Ojai Valley News Blog

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2009-01-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

This blog will remain readable, although it has been discontinued. All of its contents have been transferred to our improved site, ovnblog.com, searchable by calendar date.
You will still be able to read this blog, but not post to it.

Shuttle Service Stalling Out

2008-12-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

Lack of participation from bars threatens designated driver program

By Sondra Murphy
Lack of merchant participation in the Ojai Valley shuttle service is likely to put the brakes on the program before its first anniversary.
Dutch Van Hemert began the downtown shuttle service last winter with The Village Jester owner Nigel Chisholm after observing that there was no night transportation services for people patronizing local bars or restaurants that serve alcohol. As an airport shuttle driver, Van Hemert had the vehicle and license to provide a weekend shuttle for nightlife patrons and Chisholm contacted other merchants to garner support.
According to Van Hemert, about a dozen merchants got on board and contributed from $25 to $80 per weekend, depending on their operating hours, to cover Van Hemert’s fuel and maintenance. Van Hemert said there was rarely any overage to compensate him for his time.
“I’ve been doing this for 11 months now and every weekend a couple hundred people use it, but all the bars and restaurants have pulled out,” he said. “They say the economy is bad and they can’t afford it, but it’s only going to get worse if I quit.”
Van Hemert said that people call him from every corner of the Ojai Valley and he has even gotten calls from the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa and Ojai Valley Community Hospital. “I have driven many people home from the hospital who got fixed up and needed a ride home,” Van Hemert said. “I work on a gratuity basis. If they don’t give you anything, they don’t give you anything. About 80 percent of the people I drive are cool and about 20 percent are generous. Over the months I’ve learned who is generous and who is cheap.” He estimated that it has cost him nearly $29,000 this year to keep going.
Besides the financial strain, Van Hemert has not had a weekend off since starting the shuttle service. “I think that over the 11 months I’ve been doing this I’ve driven well over 10,000 people,” said Van Hemert. “It works, but doesn’t cover the cost. People tell me, ‘We’re so happy we can drive around town and not get hit by a drunk driver,’ but I haven’t found anyone interested in contributing. I don’t have the money to support it anymore. I need help. There are so many people in Ojai who have so much money that it would be a drop in the bucket. That’s the sad part.”
Hill Top Bar bartender Sonia Miller is one of the merchants who had liked the idea. A previous supporter of the shuttle, Miller is no longer participating. “We stopped it about two months ago,” she said.
“We didn’t have enough customers using it. With the economy slowing, business is so slow we just can’t afford it anymore.”
Chisholm said The Village Jester, The Hub and Feast Bistro were the last of the participating mer-chants who quit in October. With only three businesses participating but all benefiting, their enthusiasm waned.
“I am uncomfortable that there didn’t appear to be enough interest from other businesses to keep the shuttle viable,” said Chisholm. “I think it’s a tremendous loss to the community. Undoubtedly, the shuttle started by Dutch and myself has saved lives and countless dollars that DUI arrests cost.”
Van Hemert is reluctant to charge users for the service or look for possible government assistance for the service. “There’s all kinds of paperwork involved if you charge for the service,” said Van Hemert. “The Department of Transportation, they put you through the wringer.”
Chisholm thinks that tokens sold by participating merchants could be one solution. That system would let businesses pay Van Hemert back for customers who already paid for the service.
If the shuttle stops, Van Hemert does not expect anyone else to be interested in providing the type of service he performs. “I don’t think there are many people who are going to put up with it. People tell me I’m nuts. I had my stepson drive with me one weekend and he said, ‘You’re crazy. You’re absolutely crazy.’ But visitors say the downtown shuttle is the coolest thing ever, that few other communities offer this kind of thing.”
If the lack of funding continues, Van Hemert expects to stop the service at the end of this year. Chisholm is disappointed. “I’m not exactly sure that letting the shuttle die is the right choice for this community,” he said. “I would hope that, in the near future, all local businesses would see fit to support the service for what is a minimal cost.” He pointed out that if all participating merchants helped support the shuttle, the cost would go down.
“How much is one life worth?” asked Chisholm.

Long Road Ahead In Gravel Truck Fight

2008-12-25T09:58:00.000-08:00

Violations continue to be reported, despite restrictions

By Linda Harmon
Even after a Ventura County court upheld C.U.P. restrictions for the Ozena gravel mines for both north- and south-bound traffic, and re-affirmed the county’s power to apply them, the gravel trucks keep on rolling. And Stop the Trucks Coalition says it must keep on fighting.
“We intend to keep protecting the valley from these interests that would violate their conditional use permits and send more trucks rumbling through our valley,” said Howard Smith, vice chairman of Stop the Trucks.
Stop the Trucks has been actively documenting violations in hopes of either getting county officials to strictly enforce existing governmental controls, or revoke the offending mine’s C.U.P. entirely. At its Oct. 14 meeting, the city of Ojai joined the effort and committed to backing the nonprofit organization with needed funds.
According to Smith, there have been numerous recent violations by gravel trucks traveling along the Highway 33 corridor during forbidden hours. The mine’s C.U.P. allows gravel trucks to travel only between 6 to 7 a.m. and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays.
The group has been in contact with Kim Rodriguez, Ventura County Planning director, and her superiors, requesting all weight tickets from Ozena between Dec. 1, 2007 and Aug. 12, 2008, to gain more evidence of non-compliance and force the withdrawal of Ozena’s C.U.P., which would halt its operations.
“It appears that the enforcement work of the prior weeks with Ozena has been to little avail,” wrote Smith in an e-mail to Rodriguez. “This morning, Dec. 18, 2008, a dark blue, double hopper truck from Pride Trucking passed by Nordhoff High School just as students were arriving, heading north at 7:37 a.m., in apparent violation of the allowed hours of travel through the Ojai Valley.”
That is only one of eight complaints noted in the e-mail sent to Rodriguez by Smith regarding Ozena’s operations in the last two months.
According to Smith, he was pleased by the footnote in County Court Judge Glen Reiser’s Dec. 10 decision rejecting Ozena’s owner Elizabeth Virgilio’s writ petition, saying that the owners should be happy they can continue to operate at all. In a recent e-mail to members, Smith wrote, “It is a huge victory for the Stop the Trucks Coalition, particularly considering a footnote by Judge Reiser, which states: ‘The initial permit allows for a five-year extension if the Planning Director, assuming, ‘all conditions have been continuously complied with’ by petitioners, authorizes such continued use. Since the County has already found permit violations, it might well be an abuse of discretion for the Planning Director to authorize such an extension. This issue however is not before the court.’”
Smith’s e-mail also points out another oversight by county officials who failed to heed warnings about the potential collapse of State Route 33. The road, in fact, collapsed in February of 2008.
According to Smith, in a letter dated Aug. 21, 2006, the Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Council warned county officials that “SR-33 has suffered many landslides and slipped roadways in past years. The vibration created by the mine’s trucks on SR-33 may be adding significantly to the problem of road slippage, slumps, and slides. No review of vibration as a potential impact on SR-33 has been included in the Draft MND and vibration from trucks may present a significant adverse impact on the environment.”
According to Smith, a Caltrans District 7 traffic study dated July 2007, concluded that State Route 33 is maintained to provide safe travel for all motorists and is designed to accommodate large trucks. After the collapse, Maria Raptis, spokesperson for Caltrans District 7, said that the study had focused exclusively on the geometric design of the road for safe and orderly movement of vehicles, but not on the effect of the vibrations caused by the heavy trucks.
Stop the Trucks Coalition has repeatedly questioned whether SR-33 should be open to any heavy gravel trucks. Smith questions “why extensive studies of the impact of gravel trucks are being excluded from the EIR review process.”
Truck travel and its regulation are further complicated for area governments as gravel trucks often travel across county boundaries, necessitating that area governments work together.
Stop the Trucks and officials from both Santa Barbara and Ventura counties reached a temporary solution at an earlier hearing for expansion of the Diamond Rock Mine. They decided further escalation of trips into their boundaries was best achieved by cooperation and promised to only grant new, or modifying existing C.U.P.s, for mining operations whose traffic stayed within their own boundaries. The compromise is tenuous, depending on each county to uphold their end of the bargain. No other method has been put forward since for a problem that seems unlikely to go away soon.
The future of this issue is further complicated by what Caltrans sees as an increasing need for materials to maintain state infrastructure. Stop The Trucks and the Ojai Valley may face an uphill battle if the demand for gravel rises with potential funding from the incoming Obama administration, an issue Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett addressed in a recent e-mail.
“The county doesn’t actually expect a windfall of infrastructure funding,” said Bennett, “nor any substantial increase in public works projects in the Ojai Valley. However … if additional state and or federal transportation funding becomes available it would move up the repaving of county roads; i.e. roads would be repaved sooner rather than later.”

Union 76 Owner Seeks Zone Change

2008-12-25T09:55:00.000-08:00

Calls made for plan for whole Maricopa area

By Sondra Murphy
A business owner’s desire to expand his gas station near the “Y” prompted the Ojai Planning Commission to discuss the future improvement to that area of Ojai.
Neil Abasi brought to the council a concept review for a zone change from business professional to general commercial in order to allow his Union 76 station on Maricopa Highway to add a mini-mart and drive-through car wash. It was Abasi’s third presentation to the commissioners, who were still unsatisfied with the plan’s accommodation for any increased pedestrian traffic the expansion would invite.
General safety at the three-way intersection was discussed as needing improvement. “I think we could support the changes despite the fact that it’s a huge intensity of use, but the public realm needs to be addressed in order to balance that,” said President Paul Crabtree.
“We are hoping we will have created, over time, a more pedestrian-friendly environment,” said Commissioner Susan Weaver.
“Right now, everyone who walks there puts their lives on the line. We were hoping that we would see something safer and more attractive for pedestrians.”
“Making a zone change is a really big thing for us and I’m not really seeing incentive,” said Commissioner John Mirk.
“Commis-sioner Mirk is absolutely right,” said Commissioner Steven Foster. “A zone change bears a lot of consequence for us and we need substance to justify one. The fact of its location, that it’s at the gateway into Ojai, the aesthetics become very important, but there’s a certain lack of design involvement that needs to be brought up to a higher level.”
The commissioners also hoped for improved style and configuration design for the business that would be more attractive to potential customers. Commissioner Troy Becker suggested to Abasi’s architect, Seven Bovee, that he tighten up the visual design. “It’s really hard to tell what this is going to look like given the drawings,” said Becker. “It looks like it’s going in a Craftsman direction, but you said Western and I think it would help if it went more in one direction or another.”
The commission thought moving the driveways from Maricopa Highway frontage to North Carillo Road frontage would improve some of the safety concerns, but also acknowledged that, with the pumps running parallel to the highway, it creates design challenges for Abasi and Bovee.
“Those driveways would never be allowed in today’s standards,” said Foster.
“And if you’re putting in a convenience store where people may come — pedestrians and young kids and skateboards and cars are pulling in and out and trying to get to the propane tank — that becomes a dangerous environment,” said Weaver.
“It would be nice to have a whole Maricopa plan,” said Carol Smith, City Council liaison. “That 76 lot is huge, there’s a lot of area there and also we have Carillo behind it that has a lot of seniors and a lot of people walking.” She encouraged the commission to take a closer look at the whole area in terms of improving the visual design, as well as functionality.
“I’ve always thought we could do some real work at the ‘Y,’ but it would involve all the property owners,” said city manager Jere Kersnar.
In other planning business, the commission approved two residential design review permits. Hank and Jean Manninen were given the go-ahead on construction of a two-story, single-family residence and detached garage with a second residence on South Montgomery Street, and Chuck Barnett got the green light for an addition to a rental unit on East Aliso Street.
Both sets of property owners have been working with the commission on design requirements and vegetation design that would enhance their neighborhoods.
Barnett’s plan to install native, drought-tolerant plants brought up the issue of the commission’s irrigation requirements. “I’ve had experience with native plants,” said Weaver. “”I don’t think we need to require the irrigation system. I think it would present the risk of overwatering. I support any move we can make toward xeriscaping and we have to rethink what we require people to do in terms of watering.”
The commission waived Barnett’s irrigation requirement with the condition he report back to the city in about one year on the condition of his landscaping.
Smith also reported to the commission that there is council interest in developing an ordinance regarding plastic shopping bags and she has requested that the Ojai Valley Green Coalition look into options such as biodegradable plastic, among other things.

MAC Mulls MO Parking Options

2008-12-25T09:53:00.000-08:00

Safety issues include recommendations for four-way stop at Alvarado and El Roblar

By Sondra Murphy
In an effort to create a safer traffic situation in Meiners Oaks, the Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Council voted Dec. 15 to recommend several changes in the 500 block of El Roblar Drive.
The council recommended to Ventura County that a four-way stop be installed, complete with crosswalks, at Alvarado Avenue and West El Roblar Drive. As part of the joint motion by council members Jerry Kaplan and Russ Baggerly, the council is also recommending that a current bus stop in the 400 block of West El Roblar be moved closer to the corner of Alvarado Avenue, both for safety purposes and to open up parking options in the area. Baggerly also moved to create a loading zone on the south corner of El Roblar Drive near Alvarado Avenue.
It was after much discussion by the council and community that the recommendation was agreed upon. Nazir Lalani Public Works Agency was present to explain the study his agency completed last month regarding creating several “No Parking” zones that concerned local merchants in the burgeoning commercial area.
Those Public Works recommendations discussed by MAC last month were created based on site line visibility at the corners of Poli and Alvarado avenues.
After exploring reducing the speed limit, roadway berms and bike lanes, the council felt that stops signs, which Lalani said cost about $300 each to install, would be most effective in increasing safety in the 25 mile-per-hour neighbor-hood. Lalani said reducing the speed limit would be more expensive.
With the addition of stop signs to the council’s recommendation, Lalani said 40- to 65-foot “No Parking” zones would likely be unnecessary, as stop signs allow drivers to better observe vehicles or pedestrians and he said the agency would reassess if shorter “No Parking” zones, if any, should be called for.
Most of the public attending the meeting seemed satisfied with the MAC’s recommendation, as it allowed for continued merchant parking while addressing the safety concerns that initiated the Public Works study.
Increased Highway Patrol presence was brought up as necessary to prompt drivers into slowing down along the road. “Police are the key to safety,” said resident Laurie Dunn.
“Courteous drivers wouldn’t hurt, either,” said Baggerly.
The further issue about public parking and more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly features in Meiners Oaks proves a greater hurdle to clear, as funding for such a project is lean. Lalani said most county communities rely on very competitive grants to cover the costs.
Council member Florencia Ramirez suggested the council consider some long-term mitigation to the parking concerns. Baggerly asked executive director Steve Offerman to seek possible funding sources.
The Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Council usually meets the third Monday of each month at 7 p.m. in the Oak View Community Center, 18 Valley Road. The public is always welcome to attend. Agendas and information are posted on 1st District Supervisor Steve Bennett’s web site at countyofventura.org/ovma. For more information, contact Offerman at steve.offerman@ventura.org or call 654-2703.

Ojai Survey Centers On Youth, Greening

2008-12-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

Make Ojai Better survey draws nearly 1,000 responses, share of criticism

By Linda Harmon
The Make Ojai Better Survey results are out and the author, Steve Velkei, has made a mark on Ojai. Velkei, a lawyer who splits his time between Ojai and Los Angeles, took out a full-page ad in this newspaper last summer and founded a web site, MakeOjaiBetter.com to get responses to his survey.
According to Velkei he did so “to begin a dialogue about how to effect positive change in Ojai” and “help the community and its leaders prioritize what is most important.”
He approached pretty much anyone who would listen and a few that didn’t.
“I wanted to make it as broad-based as possible,” said Velkei, who had responses from people age 14 to 95.
Not everyone was happy with the survey or with Velkei.
“I had people threaten me about the survey,” added Velkei, who tried not to take it to heart. “I had one guy who said, ‘If your survey says x, y, and z, then you’re my enemy.’ Now what kind of word is that to use about someone in your community?”
Undeterred, Velkei went on to gather more than 998 respondents for his survey, talking with people at churches, shopping centers, the Farmers’ Market, Little House, the Skate Park, Nordhoff High School, and even dinner parties, gathering responses.
He found the top five concerns were increasing youth activities, moving toward becoming a “green” city, increased preservation of public land, increasing affordable housing, and better maintenance of public facilities.
“Once I broke down the data I could see where different groups ranked on each issue,” said Velkei, citing the gender breakdown on the green issue ranking as an example. “Among women going green was the No. 1 issue, with men, No. 4. But on two issues, youth activities and going green, people really seemed to transcend groups and there was a really close battle between the two.”
Velkei’s survey found several trends that he found of interest and concern. According to Velkei, the No. 1 issue for people under 25 was affordable housing, followed by increasing youth activities and going green. In the over 50 and 60 age categories, going green ranked first, ahead of preservation of public land and youth activities, with affordable housing a much lower concern.
“On affordable housing, it looks like the older the respondents were, the lower it ranked,” said Velkei. He added that some older respondents indicated they were afraid of affordable housing’s impact, while data showed affordable housing outranked any other issue in the 25-and-under age category telling.
“This is an experiment in creating a larger awareness and getting people connected so that they can feel a part of the system,” said Velkei. “There are a lot of people who felt totally disconnected. That kept me going.”
Velkei addressed the City Council last week when they voted on whether to approve funding $10,000 for the Ojai Youth Employment Service.
“We do have the ability to make a difference,” said Velkei at the meeting, giving the council members copies of his results. “Given the enthusiastic support reflected in this survey for more youth activities, I am hopeful that this agenda item will pass unanimously.”
Later, after a lengthy presentation by rep-resentatives of the Youth Employment Service, including several student testimonials, the allocation did pass unanimously.
Velkei was pleased.
Velkei was hoping the survey would promote action on other issues as well, and is disappointed that he hasn’t been approached by any members of the council about the results.
“Somehow I get the sense they’re not really interested,” said Velkei. “When Jere Kersnar moved here from Carmel he had talked about doing a survey and yet one of the earlier responses from the city manager office was, ‘We have plenty of events for youth, what are they talking about? What is all this complaining about?’ I really wonder if anyone is going to pay attention.”
Velkei hopes the survey provides issues that will unite the community, bringing it together to find compromises.
“For instance, with an issue like affordable housing, it is a state-mandated issue,” said Velkei. “Let’s not waste energy fighting it. Obviously there are going to be issues with resources and water. Maybe there will be 200 units, not 400, but let’s get together and help solve some of these issues. Make those units a showcase, from a green perspective, and a model for what this community can be.”
He hopes people take the information in the survey and move forward.
“The issue of going green alone could be part of the impetus to get the city to adopt a resolution which says, we are going to be a green city by (specific date) and do the following things to meet that goal.”
Velkei says anyone interested about specific comments made by participants and more detail about the process are welcome to contact him at MakeOjaiBetter.com. For now, he is just glad to get his spare time back.

DUI Takes Toll On Skills, Privileges

2008-12-18T17:07:00.000-08:00

Justin Veenhuis fails a sobriety test under the watchful eye of Deputy Mike Harris of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

By Misty Volaski
Drinking and driving don’t mix, as Justin Veenhuis discovered in an OVN drunk-driving simulation Tuesday night.
“The handcuffs are reason enough not to drink and drive!” Veenhuis lamented after about 20 minutes in the steel constraints.
The 6-foot-2-inch, 170-pound Ojai Valley resident drank three cocktails, a beer and a shot, and then was taken to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department-Ojai Substation and put through a mock DUI traffic stop with Deputy Mike Harris.
After asking a series of questions designed to assure that Veenhuis’ suspected drunkenness wasn’t a result of any physical or medical disabilities, Harris administered all the tests as he would on an actual DUI traffic stop: having Veenhuis track the officer’s finger with his eyes without moving his head (failed); tilting Veenhuis’ head back with eyes closed and silently counting out 30 seconds to himself (failed); having Veenhuis walk nine steps, heel to toe, in one direction, then the other (failed); having Veenhuis lift one foot for 30 seconds, then the other for 30 seconds (failed miserably and nearly fell over); and having Veenhuis close his eyes and touch his left and right index fingers to his nose as Harris requested (failed with bravado).
Then came the preliminary alcohol screen, the pre-breath-test test. Harris took two readings, finding that Veenhuis had a blood alcohol level (BAC) of .11 and .12 percent — well over the legal limit of .08 percent for adults over age 21. The real breath test came next, finding similar results and creating a printout of Veenhuis’ BAC.
Veenhuis could have refused the breath test, or requested a blood test (which would have been done at Ventura County Medical Center). Had he attempted and failed one test, then refused the other, he would have been arrested and automat-ically had his license suspended for one year. He would also then be required to give a blood test anyway, even if it had to be forced (and, if convicted, he would face additional penalties for this refusal).
After taking into account all of Veenhuis’ test results (which weren’t pretty), his physical movements and the stench of alcohol on his breath, a very patient Harris had enough evidence to convince him that Veenhuis was drunk.
So away went poor Veenhuis, cuffs and all, to the Ojai Substation’s holding cells. Officer Harris demonstrated the operation of the on-site breath test device, which showed Veenhuis had BAC levels consistent with those found in the field.
Another Ojai Substation officer, Jacob Valenzuela, explained that all of these tests, both in-station and in the field, are designed to give the officers two types of information. One, officers gauge suspects’ “ability to follow our instructions. And two, their ability to carry out the tasks,” said Valenzuela.
To say Veenhuis was intoxicated and failed all his tests — instruction-following included — was clear. Throughout the test, our OVN guinea pig kept reiterating, “I am so, so glad this is not real!”
Had this been an actual DUI stop, Veenhuis would have been taken to the Ventura County Jail and booked, where he’d spend from four to 12 hours before signing an agreement to appear in court and being released. If convicted, Veenhuis would have faced a possible 48-hour jail sentence, three months of alcohol school, three years of probation, court fines of around $2,800 (which does not include traffic school costs or the thousands of dollars he’d pay his lawyer), and the doubling or tripling of his vehicle insurance costs.
And that’s just for a first-time offender with a BAC under .15 percent, no injuries or fatalities involved, and with no children under age 14 in the vehicle at the time of the traffic stop.
Add a couple of those in, and the district attorney can slap you with delightful “special enhancements” that can include years in prison, and 18 months of alcohol school (which will throw an additional $2,400 to your bar tab).
Oh, and you have to buy and install your own Ignition interlock device in your car to prevent you from driving under the influence again (that’s another $730 per year). And for repeat DUI offenders holding a Class A license? Forget it — you’ll never drive a semi again.
According to Harris, the repeat offenders are numerous, and their BACs often startling.
“Once, we had a guy with a .52 BAC,” he said. “Walked right into the station without help.”
“But doesn’t a .40 usually mean you’re, ya know, comatose?” I asked him.
Shockingly, Harris explained that alcoholics can often function at a .30 BAC. Pretty scary for the rest of us on the road. In California alone, an average of 130,000 people are arrested for DUI each year — that’s roughly one drunk driver for every 142 licensed individuals. Add to all of this statistics from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which show an average of only one of every 88 drunk drivers on the road are actually pulled over, and you begin to see the problem.
And the necessity for strict laws and steep fines. The bottom line: not only do drunk drivers kill 12,998 people a year and injure 500,000 more (2007 statistics, National Highway Traffic Safety Admini-stration), they also cost you a ton of money, time and pride.
So get a cab or designated driver. Bribe a buddy with a free dinner. His $50 surf ‘n’ turf is roughly $7,950 less than paying for a DUI. Even Wal-Mart can’t offer you those kinds of savings.
Just a little something to consider before leaving the office Christmas party this weekend.

Feds Seek Review Of Casitas Ruling

2008-12-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

Issue at stake is ‘taking’ for fish ladder

By Daryl Kelley
Claiming that a three-judge appeals panel erred, federal lawyers have asked the full U.S. appeals court in Washington to review a September ruling in which the panel found that the federal government had seized Casitas Municipal Water District property by forcing it to provide water for a fish ladder built for the endangered steelhead trout.
That panel decision, if it stands, could potentially be worth tens of millions of dollars for Casitas, the largest water district in the Ojai Valley. Either way, some experts say, the Casitas case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court as a test of private property rights.
Last week, U.S. environmental lawyers asked the entire 11-justice Washington appeals court to reconsider the case, on which the appeals panel itself split 2-1 in overturning a lower court decision.
The lower court had found that the Bureau of Reclamation had not seized Casitas’ private property when forcing it to provide water without compensation. But the appeals panel decided the water was private property and sent the case back to the trial court to be heard on that basis.
Now, lawyers for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Justice Department have argued consider the case.
The panel “clearly departed from binding precedent of the Supreme Court and this Court” in requiring that the Casitas case be considered under federal law for the taking of private property instead of under law relating to regulatory restrictions on property, the new petition said.
Indeed, federal lawyers even argued that Casitas had not lost a drop of water to the fish ladder that it has been forced to replace, since the Casitas reservoir and dam project is naturally replenished by rainfall.
“The record shows no evidence of loss of use, and the United States’ expert report shows that, under historic weather patterns, the Project has sufficient access to water and storage so that no loss of use is anticipated to occur …,” the petition argues.
But Roger Marzulla, a Washington lawyer representing Casitas, said Tuesday that he thinks reconsideration of the case will be rejected by most of the 11 justices, and the case will be returned to the trial court to be tried as a property taking, with compensation going to Casitas for its loss of water. The full appeals court decides to rehear cases decided by a panel only about once a year out of dozens of petitions, he said.
He said he expects a decision in January.
“The panel was correct,” Marzulla said. “There are three water rights cases (decided by the Supreme Court), and in all the finding was that the plaintiffs should recover.”
Nor does Marzulla think the case should ever reach the Supreme Court, although property rights attorneys said it could set a precedent nationwide.
“I’d just like this case to go back to the trial court, and get it over with,” he said. “I think the Supreme Court law is clear enough. There is not a new issue here that the Supreme Court ought to be addressing.”
But that’s not the way state and federal lawyers have seen the case since it was filed by Casitas in 2005 after the district was required to build a fish ladder on the Ventura River, and to provide water for it.
Casitas sought compensation for both the ladder and the water, but lost the case to reclaim the $9 million for ladder construction. But compensation for the on-going cost of water remains in play.
J. David Breemer, a principal attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights group in Sacramento, said the appeals panel’s Casitas decision “is very important because it says your water can’t be taken without you being paid for it.”
Before that ruling, Breemer said, the presumption was that the government had a right to take water being used by a private party without compensation to satisfy federal environmental law, such as the Endangered Species Act.
“Now the presumption is that they’ve got to pay for that water,” he said.
If the Bureau of Reclamation is forced to pay for water to operate the fish ladder, the bill could total $1 million to $2 million a year, officials said. That compares with Casitas’ annual budget of $15 million.
Casitas estimates that it takes at least 3,200 acre-feet of water a year to guarantee that the steelhead migration can occur.
The district charges farmers $371 an acre-foot for water and residential customers $444. It also estimates that it would cost at least $600 an acre-foot to import water for the fish ladder during a prolonged drought.
That means that the value of the 3,200 acre-feet is at least $1.12 million and as much as $1.92 million, said Casitas representatives. (An acre-foot of water meets the needs of two typical households for a year.)
Lawyer Marzulla said that a water appraiser and broker hired by the district has placed the total value of the water the district could lose for the fish ladder over decades as at least “tens of millions of dollars, and it could go as high as $80 million.”
But Casitas is not counting its money yet.
Indeed, the five elected directors of the water district are split 3 to 2 on whether its a good idea to continue with the suit.
Last year, the board majority voted to press the litigation for a third year despite a steep $500,000 cost and repeated setbacks, while the board minority said the suit was a waste of money and would undercut the Endangered Species Act if Casitas won.
That split has persisted, with Directors Jim Word, Bill Hicks and Pete Kaiser wanting to continue the case, and Directors Russ Baggerly and Richard Handley wanting to end it.
Also fighting against the Casitas case are state and federal lawyers who maintain that the river water Casitas gathers in its reservoir is owned by all of the people of California and not by the water district, and that it can be used by government agencies for the common good without compensation. It fact, that procedure is common when enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
Last year, a federal claims court judge agreed, ruling that a constitutional property right was not involved when the federal government required Casitas to provide water without compensation.
The claims court judge ruled that the Casitas case had to be considered under federal law that deals with the government’s simple regulatory constraint of water use, and not as a “physical taking” of private property. Water agencies have rarely, if ever, won compensation in a case argued under such rules, officials have said.
But after the appeals panel decision, and the new petition opposing it, the case appears wide open again.
The Casitas district provides water for about 65,000 people and nearly 5,700 acres of farmland in the Ojai Valley and Ventura area.
a lower court decision.
The lower court had found that the Bureau of Reclamation had not seized Casitas’ private property when forcing it to provide water without compensation. But the appeals panel decided the water was private property and sent the case back to the trial court to be heard on that basis.
Now, lawyers for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Justice Department have argued to consider the case.
The panel “clearly departed from binding precedent of the Supreme Court and this Court” in requiring that the Casitas case be considered under federal law for the taking of private property instead of under law relating to regulatory restrictions on property, the new petition said.
Indeed, federal lawyers even argued that Casitas had not lost a drop of water to the fish ladder that it has been forced to replace, since the Casitas reservoir and dam project is naturally replenished by rainfall.
But Roger Marzulla, a Washington lawyer rep-resenting Casitas, said Tuesday that he thinks reconsideration of the case will be rejected by most of the 11 justices, and the case will be returned to the trial court to be tried as a property taking, with compensation going to Casitas for its loss of water. The full appeals court decides to rehear cases decided by a panel only about once a year out of dozens of petitions, he said.
He said he expects a decision in January.
“The panel was correct,” Marzulla said. “There are three water rights cases (decided by the Supreme Court), and in all the finding was that the plaintiffs should recover.”
Nor does Marzulla think the case should ever reach the Supreme Court, although property rights attorneys said it could set a precedent nationwide.
“I’d just like this case to go back to the trial court, and get it over with,” he said. “I think the Supreme Court law is clear enough.”
But that’s not the way state and federal lawyers have seen the case since it was filed by Casitas in 2005 after the district was required to build a fish ladder on the Ventura River, and to provide water for it.
Casitas sought com-pensation for both the ladder and the water, but lost the case to reclaim the $9 million for ladder construction.
J. David Breemer, a principal attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights group in Sacramento, said the appeals panel’s Casitas decision “is very important because it says your water can’t be taken without you being paid for it.”
Before that ruling, Breemer said, the presumption was that the government had a right to take water being used by a private party without compensation to satisfy federal environmental law, such as the Endangered Species Act.
“Now the presumption is that they’ve got to pay for that water,” he said.
If the Bureau of Reclamation is forced to pay for water to operate the fish ladder, the bill could total $1 million to $2 million a year, officials said. That compares with Casitas’ annual budget of $15 million.
Casitas estimates that it takes at least 3,200 acre-feet of water a year to guarantee that the steelhead migration can occur. The district charges farmers $371 an acre-foot for water and residential customers $444. It also estimates that it would cost at least $600 an acre-foot to import water for the fish ladder during a prolonged drought.
But Casitas is not counting its money yet.
Indeed, the five elected directors of the water district are split 3-to-2 on whether its a good idea to continue with the suit.
Last year, the board majority voted to press the litigation for a third year despite a steep $500,000 cost and repeated setbacks, while the board minority said the suit was a waste of money and would undercut the Endangered Species Act if Casitas won.
That split has persisted, with Directors Jim Word, Bill Hicks and Pete Kaiser wanting to continue the case, and Directors Russ Baggerly and Richard Handley wanting to end it.
Also fighting against the Casitas case are state and federal lawyers who maintain that the river water Casitas gathers in its reservoir is owned by all of the people of California and not by the water district, and that it can be used by government agencies for the common good without compensation. It fact, that procedure is common when enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
Last year, a federal claims court judge agreed, ruling that a constitutional property right was not involved when the federal government required Casitas to provide water without compensation.
The claims court judge ruled that the Casitas case had to be considered under federal law that deals with the government’s simple regulat-ory constraint of water use, and not as a “physical taking” of private property.
But after the appeals panel decision, and the new petition opposing it, the case appears wide open again.

