residents. Um Oxnard is currently the only city in Ventura County actively addressing this health and safety and fire risk to our residents. Another challenge is state housing laws. Since 2020, over a hundred laws have been passed with good intent in most cases to increase housing production. However, they've they've um gone into nearly every aspect of permitting and I've listed a few of them there. It's just a challenge for us to keep up with them to adjust our processes where necessary to be compliant. Um and in some cases they they're quite challenging such as requiring the implementation of an online permitting system. Uh we had to pass an exemption through council to give us a three-year extension because we were working on it. That's not a quick and easy fix and that's very costly for cities to do. Uh squa processing uh how that how things are processed and exemptions for squa timelines, ministerial approvals, um an allowance for housing development and commercial zones, post project uh post entitlement deadlines, uh project density in increases, etc. It's just a myriad of of a patchwork of laws that aren't cohesive. They are trying to do a

good thing, but they're they're hitting nearly every angle of how we operate and it's tough to keep up with that. We did uh fill uh create a new position for a housing planner specifically to help us address those issues. Uh a year ago, uh the increasing workload is another challenge. I wanted to touch on uh the proliferation of ADU permit applications. As you can see in the table, um it has been rising considerably since about 2019 2020. Um ADU permit processing currently occupies about 40% of our plan check and permit processing workload. That's a new workload that did not exist prior to 2020. And as you've heard from other departments, recruiting is a significant challenge, especially for the higher level positions both in engineering and planning. Um, several positions have taken, as you've heard from other departments, 18 to 24 months, and some remain unfilled. Um, I did make a mistake here. We have seven vacancies out of seven, not six. Uh, we didn't recently lose one. I just miscounted. Uh but the the good news is by way of comparison, there was a point in time where we had only three of 11 current planning positions filled. Now that's reversed. We have uh we have only three vacancies out of 11. And at another point in time, we had only one out of four of our building plan check engineering positions filled. And currently those are all filled. But recruiting is a challenge. We're utilizing recruiting firms. We're working with HR to make uh to look at salary ranges to make sure we're competitive, especially with other local cities over the next three years. The overall challenge is how to implement our new permitting software while we're very busy and to keep the gears turning and not impact our customers. That's one of the big challenges. um continuing to address changes in

workload as mentioned the increasing number of ADU projects uh ever changing state laws and the uh the also the unpermitted food vendor activity. Um I will say on the unpermitted food vendor activity when we started uh with the fire department and police department and our after hours operations under the hero program there were about 35 regular setups around town. um quickly within a few months and at a steady state since then. There's about three regulars that set up and again they're they're predominantly almost universally from out of town and we'll continue to work closely with HR and filling those vacancies and particularly for those challenging higher level positions. The other part of that is make sure we retain our existing employees. So uh we make a lot of effort to hire a good quality staff um that can uh not only work with the public but work with each other other internally as well and uh we try to be as supportive of them as we can. That concludes this presentation and again I'm here along with many of our management staff to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Any council members have any questions of staff on this item? Okay, go ahead, Mr. Pearl.

Comments. Thank you very much for the presentation. I first off the very beginning slides, I give you credit for putting on there vacancies and red letters, but we didn't get a chance to spend a lot of time there. We're trying to pick up the pace. Um, I very much appreciate the fact that you're trying to fill all these slots because I'm going to give you one that's an uncomfortable question, but I get it all the time. You mentioned the term that you operate and you try to be timely and efficient in a timely and efficient manner and I continually get people regurgitating. I want to use that word again regurgitating the same stories that somebody had a problem getting something done getting something taken care of. Can you give us an example of situations where there are delays based on the people returning the paperwork to you or taking the time to get back to you where it's not your department or your staff's problem or fault?

Yes, Council Member Pllo, happy to answer that question. And first of all, I want to say if we make a mistake, we don't want to make excuses. We want to know about it and we want to try to make things right for that specific project. In many cases, however, there's a lack of communication between the design team that's actually submitting the plans to us. They are the applicant and the project owner or the property owner. So, usually there's uh let's just say it's easy to blame the city uh without other information. And usually when we get all the parties together, the owner, the person preparing the plans, and our our staff, and we explain what's been going on, how many times it's gone back and forth that maybe that owner wasn't aware of, or how long it took between submitts. uh that's when the light bulb goes on and they realize we're here working with them to solve the process. Um you've heard claims of hundreds of days of a project being delayed when it's not in our possession and um you know we can only just uh wait for the project to come back in and treat it um efficiently when it gets in. But we cannot go compel people to manage their own uh contractors, vendors, uh consultants, architects. We have to the projects have to be submitted back to us. However, like I said, if we make a mistake, we want to know about it and we'll see what we can do to shortcut things on the next cycle and make them whole on the project in total.

Thank you very much and thank you for taking the time to explain that to the public. Um, unfortunately, a lot of people don't get that message no matter how many time they're told. I want to thank the code enforcement. They mentioned the safety um the food vendors. We could show possibly pictures of the damage and the extensive burns that were done to a person with the food vending because of accidents and un unprohibited actions taking place. And in the past, there has been mention about specific um as you mentioned several times tonight, the people running these things are from out of the area. Basically, it's a big business. They have bis sites in this city, Ventura, and other places, raking in over six figures on these situations. We're doing the best we can, but a compliment. You're the only city, this is the only city that's taking an action to do that stuff. It's a credit to you, to the council, and management for supporting you and doing that. Thank you very much.

A credit to code compliance, the fire department, and police department. They're the ones doing the heavy lifting. Yes. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you, Council Member. Any other questions? I'm just excited that we're moving um to be that much more efficient, right, with the implementation here. Hopefully, I know you said don't uh maybe don't stay till March 27th, but you know, we're going in that direction. So, and I know that that I see a couple of your staff members here that have been uh excellent when there's been issue that that have been brought up. Uh they've been very attentive and responsive to to members of our community. And I think people quickly realize that we're here to be great partners. Um, and you've got a huge department and code compliance. I thank you for taking those operations on with police and and fire looking ahead to take the initiative to protect members of our community. So So I'm just I'm thankful for the efforts. Thank you.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Thank you. And I just uh wanted to uh follow up on that as well and thank your team, Mr. Pengilly. They're a great team. I've had the privilege to work with each of them in a different capacity or in different um projects over the last couple of years and I just thank them for the work that they do because similar to what I said for housing there's a lot of work and only a few people to do it. Um and at this level that your team here who is here tonight um knows uh the conversations we've had and the workload that they have there's just so much to do and um you have the great team who's able to do that and I tip my hat to them because it is a lot given the resources that cities like Oxard have and so I want to thank all of you for for your work and always being willing to um step up and see how we can be uh solutionsoriented in addressing the issues we face. So, thank you all and thank you, Mr. Pell.

Appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, Councilwoman.

Yes. I also want to take an opportunity. I um know that I had a conversation especially during the holiday season um Candy Cane Lane and code enforcement like there was a lot going on. So, I just I know Andy's in the audience and maybe he could share a little bit about shine light on some of the issues that were brought up. I know that there's health concerns that there's safety concerns and um I know code compliance was trying to do their job and uh go out there. I know next year we'll do better, but um I would like to just shine some light because I know that you all get the heat of a lot of things and um there's a lot of progress happening and uh I see a lot of the work happening here, but I I would really like to address that because a lot of folks called me about that specific season and uh and I know that the same weekend there was an incident with uh something blowing up or just fire out of control. So, can you just share a little bit? I know there was um you alluded to something of in terms of the state of California laws changing and uh really limiting our ability to to do much. So, we'll do better, but I I wanted to see if we could have a little bit of information for the general public who was concerned about that.

Be happy to have Andy speak on that. Um, I do want to add uh that at that same time we had uh an regular event that occurs at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Colonia and the year prior uh vendors um overran that that event. Uh they took up every parking space surrounding it. There was over 50 vendors. This year we pre-planned and we deployed a lot of uh staff, code compliance, police and I believe fire as well deployed there in advance with a plan of action and it was a tremendous success. um that was going on at the same time as some of the candy cane lane. Uh but I'll let Andy explain further. Thank you.

Good evening, members of the council. Andrew Dixon, co- compliance manager. Um yes, we did have issues with some of the out of town hot dog vendors coming in um trying to overrun our candy cane Christmas tree lane. Um we were out several nights uh in the in the initial weeks leading up to it. Uh there was an incident involving um some community activists that um basically was threatening to our staff. And it was I made the determination that in the spirit of the holidays um with the threats that were made and the the tone of it of what it was what they had promised to do, it was not the best thing to have our staff out there and subjected to the abuse. Um we also were out on the day of the virgin at Guadalupe Church. It was a great success. Um Saturday night, the December 20th, we did have one of these out of town uh vendors, unpermitted food operators up on Vineyard.

Mhm.

They were storing a propane tank under their grill. And as gases heat up, they expand the pressure release and the tank blew up causing a large fire on Vineyard Avenue right in front of our Bayata Market. Um, so myself and staff responded from home um on the the eve of of Christmas week. Um, so we were out there a lot and unfortunately um, hindsight's 2020. We we will learn. Uh, we have learned and we will do better. Um, as Director Pingilly stated, Guadalupe Church last year 50 vendors. This year the the church sold out and it was an overwhelming success generating you know the profits for our community for our church that serves our community.

Okay. Thank you very much. And I think like the main takeaway al also is like the health and safety of folks and I think that the general community can probably support by maybe not engaging in you know the purchase and sales. So I want to thank you because I know that I was calling after hours and I'm like hey folks are really concerned. and I walked through Candy Kane Lane and I saw I know I counted at least uh 17 different operators and uh I think safety and wellness is very important and how do we work together as a community. So, thank you all. I just wanted to shine some light on that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Rodriguez, for bringing that issue up. Thank you. Madam Clerk, I mayor, there's Yes. Go ahead.

Uh I just want to take this opportunity to once again thank Mr. Dixon. Uh you run a really good shop there. You've got some good people. One thing I really appreciate about you is that you don't uh you don't wield the citation first. Usually, you're trying to get to work with the person and say, "Hey, this is not uh in in compliance with the rules. You need to change this." A recent example I remember was that there was a [snorts] a gentleman who I think had some sort of like plumbing or type business or something where he was putting signs on our uh in places where they shouldn't on polls and so forth and you know you took the initiative to actually talk to the person explain to him what the rules were and then he promptly self-corrected. So I'm I'm glad that you use that approach and you only escalate when you need to. So thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, we embrace the compliance aspect of the job. We are not Yes, we are code enforcement, but voluntary compliance is our goal and that's what we always strive educating a new business owner on how to do things correctly as opposed to just citing him $200 for every sign that he had placed on every single right light post in the town. Yeah, I just once again I'm very appreciative of your appreciate that obviously I hope you'll continue that. Thank you. Thanks for that wonderful presentation. Madam cler beyond this speaker card. Are there any other public speakers in person or online?

Um mayor and council members that's the only speaker Alicia Purcell for this item. Thank you Alicia. So, in in spite of reports of progress, it still takes way too long in this city to to get a permit. Um, it is a frequent complaint from residents, not just one. Um many many people in the building industry uh have told us they just won't take jobs in Oxnard because it it's just too difficult. Um the permit process nearly drove Amazon away from opening in Oxnard. And I saw the emails. This is not speculation. Only after an online journal publicly shamed over the way that uh it was being handled did things take a turn. And look, look what we got as a result because Amazon opened here. Look at the revenues that that the city has has gained by cooperating. Um, the Ventura County Grand Jury even issued a report of their finding in 2024 about Oxnard not complying with statemandated uh timelines. So, you know, the fact that it got worse around COVID and has somewhat improved from that level doesn't necessarily mean that the system works well. Um that's the reason that we qualified the permit simplicity program for the ballot and voters adopted it. Um even [clears throat] before we collected signatures for that program, we took the draft language to the city manager and we gave them an opportunity to say, you know, hey, if voters were to adopt a measure like this, it would be better if you made this change. Um but instead,

Mr. told us that he knew there was a problem, but he was going to fix it himself. He didn't he didn't want anything to do with it. He opposed our measure. He told us he would use all his resources to fight it. And that's what he did. Um other than Aaron, council members are generally unaware of how it's been going. Uh even after voters adopted it, it took a long time for anything to happen towards implementation. website was not easy to find. It was difficult for an interested person to even sign up for the training. People would have to have to actively monitor the web page weekly because without notice, boom, they'd open a registration window for a few days. And if you missed it, too bad. Chance is gone. Uh then when there was a one-mon registration window, uh the registration form is deactivated. You couldn't actually complete it. Um, we are informed by people who inquire about the program. They have been at times told incorrectly told they're not eligible. Um, or they've been actively discouraged and frustrated out of using the program, so they quit trying. So, in spite of whatever rebuttals will be made, uh, it it's not been implemented in good faith. And that the chart in the the slide is just evidence of the city manager's efforts to thwart the program. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Porcel. Mr. Mayor, we're going to respond. So, first I'd like to give Director Pengilli an opportunity just to talk about some of the glitches in the program and what they've done and then I'll talk about a broader context. Go, Mr. Pingill. And also, Madam Clerk, I think the the timer was glitching there. um somewhat go ahead Mr. Pingy.

Thank you, Mayor. Um just to rebut some of those comments. Um the program has been implemented. Uh nobody has been dissuaded from applying. Uh I'm the one that's implemented it. Uh I've uh managed the website. uh when we were notified one time that the uh form wasn't taking applications, we ex we turned the form back on and extended it for another month or and in fact it's on continuously now. Um the the number the applicants that were interested, I contacted each one of them. Uh those that failed to respond after my attempts to contact them dropped off the list. Nobody was dissuaded. In fact, I had conversations with people late this uh calendar year 2025 uh who were who seemed to be interested uh a fish on the line potentially and I had extensive conversations with them. Uh one of the big uh detriments this year is that the program mandates that you renew your certification every time the codes change and they're changing uh effectively at this calendar year. So uh we might have a few applicants but again when people look at the merits of the program it doesn't help them. Um, it reverses the order of planch check versus permits. It doesn't save them any significant time. It doesn't save them money. Um, it it it's a 12-page document that of of regulations that calls itself permit simplicity where you have a a laundry list of forms and requirements where you could just submit an application and go through the process. Um, I can talk about again our turnaround times are comparable to Thousand Oaks and Ventura. um the unnamed persons that are saying that uh things are not working well. Come and have a conversation with me. Uh I deal with the customers on a daily basis. Let's have a real conversation. Uh you know, bad news travels around the world three times before good news crosses the street is the old saying. So if you hear a complaint, um maybe it's valid, maybe

it's a third hand, we'd like to know about it. But the the uh the fact the statement that Amazon went away because our permit process is is just um it's just unacceptable that that's that's I lived the Amazon project both versions and that's not what happened. Uh I could give a more detailed explanation at another time, but that's very frustrating. Um so I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Alex, were you going to say something?