OUSD Plans For Next Round Of Budget Cuts

2008-12-16T16:37:00.000-08:00

Schools search for $1.6 million in cuts for next year, $800k for 2010-2011

By Sondra Murphy
The Ojai Unified School District has the dubious distinction of being known as the poster child of declining enrollment of Ventura County schools and the state budget crisis is aggravating the financial fallout from that condition.
“It is in dire straits,” said Ventura County Superin-tendent of Schools Stanley Mantooth. “Declining enrollment has been with us in Ventura County overall now for at least four years, some places more than others. Ojai has had the particular challenges with declining enrollment for a decade or so.
“Every time you lose a student, the district loses in the neighborhood of $9,000 to $10,000. When you lose students it’s not easy to cut back proportionately. OUSD in particular has done an excellent job in preserving its programs and cutting everything they can as far away from the classrooms as they can. It is now looking at its core programs, and that is not unique to Ojai. It is a terrible situation and the economy might be lending a hand there.”
Ojai Unified School district held a special governing board study session Monday to begin early planning for its 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 budgets. Fresh from announcing its first-ever qualified certification last week, board members, administrators, staff and community met to look over preliminary numbers and formulate strategies.
Superintendent Tim Baird and Dannielle Pusatere, assistant superintendent of business and administrative services, submitted draft reports that broke down from which part of the $25 million budget each department’s supporting funds originated. The packet also contained dollar figures associated with programs and schools to aid the board in making $1.6 million in anticipated cuts for next year and $800,000 the following year. The information was intended to get the budget cutting process started and is expected to be continuously updated and fine-tuned as state budget decisions are made known.
“We are not going to solve the budget issue this evening,” said Baird. “We are still in the input stage and will be there really for the course of the rest of the school year.”
Dollar figures were not yet attached to specific positions. Vice president Kathi Smith said the process would be more efficient, “If we could get the dollar amount for each site and each department.
Member Pauline Mercado agreed. “Rather than backtrack, I need to have all the information in front of me. Looking at these FTEs (full-time equivalent job statistics), it’s really hard to be able to determine the cost. We need to have the dollar amount.”
Pusatere explained that it would be difficult to estimate the savings of cutting jobs because of the varying pay rates due to seniority. “It might not be accurate because you might be looking at the cost of a senior position, but bump a less senior position in your cuts,” she said.
“We understand why you didn’t put it in, but we need to know all the prices,” said Smith. “It’s just too abstract.”
“We need total salaries of everyone in the district,” said member Steve Fields.
“The budget numbers are not exact,” said Baird. “The missing component is staff recommendations. We will get the hard numbers for any recommendations and put them on the list for subsequent meetings.”
“I would like to know grade-by-grade class size reductions,” said clerk Rikki Horne.
“Also how many staff would be affected, if we eliminate it,” President Linda Taylor added.
Possible strategy plans presented to the board included one-year, two-year and quick-response plans. Baird said that, at this point, administration is recommending a two-year plan because it would be the least disruptive to the curriculum. “In a one-year plan, you essentially make all the cuts you need to make, but you have nothing left to cut the next year,” he said. “In a two-year plan you say let’s do some nasty cuts, but not all in year one and go into the reserves, knowing we still don’t have the end to the two-year solution, but in case something else could be done. But you have to refill your reserves the next year. Right now, I’m leaning toward the two-year plan because the one-year looks really devastating and you’ve used one-time monies.”
The quick response plan involves negative certifications that bring in the state and help districts qualify for 20-year emergency loans. That method results in loss of board control and, usually, the superintendent, substituting a state manager to make decisions based on financial assets and not necessarily the students’ best interest.
In the information packet, Baird included some sample plans of other California school districts going through similar struggles and that have submitted negative certification budgets this year.
“Some districts are looking at rolling back salary schedules and reductions of work days,” Baird said. OUSD currently has 184 work days and must have at least 180.
Two public speakers were critical of the way OUSD has handled the budgeting process. “I feel you are completely unrealistic to use the governor’s October budget,” said Bill Gilbreth. “If you don’t really look at what is likely to be, you’re likely to make the wrong decision.” Gilbreth pointed to that opinion as why he did not support Measure P in the most recent election. The measure proposed a seven-year tax of $89 per parcel in the OUSD boundaries.
Pusatere said that the district was awaiting an update from the state sometime next month, which is why some of the estimates are unknown.
“If you don’t cut salaries, you’re not showing the public that you’re taking honest cuts,” said Ron Wilson. “I think overall your service is outstanding, but it’s a very, very difficult process for the public to understand.”
“I can appreciate what Bill and Mr. Wilson have to say because we know this is dire,” said Kathleen Smith, “but we have to look at everything.”
“What’s upsetting me is that my kindergartner is not going to get the same education that I received,” said parent Marianne Ratcliff. “Ojai should be ashamed of itself for not passing the parcel tax. Mr. Gilbreth’s letter to the editor made me angry and I wasn’t angry tonight until I just heard it again. I’m dedicated to raising the $7,000 to put another parcel tax on the ballot and swaying Mr. Gilbreth to write another letter to the editor encouraging support.”
Kathleen Smith told the board that local parent organizations are beginning a campaign to get Measure P supporter to donate $89 to OUSD.
“I appreciate your efforts and that you are continuing to work on this,” district employee Chuck Crawford told the board. “I understand categorical funding, but it’s hard to explain that to someone who’s just lost their job. I try watching the budget and it’s hard to have confidence in the process.”
Meiners Oaks teacher John Hook boiled down the emotions associated with the meeting. “What is going to happen to the children, with no support services for students who are struggling?” he asked. “We need to realize what we’ll be losing in human terms.”
“And as we shed employees, it impacts the economy here,” said vice president Smith.
“As a union, I think it’s time to put our differences aside and work together in these difficult times,” said president of the Ojai Federation of Teachers Martha Ditchfield.
“In January, we will find out about our midyear cuts,” said Taylor. “On Jan. 13, we’ll have a continuation of our budget discussion and have more specific numbers. School funding is very complicated with all its categoricals and how it’s spent and how we need to get loans every year because we don’t get the money we’re supposed to. I appreciate people who keep coming to these meetings.”
“I want to thank John Hook and those people who talked about the faces of our employees,” said Horne. “All of these people represent our students and that’s why we’re all here. The thought of obliterating the school district that my daughter still attends is devastating.”
originated. The packet also contained dollar figures associated with programs and schools to aid the board in making $1.6 million in anticipated cuts for next year and $800,000 the following year. The information was intended to get the budget cutting process started and is expected to be continuously updated and fine-tuned as state budget decisions are made known.
“We are not going to solve the budget issue this evening,” said Baird. “We are still in the input stage and will be there really for the course of the rest of the school year.”
Dollar figures were not yet attached to specific positions. Vice president Kathi Smith said the process would be more efficient, “If we could get the dollar amount for each site and each department.
Member Pauline Mercado agreed. “Rather than backtrack, I need to have all the information in front of me. Looking at these FTEs (full-time equivalent job statistics), it’s really hard to be able to determine the cost. We need to have the dollar amount.”
Pusatere explained that it would be difficult to estimate the savings of cutting jobs because of the varying pay rates due to seniority. “It might not be accurate because you might be looking at the cost of a senior position, but bump a less senior position in your cuts,” she said.
“The budget numbers are not exact,” said Baird. “The missing component is staff recommendations. We will get the hard numbers for any recommendations and put them on the list for subsequent meetings.”
“I would like to know grade-by-grade class size reductions,” said clerk Rikki Horne.
“Also how many staff would be affected, if we eliminate it,” President Linda Taylor added.
Possible strategy plans presented to the board included one-year, two-year and quick-response plans. Baird said that, at this point, administration is recom-mending a two-year plan because it would be the least disruptive to the curriculum. “In a one-year plan, you essentially make all the cuts you need to make, but you have nothing left to cut the next year,” he said. “In a two-year plan you say let’s do some nasty cuts, but not all in year one and go into the reserves, knowing we still don’t have the end to the two-year solution, but in case something else could be done. But you have to refill your reserves the next year. Right now, I’m leaning toward the two-year plan because the one-year looks really devastating and you’ve used one-time monies.”
The quick response plan involves negative certifications that bring in the state and help districts qualify for 20-year emergency loans. That method results in loss of board control and, usually, the superintendent, substituting a state manager to make decisions based on financial assets and not necessarily the students’ best interest.
In the information packet, Baird included some sample plans of other California school districts going through similar struggles and that have submitted negative cert-ification budgets this year.
“Some districts are looking at rolling back salary schedules and reductions of work days,” Baird said. OUSD currently has 184 work days and must have at least 180.
Two public speakers were critical of the way OUSD has handled the budgeting process. “I feel you are completely unrealistic to use the governor’s October budget,” said Bill Gilbreth. “If you don’t really look at what is likely to be, you’re likely to make the wrong decision.” Gilbreth pointed to that opinion as why he did not support Measure P in the most recent election. The measure proposed a seven-year tax of $89 per parcel in the OUSD boundaries.
Pusatere said that the district was awaiting an update from the state sometime next month, which is why some of the estimates are unknown.
“If you don’t cut salaries, you’re not showing the public that you’re taking honest cuts,” said Ron Wilson. “I think overall your service is outstanding, but it’s a very, very difficult process for the public to understand.”
“I can appreciate what Bill and Mr. Wilson have to say because we know this is dire,” said Kathleen Smith, “but we have to look at everything.”
“What’s upsetting me is that my kindergartner is not going to get the same education that I received,” said parent Marianne Ratcliff. “Ojai should be ashamed of itself for not passing the parcel tax. Mr. Gilbreth’s letter to the editor made me angry and I wasn’t angry tonight until I just heard it again. I’m dedicated to raising the $7,000 to put another parcel tax on the ballot and swaying Mr. Gilbreth to write another letter to the editor encouraging support.”
“I appreciate your efforts and that you are continuing to work on this,” district employee Chuck Crawford told the board. “I understand categorical funding, but it’s hard to explain that to someone who’s just lost their job.”
Meiners Oaks teacher John Hook boiled down the emotions associated with the meeting. “What is going to happen to the children, with no support services for students who are struggling?” he asked. “We need to realize what we’ll be losing in human terms.”
“And as we shed employees, it impacts the economy here,” said vice president Smith.
“As a union, I think it’s time to put our differences aside and work together in these difficult times,” said Martha Ditchfield, president of the Ojai Federation of Teachers .
“In January, we will find out about our midyear cuts,” said Taylor. “On Jan. 13, we’ll have a continuation of our budget discussion and have more specific numbers. School funding is very complicated with all its categoricals and how it’s spent and how we need to get loans every year because we don’t get the money we’re supposed to. I appreciate people who keep coming to these meetings.”
“I want to thank John Hook and those people who talked about the faces of our employees,” said Horne. “All of these people represent our students and that’s why we’re all here. The thought of obliterating the school district that my daughter still attends is devastating.”

Avary Pleads Not Guilty To Manslaughter

2008-12-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

Oscar-winning writer appears in court

By Daryl Kelley
Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary pleaded not guilty Friday to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, resulting from a late-night car crash near Ojai in January in which a man was killed and Avary's wife was injured.
Defense attorney Mark Werksman entered not guilty pleas to three main felony counts and five special circumstances, while a grim 43-year-old Avary, who won an Academy Award for 'Pulp Fiction' in 1994, stood before a Superior Court judge to answer charges that could result in 11 years in prison.
Judge Bruce Clark granted motions to split a blood sample taken from Avary so the defense can confirm – or rebut – prosecution findings that the defendant had a blood-alcohol level of .11 when the tragic accident occurred just near Boardman Road on Ojai Avenue. A blood-alcohol level of .08 or greater constitutes drunken driving in California.
Clark also allowed the defense to examine the 2000 Mercedes sedan Avary was driving when he failed to maneuver a turn shortly after midnight on Jan. 13 and crashed into a telephone pole in front of Ojai Lumber.
Later Friday, a judge left Avary's bail at $50,000, compared with a statutory recommendation of $80,000, because the defendant has appeared at every court date and prosecutors did not object to the lower bail. Avary also will be allowed to travel out of the country within North America while awaiting trial.
In an interview, Werksman declined to elaborate on the his client's defense, or the strength of the case against Avary.
But previously he had said Avary denies being under the influence of alcohol, was not speeding and thinks the crash was caused by a tire blowout.
And Werksman said Friday that Avary wants the case to be resolved promptly.
“We're going to resolve this as soon as we can,” Werksman said. “But we have a duty to do some investigation to resolve the cause of the accident and the validity of the chemical test that was done.”
In charges filed Wednesday, prosecutors maintained that Avary committed several crimes while driving under the influence of alcohol, when his car skidded and crashed, killing a visitor from Italy and seriously injuring the screenwriter's wife.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Lief said in an interview that the case against Avary is solid.
“This is not the kind of case where the deal is going to get better for him as time goes on,” Lief said.
“There were positive results for alcohol and for another controlled substance as well (in toxicological tests).”
Lief would not say what the other drug was that was purportedly detected.
The first felony count against Avary is gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, which carries a basic sentence of 10 years in prison, and one additional year considering the circumstances of this case, Lief said.
Avary is also charged with driving under the influence and causing injury, with a so-called special circumstance of causing “great bodily injury,” which could carry a penalty of three years in prison, plus another three years for the special circumstance.
Thirdly, Avary is charged with causing injury while driving with a blood alcohol level of at least .08 percent, with another great bodily injury special circumstance. This charge also carries a potential six-year sentence.
If convicted of all charges, Avary might serve them at the same time, although a judge could impose the penalties consecutively, lengthening the basic 11-year sentence.
“The bottom line is he's facing up to 10 years in prison,” said Bill Haney, supervising attorney for the felony unit of the District Attorney's Office.
But if Avary has no previous criminal record, a maximum sentence would be unlikely, authorities said.
It took nearly a year for prosecutors to file the charges, Haney said, because the investigation was so thorough, with a crime scene analysis and follow-up questioning of witnesses. An elaborate accident re-construction was part of the investigation, authorities have said.
“We've done extensive follow-up and investigation on this,” Haney said. “This has been very thoroughly researched. The Sheriff's Department has done extensive work and responded to every request we've given them.”
Haney said the thoroughness of the investigation was not determined by Avary's celebrity or the quality of his legal counsel. Werksman, a former federal prosecutor, is a prominent criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles.
“We are very thorough in every case of this nature,” Haney said. “We follow the facts and investigate the case.”
After arraignment, prosecutors must show at a preliminary hearing that they have enough evidence to warrant a trial. A court date was set for February 20 to determine whether the defense was ready to proceed to that evidentiary hearing.
Key evidence in the case, defense lawyer Werksman has said, will be the results of blood samples taken to determine the screenwriter's alcohol level after the crash, and the type of damage to Avary's automobile.
“There are things we can't learn without court orders once the case is filed,'' he said.
In rare cases, new tests of blood alcohol levels in DUI cases have yielded different results in Ventura County, but authorities have said that such historical problems were remedied long ago.
Werksman said in a previous interview that once charges were filed “we can begin to work toward resolution of this case. ... We can't determine the true cause of this accident until ... we have an opportunity to inspect the vehicle and examine the district attorney's evidence.”
Andreas Zini, 34, who was visiting Avary from Italy, died in the single-car crash, apparently from internal injuries, authorities said. His wife, Maria Julia Zini, has returned to Italy, and her representative, attorney Tom Donovan of Santa Monica, said he would have no immediate comment on behalf of the victim's family.
Avary's wife, Gretchen, also suffered serious injuries after being thrown from the car when it crashed in front of Ojai Lumber Co. on East Ojai Avenue. According to police, Avary failed to negotiate a turn in the highway and crashed into a power pole.
Avary was uninjured in the accident, but his 40-year-old wife was found lying in the road next to the couple's sedan. She was transported to Ojai Valley Community Hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. She was released about a week later as she recovered from a ruptured bladder.
Avary, a screenwriter, director and producer, remains free on a $50,000 bail bond.
“This is a tragic case, and Roger is devastated,” Werksman said. “He feels terrible for the Zini family, whose lose is incalculable.”

Ojai gavels in new council

2008-12-11T16:47:00.000-08:00

Council votes to take over public access TV, while DeVito sworn in for turn as mayor

By Nao Braverman

After returning Councilwoman Sue Horgan, newly elected Councilwoman Betsy Clapp and City Clerk Carlon Strobel were officially welcomed to their positions, and Joe DeVito took the mayor’s seat, the City Council took a somber turn.
Welcoming remarks and congratulations were followed by a series of declamations from concerned citizens about the health hazards of pesticides.
“What really woke me up was that I got a diagnosis of breast cancer,” said Ojai resident Suzanne Freddie. “I have been waking up to these issues and I know that there is some connection between cancer and pesticides.”
Her remarks were followed by another Ojai woman who broke into tears describing a 2-year-old boy in her neighborhood who had also been diagnosed with cancer. She was concerned that pesticides could have been part of the cause.
They were followed by three other speakers from a citizens group advocating for a pesticide-free Ojai. Patty Pagaling said that Fairfax, Calif., had become officially pesticide free and that Ojai had several models to follow if the city were to create an ordinance banning pesticides.
Councilwoman Sue Horgan asked city manager Jere Kersnar to prepare a report on what pesticides are being used in the city.
Later at the meeting council members hesitantly adopted the first reading of an ordinance that would allow the city to collect a 1 percent franchise fee earmarked for public, educational and governmental television programming support.
Time Warner Cable’s decision to franchise with the state will leave public access programming in the hands of the city, starting in January. The 1 percent franchise fee, all the city is entitled to after the expiration of its franchise agreement with Time Warner, comes out to a measly $17,600 annually, not nearly enough to pay for running a public access station. Since the city doesn’t have available funding to continue to provide public access programming, interested residents have rallied together to drum up a way to keep public access television in Ojai. Ojai Valley News reporters Sondra Murphy and Linda Harmon said that the newspaper could provide news content for the station.
“We believe that two things, a well-informed populous and a platform for informing the populous are paramount to open up avenues of growth and potential, strengthening Ojai as a community,” said Harmon. “We see communication as key, and cable as a vastly underutilized tool to achieve that goal.” Nordhoff High School principal Dan Musick suggested that the high school take on this project as part of its educational program.
“We see this as a golden opportunity for our students to have real world opportunities and job skills,” he said. “We would like to get the extra 1 percent from Time Warner and run the program as a business.”
But Public Works director Mike Culver said that the 1 percent funding from Time Warner was restricted for the purchase of equipment only, and could not be used to pay school staff to run the program.
The ordinance adopted Tuesday night was just the first reading, and could be implemented only after the second reading at a future meeting.
Horgan said she was uncomfortable adopting the ordinance without a concrete plan, but voted to do so with the condition that a road map for an Ojai public access program be established before a second reading is brought to the council.
Harmon and Murphy said that they needed the commitment from the city in order to qualify for funds that would enable interested residents to set up a public access program. The first reading of the ordinance was adopted with unanimous support.
To the relief of Franklin Street residents, the council agreed to approve a lien on the longtime eyesore on the corner of Franklin and Montgomery streets in downtown Ojai. The out-of-town property owner, Edward Cheverie, had not responded to requests to clean up the substandard residential duplex after a vehicle crashed into one of the properties, and a tree fell onto one of the rooftops later on. Cheverie owes the city $92,989 in cumulative fines.
Ojai Avenue passersby may stop and rest as they stroll from store to store this holiday season. The City Council approved an amendment to the Arcade design allowing for benches. The resolution supports a new program that will allow business owners to purchase benches and install them in the Arcade Plaza with a bronze plaque that displays the name of the owner. Councilwoman Horgan asked for the program to be open to citizens as well as merchants, so that anyone can install a bench in the arearcade. Interested citizens should contact city staff.
In other council news, the council voted to allocate $10,000 to Youth Employment Services, a referral agency that places Ojai Valley teens in local jobs. Several Ojai teens accompanied the Ojai Valley Youth Foundation’s executive director to petition for the funding.
“This program has helped me pay for things that my parents would otherwise be unable to afford,” said Ojai Valley teen Eryn Johnson. She said that her mother, who was already busy and stressed, was thinking about getting a second job until Johnson was able to help.The program stopped receiving funds from the city during the financial crisis in 2005. Horgan stressed that this was a one-time allocation and suggested that Youth Employment Services find a way to be self-sufficient.
The council also approved recommendations for allocation of $7,000 in Arts Commission art grants, including $1,500 for Got Strings?, a program that provides free violins to Meiners Oaks students to carry with them throughout their schooling.
Council members wavered on their decision to approve a program that starts outside of the city limits, but conceded because of commission members’ testimony that the students would later attend other schools, and that the program would eventually have an effect on the entire community. This is the first time that the city has provided funding for the arts grants since funds were depleted during the city’s financial crisis several years ago.
“This is a pretty gutsy move, especially when you got the arts grants back,” said Horgan, “but I am reluctantly willing to go along with your recommendation tonight.”
Steve Velkey announced results from his Make Ojai Better survey of 998 people at Tuesday night’s meeting. The top issue that concerned survey participants was increasing youth activities. Becoming a green city, preserving public and increasing affordable housing in Ojai trailed closely behind.

School district sends up warning on dwindling cash

2008-12-11T16:45:00.001-08:00

By Sondra Murphy

For the first time in it history, Ojai Unified School District has filed a qualified budget report and is projecting that it may not be able to meet its financial obligations in the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years.
In preparing its interim report for the governing board, OUSD assistant superintendent of business and administrative services Dannielle Pusatere has determined that, based on current financial projections from the state of California, the school district may not be able to sustain any more deficits and remain fiscally solvent.
School district administrators are required to submit two reports to the governing board each fiscal year, the first covering the financial and budgetary status of the district for the period ending Oct. 31. Reports are then either certified as positive, qualified or negative. Qualified certifications may pertain to the current year and/or the subsequent two years. In the case of OUSD, its dwindling cash reserves are also impacting the certification status.
“This is the big crisis in Ojai, right here, right now,” said OUSD superintendent Tim Baird during Wednesday’s public forum about the budget. “We qualified because of the magnitude of the state cuts. How can you sustain those reductions and remain solvent? These are some of the things the board is going to have to grapple with. There’s a point where you simply won’t be able to cut anymore. You need someone to clean the classrooms or take phone calls and we’ve been down this road a long time now.”
“It’s a state and national issue of mismanagement, not an Ojai one,” said Pusatere.
About 50 community members and district supporters attended the forum, offering ideas about how to generate revenues for the financially struggling district. The informal setting allowed for dialogue between the public and administrators not possible in the regular school board setting.
Baird gave a short presentation with an overview of how California schools are funded that explained a long history of underfunding. “It’s been an ongoing issue for many years and in Ojai for a long time,” Baird said. Because property taxes fund public schools, more affluent areas were able to offer better academic opportunities for students until laws were passed in the 1970s to try to balance inequities. Later laws that lowered property taxes resulted in fewer revenues for schools, which were never replaced, and schools began to feel the financial strain in the 1980s and 1990s.
The presentation reminded the crowd that schools receive funds based on average daily attendance, a costly and time-consuming process that must be submitted regularly. In Ojai, declining enrollment that began about 10 years ago has further limited its revenues and OUSD has been compensating for that every year since. “One of the reasons Ojai is more vulnerable than other districts is because we’ve been making cuts longer than most other schools,” Baird said. “We provide a stellar education for our students in terms of arts, athletics, performing arts, and so on. We are not a failing district, but we are at risk of losing this. I plead guilty to the fact that we have done a very good job keeping this out of the classrooms, but we need help now.”
Pusatere said that the 2008-2009 fiscal year is most likely to remain balanced if the state does not renege on funding promises, as feared.
“Remember, the state owes you $1.8 million next year,” Baird told the board at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Not to mention $800,000 that they were supposed to give us this year that you’ll never see,” Pusatere tacked on.
The district spent most of last spring whittling at its $25 million budget in order to cut more than $1 million. Now that declining enrollment is impacting other state districts due to lower birth rates and higher housing costs in many California locations, OUSD is competing for relief against educational brethren. Even private schools have reported declines in enrollment.
The board was able to keep all district schools open this year and retain class size reductions in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, thanks to the Save Ojai Schools campaign efforts of the Ojai Education Foundation and parent organizations last spring. Everything is back on the table for possible cuts for the 2009-2010 school year because of the state budget crisis, including using its mandated 3 percent reserve funds, which would have to be replaced the following year. When the fiscal year’s budget was eventually settled in October, schools received funds that now may be withdrawn in light of the severe situation the state finds itself in. “Any new money we got in October we set aside because it’s likely we’ll have to give that back,” said Baird. “The state has to fix its cash flow problem before we can fix ours.”
“The distressing thing is how hard our staff has worked to try and keep our schools providing a great curriculum,” said Linda Taylor, newly appointed school board president.
“This is how it’s going to affect us, right in the classrooms, and we’ve kept it from the classrooms so far,” said clerk Rikki Horne.
“And this is a game the state is playing to balance their cash,” said member Steve Fields.
With California’s current budget disaster, state lawmakers have hinted at rescinding cost of living increases and categorical funds given in October when they finally haggled through a budget so its public agencies, programs and schools could continue serving the public.
“The big disappointment now is that the parcel tax didn’t pass,” said Baird. “Out of 11,000 votes that were cast, Measure P lost by 77 votes. The way the rules are structured, the minority wins.” A needed two-thirds majority fell less than 1 percent shy of the 66.67 percent margin needed for the measure to have passed. Baird estimated the measure could have generated about $600,000 per year for seven years.
Over the next two years, Pusatere said OUSD expects to need to cut $2.4 million in order to create balanced budgets. Closing schools, cutting arts programs, canceling all sports, eliminating class size reduction, raising class sizes and reducing support staff will not equal that amount. Replacing classified employees with volunteers was brought up as a possible solution to the financial burdens.
Baird said that, like advertisements on school buses, ignoring contracts is illegal and is unlikely to solve the problem anyway. “Last time I checked, none of our employees were overpaid,” he said. “Our staff works very hard for our students and it’s hard to take that away. Teachers and classified employees have been very collaborative in the budget process. Staff always puts the students first.” Salaries and benefits use about 87 percent of OUSD revenues.
The district is in the midst of getting bids for lease development of its downtown district office property. Besides administration, the site houses Chaparral High School and Auditorium, transportation and bus yards and day care facilities. Baird said that about 15 companies have indicated interest and they will know more about those efforts next month when the bidding window closes.
Pusatere said federal sources of OUSD revenues total $1.7 million and lottery funds generate $400,000. Loss of state revenues from sources such as the vehicle license tax, and corporate tax breaks have contributed to the state’s fiscal hardships.
Some community members like Kathy Smith are trying to begin a campaign to encourage voters who supported Measure P to send in an $89 annual donation, the amount per parcel the measure would have allocated to OUSD. Other parents are starting to mobilize fundraising efforts around programs and schools that they have a stake in protecting and thought that they might be able to work with local banks to create a program that may deduct $10 per month from participating customers wanting to donate to OUSD.
Others at the forum raised the possibility of offering community college courses at the high school or finding professional teams that might be interested in using the stadium to help generate revenues. Baird said that some dialogue has been initiated with Ventura College and Santa Barbara City College to bring courses into Ojai, but no agreement has yet been reached.
The possibility of California receiving a federal bailout is circulating among lawmakers and the district hopes that, if it materializes, schools will be one of the beneficiaries, but is not counting on fate when planning its next budgets. Facing possible midyear cuts of more than $1 million would be devastating to OUSD. “Unlike the federal government, unlike California, OUSD has to come up with a balanced budget,” said Baird. “Collectively, state schools are bigger than General Motors. Just in terms of dollar economics, investing in our children, our future, promises bigger dividends than a new car series in 2010.”
Baird acknowledged that in hard financial times, it is challenging to raise support. “Our schools depend a lot on local fund raising and business,” he said. “We’re asking more from people who have less, which is basically what the state is doing to us. Somebody needs to explain to these kids why they don’t deserve the same quality education we got.”
The district is closely watching state school districts, like King City, that filed qualified budgets last year and are now in the middle of state receivership. As part of that process, King City has gotten a local legislator to sponsor a request for an emergency loan. “Schools cannot close,” said Baird. “It is a state mandate that schools must provide free education to students.” He added that with state takeover, the superintendent is normally fired, the school board loses local control and state administrating staff makes all the decisions. “We’ve seen they’re all about the budget and not education,” Baird said.
OUSD encourages the public to continue sending in ideas and has budget information and articles posted on its web site. There is a link people may use to e-mail their ideas to Baird, who said the board will consider all legal suggestions. OUSD’s web site is ojai.k12.ca.us. Baird’s e-mail address is tbaird@ojai.k12.ca.us.
There will be a special budget study session of the OUSD board of education Monday at 4 p.m. in the OUSD office, 414 E. Ojai Ave., Room 1. Public comments will be taken.

OVN holiday submission deadlines announced

2008-12-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

Deadlines will be earlier for the papers coming out the weeks of Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. The deadline for both the Dec. 24 and 26 issues will be Friday, Dec. 19, by noon. The deadline for both the Dec. 31 and Jan. 2 issues will be Friday, Dec. 26, by noon.

Pine Mountain-Reyes Peak Road Closed

2008-12-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

The popular Pine Mountain-Reyes Peak Road in the Ventura County portion of Los Padres National Forest is now closed to vehicles for the winter. Ojai District Ranger John Bridgewater said the temporary closure is needed to prevent damage to the road surface during wet weather. The closure may be lifted during periods of dry weather and the road will remain open at all times to foot traffic. Pine Mountain-Reyes Peak Road (Forest Road 6N06) intersects Highway 33 32 miles north of Ojai. It provides access to Pine Mountain and Reyes Peak campgrounds and the Reyes Peak Trailhead.