Yeah, I just want to add to this wonderful revisionist history. I can guarantee you I have never once said to anyone, I'll use all my resources to fight something. What I probably said was, "It's a stupid idea." And I still believe that. Now, a shortcut is not always the solution to a complex problem. So, let's let's fix this context window here so that we can have an actual shared understanding. Now, the Amazon thing was fascinating, but Mr. Pengilli is correct. Had nothing to do with permitting, right? A lot of that did precede my time, but I did reach out to Amazon and I we were able to get them back to the table and the outcome is what it is. But let's enough of this revisionist history and quoting people out of thin air. Just deal with the facts as they are. One other thing I want to speaking of a context window because and it's not just Oxnard this this department in every city especially when it comes to regulations and permitting and code compliance always gets blamed for everything. But let me let me just share with you that the primary reasons that we do these things are not to frustrate our residents or our businesses. primarily it's about safety. When you look at the the Christ Church earthquake 2011, 100,000 buildings damaged, 10,000 of those buildings had to be demolished. Imagine something like that here. But what happened in Christ Church afterwards? They looked towards our building codes to figure things out for a better future.

Last year, the high-rise fire in Hong Kong, lot of deaths. What did they do immediately? They started arresting people, including engineers and building officials who didn't do their due diligence in approving permits. Now, that came out rather rapidly, so I don't know what the outcomes of that are and what really happened. I'm not sure we would find out on on our end of the globe. the New Year's Eve fire recently, this New Year's Eve in Switzerland. What's the headline story today? No inspections. So, just remember this is about safety. We do the best we can, but it's all wrapped around safety. Thank you.

Thank you, Alex. Any other comments? Mr. Parlo, go ahead.

I'd [clears throat] like to address something. um when I made my first comments with respect to the presentation that was just made by Mr. Pengilli. And now after we've had a member of the public speak, um I know that member of the public was introduced by her husband, a city council member, as recently passing the bar, making her an attorney. And I [clears throat] know that um I don't have the ability to retape and go back and listen to exactly what she said, quote exactly what she said, but she used the term we have heard. We have been informed. That's called hearsay. And I did say the first time that I mentioned the comments that I continually and I said it twice here regurgitated comments with respect to our city not doing a good job with the code enforcement permits timelines everything else. The most recent time was at the Christmas tree lighting. I heard somebody in the audience right now tell me about the problems that they're having and everyone else is having the same problem. Well, when you see the numbers that are put up on the board about construction going on in the city, it must not be everyone else is having the same problem. In some communities, it's not what you know, it's who you know. If some people don't want to work in the city of Oxnard or do business in the city of Oxnard because they can't get something specially done for them, I wish them well some other city. I don't want them something that you know somebody so you get a special favor. Usually special favors come with considerations and the considerations are that somebody gets shortch changed and the person that gets short changed is a member of the public and this whole process of the repeated statements that are made we have heard we understand businesses don't want to operate in Oxnard when you have facts and evidence something that someone should learn in law school I think the first day it's important bring the facts and evidence otherwise someone will come

to like I am come to an opinion that there's a degree of untruth in what you're saying. Thank you very much, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Pearllo. There are no other questions or comments. Oh, yeah. Go ahead, Mayor Pton.

Thank you. I'll just be brief on this. Um [clears throat] I was just taking this all in and I'll just say I've been following measure F um since getting on the council and I appreciate Mr. Pingilly keeping me updated when I asked for uh each session and how many inquiries there were and how many applications there were. And you saw on the board earlier on the table zero applications in all of the um eight sessions that have occurred since implementation. So the voters may have approved it, but it appears to me that professionals have rejected it. I don't know what else to say because um on February 13th, 2023, the Moving Oxnard Forward blog sent out or a blog post and probably emailed untold number of professionals as well about the permit simplicity program, about measure F. If you look at the table in the public documents for this meeting, the February 2023 session had 28 inquiries, far more than any of the others. I'd imagine those are people who received the blog post or an email and there were still zero applications. So does that mean 28 people were somehow dissuaded from applying or told they weren't eligible? Does that mean those 28 people who unnamed people who said, "Oh, I was told I wasn't eligible." If they were told like, "Oh, no, that's incorrect. You're eligible." They still chose not to come back and still are not have not applied. I mean, I'll just say candidly, it's okay to fail this thing. If it's failed, it's all right to admit that we get lessons in failure. Being a failing at something is is okay. I think everybody in this dasis, everybody this room has failed at something before. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a humbling experience. We learn from it. We move forward. So, what shows me that this program is not working is the fact that professionals have viewed it, have inquired, zero have gone forward with it. And I could just as easily sit up here and say I've spoken to

professionals who who said I would never do something like that. That makes zero sense for me as a professional to uh participate in that program. So anyhow, that's those are my comments. I appreciate the um opportunity to speak on this. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to Mr. Mr. Mayor. Do you mind if I just go to a couple speakers and we'll we'll back to you council member? If there are um we'll take Mr. Greg Renan and Mr. Stein, you'll follow Mr. Renan and then Victor. And after Victor, we have Angela Wel. Good evening again, council. No Gatorade, no bananas today, so hopefully I'll stay awake. The uh

I know you are. I appreciate it. I'll probably slip on it on the peel. the uh I wasn't going to say anything and I and I came a little late, but I get way we start arguing about permits and we start arguing about the technicalities and things like that. Um I actually got up because I wanted to point out as you guys were complimenting Andy and I've known Andy a long time. His uh sister was part of a Special Olympics group. We we bowled together. Um he helped me in cleaning up a church property we had when we were trying to help some homeless folks. And one of the individuals was vile to him, said [snorts] some things that were completely and totally inappropriate. And I went and I told Andy, I said, "I'm so sorry." And he said, "Greg, when you're trying to help people that need help, you [snorts] need to remember that they need help." I think sometimes when we talk about technicalities and things and we begin to look for gotcha moments, we forget to thank the people that are working through gotcha moments. It would have been very easy for Andy to say, "You know what? Forget it. We're not going to give you any extra time. We're not going to do this. You need to do this because this guy disrespected me and this guy did that." He didn't play politics. He didn't play personalities. He did it the right way. And when you see something like that, it's kind of sad in a way because we were at kind of a high point and then it came crashing down.

So, I'd like to see us get up to that high point of I'm not an engineer. I don't know about permits. I'm not a construction guy. Um, but I do know how to treat people. And my fear is that there's people that may not want to come to Oxnard because they don't like the people, not the permits, they don't like the way the people are doing things. And I hope and I pray that we can look to people and thank them when they do a good job and thank them for the example. So Andy, I've told you before, but thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks, Pastor Mr. Larstein.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Good evening, Mr. City Council, staff, and the general public. My name is Larry Stein. I've been a activist for 30 plus years and one of the things that bothers me is the fact that we had specific plans. The city makes sure that we do not complete the specific plans. We take a look at the specific plan for Northeast Community Village. That specific plan called for a fire station when 50% house be built out. The specific plan called for a park to be built. Again, residents bought 2500 plus homes in that specific plan. They paid development fees. And where's the park after 25 years? Where's the fire station after 25 years? Well, after all the homes were built by 2012, the city decided in 2018 not to build a fire station because, oh, we don't need it. According to the fire department, we still have 2500 plus homes, advanced construction going on and a specific plan that called at the time the people bought their homes for our fire station and park. Community development is responsible for specific plans. The city manager and city attorney are responsible for making sure the specific plans get completed. to get completed. We have a current assistant manager indicating that we have enough water for 10,000 new housing structures as part of the general training plan. Where are the wells? The wells that were supposed to be built from the 2010 water bonds have not been built. Where's the water going to come from for 10,000 new homes? Oh, we're going to get by conserving water. Well, that's not was said when the bonds were sold. We have a develop we have a community

development department that adapts specific plans but nobody verifies the specific plans get completed. City council is not allocate funds to make sure things get completed. We have the wells that were supposed to be built 2010. We are well still not working on fifth street after five years. Where's the planning that follows up on specific plans? We have the te club plant that's has great deal of attributes to it but we also have a field next to it where the air may be toxic. The air may be toxic because the lead next to the airport in the fuel planes. Well, who has ted the air? Oh, not the city, not the county. Nobody has t the air because you don't know if the air is safe or not. when it's brought up in specific plan hearings last April, staff said, "We've looked into that." That's all they said. We've looked into that. Why don't we look at the specific plans and how we're processing specific plans? Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Sign Victor. And following Mr. O'Hare, that's Angela Wo. Hello, city council. My name is Victor O'Hather, longtime resident in the city of Oxnard, and I wanted to make some comments um on the city permit side and whatnot. I commend them and they're doing a good job and they're getting better year after year and I'm glad to hear that you guys are going digital now because most cities in this in the state of California are there now. We're always for whatever reason lacking one step behind and we're playing damage control kind of trying to play catch-up with the world. Um, one of the things I know I have heard I I deal with a lot of businesses doing consulting work. I also work with Modern Beauty Academy here, local business in the downtown area. And one of the things that when I go in there, some of the friends that do construction, some of the um people who are out in the world trying to get permits I do here. it's uh you know takes a year and a half for them to get something approved for whatever reason it might be. I know it's case by case. I'm not saying you guys aren't not doing your job, but I guess we can always get better and it's more just a comment to make. Let's find more of a solution than a problem. Um, I know that sometimes I've heard from some of them and I it's out here say yes, but it's just something to put out there in the world and for everybody to know that sometimes they come out and they bring they bring their plans and they're like, "How much is it going to be?" Oh, I don't know. I have to look over the plans. It's like I mean there should be some type of more structure on this is a fee for this. If you add on this, add on that, then kind of go move forward from there. As I said, I know it's case by case scenarios, but I do say, you know, you guys are doing a better job year for year. I know I recently had some issues

with some permits trying to get, hey, I need this permit. Not not through the planning side, more on the city business side. Well, wait. I gotta go talk to Alberto or Roberto or, you know, and then it's like they should have like the whoever's in the front should be trained a little bit better maybe just to be able to kind of come to a solution and not have to wait. Oh, you know what? My manager's not here. Can you come back? You know, and it's okay. I'm I'm not unhappy with the city, but we can always be better. You know, I do want to commend the the fire department. Their their plan their u inspectors are awesome. I've dealt with some of them in the last year and nothing but good news from them on their on their behalf and I appreciate a lot of these programs that are out there. Some So, one of the things I don't do uh or um [clears throat] the lack of education of knowing like the simplicity act that they were talking about, I had never heard of it. Maybe I just was unaware or not put my attention, but they haven't really voiced it out to the world as as clearly. Um just little things we can get better at. Nothing, like I said, nothing to say, oh, they're not doing their good job, but let's just try to make the city better. And Mr. uh Pllo, I know you said, you know, I don't care whoever doesn't want to work here, come here and whatnot. I feel that Oxnard should be a city to kind of be more inviting to let's work together and let's make it grow. We are the biggest city in this in the county.

Thanks, Victor. I am not against people coming here, but I'm against people expecting special treatment if they come. Apologize, mayor, for and I apologize, but just the the deliverance of the message. Yeah. Thanks, Victor. I apologize. You're out of time. This is this is the time we take to listen to [clears throat] public comment, but thanks for your comments. Victor Angel Wcom,

I wasn't going to speak because I was waiting for one of you guys to ask the question. Why are we still taking paper plans? You talk about the weights and the size. We live in a digital age. I'm a contractor. I do everything through PDFs and a large screen and you can take it apart. You can zoom in and you can send them one time and you can have them now. And it's not going to cost any money to reprint them. It's going to save the environment. So, I just don't understand um why we are still taking paper plans. I think the city should say, "No, you have to send them to me digitally, then you don't lose them. and you don't have to pay so much. Um, I live on Christmas tree lane. I was part of getting the TU where my husband was, which means I was part of it. Um, it was the most stressful Christmas I've ever had living on Christmas tree lane dealing with the vendors and the amount of residents. I'm also the chair for Wilson and the residents that live on that street, they're very frustrated and I really fear that they're not going to light up next year unless we come up with a with a solution to this problem. And I understand that VC Defense came out and they wanted to protect the vendors. I did put in a call to them to work with them with a workaround because they didn't want to work with the city. Um, and I understand the fear that the uh that was coming from um code enforcement in in the heightened political environment that we're in, but we need to come up with workable solutions and and so I really look forward to working with the city. I can tell you that the amount of toilet paper and trash that we went in through, my husband was personally pushing the trash down um to because we didn't have the trash collection um as much as we needed because of the amount of vendors that were selling things that produced trash um and the amount of toilet paper that I

personally bought to to keep up with the with the need because food and drink. You know, we're we're people, right? And we try to provide these clean, safe spaces, but but we're as a neighborhood, we're going to need more support next year. and and if we want to keep this tradition alive and and is lovely to the community, I I look forward to working with you guys and coming up with solutions and and um I can say that I did work with you guys with the local permitting department and I had to get a re-roofing project done and it all went great except for the one day that the inspector didn't show up to the house and I waited for him all day and I don't he said that the paper wasn't there and I could guarantee you that it was. So, I don't know what to do with that. So, I could understand the public's frustration and maybe what they need is we need a a a little quick survey. I don't know. You might have it, but something to help fix that. Thank you.