Caltrans postpones bridge building, again

2008-12-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

San Antonio Creek spanned by detour while bridge rebuilding effort expected to be complete in one year

By Nao Braverman

Caltrans has delayed the reconstruction of the San Antonio Creek Bridge, once again. But fortunately for East End commuters, a solid sizable but temporary detour, taking residents through the creek bottom, is now complete.
The reconstruction project, which began in October, was expected to take about six months, said Public Works Director Mike Culver. Now Caltrans spokesperson Maria Raptis says construction of the rebuilt bridge should be complete by December 2009.
Caltrans had obtained a permit to construct the new bridge during the rainy season to expedite the process, but called off winter construction plans when the Department of Fish and Game only offered them a permit that would have to be renewed every 15 days, said Culver.
“They decided it would be too much of a hassle to start up construction if they might have to take it down again” he said. Now demolition of the existing 91-year-old bridge will begin in April.
But if constructing through the raining season was expected to be inconvenient, taking down the detour may be just as cumbersome. Ojai city staff have questioned the efficiency, size, cost, and engineering of what is supposed to be a temporary detour.
“I have previously noted that I felt the detour was dramatically oversized and was misaligned so that downstream bank erosion was very likely in the event of any significant storm,” wrote city engineer Glen Hawks to the Caltrans project manager, Steve Novotny.
Culver said that the detour alone was estimated by city staff to have cost in excess of $1 million.
The full two-lane 28-foot wide detour has concrete culverts in the river and concrete retaining walls.
“If they are just going to be torn down, it’s wasteful in our opinion,” said Culver.
“The retaining walls, besides being costly to construct will be equally costly to remove,” wrote Hawks in his letter to Caltrans. He noted that the city was not given an opportunity to comment on the detour design, and would have been able to save Caltrans some of the cost.
Since it did look sturdy, however, some local residents suggested putting the detour to use and saving the agency the cost of demolition. If it stayed in the river bottom, the detour could be used for bicycle and pedestrian crossing once the bridge is reconstructed, suggested Suza Francina, a member of the Ojai Valley Green Coalition Transportation Board.
But when public works staff wrote to Caltrans asking to keep the detour for bicycles and pedestrians, they were denied. The temporary crossing does not meet 100-year flood standards required for the creek, according to Caltrans, and it would not be allowed remain in place beyond the scope of the project. Raptis added that the detour was constructed on private property and that Caltrans was given a temporary easement by the property owner for construction of the detour.
The new bridge design does look promising for Ojai bicyclists, at least more so than the one that’s being demolished this Spring.
While the existing bridge is 24-feet-wide curb to curb. The new bridge will be 40 feet wide, curb to curb with 12 foot traffic lanes and an eight foot shoulder on either side, plenty room for bicycles. While many bicycle enthusiasts agree, it would have been nice to have a separate lane, the cost of an additional structure would be in excess of $1 million which the city itself would have to pay for, said Culver. It would be an additional expense for which there are no funds available, he said.
The new bridge, which should be constructed by January will not be officially complete until the landscaping has been fully established a year later, said Raptis.

Ground broken for new Ojai ER

2008-12-09T16:47:00.001-08:00

$1.8 million facility will be double the size of existing emergency room

By Nao Braverman

Ground breaking for the Ojai Valley Community Hospital’s new Emergency Room was celebrated by about 100 people on Thursday, including physicians, nurses, Emergency Room staff, members of the OVCH Foundation, the OVCH Guild, and the local community.
“It was a real sharing of the progress that has been made,” said Nita Whaley, a board member of the OVCH Foundation.
In the year 2000, a community survey by the OVCH Foundation showed an improved Emergency Room was a top priority.
After OVCH’s merger with Community Memorial Hospital two and a half years ago, Ojai resident Chilant Sprague, who passed away this fall, provided the seed money for the Emergency Room. The Community Memorial Hospital then agreed to provide additional funds and partner with the OVCH Foundation and OVCH Guild to build the facility.
The new Emergency Room will be twice the size of the old one, going from three beds to six, and will offer greater privacy and comfort for patients and their family, said Whaley. A new waiting and admitting area will also be added to the facility.
The community is paying for at least half of the $1.8 million project through the OVCH Foundation and OVCH Guild.
“The proceeds from the last three Nightingale Balls, which were very successful, have gone toward the Emergency Room,” said Whaley. Construction is expected to be completed next summer, she said.

Thacher School Teens Found Safe

2008-12-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

UPDATED: Tuesday, 2:15 p.m.
Missing Students Located

By Sondra Murphy
The Thacher School community experienced an anxious weekend after two boarding students failed to check into their dormitories Friday evening. George Nicholas Skan and Tyler Collins Cook were last seen between 7:30 and 9 p.m. Because neither student left clues on their computer and left their cell phones and wallets at school, the school went into high alert.
Both students were located safe Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the Santa Barbara Airport, where, according to a Sheriff's Department press release, they were attempting to board an airplane to an undisclosed destination. "We are delighted they were found and are with their families, which is where they should be," said Thacher School headmaster Michael K. Mulligan. "A phone call was made by Tyler to her mother, who responded quickly, and they were found by virtue of good work by KEYT-TV." Cook and Skan were soon reunited with their worried families.
Little detail was available at press time. "This was one of those situations where we had to raise all the flags," said Mulligan. "I just spoke with them and their response was they decided to do this 'take-off road trip' without much thought. It's an example of the prefrontal cortex not being fully developed at this age."
The Thacher School issued a press release thanking all who participated in the search for the missing students. "The Thacher School, the Skans, and the Cooks would like to thank the Ventura County Sheriff's office for their tireless efforts and help, the countless Search and Rescue professionals who combed the backcountry by horseback, foot and air, and the Thacher faculty and students," read the press release. "Thacher and the students' parents are relieved and thankful that they are safe and healthy."
"Thanks to the help and attention focused on this by the news media," said Mulligan, "this matter has been brought to closure with the best outcome that anyone could have hoped for."
The school also expressed gratitude to the Ojai, Ventura and Santa Barbara communities "for their diligence, perseverance, and willingness to communicate information" on the students' disappearance.

UPDATED Monday, 4:05 p.m.
Missing Thacher students

By Sondra Murphy
A search is still under way for two boarding students of The Thacher School who last seen together Friday evening between 7:30 and 9 p.m. George Nicholas Skan is described as a white male, 16 years old, 6’1”, 170 pounds with brown hair and eyes. He has some bald patches in his hair, was last seen wearing a gray hoodie sweatshirt, red shirt, blue jeans and sneakers with the word “money” on them.
Tyler Collins Cook is described as a white female, 5’9”, 140 pounds, brown eyes and was last seen wearing a gray hat, blue and green poncho, brown turtleneck shirt, blue jeans with white paint on them and brown slippers. Her hair is brown but has sun streaks that may make her hair appear blonde.
At 10:30 Friday night, it was discovered that Skan and Cook, who are reportedly romantically involved, had not checked into their dormitories following an on-campus movie. Within 15 minutes, search parties mobilized across the campus and nearby trails on foot and horseback until 3 a.m. Saturday.
The search resumed at 6 a.m. Saturday with an extensive air and ground search involving sheriff’s helicopters, 44 urban search and rescue personnel, bloodhounds and volunteers.
“After a further daylight search, we called the police and made a missing minor report. That report is in the statewide system. Ventura County Search and Rescue will begin work in the backcountry shortly. In addition, Cam Schryver has organized a group of upper class riders to comb the adjacent trails,” wrote assistant head of school Peter G. Robinson in a Saturday letter for Thacher parents.
According to Thacher’s director of communications, Chris Land, the search in the area around Thacher uncovered no sign of either student by Sunday and the rescue aspect of the effort was called off, shifting the focus to the urban areas of Ojai, Ventura and beyond.
“The families have not heard anything from the students,” said Land. “There has been no cell phone activity and no bank card activity to help locate them. It has been alarmingly quiet.” He added that they have found no sign of pre-planning by either Skan or Cook to help in the search.
“Anyone at Thacher who might know anything about this has been interviewed,” said Land. “The focus of the search is now on transportation out of the valley.”
Thacher held a press conference Monday at 2 p.m. to distribute photos and give an update on the search efforts. Sherrif’s Capt. Ross Bonfiglio reported that search dogs followed the teenagers’ scents to Reeves Road and stopped. Bonfiglio speculated that Cook and Skan may have gotten into a car at that point.
Possible Monday morning sightings in the Dennison Park area “did not appear to be them,” according to Bonfiglio during the press conference.
Skan’s parents, Paul and Jean Skan, flew down from Alaska in time to attend Monday’s press conference. Paul Skan said his son is a “quiet kid.” Jean Skan called her son, “just a normal teenager.” Cook’s parents were on their way to Ojai during the press conference.
The Thacher School is a coeducational boarding high school located four miles east of the City of Ojai. The 425-acre campus abuts the Los Padres National Forrest and currently enrolls 215 boarding students and 20 day students from 26 states and nine countries.
Anyone who has seen the teenagers or has information on their whereabouts is urged to contact the 24-hour tip line at 654-2417.

Trees top talks

2008-12-04T16:55:00.000-08:00

Planners direct city staff to work on tree master plan

By Nao Braverman

Ojai’s residents have been known as tree huggers, literally. In the year 2000, one local citizen once climbed an oak slated for demise in Libbey Park and refused to get out until the police were called.
Local officials, parti-cularly, members of the Planning Commission and City Council have also have expressed the desire to create a plan that will help preserve Ojai’s canopy.
“We all kind of take trees for granted, but healthy trees mean a healthy community,” said Tom Bostrom, chairman of the Ojai Tree Committee.
Ojai, particularly known for its clean air and rustic charm, would lose both those characteristics without its urban forest, Bostrom explained in his report presented to the Planning Commission Wednesday night.
The Tree Committee has identified the community forest in Ojai as an aging tree population in less-than-average health, he said.
To address the problem, Bostrom and the committee have drafted 11 goals, essentially a foundation for a tree master plan. Both Planning Commission and City Council have recently shown interest in implementing a plan for local trees.
Among those goals are establishing maximum tree cover, maintaining trees in healthy condition through proper care, preserving native trees, and promoting tree conservation.
Commissioner Steven Foster asked Bostrom how he felt about becoming a Tree City USA, which would cost the city funds, for a status with no tangible benefits.
Though the City Council had shown interest in obtaining Tree City USA status, Bostrom said he didn’t see that as a priority.
“Would you rather have a healthy tree plan, or a plaque on the wall?” he asked. “We have been trying to get a tree master plan going for years, and a tree master plan is required in order to become a Tree City USA. Let’s get a plan going first because in my opinion we don’t deserve to be a Tree City USA just yet.”
Commissioners agreed to direct staff to draft a tree master plan with the Tree Committee’s goals as a foundation, which would later be integrated into the city’s general plan.
City manager Jere Kersnar said that Ojai was a tree-conscious community that hadn’t implemented any concrete tree-friendly planning practices.
“We could have selected street cross sections that allow for a parkway, but we haven’t,” he said. “It will take decades to reverse that, but we have to start somewhere.”
In other planning news, commissioners approved a modification to the Herb Garden Family Pool project at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. A proposed teen center was changed to a fitness center which has a considerable lower roof line. The inn’s executive director Janis Clapoff said the concept of the project changed because the inn is beginning to market toward a different demographic. The new marketing direction is aimed at business conferences, and children would be allowed, she said.

Ojai’s Light Brigade

2008-12-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

Help of Ojai’s dynamic duo electrify the ‘Y’ tree

By Sondra Murphy

Ojai Valley residents get a boost of cheer each holiday season when they see the “Peace on Earth” sign lit up next to the holiday tree at Maricopa Highway and Ojai Avenue.
Help of Ojai will light the holiday tree at the “Y” shopping center today. This year’s lighting ceremony includes entertainment by the Ojai Community Choir Youth Ensemble and Ojai Acapella Choir, directed by Candace Delbo.
The tree-lighting event has developed over the years into an honored ritual through the efforts of volunteers and coordi-nation by Marvin Hanson and Tom Jamison. Preparation for the big night is a lengthy process that Jamison and Hanson have perfected. “Marv and I have been doing this for about 100 years,” said Jamison, but also estimated seven years. “We were both on the board of directors with Help of Ojai and both of us served on the Building and Grounds Committee.”
“Help asked us to do the decorating and we said yes,” said Hanson.
The tree’s lights were originally connected to the shopping center’s parking lot electrical system, but were later wired independently. “It didn’t have many lights at the time and a lot of Christmas ornaments,” said Jamison. “When someone wanted to memorialize someone who died, they would put up an ornament for them.”
The pair experimented with different decor each year and gradually added lights. “I’d estimate we put 10,000 lights on that tree a few years ago,” Jamison said. “We made a star out of metal and tied it to the tree and that came out great. Vertical lights didn’t work too well and one year we took some white cotton-type material that looked like snow. That didn’t work too well. When the rains hit it, it looked terrible.”
Barry Carlos and family have volunteered many times to decorate the tree and made the metal star, which is about 6 feet in diameter. “It’s pretty significant in size and has stayed up there for five years, now,” said Hanson.
As more lights were added, the men discovered it drew too much power. “The lights started blowing out in the stores, so that didn’t work out either,” said Jamison. “Then Help hooked up directly to an Edison meter behind Attitude Adjustment. It takes an act of congress to do that. Then we bored underneath the parking lot and created a junction box by the tree.”
“The property owner, Dean Vadnais, was willing to give us the power, but it just took too much energy,” added Hanson. “Just to run electricity out here cost about $4,000.”
Jamison credits Denise Reams with the idea of establishing a separate electrical source for the tree. “We got a special rate for the power, it’s on standby in the summer, so it costs about $200 a month to run the lights,” said Jamison. “Our annual donations for this are about $1,500. Thanks to the contributions of the community, Help can continue to do it.”
Hanson and Jamison leave the lights up year round and then replace bulbs as each December nears. Low voltage lights are used near the bottom of the tree.
They have been working on preparations for this year’s lighting ceremony for a couple of months. “Help of Ojai really does it for the community,” said Jamison of their labor of love.
“We have six main circuits that go up the tree, then two for the signs,” Jamison said. “The star alone takes one and all of that needs to be regulated so you don’t overload the system.”
Jamison added that the lighting is now set on a timer to run 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. each night. The pair planned to give it a test run before tonight. “If all goes well, the tree should light up at 5 p.m. on the dot,” said Jamison. “If it doesn’t, Marv and I are going to take off.”
The lighting ceremony is set to begin at 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served.
For more information, contact Help of Ojai at 646-5122.

Council weighs risks on new housing plan

2008-12-04T16:51:00.000-08:00

State formula would require Ojai to allow up to 427 new units by 2014, deadline to be certified already past

By Nao Braverman

If the city of Ojai wants to follow the rules of the state of California and make room for new housing, it looks as if some of its boasted assets, clean air, water and quality of life, would likely be at stake.
A look at some surrounding cities shows that a very small number of municipalities have not followed the state’s requirements, with little consequence. Others have defied the state’s rules and faced costly litigation. No cities in Ventura County have had their plans certified yet.
At a special City Council meeting Tuesday evening, council members revisited the Housing Element, a required plan to accommodate new housing to be certified by the state’s Housing and Community Development Department.
The topic was last discussed in May when council members said they were not ready to adopt a plan to accommodate the 427 new housing units required by the state.
While council members all agreed that they would like to provide affordable housing for Ojai’s work force, they were not ready to open the door to the development of 427 new units, a housing increase that does not coincide with the city’s pre-existing growth management plan.
At a prior discussion of the topic, council members said they were not entirely opposed to defying the state’s mandates. They had asked consultants and city staff to look into the consequences of not complying with the state requirements.
“We have to decide what level of risk we are comfortable with,” said Mayor Sue Horgan on Tuesday. “If we provide affordable housing in the way the state wants us to do, I think that is a risk for our quality of life in Ojai. If we don’t follow the state’s mandates, we are opening ourselves up to litigation from developers. Is that more risky than providing a road map for developers to exploit Ojai?”
Housing consultant Tom Figg presented three Housing Element options that the city could pursue. The first plan, the most likely to be accepted by the HCD, allows for new development of new units primarily through housing overlays which allow property owners to build residential units on land that is zoned for commercial development. That is essentially the same plan, rejected by the council, that Figg presented months earlier.
The second option, though less likely to be approved by HCD, proposes to increase affordable housing in ways that will be less likely to add as many new developments, such as turning existing non-compliant units into permitted homes. The second option also accommodates new development, though not as much as the first option. The third option is essentially defying the state, relying primarily on existing housing, and linking new development projects with non-resident employees of local businesses.
“As a professional consultant, I continue to promote option No. 1,” said Figg, “because it is the most likely to get you certified.”
If HCD receives a housing plan for Ojai that the department contends does not substantially comply with the Housing Element law, then the city must either change their plan in accordance with HCD’s requirements, or self-certify. Self-certification means that the city adopts the plan that has not been certified by the state’s HCD, but makes findings as to why it thinks the plan does comply with the law.
If a city with an HCD-certified plan gets sued by developers, the state government will back them up. If it gets sued with a self-certified plan, the city is on its own.
While 20 percent of California communities have not implemented housing plans that have been certified by HCD, all except for 8 percent hope to eventually be certified by the state.
Pismo Beach is self-certified because of its lack of available land at reasonable cost, with no consequence to date. The self-certified city of Buellton in Santa Barbara County, however, was faced with a lawsuit by California Rural Legal Assistance, which resulted in the city paying more than $360,000 in damages, and adopting programs which designated sites for high-density housing. The latter was illustrated in the council’s staff report, along with lawsuits against Fillmore and Camarillo.
Council members, still in search of ways to increase affordable housing with minimum development, showed interest in a new bill that was passed to address foreclosures. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 allows local governments to purchase foreclosed homes. Another recent law allows local governments to re-finance mortgages on owner-occupied homes, using tax-exempt bond funds. Since the housing plan does include assistance to existing households, it could use such a program in some credit toward assisting households that are at risk of losing their homes, according to Figg’s report.
A recent development also requires the city to accommodate emergency shelters and transitional housing facilities for the homeless in their plan. If the city moves forward with a housing plan it must take the latter into consideration, according to Figg.
Councilman Steve Olsen asked staff to look into more creative ways to accommodate new housing, without increasing the possibility of overwhelming build-out.
Sue Broidy, local resident and commissioner for the Area Housing Authority, urged the council to examine the need for affordable housing and opt for Figg’s proposed plan. Local residents Stan Greene, Jim Ruch and Bill Miley, pleaded for consideration of Ojai’s water, and asked for additional studies on water availability in the valley.
The urban water management plans for the Golden State Water Company and the Casitas Municipal Water District both show the availability of water, but are somewhat incomplete, according to the staff report.
Since no decision was required for the meeting Tuesday, council members agreed to resume discussing the housing plan at the Jan. 27 meeting.
Councilwoman Rae Hanstad received a standing ovation for her eight years of service at her last meeting with the council. She thanked her colleagues and members of the public, and accepted praise from fellow councilmen.
Councilwoman Carol Smith applauded her for taking the reins and leading the city through tough times during Hanstad’s term as mayor.
“The city will miss your leadership and your wisdom,” said Horgan.

Cash registers ring

2008-12-02T16:38:00.000-08:00

Local businesses report brisk holiday sales

By Linda Harmon

According to 14 out of 15 downtown businesses surveyed Monday, Ojai’s holiday shopping season is off to a robust start. Businesses noted a ground swell of local support as well as increased business from out-of-town residents and tourists spending their holiday in Ojai.
Rains department store, the traditional downtown anchor, was bustling with shoppers during its annual customer appreciation day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, offering a 20 percent discount.
“It was wonderful,” said Carol Kay, a Rains employee for over 20 years. “I heard so many people say they wanted to shop local and didn’t know what they’d do without us. We had three registers going all day and we actually did a little better this year than last.”
Kava Gifts, an Arcade gift, interiors and housewares store several shops down, also had a good beginning according to owner Hildegard Tallent.
“We had a sale too,” said Tallent, who added sales had been a little slower this year. “I think that made all the difference. People are not being as frivolous in their buying this year and want items that have more meaning and usefulness.”
According to owner Anne Helson, Down Home Furnishings, a 9-year-old home decor business in the Arcade, hasn’t even seen a downturn in sales this year.
“Things have been very good for us,” said Helson. “We have a lot of one-of-a-kind items, maybe that’s what saves me.”
At Kindred Spirit, a women’s clothing store in the Arcade, sales have also been brisk.
“We did beautifully this weekend,” said Kindred Spirit manager Mary Rynsoever. “We’ve been here 23 years and about 80 percent of our business is local.”
Rynsoever says she has had customers come in and say her prices are even $10 to $15 less than Ventura.
“They go there and then come back here,” said Rynsoever, who has worked for owners Kathy and Pat Francis for more than 12 years. “The whole year has been very good for us and we couldn’t have done that without our local shoppers. That makes us work harder for them. People comparison shop and we do it too. Kathy works at getting the best for the best price.”
Stan and Hallie Katz are the owners of another Arcade icon, Human Arts, and recently combined their two stores under one roof.
“Overall business for us has been very good and our strongest day was Saturday,” said Katz, also a fine artist in her own right. “There were lots of people on the street and we need people.”
According to the couple, they have many repeat customers and “a lot of local support.”
“We are very grateful for the momentum,” said Katz, adding, “and that Ojai is still attracting people.”
As for relative newcomer Vesta, a retail and restaurant establishment celebrating its first year in business in October, they had a very busy weekend too.
“Friday was really fabulous in the retail and the restaurant area,” said Shari Grant, manager. “Sales have really picked up in the last week.”
Off the Arcade, business seemed to be good as well.
“Sales were very, very good.” said Lilly Barthelemy, who, along with her husband, Joe, owns Serendipity Toys, behind the Arcade at 221 E. Matilija St. “Friday, Saturday and Sunday sales were actually ahead of last year’s.”
“November was the best November we’ve ever had,” said her husband with a laugh. “We had one guy who said he drives over 700 miles to shop here every year, but we’re pretty sure he has relatives here too.”
Across the parking lot at Ojai Electronics, Kelsey Martin, an employee of the Radio Shack franchise, says they met their sales goal for the weekend.
“We did really great Friday and Saturday. And Sunday we met our regular sales,” said Martin, who worked all weekend.
Around the corner, sales were also strong. Jones & Company, 307 N. Montgomery St., is a gift store offering jewelry, stationery and bath items. Ojai House, 304 N. Montgomery St., is an artist-friendly venue featuring furniture, wearable art and handmade items for the home and garden. Both are decked out for the holidays and the respective owners reported encouraging sales, with an increase over last year.
The best thing for Ojai shoppers is that almost every store has either had a sale, will have a sale or is offering a special event over the course of December. Vesta’s events will range from a holiday wine tasting Dec. 4 to a holiday tea, with Santa and a petting zoo, Dec. 14. Made in Ojai, located at 323 E. Matilija St., and featuring all local items, will have special patio sale where you can meet the artists every Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. throughout December. Ojai House will also have an artists’ boutique on their outside back patio with refreshments where customers can mingle and meet the artists, Dec. 13 and 14 from noon to 5 p.m.
Wherever you go to purchase this holiday season, the Ojai Valley Green Coalition would like you to remember to bring your own shopping bag. Don’t have one? Don’t worry. Get one at “A Day Without a Bag” Sunday, Dec. 20, where the OVGC will offer free reusable bags to the public at Vons, Starr Market, Rite Aid, Rainbow Bridge and Westridge Market while supplies last.

Friend in deed

2008-12-02T16:31:00.000-08:00

Inspired by ‘Bucket List,’ Ojai man joins pal on cross-country trip

By Sondra Murphy

When Ojai resident Jack Smart spent years in the travel industry, he never guessed his experience would lead to organizing a grand adventure that would feel like a step back in time. Last spring, Smart helped a high school friend make a “Mini Bucket Trip,” inspired, in part, by the movie, “The Bucket List.”
Smart met Sonny Rowell as a Granby, Va., high school football player in the 1940s and had not seen him for about 40 years. “In August 2007, I reunited with Sonny for 24 hours and that’s when I learned he was itching to take a trip.” Rowell was recovering from the death of his wife the year before and dealing with physical limitations brought about from type 2 diabetes and peripheral neuropathy in his legs and hands when he and Smart began planning a modest trip to visit former classmates.
The pair initially planned to visit specific people Rowell longed to see, plus tour New Orleans. “The fact that I had a travel background helped a lot,” said Smart. The friends set an itinerary that would take them 3,400 miles through 11 states for visits in Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, while driving Rowell’s specially equipped van.
Smart’s understanding of the Americans with Disabilities Act proved useful to acquiring the types of accommodations Rowell required, as he relies on a motorized scooter for his mobility. “We stayed in Motel 6 in every town except two,” said Smart. “Their interpretation is, if there is a handicap room available, then somebody like Sonny can have it. If it only has one bed, then the person helping him can have the next room at no cost. It helped keep the expenses down.”
As word spread about Rowell’s visits, other school friends began wanting to meet with him and the bucket trips abounded. Smart helped arrange visits with the former classmates until a kind of momentum grew and a surprise luncheon was organized and attended by a veritable “who’s who” from their high school yearbook in Virginia Beach last spring. Who would have known that when Rowell was voted Most Popular in 1948 the opinion would have lasted 60 years?
By the time of the March 21 luncheon, 44 guests attended, which included the Granby High School football teams from 1946 through 1948, a coach, cheerleaders, as well as many people voted Most Popular, Best Looking and Most Athletic during school. All signed photos and souvenirs for Rowell to take home with him.
“When I was putting together the luncheon, it became apparent that the Granby High football team had not had a reunion, prompting them to come,” said Smart.
Smart kept a detailed travel log of their visits and adventures, some of which only the mature can appreciate. After Rowell’s motorized cart got stuck in a public rest room door in Georgia, Smart wrote, “Lots of foot traffic. Not a pretty sight. We both came to the conclusion on our departure from the visitor’s center that we probably set back Georgia tourism 20 years.” At a South Carolina location, the scooter got stuck in the narrow aisles of a small grocery store, with the vehicle’s tires wedged so tightly against displayed 12-packs the help of an employee was required to free it.
There were other examples of southern hospitality. “We’re both pretty big guys, each is about 6-foot-3, so Motel 6 was a real hero for us.” Smart said that even with the great service, he regularly had to educate the front desk staff about the Americans with Disabilities Act at each venue.
The travel log captures the fun Smart and Rowell had during their trip. “We laughed until our sides ached. We were two young teens who just obtained our driver’s license and were ‘on the road.’ Sonny’s mishaps with his scooter were priceless,” Smart recorded. “Sonny and I agreed all of this added 10 more years to our lives. Because of mishaps and chaos everywhere we went, we had the feeling as we motored into a new state, that the previous state immediately was hanging a sign flashing ‘Please do not return.’”
Smart said the successful trip has Rowell feeling better and the experience gave him the urge to do more traveling. “Sonny really hit it off with Janet Connelley Summers,” said Smart of the former cheerleader and Granby High’s most popular female of 1948. “Sonny invited her to take a cruise with him too and they had such a great time they are now planning a trip to South America.”
Smart said his wife of 54 years, local artist Jean Smart, was very supportive of his efforts to cheer up his buddy. “She is extremely encouraging to me,” Smart said. The couple moved to Ojai in 1987 after “looking for areas more rustic and with greenery.” They have two children, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Son Joel lives in Oregon and daughter, Jody Comet, works at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa.
“When we first moved here, I was fairly well-known and people would say, ‘This is Jean, Jack’s wife.’ Now that I’m retired, they don’t know me much and say, ‘Oh, this is Jack. He’s Jean’s husband,’” Smart said. “I’m very proud of her.”

ACLU presses ahead with citizen lawsuit

2008-12-02T09:59:00.001-08:00

By Nao Braverman
The American Civil Liberties Union appealed the court's decision upholding the city of Ojai's position in the lawsuit against local citizen Jeff Furchtenicht on Monday. If accepted, the appeal will be heard by the California Supreme Court. (Read petition for review)
The court will generally decide whether to take up the case, deny it or extend their decision within 60 days, or by the end of January, according to a court clerk. If a decision is not made by then, the court can take an additional 30 days to come up with a response by the beginning of March.
But Peter Eliasberg, the ACLU attorney defending Furchtenicht, is making the case that the lawsuit is significant enough to be considered by the California Supreme Court.
"The decision that was made in the State Court of Appeals would have a dramatic effect on the initiative process," said Eliasberg. "If a person proposing an initiative is afraid of being faced with a lawsuit before getting out of the starting gate, they would think three or four times before deciding to go through the process."
That, he said, is an obstruction of a citizen's right to circulate an initiative.
In October the State Court of Appeals reversed the demurrer granted to Furchtenicht in 2006 and affirmed denial of his anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) motion against the city of Ojai.
A petition for rehearing of the lawsuit in the State Court of Appeals was denied on Nov. 18, before Eliasberg filed the appeal to the Supreme Court.
Mayor Sue Horgan and incoming Councilwoman Betsy Clapp both said at a candidate forum in October that they would not vote to spend any more money on the case if it were appealed. But neither have confirmed any promises to stick by their statements. Clapp did not answer phone calls in time for press. Horgan did say that she didn't want to spend any more money on what she considered a dead issue. However, she was not willing to speculate on how she would vote if she is wrong, and the case is taken up by the Supreme Court. Councilman Steve Olsen, Councilman Joe DeVito and Councilwoman Carol Smith all said they were not ready to comment until they had received more information and discussed the issue with city staff.
City manager Jere Kersnar said it was too early to discuss the issue. But if the case were to go to the California Supreme Court, statewide organizations such as the League of California Cities and the County Supervisors Association of California would likely get involved. If it reached that level, Ojai might not have much of a choice but to participate, he said.
The two-year-long battle between the city attorney and Furchtenicht began when Furchtenicht proposed two citizen's initiatives to the city regarding chain stores and affordable housing in August 2006.
City attorney Monte Widders declined to prepare the ballot title and summary for the initiatives, claiming that they were not submitted in the proper format, and asked Furchtenicht to withdraw them, rewrite them and resubmit them in the proper format. When he did not, Widders took Furchtenicht to court, and Furchtenicht responded with demurrer and anti-SLAPP motion. Both were denied in the State Court of Appeals.
The two-year-long battle has cost the city $93,810, according to Kersnar.