Thanks, Angela. Madam Clerk, are there any other speakers in person or online? U mayor and council members, that concludes our speakers in person and virtually for this item. Thank you. Thank you, uh, council member.

Yes, sure. So, um, perhaps the city manager doesn't remember this, but, uh, Alicia and I, our very first meeting with him, which was in late 2018, uh, he made very clear to me and her that he would fight this measure with everything he had. That was both of our recollections. And sometimes memories dim and maybe I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the same manager that maybe he doesn't remember anymore. But my wife and I certainly do. Regarding the number of applicants being a indicator as to whether the program is even appealing, I'll tell you this. back in February of 2023 or just prior to that, we recruited folks to actually apply and we got 28 of them to actually make inquiries. I was copied on the emails requesting the information. So I saw the responses from staff and just for further background it was kind of by dumb luck that we recruited these people the time we did because [laughter] it wasn't [clears throat] clear that there was going to be a class. It wasn't stated when the next class was going to be. What happened was that the class was announced uh only a week ahead of time just before a holiday weekend so that people would only have four days to apply. Nonetheless, we got 28 people to apply at that point and they were being told by an email that the prerequisite for taking the permit simplicity class was that you first had to take the permit simplicity class. It was a circular requirement and I spoke to the city attorney's office. He finally agreed that I was right. I have

that in writing and what I'm told is that there was an effort to follow up with these people and let them know, but I'm not really sure how well that went. But I'm just simply saying that to say that no applicants means the program is not a success is just false when it's not possible to even apply or know when the class is going to to happen. Now, to the credit of the department now, I'm happy to say that they are opening up the uh the ability to apply ahead of time. I think that's a good move. I know that a recent applicant who was a recent inquirer who was interested in becoming applicant was told that yeah, he he shouldn't even bother taking the class and most recently because the building code is being updated. So, I will see if he is able to be part of the program when it next comes up. I assume in April. Uh, but I just wanted to correct the record and the understanding. I mean, I've lived this. So, I know there's been problems. When I first ran for city council, people were telling me this. That's the reason why we came up with permit simplicity. And by the way, if there was anything that we didn't like that, you know, that city staff didn't like about permit simplicity, we specifically added a provision that the city council has the ability to modify this law. It doesn't have to go back to the voters to even do it as long as it uh promotes the purposes that the initiative stated. So, those are just my comments. I just wanted to correct the record. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman S. And I'll just I'll just conclude um by by stating that, you know, I I personally want to modernize this city and I'm just as I stated, I think Angeline, you mentioned uh why are we taking paper? Um Mr. Pingley mentioned that we're shooting for a March 27th um date to implement after adequate training for staff and to implement digital acceptance of of permits. So, we're we're getting there. Um, as you know, we I I certainly and I think this council does too in our city. We support entrepreneurs, businesses, because if they're successful, we we are successful as a city and as a community. We're all successful. Um, so we want to see them succeed, but that's not to say we we can cut corners. We we want to be as efficient, but also understanding that the protocols and codes are in place to protect all of us. So, we have to abide by them. And but that's also not to say that there potentially hasn't been some errors along the way. But I can tell you that at least my personal experience in dealing with our department or Mr. Mr. Pingilli and others is that they're open and receptive to to having those kind of robust discussions to to get better and be more efficient because ultimately we want to no one's in in in the business here to not be successful. We all want to be successful and want to offer the best possible services we can to our community. So, I'm I'm confident that we're going to continue to strive to to be as efficient uh as we can and as serviceoriented as we can to our businesses because we want them to succeed because then we succeed as a city as a as a community. So, I'm confident that we are moving in in the right direction. Uh so, there's no other public comment and no other questions or comments by by our council. Um

this is only a receive and file item. Yes, council member. Just one comment um for the council members that were not here. Um this happened before I was on the council, but Mr. Stein brought up an issue. He's 100% correct specifically about a north specific northeast specific plan in a fire station. There was a member of the public in the audience and I kept hearing that kept hearing that why why why the response was the fire department chief at the time made the determination since the homes would have indoor sprinklers there would not be the need for a fire station in that development but they would propo they would postpone the fire station as the city develop more towards the east currently apparently there is something in Sakioka farm so Mr. Stein is 100% right on a fire station that was supposed to be in an area, but there was a determination by the fire people in place that because the homes are equipped with indoor sprinklers, there was no need for that. That was reported at the council before I got on council.

Thanks for that clarification, council member. Okay. Um, thanks for your patience, by the way. Um, good evening, everyone. Just want to call now formally the meeting to order for the auction city council for Tuesday, January 6th, 2026. Madame clerk, may we have the roll call and posting of the agenda, please? Uh, Councilwoman Basilla here. Council member Paralo here. Councilwoman Pettis here. Councilwoman Rodriguez present. Councilman Star here. Mayor Prompteran here. Mayor MacArthur here.

The agenda for this meeting was posted at the kiosk at city hall, the Oxer Public Library. the city administrative offices and on the city's website on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2025. Thank you. Thank you. And next, I know we have Keon and his and his family here for the pledge of allegiance. And for that, I'm going to turn over to Councilwoman Basua uh to make the formal introduction and then we'll go into the pledge of allegiance.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I didn't know I was going to do that, but um I I had the opportunity to reach out to um a local high school and I chose Santa Clara High High School. Um it's very dear to my heart. So um without any further ado, I will turn it over. Thank you. I invite everybody to please stand for the pledge of allegiance. And mayor, when we're done with the pledge, can we take a moment of silence? Tomorrow is the anniversary of the number of people that were burned to death in the fires down south. And today is the anniversary of the despicable thing that happened in the nation's capital and all the people that were pardoned by our president.

Yeah. Thank you very much for that, council member, for reminding us of the January January 6 insurrection that happened and what happened there. So, we'll take a moment of silence here right after it. Okay, sounds good. Please place your right hand over your heart. Ready? 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. You may be seated.

Thank you very much everyone. Thank you.

Okay, Keon, go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor MacArthur, city council members, staff, and everyone present in the gallery. My name is Kian Via, and I am a senior at Santa Clara High School. I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude for to city council and Santa Clair High School for granting me this honor to speak here today and share my story and impact on this community. [snorts] As the youngest of three children, I constantly found myself having to prove myself to others. To provide some context, my older brother and older sister were very successful in high school, graduating valadictorian, receiving recognition in sports, and were involved in various school organizations. They then went on to be successful in adulthood. my brother um becoming a commissioned officer in the Navy, graduating from the United States Naval Academy. My sister becoming a doctor of pharmacy, graduating from University California, San Francisco. And it's safe to say that they set the bar pretty high and encouraged me to surpass their expectations, which I am eternally grateful for. Now, I have had many people tell me that everything I have achieved up to this point was a result of my siblings legacy. But what they did not realize or witness was the amount of work, preparation, and most challenging, the pressure I was under. This pressure was not brought on by anyone other than myself. I never in my entire life wanted to be better than my siblings. I just wanted to create something unique, something meaningful to me. So, I sought to do and try everything that my siblings did and more to produce a legacy I can call my own. As soon as I started high school, I joined two varsity sports and almost all

the clubs and organizations on campus while striving for academic excellence with the Arizona State University dual enrollment program my school offers. But this is where I made my biggest mistake. In the dense fog of navigating high school and creating my own legacy, I found myself overloading my schedule and creating this pressure which ultimately made me lose sight of what my true goal was. Finding something something meaningful to me. Now, as I approached my senior year, taking um something hit me. taking on the roles of Santa Clara's student body president my junior and senior year, class president freshman and sophomore year, team captain of varsity sports, president of student ambassadors, and various other leadership positions on campus all had one thing in common. Serving something bigger than myself. In all of these achievements, I always found myself helping the school, the people within, or the community as a whole. spending countless hours giving back to the community. In those times where I was burnt out and exhausted, I still found the energy to simply ask anyone if they needed help, whether they were on or off campus, because I knew I had the support of my parents, school, and the community. And it was in those moments of aid where I felt the pressure melt away. In addition, I found other students who are willing to help those in need and shared the common goal with me. Knowing that there are others who share the same passion with me assures me that our community is in good hands and the future is bright. It turns out that in the end, this pressure was solely my own doing and it

was my parents, siblings, Santa Clara High School, and the community of Oxnard who helped me persevere. With that being said, I have come to the conclusion that I am best suited to help and be of service. My plans for the future are to hopefully attend the United States Air Force, Naval, Army, or Merchant Marine Academy where I can develop my leadership, resilience, and dedication to serve this world. My dream is to become a pilot in any of these branches and use my leadership and experience to be create positive change in the world. Thank you for your time and have a blessed night. G, do you want to do you want to introduce who's here with you?

Of course. Please. Front row, I have my dad, Ben, my mom, Michelle, my sister, Kirsten, and uh my principal, Miss Pomano. Wow. [applause] And in the back I see we do have some teachers um from the school, Miss Ramsey and Mr. Ramirez.

You know, you had an opportunity to see uh K, you had an opportunity to see um a little bit of how our city government works. Waiting a little bit. So, thank you for your patience. But of course,

um, but you know, this is a highlight for us is having young people like yourselves come up and it just really just showcases for our entire community just the amount of talent we have here in this city. Um, that are coming up, growing up here, being part of our educational system here. Um, and so we're just so happy. And you have an entire community behind you whether you realize it or not. That's what the function of this is, is for us to get behind you and be supportive and support your principal, your educators that are all here rallying for you to I mean, you're the next generation and things don't happen by accident, right? So certainly the credit to your parents obviously they've got man the right recipe because they're producing gosh I mean it's just impressive. So thank you um for the work that you've done and we have a a certificate for you up here if you want to come up and your family can come up and we can take some photos. Okay. Yes, absolutely.

Sorry. I was going to absolutely a few things. You know, I I just I just want to thank you. One thing about um

you know, I'm a big proponent of Catholic education. For those of you that don't know, I'm I'm extremely rooted in my faith and in who I am. Um but one of the biggest things that we teach in Catholic education, which I'm sure your principal can attest to, is that we teach to serve others and that we are here to serve. And I think that you are a great testament of that. And um congratulations to your parents because it starts with them. And then you know they they put a lot of sacrifice to send you where they sent you. And to the teachers there also um they they they're there because they love what they do and they don't do it because of the money because I'm very much aware that it's not much. Um, but I I just loved who you've become here in the city of Ouxard and you've said it. It's the community that has put you there and I'm just so thankful and I'm so happy to hear that there is more, you know, students. You said you found students there within the community that just think that way of you. So, I congratulate your teachers, your parents, and um I I could not be more prouder of, you know, you and your school, and I'm just so happy to have you in your community. Now, the only thing that I ask is that you come back to Oxnard. Um after you go, I ask that you come back to Oxnard and you become a great member of our society and that you give back to what this community has given to you.

Of course. Yeah. Thank you. Come on up. Yeah. Thank you.

Can I give you my my cell phone? Texas 47. Keon, this is for you. And I don't uh Where's your principal? Is your principal up here? Oh, there she is. Okay. Do you want to say a few words or anything?

How about this great great student here? Yeah. Let's take a picture. Here we go. camera. You know, we'll look at this one. Okay. No, thinking through. Thank you. Yeah. With the air conditioner, right?

Here you go. Okay. Um, good evening everyone. just a few words. We are just so proud as you know of Ken and his whole family. Um they are a legacy family and um it's just a testament of how our students are at Santa Clara High School and also a testament of having teachers here and our counselor here um to see this moment with Ken and we're really proud of you. So, um I know you're going to graduate soon, so best of luck to you. And um we have a mission at Santa Clara High School, and you definitely have that mission, too. And just hearing you about service, it just I'm just so proud. So, um good luck for your future. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. [applause]

Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. You've done a great job. How are you? Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming there. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And we have a couple of ceremonial items. We're going to start with Sir Optimus. If Lori and Debbie can come up.

You want to do this one? Oh, yeah. [clears throat]

Okay. As our uh recipients make their way up here, I'm going to go ahead and go over the proclamation here. This is the SRO Optimist Stop Human Trafficking Awareness Day. And whereas January 17, 2026 is the 19th annual Suroptimus stop human trafficking and sexual slavery community awareness event in Ventura County hosted by Kamino Royale region Soptimus of Oxnard, Camrio, Filillmore, Ventura and Channel Islands clubs to take place at Columbus Hall and whereas the Soptimus mission is to raise community awareness, provide education and to honor and uplift women and girls who have struggled through hardships, disparity and in some cases human trafficking. And whereas January is known as the month of human trafficking awareness month, it is now time that individuals at home, workplaces, churches, and schools should educate themselves and learn to identify the signs of trafficking. And whereas every 30 seconds, another person becomes a victim of human trafficking through force, fraud, or coercion. Trafficking primarily involves exploitation for the purposes of prostitution, slavery, involuntary servitude, and compelling victims to commit commercial sex acts. Approximately 75% of all human trafficking victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation while 18% for labor exploitation. And whereas the global slavery index estimates 40 million women and children are living as modern-day slaves, horse labor and sex trafficking is a 150 billion dollar worldwide industry and the fastest growing criminal enterprise. And whereas Soptimists are investing in the program sopimus live, excuse me, Sopimus live your dream which helps recipients with financial support to continue their education and gain independence. 50% of these women are survivors of trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault. And whereas Suroptimus International of Oxnard,

Camriel, Filmore, Ventura and Channel Islands clubs support the federation, Sir Optimus International of America, uh these programs to promote awareness, advocacy, and action, and that all SOP clubs are in a global position to educate everyone, especially women that have the right to live free, to live free from violence and exploitation. Now, therefore, our mayor, Lewis A. MacArthur, mayor of the city of Oxnard, does hereby proclaim January 17, 2026 as the 19th annual Sophimus Stop Human Trafficking and Slave Sexual Slavery Community Awareness Event. Thank you. Thank you. [applause]