Strickland edges out Jackson

2008-11-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

By Daryl Kelley

With election officials in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties down to their final 120 uncounted votes, two tantalizingly close races on the local Nov. 4 election ballot finally appeared to be decided late Wednesday afternoon.
By the Ojai Valley News' deadline, Republican Tony Strickland maintained an apparently insurmountable lead of about 800 votes over Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson in the $10-million 19th state Senate race, despite late gains by Jackson in both Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
Only about 100 votes remain to be counted in Ventura County and just 20 in Santa Barbara County, officials said. About 65,000 votes remained to be counted in Los Angeles County overall, but that county encompasses only a small sliver of the 19th District and it had gone solidly for Strickland.
"Strickland still has a sizeable lead," Ventura County elections chief Philip Schmit said. "So (catching him) doesn't seem possible."
After more than 415,000 votes had been counted, Strickland led Jackson by less than one-third of a percentage point in the most expensive race in Ventura County history and the most costly legislative race in California this year.
Tracy Saucedo, assistant Ventura County registrar, said only about 100 votes remained to be processed late Wednesday, and some of those would not be eligible votes. The full vote count should be complete by Friday, after a Thanksgiving holiday.
The county must report final results to the California secretary of state's office by next Tuesday, Dec. 2.
In another compelling race, challenger George Galgas apparently won a directorship on the Ojai Valley Sanitary District after he broke a tie with incumbent Bill Stone late Tuesday, pulling ahead by 10 votes. Then on Wednesday, Galgas widened that margin to 14 votes.
For the latest results go to recorder.countyofventura.org/elections.htm.
Stone, 50, and Galgas, 75, were tied with 682 votes each late Monday, but Tuesday's count gave Galgas 21 more votes while Stone got only 11, election officials said. Then Wednesday afternoon Galgas received four more votes and Stone none as provisional ballots were tabluated.
"It's pretty wild, isn't it," said Stone, a 14-year incumbent who is a plant manager for a communications company in Ventura, before the outcome was known.
"It's been very exciting to say the least," said Galgas, a semi-retired masonry inspector from Oak View, after he'd staked his Tuesday lead. "It's been back and forth. I was ahead by five on election night, and then I was ahead by four, and then he was ahead. So being ahead by 10 is really encouraging."
Now, with a 14-vote lead, the race seems to be over.
Galgas will assume one of seven seats on a special district that operates sewer facilities from the Avenue area of Ventura through the city of Ojai, serving about 23,000 people.
The directors, who oversee 19 employees and a budget of $7.5 million, hold one regular meeting a month and sit on at least one committee. They receive a stipend of $150 for every regular or special meeting and $75 for each committee meeting.
They receive no other financial benefit, said district general manager John Correa, except $150 a day plus expenses when they attend one of four conferences directors may attend each year.
Correa said he'd never seen a local race like this one, and that his staff has marveled over how remarkably close it has been.
Schmit said he was not certain what would have happened if Stone and Galgas had ended their race in a tie.
On Wednesday morning, Schmit said his office still had to count about 500 provisional and 1,500 ballots that had to be duplicated and reprocessed for a variety of reasons. But Saucedo said by mid-afternoon that all but about 100 had been counted.
"We hope to have it all done by Friday," Schmit said. "And if we don't we'll work Saturday to finish it."
Meanwhile, in other updates through Wednesday morning, Betsy Clapp and Sue Horgan held insurmountable leads for the Ojai City Council, despite some closing by former Mayor Suza Francina on second-place Horgan, the council incumbent.
Horgan still held a 92-vote lead over Francina, while Clapp, the leader in the five-person race, led Horgan by 280 votes.
The near-final count for City Council was: Clapp, 1,694, or 27.18 percent; Horgan, 1,414, 22.69 percent; Francina, 1,322, 21.21 percent; incumbent Rae Hanstad, 1,054, 16.91 percent; Mike Lenehan, 723, 11.6 percent.
A total of 6,233 votes had been cast in the council race, with each voter allowed to vote twice.
Also by Wednesday morning, the Ojai Unified School District parcel tax initiative had gained a little ground and stood at only 65.9 percent approval, but a two-thirds super majority is required for passage. And the near-final count on Wednesday showed that it had failed with 65.94 percent of the vote.

ACLU denied hearing in city lawsuit

2008-11-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

By Nao Braverman

Ojai resident Jeff Furchtenicht and the American Civil Liberties Union were struck down several times, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they have given up yet.
The ACLU's petition for rehearing of the lawsuit between city attorney Monte Widders and Furchtenicht in the State Court of Appeal was denied Nov. 18.
An appeal to the California Supreme Court may be filed next.
"We think there were a number of mistakes and misstatements in the court's opinion," said Peter Eliasberg, the ACLU attorney who defended Furchtenicht in the case.
The petition for rehearing was received by the court Nov. 4, shortly after the State Court of Appeal reversed the demurrer granted to Furchtenicht in 2006 and affirmed denial of his anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) motion against the city of Ojai.
If an appeal is filed by Furchtenicht and the ACLU, the case would go the California Supreme Court, which only takes cases considered to be of statewide significance.
Should an appeal be filed, and if the Supreme Court were to decide to take the case, a number of statewide organizations like the League of California Cities and the County Supervisors Association of California would likely get involved, said city manager Jere Kersnar.
Mayor Sue Horgan and incoming Councilwoman Betsy Clapp both said at a candidate forum in October that they would not vote to spend any more money on the case, if it were appealed to the Supreme Court. Neither answered phone calls or returned messages to state whether their statements still stand. Councilwoman Carol Smith and Councilman Joe DeVito both said they could not take any stance on the issue at this time. Councilman Steve Olsen did not return phone calls in time for press. Councilwoman Rae Hanstad, although her last meeting will be on Dec. 2, said that she feels the city should focus instead on other legal priorities such as supporting the efforts of the Stop the Trucks Coalition.
The case has cost the city $93,810, according to Kersnar. Widders, his partner, attorney Roger Myers, and associate Nancy Hartzler, of the firm Myers, Widders, Gibson, Jones & Schneider, L.L.P. were each paid the standard $150 for their work on the case.
The two-year-long battle between the city attorney and Furchtenicht began when Furchtenicht proposed two citizen's initiatives to the city regarding chain stores and affordable housing in August 2006.
Widders declined to prepare the ballot title and summary for the initiatives, claiming that they were not submitted in the proper format, and asked Furchtenicht to withdraw them, rewrite them and resubmit them.
When Furchtenicht suggested that the initiatives be placed on a future City Council agenda, but did not withdraw the initiatives, Widders took him to court, stating that he needed the opinion of a judge.
In response Furchtenicht filed a demurrer and an anti-SLAPP motion, declaring that the lawsuit was intended to obstruct his right to propose initiatives.
At the end of November 2006, Furchtenicht was granted the demurrer but his anti-SLAPP complaint was denied.
Both parties left the courtroom believing that the decision had been made in their favor.
Furchtenicht was not pleased with the judge's dismissal of his anti-SLAPP motion, and appealed that portion of the decision in early 2007 defended by the ACLU. In response the city asked for the entire decision to be appealed.
A three-judge panel decided in favor of Widders on Oct. 20, reversed the demurrer and denied the anti-SLAPP motion.
The petition for rehearing filed 10 days after by the ACLU, was denied, leaving the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court if ACLU and Furchtenicht so choose.

Ojai generous to politicians

2008-11-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

By Nao Braverman

Ojai may be small, but locals continue to contribute to politics in healthy proportions.
Ojai Valley residents spent a total of $288,162 in donations to political candidates and organizations in 2008, about six times the average ZIP code, according to opensecrets.org, a web site that tracks political donations. That doesn't count the $8,127 in donations from people living within the 93024 ZIP code area.
The figures beats $142,776 total political contributions from the 93023 ZIP code in 2004, which was only four times the average ZIP code for that year, and the $90,241 the year before that.
President-elect Barack Obama got more money from Ojai and Ventura area residents than Republican candidates this year. But contributions to Republican candidates and organizations across the board still got more votes than Democratic candidates across the board and Democratic organizations in Ojai and Ventura area.
The web site indicates Obama as receiving the largest total donations from Ojai and the Ventura area with $87,119 from Ojai and $669,172 in the entire Ventura area, including Ojai.
John McCain trailed behind with only $23,723 from Ojai residents and $508,642 in the entire Ventura area, including Ojai.
Mitt Romney was the presidential candidate with $15,750, the third largest contribution from Ojai residents.
Oak View residents, less generous toward political campaigns, gave only $13,528 this year, still more than the $11,275 reported in 2004. Obama still came out as the top recipient from Oak View contributors with $3,550 in contributions from the area.
McCain followed closely behind with $3,140 from Oak View residents. Ron Paul was the presidential candidate with the third highest funds raised from Oak View residents receiving $850, according to Open Secrets.

Ojai landmark to get face-lift

2008-11-25T13:52:00.000-08:00

Cottages Among the Flowers owner seeks more time, as fire concerns at nearby Mallory Way project heat up

By Nao Braverman

Richard Colla, owner of Cottages Among the Flowers, one of Ojai’s cherished historic properties, returned to the Planning Commission on Nov. 19 to request more time to renovate and expanded his antiquated structures.
About a year after this property had been discussed by planning commissioners, Colla asked to break up the project into four phases, with a year and a half between each. This would be a major extension of the project timeline, according to city staff, as the municipal code standard is generally 180 days for a construction phase.
“Adding all this up, it looks like this could take about six years,” said Commissioner John Mirk. “We have had experience with people abandoning projects midway.”
But Colla insisted that he had purchased the property because he fancied their historic charm, and because he cared for the cottages.
“I am not going to abandon them,” he said.
The seven structures were built as winter cottages by John Burnham, who developed Country Club Drive in the late 1920s, according to local historian David Mason.
“They were quite popular during the time that Ojai was known as a winter resort,” he said.
Colla wants to renovate the seven structures that house eight rental units, and build two more, then sell the whole batch as condominiums. He needs all the time he can get to do a decent job on the project, he said.
“I work in the film industry and there’s saying: ‘You can do it quick, you can do it cheap, and you can do it well, now pick two of those.’ I would like to finish them well,” he said.
Marc Whitman, architect for the project, added that the property owners wanted to allow tenants to stay in the cottages as long as they could, as city staff had indicated they wanted to keep the much-needed affordable rental units in the community as long as possible. Colla was requesting an elongated timeline so that he wouldn’t have to install all the underground utilities at once, which would probably result in ousting tenants.
One neighboring tenant, Vickie Peters, who lives in a cottage owned by a different owner, said that she was concerned that Colla employees were dumping branches from landscape maintenance in the nearby creek bed. Peters said she is concerned that the Collas are not being responsible about maintaining the property for the tenants that live there now.
“I had to pick branches out of the creek bottom that are a fire hazard and flood hazard,” she said.
The commission approved the timeline extension for turning Cottages Among the Flowers into condominiums, and asked for the project to be reviewed once more before the final phase, as it would be years away.
In other planning news, commissioners approved modifications to their proposal to renovate and construct new units on 1314 and 1326 E. Ojai Ave. Part of the property to be developed and improved is to be sold to The Day Spa of Ojai. To properly accommodate it, owners asked for a 6-foot-high privacy wall around the spa garden.
Though commissioners were sympathetic to the privacy of spa clients in their bathrobes, they did not like the idea of a wall in pedestrian view.
Very few pedestrians are currently seen along East Ojai Avenue, but commissioners hope that the new construction will help change that. A high wall facing the street detracts from a friendly pedestrian atmosphere, said commissioner Susan Weaver. The modifications were approved, with a condition that the front wall be redesigned to incorporate an attractive pedestrian entrance.
Later at the meeting commissioners mulled over the definition of a vending machine. When commissioners and councilman passed the ordinance restricting formula retail businesses in Ojai, they expected some unintended consequences. Apparently prohibiting vending machines was one of them. City attorney Monte Widders had indicated that vending machines that sell food would fall under the category of formula fast food, according to the ordinance, and would consequently be prohibited entirely.
That could mean that all the Glacier water machines would have to go, a consequence that could be grave, planning commissioners agreed.
But the definition of a vending machine could veer far from formula retail to include an ATM machine, a gas pump, a newspaper rack, or an ice machine. It could also mean a chain restaurant, as technologically advanced Japan has entire meals that are dispensed from vending machines, said Commission Chair Paul Crabtree.
Commissioners said that they want to keep the water machines, if possible, but have other vending machines come before them for approval. They asked staff to look into whether they could exempt vending from the formula fast food ordinance, so that they would not be prohibited entirely. They would not want vending machines exempt from the formula business code, however, so that they would still need to obtain a permit, and be reviewed before they are placed on city streets.

Ojai seen for Main Street program

2008-11-25T13:50:00.000-08:00

Chamber hosts meeting with city, business owners

By Nao Braverman

What business owners want for a city does not always correspond with the interests of local residents. But in Ojai’s case, there is a great deal of consistency, said Scott Eicher, chief executive officer of the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Following a meeting of local business and property owners about how to revitalize the local economy on Nov. 11, the Chamber of Commerce subcommittee held another meeting Nov. 19, this time inviting local residents.
About 55 people showed up at Chaparral Auditorium for the discussion.
While residents generally may be more fearful of attracting tourists than local hoteliers, all agree that much of Ojai’s charm lies in its small-town character, and no one likes the sight of commercial vacancies.
Mayor Sue Horgan opened the meeting raising some questions for consideration.
“How can we make Ojai’s businesses more attractive, and how can we do that without annoying the residents?” she asked.
This more diverse group raised some concerns that were brushed upon by the business and property owners at the previous meeting.
“Some people have this notion that our hometown has an image that we are a hometown for visitors, but we are not really a hometown for people living in Ojai,” said Stacie Jones, owner of the Ojai Coffee Roasting Co., a coffee shop frequented by locals. She mentioned some complaints regarding the high price for everyday goods such as toilet paper.
But when facilitators of the meeting perused the overall response from residents, regarding what they considered to be Ojai’s assets, and ways they thought it could improve, the comments were surprisingly similar to the responses from business and property owners, said Eicher.
That was fortunate, he added, because in order to make any improvements, the city needs to have the cooperation of local residents and business owners alike.
Dave Brubaker, chief operating officer of the Ojai Community Bank, proposed a Clean Up Ojai Day, as an initial combined volunteer effort of local businesses and residents to make Ojai better.
Residents heard the presentation by Rob Edwards, director of the Downtown Ventura Organization, which offered the Main Street program as a possible road map for improving Ojai’s economy. The program is known to have helped revive some of the most deserted city centers in Baltimore, Md., Cripple Creek, Colo., and downtown Los Angeles. It may not have the most positive image, perceived by many as a program that is sought out by some of the most deserted and dilapidated downtown corridors. But its principles — maintaining historical architecture, supporting local business and training shopkeepers to be more personable — do coincide with the efforts of many Ojai residents and policy members. The Main Street program would at least provide a road map to help the city improve and coordinate such efforts, said Martha Groszewski, coordinator for the Chamber of Commerce subcommittee at a previous meeting.
Eicher said he was not yet sure if the city should follow the Main Street program or not. The Chamber of Commerce subcommittee is still evaluating the dialogue at recent meetings and considering the next step, he said.
Clean Up Ojai Day efforts, coordinated by Brubaker, will meet Dec. 13 at the Park & Ride at 9 a.m. and will continue until noon.

Bounty of Ojai

2008-11-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

Farmers’ Market bustling with community as holidays begin

By Linda Harmon

The social chatter and shouted greetings took on an even more spirited tone this holiday week at Ojai Farmers’ Market, which is held each Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the parking lot between Matilija and Aliso streets behind the Arcade.
Shoppers filled their baskets, cloth bags, wagons and even strollers with farm-grown produce and artisan-made products, as scattered musicians played everything from classical violin to country and bluegrass.
According to market manager Cynthia Korman, the market, which began in December of 1991, brings more than 45 vendors and their wares to participate in Sunday’s market, bringing character and flavor to holiday tables.
Freckled 7-year-old Copper Clark is standing next to one longtime merchant, Vickie Cohen, at her popular stop offering handmade lavender soaps. Clark is quick to state that this isn’t her first market.
“I work here,” said Clark, looking at Cohen. “My mom’s really close with her. I come down all the time.”
Cohen can’t help but grin.
“She gives me a helping hand and earns a little spending money,” said Cohen, whose lap is filled with 2-1/2-year-old Biggs, who is visiting his grandfather from up north for Thanksgiving. “Copper comes in 8:30 or 9:00 and leaves just before the markets ends.”
Across the aisle is Les Bles D’or, a local bakery stall staffed by Beth Sichel, another familiar Ojai resident. She’s lived here since 1969.
“We’ve been doing the Farmers’ Market here for about nine or 10 years,” said Sichel during a pause in the action. “I’ve been doing it for about two years. It’s fun, I love it. We do eight markets altogether.”
As we finish our conversation Mitch Cornelius comes up to join the conversation and make his purchase.
“Actually this is my third or fourth time at the market,” said Cornelius, an Oak View shopper stopping off to peruse the handmade breads and cinnamon rolls.
Not every vendor is from Ojai. Take Marcie Jimenez, of Marcie’s Pies. Jimenez sells homemade pies, preserves, pickled vegetables and her home-grown produce from Santa Ynez.
“I’ve been doing this market for three years now,” said Jimenez, who makes the drive each week. “Stephanie comes with me, and Matt, who lives in Ojai, joins me here. They are a great help. We do 14 markets. Sometimes we do five markets a day.”
This is Jimenez’s second career. She started farming seven years ago after selling a business she and her father founded, Matsukas Food Company and its Santa Barbara Bay brand.
“You may have seen the label at Costco,” said Jimenez, “Those are all my family recipes. We grew it big so we were able to sell. My father wanted to retire.”
Next, there’s the Chows who come from Carpinteria with their vegetable and flower stand.
“I’ve lost track of how many years we’ve been coming. I think we’ve been around for at least six or seven years, at least that. We have lots of friends here,” said Rodney Chow, standing next to his wife of 54 years, Joy. The couple brings in loads of apples, plums and peaches, as well as colorful plants like the hot pink azaleas they are selling today. “We’ve been farming eight or 10 years. We started out just as an orchard and then, to fill out the season, we started growing flowers between our trees. We do three markets. Everyone asks us for our apples but we’re out now. We don’t store. That’s why our apples have such flavor. They’re picked right from the tree.”
A little farther along the aisle is the Perez family, Damian, Carlos, Olga and Jennifer, who travel to 17 markets for their cousin’s Cortez Farms in Santa Maria. They have been coming to Ojai for several years, and members of their family have been farming and selling through markets for more than 20 years.
“My aunt started when she was pregnant with my cousin who is five years younger than me,” said Perez.
The market’s customers get to know and treasure their favorites and notice a change in the regular cast of characters. Take the cheese vendor.
“I’m filling in while Bill gets his cheese head wedge made up. He has to get an overhaul once a year,” said Mark Lauren, referring to the regular “cheese dude” from Spring Hill Dairy, who sports a cheese hat. “The dairy has been selling at the market for a little over four years. We make about 32 types of cheese. We have a couple of raw cheeses, but everything else is pasteurized. Primarily we make the Jersey milk cheeses because we have over 400 Jersey cows, all grass fed, organic. We have goat cheese from our neighboring farm, their goat milk and our cheese processing. We’re out of Petaluma and have a refrigeration unit down in Ventura and service all the Southern California markets.”
Down the row is another regular character who makes the trip from out of the area.
“They call me Papa Bono,” said 89-year-old Bono,” you know like Sonny Bono. I’m been doing this market for about 10 years now. I got to know the people in the area real well. California has become a big part of my life. I do the Pasadena, Torrance, Channel Islands markets and a couple markets during the week.”
Bono is cracking his biggest seller, macadamia nuts, with his patented nutcracker he sells at markets and home shows. He has 1,200 trees down in Fallbrook. His son, Michael, is keeping him company today, visiting for the holiday from Maui.
“I’m thinking about moving here,” said the younger Bono. “I’m more into a country atmosphere and it’s getting pretty crowded over there. I like already like it here and the people are friendly.”
There are not many places that can rival Hawaii, but I guess on a November morning with the leaves turning and the bounty flowing Ojai could go to anyone’s head.

Local election in dead heat

2008-11-24T17:23:00.000-08:00

Wild tie in sewer seat, other races no longer too close to call

By Daryl Kelley

With scarce few votes left to count, two races on the local Nov. 4 election ballot remained too close to call late Monday.
In the most expensive race in Ventura County history, the $10-million 19th state Senate District contest was within about 1,700 votes, with Republican Tony Strickland edging Democrat Hannah Beth Jackson.
But Jackson of Santa Barbara may have great difficulty making up that margin, since nearly all votes have been counted in her stronghold, Santa Barbara County, while perhaps 16,000 remain to be counted in Ventura County, where Strickland holds a sizeable lead.
But the most compelling local contest may still be the intriguing run between incumbent Bill Stone and challenger George Galgas for a seat on the obscure Ojai Valley Sanitary District board.
Stone, 50, and Galgas, 75, were tied with with 682 votes each late Monday, election officials said. Stone lost his one vote lead from last week, as he received six new votes to Galgas' seven during the count of provisional ballots.
“It's pretty wild, isn't it,” said Stone, a 14-year incumbent who is a plant manager for a communications company in Ventura.
“It's been very exciting to say the least,” said Galgas, a semi-retired masonry inspector from Oak View.
The winner will assume one of seven seats on a special district that operates sewer facilities from the Avenue area of Ventura through the city of Ojai, serving 23,000 people.
The directors, who oversee 19 employees and a budget of $7.5 million, hold one regular meeting a month and sit on at least one committee. They receive a stipend of $150 for every regular or special meeting and $75 for each committee meeting.
They receive no other financial benefit, said district general manager John Correa, except $150 a day plus expenses when they attend one of four conferences directors may attend each year.
Correa said he'd never seen a local race like this one, and that he's marveled over how it could be so remarkably close.
Phil Schmit, county elections chief, said he's not certain what would happen if Stone and Galgas end in a tie.
“Let's just hope they don't,” he said.
Either could ask for a recount, but would have to pay the cost themselves.
Schmit said his office still has about 9,000 provisional ballots to count, and perhaps 5,000 to 6,000 other ballots that had to be hand duplicated because of damage or other problems.
“We hope to have it all done Friday,” he said. “And if we don't we'll work Saturday to finish it.”
The county must submit final returns to the California Secretary of State by next Tuesday, Dec. 2.
Meanwhile, in other updates through Monday, Betsy Clapp and Sue Horgan still held strong leads for the Ojai City Council, despite a bit of closing by former Mayor Suza Francina on second-place Horgan, the council incumbent. Horgan still held a 106-vote lead over Francina, while Clapp, the leader in the five-person race, led Horgan by 256 votes.
The Ojai Unified School District parcel tax initiative lost a little ground and stood at only 65.55 percent approval, while a two-thirds supermajority is required for passage.

Citations Issued To Alleged Vandals

2008-11-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

Eight teens arrested for Villanova incident

By Sondra Murphy

Update Nov. 21:
According to Ojai Det. Steve Michalec, Gregory Martin Kiddie, 18, turned himself in to the Ojai Police Department today. He was cited and released on suspicion of violating PC 594.3(a), vandalism of religious property, and PC 594(b)(1), vandalism over $400.

Nov. 20 post:
Ojai Police Department issued citations to seven juveniles and one adult yesterday in connection with the Oct. 3 vandalism to Villanova Preparatory School. Paint, manure and salt were used at several locations on the private school’s campus in the early morning before Villanova was to play Nordhoff High School in a varsity football contest.
The eight teenagers were arrested on suspicion of violating PC 594.3(a), vandalism of religious property, and PC 594(b)(1), vandalism over $400. Damage was estimated at $5,100.
Ryan John Drury, 18, is the lone adult cited on Thursday. The identity of the other adult will not be released until he is cited. He is expected to turn himself in to the Police Department today. The names of the juveniles were not released.
Ojai Police Department Administrative Sgt. Mo Hookstra said that all those involved have been very cooperative. “It took so long because we had to follow all leads and conduct a fair and balanced investigation,” said Hookstra. “The investigation has determined this is not a hate crime. We did not find that this investigation was motivated by hate.”

***************************
OJAI POLICE DEPARTMENT MEDIA RELEASE 11/21

Nature of Incident: Felony Vandalism of Religious Property
Location: Villanova Preparatory School, 12096 North Ventura Avenue, Ojai

Date & Time: October 3, 2008, 5:30 hrs

Unit Responsible: Ojai Police Department

(S)uspects
(S) Ryan John Drury,18
(S) Gregory Kiddie, 18
(S) Six (6) Male Juveniles, 17
(S) One (1) Male Juvenile, 16

Narrative:
On November 20, 2008 Ojai Police Department detectives arrested two adults and seven male juveniles in connection with the October 3, 2008, vandalism at Villanova Preparatory School. During the investigation, detectives determined two separate groups were responsible for the vandalism. One group vandalized an antique marble statue of Saint Thomas of Villanova and other graffiti nearby. The second group poured manure and salt in the swimming pool and on the football field. Damage was estimated in excess of $5,000.00. The incident took place the night before a rival football game between Nordhoff High School and Villanova Preparatory School. This was the first game between the schools in 33 years. Although some of the damage was done to religious symbols, there is no evidence to suggest this was a hate-motivated crime.

Officer Preparing Release: Sergeant Maureen Hookstra
Date of Release: November 21, 2008
Approved By: Captain Chris Dunn / Ojai Police Department

City budget under watch as numbers slip

2008-11-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

While this year’s figures slow up, higher-than-expected surplus from the past year designated for maintenance projects

By Nao Braverman

Ojai seems to be staying financially afloat, at least for now, despite harsh economic times nationwide.
City Council members approved $167,000 in net surplus from the 2007-2008 fiscal year to go toward maintenance projects that have been waiting on the back burner, at Tuesday night’s council meeting.
Revenue budgeted for this year is $8.84 million in revenues with $8.3 million in expected expenses, for a net surplus of $540,000.
However, for the first quarter of this fiscal year, which ended in September, the city has collected $64,000 less than expected, said Jere Kersnar, city manager.
“Listening to my colleagues at neighboring cities, I’m hearing that this is a tough economic year for all of them,” said Kersnar.
While Ojai is currently on track financially, he cautioned decision makers, urging them to stay on their toes.
The shortfall was due to a $66,000 under collection in property tax, he said. However, first quarter property taxes are a very small amount, and not a good predictor for the rest of the year, he assured the council. More solid predictions should be made after property tax collections in December, he said.
“Times are very fluid and very uncertain,” said Kersnar.
But if surrounding cities are cutting back and downsizing their staff, Ojai has been comparatively fortunate.
While city staff had predicted a surplus of about $950,000 at the end of the 2007-2008 fiscal year, which would have been $217,000 more than initially budgeted, they actually ended up with $167,000 in excess of the predicted amount.
Since there would already be $217,000 more than budgeted going into reserves, Kersnar suggested setting aside the additional $167,000 in the capital projects fund, for much-needed maintenance.
The money would go toward repairing the damaged stucco and wood at the Boyd Center Gym and replacing some of the gym’s water-damaged floor, he said.
Kersnar concedes that the $167,000 in excess from the 2007-2008 fiscal year was timely considering that there may be even less money to spare in the near future. If those repairs get left any longer, costs could increase astronomically.
But as the tides have been turning for cities nationwide, city staff needs to keep a close eye on funds, should conditions change for the worst, he said.
Furthermore, there has been some concern that hotel reservations may not be as high as they generally are this month, said Kersnar. Though it is too early to make a solid statement regarding the hotel tax, which has been steady to date, council members considered having city staff meet with local hoteliers to brainstorm ways to keep hotel business in good standing. A primary revenue source for the city, the steady business of local hotels is important for Ojai, especially in these economic times, explained Mayor Sue Horgan.
Councilwoman Carol Smith agreed, denouncing illegitimate local inns that avoid registering with the city in order to doge the bed tax.
Councilman Steve Olsen proposed budgeting $10,000 for Youth Employment Services, which could be an asset to the community in these times. City staff agreed to place the budget recommendation on a future agenda for further discussion.
In other council news, Public Works director Mike Culver confirmed that the Libbey Bowl renovation project would require an environmental impact report because of its historic significance. The environmental report will likely delay the project, though Culver wasn’t sure by how much.
Slated to begin construction in January 2009, the project timeline is now up in the air, but Culver assured that staff would make sure it doesn’t interfere with the Ojai Music Festival. The festival has already raised about $930,000 mostly in pledges, for the project, said Music Festival executive director Jeff Haydon.
Also at the meeting, council members all said they wanted to become a Tree City U.S.A. The program, sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation and the U.S Department of Agriculture would require the city to establish a tree commission and adopt a tree ordinance, which city staff warned would be too costly and time consuming to make up for the benefits.
Olsen, who thought the Tree City status particularly suited to Ojai, suggested having the Planning Commission serve as a tree commission, as well, to save costs.
Kersnar agreed to consider it, and bring the issue back to council after researching it further.
The meeting was adjourned in the memory of Marian Greenfield.

How we voted

2008-11-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

Obama receives nearly two-thirds of Ojai votes, while Prop. 8 opposed by nearly same margin

By Daryl Kelley

As election officials moved toward completion next week of the count of ballots cast Nov. 4, an analysis of Ojai voting patterns showed that this bastion of liberal politics again revealed its left-leaning ways on Election Day.
While voter registration in Ojai gives Democrats a 17-percentage-point edge over Republicans, Democratic candidates generally built much greater margins here this time, an early breakdown of Ojai votes shows.
President-elect Barack Obama, for example, received nearly two-thirds of Ojai’s vote, a much greater margin than in Ventura County, the state or the nation as a whole. Republican John McCain got just 31.5 percent of Ojai’s vote.
And in two tight ballot propositions, Ojai voters made a much clearer choice than the nearly even split by the county and the state overall, overwhelmingly rejecting a ban on gay marriage and a requirement that parents be notified and a waiting period imposed before a minor could have an abortion.
Sixty-two percent of Ojai voters opposed the same-sex marriage ban, while the parent notification measure was defeated here by the same margin. Statewide, the vote was split 52-48 for the ban and 48-52 against notification.
Ojai voters were also much more insistent that farm animals be treated humanely when confined than those in the county or the state overall. Nearly three-quarters of Ojai voters favored the animal protection ballot measure.
“In Ojai, there seems to be a real understanding that the need for social justice be considered along with the environment,” said Sue Broidy of the Ojai Valley Democratic Club.
Broidy, president of the club for years and now its secretary, said she thinks Obama and other Democrats did so well in Ojai partly because of the strength and coordination of the historic presidential campaign.
“We’d like to take credit, but there were other forces at work,” she said. “I’m elated after so many campaigns for people who lost … This was a wonderful vindication of a lot of hard work.”
Broidy said she thinks Democrats polled so strongly in Ojai not just because of party registration, but because of the presence of an Obama headquarters in town.
“That made an enormous difference,” she said. “It was a tangible thing for people to visit … and to see we were willing to pay rent and staff our office. And for me as a political activist, it was a very exciting for once to get our campaign out of my living room,” said Broidy, a field representative for Hannah-Beth Jackson when she was an assemblywoman.
Meanwhile, in election updates through Thursday, Democrat Jackson still trailed Republican Tony Strickland for the state Senate by more than 1,700 votes, despite whittling his advantage with new returns from Santa Barbara County. In Ojai, about 63 percent of voters favored Jackson, while she was receiving only about 47 percent of the vote throughout Ventura County, the largest part of the three-county senate district.
And in a tantalizingly close race for a seat on the Ojai Valley Sanitary District board, director William Stone held a one-vote lead on Thursday, after new tallies wiped out challenger George Galgas’ four-vote lead.
In the race for Ojai City Council, Betsy Clapp and Sue Horgan still held strong leads, despite a bit of closing by former Mayor Suza Francina on second-place Horgan, the council incumbent. Horgan still held a 115-vote lead over Francina on Thursday, while Clapp, the leader in the five-person race, was ahead of Horgan by 257 votes.
The Ojai Unified School District parcel tax initiative gained a little ground, but still stood at only 65.6 percent approval, while a two-thirds super majority is required for passage.
Election officials said they thought the counting of the final 20,000 or so late absentee and provisional ballots may be completed by the end of next week, with the next update of results expected Monday afternoon.
Some 6,000 to 8,000 absentee ballots had to be duplicated for processing because of voter mismarks, said Assistant Registrar-Recorder Jim Becker. Another 14,000 provisional ballots still had to be checked for veracity and counted, and the count of about 500 ballots from military employees and residents living overseas had not yet occurred.
Of votes analyzed from earlier counts, about 75 percent of Ojai’s total, not only did Obama and Jackson soar locally, but so did Democratic Assembly candidate Ferial Masry. Despite losing in a close race to incumbent Audra Strickland, Masry easily defeated Strickland in Ojai with about 63 percent of the vote.
In fact, the only Democrat in a legislative or congressional race not to win in a landslide in Ojai was Marta Jorgenson of Solvang. Jorgenson’s margin over Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly was nearly 14 percentage points, here, but that was only about half the margin enjoyed by Obama, Jackson and Masry.
“Marta was not a good candidate,” said Broidy. “She was just as surprised as the rest of us when she won the primary. And she raised only about $2,600 (for the general election campaign).”