Here we are again. This is the 19th year that we have put on this program. I wanted to just introduce a couple of other Seroptimus members with me. our president Lori, our president-elect, Noammy, and you know, most of you all know this is our past president Denise Mhouse. So, why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep coming year after year putting on this program? Well, if those words and those statistics don't scare you, they should. Um because the community, you're talking about safety out here earlier. We need to make our community safe for everyone. And there could be somebody right now sitting in the privacy of their bedroom on a computer. And there's a trafficker out there lurking to get her or him. And they could be on websites that you're very familiar with. Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, WhatsApp, all of those that we kind of know the and the kids know a lot more than we do. They go on these gaming apps and that's where the traffickers, you know, go out finding young kids that are vulnerable. And so we put on these programs every year to they're free of charge to the community. If any of you have young children or grandchildren, you babysit, you have nieces and nephews, you need to come out and get yourself educated and become aware of what's going on because it's not just something that's happening over there. The face of a trafficker is not like it used to be. They're not like driving around in dark alleys and vans trying to get people off the the the street. They're sitting in a in a room just like

this. Well, not like this, but with the computer and they're looking for people to pray on. And unfortunately, it happens. And so, you need to really spread the word about January 17th. I've got some flyers here, so please help yourself. and come out, do the walk with us. And we have two speakers. One of them is a survivor advocate and the other one is um a professional FBI special agent. So, she's going to be giving us a lot of information. So, please come out and we thank you for recognizing the work that we do. And President Lori, do you have a few words to say? Well, I I just want to congratulate Debbie and her committee for all the hard work that they've done over 19 years of making this a a truly a monumental awareness project. But if you get a little chance and you're driving on the 101 freeway, take a look up at that Auto Center Drive um area because we have signage on the 101 freeway, one of the most trafficked zones in California, maybe the West Coast. So, please take the time to either come and see us. Um, for women in the audience, maybe you want to find out what a seropimist is or does. Um, please, you know, we can always reach out to you. But come to the event this this um on in January 17th um at the Knights of Columbus Hall in um Ventura and join us um and see what you will leave um a changed person. Thank you. Thank you. [applause]

Thank you, mayor. And I appreciate the opportunity to read the proclamation for this evening. And uh I I appreciate all of you being here. And no is uh also one of my appointees for previous uh commission work as well. Thank you for all of your work. But um I uh I I each year when this comes to us um this is something that's very uh important and impactful to me personally and professionally and in early in my career um you know working with youth I as I always have throughout my my career. Uh I did engage with young people who were victims of trafficking and it's something that has stuck with me all these years later and um oftentimes uh many are put in that position by people they thought they could trust, adults whom they thought they could trust. It's not as you mentioned somebody driving around in a you know windowless van looking for someone. This is often times someone who will who already knows that young person or engages with them in some way, gains trust and then puts them in that position and it's difficult to get out of. So, thank you for all of that. And as you mentioned as well, let's not pretend this is not something that doesn't happen in Ventura County or in Oxnard. The 101 corridor, as um many of these experts can tell you, is a main corridor for this. It happens in our backyard. It's not something that happens only in the metropolitan areas or northern California, the central valley. It is absolutely happening in our community. So, thank you for the work that you do.

Thank you. And thank you, mayor, for the extra time on that. Yeah. And I just want to conclude before we take that photo, just really quick uh to thank Debbie, Lori, uh No, and also Chief Morehouse for their initiative. I certainly know the issue well. So is Chief Morehouse having both both of us worked um in our u in our victim unit um involving child sexual abuse, elder abuse, etc. And we certainly know as community members the vulnerable population we have here in this city. Uh and so we know well that this happens. So I just thank you personally for the initiative that you take and for the amount of volunteer work that you do and and doing this work. So thank you for that. Thank you.

We'll just take a photo now. Is that Dan? Yeah. Go ahead. We're not going to blink that word.

[laughter] One more.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Absolutely. so much. Thank you so much. Absolutely, Chief. Thank you. Hopefully. Thank you very much. Spread the word or whatever. Thank you. Thank you.

19 We have uh one last proclamation. Um and Dr. Stewart, I see he's here. and Miss Montgomery, if you both want to come up for this proclamation and this proclamation is for Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today. And as Miss Montgomery and Dr. Vincent Stewart make their way up here, we certainly know what Dr. King has done for for our country um through um his peaceful demonstrations that led to the passage of our Civil Rights Act, also the passage of our uh our a voting rights act um that we've all benefited from in this country. But for the proclamation, um council member, do you want to would you mind reading it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. [clears throat] It's a proclamation of rever of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day for January 19th, 2026. Whereas Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked to reaffirm the ideals of freedom, dignity, and opportunity for

all races and peoples, helping our nation recognize the importance of of upholding America's founding principles of equality and justice for all. And whereas Dr. King served as a voice of conscience for our nation and his words and actions continue to inspire courage, humility, and compassion. His enduring contributions to America remind us and countless others around the world that people should not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And whereas January 19th, 2026 has been set aside as a national holiday to pay tribute to Dr. King and the theme of this year's commemoration is a living legacy cultivating compassion and justice in Ventura County. And whereas the 40th annual Ventura County Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration will be held on Monday, January 19th, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center and will feature youth speakers, scripture readings, and gospel music selections by the MLK Celebration Choir. That sounds fun. And now therefore, uh, Lewis MacArthur, mayor of the city of Oxnard, does hereby, uh, proclaim January 19th, 2026 as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. uh, day in the city of Oxnard and encourage all residents to recognize the lasting truth of his words and his legacy and to renew our commitment to the principles of justice, equality, opportunity, and optimism that Dr. King espoused and exemplified and participated in the Freedom March and Prayer starting at Plaza Park on January 19th, 2026 at 8 a.m. followed by a program at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. In witness

thereof, the mayor hereby sets his hand and causes the great seal of the city of Oxnard to be fixed this sixth day of January, 2026. Thank you so much. [applause] Thank Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read that. That was perfect. Miss Vincent, you want to say anything? Absolutely. I'll hold on. Good evening.

I'm Lorita Montgomery, chairperson of the Martin Luther King Committee of Ventur County. And I have some wonderful people with me today. I'm going to pass the mic and ask them to give their names and their positions and what they do within the committee.

Hi, my name is Haiti Gayton. I've uh been with the committee for about eight years now. Uh lead with the uh refreshments. We do have refreshments at the end of the the program and we invite everyone over to have some coffee, sit down, uh enjoy our vendors. We do have vendors also. Uh and that's what we do. Hello, my name is Vincent Stewart and I've been on the committee for 25 years now and I'm responsible for the park. So, you come over to performing arts center at 7:30, park the car, jump on a van, and join us for a program that's in the park, uh, Plaza Park. And then from there, we will march back down Fifth Street to the performing arts center. So, while we're at the park, we have um elected officials that give speeches uh related to Martin Luther King and the ideals that he believed in. And it's a a great time. Uh have a big crowd. I think we had like five or 600 last time. So, uh come on out and support that. 7:30 performing arts center. Grab the van and then join us for a program that starts at 8.

[applause] We also have one additional member with us. He's our one of our youth who's volunteered for several years. Uh he's back taking pictures, I think. Oh, he's over here on the wall.

Isaac Gayton. Well, we invite you all to come to come and celebrate with us for our 40th annual celebration right here in Oxnard and throughout Venture County. I've been on the committee for that number of years. I'm a little tired because, you know, volunteering is a lot of work, you know, [laughter] but we really would like to see you all. our mayor will be there. We know and I hope some of my other friends will be there as well and you can join us in the freedom mar excuse me freedom march main thing we like for you to come to the celebration we will actually be in a theater so we're going to fill that theater the 1600 seats we want to share with your friends and family to come out and be a day of service on behalf and with us for Dr. Martin Luther King, we thank you for allowing us to come here this evening and we definitely appreciate this beautiful proclamation and we look forward to serving another year as well.

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Yes, it's photo time. One, two, three. One, two, three. Somebody blinked. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you,

welcome. Thank Mr. Mayor,

go ahead. Council member, I guess a point of personal privilege. Uh, we have people who are freezing in here. I see the city clerk is is is chilly. My wife is all bundled up. She's You just turned it up. Thank you. Thank you so much. 56. Mr. Mayor, [laughter] go ahead.

Yes. Um, before these representatives for the Martin Luther King Day leave, I'd like the public to understand the council and anybody watching this on television. The leader of this nation, President Trump, has removed the insignas of people of color from national parks, symbols, military organizations. This is something we should never forget. This should have never happened, but it is happening as we're here. If you sit and do nothing, this could continue. You need to get involved. I'm not talking violence. You need to get involved. What is going on now should never stand. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you, Heidi. Thank Thanks, Mongomery and uh Dr. Vincent Stewart. Thank you for all the volunteer work. We we'll move to the next item on the agenda. This is uh for public comments for items not on the agenda. Madam clerk, do we have any on call speakers before we move to the inerson callers?

Sorry. Uh, mayor and council members, we do not have any virtual speakers for um items not on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you.

And just as a reminder for those watching at home, if you want to speak, you can uh call in and press star 9 to raise your hand. We'll go to Carolyn Amulan as our first speaker. followed by Miss Angela White and Josh Tees.

All right, good evening. We're going to kind of tag team on this. Uh, but uh, happy new year, Mayor MacArthur, Mayor Prom Tan, uh, city council members and city staff. I'm Carolyn Marina Mullen, the executive director of the Oxarm Performing Arts Center Corporation. It's a mouthful, so we go by OPAC. I'm also here with Gary Blum, our chairus for the nonprofit, as well as uh Angela Whitecomb with the Downtown Oxnard Improvement Association, and Daniel Cabrera with Visit Oxnard. And we're here with some really exciting news. Um, and to announce that downtown Oxnard has been officially designated a cultural district by the state of California and the California Arts Council. This is huge. Uh, there were 74 applications, 10 finalists. Oxnard was one of those 10. Um, I can't underscore how important this is. We're the only one in Ventura County, the only one in the Tri County area. So, this is a big deal. We're with Balboa Park, Little Tokyo, um, some other big wigs. So, uh, just very, very excited. So, that's why we're here. I want to say that OPAC was proud to serve as the lead applicant, but we worked closely with DOYA, visit Oxnard, the city of Oxnard, and community stakeholders. Uh, this designation did not happen overnight. This was decades of work by city staff, um, by nonprofits, by our, uh, you know, stakeholders in downtown, all in an effort to make arts and culture a driver of community vitality. We especially want to thank Deputy City Manager Katie Casey for all her help during the application process and the day of the visit from the state, Mayor Mark for your leadership. Um, I know I gave you a lot of homework that day. uh and council member Gabriella Rodriguez for showing up and being uh so instrumental during their visit. Your engagement absolutely made this possible. And so we'll definitely keep you posted on ongoings because this is just getting started. We were all kind of flabbergasted when we found out in December that we were awarded. Um so congrats to you all. Congrats to Oxnard. This moment is ours.

Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you.

So good evening. I'm I'm Angela Whiteb in case you all forgot from the five minutes ago. [laughter] I'm a chair of the of the downtown Oxard Improvement Association. DOYA is a proud equal partner in this effort together with OPAC, Visit Oxnard and the city and our creative community. I can't underscore how important our creative community is. We've worked to integrate the arts and culture into downtown Oxnard's revitalization. This designation recognizes the collective efforts and reinforces the creativity is essential to Oxnard's identity and economic vitality. This designation gives us new new tools to build on that work and strengthen downtown Oxnard for residents, ox artists and visitors alike. From the mystery shop to open door studios to the mariachi in I inlatch, the CFF dance studio and chapter 30 studio artist studios. There's so much happening in downtown and I couldn't be prouder. Thank you.

Thank you.

And hi, good evening. I'm Daniel and I'm the digital and multicultural marketing manager with Visit Oxnard. And Visit Oxnard has been an active supporter of this process and a committed collaborator through DOYA's placemaking committee. Um, we see this designation as a powerful opportunity to elevate downtown Oxart's cultural assets. From its legendary music scene and historic landmarks to its growing creative economy as a destination for both residents and visitors, the California Cultural District designation allows us to align cultural tourism with community values, supporting local artists and businesses while sharing Oxard's authentic story with a broader audience. We look forward to continuing this partnership to ensure that the cultural district delivers lasting benefits for the community and the local economy. Thank you.

Thank you, Daniel.

Uh Kevin, you want to come up? Okay, that's fine. Yeah, it's Kevin. Brandon and uh and Josh Tees. Uh good evening uh uh city council. Uh my name is Joshua Tees. Um I am a uh paid intern with Real Guppy Outdoors and I currently go to Channel Islands High School and the reason I got the internship in the first place was thanks to a program at my school which was Upwardbound Channel Islands. and we're just here to invite you to the blue carpet premiere that will be at the the

uh the Channel Islands Maritime Museum to feature our new uh show coastal critters. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. Try to get in this. Get Hey, what up,

community of Rogue Guppy Outdoors? Yes. Just want to echo it. wanted to bring one of our paid interns down to show that we are doing our economic development part of our program of Rogue Guppy Outdoors besides just taking kids and families fishing. Um, and this is a premiere of our new TV show. Uh, previously I um spoke with the mayor about uh the PEG funding to see about the educational funding. I'm sorry, the educational television um uh what is it? Uh public education and government and we have education and it's public. So, uh, we're already on CAPS television and Santa Barbara and we just launched, uh, Real Langers Fishing Show on Pursuit Network, which is streaming on, um, any dish network. So, uh, Justina, if we could kind of circle back around that PEG support, um, that we spoke about at your office a few months back. Um, but then again, also again, you should have flyers up there for this blue carpet premiere of Coastal Critters. It's kind of like a PBS style uh, program. Um, again talking about art and steam. We put the A in Angller and we put the A in uh in art and they just talked about the award that Oxnard got for art and culture that we do. Um, and also again career development and multimedia that is growing right now. So you get a chance to see that. We have puppets um coming in and and it's an art collaboration. So the music that's in the background of these shows are are composed artists that you get to meet. So, you get to meet the film artists, you get to meet the composers, and they're going to be on this blue carpet um at the China Islands Maritime Museum in the Channel Islands Harbor. So, um anyhow, let's see. I wrote a bunch of scribbles over here, but I think I kind of covered it all. But yeah, just wanted to invite you to that, you know, to check it out. It's kind of like a little mini film festival. We'll have um what is that? Refreshments. You have little goldfish crackers and little gummy worms, right? And uh and part of the program with the paid internship is a partnership with the Port of Wine. So, they're a big sponsor of this, too, as far as economic development goes. We get two um paid interns for the next two years per semester. Uh except for I think we're going to keep Josh for like two semesters cuz he's solid. Um but then if you guys heard of their GTL program, global training and logistics,

they get to pick a student from that as well that comes in as a paid intern. Right now, we have five interns and that's another partnership we've this year with Oxnard Union High School District. Um and then we have three different schools participating in our program now. Uh China Islands, Rio Mesa, and Oxnard. and we're looking to expand that with Ashley which is the student rep for VCOE. So again you get a chance to come out and see all this cool stuff that we're doing. Um again I went to Oxnar College man to be a filmmaker. I inherited a nonprofit and went that direction but my my heart is in art and uh this this positive television show um is for families right and you have uh like the word of the day you know like confidence or um effort instead of letters that you would see on Sesame Street. So we kind of copied some of that style for a nostalgic feeling. Um but you got me like you know Mr. Rogers meets Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. Also highlighting Oxnard, you know, in the tourism, and we do have in our backyard on some of these programs. So, and the last thing is we do have a new children's workbook called uh Seabirds that one of the students will be premiering that day as well. So, come on out, enjoy some uh some refreshments and and watch it and, you know, see what you guys think.