Residents, business owners discuss revitalizing Ojai

2008-11-20T15:09:00.000-08:00

By Nao Braverman

What business owners want for a city does not always correspond with the interests of local residents. But in Ojai's case, there is a great deal of consistency, said Scott Eicher, chief executive officer of the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Following a meeting of local business and property owners about how to revitalize the local economy on Nov. 11, the Chamber of Commerce subcommittee held another meeting Nov. 19, this time inviting local residents.
About 55 people showed up at Chaparral Auditorium for the discussion.
While residents generally may be more fearful of attracting tourists than local hoteliers, all agree that much of Ojai's charm lies in its small-town character, and no one likes the sight of commercial vacancies.
Mayor Sue Horgan opened the meeting raising some questions for consideration.
"How can we make Ojai's businesses more attractive, and how can we do that without annoying the residents?" she asked.
This more diverse group raised some concerns that were brushed upon by the business and property owners at the previous meeting.
"Some people have this notion that our hometown has an image that we are a hometown for visitors but we are not really a hometown for people living in Ojai," said Stacie Jones, owner of the Ojai Coffee Roasting Co., a coffee shop frequented by locals. She mentioned some complaints regarding the high price for everyday goods such as toilet paper.
But when facilitators of the meeting perused the overall response from residents, regarding what they considered to be Ojai's assets, and ways they thought it could improve, the comments were surprisingly similar to the responses from business and property owners, said Eicher.
That was fortunate, he added, because in order to make any improvements, the city needs to have the cooperation of local residents and business owners alike.
Dave Brubaker, chief operating officer of the Ojai Community Bank, proposed a Clean Up Ojai Day, as an initial combined volunteer effort of local businesses and residents to make Ojai better.
Residents heard the presentation by Rob Edwards, director of the Downtown Ventura Organization, which offered the Main Street program as a possible road map for improving Ojai's economy. The program is known to have helped revive some of the most deserted city centers in Baltimore, Md., Cripple Creek, Colo., and downtown Los Angeles. It may not have the most palatable image, perceived by many as a program that is sought out by some of the most deserted and dilapidated downtown corridors. But its principals, maintaining historical architecture, supporting local business and keeping shopkeepers personable, do coincide with the efforts of many Ojai residents and policy members. The Main Street program would at least provide a road map to help the city improve and coordinate such efforts, said Martha Groszewski, coordinator for the Chamber of Commerce subcommittee at a previous meeting.
Eicher said he was not yet sure if the city should follow the Main Street program or not. The Chamber of Commerce subcommittee is still evaluating the dialogue at recent meetings and considering the next step, he said.
Clean Up Ojai Day efforts, coordinated by Brubaker, will meet Dec. 13 at the Park & Ride at 9 a.m. and will continue until noon.

Election tallies change as final count nears

2008-11-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Sanitation District seat seesaws, as Kaplan apparent MAC-seat winner

By Daryl Kelley

As election officials moved toward a final count for the Nov. 4 election, results solidified this week: A school parcel tax has apparently lost, Betsy Clapp and Sue Horgan strengthened their hold on Ojai City Council seats, and Republican Tony Strickland inched farther ahead of Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson for the state Senate.
Yet, in two lower ticket races, a bit of intrigue remained.
Ojai Valley Sanitary District director William Stone saw last week’s 13-vote lead over challenger George Galgas evaporate as late-arriving absentee ballots were counted Monday. Stone now trails by just four votes, according to new tallies from the county Elections Division.
And in the race for a seat on the Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Committee — an obscure panel that meets once a month and whose members receive no pay — the county registrar of voters said he thinks he will certify the election of challenger Gerald Kaplan over incumbent Alan Saltzman even though residents of the city of Ojai were improperly allowed to vote because of “human error.”
“My thinking is that I’ll certify the election as it was done,” said elections chief Philip Schmit.
But county lawyers told Schmit late Monday that he could also choose to void the election or certify it with an added explanation that the votes from Ojai did not alter the election. He said he thinks he will add the Ojai vote for informational purposes.
The MAC race results include more than 1,700 votes from Ojai residents that should not have been counted, since the city of Ojai is not within the unincorporated areas of the Ojai Valley.
Schmit said it’s not so simple to back the Ojai vote out of the MAC tally because some city precincts overlap into unincorporated county territory. But he said Kaplan’s lead is so great that city voters did not change the result of the election.
Kaplan led by more than 1,000 votes — 4,901 to 3,828 — through Monday.
“Mathematically, there’s a chance,” said Schmit. “Logically, there’s no chance. The end result would be no change, except maybe in Chicago.”
An Ojai Valley News analysis of early tallies in the MAC race show that even if the Ojai votes were backed out, Kaplan would still win handily. That’s because Kaplan gained fewer than 200 of his 1,073-vote advantage from city voters. Ojai voters favored Kaplan 960 to 777, county data showed three days after the election.
Schmit said the MAC error resulted from elections workers using a MAC boundary map that showed Ojai within the district. But in 1996 the county changed that boundary to exclude the city, because the City Council gives representation to city residents on local issues. The MAC gives a similar voice to county residents.
The MAC, formed in 1974, advises the county Planning Department and the Board of Supervisors on planning, development and other issues.
Schmit said the voting error occurred because Steve Offerman, an aide to county Supervisor Steve Bennett and executive director of the valley MAC, approved the map for the vote. There had been no MAC election for at least 14 years, so elections officials wanted to double-check the boundaries with Offerman.
“It was human error,” Schmit said, “but not by this office.”
Offerman said last week that the mistake was a “human error” by the Elections Division.
Kaplan, a semi-retired business consultant, has said he thinks the tainted vote can be remedied without a new election, perhaps even with a good-natured flip of a coin. Saltzman, a retired attorney, was traveling and unavailable for comment. Any challenge for the certified result would be up to him, Schmit said.
About 3,000 late absentee and 14,000 provisional ballots were still uncounted in Ventura County on Tuesday. The count should be complete this week, election officials said, except for the Strickland-Jackson race, in which a 10 percent hand count was completed Monday because it is so close. In the hand count of about 20,000 ballots, no difference was found from the computer count, Schmit said.
The $10-million Jackson-Strickland race was the most expensive legislative contest in the state.
In several updated tallies, the two former Assembly members, who are ideological bookends, have swapped places. But in recent updates, Strickland has consistently moved ahead, and now leads by about 2,200 votes.
Jackson, a Santa Barbara resident, has held a 10-percentage-point lead in Santa Barbara County, but Strickland, a Moorpark resident, has led by seven points in the larger Ventura County part of the district. The tiny segment in Los Angeles County has also sharply favored Strickland.
Observers think Jackson could close that margin in the provisional count because provisional ballots are often cast by newly registered voters, such as college students. And Democrats, led by President-elect Barack Obama, fared very well with young voters nationwide.
In other Ojai-related races, small business owner Clapp maintained her lead in the five-person City Council race. She’d received 1,538 votes by Monday. That’s a 234-vote lead over incumbent Sue Horgan, who slightly increased her lead over Suza Francina for second place and the second open seat on the council.
Francina trailed Horgan by 145 votes.
Meanwhile, the Ojai Unified School District parcel tax initiative lost a little ground and stood at 65.3 percent approval; a two-thirds super majority is required for passage.

Council to be Bowled over with stage plans

2008-11-18T16:26:00.000-08:00

$3 million project goes before Ojai City Council

By Nao Braverman

Despite nationwide economic woes, Ojai residents are scrambling to raise enough money to renovate Ojai’s historic main stage.
The $3 million Libbey Bowl renovation project was scheduled for discussion at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.
A conceptual design process is moving along according to schedule so far, said local architect and former Mayor David Bury, who is working on drafting a design for the much-needed make-over.
In March, the Ojai City Council approved to allocate $100,000 toward reviving the dilapidating structure, with $30,000 to pay for immediate repairs and $70,000 to get designs for the overall remodel in motion.
Short-term repairs are complete and have stayed within the $30,000 budget, said Public Works director Mike Culver.
To keep the stage afloat for another couple of years, Public Works made some minor roof repairs, fumigated the facility to get rid of termites, replaced unstable beams, built a roof on the adjacent Green Room, repaired the dressing room floor, improved the drainage system and repaved the seating area, said Culver.
Bury recently met with city staff to discuss a initial conceptual design which will be presented to the Planning Commission, the Parks and Recreation Commission and Historic Preservation Commission in late December or January, he said.
Renovation of the historic bowl, built in 1957 within a park, is a rare project that will require input from three of Ojai’s commissions, and is expected to be presented to the City Council shortly after.
On Nov. 6, the Ojai Music Festival presented the initial conceptual design to all of Libbey Bowl’s users, who liked it, said Jeff Haydon, the festival’s executive director.
The Ojai Music Festival has already raised close to $1 million for the project.
“We are very hopeful, especially since people have been so generous already given these harsh economic times,” said Haydon. He added that almost all of the donations so far have come from within Ojai.
Ojai Music Festival representatives recently met with city staff to draft a memorandum of understanding detailing the roles and responsibilities of the two parties as fundraising efforts continue. City staff has agreed to work with the Music Festival to procure separate cost estimate and construction management services. They have decided that the money raised will have to meet a certain benchmark before construction begins, although an exact amount for the benchmark was still undecided at the Music Festival’s meeting with city staff, said Haydon.
Culver said that he is still not sure whether the project will require an environmental impact report because of the 51-year-old stage’s historic significance. If needed, an environmental report could delay the process, he said.
However, if all goes as scheduled, construction could begin as soon as July 2009 and be completed in May 2010.
Construction plans are expected to work around the 2009 Ojai Music Festival, which is still slated to take place at Libbey Bowl. Hopefully, the project will be completed in time for a grand re-opening at the music festival in 2010, said Haydon.
City staff is still accepting applications for the events at the bowl although any events after July 4, 2009 will be tentative until the construction schedule is in place, said Culver.

Parking Littles in MO

2008-11-18T16:22:00.000-08:00

'No Parking' zone plan draws criticism at MAC

By Sondra Murphy

People drive too fast in Meiners Oaks and there is not adequate parking. That was the consensus of comments made at Monday’s Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Council meeting.
A review of a recent traffic study that proposed establishing three “No Parking” zones along El Roblar Drive at Poli and Alvarado avenues inspired many of those who would be impacted by the zones to attend the meeting and speak up.
“The Department of Public Works did a site line study and found a number of obstructions, like palm trees and such, which have been removed, but they are recommending three ‘No Parking’ zones,” said Steve Offerman of Supervisor Steve Bennett’s office.
Business owners near the proposed “No Parking” areas voiced concerns about losing customer parking along a road with too few spaces to begin with. All voiced support for improving pedestrian and traffic safety along the main street of the unincorporated community and proposed alternative remedies before eliminating spaces. Lot line and setback violations in the neighborhood were also mentioned.
The issue of public parking was brought up as a need for the businesses that are often in the midst of residential areas. “I feel that all of our parking is at such a premium and someone had the good idea of putting in some stop signs,” said Foxy Lady’s Judy Whittington. Crossing or navigating a left turn at any of the streets along El Roblar Drive was said to be difficult, and not just at Poli or Alvarado.
Meiners Oaks residents Jeff Lennon and Carl Rimpa called attention to the asphalt piles at some of the corners along El Roblar and suggested repairs would increase safety, as well. The idea of more sidewalks was broached by several speakers in an almost-too-great-to-hope-for tone.
“The impact we would feel on a regular basis is that people will park in our lot,” said Susan Decordova, president of the Jewish Community of the Oaks. The temple is located near one of the proposed “No Parking” zones. “Also, I just don’t think visibility is going to be improved by this proposal.”
“On behalf of the Department of Transportation who recommended this, they did pick these sites because there are a lot of accidents,” said Meiners Oaks resident Pat Baggerly. Council member Russ Baggerly concurred, saying that the traffic study was initiated by his request due to the number of accidents at those streets.
“I like the idea of a four-way stop,” said council member Lanie Springer. “I know from experience that a stop sign can make a big difference.” She added she had little hope of convincing the county to give the community public parking, however.
“I don’t like the idea as proposed,” said council member Terry Wright. He added that red zones at the corners might improve visibility, as well as limiting the size of vehicles allowed to park on El Roblar Drive.
“I really heard a lot of good things tonight and I think we can agree there is a safety concern,” said Baggerly. “Why don’t we bring this back to the next meeting and discuss it and think of things that can fix all the problems? The way they crowned those drainages is a crime, as far as I’m concerned.”
The council agreed to address the issue more thoroughly at the next meeting. “Let’s see what we can get from the Transportation Division, if we can put stop signs in on El Roblar Drive and if there is a possibility that the county, in all its graciousness, could provide us with public parking.”
The next OVMAC meeting is scheduled for Dec. 15 at 7 p.m. in the Oak View Community Center, 18 Valley Road.

Ballot error calls race into question

2008-11-13T15:38:00.000-08:00

City votes cast in county election for MAC seats

By Daryl Kelley

As the counting of absentee ballots from the Nov. 4 election inched forward with no surprises this week, questions were raised about the veracity of the results in one obscure Ojai Valley race.
With several hundred Ojai ballots apparently left to count, Betsy Clapp and Sue Horgan solidified their positions for two seats on the City Council, a school parcel tax appeared to have lost and, in the state’s most expensive legislative race, Republican Tony Strickland widened his lead over Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson to 1,560 votes in a back-and-forth tally for the state Senate.
About 41,000 absentee and provisional ballots were still uncounted in Ventura County on Thursday. The count should be complete in a week or so, election officials said. The Strickland-Jackson race overlaps three counties, so results will trickle in from each as well.
In a new election-related development, challenger Gerald Kaplan’s decisive victory over incumbent Alan Saltzman for the Ojai area seat on Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Committee was called into question.
MAC board member Russ Baggerly said he had asked county Registrar of Voters Philip Schmit to review the outcome of the race because residents of the city of Ojai were improperly allowed to cast ballots in the race. Only voters living in unincorporated areas should have been allowed to vote, Baggerly said.
“I talked with (Schmit) today and asked why this was allowed to happen,” said Baggerly late Wednesday. “He said he didn’t know, but he’d look into it.”
Schmit could not be reached for comment Thursday morning.
Founded in 1974 to give voice to valley residents who live outside the city of Ojai, the seven-member MAC meets once a month to advise the county Planning Department and the county Board of Supervisors on planning, development and other community matters. Its recommendations are not binding, its members receive no pay or benefits, and its races are almost never contested during elections.
So, there is some question about whether a costly new election would serve the public interest.
“It’s not a small thing if they have to hold a new election, because that’s costly,” Baggerly said. “But there’s no doubt that those people who voted within the incorporated area (in the city of Ojai) skewed the election. And Phil said there’s no way to pull those votes out from the final count.”
But Steve Offerman, an aide to county Supervisor Steve Bennett and executive director of the valley MAC, said he thought the results could be properly tabulated by subtracting ballots cast by voters in precincts within the city of Ojai from the final tally.
“I believe it can be simply remedied,” Offerman said. “It seems like a simple solution. That’s what I would be pushing (Schmit) to do.”
Kaplan, a semi-retired business consultant, said Thursday that he is bemused by the tainted vote but thinks it can be remedied without a new election.
“This is Ojai. Somehow this is how we do things,” he laughed. “But I’m kind of smiling about it. And I’m sure it will work its way out.”
Kaplan said he doubted that his nearly 1,000 vote lead would evaporate if the city of Ojai vote is backed out of the total.
“But if it comes down to it, maybe we could end up flipping a coin,” he said.
Kaplan said he’d called the county Elections Division and Offerman after sample ballots came out several weeks ago to ask about why Ojai residents had his MAC seat on their ballots. But nothing came of his call.
Saltzman, a retired attorney, was traveling and also could not be reached.
As of Thursday, Kaplan had received 4,010, or 55.62 percent of the vote, while Saltzman had gotten 3,072 votes, or 42.61 percent.
In other Ojai-related races, small business owner Clapp maintained her lead in the five-person City Council race. She’d received 1,500 votes by Thursday, with the next update of results set for today. That’s a 229-vote lead over incumbent Sue Horgan, who slightly increased her lead over Suza Francina for second place and the second open seat on the council.
Francina trailed Horgan by 142 votes.
Meanwhile, the Ojai Unified School District parcel tax initiative remained stalled at 65.44 percent approval, while a two-thirds super majority is required for passage.
In another tight local race, Ojai Valley Sanitary District director William Stone was leading challenger George Galgas by just 13 votes, 575 to 562.
The $10-million Jackson-Strickland race remains the election’s most tantalizing, even as late absentee and provisional ballots are being counted.
In several updated tallies, the two former Assembly members, who are ideological bookends, have swapped places. As results have rolled in from three different counties, Jackson, a Santa Barbara resident, has held a 10-percentage-point lead in Santa Barbara County, but Strickland, a Moorpark resident, has led by seven points in the larger Ventura County part of the district. The tiny segment in Los Angeles County has also sharply favored Strickland.
But now Strickland has widened a precarious lead to more than 1,500 votes. Observers think Jackson could close that margin in the provisional count because provisional ballots are often cast by newly registered voters, such as college students. And Democrats, led by President-elect Barack Obama, fared very well with young voters nationwide.

How to sell Ojai

2008-11-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

Chamber’s marketing plan seeks to identify, attract tourists through collaboration, targeting

By Nao Braverman

A souring nationwide economy may have helped put some local merchants out of business. But the high turnover rate for businesses downtown and the occasional empty storefronts are not entirely new to Ojai.
About 92 local business and property owners met with city officials, and members of the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce at the Ojai Valley Woman’s Club, Tuesday evening, to discuss how to make Ojai more attractive to visitors, without destroying its charm and character.
“Tonight is about unveiling some concepts,” said Mayor Sue Horgan. “We hope, particularly in these economic times, that we can come up with something that is useful to you.”
For about a year now, Horgan, fellow Councilwoman Rae Hanstad, and city manager Jere Kersnar, have been meeting with a Chamber of Commerce subcommittee to brainstorm ways to revitalize the local economy. Some of the results were presented to the business community Tuesday.
Among them was a tourism marketing study for the city of Ojai, prepared by two Claremont graduate students earlier this year as a class project.
Their research confirmed that Ojai relies on overnight tourists for more than 50 percent of its annual revenues, said Jeff Haydon, president of the Chamber of Commerce and director of the Music Festival, who presented highlights of the study to the group of business and property owners.
Most tourists come to Ojai in the summer, spring and fall, while very few come to the city in winter, according to the study. The students found that while the majority of visitors come to Ojai from other parts of California, the 14 percent who come from out of state and the measly 3 percent who come from other countries, tend to spend disproportionately more money than those from within the state.
The students also found that people living in Ojai seem to have conflicting views of what the community’s character is, and should be. While some perceive Ojai to be a tourist town, other think it is and should stay a sleepy town. Still others see it as, above all, an artist haven or a or spiritual community.
In conclusion, the students predicted that the coming year would bring more competition to Southern California tourist hubs, due to the softening economy. However, international travelers, who spend more dollars, are expected to increase.
Tourists are predicted to be from younger and older segments of the population rather than in the middle. They will be overall more educated and have less time, according to the study.
While Ojai’s strengths lie in its beauty and historic charm, the study found that it was lacking a cohesive identity, that visitors sometimes had difficulty finding where to go upon arrival, and that there was not a lot of collaboration among local businesses and merchants.
With that information, members of the chamber group subcommittee decided it was necessary to build a more organized plan to enrich the local economy, and address the issues that discourage tourists, said Haydon. To begin by identifying possible goals for a marketing plan, Haydon suggested that the business community strive to attract quality visitors, increase tourism, and realize increased tax revenue. They should also come up with a method of setting benchmarks and measuring their success, he said.
Rob Edwards, director of the Downtown Ventura Organization, presented one format that has been used as a road map to revitalize the center of a number of towns and cities nationwide: the National Trust’s Main Street approach.
Edwards, who directs the revitalization of downtown Ventura using the Main Street philosophy said that its concepts had been used in downtown Los Angeles, New York, Paso Robles, Washington, D.C., and Cripple Creek, Colo., among others.
The Main Street approach, which advocates historic architecture, pedestrian friendliness, authenticity and locally owned shops, can be tailored to suit Ojai’s needs, he said.
The approach advocates an organization governed by a board of directors and four standing committees. An organization committee would oversee the finances and the fundraising, and coordinate volunteers. A promotion committee would promote the district’s image and market it to tourists. A design committee would improve the look of the area by landscaping and cleaning up the streetscape, adding benches, etc. Finally, an economic restructuring committee would recruit new businesses to the district, encourage new local entrepreneurial ventures and help convert vacant underutilized commercial spaces into something positive and aesthetically pleasing. The committees would ideally be volunteer based. Generally the Main Street philosophy advocates a grass-roots community-led effort. While the city of Ventura did hire a director to coordinate their program, the payment was a start-up cost which could be sustained by merchants and local donors in the future, said Edwards.
Following the presentation, local merchants and property owners divided into groups and discussed what they wanted for Ojai, and how to begin to realize their desires for the local tourist economy.
The turnout was overwhelmingly positive and local business owners have said they want to continue to generate more discussion about this, said Scott Eicher, chief executive officer of the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce.
One dissenting local business owner said he thought the Main Street program was unnecessary and wondered if it would require local business owners to pay a consultant to tell them what they already know.
Local residents, as well as business and property owners, will be invited to the next meeting about revitalizing Ojai’s commercial district on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at Chaparral Auditorium from 6 to 8 p.m.

Sci guy aims high

2008-11-13T15:30:00.000-08:00

Expanded science program pays off with higher test scores

By Sondra Murphy

Ojai Unified School District is small and shrinking by the year, but state test scores in science in the elementary schools has risen 25 percent in the past two years.
Administrators are quick to attribute that counterintuitive trend to the dedication of teachers like Matilija Junior High’s Jim Bailey.
Bailey grew up in Southern California and his mother was a school secretary for 20 years. “I don’t think she could be any prouder of my choice of profession even if I were a doctor or lawyer,” said Bailey.
“My dad taught me to surf when I was 10. We still take surf trips to this day. We’ve been to Mexico, Costa Rica, and Hawaii. I teach surf lessons in the summer through Ventura Surf Shop. I have been a contest judge for the C Street Longboard Classic for the last three years. I’ve surfed all around the coast of California.”
He has two daughters, age 13 and 11, who live in Minnesota. “They always come out and spend a month with me in the summer. They like Ojai, especially the water holes and Ojai Pizza.” Besides surfing, Bailey likes cooking, astronomy and playing the ukulele. Before teaching, he was a retail clerk and manager, cattle hand and Sun Valley, Idaho ski lift operator one season. “I house-sit quite a bit in the valley and am great with pets and plants.”
Bailey joined OUSD in 2001 and was welcomed by his colleagues into Matilija’s science department. Through the support of the Ojai Education Foundation, Bailey has also been teaching science to elementary students for three years.
“I’ve always been interested in science and used to read about astronomy as a junior high student myself,” said Bailey. “Matilija has a respected history of providing excellent science education to its students. As the new kid, I really looked up to mentor science teachers like Dan Harding, Rick Metheny — whose retirement allowed me to come to Ojai — and Brenda Farrant. There was already a thriving culture for science education on campus I just had to step into the stream and add my particular experience to the whole.”
Bailey got his teaching credential from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he said the environment was perfect for learning to teach science. “One of the best parts of teaching science is that we get ‘do’ and ‘make.’ Cal Poly really puts an emphasis on a learn-by-doing approach, and nurturing that philosophy has served me well in the classroom,” said Bailey. “Some of my favorite lessons include learning about Newton’s laws of motion on skateboards, studying pressure in fluids and Pascal’s Principle by making Cartesian divers, and learning about simple chemical reactions by decomposing the sucrose molecule — that’s sugar for you non-science types — over a candle flame.” Last year, chef Claude Mann assisted Bailey in making ice cream using liquid nitrogen. “The extremely low temperature of the liquid nitrogen doesn’t allow time for the ice crystals to grow, leading to the creamiest ice cream you’ll ever have,” said Bailey.
Other favorite lessons Bailey gives are making mousetrap-powered vehicles, performing science poetry in a beat poet tradition and making paint stick boomerangs, which he thanked Harding for helping with. He has also found success in having students write science songs to the tunes of pop hits to aid in memorization of key science standards.
“Of course, teaching in this community is far more than I could have ever imagined. The students are curious and well prepared, the families really care about education, and the support in the community is always there. OEF, Rotary, Food For Thought, and even individual families have supported our science programs very generously over the years. It is making a profound difference in our ability to deliver exciting and relevant lessons, as well as helping with student interest and motivation towards the sciences.”
OUSD has seen a recent boost to its science scores in standardized test performance by students since fostering collaboration between elementary teachers, Bailey, OEF and the Rotary Club of Ojai.
“Each day after teaching three classes in the morning at Matilija, I travel to a different elementary school,” Bailey said. “At each site I teach a hands-on lesson or lab directly related to the fifth-grade science standards. The teachers cover the reading of the material in the text and, in some cases, expand on my lesson with activities of their own.” This collaboration has proved beneficial in many ways.
“Science labs can take more time than other lessons both for setup and cleanup. Often they require equipment the teacher may not have easy access to. I have access to equipment from all the elementary schools and can provide the experience and expertise to deliver an effective lab for students,” said Bailey. “I gather the equipment and materials I need on Friday, and carry it with me in my car from school to school the following week. Between surfboards and science equipment there is usually not much room for passengers in my car.” Besides increasing test scores and interest in the sciences, Bailey said fifth-graders have responded enthusiastically to his graduated cylinders, microscopes, propane torches and ukulele. “I love working with the elementary students. They just give their attention and interest away for free. Junior high students make you work for it a little more, but the elementary students are jumping to learn the minute you walk in the door.”
Bailey said his favorite achievements are improved student attitudes about the enjoyment of learning science. “Parents seem fond of telling me that science has become their child’s favorite subject. That’s always nice. A rise in state test scores has been nice as well,” he said. “The elementary program has seen a 25 percent rise in state science test scores in two years: 10 percent the first year and 15 percent last year. Many of my eighth-graders have reported near-perfect scores on the science section of their standards test.”
Students aren’t the only ones enjoying science and Bailey has found that teaching has helped continue his love for the subject in ways he can also share with his peers. “Last year, at the National Science Teachers Association conference in Boston, I facilitated a workshop on creating and using science songs in the classroom. That was a huge moment for me. Playing a ukulele and singing funny science songs in a classroom of 10- or 13-year-olds is a lot easier than in a roomful of 30 adults. But it went swimmingly, and everybody left having created and shared part of a song of their own.”
The science teacher enjoys the challenge of finding better lessons, increasing efficiency in the classroom and inspiring more students to love their interactions with science. “I hope that I can achieve lasting supportive relationships with students who need a mentor or role model to look to. I view my real job as going far beyond the science standards and into the realm of helping to produce happy and healthy young adults,” said Bailey. “I play a small part in my students’ lives, but it had better be nurturing, and affirming, as well as ‘sciencetastic.’ If not, I am missing out on a powerful opportunity.”
As complex as teaching science is, Bailey boils down much of his success to basic elements. “Students will always respond well to good lessons and teachers who care. I am blessed to have some really good relationships with students and families around the valley. It is a sacred responsibility to be entrusted with the education of the next generation. A responsibility that extends beyond just my subject and beyond the classroom walls,” Bailey said. “I believe that, in a community like Ojai, the value of a teacher can be more fully realized because there are so many positive points of contact for adults and youth.”
Bailey’s commitment to the local community is fueled by his enthusiasm for teaching and he recently presented science labs at the Rotary Club of Ojai’s Youth Fest 2008, as well as at Ojai Day. “I am a mentor and facilitator of a youth leadership program run by the Ojai Valley Youth Foundation. In all of these activities there is the opportunity to affirm our youth, reiterate concepts from class, and just generally pass on the components of civilization that will continue our American values and work ethic,” said Bailey. “Ojai just presents a ton of opportunities to support youth and families. Teaching is sure a lot more fun when you care about kids.”
Like everyone else in Ojai connected with public education, Bailey has concerns about the budget. “We as taxpayers provide just around $6,000 per student per year to the school districts and something like $29,000 per prisoner per year to the prison system. There is something fundamentally wrong with our values as a nation when this disparity is so great,” Bailey said. “When good teachers are having to be let go because of the budget, that is a loss for our community. As for me, if all I had was a stick and a dirt floor, I’d still be teaching science.”

Slowing the velocity of atrocity

2008-11-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

Darfur activist coming to Ojai to raise awareness of genocide

By Nao Braverman

The Thacher School will receive a visit this evening from the president and founder of the Darfur People’s Association of New York.
Sudanese activist Bushara Dosa grew up in Darfur. The son of an agricultural researcher, he traveled around Sudan, from Darfur’s most rural areas, to villages that border Chad.
A survivor from a region which has seen systematic murder, rape, abduction, displacement and continual abuse of human rights, Dosa is on a mission to work toward putting a stop to the atrocities that are occurring in his home country.
In February of 2003, Dosa united with other refugee families from Darfur in New York to form the Darfur People’s Association.
“The people who are here in the United States don’t want to see their family members in Darfur die,” said Dosa. “Their purpose is to work to stop this genocide.”
Dosa himself has many family members in Darfur, and is perpetually worried about their safety. Just recently his grandmother had to leave her home but was not able to go to a refugee camp in Chad, he said. While he does travel frequently to Sudan and speaks with family over the telephone, Dosa knows that they are always in danger.
He hopes that spreading awareness of the issues at hand will result in pressure by the Unites States government to facilitate peace negotiations in the war-torn region.
“People can’t help unless they understand the issues,” said Dosa.
While drought and overpopulation in Sudan, causing groups of people to relocate and mingle with other ethnic and tribal groups within the country, have been cited as part of the cause of conflict, the Sudanese government is also involved, said Dosa.
The Sudanese military has sided with the Janjaweed militia group, on one side of the conflict, and is accused of providing money and assistance to the militia group, which, Dosa says, has exacerbated the conflict.
While the U.S. government has described the conflict as genocide, little has been done by the United States and the United Nations to really work toward bringing peace to Darfur, said Dosa.
Dosa has been traveling around the United States, spreading awareness of the conflict in Darfur. He spoke at universities in Washington, D.C., Denver, and New York before coming to Ojai.
The talk was organized by The Thacher School staff through Amnesty International, the student-led division of the Genocide Intervention Network, and the Darfur People’s Association of New York.
Dosa will speak about the conflict and answer questions at The Thacher School Humanities Building, Room 14, at 6:30 p.m. at 5025 Thacher Road.

Measure P lags in late vote count

2008-11-11T15:43:00.000-08:00

Francina also falls farther behind in race for council seat, official results expected Dec. 2

By Nao Braverman

With updated election results, the Ojai Unified School District’s parcel tax measure appeared even less likely to pass Tuesday than it did Thursday, Nov. 7.
Measure P, which requires a two-thirds majority vote to be enacted, was just 92 votes short of passing the evening of Thursday, Nov. 7. Yesterday morning the votes were 110 votes short of passing, with 5,635 ballots, 65.39 percent in favor of the measure, of the 8,617 ballots cast. There were still roughly 1,890 ballots remaining to be counted within the Ojai Unified School District as of Tuesday morning. If the trend remains consistent, the votes will fall just short of the number required to pass the parcel tax, which would have enacted a $89 per parcel tax for seven years to raise operating money for the school district.
Countywide there were 54,939 ballots left to be counted Tuesday, according to assistant registrar of voters Tracy Saucedo.
Betsy Clapp was still in the lead of the Ojai City Council race Tuesday, with 1,395 votes, 27.4 percent of the ballots counted.
The gap between votes cast for returning Mayor Sue Horgan and former Mayor Suza Francina was widened, giving Horgan a more solid place ahead of Francina with 1,175 votes, 23.08 percent of of the ballots counted.
Francina had received 1,051 votes, 20.64 percent of ballots counted as of Tuesday. Incumbent Councilwoman Rae Hanstad remained in fourth place with 871 votes, 17.11 percent of ballots cast, and Mike Lenehan trailed behind with 579 votes, 11.37 percent of the ballots counted. But no results are yet official, according to Phil Schmit Ventura County clerk and recorder.
Schmit said that the Elections Division was going to take the full 28 days after the elections to count ballots and certify results. Official results will be confirmed Tuesday, Dec. 2, he said.
The elections web site is expected to be updated this afternoon.

Golden State Water Company seeks new rate hike

2008-11-06T15:34:00.000-08:00

By Daryl Kelley

The monthly water bill of the typical Ojai customer of the Golden State Water Company would be hiked 4.38 percent on top of a 35 percent increase granted earlier this year under a new proposal by the San Dimas-based water firm.
Ojai customers were notified of the proposed increased this week. They may file protests with the California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advisor's Office. The address is 320 W. Fourth St., Suite 500, Los Angeles, CA 930013 or e-mail, public.advisor.la@cpuc.ca.gov.
The new increase is couched as a means to promote water conservation, not as a way to increase revenues, because it would reduce the basic monthly service fee by about $5 while charging customers who use little water lower rates than those who use more.
The net effect, however, would be to increase the typical monthly bill of an Ojai resident by $4.83, the water company reported. That would mean the monthly bill of a typical resident with a five-eighths- or three-fourths-inch meter would rise from $110.25 to $115.08 unless that customer cut water use.
"The proposed rate design will result in monthly bill reductions for low usage customers and monthly bill increases for those customers who do not conserve," Golden State said in its notification letter to customers.
"The proposed conservation rate design is intended to support and encourage water conservation and will not increase net revenues to (Golden State)."
Golden State said its proposed rate changes are intended to meet the state utilities commission's objectives for water conservation.
But to reap the financial rewards of water savings, an Ojai customer's use would need to be extremely frugal, according to Ojai Valley News calculations based on rate information provided by Golden State.
For example, not only would the typical Ojai customer see a nearly $5 monthly increase, a customer who uses only two-thirds of the water of the typical customer would also see an increase of about $1 a month. The lower user's monthly bill would be $81.58 compared with $80.49 under current rates, despite a reduction in service charge from $30.45 to $25.25.
City manager Jere Kersnar said he had not yet reviewed the proposed rate increase in detail, but that he knew the proposal was presented as a way to save water.
"I do know the PUC has been encouraging utilities to have more of a tiered system of rates to encourage conservation," he said. "But the devil is always in the details."
Ojai water customers already operate under a three-tier system, and the new proposal would increase water rates at every level of use. And even with a reduction in the service charge, water bills would drop only with a sharp reduction in usage.
The city of Ojai has no control over water rates, but it filed a protest letter during the review of Golden State's previous request for a rate increase. And state officials, as part of its ruling, directed Golden State to provide the city with a detailed analysis of water quality and service reliability in Ojai.
"We still haven't seen that report," Kersnar said. "We've talked about it with them, but we still haven't seen it."
The proposed new rates would augment a steep rate hike approved early this year for Golden State's 2,860 customers in and near Ojai.
The Utilities Commission in February ratified an administrative law judge's decision that a 35 percent increase was justified for 2008 alone and that additional increases should be granted to cover hikes in the cost of living in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
That could mean that Golden State could get all of the 43 percent three-year increase it requested in 2007, prompting a firestorm of protest. Angry customers showed up at a public hearing in Ojai. At least 100 attended and more than 20 spoke. A petition signed by more than 500 upset customers was presented.
But the water company prevailed.
Last December, state Administrative Law Judge Regina DeAngelis adopted the 35 percent rate increase for Ojai residents. And the PUC adopted her ruling almost exactly.
Under the ruling, Ojai residents' water bills have increased on a sliding scale, depending on use and size of meter.
For example, the monthly bill for a resident with a five-eighths-inch line using 1,500 cubic feet of water a month, a modest amount, increased from about $50 to about $68. A customer using 3,000 cubic feet, typical for Ojai, increased from about $84 to $110.
The base service charge also increased about $11, to more than $30 a month.
Even before the rate increase this year, Golden State's rates were much higher than other local water agencies.
With this year's hike alone, Golden State's rate increases in Ojai over the last two decades total 107 percent.
Golden State, the subsidiary of a large corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange, operates in Ojai under a long-standing, open-ended contract with the city. Its service cannot be discontinued since it owns the pumps and water lines that serve the community, unless local water users buy the waterworks — -valued by owners at about $12 million.
Company officials have said Golden State's rates are higher than those at nonprofit publicly run water companies because it has no taxpayer subsidies, has to pay taxes and must return a reasonable profit to investors.
The return on base water rates under DeAngelis' ruling was 8.87 percent a year, lower than the 9.41 percent requested by Golden State but higher than the 8.80 percent requested by the Ratepayer Advocates Office.
Under the ruling, the return on company equity was 10.2 percent, compared with a Golden State request for 11.25 percent and the Ratepayer Advocates' recommendation of 10.09 percent.
U.S. Supreme Court rulings have upheld a private company's right to a "reasonable" return on investment when operating a utility for the public, the judge noted.
At the hearings last year, Ojai residents and city officials asked DeAngelis to grant no rate increase until Golden State improved its service and water quality.
But the PUC found compelling DeAngelis' argument that the steep increase was needed to upgrade the Ojai water delivery system and water quality.
A Golden State spokesman said then that the judge's approval of a 35 percent rate increase "is very good for the community of Ojai," because it will allow the company to do much-needed repair to the city's water pipes, pumps, valves and other infrastructure. And it pays for additional workers to better serve the public.

Outcome of local races still uncertain

2008-11-05T14:55:00.000-08:00

Measure P, 19th Senatorial District, 37th Assembly District hinge on abesentee ballots

By Daryl Kelley

Ojai voters split their vote Tuesday in the race for two seats on the City Council, apparently giving challenger Betsy Clapp a spot on the council and probably returning Mayor Sue Horgan for a third full term on the council.
But those results are preliminary, and perhaps one-third of the Ojai vote had not been counted by Thursday morning, because so many votes were cast as absentee ballots on Election Day, officials said.
Meanwhile, the fate of a school parcel tax also still rides on absentee ballots, while two incumbents were returned to the board of the Ojai Valley's largest water district.
Two state legislative races remained close Thursday, with Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson leading Republican Tony Strickland by about 100 votes for a state Senate seat and Republican Assemblywoman Audra Strickland ahead of civics teacher Ferial Masry, the Democratic challenger, by a few thousand votes.
Initial results also showed that Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, easily won a 12th term in Congress, despite a strong Democratic vote nationwide. He defeated Marta Jorgensen, a former nurse and teacher from Solvang.
Countywide, at least 86,000 late absentee and provisional ballots were still to be counted Thursday morning, election officials said.
And, in Ojai, City Clerk Carlon Strobel said she wouldn't be comfortable predicting any close race because so many voters made their choices on absentee ballots on Election Day or mailed them late in the process.
She said she had expected at least a 72 percent turnout of the city's 5,089 registered voters, but votes from only about 46 percent had been counted by Thursday morning. That means that perhaps 2,700 votes for council had not been counted, while 4,648 had been counted, Strobel said.
"People are holding onto their ballots and casting them on Election Day or a couple of days before," she said. "You can see a trend based on the votes so far, but I can't project winners based on 46 percent (of registered voters)."
About 64 percent of Ojai's registered voters turned out in fall 2006 for congressional elections, and Strobel said she thinks that increased to at least 72 percent in this presidential election.
For the Ojai council, Clapp, who ran on a platform of change, had received 1,275 votes, or 27.43 percent, to head the five-person field. Horgan, who stressed the accomplishments of the current council, had pulled 1,057 votes, 22.74 percent, to place second. Former Mayor Suza Francina, was third with 969 votes, 20.85 percent, while incumbent Councilperson Rae Hanstad had placed fourth with 790 votes, or 17 percent of ballots cast. Recreation Commissioner Mike Lenehan had 536 votes, 11.53 percent.
Election officials had to report to the state by 5 p.m. Thursday how many votes were cast in Ventura County and how many were yet to be counted. While updated counting of absentee and provisional ballots will be posted on the county registrar of voters' web site promptly, semi-final results will not be known for a couple of weeks and final results don't have to be delivered to the state for 28 days after the Nov. 4 election.
Two years ago, it took nearly a month for City Council results to be finalized, and a 76-vote margin decided one council seat. That margin, however, remained about the same from Election Day until the final tally was released, so there was no surprise.
On Tuesday, the separation between council candidates was greater, although Francina trailed Horgan by just 88 votes for the second available council seat.
Indeed, Horgan, first appointed to the council in 1999, was cautious about saying too much Wednesday morning.
"I'm honored to be able to serve another term," she said. "I'm just trying to digest it all."
She said she'd have more to say about her goals in the new term once the results are final.
Francina said she still hopes to win the second council seat: "I'm delighted that Betsy Clapp is in the lead and I'm hoping to catch up. Sue is 88 votes ahead of me, (so) anything is possible. It's in the hands of fate! … If the outcome is still the same, I sincerely congratulate both Sue and Betsy."
Clapp, a small business owner who ran with backing from environmentalists and a Chamber of Commerce endorsement, said she feels she's been handed a mandate for change, but needs the cooperation of the rest of the council to accomplish her goals.
"My feeling now is that I have a responsibility to bring the change people said they wanted and need," she said the morning after her victory. "That is to make Ojai an economically strong and environmentally sustainable community. But I'm only one vote, and I hope the City Council will join me to move forward as quickly as possible. It takes three votes to make these changes."
Among Clapp's primary goals, she said, is to create citizen committees to oversee budget, police and water issues, and also to form a valleywide recreation district.
She said she also wants the council to work harder to "market" Ojai as a tourist destination, "to keep ourselves strong in frightening economic times."
Clapp said a key issue in the months to come is what is to happen to property owned by the Ojai Unified School District at its district headquarters on Ojai Avenue at Montgomery Street.
Hanstad, a consultant on drug issues and a council member since 2000, said she was disappointed not to receive a third term.
"My heartfelt congratulations to Sue and Betsy," Hanstad said. "Clearly, there was a lot of interest in Betsy's message for change."
Hanstad, a longtime community volunteer before she won a council seat, said she will now "take a sabbatical" from public life.
In other local election results Tuesday, Ojai school officials were digesting a razor-thin, 87-vote loss of the ballot measure to establish a small parcel tax to support the school district. In unofficial results, Measure P received 65.42 percent of 7,418 ballots cast, but a two-thirds super majority was required to enact the new property tax.
On the Casitas Municipal Water board, directors Jim Word and Pete Kaiser were re-elected, with Ventura-based Word getting nearly 82 percent of the vote to defeat salesperson David Norrdin. Kaiser won in the division representing Oak View and Mira Monte by defeating perennial candidate Jeff Ketelsen by an almost 2-1 margin.
Kaiser also was returned to the board of the Ojai Valley Sanitary District, easily defeating Ketelsen and a third candidate, Frank McNerney.
Incumbent William Stone was apparently defeated by state licensed contractor George Galgas for a second sanitary board seat. But Galgas led Stone by only five votes, 470 to 465, in the initial count.
On the Ojai Valley MAC, challenger Gerald Kaplan defeated incumbent Alan Saltzman, with Kaplan getting nearly 56 percent of the vote.
For the Meiners Oaks Water board, incumbents James Barrett was re-elected with about 38 percent of ballots. But a second incumbent, Karol Ballantine, was knocked off by retired business owner Norm Davis. Davis got about 36 percent of ballots, while Ballantine got 25 percent.

Local election results

2008-11-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

The Ventura County Elections Office should have results for Ojai voting posted around 11 p.m. Tuesday evening.

For up-to-the-minute election results, click these links. If the links aren't live, cut and paste into the browser of your choice. The second link should take you right to the Ojai City Council race.

The left-side window of the county elections frame will take right to the race you seek, from Obama-McCain for President, to Kaplan-Saltzman for Municipal Advisory Council.

http://recorder.countyofventura.org/Election%20Result.htm

http://recorder.countyofventura.org/Election%20Result.htm

OVN reporter Daryl Kelley will have a full report on local results and reaction about noon Wednesday. It will be posted as soon as its available.

Ojai Film Festival set to tee off with golf tourney

2008-11-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

Local talent includes many on the screen, and behind the scenes

By Sondra Murphy

Continuing its tradition of "enriching the human spirit through film," the ninth annual Ojai Film Festival opens tomorrow at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa golf course with its inaugural Celebrity Golf Classic benefit.
With programs illustrated by Sergio Aragonés circulating the area, locals are ready for the influx of thousands of movie-goers expected to attend the event that grows in prestige each year. In the short history of the Ojai Film Festival, more than a dozen films first shown here have gone on to be honored at other venues, including Academy Awards nominations.
The Celebrity Golf Classic is scheduled to begin tomorrow at 10 a.m. with Malcolm McDowell serving as honorary chairman of the event to benefit OFF and the Breast Cancer Resource Center at Community Memorial Hospital. Participating golfers will enjoy the company of at least six celebrity golfers gracing the green this year, a list that includes Mickey Dolenz, Robert Hays, Bobby Herbeck, Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill, Joanna Pakula and John Bennett Perry. A putting contest precedes the shamble format tournament.
Festival-goers will again view comedy, tragedy, animation, documentaries, narratives, shorts and feature-length films. Screenings begin tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the Ojai Center for the Arts and Ojai Theatre and the opening night party is slated to start at 4 p.m. at OVIS. The traditional free community screening will take place at 7 p.m. at the OVIS recreational field and features Charlie Chaplin's 1931 film, "City Lights," paired with a new digitally recorded soundtrack performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra that festival organizers expect to be well received. People attending the screening should know that they are not allowed to bring in food or beverages to the field, but refreshments will be sold on site.
Film screenings continue at OVIS and the Art Center, as well as at Matilija Auditorium, Friday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. A filmmakers' party will take place Friday from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Art Center.
On Saturday, director of photography Billy Fraker will be featured during a noon seminar at the Art Center and special screenings are scheduled as part of the Lifetime Achievement Awards given this year to Ray Bradbury, Richard Donner and Lauren Shuler Donner. At Matilija, the Donners' film "Ladyhawke" will be screened at 12:30 p.m., followed by "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit," adapted from a Bradbury story, at 3 p.m. At 6 p.m., Bradbury will sign books in the lobby of the OVIS Hacienda Ballroom, then the awards ceremony honoring the Donners and Bradbury will take place at 7 p.m. inside the ballroom.
Many in the film industry will appear to pay tribute to the honorees, with others sending in video tributes for the event. Ojai's John Langley will present the award to the Donners, while Diane Ladd will present Bradbury his.
A total of 57 films are part of this year's Ojai Film Festival. The film "Tru Loved" features the Ojai Laurel Springs School graduate, Najarra Townsend, in this tale of a high school student who educates her peers by forming her school's first gay-straight alliance. Townsend has had a busy year, working in eight feature films, most of which will be released in 2009. "I feel extremely lucky to have booked this role," said Townsend. "I loved the script. 'Tru Loved' kind of opened my eyes on how one person can make such a difference. It made me stronger in my beliefs and inspired me to stand up for what I believe in." She plans to attend the festival this year and attend the Sunday screening. "Tru Loved" plays Friday at 5:30 p.m. at the Art Center and Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Ojai Theatre.
"Torn from the Flag" is another film to be screened this year with Ojai connections. The documentary recalls the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and its impact on the fall of communism. Ojai resident Arpad Ecsedy is a Hungarian freedom fighter who narrowly survived an assault by Soviet tanks. The story is by Klaudia Kovács and features footage by Oscar-winning cinematographer László Kovács, who died shortly after the film was completed. Ecsedy and wife, Yudit, will host an open house Saturday from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 210 Descanso Ave., where Klaudia Kovács and Arpad Ecsedy will answer questions and relate experiences.
"I saw this film in Los Angeles recently and Klaudia did an excellent job," said Arpad Ecsedy. "It surprised me because she is a young one and, mostly, young ones are not interested in history. She had a very hard job to put it together because she didn't have a bunch of money, so had to be thrifty to do everything."
The couple has welcomed the filmmaker to their home before. "I met Klaudia at a party in Los Angeles about a year ago," said Yudit Ecsedy. "She has been working on this film for about nine years and I realized she's up to something very big. Her intention is to show that what happened in a little town influenced history. It's a really well-made film and László used his own personal footage. Klaudia hopes to have a new generation see what went on, and my prayer is that people will get that this is not just a historical moment, it's a spirit that needs to be honored today of freedom, self-expression and responsiveness and be in people's consciousness. And it is now an Oscar contender."
Academy Award winner Vilmos Zsigmond also acted as executive producer of the film. "Torn from the Flag" will be screened Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Ojai Theatre and is not considered appropriate for people under 16.
Advance purchase of a variety of golf or ticket packages and passes may be made by calling the OFF office at 640-1947 or by logging onto the web site at ojaifilmfestival.com. A full schedule of the many film screenings, events and locations is also detailed on the web site.

D.A. Seeks More Info In VPS Vandalism

2008-10-31T17:04:00.000-07:00

Oct. 3 incident not being investigated as hate crime

By Sondra Murphy
As of Oct. 31, the vandalism incident that occurred on the Villanova Preparatory School campus Oct. 3 is still under investigation.
“The DA’s office has asked for more follow-up investigation and we’re hoping to have it wrapped up in a couple of weeks,” said Ojai Police Department Administrative Sgt. Maureen Hookstra. “We had a meeting with Villanova and the representative from the DA’s office reviewing the case. The school is being apprised of our status and so is Nordhoff.”
Villanova’s football field, pool and marble statue of St. Thomas of Villanova were reportedly vandalized with blue and gold paint, manure, salt and bleach. Slogans were also reported to have been painted on various surfaces, but details will not be released until the investigation is complete.
Villanova staff was able to clean up most of the mess quickly, with the exception of the statue. The marble proved very absorbent and Villanova is contacting specialty companies for help in removing the residual blue tint.
Seven Nordhoff students were subsequently suspended in connection with the incident, but names have not been released pending police investigation out of concern that it could compromise the case. Not all suspected vandals are Nordhoff students.
As reported in the Oct. 8 issue of the Ojai Valley News, Sheriff’s Detective Mark Burgess said that, contrary to rumors circulating throughout the community, the vandalism is not considered to be a hate crime. No further specifics have been given by investigators regarding the issue, but according to California Penal Code 422.7, hate crimes are defined as criminal acts against an individual or group because of actual or perceived race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability.
Under felonies, P.C. 422.7 lists a hate crime to be the “commission of a crime for the purpose of interfering with another’s exercise of civil rights.” P.C. 594.3 specifies, “Vandalism of place of worship based on racial or religious bias.” P.C. 11412 reads, “Threats obstructing exercise of religion.”
Based on the information OVN has received to this point about the vandalism, religion was not the motivating factor in the incident, but misplaced school rivalry.
The OVN will run updates as information about the case is released.

Areas Of Valley Under Quarantine

2008-10-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

Gypsy moth infestation in Mira Monte, Meiners Oaks brings state’s sole quarantine

By Daryl Kelley
Discovery of a “breeding population” of tree-killing gypsy moths has prompted a quarantine of most of Mira Monte and Meiners Oaks and a western slice of Ojai, the only restriction of its kind in California.
Two clusters of up to 100 orange-colored moth eggs were found recently in Mira Monte, following discovery last summer of seven adults moths in traps nearby, officials said.
Gypsy moths were discovered in the same area last year and two were eradicated without harm in Meiners Oaks in 2000.
Gypsy moths, which can devastate oaks and other hardwood trees, are rarely found West of the Mississippi River. But some apparently hitchhiked on recreational vehicles from the Midwest or northeastern United States, where the pests have severely damaged forests, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
The new Ojai Valley quarantine requires 35 businesses and thousands of residents to get a government inspection of anything stored outdoors during last summer before they can move the property elsewhere.
That means that owners of boats, RVs, trailers, patio furniture, firewood or other wood products within the five-square-mile quarantine area would need a county permit before the property could be sold or moved.
The quarantine area is bounded generally by Baldwin and Villanova roads on the south, state Highway 33 on the east, Fairview and Meyer roads on the north, and a sparsely populated area near the Ventura River on the west.
“The quarantine is necessary because we found egg masses in a couple of locations in Ojai (area),” said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “That tells us there is a breeding population there.”
The quarantine could last for two years, he said. It could affect, for example, a boat owner wanting to take the craft to Lake Casitas for the day or a recreational vehicle owner who wants to take a fall trip out of the area.
It is “intended to stop the spread of objects contaminated with gypsy moth eggs,” he said. “People are being asked not to move outdoor objects without prior inspection.”
Although the county Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, which will do the inspections, is requesting voluntary cooperation, a violation of the quarantine would be a misdemeanor crime and subject to a fine under the state Food and Agricultural Code, officials said. But inspectors won’t be writing tickets right away.
“Our first priority is to achieve compliance,” Lyle said. “Experience tells us that people want to cooperate and do what they can to reduce the risk of spreading invasive species.”
Notification letters to residents were scheduled to be hand-delivered Thursday after a quarantine declaration was issued in Sacramento.
Most affected businesses — a plant nursery, a landscaping company, a green-waste facility, a lumber yard, storage facilities and mobile home parks, for example — had already been contacted by midweek, said county Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Alan Laird, who is overseeing the program.
While retail complexes such as the Vons shopping center at Ojai’s “Y” intersection are within the eastern edge of the quarantine area, businesses there don’t have outdoor storage, so they won’t be affected by the restrictions, Laird said.
“This only affects anything stored outdoors,”he said.
He said two county inspectors, and more state officers, will be working the quarantine area, and that residents should expect a response within 45 minutes if they decide they want to move a boat or an RV that’s been in outdoor storage.
“We’ll be there in a very timely fashion,” he said.
As for businesses, as soon as they are inspected, they’ll be cleared to carry on business as usual, Laird said. For example, a plant nursery in the quarantine zone will be inspected for infestation, receive a certificate showing no problem was found, and then be free to sell plants.
Officials said the moth’s egg-laying season is ending, so any problem should be evident to inspectors now.
The quarantine was triggered after state inspectors, following up the discovery of seven gypsy moths in state traps in June and July, found two masses of eggs.
“They found two properties (in the Mira Monte) area infested with eggs masses,” Laird said. Each of those was within a quarter-mile of the other, he said. So the problem may be focused.
But the summer catch was serious enough to prompt this fall’s survey to find if gypsy moths are laying eggs locally, then to kill them before the resulting baby caterpillars eat many times their weight in leaves.
Since the summer discoveries, the number of traps in a four-square-mile survey area around the catches had been increased from 14 to 144, Lyle said. The state usually maintains two traps per square mile in the Ojai Valley, he said.
In addition, there were 10 state inspectors assigned to the survey, he said.
A single gypsy moth caterpillar can eat 1 square foot of leaves every day, experts say. And they have wrought devastation on vast swaths of woodland of the northeastern United States and the Great Lakes regions since migrating from Europe in the 1800s.
Once a tree is repeatedly defoliated, it is susceptible to disease, and often dies.
“It is important to detect and eradicate gypsy moth infestations while the population is still small,” says a Food and Agriculture flier that announced the survey.
“If a larger infestation were to develop in Ojai,” the flier said, “the gypsy moth caterpillars would threaten oaks in this region as well as other hardwoods, evergreens, manzanita, cottonwood, willow and others. It is also a threat to forests and agricultural crops such as fruit trees.”
Generally, however, gypsy moths are not a big problem for farmers in California, said Susan Johnson, Ventura County’s chief deputy agricultural commission. So far, every outbreak of gypsy moth infestation in this state has been eradicated, state officials said.
“It’s not an agricultural pest, it’s a pest of open spaces and viewsheds,” Johnson said. “It infests oaks and hardwood trees.”
Masses of eggs, appearing as buff-colored felt, are found on trees and on transportable items such as RVs, outdoor play equipment, barbecues and campers, according to state officials.
New infestations are primarily caused when these items are moved from infested areas such as the eastern United States, where millions of gypsy moths strip broad stands of trees and bushes each year.
The moth threat has prompted concern among local landowners, such as the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, which oversees more than 1,930 acres of open space, much of it within the quarantine area.
The eggs are laid in masses that are light yellow-orange in color, often on the bark of trees. Any sighting should be reported to a state pest hot line at (800) 491-1899, officials said.
If a population of moths is found, it can be attacked with an organic insecticide, the standard practice after such a discovery.
Also, a quarantine could include inspection of motor homes at the California border if they are arriving from infected areas. And local inspectors would follow up in Ventura County to make sure none of the pests remain on the vehicles or equipment that were in infected regions. Those stretch from Maine to Wisconsin to Virginia.

Ojai Public Access Issues Aired Out

2008-10-30T18:26:00.000-07:00

Council also considers paying $3,000 a month to reimburse Stop the Trucks for settlement

By Nao Braverman
There may be hope yet for Ojai’s home-grown television shows.
AB 2987, which proposed to equalize competition among cable providers by allowing them to franchise with the state instead of individual cities, has already wiped out a number of public access stations in California.
When Time Warner, Ojai’s cable provider, announced its decision to franchise with the state after its agreement with Ojai expires in November, city staff expected to take on the task of broadcasting government meetings on Channel 10, but nothing else.
“It is my concern that if we are running a television studio that would add up to a lot of staff time,” said city manager Jere Kersnar.
But Ojai’s public access regulars, John Wilcock, who airs a low-budget travelogue through the local station, Lee Fitzgerald whose 14-year-old news show began in Ojai, and William Roberts who airs a vedic theology show, were not ready to give up their Ojai air time. All attended the regular City Council meeting Tuesday night to protest the city staff’s recommendation.
But council members did show interest in having a community-run public access station, and considered appointing a subcommittee to look into the task.
“If we do have a subcommittee, I will volunteer to be on the committee,” said Councilwoman Carol Smith, “because I think public access is something really precious and I would hate for Time Warner to get away with taking it away from us.”
While the endeavor would require some funds and certainly a number of community volunteers, the city could easily find the latter, as many meeting attendants eagerly volunteered themselves.
“I think PEG (Public Education and Government) access is a very important tool in bridging the digital divide,” said Ojai resident Marcus Sandy. A self-described tech-savvy geek, Sandy said he would be happy to offer his services should the council consider contracting the operation of a station to local volunteers.
Tyler Suchman, founder of the Ojai Post, also offered to provide data feed to the public access channel, in between City Council and Planning Commission meetings. “We have a wealth of content and technology,” he said.
Fitzgerald said that he and his show’s producer had been looking into independent community public access stations such as the one in Ventura (Community Access Partners of San Buenaventura) and another in Santa Barbara. He asked to be placed on a future City Council agenda with a proposal for Ojai.
Mayor Sue Horgan directed him to meet first with city staff. Council members all said they were open to the variety of ideas from public speakers and showed interest in directing a subcommittee of local volunteers to look into to the issue.
In an interview earlier Tuesday, Todd Thayer, executive director of CAPS in Ventura, said that their program was funded partially by the county, which gives it 40 percent of its franchise fees from Time Warner, and partially by small membership fees. They also receive an additional percentage for public access from the county through the new legislation, which requires Time Warner to give the city of Ventura a small percentage of its profits, earmarked for public access.
Ojai Council members also asked staff to apply to get 1 percent of Time Warner’s Ojai profits through the new legislation. But that will likely be less than $20,000 a year, according to the trend, and not enough to run a station, said Kersnar.
In other City Council news, council members considered paying the Stop the Trucks Coalition in monthly increments of about $3,000 until the end of the fiscal year.
Although nothing was solidified at the meeting, council members directed staff to work with members of Stop the Trucks to draft a memorandum of understanding which would provide the coalition with funds to operate.
Coalition Chair Michael Shapiro suggested an indefinite amount, with a total cap of $43,000, the sum that it cost the organization to settle with owners of the Diamond Rock Mine, over a period of about 14 months. That comes out to approximately $3,000 a month, though every month is different, said Shapiro. There have been many months that the organization didn’t use any money, while the costs during settlement meetings were much higher than $3,000 he said.
Shapiro said he hoped to work out an arrangement where the monthly amount was flexible. Council members asked staff to draft a memorandum of understanding which would give funds to the coalition for a trial run until the rest of this fiscal year which terminates in June. The memorandum would have to come back to council for approval.
Kersnar reported that a meeting between Skate Ojai, city staff and Site Design Group, Inc., on Monday went smoothly. The firm had continued to refine their design and seemed to be getting closer to a concept that meets everyone’s needs, he said.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” said Councilman Joe DeVito, who also attended the meeting.
The council also approved prioritizing parts of Valle Rio, Sierra Road, Shady Lane, Creek Road, Fulton Street, and North Signal for repaving with rubberized asphalt, a newer material which has a longer life span, according to Mike Culver, Public Works director.
Earlier on, the council agreed to allow tax incentives for owners of the Lavender Inn, for preserving and maintaining the inn under the Mills Act. The Mills Act authorizes the city to contract with owners of historic landmark properties, giving the owners tax incentives for upkeep of historic landmarks. The Lavender Inn, once a brick schoolhouse, is one of Ojai’s historic landmark structures.
Also at the opening of the meeting, San Antonio School fifth-grader Christopher Van Son gave a PowerPoint presentation on the environmental harm caused by grocery store plastic bags when they are discarded. Van Son urged the council to follow the lead of Bangladesh, Rwanda, China and San Francisco and adopt an ordinance banning plastic bags.
Council candidates Suza Francina and Betsy Clapp voiced their support for such an ordinance.
The meeting was adjourned in the memory of Ray Ellis.