Got it. The date is February 6th. That's a Friday night. Um, so you get to mingle from 5:00 to 6:00 and then 6:00 to 7:30 uh is the time of the event. So again, this is like again a little mini film Canes Festival. So we're going to do it that way and I hope to see you guys out there and then hopefully we could again review this PEG funding or PEG support and get our show back on local television here. Thank you.

Thanks Kevin. Thanks Josh. Thank you. Uh Pastor Greg Renan followed by uh Ron I won't uh Good evening again, mayor and council. I won't take up too much of your time. I was actually going to say a little bit of what I said earlier. So, new year, new hope, and and I hope that all of us can do our best to focus on the people and the problems of our area and not let our focus get distracted on what's not being done. Um, I actually spent a great deal of the last month talking uh with Chief Bonitz about not so much about pointing out what the problems are, but how can we help the people who have the problems? Because I think, you know, um there's a lot of other things that go on in Oxnard besides immigration and homelessness. Um, you know, we we saw human trafficking, uh, families are devastated. Fentanyl, families are devastated, believe it or not. Shoplifting, families are devastated. You know, there's a lot more things now that are going to be crimes that weren't with Prop 36 passing. And I just really hope that in 2026 we're able to do more than just be that person who points out, well, this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem. Let's do this and fix and you

know, let's try to help people. Like the Bible talks if somebody's hungry, you feed them. If they're naked, you clothe them. And I think that Oxnard needs to get back to that. You know, years ago we had that a slogan. Remember the slogan was the city that cares. Well, a city can't care unless people care. And it's important that we get back to that thing of what can we do? Government can't solve a problem. Government can create them. people solve them. And it's people working in [clears throat] step with government. I I really mean this. Government shouldn't lead people. People should lead government. And if we want folks to follow us, we need to make sure that we're leading in them in a direction that we're helping people. So in 2026, I hope our focus remains on helping people, not pointing out problems, but fixing them. Thank you.

Thanks, Pastor Ron. And then um Ron, you'll be followed uh by Dan Pinto. Ron,

good evening. Mayor MacArthur, mayor prom and council members. My name is Ronald Orjo and while not speaking on behalf of them, I wanted to note and give context to the remainder of my public comments that I'm currently the chair of the planning commission, the chair of the measure o citizen oversight committee and the chair of the east village neighborhood council. 201,000 the number of people living in Oxnard. Eight, the number of appointments from Oxnard that only you, Mayor MacArthur, can make to active citizen advisory groups. zero, the number of people you have selected to serve on the KAG. It has been 14 months since you, mayor, were elected, 13 months since you were sworn in, and nine months since the first round of KAG appointments were being approved by this council. These KAG appointments are not a surprise. When the first round of selectes were coming up for approval last April, that should have been the optimal time to start appointing. When over this summer or fall that you received through an annual presentation or written communication from the current or immediate past chairs of the community relations commission, cultural arts commission, parks, recreation and community services commission, planning commission, and measure o citizen oversight committee. That would have been a late but needed start to select future members. Vacancies on the measure O committee of which you as the mayor can appoint three have left the committee on the cusp of not making quorum if just one member is absent which happened at the last meeting since five are needed on the nine member committee and only six having been duly appointed with the planning commission. There have been major changes in SQA which staff provided a thorough presentation on how that will impact our decision-making which would have been great for the seventh member to have. Moreover, I had wanted to provide a series of parliamentary mini sessions to help the members in that and whatever bodies they may serve on in the future of which I postponed until the end of the year in the hopes that the seventh member would have since been appointed.

Past or current council members have worked speedily to try to fill in the appointees that they are allowed. I remember fa former mayor pro Tim McDonald asking the public on Facebook for who has interest in an unfilled CA position. Councilman Starr was able to select two people for the planning commission within the span of just three months. Council member Perez recently asked the community through social media who wanted to serve on the park recreation and community services commission for the District 6 vacancy. Actions speak louder than words and unfortunately Mr. Mayor, you have done neither. Your election was more than a year ago and has been way past time to make these appointments. And to the rest of council, if the mayor does not appoint a full slate to fill all of his vacancies by the first February meeting, I'm kindly asking you to send your alternate applicants to the CAGS, and I'll be making a public records request to see who actually does this by the end of the month. I look forward to your appointments, mayor, being agendaized by next month. Thank you. Thank

Thanks, Ron. Mr. Dan Peda, then Dan, you'll be followed by Mr. Larry Stein.

[clears throat]

My name is Dan Penro. I'm live in the real Lindle um neighborhood. I want to thank Councilman uh Star for his pro response to the um signs of commercial signs on uh um on public property. Thank you. Um as a member of the uh Rio Lindo neighborhood, I have some concerns uh regarding the uh median on Baja Drive. Uh the origin of the um traffic median arrive drive drive stems from realender residents concerned about the potential hazards by the increased traffic in the neighborhood streets. Prior to the Harborside, Sycamore Place and commercial development, realo residents requested that a safety medium be installed at the east uh exit of the shopping center as a deterrent to keeping motorists from entering the neighborhood. As part of the development agreement, the medium was a coop condition of a uh approval imposed on the developer by the Oxner city council of that time. Uh existing conditions and problems. The median exists in its original state. Motorist exit the commercial shopping center onto uh Bajia Drive. must make a right turn and then must make a right turn onto Gonzalez Road west west to their destinations. It is no longer permissible to make a Uturn uh from Gonzalez Road towards East Gonzalez Road due to the proximity to the railroad and frequent train accidents, train related accidents at Gonzalez and Oxnar Boulevard. [snorts] Realinder residents visiting the shopping center are inconvenienced by having to drive extra uh minutes to get

back into the neighborhood into real neighborhood through St. Mary's Drive as a uh tradeoff for that safety. Due to the increased traffic, accidents on St. Mary's Drive have occurred more often. Traffic has increased over the years. Something needs to be done. Cars do drive into the neighborhood against traffic on Bajia Drive. I have personally experienced a wrongway driver and had to reverse uh myself to let to let that driver go through. Uh what's going what's going to happen when the the lot south of Gonzalez Road is developed? An increase in traffic. Some residents want the medium removed, but I will not not support any change uh that will put our city in a position of liability. Um it is my understanding that to remove or modify the median it will require several I wish for additional time mayor.

No. Uh to finish off Mr. Mayor, if you have something written, you can submit it to us. Okay. I think this Yeah. No, but that's I'm sorry. You're out of time, Mr. Pineda. Out of time. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I have submitted. So, you have the the text. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Stein.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good evening,

member of City Council staff. I submitted an application to serve on the parks and recreation committee last July. I submitted the application to both to you, Mr. Mayor, and Miss Perez. Council Council President Perez. That response has been unanswered. Uh that position has not been filled. Uh it's my understanding the city council wants the public to participate in activities particularly participate in the citizen action groups. So why is it that members of city council don't want to fill the positions if the city council wants community activists? I'm I'm dying. Well, not not quite yet but soon enough. But uh there are other people who have want the opportunities to to be an activist. I like to be able to share my opinions and ideas to other people and by serving on a KAG, especially a parks and recreation committee KAG might be fruitful to other members. Uh I've been following parks and recreation activities for 30 plus years. College Parks has not been built or has not been finished. residents pay development fees to develop sports park and sports park has not been developed after 30 years. We have at least three park master plans over the last 30 years have not been completed. Nine of them or some of them again every time we get a new public director we said takes so much time to develop a parks master plan takes 30 years to develop a parks master plan. Well, uh, after 30 years, College Park hasn't been finished. After 30 years, Sports Park hasn't been finished. After 30 years, campus park has not been finished. So, where's the money? People pay developer fees. The fees went to the developers who paid

fees to the city to develop the infrastructures, but the infrastructures have not been completed. Specific plans were designed 30 years ago. specific plans that called for a park at the corner of Gonzalez and Oxnard Boulevard. Specific plans called for funds and paid and people paid funds that fire have a fire station built. And at the turn of the century, you like that phrase, turn the century, we had 50% buildout in East and West Village, but no fire station despite that requirement to build a fire station at 50% buildout. In 2012, we had 100% buildout at uh the east and at West Village plans and no fire station. In 2018, to correct, Miss Councilman Pillo 2018, the fire chief said, "Well, we don't need a fire station 18 at two uh at this area here, but developers have repaid their fees 12 years or eight years ago. Please fill this. Please complete the parks and plans acts that were permitted. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stein. Madam Cler, we'll go to the virtual caller ending in 3259 3259. Um virtual speaker ending in 3259. You have um three, please press star six to unmute and you have three minutes starting now.

Hi, this is Dear Dree Frank. I'm calling to wish you all a very merry Christmas. Tomorrow, January 7, is Orthodox Christmas. I was raised as a Ukrainian Orthodox uh religion. Um, and so tomorrow is our Christmas. We've had our holy days over the last 12 days. And I don't know if you appreciate that there are cultures in your city beyond what we always talk about. You even have a Ukrainian Orthodox church on Woolly Road at Five Points. Did any of you know that? I'm sure they're going to be celebrating a beautiful Christmas mass tomorrow. And I think some recognition should be made to the other cultures that we have within our city. So that was the point of my calling. But since I heard Mr. Paned speaking about some traffic uh design issues, uh Mr. Pedo, please send your report to me as a personal injury lawyer. I would love to put that in my file so that when I have a major crash or death or uh uh accident that happens at that location, I can win and recover something for the poor victim that shouldn't have been a victim. Merry Christmas, everyone. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to the next virtual caller ending 4018418. Um caller ending in 4018. Um please press star six to unmute and you have three minutes starting now. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay. Uh good evening and forgive my voice. I'm one of the ones suffering with that terrible flu going around. My name is Doug Portello. I'm a long-term resident of Oxnard. I'm the president of a local charity u community renew alliance. I'd like to touch on a couple topics. Uh one is about the Quimby reserve fund projects. It seems that of the nine or 10 million that remain as Quimby fund reserves that weren't spent when the developments were made, uh there's very little movement on seeing those monies go toward improvement of the parks. There's over 20 communities that have reserve funds and there's less than a handful that actually have capital improvement projects on paper. So there are some on paper, but it's not what is required by the state from the Quimby Act. And I think the residents and perhaps the new members of council need understand that the Quimby act allows for these funds for improvements of neighborhoods when the developments are made. And so some of the neighborhoods like mine in Cababrio are nearly 40 years uh ago that the neighborhood was developed. We have Cabo Park, but some of the money was left over. When I was chair of the neighborhood council in 22 and 23, I became aware of these reserve funds and started making every effort and due diligence to move forward a project for our park. And so, thus far, there's been nothing done. So, the current chair has also uh moved forward in communication with the city about moving that project forward. I don't understand why some of these Quimby projects don't even make the CIP list, but I think more movement

needs to be made. Now, in terms of state law, those funds, the the cities only have five years to utilize those funds or return those funds to the property owners. So, I think it behooves Oxnard to make every possible effort to actually get an actual project moving forward with plans and all the necessary documentation that shows it's just not a piece of paper that's put on a shelf, but it's an actual project to move forward or those funds need to be returned to the property owners. That's the law and I believe that's what needs to be followed. Now, I'd like to touch on homelessness. There's point in time counts. That's a valuable snapshot of our homeless population, but it's significantly underestimating the true scale and scope of homelessness by a single night method. It's not the fault of the county or any other entities that are doing this.

But there's reason why it's Thank you, Mr. We're out of time. Thank you. Hope you feel better. Thank you. We'll go to Was that the last virtual uh [clears throat] excuse me, mayor. We have um another virtual speaker ending in 1622. Please press star six to unmute. And you have three minutes starting now. And mayor, while the clerk uh unmutes the speaker, I note that if this is the last speaker, we have just about two minutes left in our 30 minute set aside period for this. So, uh, I would, uh, seeing no other speakers here and seeing no others with their hands raised, I would say that this would be our last speaker this evening.

We have we have one more, man. We have Mr. O'Hather. That's okay. So, we had another card come in then. Yeah. So, just a virtual one and then Victor, I think you're the last one.

Hi, this is Larry Barbarine. Uh, if there's any time left in my three minutes, I'd like to give that to Mr. Dan Paneo. Great hearing his voice again. uh to take up the remainder of my time if that's okay. Um I want to say uh Lethan Noeo Buano, happy new year to everybody and happy Epiphany officially today, Kings Day. And I want to thank Miss Frank uh as a reminder and happy Orthodox Christmas for tomorrow to our brothers and sisters in the Orthodox uh Christian churches there. Um I uh talked to the uh Able Nagana all those involved with the downtown on that recognition. Uh we have to watch you know just not to rain on parade but we also that same day that I read about that recognition uh was the day after Christmas and on Christmas there was a shooting on a street and I hope that uh that uh victim's name is a young man is doing well now. Um we have to keep keep our guard up even as we you know t good things as well. Um the uh councilman Pillo uh mentioning about the names if uh uh I hadn't heard about that. I did some research while I was you know since he said that and I think he might be referring if you could flesh that out. U there was names for instance that the USA Today uh and stars and stripes mentioned that were taken out due to DEI concerns. uh touting you know the race and gender of veterans at Arlington for instance and uh I don't I don't want to you know with President Trump you like any politician or anybody you got to call balls and strikes you know and uh so he this is the same man who also funded permanently the historically black colleges and universities in the first term and uh protected a lot of uh

uh people of color from uh uh a lot of arrests and he's, you know, appointed uh African-American head secretary and so forth. So, I think it was more to tout their accomplishments, these veterans, for instance, that Arlington and less focus on race and gender because we've gotten so extreme on that above all other things a lot of times. Um, but I wouldn't have done that, you know, I think probably better just to keep that those pages up on the website for instance. Um, want to just mention uh briefly to that uh uh kind of in contrast what Mayor Potim mentioned uh last month uh Washington Examiner reported that the uh DHS has uh said that Homeland Security has u reported that seven out of 10 people that have been arrested that were illegal who did originally the crime of coming over illegally federal misdemeanor. Seven and 10 out of the 10 of them have criminal uh charges or been convicted since then you know other crimes and three of the 10 could be from other c you know had c crimes committed in other countries so they are still focusing they should do on those who committed violent crimes after they've been

thank you we're out of time thank you so much and then Victor if you want to come on thank you speak. Yeah, Victor is the last speaker.

Hi, good evening, council members, you know, and I want to first and foremost congratulate you guys for supporting the city of Auckland, the downtown, getting that cultural cal the California cultural district and stuff. And hopefully with that, we can maybe get the Carnegie Museum back up and getting a little bit a couple more things for the kids. I remember as a kid growing up here, you know, I had fun moments going there in the Gold Winds uh children's museum as well. I have a daughter now. She's 8 years old and I would like to have her have the same opportunities that I had as a child, you know, for that going forward. Um I do want to, you know, mention what p the pastor had mentioned before as far as Oxner, you know, being the city that cares, which is what helped us grow into the city that we're now. And I'm hoping that, you know, we can get back to that. I know you know Gabriella Bosua she had a meeting with my mom at one point and gave her peace of mind. So that union, that cares part starts with you guys, you know, and you guys, each and every one of you touch your community and your district and in your section and you guys push forward for the city to move on. And as myself, you know, being a community member, I'd like to also, you know, offer myself because I do hear that there's issues with not having enough people to go on a committee, then I'll join a committee, you know, or maybe two. And I implore that whoever's watching at home could do your part as a community member as well, not just let the council members, you know, force it all on them. Uh, sir, mayor, I know you've just been in in this for 13 months. We all as a community union can come together and, you know, not push people away, but more so let's help each other out to make the city work better, you know, which is ultimately what we should all want. Um now that the fact of you know you guys get the pardon my language the uh the bad part of the stick then you know it it suck but at the same time you

guys do a good part whether it's Mika whether it's Mr. Pllo whether it's proary term tran even gabella Rodriguez it's let's just keep pushing for a better boxer you know and Mr. Aaron Star, you yourself, although unusual, I've loved what you've done with your community and continue to push forward with with a lot of the members in that district. And you know, I you guys have my support for whatever you guys can need or will need, whether it's an oversight committee or any of that nature. And I congratulate you guys. And once again, you know, my applause to you guys all. All right. Thank you. That's

Thank you, Mr. O'Hara. Thank you, madam. just to confirm that concludes the last speaker. Uh mayor and council members, yes, that concludes our speakers in person and virtually for items not on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you. We will next move to item H. This is a report of the city manager. Uh Mr. One,

thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh so, it is a new year and it is January 6. It's been mentioned before tonight. Uh but I've been advised not to make any commentary about January 6. So, I will not uh the one thing I'd pass along is that um this Friday, our governor is expected to release his budget proposal for the upcoming year. So, many eyes uh will be on that. Um it's very important um for all sectors uh of the California community to to to be attentive uh given the deficit that the state's been uh banting about. And again, it's it will be his initial proposal. So the next four months, I'm sure there will be um a lot of back and forth, but just want to pass that along. It is expected this Friday. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Win. The next item on the agenda is Adami. This is the report from our city council members. And we'll start with you, Councilwoman. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor, for the recognition. Um, happy holidays um to everybody that celebrated and happy new year as well. um had a lot of time to um be out in the community in the month of December and really reflect on what goals I have for this upcoming new year. Um and as a part of that, I think um one of the biggest initiatives that I've championed early on is really wanting to make sure that not only do we consider the current generation of leaders, but also preparing the next generation of leaders. And so my goal this year is to meet with all of the schools within my district to really um ensure that they know who their representatives are. I know a lot of our family members um have many things that are on their plate. So meeting them where they are, which is oftentimes in the schools or um out in community PTA meetings um is something that I I look forward to doing. So, this Thursday, I'll actually be at Black Stock's um schools meeting uh meeting with parents and families to really understand the needs and concerns of the community there and really look forward um to building a relationship with all of our school principles, whether it's our middle schools or high schools in district 6. Um, and I also wanted to share that this Saturday, Southwinds will be having a cleanup at Southwinds Park from 8:00 to 12:00 and would love um to have many volunteers. I know um for some of the distributions we had in December, we had Oxnard um girls flag football come out. We've had people even outside of Oxnard come out um to really, you know, ensure that there's that community investment in volunteerism. So really excited to to to start the year and um with that cleanup. I also wanted to share that in light of um some of that work tomorrow we are going to be welcoming our first cohort um for the

voices of Oxnard youth and really excited to get that off the ground um with Mayor Prom and and really um do the great work. So that's my report and handing it back to you mayor. Thank you councilwoman. Council member go ahead.

Thank you very much. U again, [clears throat] as others have said, happy new year, happy, you know, hope you had a good holiday season. Um, [clears throat] something that is not often talked about, we as council members, and I'm sure it goes out to large numbers of the public, you get a daily crime report. I want to thank the police department for the number of people under the influence that took off the roads. Each one of those cases is potential fatality possibly for the person in the car or an innocent person that happens to meet them. As was mentioned by Mr. Paned on that particular street, people come out of there to make a fast delivery of a pizza and they go the wrong way down the street and hope that nobody meets them headon. And when that happens, the person that is going in the right direction has no opportunity to do anything other than to back up. It's a real problem. Um, it's it's impossible not to make some mention of what's happened nationally with Venezuela. Uh, I don't agree and that's enough said on my part. I wish the best for this nation. I hope that the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branch of the federal government get their heads out of the sand and start looking out for the best possible for the city of Oxnard, the state of California, and the nation as a whole.

Thank you, Mr. Pearl. Mayor Prom.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple quick items here. So, um, in my notes, I have a couple, uh, neighborhood council meetings. Um, but in district 2, we have Carriage Square on January 15th at 6:45 p.m. That'll be at Curran School. So, anyone who lives in the Carriage Square neighborhood is welcome to attend. They are public meetings, though, so if the uh, agenda has some items that catch your eye, you're welcome to attend as a member of the public. I encourage people to subscribe to the weekly packet and they can see all the neighborhood council meetings and the city meetings that are published every week at the end of the week. Uh I was able to volunteer as a tour guide for the Holly Trolley tour uh over the holidays and that was a great experience. I appreciate the opportunity to do so. and uh was went through Christmas tree lane and uh there were a number of uh houses that were on the notes that we would talk about, but otherwise they gave the tour guides kind of the freedom to um put their own flavor on it. And I I appreciate that freedom because I I got uh some great great feedback and it was a lot of fun for me. So, um, I had a tough audience my last tour that I did and because my grandmother, my grandfather, my mom, and my aunt and uncle were right in the front row looking at me the entire time. So, uh, that was that was the toughest out of all of them, but they were they were a friendly audience still. So, thank you again to all of the residents and the downtowners and, uh, Gary Blum and everybody who put their time and effort into all of the festivities that happened over the holidays. And uh that's that was going to be my last note. I I'm just going to say that uh in response to um citing DHS themselves when it comes to uh statistics or information they're putting out. Um,

I'm looking at the numbers just right now from December 14th, 2025, their own numbers, and shows here there are thousands more people in detainment um by uh DHS who have no criminal record versus those who do. And yet in the same breath DHS will say that they're going for the worst of the worst. The worst at what? So, um I'm just saying just keep those things in mind and let's also remember that uh this is a department that has shown time and again that they have no problem lying to the public. I will use the word lying. Not misinterpreting the facts, not um getting it wrong and having to revisit. They have lied to the public locally. They lied about a community member um focusing on and chasing and ramming into their vehicle when dash cam footage showed otherwise. So, and then nothing. Then they said nothing. So, let's let's take what they say with a huge grain of salt. I'll bring some salt with you if you need some some with me to share with you all if you need that. But, um when they're sharing statistics, we need to look at all sides of that and look at it factually. So, I appreciate the extra time on that. Thank you, Mayor.

Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor Part Councilwoman. Thank you, Mayor. I first of all want to wish everybody a happy new year. Um, and also, um, I know there were comments in regards to the CAGS and the mayor, but the mayor, I know, has been at least appointed is in the in the process of appointing um, some somebody. So, um, I I do know that. So, I just wanted to make sure that the public does know that you are currently in the process of doing that. And thank you.

Somebody just did a background today um for that. Um and last, I want to wish my brother um Jesus Chewy um a happy birthday. Um he was born January 6. I know it's, you know, something that we don't want to talk about, but it's also loses um in in our culture, so in a religious. So I want to wish him a happy happy birthday. Love him very much and thank you for everything he does. That's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. Guess one member. Go ahead.

Well, first of all, happy holidays. Um it it's been a joyous season. I attended some events. I attended a toy giveaway at the Colonia Gymnasium on December 17th and there were a number of sponsors there both inside the city and outside the city that were helping out with that. I think that was great. Uh in uh on that same night actually I attended the Rose Park neighborhood council rather the Rose Park neighborhood holiday potluck and I know that the mayor was there. I believe Burpella was also there. Um I attended the holiday pada in L Colonia on the 19th and uh one but one of my most enjoyable experiences was on December 24th when Abel Velasquez's senior uh actually invited me to at a a adopt a senior pro uh event at the Vistas at Oxnard Senior Living Center which is over on Gonzalez uh near um Williams. Abel was wonderful. He played he dressed up as Santa Claus. He's a hysterically great Santa Claus. And he was accompanied by a bunch of elves. I don't know who all of them were, but apparently I I got recruited to be an elf that day. And that was fun. Uh I got to meet with some folks that uh mayor you and I met with u uh I think it was couple couple folks. One was uh father labe and also crutcher crutcher which I'm I'm sad to report that she passed away a couple months ago and she was just such a a wonderful person. I think she was 96.

uh she had a a great life and she she had her um she had her faculties to the very end. She was and uh she's been a bedrock of the community and uh and and you're familiar with her family. That's right. So uh she'll be missed. Um and uh upcoming uh I've got the Ventura Council of Governments meeting on January 8th which I'll I'll attend as a alternate uh and on January 14th will be the East Village Council meeting which I I will be attending. And [snorts] that's that's everything. Thank you, Council Member Council.

Yes. Um, I know that I shared some of the the issues that came up during uh the holiday season at Christmas Tree Lane. So, I apologize for my misspeaking earlier. Um, and I just want to thank city staff again for for going out there even after hours and and just doing our best and every day we learn and every day we grow. Um, I also attended some of the other events that uh were shared. Uh, specifically at Kasala Lopez, I know that we did like a tamalei distribution on the 22nd for about 700 folks who came through. Uh I'm a kid who can did a distribution of toy drive and um that was amazing. Um a lot of holiday cheer and um merry Christmas to those who celebrate tomorrow. So I I just want to recognize that there are a lot of different communities and as inclusive as we try to be, please don't let let us do better. So uh thank you for that. So I'm a kid who can. We helped uh bring joyous memories or or just you know celebrate the holidays uh for 265 families. And I know um I don't want to steal your thunder, mayor, but I know um youngquics at Wayne High School also had their uh amazing distribution for our youngsters. So even my college students, oh I remember he used to do that for us um while we were in high school. Um last but not least, I had the opportunity to go on tour along with Mayor Prom Theran um of the navigation center and they are doing amazing work, 110 beds. Um, I'm glad that it opened before the the atmospheric river and u and the rains. So, I just I'm very grateful for everybody making that happen behind the scenes and uh the units that are up for rent. So, um there's a lot of great things happening there. And um last but not least, uh in my last comments from the last meeting that we had, um I had mentioned some of the of the traffic flow and I know we're going to talk about it so I won't get in detail in terms of um you know, Kamala Elementary School. I did have a trustee Rose Gonzalez reach out to me just to see how we could strengthen our relationship. I am sharing um the report that was uh put together by our public works and the

initiative that we'll be talking about later today. Um, so I look forward to some type of partnership or at least um making sure that the work that's been put together from our engineering team and and folks just working on a plan uh don't go unnoticed. So I really do appreciate folks listening to these reports and following up um because that allows us to become that bridge when possible. So um I think that's it for right now, but um thank you all and again happy holidays. I know many of us are missing cutting the Roska Rees, but we're happy to be here today. Thank you, Councilwoman. Mayor Pro, go ahead. You have additional. I signed [laughter] up.