Voters Face Wide Array Of Choices

2008-10-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

Local races, from city council to water board, make for full ballot on Tuesday

By Daryl Kelley
Rarely have Ojai Valley voters had clearer choices than those they face on Tuesday as the long campaign for local, state and federal offices comes to a close.
Beyond the historic race for U.S. president, local voters will be picking a congressman, state legislators and an array of local officials, including two for the Ojai City Council and two more for the Ojai Valley’s most important water board.
After choosing between Barack Obama and John McCain, local voters will cast their ballots for a host of potential lawmakers that are even more starkly different than the presidential aspirants.
Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, 64, a conservative who has consistently backed President Bush, seems a safe bet to return to Congress for a 12th term, despite an anti-Bush backlash that threatens Republicans in some of the strongest GOP districts in the nation.
That’s because his challenger in the 24th Congressional District, a former nurse and computer teacher, Marta Jorgensen of Solvang, has run almost no campaign. She’s failed to raise much money to offset the incumbent’s nearly $1-million bankroll, or to effectively press her environmental platform and fervent opposition to the Iraq War.
Jorgensen, 54, who has been sued by her former campaign manager for back pay, has said she’s relying on the coattails of Obama to gain election in a district with a strong Republican advantage in registered voters.
In one of the most interesting and costly races for the California Legislature, Ojai voters will also consider the differences between the philosophical bookends running for the 19th State Senate seat, Hannah-Beth Jackson and Tony Strickland.
Together, they and their supporters have spent more than $8 million on an avalanche of TV ads and mailers that seek to define their opponent in the starkest terms.
Jackson, 58, a Democrat from Santa Barbara, was a family lawyer before she became one of the Assembly’s most liberal members from 1998 until 2004. She’s been backed consistently by environmentalists, labor unions and social service advocates and opposed by pro-business, anti-tax and law enforcement groups.
Strickland, 38, a Republican from Moorpark, had never really held a job outside of politics when he became the Assembly’s youngest and one of its most conservative members while serving the same six-tear tenure as Jackson. He has been supported as a reliable pro-business, anti-tax and small government vote. After leaving office, he established a group to punish Republicans he saw as too willing to compromise with Democrats.
Now, both candidates are seeking support from moderate voters, who may decide the race, since voter registration in the once-safe Republican district is split almost evenly after a surge of Democratic registration this year.
Strickland is running as an “independent” thinker who has founded a company to promote renewable energy, despite his past opposition to alternative energy bills. He’s gained Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s endorsement. But critics say his new stance is a ruse to give Strickland a position from which to campaign at a time when voters seem turned off by polarized politics. Strickland’s fledgling company has no employees and is awaiting permits to test wave energy.
Jackson is running as a protector of the middle class and the environment, highlighting her support of Obama and Strickland’s past support of Bush policies. She’s maintained that she voted to rein in subprime mortgage lenders in 2001, while Strickland rejected the same law as undue government control.
But she’s had to fight a Strickland campaign that tars her as “Taxin’ Jackson,” a politician who never saw a new tax she didn’t like. She’s supported by the Sierra Club, but opposed by a prominent anti-tax group. Strickland, meanwhile touts the support of Ventura County’s sheriff and district attorney.
Strickland is anti-abortion, while Jackson supports a woman’s right to choose.
Those stark differences are also clear in the 37th Assembly District, in which Audra Strickland, a former legislative aide and private school teacher, is seeking a third and final term. She replaced husband Tony in the seat in 2004, when he reached the maximum three terms Assembly members can serve.
Audra Strickland, 36, is opposed for the third time by Ferial Masry, 59, a high school government teacher from Newbury Park. The native of Saudia Arabia would be one of the first Muslim women elected to state office in the United States if she prevails. Masry has lost twice to Strickland by double-digit margins.
Although Democrats have made registration gains in the 37th District, Republicans retain a 7 percentage point advantage. In addition, Audra Strickland has run on her opposition to new taxes of any kind, her responsiveness to constituents and, in recent months, her leadership in opposing construction of a state prison hospital near Camarillo.
Masry, in turn, has run as an “independent Democrat,” and a “breath of fresh air,” who has business experience through ownership of a small company with her husband. She has said that construction of new court-ordered prison hospitals, such as the one near Camarillo, is a sign of the failure of California lawmakers like Strickland to fix a substandard health care system for inmates.
Other races on Tuesday’s ballot include a seat on the Ventura County Board of Education, in which pediatric dentist Mark Lisagor, 61, is challenging incumbent Chris Valenzano, 29, an emergency medical technician who was once an Assembly aide to Tony Strickland.
A majority of the Ojai Unified School District board has endorsed Lisagor.
The race for two seats on the Ojai City Council has been aggressive, but civil, with five candidates vying.
Joining veteran council members Rae Hanstad and Sue Horgan on the ballot are former Mayor Suza Francina, small business owner Betsy Clapp and federal government investigator Michael Lenehan.
While the candidates say they are running separate and independent races, incumbents Hanstad and Horgan each signed the other’s nomination papers, and challengers Francina and Clapp did the same for one another.
Lenehan, 47, a coach and Recreation Department member, said he thinks the current City Council is doing a good job and that he probably would not have run if the incumbents had not first bowed out of the race, then re-entered it in July.
The incumbents said they decided to seek a third full term because of unfinished city business, such as construction of a new skate park and a decision on how to meet a state mandate that Ojai provide more affordable housing.
Challengers Clapp and Francina, meanwhile, say they are running because the city needs a change in leadership. The incumbents have not been responsive to residents, they maintain, and have not moved forward quickly enough with actions to support their adopted goal of making Ojai an environmentally sensitive community.
Clapp, 57, and Francina, a 59-year-old author and yoga teacher, said they are running on platforms that include policies embraced by the fast-growing Ojai Valley Green Coalition.
“It’s time for the City Council to follow through in creating a truly sustainable Ojai,” Francina said.
In fact, the City Council did endorse those principles in May, when it pledged to embrace an array of new strategies to make the Ojai Valley a “green” community that laces economic, social and ecological needs into the fabric of everyday life.
Hanstad and Horgan specifically said then that it was time to make such concepts part of government and community life.
“Ojai’s natural setting and magnificent environment must be protected,” Horgan, 53, said.
Hanstad, 57, stated similar views, saying her goals were to preserve Ojai’s “hometown character” while balancing its three primary assets, “a natural environment, a diverse character, and a healthy economy.”
Also on the Tuesday ballot are seats to direct the Casitas Municipal Water District, the Ojai Valley Sanitary District, the Meiners Oaks Water District and the valley Municipal Advisory Committee.
There are competitive races for two Casitas Water board seats, In a district centered in Ventura, incumbent Jim Word is challenged by retail salesperson David Norrdin. In a district that includes Meiners Oaks and Mira Monte, incumbent Pete Kaiser is challenged by substitute teacher Jeff Ketelsen. Both Norrdin and Ketelsen are perennial candidates who have never won a competitive race.
For the Ojai Valley Sanitary District, two seats are contested: incumbent William Stone is challenged by state license contractor George Galgas in Division 1; incumbent Kaiser is challenged by Frank McNerney and Ketelsen in Division 3.
On the Ojai Valley MAC, incumbent Alan Saltzman is challenged by Gerald Kaplan in Division 7.
For the Meiners Oaks Water board, incumbents James Barrett and Karol Ballantine are challenged by retired business owner Norm Davis.
Polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. Election officials expect a heavy turnout.

Five Vie For Two Council Seats

2008-10-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

By Daryl Kelley
Ojai voters have five choices this fall for two seats on the City Council.
Joining veteran council members Rae Hanstad and Sue Horgan on the Nov. 4 ballot are former Mayor Suza Francina, small business owner Betsy Clapp and federal government investigator Michael Lenehan.
Unlike many other campaigns this electoral season, the Ojai council race has been pointed but civil, with four candidate forums, including one Monday at Chaparral Auditorium co-sponsored by the Ojai Valley Green Coalition and the Ojai Post.
The race has been defined in the context of incumbents vs. challengers, with Hanstad and Horgan citing the importance of their experience as public officials and Francina and Clapp insisting that Ojai city government should be more open to an array of citizen opinion and more active in pursuit of solutions.
By contrast, Lenehan, a city parks commissioner and federal military investigator, said he thinks both incumbents have done a good job but that he stayed in the race to give voters the option of a blue-collar candidate with a strong parks and recreation background.
“I predict this will be a close election,” Hanstad said. “All of the candidates are capable and all have as a goal to enrich the quality of life in Ojai. The difference is experience specific to this job.”
And, Horgan said: “The city has done a great job.”
But Francina and Clapp insist that current council members agree so often they nearly always see things the same way to the exclusion of diverse ideas.
“Consensus-building among people who think the same is easy,” said Francina, a council member from 1996 until 2000, when she chose not to run again after a controversial first term. “I respect Sue and Rae, but I think there should be a lot more transparency in our local government. Betsy and I are serious, well-qualified challengers.”
Clapp said she’d characterize the race as “status quo vs. the willingness to change and look at new ideas … For a long time, the city council has not been receptive or inviting to the public.”
This election represents the first challenge to Horgan and Hanstad since 2000. They ran unopposed for re-election in 2004.
Horgan, 53, a former business banker and city planning commissioner, was appointed to the council in 1999, then placed first in a three-person race the next year.
Hanstad, 57, a substance abuse consultant who was recruited by a group of city leaders in 2000, placed second, ahead of the late community activist, Bruce Roland.
Horgan had 1,903 votes, Hanstad 1,591 and Roland 1,378.
“The incumbents have never really had to run for their seats until now,” said Francina, 59, a yoga instructor and author of four books on health and yoga for older people.
As two-term incumbents, Hanstad and Horgan have become friends and admirers. Each signed the other’s nomination papers for council. Both participated in the fiscal turnaround of Ojai city government.
And each has received the support of Councilmembers Steve Olsen and Joe DeVito, who were both critical of Francina’s performance when she was on the council a decade ago.
Hanstad and Horgan said they are running for a third full term because they want to finish the work they’ve begun, especially construction of a skate park for Ojai youth, completion of a new comprehensive plan to guide city policies and adoption of a new housing plan that addresses state mandates for more affordable dwellings.
They also want to make sure the City Council adopts follow-up policies to assure that the city never gets in the same financial mess that led it to completely drain a $4-million budget reserve four years ago.
And, as the emerging Ojai Valley Green Coalition finds full voice, both Hanstad and Horgan are pressing with the rest of the City Council to begin to implement the “Road Map to a Sustainable Ojai” it approved in May.
Specifically, Hanstad said at Monday’s forum on environmental issues that the city needs to work with the rest of the Ojai Valley communities to better address serious problems of water quality and availability, traffic and the region’s overall quality of life.
“Ojai really is a very special place,” Horgan added. “We all want to protect what we have here. We know we have a gem here.”
But Francina and Clapp criticized the City Council for talking a good game but acting too slowly.
“I hear Sue Horgan talk about being in balance: Our world is way out of balance,” Francina said.
And Clapp said the council had shelved the bicycle and pedestrian master plan Francina helped draft in 1999, and still has 50 bike racks in storage behind City Hall.
“We need to have deadlines,” Francina said. “Otherwise it’s just a bunch of hot air.”
On a sampling of questions at Monday’s forum: Hanstad and Horgan said they wouldn’t ban use of plastic bags in the city, while Clapp and Francina said they would, and none of the candidates said they would ban from city use the herbicide spray, Roundup, which Ventura County is using to rid the Ventura River of the invasive arundo reed. Francina did say, to applause: “As a general rule we should have a pesticide-free valley.”
In more general terms, the incumbents have stressed in interviews that they’re running separate and independent campaigns. “Ojai voters are studious,” Hanstad said. “They judge candidates as individuals.”
Hanstad said she’ll spend about $3,500 in a “paperless” campaign that has no mass mailings, focusing instead on her reelectrae.com web site. Horgan said she has raised about $5,000 and spent about $4,000 on a mailed flier, a “focused letter” to potential supporters, ads and Ojai Day. Francina said she has spent about $3,500, mostly on a web site (suzaforojai.com), newspaper ads, mailers and an Ojai Day booth. Clapp estimates her spending at $4,400 for ads, mailers, lawn signs, a booth and web site (Betsy4Council.net). Lenehan said he has spent about $200 and has refused to accept campaign contributions.
Both incumbents said they’ve been pleased with the civil way in which this campaign has been waged by all five candidates, although Clapp and Francina have taken the fight to them at some of the forums.
“Obviously, there will be attacks on the city and the incumbents, but that’s just part of the format,” Hanstad said. “But between the candidates, I think it’s been very civil and respectful.”
Lenehan, however, said he didn’t like the way Clapp has pressed issues sometimes.
“I don’t agree with her sound-bite attacks,” he said. “I like her and I respect her, I just don’t agree with her tactics. Whether I agree with Suza or not, or think she’s on this planet, I like her.”
He said he likes and respects both Horgan and Hanstad because he worked well with both when they served as liaisons to the city Recreation Department.
Clapp said she’s received praise for her aggressive performance at forums, and was endorsed by the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce board of directors after one last week. When chamber executive director Scott Eicher called, “… he said I was incredibly prepared” at the forums, she said.
Eicher said that at least five of the seven board members who voted endorsed Clapp. The board has 10 members, but two were absent and one abstained because she works on the Francina campaign, he said.
Meanwhile, like the incumbents, Clapp and Francina have echoed each other on issues.
They signed each other’s nominating petitions and have stressed many of the same environmentally oriented issues.
Clapp, 57, who runs a small business that makes powdered food products, and Francina said they are running on platforms that include goals embraced by the Green Coalition.
“The Ojai Valley Green Coalition is advocating things I’ve supported since 1974,” said Francina, who was derisively dubbed “Mayor Moonbeam” during her mayoral term in 2000.
“I smile when I remember that I used to be called ‘that bicycle lady’ and ‘Mayor Moonbeam,’” Francina said in her official candidate statement. “Now conservation is the watchword of every government and business around the world.”
Both Clapp and Francina said it is past time for the city to implement the bicycle-pedestrian master plan. “Where’s our bike plan developed 10 years ago?” Clapp said. “It’s gathering dust somewhere in City Hall.”
Both Clapp and Francina also have rapped the council for approving a 2006 lawsuit in support of the city attorney’s decision not to place on the city ballot two citizen’s initiatives he found too vague to be constitutional. The ensuing legal battle, in which the city prevailed on appeal this week, has now cost taxpayers about $100,000.
The proposed initiatives were in favor of affordable housing and against chain stores, both issues addressed this year by the council.
But both Horgan and Hanstad said they would not vote to spend any more money on the case if the American Civil Liberties Union appeals it to the state Supreme Court.
“Enough,” said Hanstad in an interview. “We have other legal priorities at this time.”
In a general sense, the five candidates bring to voters distinct personalities and clear choices.
When Hanstad, a 28-year Ojai resident, was first elected eight years ago, she was a partner in a local surgical equipment firm, raising three teenage children and was active not only in local schools but also in groups such as Ojai Valley Library Friends and Foundation, the Ojai Music Festival and the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy.
“That combination of volunteerism and business experience appealed to my drafting committee (in 2000),” Hanstad said, speaking of former Mayors Nina Shelley and David Bury, Councilman Olsen and current school board member Ricki Horne, among others.
Today, Hanstad, who holds a community college degree and attended classes at the University of Chicago, said she’s hardly a seasoned political veteran.
“I don’t know if anyone ever feels like a veteran here,” she said. “Ojai has such an active public. And you know what they say, there are no small issues in small towns.”
Hanstad sees herself as “a centrist, and that’s a strength.” But she knows that could be a dicey position in a close election in which other candidates have niches of support. “The person in the middle of the road gets run over,” she said.
Horgan’s path to the council followed graduation from the University of Colorado and years as a commercial banker in Los Angeles. She, her lawyer husband and 2-year-old daughter moved to Ojai 16 years ago. She served as administrative director at Four Winds School until 2003, and has been a stay-at-home mother since then. Like Hanstad, she’s served on a variety of local, city and countywide boards as a representative of Ojai.
Lately, she’s also served as a board member to the Ojai Valley Community Hospital Foundation.
“Really what sets me apart is my belief in responsive government, openness to new ideas and prudent fiscal management,” she said. “It’s a really balanced approach to solving the issues we face. I have a broad focus and not a single agenda.”
Her top priority right now, she said, is getting the skate park built promptly.
Clapp, an 18-year Ojai resident, has a widely varied professional history. She worked as a finish carpenter for 20 years, cooked on an offshore oil platform for four years, cruised in a sailboat with her husband for a year and a half and operated a Ventura coffee shop. Now, she runs two small businesses. And she did much of that while raising a daughter.
During her campaign, Clapp has proposed a number of new initiatives, including creation of a valleywide recreation district, since people throughout the area participate in programs sponsored by the city.
Indeed, a survey Clapp did during Ojai Day showed her what residents want the city to do with its money. Placing first, was construction of a community swimming pool, while more recreational activities was second in her survey. Street repairs ranked high, as did library remodeling, refurbishing Libbey Bowl and more bike lanes and racks, she said.
“This is all about the quality of life in this valley,” she said.
Francina, who emigrated from Holland to Ojai 51 years ago, trained as an early childhood teacher before graduating from the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco. She’s written best-selling yoga books and is a local teacher of that discipline.
She has raised two children and now lives with “lots of animals” on “one of the most beautiful streets in Ojai.”
“I feel very loved and supported by the community,” she said, and good about running for council again.
“I feel I’m headed in the right direction, and I’m at peace either way.”
She’s already personally involved in one issue before the City Council — a proposal to tear down 18 of 25 low-income rental units on Mallory Way near her home, and build 23 new units in their place.
“I’ve submitted my concerns,” she said. “These are about the last low-income houses left.”
Lenehan, a lieutenant colonel in the Army reserves who is an Iraq War veteran, said he moved to Ojai in 2001 because it was such a good place to raise his five children.
“We all live in a three-bedroom, one-bath, 950-square-foot house,” he laughed. “But we feel very fortunate just to be here.”
He said he’s running his campaign on behalf of blue-collar Ojai. “I’m pretty much a working-class individual, like a lot of Ojai residents,” said Lenehan, a graduate of Santa Barbara City College and the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Lenehan said a focus of his campaign is improving youth recreational programs, although he said he’s learned a lot about other issues during the campaign.
“Most folks here in Ojai know me as coach Mike,” he said.
Lenehan has coached youth soccer, T-ball and hockey teams on which his children have participated. He is also an assistant varsity football coach at Villanova Preparatory School.
“I thought being involved in so many sports and having so many kids, I might as well contribute where I can.”

OUSD Takes Steps Toward Leasing Offices

2008-10-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

Board OKs district to move ahead with plans to lease out nearly eight acres in downtown Ojai

By Sondra Murphy
On Tuesday, Ojai Unified School District took an official step in its efforts to be less reliant on government sources for its funding.
With continued budget uncertainties looming on the horizon, the OUSD board approved the distribution of the Request for Qualifications-Proposals for joint occupancy lease and development of the district office and Chaparral High School property on East Ojai Avenue and North Montgomery Street. OUSD board members and administrators see lease options as one way to establish both short-term and long-term control revenues.
The stated intent of the RFQ-P is, “To enable the district to identify highly qualified and capable entities with experience in commercial and mixed-use development that can evaluate and carry out development strategies pursuant to a joint occupancy ground lease with the district.”
“The market and economy has sort of been on again, off again,” said OUSD superintendent Tim Baird, “but we feel like we just need to see what the market is like right now for this very unique piece of property.”
“This is very exciting,” said board member Rikki Horne.
“How do we get the word out?” asked President Steve Fields.
“Anyone may request a copy of the RFQ-P,” said Baird, adding that the district would advertise in the Ventura and Santa Barbara areas to alert developers to the opportunity.
“How much interest do we have?” asked member Pauline Mercado.
“I’ve had about five people who have expressed interest,” said Dannielle Pusatere, assistant superintendent of business and administrative services. She pointed out the estimated timeline in the RFQ-P packet named Jan. 5 as the response deadline in order to bring any submissions to the board by the pending Jan. 13 meeting.
Clerk Kathi Smith cautioned administration not to hurry through the application process. “I’m very concerned about having staff rush through looking at RFQs in a week,” she said. “I would much rather have administrators and attorneys comb through them. We don’t want to get stuck with something buried in the wording.” Vice President Linda Taylor agreed.
“It’s not like it’s going to be money in the hand,” said Mercado.
“We were trying to get it to the board before you start to make budget decisions,” explained Baird. “We could change the dates to whatever we want.”
According to the RFQ-P approved Tuesday, the downtown property in question is about 7.88 acres in total and OUSD would require about 1,000 square feet of building space, if developed. In addition to the administrative offices and Chaparral, the property currently houses infant and preschool centers, nutrition services, a community auditorium, garden and maintenance and transportation yards and offices. OUSD is waiting until any submission is accepted and proceeds before determining potential relocation of any department or center.
The site is currently zoned for Public-Quasi-Public Use (P-L) and surrounded by Village Mixed Use (VMU) zones to the west and north, and medium and high-density multi-family (R-2 and R-3) zones to the east and south.
The district also owns the attached site of the Park & Ride and Skate Park areas, which the city has leased through 2023. Community members, especially those involved in building a permanent skate park at the location, have voiced concerns about the future of those leases in light of the district’s development efforts.
If the plan plays out, a ground lease for a maximum of 66 years would be negotiated and any selected development team would be subject to obtaining necessary entitlements subject to approval by the city of Ojai and OUSD and state boards of education.
Lessees would be responsible for all facets of development, including any governmental issues that impact development, such as zoning, land use policies, environmental review and political or social implications of developing the sites, arranging financing for any development and all costs and risks associated with the design and construction processes.
Submission requirements are detailed as to communicating development team qualifications, approach to development, project schedule, financial and legal declarations, and district compensation. In the compensation section, OUSD specifies, “The compensation proposal must include: (1) an up-front/on contract payment at the commencement of the development process; and (2) annual ground lease rent and how rent will be calculated … The exact terms of the ground lease would be negotiated between the district and the selected responder if the necessary entitlements are obtained.”
The district also reserves the right to reject any and all submissions at its sole and absolute discretion with our without cause, change the submittal requirements, or terminate the process at any time.

Ojai Commits To Skate Park

2008-10-23T17:11:00.000-07:00

Staff, council find common ground with Skate Ojai on costs, construction issues

By Nao Braverman
City staff and council members came together Tuesday night to mend the rift that has drawn them apart from members of Skate Ojai and local skateboarders over the past few weeks.
“We are here to build a park,” said Mayor Sue Horgan. “It will not be easy, there will be bumps in the road, but we are going to do it.”
The special City Council meeting was scheduled to clarify some misunderstandings and give council members an opportunity to respond to issues regarding the skate park that they weren’t able to address at the previous council meeting a week prior.
Difficulties arose earlier this month when city staff received an estimate for the skate park from Site Design Group that was nearly $200,000 over budget. While city staff and members of Skate Ojai have committed to working through the budget discrepancies as quickly as possible, city manager Jere Kersnar said that the skate park’s completion date would be delayed several months at the very least, until August 2009.
Kersnar admitted to members of the public Tuesday that he had seen the estimate before the design was presented to the public at the Oct. 1 Planning Commission meeting. But it was only two minutes before the meeting, so he had decided to go forward with the presentation, he said.
The Site Design Group representative who presented the design to the Planning Commission was only a junior designer at the firm, and could not answer budget questions regarding the increased costs the night of the meeting, said Kersnar.
The estimate which came in an e-mail before the meeting was $533,430 instead of the budgeted $360,000, Kersnar said. It was unclear and apparently incomplete, he added, which means that the numbers could get even higher once public art and other costs that hadn’t been included in the estimate were factored in.
“In any event we are committed to getting this back on track as soon as possible,” he said.
When city staff finally spoke with the lead designer, Kanten Russell, on Oct. 6, Russell had agreed to give the city a design which was built to budget. Kersnar said he received the rough downsized version at 5 a.m the next morning. The designer had subtracted a bank with ledges on the east side of the property, eliminated one of the main elements, shortened a half pipe and cut off two corners to make the park smaller.
“Part of the problem appears to be that too many people were giving directions to the design group,” said Kersnar. “It was a process that wasn’t being well controlled.”
Although he conceded that the firm should not have been taking directions from just anyone, he decided to direct all communication to Site Design through the city’s recreation director, Dale Summersille.
‘“I was frustrated and I do not doubt that I was curt,” said Kersnar regarding his communication with members of Skate Ojai. But he affirmed that the city’s goal was congruent with that of Skate Ojai’s, and that the park would get built, though not as quickly as staff had hoped.
City attorney Monte Widders confirmed that volunteer labor could be used for the construction of the skate park.
Public Works director Mike Culver said that he had misunderstood and mis-represented the prevailing wage requirements of the labor code, which mandate employees working on public projects be paid prevailing wage.
Widders said that an exception to the law, which allows volunteers to work for free on public projects for a government agency or (501)c3 nonprofit organizations, had been extended, and would allow volunteers to work on the skate park construction.
“It seems this opens the door in a wide way to allow volunteer labor,” said Horgan.
Sasha Wolfe, a consistent advocate for the Ojai community garden, lamented the loss of 60 percent of the existing garden to make room for the skate park.
Skate Ojai member Bob Daddi assured council members and the public that members of Skate Ojai would gladly extend a hand to Wolfe in revitalizing the garden. “There is plenty of land back there and we will be happy to volunteer and help,” he said.
At the next meeting, set for Oct. 27, city staff, members of Skate Ojai, and a City Council representative will meet with Site Design Group to review the estimate in detail and try to bring down costs.
Kersnar said that members of Skate Ojai have indicated that the estimate by Site Design Group may have been too high. Council members also agreed that the use of volunteer labor might bring down expenses.
Ojai resident Pat McPherson asked that ongoing meetings regarding the skate park be recorded, and the minutes made public on the city web site, to prevent further mis-understandings.
Kersnar was not in favor of the idea, but agreed to consider posting updates and bullet points on the city web site regarding the skate park’s progress.

City Council Candidates Debate

2008-10-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

From left, challengers Suza Francina, Mike Lenehan, incumbent Sue Horgan, challenger Betsy Clapp and incumbent Rae Hanstad spent more than two hours debating a wide range of Ojai-related issues.

By Daryl Kelley

In spirited exchanges that revealed sharp differences, five candidates for Ojai City Council sparred Monday evening before a nearly full house at Chaparral Auditorium just 15 days before the November election.
While incumbents Sue Horgan and Rae Hanstad calmly defended the city’s performance during the last four years, challengers Betsy Clapp and Suza Francina aggressively pressed the need for change at City Hall.
A third challenger, Mike Lenehan, rarely engaged in the sharp exchanges, choosing not to “second-guess” the incumbents while stressing his own background as a coach in youth activities.
The incumbents laid out their platform of experience and collaborative problem-solving during tough financial times and noted the knowledge they had gained on numerous city and countywide boards.
They cited a list of accomplishments — new parks and community improvements and plans for more, finances allowing — even as they had struggled to replenish city budget reserves depleted by taxes lost during lengthy renovation of the Ojai Valley Inn, the city’s largest taxpayer.
Horgan said the city was in better financial shape now than the vast majority of other California municipalities.
Hanstad said she ran initially “to restore a spirit of consensus to our council,” and felt she’d been “drafted” by Ojai residents again to complete an ambitious agenda as the council attempts to balance local business and community concerns while maintaining the small-town character of Ojai.
Indeed, all of the candidates said keeping Ojai an oasis of livability and citizen involvement was a main goal.
But Clapp, in particular, took the fight to the incumbents in a wide-ranging, respectful and even-keeled forum hosted by the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Ojai Valley Board of Realtors and the Ojai Valley News.
Clapp, a small business owner, criticized the City Council for supposedly not listening to citizens, failing to implement environmentally sensitive programs and wasting money to fight a citizen initiative through a costly lawsuit.
“I believe Ojai needs change, and I believe I can help bring that change,” Clapp said in her opening statement. “Our current city government is not doing enough …”
Horgan, who responded most often to Clapp’s criticisms, said the City Council had done a good job pulling the municipal government out of a financial mess in recent years. She and Hanstad both said their response to financial crisis, which saw city budget reserves fall from $4 million to nothing, was their proudest accomplishment in the two full terms they’ve served on the council.
“You can be sure my position was arrived at after careful consideration,” Horgan, a former business banker, said in her opening statement, describing her decision-making process in general. “We need the steady hand and balanced approach that I bring.”
Typical of the exchanges were answers to a moderator’s question to incumbents about what decisions they regret most and of which they are most proud. Conversely, the challengers were asked what City Council decision they disagreed with most and to cite one they agreed with.
Francina, a former mayor, yoga instructor and author, rapped the council for approving a 2006 lawsuit in support of the city attorney’s decision not to place on the city ballot two citizen’s initiatives he found too vague to be constitutional. The ensuing legal battle, in which the city prevailed on appeal this week, has now cost taxpayers almost $100,000 (see accompanying story).
“It’s a huge waste of money and sends the wrong message to Ojai’s citizen activists,” Francina said.
In turn, Clapp blasted the city for not accepting activist Jeff Furchtenicht’s offer to withdraw his own suit challenging the rejection if the council would put the two measures on the council agenda for discussion.
The proposed initiatives were in favor of affordable housing and against chain stores, both issues addressed this year by the council. The council restricted chain stores in the downtown core and is now considering what to do about a state mandate that the city provide more affordable housing.
“It’s horrible to sue a private citizen,” Clapp said. “(Furchtenicht) was reaching out the olive branch.”
In response, Horgan explained that city attorney Monte Widders could not legally prepare the initiatives for the ballot because they were unconstitutional, and since Furchtenicht refused to withdraw them, Widders had to sue to protect the city’s legal position. Now, the state appellate court has found the form of the initiative petitions “unconstitutional on its face,” Horgan said.
But when a questioner from the overflow audience asked whether the candidates would vote to fight the lawsuit further if the American Civil Liberties Union appeals to the state Supreme Court on behalf of Furchtenicht, both Horgan and Hanstad said they would not.
Clapp and Francina also criticized the incumbents for not doing more to implement a plan Francina helped draft while on the council nearly a decade ago to encourage bicycle riding in Ojai instead of driving.
“Where’s our bike plan developed 10 years ago?” said Clapp. “It’s gathering dust somewhere in City Hall.” That’s true, she said, even after a $22,000 rewrite of the plan two years ago by a consultant. Fifty bike racks purchased by the city remain in storage, she said.
But Hanstad and Horgan said they had served the city well, tackling complex issues in a productive four years since they ran unopposed.
Just this year they approved a “Roadmap to a Sustainable Ojai,” embracing the broad guidelines of an emerging worldwide movement and a new Ojai Valley Green Coalition, while also pledging funds for a new skate park for local youth and a successful grass-roots effort to limit the number of gravel trucks that use state Highway 33 through Ojai.
The council has also begun planning a $3-million, public-private effort to rebuild Libbey Bowl, a centerpiece of the city, they said.
“The list (of council accomplishments) is huge for a city this small,” Horgan said.
Clapp said a current dispute over skate park construction, and whether it should be a $350,000 project or cost $550,000 with add-ons, shows “how broken down the communication is” between the city and the community, which led fundraising for the skate park.
But Hanstad said the fact that Horgan, as mayor, had called last night’s special council meeting to discuss the issue showed how responsive the city is to community concerns.
In answers to other questions, the candidates expressed diverse opinions.
When asked whether a fully staffed visitors’ center should be in place to support tourism, the city’s largest revenue producer, the candidates said they supported such a center. The center is staffed by volunteers now, and not open every day. But Horgan and Hanstad opposed dedicating a portion of the city’s hotel-motel bed tax to that effort. And both said they’d worked with business leaders in recent months to piece together a coherent plan to bring tourists to town.
But Francina and Clapp noted that the city had withdrawn money it had once given to the Chamber of Commerce to support the center.
“Why is it that our visitors’ center closed down?” Francina asked. But she also said, “It’s a mistake to put all of our eggs in the tourism basket.”
Clapp said the city needs a fully staffed visitors’ center since 28 percent of its revenue comes from tourism.
Horgan said the city did not close the visitor’s center by withdrawing financial support for it during tough times. They stop funding the chamber for providing visitor services.
“When we had a financial crisis we cut funding to many entities,” Hanstad explained.
But the council, with the city now flush with a surplus each year, hopes to restore some of that support, including funds for a visitors’ center, she said.
The city’s annual budget surplus is more than $500,000 out of a budget of about $8 million, but an emergency reserve of $4 million has not been fully restored yet. It was that reserve, Horgan noted, that carried the city through tough times during the Ojai Valley Inn’s lengthy expansion and restoration.
Lenehan said the other candidates had all made “great points.” He noted that business operators east of Montgomery Street tell him they feel ignored by the city. “They have doubts they value much” to city officials, he said. Officials have said that East End improvements, including placing power lines underground, are part the redevelopment plan for the city.
All candidates said they thought the city was served well by the Sheriff’s Department, which functions as the local police agency, and that a local police department would cost more for less service. About one-third of the current budget goes to the sheriff’s contract, candidates said.
Lenehan, a federal investigator and Army reserve officer, said the city gets lots of costly sophisticated services from the sheriff’s contract that a small city police force could not afford — such as major crime investigation, gang suppression and emergency response. Yet, Clapp called for a police oversight committee to better involve the community in law enforcement issues.
A question about a potential conflict of interest by Jere Kersnar because he is both city manager and planning director, sparked a pointed exchange.
The incumbents said Kersnar functions in both capacities because belt-tightening eliminated the top planner’s position, but that the post might be re-established if there’s enough money in the future.
“The real issue is the city manager effectively runs the city of Ojai, because the City Council does not provide leadership …,” said Francina.
But Horgan and Hanstad said the council makes the final decisions. And the real concern about Kersnar, Horgan said, is that he may work too hard.
Clapp said city services suffer for lack of a planning director.
When asked by a member of the audience whether the city should annex surrounding neighborhoods that are now in county jurisdiction, the candidates agreed that didn’t make sense financially.
Hanstad also said there has been only “uneven” support among residents of the areas to be annexed. But she said she understood the frustration of many seeking annexation because so many issues, such as water availability and rates, overlap city boundaries.
Ojai is “a well-run city,” Horgan said. “It doesn’t make financial sense for our city to annex other property.”
But Clapp responded, “That doesn’t mean you can’t re-address things.”
Horgan agreed that issues should be reconsidered from time to time, “should something have changed. But nothing has changed” on the annexation financing issue, she said.
A Clapp recommendation that a valleywide district be formed to fund recreation programs now paid for by the city, drew support, including that of Horgan.
The candidates were asked by a member of the audience what “attitudes” made for a successful council member.
Francina said putting herself in “other’s shoes,” was a key as was in-depth research of issues. For example, she noted earlier that she’d been an expert on “sustainable communities” for more than a decade. The sustainability concept is that a society should plan its activities so they meet its needs while preserving the natural way of life, and to maintain this balance indefinitely.
Lenehan said an ability to take in a great deal of information was an important characteristic for a council member, as was understanding the need to “staff the ideas” for soundness.
Clapp said she personally offers “tremendous business skills,” and could work with others respectfully.
Horgan said always being available to constituents was important, as was an ability to listen well and respond in an analytical way to achieve consensus.
Hanstad agreed. “Most important is the ability to achieve consensus,” she said. Without that, even good ideas fall to the wayside, she said.
Monday evening’s forum was the second for City Council candidates, with another to follow at a Rotary Club of Ojai lunch on Friday before a final public discussion next Monday at 7 p.m. at Chaparral Auditorium sponsored by the Ojai Valley Green Coalition.