Thank you, mayor. Just a quick item that I did leave off. I'd be remiss if I didn't uh congratulate um our Senator Monique Lemon who was just sworn in as Senate President Prom for um our state legislature. And so, congratulations to Senator Lemon. And she's been a great partner, I think, with the city of Oxnard. And um I feel fortunate to be able to work with her. And I'm sure many of us who've had the opportunity to do so would u say so as well. And so I just wanted to acknowledge that. And I will second what councilwoman Basua mentioned. At a recent meeting I did see on your desk you did have the binder for the applications for the kegs. So I know the work has been happening. So

thank you. I know several backgrounds but thank you for pointing that out. I appreciate that. And look I just want to speak about the obvious right. We had a very challenging time. I many of us who are long-term uh members of this community um recognize that this last year has been the most difficult I think politically that we've seen um at least in in our generation right and so it's been extremely difficult for many of us here to navigate um I know for me is trying to walk a straight line go this way it's like ah go this way it's been difficult right so that's where I think leadership comes in where we are true to who we are true to our character true to for what we stand for uh and I think you've seen many of us that that are here um you know this job is is it's a lot of volunteer work right uh we do it because we genuinely sincerely care about community and trying to trying to make it better and so a lot of the passionate conversations that are held here as well as some of the speakers that come up is I I get it is because equally we all want the same thing we want our community to be better um but I can tell you I when we speak about actions I personally have started uh this whole year meeting business owners very strategically going doortodoor meeting our business owners uh just connecting with them our homeowners that's what you some of you follow me on social media realize how busy I am because I very purposefully and very intentionally go out there and interact with people but in in those interactions you get homework out of it people are asking for something or wanting you to look into something that's what we do and I tell you in meeting with our executive leadership team we've got a great great staff that is committed to making this city better. Um, and if you see the amount of work that they do, uh, you can understand from their perspective how tirelessly they work to make our city better. That's not to say that we can't always do more because certainly that's the input we get and and I tell you when

we bring issues forward, they recognize it like yes, you know what, maybe we aired here or there was a misstep here, but let's correct it. Let's have those robust conversations and let's intentionally work to do better. And I can tell you those things are happening. And that's why I'm such a believer in our democracy because we are conduits to your voice. What it is that's important to you is certainly important to us and we convey that to our executive leadership team to make those things happen for us. And they're doing it. They're absolutely doing it. Um, and so I'm just thrilled u that we have who we have here on board from Ping Gilly to our city manager, city attorney, and everybody else, you know, because when you bring issues, it's like not on the defensive, but let's recognize it. Let's let's try to move on or let's let's have a a good conversation about it and we move forward because ultimately it's evolution. We want to keep pushing pushing. So my commitment to you for this next year is I will continue to meet with all our our departments. I will try very intentionally to make all of our neighborhood council meetings that are present to go out there and and just hear and present um to our community uh as well as continue my relationships with the schools u because I am a proponent of our youth because they're ultimately our next generation uh and for them to get connected with our local government. Um and as you know my uh principal thing for me is modernizing and beautifying our city. Um, and I've talked about that extensively from maintaining our green spaces uh to pushing uh more infrastructure in our roads and and our inspectors. This is just look look at our city after the the rain that we received. Our inspectors are doing a great job and going out to look at all the major streets that have been resurfaced. You don't see a lot of flooding. It's just it goes to show the the care that has been done in doing what we're doing right. Uh I got the report about how many trees we had fallen during the the storm and the

winds too in our city being the biggest city uh in this whole region. Two trees and that's the remarkable work that we're doing. I think it's also because the trimming, the pruning of our trees, the maintenance worked ahead of time and as a consequence you saw what we saw very minimal and that is that translates to a better quality of life and making sure nobody gets injured u because of the these hazards that our that our climate presents. Um, and so that's what that's what that's that's the action that you're seeing uh and that we're all enjoying because ultimately that's what local government can do is enhance the quality of life for all of us and that's that is for us to do that uh to set those policies in place to enhance all of us all of our quality of life. Um, so as your as your mayor out here, I'm just committed to continuing those efforts and hearing directly from the public what should be priority and then having those conversations where with our executive leadership team to make sure that we uh implement those those um those those priorities that are priority for our public. Um, and just lastly, I just want to I was on the radio this morning and I've been on on radio leading up to the holidays. Just asking, pleading with our community to please take care of this city. The way we are taking care of our city here with modernizing, beautifying our city, presenting it better. Just like as soon as you walk out of here, you'll see our palms are beautifully cut. You saw what we're doing here in front of our library, the police department. Um, and I know I misspoke in a video where I said we were bring bringing in artificial turf. I just I I misspoke there, but there's no artificial there's no artificial grass coming in. I'm not a proponent of that, but there's not that's not happening. It's all but it's just beautifying it. But now let it's I challenge all of us to make sure that we also take care of it from our wayfinding signs, our gateway signs, just picking up after ourselves. And you know, Victor, you see me out there in the soccer fields picking trash after

everybody plays, right? Because I believe in in actions. I believe in us doing our part, right? Taking care of our city, not tagging it, just enhancing it, making it better for all of us. This is all of our house, right? Just like the police department has police cars that are that are clean. it. I think for anybody coming in or living in this city, I think if it presents well, if you got police cars, if you've got our city trucks, our fire trucks, our city buildings, which is essentially is your your it's yours. It's ours. If it presents well, that is it showcases that this is a city that absolutely cares and takes pride in our city. And I and I ask all of you here and also that are watching to please help us take care of the city so that it's beautiful for all of us to enjoy because that's how we're going to get uh just joy in living here but also that it enhances businesses to come in our quality of life is better uh and so we all benefit as a result of us collectively taking care of taking care of it. So that's my ask of of all of us. Thank you. And then with that I think that concludes unless anybody else has any other comments to make. If not, then we'll go to the next item on on the agenda. And [clears throat] the next item is the the review of our our info consent agenda. And at this point, um, does anybody want is there a particular item that you want to remove or want a further discussion on?

Yeah, council member St. go ahead. Yeah, just briefly for L1 and L6. One. Okay. One and six. And if we want to vote on the other items, I believe that only number four is one where there's no action required. So we can vote on the remainder. If you move, I'll second that. I I'll I'll make that motion to vote on the non-action rather ones that require action that are not one and six. It would be [snorts] two, three, two, three, five, seven, and eight. Seven, eight. Yes.

Is there is are there any public comments on any on any of the agenda items? Um mayor and council members, we do not have any public speakers for the information and consent agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Um both in person and virtually. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We have a first and a second to approve the other items with the exception of item four, which is just a info. I mean, which is a receipt file item. Um Council Member Palo, yes. Councilwoman Perez, yes. Councilwoman Rodriguez, hi. Councilman Starr, yes. Councilwoman Basua, yes. Mayor Prompteran, yes. Mayor MacArthur, yes. And this motion carries seven to zero. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk.

And we will start um with the first item you pulled um council member St. This is L1. Mostly I just wanted this to be a separate vote because I intend to abstain on it. Okay. I've currently having uh there's currently litigation involved with contribution limits and uh I think as you probably know I'm philosophically opposed to them because I think they're a violation of the first amendment u but I understand that my view is maybe the minority view here and that's that's the only reason why I wanted this pulled is so I can vote separately to abstain [snorts]

and just for those watching that are not following the written item This is L1 is from the city clerk department. The subject entails campaign contribution and loan limit adjustment. The recommended action is that the city council adopt a resolution adjusting campaign contribution limits and loan limits set forth on sections 2-443 and 2-44 of the aux city code. This item did not originate in committee. Uh is there any further discussion on this if Mayor Bert?

All right. Thank you uh mayor and thank you madame clerk for the update on this and just so that the um public is clear on it since it's pulled as an agenda item or pulled from the consent calendar for discussion uh there are contribution limits that the voters enacted in the 2020 election and uh it initially was at $500. It was also written into that um initiative that there would be uh every two years evaluation to look at the um CPI and if it needs to be uh adjusted and in this case we were adjusting it again. And so for those running for the office of city council and those running for mayor, city clerk and city treasurer, this would apply to them at different levels because council's by district and mayor, clerk, and treasurer are at large. So, um, the details on that are in the staff report if anyone wants to see it. Um, I will share that prior to being on council. Um, I was absolutely a proponent of reigning in the amount of money that is going into elections at all levels, local, county, state, federal. Um, folks, go watch a video about Citizens United if you want to um, get some information about the federal level. looking at local elections uh when we especially looking at a district-based election 33,000 to 35,000 residents and then a fraction of that being number of voters 18,000 22,000 depending on the district but I'm a firm believer that people who live and interact and engage in their community and what's happening in their community um the the money involved in their election should be irrelevant. And uh this is originally started as $500 max contribution per individual and then

it was $1,000 from um from the committees or from PAX. And even at that level, I remember putting a comment in back in 2020 saying we should also have uh spending or expenditure limits where there's a limit on the amount a candidate can spend on their um on their uh candidacy and their election. And the at the time the county of Intera had something similar and many other jurisdictions have that. And I just truly believe that um money should be irrelevant when it comes to running for local office at this level. Uh somebody who is truly out there doing the work, is going doortodoor, is talking to voters, that's not some some lower form of running for office. That's the way to run for office. So to say that someone has to resort to doing that because of contribution limits that is um that that shows I disagree fully with that ideology. Um so I just want to put out there to the public watching and those coming into this election year that um I fully support this and yes we are increasing it because of CPI and that's the way the voters enacted it and I'm fine with that. But even absent this um I would have personally put limits on myself even absent these limits because I truly believe that someone with actual community support and actual community engagement doesn't need this in order to get elected. You don't need $75,000 $100,000 to get elected. You just need to do good work for the community. So those are my comments. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor Port. Any other pros and cons on on this side of if not is there a motion on the table? I'll move the recommended action to adopt this. I'll second. Great. M clerk, call for the vote. Councilwoman Perez, yes. Councilwoman Rodriguez, hi. Councilman Star, abstain. Councilwoman Basua, yes. Mayor Prompteran, yes. Council member Palo, yes. Mayor MacArthur, yes.

And the motion carries 6 um-0-1 with council member Star abstaining. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Uh we'll move to L6. This is from the public works department. The subject agreement with Premier Property U Preservation LLC for custodial services at the Johncosa Auxner Transit Center, otherwise known as OTC. The recommended actions that the city council approve and authorize the mayor to execute an agreement with Premier Property Preservation LLC for a term of one year from February 1st, 2026 to January 31st, 2027 with an option for four consecutive one-year period periods ending January 31st, 2031 for a total contract not to exceed amount of 700,000 for custodial services at the John Caesar Oxnard Transit Center. The public works and transportation committee approved this item 20 on December 9th, 2025 and uh our director Michael Wolf is here to answer any questions we may have. Council member Star, go ahead.

Yeah, [clears throat] my mine is is just a request. So I'm was reviewing the prior agreements schedule of compensation at the end of the staff report uh for this for these custodial services. I can see that the monthly cost is dropping from 11,386 per month to $10,480, which is a good thing. Uh what I'd like to see in a future report is that such comparisons are prominently mentioned in the report summary itself because I think that people should know when we're actually making improvements and also know when we're not making improvements. But uh that that's all all I'm requesting is that just a little bit more prominence on that. But otherwise, people could dig through the entire report and ultimately figure it out. But let's let's let's show ourselves off when we can.

That's it. Okay. Because I know in reading the the report, but I I hear what you're saying. In reading the report, I when he went out for bidding, I I you know, I saw the numbers on there, but which is great work. Um but I I hear what you're saying. Uh any other comments, pros or cons? Go ahead, Mr. Po.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the staff report. Since this item has been pulled off the agenda and there's questions and asked, I had not intended to, but I I am going to now. With respect to the history of the transportation center, when there were times when human waste would be outside of the building, when people would come to work, is this going to be handled differently? Because we do have a bid, as the council member mentioned, it's lower than the past. Is there an extra cost when human waste is involved and has to be handled different than a custodian? I know that the downtown improvement with the human waste issue, it's handled much differently.

We can't just, excuse me, we can't just flush it down to the drains and send it down the street. So, is there some extra cost involved or unforeseen potentially? Uh, good mayor, mayor prom, council members, Michael Wolf, director of public works. So our what you're talking about is some of the contracts that we have for biohazards that are like the parking structure and the um the rideway and those are handled differently than just regular street sweep weeping things like that. The the contract here is for janitorial services which does include the handling of biohazards.

Okay. uh we have as needed services and so when those things are above and beyond what they typically have to do then it would may fall into the as needed services and not their normal routine services that they would do either on a daily or weekly or quarterly basis. So the question is a little bit uh has two parts to it. One is that part of their routine process is to clean up the restrooms that may may or may not include um um bi bio biological um waste. [clears throat] The other part of it, if it's not part of the routine, then it would be extra cost for those things. And so there's two parts to that question. Okay. Thank you very much for the clarification. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Po. Any other questions? I'll move the recommendation if there's not. Wonderful. I'll second it. Wonderful. Madam clerk, call for the vote. Um, I'm sorry, Maria. Who was the It was moved by Mayor Prompter. Motion second. Thank you. Um, Councilwoman Rodriguez, I. Um, Councilman Star, yes. Councilwoman Basua, yes. Mayor Prompteran, yes. Council member Palo, yes. Councilwoman Pettis, yes. Mayor MacArthur, yes. And this motion carries seven to zero. Thank you.

Thank you. Good. [laughter] Just in case.

We'll now move to the next item on the agenda. This is item N1 from public works. Uh subject safe uh routes to school SRTS uh report. the recommendations that the city council receive and and file the city's safe routes to school report. Uh the public works and transportation committee approved this item 20 back on December 9th, 2025 to forward the item to the to the full city council to review and receive and file it. Uh director Michael Wolf is here along with members of his staff, Jose Morgan to answer any questions we may have with them. Um we'll start with council member sir. Go ahead.

Yeah, ju just a couple questions. So, I'm looking at page 266 of our PDF and let's see if I got this. I think I got the right page there. It says, "In compliance with the California ATP grant, a student travel survey was distributed to schools to gather pre-RO and post project pedestrian and bicycle student travel tallies. During phase one, a total of 13 of 26 schools provide responses reflecting a 50% response rate, which is a reasonable outcome for a survey of this kind. And then it says postprogram data from phase 2 schools will be collected, analyzed, and reported in fall of 2025. So, I'm just wondering, is there going to be some update that will say what what the what the analysis shows? Good evening, mayor, mayor prom, council members. My name is Jose. I'm from the traffic engineering division. Um, to answer your question, council member star. The post surveys are still in the process to be collected. Uh, we've been having challenges getting the responses from schools, but we're still working on it.

Okay. So, we'll get it eventually. And I can I can see how the city constructed infrastructure changes like extending a sidewalk and

traffic calming measures. I I can see how that can improve safety. Uh I'm concerned that the recommendations in this report that require action by the school districts, the operations and program aspects will just wind up uh on a shelf somewhere, never be implemented. And and the reason why I'm I'm concerned about that is when I look at page 265, uh the walk to school day, the SRTS project team conducted a conducted walk to school day events in October 2022, 2023, and 2024. Interested schools were provided with flyer and banner templates to encourage student participation. And then it says this, in 2023, no even mentioned 2022 because I guess the number is zero, but in 2023, two schools participated and reported back. And in 2024, two schools also participated and reported back following the event. So out of 51 schools, very, very little interest from the school districts. And I just would love to know, I mean, do you have any thoughts on what we can do to inspire the the school districts to implement the operations and program aspects of this large report?

Yeah, I don't want to speak for the school about what their workload is and what their concentration is on. I I I I'm going to guess uh having been a product of this school district a long time ago that uh um their focus is on other things sometimes. Uh but I would say that it is the we want the uh administration from the school district to to take this information and it be part of their educational component um part of their parent teacher association interactions. I know that um Jose can talk about some of the things that he has seen or has heard from school districts where they put this in to the parent teacher packages that go out on Sunday for the next week. Um so we are seeing and hearing and finding that the school district is utilizing this information and its intent. Um part of that is then what's the followup of that? Um, and so, you know, there's a separation between the city and the and the school district. And I would think it's it'd be interesting conversation as an elected official if you wanted to have it with a school board member. We've talked about this.

Uh, and say, "Hey, you know, the city's given you some interesting information. How are you guys going to use it?" Um, and maybe the school board members can talk about it at the school board. Um, we got to be very careful about a fine line between our recommendations and our potentially overreach in terms of what our responsibilities are, our liabilities are. Um, and so I would say that we'd be cautious from a staffing standpoint of of pushing the issue too far other than making recommendations.

Absolutely. That makes that makes a lot of sense. Um, there's one thing that I think we should look at to improve uh safety that's not really mentioned here. Not maybe it's something that the police department can look at, but I I I'm I'm referring to vehicle code 2815.

And basically, it's it's not in the report, but basically it makes it possible to um well, let me just I'll just read it to you. Uh it says any person who shall disregard any traffic signal or direction given by a non- studentent school crossing guard appointed pursuant to this other section or authorized by a city police department any board of supervisors county blah blah when the guard is wearing the official insignia of a school crossing guard and when in the course of the guard's duties the guard is protecting any person crossing a street or highway in the vicinity of a school or while returning thereafter to a place of safety uh shall be guilty of an infraction subject to the penalties provided in this other section. So what I'm wondering is is it possible uh for us to empower school crossing guards to kind of initiate the process where they can they they can document maybe with a camera or something like that somebody who's going past a crosswalk without st without stopping when they ought to. uh may at that point of course have maybe law enforcement at that point receive the report and issue a u a citation. I don't know if that's something that's possible but if it can be done I think maybe it's another tool to add to the toolbox.

Yeah. I'm not I'm not so sure that our public works director can answer that that question.

Yeah. And that that's why I said this is probably a matter for the police department or or city attorney's office. But just to circle back, uh, just to circle back, I u I had to sit down with uh Director Wolf and his staff on on this particular item and I I committed to Director Wolf that I would personally go to speak with the elected officials at the school districts and also have sit down meetings with the superintendent's office and just uh provide them this report um and just urge them to share that with u with parents and and the principles and and so forth. But I think the benefit of having this report too, it gives us the foundation to go after grants and so forth because we've got the data and we've got uh essentially the the information we need to showcase where certain schools may may need some infrastructure enhancements for commuter safety, pedestrian safety, and so forth. So, this is this is a great tool that we have to work with. Um, and so I told our our director that I would commit to going out there and speaking with the trustees as well as the superintendent's office.

May Mayor, I really do appreciate you doing that. So, thank you for taking that on. I think it's very important well with the uh safety of our children. Yeah, abs. Absolutely. And mayor, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. And uh similar conversation I had with Mr. Wolf and his team on this. And I think that there's um an important component to this that we all in the public need to recognize as well that um the our traffic engineering staff and our public works staff have um gone and done some physical changes around these schools to enhance safety and to do some traffic calming. uh but those physical things alone uh are only part of the equation and the city's only part of the equation. I believe that uh good collaborative partnerships with the school administration and with between the school administ administration and parents and families of those schools is where those three being involved uh is where we'll actually see effectiveness because any one of those groups doing it on their own is only going to have limited effectiveness. But all three of them is where you're really going to hit the um the sweet spot in that vin diagram of having effective change happening within uh within these around the schools. And I will just use one school in district 2 as an example uh where uh they did receive uh some of the um uh little islands. I apologize I forget the technical name for them that around each crosswalk and they received a lighted uh crossing beacon as well and that and they actually from the recommendations of engineering a crosswalk was moved to another part of the uh rear entrance for the school and that has made a major difference. But as I shared at committee as well, uh there prior to all this work happening, there was an issue with uh parents who were double parking or parking in red zones or parking in a way that they were blocking visibility of the crossing guard at the crosswalk. And so uh the school and parents taking it upon

themselves to put their own cones out there to block other parents from parking in the red zone is what made the difference. And the school had cones, they just needed to put them out. And for whatever reason, uh, in the city of Oxnard, people will respect a cone. They they won't park there if there's a cone there. And so, um, putting them out before school, bringing them in, and then before school let out, putting them back out, that kept people from, uh, parking in that red zone and increasing safety. And unfortunately, at this school, there was a student who was, uh, hit by a car in that crosswalk. Um, I believe it was two school years ago, and they were, you know, very, very minor injuries, but it still happened. And so the the administration, the staff, the parents, and the city, we all have a role in this. And I think there's opportunity in these conversations to see what we can all do to pitch in on this. And last thing for council member Star and then uh Mr. Wolf, we have three folks up here who worked in education on some level. And I will say that uh even just the surveys um there's a uh concept of survey fatigue within education that they have to do all these surveys for any number of things. Sometimes they're required by grants that they have to do x amount of response rate for a survey or there's these surveys by the PTA or surveys for any number of reasons. And it's just it's another thing that they have to do. But the programming and operational side is that within education uh there is a um pretty universal staffing shortage for classified and certificated staff members. So even if they want to have crossing guards out at every exited entrance of the school, um often times an administrator has to make a decision, do I have a safety person watching the gate to make sure nobody comes in or do I have a crossing guard? and it's one or the other just from physical bodies they have with the ava a availability for that type of work. So I think that's where we can you know talk about with

crossing guard programs through PD or parent volunteers um or school staff who are able to uh are willing to work to do that extra duty they can do that too but it's not an impossible unsolvable issue here but we all have a role in it. So anyways that's my comments. Thank you.

You know we've got the No, thank you Mayor Port. got the three E and for for traffic safety and engineering, education and enforcement. Um I think Michael Wolf would say we have five, right? But we recognize the three. Um but I tell you it's hard to predict um you know driver behavior for example. How do you change that? But I think the schools have in my experience as a policeman, they've been great partners here recently with uh taking on the crossing guard responsibility um themselves and also in encouraging parents to also volunteer to help with with traffic safety and and we recognize it's just um it's just with the morning doing the drop doing drop off and then pickup, right? is just and I think our streets were not necessarily meant meant for that even though um I think we've tried our darnest um and so it's just we have to constantly I think preach the education part of it right I think the engineer can only do so much now it's the education part of it is making sure that we can hopefully encourage good driving behavior uh by by parents and then the enforcement should be the last thing um we should consider but that's also an element to it but it it's it's a challenge but I think this report will will give us the opportunity to go after aggressively go after some grant funding that'll that'll help us as a city. Um any other comments, pros or cons for for this item? No.

I just want to thank them for the heavy lift because I see the like just the evaluation, the assessment and everything that you are recommending. I really appreciate how much work has been put into this and um like I did say um Rose Gonzalez already did reach out and I'm glad to make a warm handoff or you know participate as needed, but um I'm glad to see that there's an interest and she she was excited about this report. So I can't speak for her but um at least our previous engagement was positive. Yeah. So so so thank thank you. Thank you for that. Um there are no other Go ahead. Yes. Go ahead. M

thank you [clears throat] very much for the the presentation. I did have the opportunity to speak as I'm sure every council member did with the public works staff. I appreciate it. Um just a suggestion to council members. If you want more buyin, whatever school districts are in your district, you could get the schools that are in your district and you could get a hold of the local neighborhood councils that are addressed. That's in one strong body that has an interest because most neighborhood councils have people on board that have kids and they're looking out for their kids. Um, one thing that I I I need to state, if we're going to look for grants or we're going to look for putting money into crossing guards, I want the school districts to go 5050 on this. I don't want the city to do the job of the schools, I'll go 50/50, but I'm not going to pay all the bills for a school district. The other issue is it's [clears throat] ever since I've moved into residential area and traveling throughout the city of Oxnard, it's not the erratic driver through a school zone. It's not the commercial truck. It's not the drunk driver. It's the mom and dad's dropping their kids off at school that are the most dangerous thing near schools at pickup and drop off time. It's insane what goes on. the school in my neighborhood, Rio Del Norte, they ran over the principal's foot, broke his foot. He's trying to slow people down. It uh it's insane. And when we do have enforcement at the beginning of the year, when gets exciting, I am all for not giving warnings. You give citations. When people do things, they get a citation. And the word gets out very fast. Nobody likes paying a fine, but uh I don't know how else you teach the public because they seem to forget it the next opening year day of school. They got to start all over again. But I think the neighborhood councils are something we could take advantage of.

Thank you, Council Member. Yeah. Yes. Go ahead, Mayor Port. Absolutely. I'll just second what council member Plloello said that the carriage curry neighborhood has given great feedback and the school has taken that and uh worked with them to ensure that uh parking habits and driving habits of the parents during pickup and drop off um you know were addressed and so absolutely correct on that with the neighborhoods and we all have schools within our districts uh nothing stops us from going and talking to those principles and having sitdown meetings with them. So I and with the school board U trustees as well and Trusty Gonzalez is a great partner as well. She's um been very uh engaging and approachable and easy to work with. So last question if I can I believe there was legislation that started um that is kind of a a graduated legislation that would allow through local ordinance a lowering of um speed limits in school zones between now and 2030 or 31 I believe. Um, is that about correct? So, not to go off the agenda item here, but it does pertain to what we're talking about with school safety. Uh, if there's any little brief uh information you can give us on that.

Sure. I think you were looking at my notes from earlier this morning because Morgan and I were talking about that earlier today. So yes, there is a a new law that by by code in 2031 2031 will um produce a basically a primmaacia or a default speed limit in the school zone for 20 m hour. So we are talking about how that looks in terms of roll out. Obviously there's an enforcement component to that that needs to be discussed as well. There's a cost component to that. So, uh, you can and we don't know right now all the logistics behind it in terms of do we need to have an action item from the council to do it in advance of 2031. Um, so we're looking to all those things.

Okay. I will say though, I I I don't want to pass up this opportunity because of the information and knowledge that that we have in public works. Um, speed limits are set a certain way. Um, and there's lots of studies out there from the Federal Highways Association, FHWA, that talks about just putting up a a um lesser speed limit does not typically result in lower speeds. And so this is while this is a new law that will be in effect 2031, whether or not it actually is fruitful is a different question. And whether or not there's how that gets enforced is a is a even a bigger question. Um, but there are lots of studies out there by just putting up a random speed limit that's lower than the traditional way you set it doesn't usually result in reduction in speed.

Understood. Thank you for that. And last thing I'll say, Mayor, there's plenty of studies, too, to show the difference in impact and injury to a pedestrian when they're hit by a vehicle traveling 30 miles an hour versus 25 versus 20 versus 15. And so, um, those are all important components. And I've been to other states where the speed limit in school zones is lower, but the that's just always been that way or it's been that way for a number of years. And the enforcement is on it where people they go the 20 miles per hour because they don't want to get caught going 22 in that zone because it is pretty stiff. So, um, anyways, thank you for answering that, Mr. Wolf. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor Prom. Any other comments? If not, this is there's no action. Uh we'll take any public comment though. U thank you mayor. I'm so I'm so sorry Mr. W. Yes. Go ahead.

Just a little history for this. Um again to broaden the the context. Obviously it behooves all of us to do everything we can to improve safety especially around schools. Um but this is a there's statewide history here. So when so this has nothing to do with Oxnard but when a school goes to create a school um they don't go through the local jurisdiction for planning and anything it all goes I believe is it called the the state department of architecture

right so there's minimal minimal coordination with local jurisdictions about road design and all that um very minimal So we we uh speaking abstractly about all local jurisdictions don't have the opportunity to have a discussion about what how we would like to see a safer pickup drop off zone. Um and understandably every school wants to maximize their real estate for things on their within their fence line. The result over the decades has been these these um safety problems have been pushed out into the public right away. Uh so everyone scrambles to try to make things safer and improvement and make improvements, but it all goes back to there's no coordination, right? The the school plans go to Sacramento, they get approved there. Uh we don't have enough and again it's not Oxnard, it's just the way things have evolved. um and local jurisdictions don't have the opportunity to say, "Hey, can you build a pickup and drop off zone there, right?" So that it's it gets the traffic out of the road. And it's particularly difficult um and problematic in in neighborhoods with narrow roads. So there's some history to to this here. So everything we try to do now to make it safer um is is always going to be not enough and and mostly imperfect solutions.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that clarity and insight. Madam clerk, are there any public speakers on this item? Uh mayor and council members, we do not have any public speakers in person or virtually for this item. Thank you. Thank you. Uh no actions required. This is only a file and receive item. And yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Council Member Star. And if there's no objection, uh nothing else on the agenda, we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.