Judge Rules for City in Citizen Lawsuit

2008-10-21T18:10:00.000-07:00

Furchtenicht says decision will chill initiatives

By Nao Braverman
A three judge panel in the State Court of Appeal reversed the demurrer granted to local citizen Jeff Furchtenicht in 2006, and affirmed denial of his anti-SLAPP motion against the city of Ojai on Monday.
“The appellant judges seem to say I did exactly what I was supposed to do,” said city attorney Monte Widders.
But Furchtenicht maintains that the sweeping court decision was a terrible one, that will rob the public of its right to freely propose an initiative from here on.
The dispute which began during the 2006 City Council elections, comes to surface once again in time for this year’s election debates.
The two-year-long battle began when Furchtenicht proposed two citizen’s initiatives to the city regarding chain stores and affordable housing in August 2006.
Widders declined to prepare a ballot title and summary for the initiatives, claiming that they were not submitted in the proper format, and asked him to withdraw them, rewrite them and resubmit them.
Widders had argued that the initiatives were too vague, directing the council to “consider” and take measures to address the affordability of housing, and discourage chain stores from opening downtown, instead of proposing actual legislation.
When Furchtenicht refused to withdraw the initiatives and rewrite them, Widders took him to court, stating that he needed the opinion of a judge.
In response, Furchtenicht filed a demurrer and anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) motion, declaring that the lawsuit was intended to obstruct his right to propose initiatives.
At the end of November 2006, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken Riley granted Furchtenicht the demurrer on the grounds that even if the alleged complaints were true, there was no legal basis for a lawsuit. However, Riley found Widders “well within his official duties to deny Mr. Furchtenicht’s request to title and summarize the two initiatives,” according to the minutes of the hearing.
Riley also denied Furchtenicht’s SLAPP complaint. Both Furchtenicht and Widders left the courtroom believing that the decision had been made in their favor.
Furchtenicht was not pleased with the judge’s dismissal of his anti-SLAPP motion, however, and appealed that portion of the decision in early 2007, this time with the American Civil Liberties Union defending him pro bono.
ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg said that the city attorney should not be able to impede in the initiative process which essentially gives citizens a voice.
In response the city asked to appeal the entire decision, not just the anti-SLAPP portion, so that the case could be reviewed in its entirety, according to city manager Jere Kersnar.
An oral argument was held on July 9, and the three judge panel issued a unanimous decision, Monday, in favor of Widders.
The written decision states that the three judge panel agreed the demurrer granted to Furchtenicht was erroneous. Since Widders did not claim the authority to make the decision himself, regarding the initiatives, but asked the opinion of a judge, he was not claiming any authority beyond his ministerial duties, according to the judges. It also adds that there is no constitutional right to place an invalid initiative on the ballot. Although characterized as ministerial, the duty to prepare a ballot title and summary requires professional skills and judgment, according to Judge Steven Perren’s written decision.
The judges accepted Widders’ claim that he could not conceive of a ballot title and summary of the initiatives that would not be misleading to voters, according to Perren’s written report.
Moreover, Perren adds that Widders was not acting on his opinion of the content of the initiatives, but the format in which they were written. Had he acted on his opinion of the content of the initiatives, that would have been unconstitutional, according to the report.
Perren also comments on Furchtenicht’s argument that if his measures were presented to the City Council prior to the 2006 election, the voters would have the opportunity to consider their council members’ positions on the issues included in his initiatives at the upcoming election.
Perren states that “if the proposed measure does not enact legislation or if it seeks to compel legislative action which the electorate has no power to compel, it should not be on the ballot.”
Ironically, the proposed initiatives and the lawsuit have been hotly debated by the council members who are running for re-election this year, and their opponents.
Councilwoman Rae Hanstad said the court decision validates the city’s position legally and logically.
Opponent candidates Suza Francina and Betsy Clapp criticized the incumbents for allowing the city to proceed with a lawsuit that has now cost taxpayers more than $93,000.
Widders maintains that he gave Furchtenicht the opportunity to avoid the lawsuit.
“I tried to negotiate with him,” said Widders. “I told him to withdraw the initiatives and resubmit them in the proper format.”
However, Furchtenicht explains that he, in turn, responded to Widders, saying that he would withdraw the initiatives if the city would have the topics he addresses in his initiatives placed on the agenda of a future council meeting. Furchtenicht says that there was no attempt to respond to his suggestion from either city staff or council members.
“I didn’t take that as a genuine offer to negotiate,” said Furchtenicht.
The topic of affordable housing has since been discussed extensively at council meetings and an ordinance regarding chain stores was passed.
“I think that indicates that we are not opposed to bringing those issues to council,” said Hanstad.
Furchtenicht said he worries that the court’s decision sets a problematic precedent. It gives the city attorney power to quell a citizen’s initiative before the public and City Council get an opportunity to see it, he explained.
“I don’t know that Widders had bad motivations or not,” he said. “But now this legislation is ripe for abuse by people who do have bad intentions.”
Furchtenicht said he was not yet sure whether the ACLU would be interested in appealing the court’s decision. Eliasberg did not return calls in time for press.
However, both incumbents said they would not vote to continue fighting the case if it were appealed.
Kersnar confirmed that the lawsuit has cost $93,000 to date and is not sure if there are additional costs for which the city has not yet been billed.
The written report states that costs on the appeal are awarded to Widders although neither Widders nor Furchtenicht are yet sure exactly how much that will be.

Nordhoff Suspends Seven Suspected Vandals

2008-10-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

Police eye arrests for Oct. 3 incident at Villanova

By Sondra Murphy
Seven Nordhoff High School students were suspended this week for their involvement in Oct. 3 vandalism to Villanova Preparatory School campus. The two schools’ football teams were to play that evening for the first time in more than three decades.
Perpetrators painted Villanova’s statue of St. Thomas of Villanova, as well as offensive graffiti slogans around the school. The football field and pool were also vandalized with manure and salt.
Nordhoff administration reported that because the incidents occurred outside of school, the law is very specific about how they were able to deal with their students. Suspensions were initiated for this situation since expulsion is an option for drug, alcohol or weapon-related incidents during school hours or activities.
Not all the vandals were Nordhoff students. Both schools waited for police to investigate the incident before deciding what action to take.
The oil-based paint used has been difficult to remove from the marble statue. Villanova president, the Rev. Gregory Heidenblut, said that experts are being sought to aid in cleaning it off. So far, no product has been able to remove residual blue tint from the structure.
“I walk by that statue about 40 times a day,” said Heidenblut. “That being one of our Augustinian brothers from 500 years ago, it’s very disheartening.” Heidenblut had another company coming to Villanova Thursday to see if they could restore the statue.
The pool has returned to safe condition and was the site of an Oct. 10 water polo match between the two schools. “We have had some sporting events with Nordhoff since then, so things are looking up,” said Heidenblut. “We are letting the police do what they need to do and have not heard anything new from them.” Heidenblut said he and OUSD superintendent Tim Baird also met this week and agreed to let the police investigation continue, as needed.
Ojai Detective Steve Michalec said they will be taking the case to the district attorney’s office next week. “We’re looking at several people, mostly juveniles, to determine what arrests, if any, will be made,” he said.

Council To Help Fund Stop The Trucks Effort

2008-10-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

While Diamond Rock gravel trucks slowed down for time being, new threats looming

By Nao Braverman
At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting the council agreed to give financial support to the Stop the Trucks Coalition, after the a semi-victory for the citizens’ group in August.
“After this agreement has been worked out, keeping the Diamond Rock Mine’s trucks out of Ojai, it has been pretty clear to me that whatever this group did, they did it successfully,” said Mayor Sue Horgan.
The recent legal settlement granted to the coalition, preventing the Diamond Rock Mine from sending gravel trucks through Ojai until 2012, has given the Stop the Truck’s Coalition some respite.
But the Ozena Valley Ranch Mine’s expansion looms ahead, with many potential consequences endangering Ojai’s safety, tourist economy and quality of life, said Scott Eicher, a member of the Stop the Trucks Coalition and CEO of the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce.
The coalition members pleaded for some financial backing from the city to help them battle increased truck traffic from the Ozena Valley Ranch which is looking to expand.
So far the coalition has spent about $60,000, with $41,000 toward the settlement agreement with the owners of the Diamond Rock Mine, coalition representative Howard Smith told the council.
Council members were eager to support the committee.
“I think the Stop the Trucks Coalition has done all this work and the city has benefitted from it,” said Councilman Steve Olsen. “I think a financial thank-you would be appropriate.”
But since the city is not legally in the position to give a gift of public funds, council members have to come up with findings that demonstrate that the money will go to a legitimate public purpose. They would also have to do some work to come up with a specific amount to give the coalition, they decided.
“The coalition has spent $60,000, $41,000 on the agreement with the Diamond Rock Mine which was hugely successful,” she said. “I think giving anything up to $41,000 can be justified.”
But council members agreed that it would be wise to wait and meet again with members of Stop the Trucks to come up with a methodology for finding the exact amount the city should give the coalition, and a way to keep track of how the money is spent.
A motion was made for city staff to return to the council with a resolution to give financial support to the coalition, leaving the amount blank.
The motion passed unanimously.
In other council news, Public Works director Mike Culver announced that the department has $500,000 available to repave Ojai’s roads, $400,000 of which come from state funds and $100,000 allocated from the city’s general fund.
Vallerio Avenue was prioritized as the highest on the list of 12 out of Ojai’s 48 streets which are identified in a computerized pavement management system as the most in need of repairs.
The estimated cost to repair all the damage to Ojai’s 39 miles of paved roads would cost $8 million, according to the computer system, said Culver. The $500,000 should give them a start.

Skaters, Council At Odds Over Park Cost

2008-10-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

Skate park design exceeds budget by $200,000, prompting uncertainty

By Nao Braverman
Skateboarders and local citizens were disappointed and outraged to learn that the attractive skate park design presented to them at a Planning Commission meeting was probably too good to be true.
Council members and city staff confirmed at Tuesday night’s regular council meeting that the state-of-the-art park that Site Design Group presented to local skateboarders on Oct. 1, was not within budget.
While Site Design Group representatives maintain that they had created a design to meet the city and Skate Ojai’s $360,000 cap, the design that was presented at the Oct. 1 Planning Commission meeting had included some bonus features which would add up to around $200,000 more than the city and Skate Ojai had to spend.
Site Design Group’s lead designer, professional skate-boarder Kanten Russell, said in an interview that he had gotten the impression somewhere that the community was really excited about the project. He understood that Skate Ojai might be able to add some in-kind donations and raise more money in the future. Running on that notion, the firm had included some more costly elements, in case some additional funds and volunteer labor were added to the mix.
But if there were two designs presented to the Planning Commission earlier this month, as Site Design Group claims, vocal members of the public only saw one, and the more expensive one at that.
Members of Skate Ojai were miffed that they hadn’t heard about the fiscal discrepancies earlier, and had already presented the design to donors.
“Two weeks ago we were presented the design for Ojai’s skate park, and there was no talk of a problem at that meeting,” said Chet Hilgers, president of Skate Ojai. “I have an obligation to over 1,500 people who dug into their wallets for this park.”
Hilgers said he was called to a meeting early Tuesday morning where city manager Jere Kersnar instructed him not to speak to the city attorney, city council members or city staff regarding the subject until it had been scheduled for discussion.
Council members were also taken by surprise.
“You said that $350,000 would be more than enough,” said Councilwoman Carol Smith to Skate Ojai. “So I am angry, and I have no idea who OK’d this $550,000 number.”
Mayor Sue Horgan said that the City Council needed an update on the issue. However she wondered why, when members of Skate Ojai were invited to participate in a scheduled skate park discussion to be added to Tuesday’s agenda, they had refused.
Skate Ojai member Judy Gabriel explained that she was told that the meeting would be about taking elements that donors and local skaters are counting on, out of the park design.
“We don’t want to do that given the situation,” she said. “The kids and our donors have already seen this design. Now that we are in this position we are trying to see if we can get in-kind donations to build the park that was presented.”
But while Skate Ojai seems to be counting on in-kind donations in the form of volunteer labor, Horgan said she is still unsure if the city can legally accept such gifts.
The 1931 Davis-Bacon Act requires that anyone working on Public Works projects be paid no less than the prevailing wage.
But city attorney Monte Widders said that there is an exception to the law that allows volunteer laborers to work for free, for city projects, and (501) 3c nonprofit organizations, such as Skate Ojai. The only problems that might come up are if a concrete company offers to donate concrete, he said. Then the company employee who delivers the concrete would likely not be paid prevailing wage. But there are a number of ways to get around such an issue, he added. For example, the owner of the business could pour the concrete himself, and not get paid.
Horgan said she had asked Widders to prepare a written analysis of the issue so that the City Council could understand it.
Members of Skate Ojai who felt they were being accused of instigating the more expensive skate park design, argued that they had not even been invited to participate in the city’s negotiations with Site Design Group, let alone dictate the park’s price.
“The city contracted the designer, yes, Skate Ojai has been invited to some of the conversations, but we were not allowed to be involved in the contract,” said Gabriel. She added that there was nothing in the contract, drafted by city staff, that requires Site Design Group to build to the $350,000 budget.
“That is not good management,” she said.
Horgan reminded Skate Ojai that the City Council and members of the community had the same goal.
“I am sorry we are in this position and we need to find a way out because we owe it to our kids,” she said.
A special council meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall Council Chambers to discuss financial issues the skate park is facing.

Two Casitas Incumbents Challenged

2008-10-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

Two directors on Ojai Valley’s largest water supplier each face challengers

By Daryl Kelley
Two veteran directors of the Ojai Valley’s largest water district face familiar challenges this fall as they take on the same two opponents they defeated handily in 2004.
And the winners will be faced with a host of important decisions over the next four years, as the Casitas Municipal Water District decides what to do about a costly federal lawsuit, expansion of the Lake Casitas Recreation Area, boating restrictions prompted by an alien mussel and the cost of water farmers use to irrigate Ojai Valley crops.
As they seek another term on the board of directors, Jim Word and Pete Kaiser are opposed again by David Norrdin and Jeff Ketelsen, a pair of perennial candidates for elective office in Ventura County.
There are sharp contrasts between the incumbents and the challengers.
Word, a 71-year-old Ventura resident, is a retired department store manager who has served as president of several Ventura public service agencies. He is now president of the Casitas board.
Kaiser, 52, of Mira Monte, was a police officer and county employee for 34 years and now runs his own consulting firm. He, too, has been active in community service, including as a coach in Ojai youth sports. He is also a three-term director of the Ojai Valley Sanitary District.
Conversely, Norrdin, 49, stocks shelves at the same Ventura department store – JC Penney’s — that Word managed for many years. Norrdin lives in a Ventura motel. He is a self-described “political junkie,” who has run for public office nine times in the last decade, never winning more than 10 percent of the vote.
Ketelsen is a 47-year-old Mira Monte resident who occasionally works as a substitute teacher. He has also worked as an usher at Magic Mountain and was employed last summer as a “wildfire crew member” for the city of Oxnard.
With his run for the Casitas board and the Ojai Valley Sanitary District board this fall, Ketelsen has sought public office 11 times in nine years, winning only an uncontested race for the Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Committee.
The Oak View-based Casitas district provides water for about 65,000 people and nearly 5,700 acres of farmland in the Ojai Valley and Ventura.
The district draws most of its water from Lake Casitas reservoir storage, but also has deep wells to pull water from Ojai Valley aquifers.
Word and Norrdin are vying for a directorship in a district that encompasses part of central and west Ventura. Kaiser and Ketelsen are seeking a seat that represents a swath running from Mira Monte to the Avenue area of Ventura.
A third director, Russ Baggerly of Meiners Oaks, will be returned to the board in the Nov. 4 election, because he is unopposed.
Long operated without much dissent and by the same veteran general manager, the Casitas board has become a lightning rod for debate in recent years, as newcomers have defeated long-serving board members and hired a new general manager.
Word, with 11 years experience, has straddled the old and the new.
Kaiser, with six years on the board, generally represents the new majority. He has served as the swing vote on two large issues during the last two years.
Kaiser voted with Word and longtime director Bill Hicks to continue a federal lawsuit to gain reimbursement for money spent to save the endangered steelhead trout. Last month, a federal appeals panel reversed a lower court decision and found that Casitas was entitled to payment for water it uses to run the fish ladder the federal government forced it to build and operate.
But Kaiser voted against Word and Hicks on an initial vote to ban outside boats from Lake Casitas to make sure the damaging quagga mussel would not infect the lake. The full board later voted to impose less stringent controls of boating while setting up an inspection system to keep the invasive mussel out.
Now, as the once-divided Casitas board has begun to agree more consistently on big issues, both Word and Kaiser say they’re running for another term because future decisions are so important and complicated they require seasoned directors to make them.
Chief among those decisions is how the half-century-old district can pay millions of dollars to overhaul its aging pipes, pumps, tanks, wells and reservoirs.
“I certainly have the experience to help the district try to rebuild its infrastructure, solve the issue of invasive species and hold down water rates,” Word said. “I certainly know what it takes to make the water district run efficiently.”
Word, in fact, boasts on his election ballot statement that many water district customers are paying lower rates than before. He doesn’t note the sharp increases in rates imposed by the board to irrigate cropland in the Ojai Valley.
“We’ve come together on tough issues,” Word said of the board. One big issue was imposing huge water rate increases on farmers, a move directors said they were forced to make because of state law they said requires districts to charge all customers the full cost of water delivery.
On the other hand, Norrdin said that while he thinks Word has done a good job as director, the Casitas board needs to plan better for drought by storing water in underground aquifers. He said the fact that there is no single large aquifer in the Ojai Valley in which to store water does not deter him. A foundation in India stores water in man-made aquifers, and the Ojai Valley should do the same, he said.
“The main reason I’m running is water banking,” he said. “It would cost a lot of money, of course. But it’s better than running out of water. Where do we put it? I don’t know. Where do we get the money? I don’t know. But we need to think ahead.”
When running against Word in a three-person race in 2004, Norrdin got 181 votes, while Word received 1,770. Norrdin has also run unsuccessfully for state Assembly, Ventura city council and Ventura school board and the county board of education.
In the 2004 Kaiser-Ketelsen race, Kaiser received about two-thirds of the vote in a two-person race.
Kaiser said he ought to be returned for another term because he has shown an ability to think issues through, and even to change his mind after listening to his constituents.
That occurred, he said, last year, when he first favored dropping a federal lawsuit that had already cost Casitas about $400,000 to press, but changed his mind when constituents supported continuing the suit.
Now, with an appeals panel backing his position, Kaiser said he feels vindicated.
“Our primary objective is to our local ratepayer,” he said. He said he did not believe that a Casitas victory in the case would undermine the federal Endangered Species Act, a claim of opponents to the suit, including Baggerly.. “Everyone should pay for this (fish ladder project). Not just our ratepayers. It’s a more balanced approach. This is a burden we’ll be saddled with from now on.”
Kaiser said he felt he has been a force for change. He and other board members applied pressure to change water agency general managers, he said, encouraging veteran John Johnson to retire.
Johnson had a problem cooperating with other water agencies and there were morale problems on his staff, Kaiser said.
New general manager Steve Wickstrum has solved those problems, Kaiser said.
Now, Casitas is a leader on issues such as the quagga mussel and water conservation programs, he said.
But Ketelsen, who is also running against Kaiser for a seat on the Sanitary District board, said it’s time for a change.
He said he disagreed with board decisions on the quagga mussel and on hikes to recreation fees at the lake.
“I’m running because user fees keep going up, and a lot of people didn’t like that ban on boating,” Ketelsen said.”A lot of people are still upset about the costs in that. They have businesses and they lost money on some other things out there too.
“There’s this guy, a friend of mine, and he’s not the only one, and he told me he lost money because they canceled his yearly pass (because of the quagga restrictions),” he added.
Casitas has lost recreational customers to other local lakes – Cachuma, Piru and Castaic – because of quagga restrictions that force owners to lock their boats to a trailer when not at the lake, or face a 10-day quarantine before re-entering.
“Those other lakes have been welcoming people who used to come to Lake Casitas,” Ketelsen said. “They say like, ‘look, you idiots who run Lake Casitas.’ And they put out their welcome mats.”
Word said that setting up a screening system to keep out the quagga mussel, which could do millions of dollars in damage, was a wise decision by the board, and one that is now being modeled around the state.
“We have a very dedicated board that has been able to work out most of our differences,” Word said. “We have dealt with some very tough issues very effectively.”

Stars Tee It Up For Breast Cancer Research

2008-10-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Celebrity Golf Classic added to event lineup for 9th annual Ojai Film Festival, Nov. 6-9

By Sondra Murphy
This year’s Ojai Film Festival has a philanthropic spin to it. Festival organizers, together with the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, will host a Celebrity Golf Classic Nov. 6. Honorary Chairman Malcolm McDowell, as well as stars from the film and music world, will participate in this kickoff event for the 2008 Film Festival set for Nov. 6 through 9.
Confirmed participating celebrities for the golf event include Bruce McGill (“W” as Bill Tenet, “Animal House”), Mickey Dolenz (of the Monkees), Ray Manzarek and Robby Kreiger (former Doors), Joanna Pakula (“Space Cowboys”), Dennis Franz (“NYPD Blue”), Bobby Herbeck and Robert Hayes (“Airplane!”).
Proceeds will benefit the Breast Cancer Resource Center at Community Memorial Hospital and the Ojai Film Festival (a 501 3C tax deduction).
The $275 entry fees include a day of golf, coffee, lunch, prizes, awards, cocktail reception and “Movie Under the Stars.” The shamble format begins at 9:45 a.m. with a call to cars and shotgun starts at 10 a.m.
Steve Thomas BMW has donated a car for any talented golfer who shoots a hole in one during the benefit.
The ninth annual Ojai Film Festival spools out its programs Nov. 6 through 9 at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. This year’s Lifetime Achievement Honorees are American sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, who gets feted on Nov. 8, while the highly acclaimed directing-producing team of Lauren Shuler Donner and Richard Donner will be honored on Nov. 7.
The Donners have asked to screen “Ladyhawke” and Bradbury asked to screen “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” the latter of which was never released theatrically.
Ojai’s 2008 program consisting of invited films, as well as films submitted to the festival, will give moviegoers a choice of nearly 50 films to see in addition to the special events, seminars and Golf Classic. Ojai Film Fest’s tagline is “Enriching the Human Spirit through Film,” and it’s getting noticed by the Hollywood elite — in fact, producer Peter Guber, who ran Columbia Pictures in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, announced on the stage last year at the Toronto Film Festival, “The Ojai Film Festival is becoming the next Telluride.” Telluride is considered by many to be one of the best fests in the United States.
VIP Packages are on sale now at ojaifilmfestival.com.
Golf Classic sponsorships are available. For more information, call 640-1947 or visit ojaifilmfestival.com.

City Wants Full Mallory Way EIR

2008-10-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

Owners want to destroy 18 of 25 former motor lodge turned rental units, remove 35 healthy trees

By Nao Braverman
After substantial opposition from local residents, the city of Ojai has decided to require a full environmental impact report for the Mallory Way bungalows project, according to city planner Katrina Schmidt.
“This gives us a broader forum for the public to comment on the process and we thought that would be a good thing,” said Abe Leider, a planning consultant with Rincon Consultants, who is the project manager for the EIR. As a result the Mallory Way project won’t appear before the Planning Commission until early 2009, he said.
Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood surrounded by oak, California pepper and eucalyptus trees, the Mallory Way cottages have been among Ojai’s few moderately priced rental units for years.
Just walking distance from downtown, the modest homes, clustered together in a friendly semi-circle, were among Ojai’s best-kept secrets until about four years ago.
In 2004, a project to tear down the majority of Mallory Way rental units to make room for brand-new two-story condominiums was met with controversy at a Planning Commission meeting. The item subsequently dragged on for four years, and drew public attention to Mallory Way, especially during the 2006 City Council elections.
While some Eucalyptus Street residents applauded the suggestion of the so-called upgrade to their next door neighborhood at a 2006 Historic Preservation meeting, the majority of attendants rebuked it.
Opponents of the project cited the historical significance of the community, which was originally built as an auto court in the 1940s, with each cottage named after a racehorse. In 1997 the cottages also appeared in Oprah Winfrey’s movie, “Before Women Had Wings.”
Members of the public also raised a number of complaints about losing much-needed affordable rental units in Ojai.
The city’s initial study of the Mallory Way project states that buildings on the site could be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the California Register of Historic Resources and the City of Ojai Landmarks as a remnant of the post-war automobile tourism era in Ojai. Those impacts will be studied further in the EIR, according to the initial study.
Pat Doerner, chair of the Historic Preservation Commission, said that commissioners had decided in 2006 that the Mallory Way cottages had veered far from the motor court that was built in the 1940s. They had been turned into family homes and the swimming pool that was once part of the motor court had since been filled with cement. If it had been declared a historic landmark long ago, it would have been protected. But since it hadn’t, some pictures of the cottages for the Ojai Valley Museum would suffice.
Jeffrey Becker of the Matilija Investment Group said that an exhibit will be created for the Ojai Valley Museum, not only telling the story of the Mallory Way Motor Court, but also of post-World War II tourism in the Ojai Valley. In addition, the group is preserving and restoring six of the cottages, and adding an onsite commemoration plaque and garden area telling the history of the site.
As to the loss of affordable housing, city manager Jere Kersnar stated in an interview in July that while the existing units are often referred to as affordable housing, many of them are studios that are listed at higher than the affordable bracket.
Matilija Investment Property LLC, the ownership group, has proposed to destroy 18 of the 25 existing rental units and construct 23 new units in their place, with the result of the 30 total homes in the proposed Mallory Way community.
While the unofficial affordable rentals will be destroyed, the owners plan to provide seven affordable units, two for moderate-income tenants, and five designated as affordable housing for very-low-income occupants. Those seven are not only considered a sufficient replacement, but also grant the applicants a density bonus for making 24 percent of the housing units affordable, according to the initial study. With that density bonus, they are allowed to build two more housing units than the city’s general plan normally allows in the 3.58-acre Mallory Way property.
The recent study has also raised some concern about the project because it calls to remove 49 of the 88 trees at the site. While 14 of them were found to be unhealthy or unsafe by the consulting arborist, Paul Rogers, 35 of them are healthy trees to be removed to make room for the development. Of those 35, 11 are Ojai’s cherished oak trees. According to the trunk diameters of those oaks which range from about 5 to 19 inches, the trees probably range from around 4 to 40 years old according to Mark Crane of Mark Crane’s Tree and Arborist services in Ojai.
The applicants propose to plant 116 new trees as a mitigation measure, 34 of which are native oaks, according to Becker. But Crane said that volunteer trees are much more likely to survive than those that are grown in a nursery. Trees that have sprouted from acorns have survived natural selection and tend to survive well without human interference, he said.
The initial study of the proposed project also notes that while the site has not been officially identified as a migration corridor, a concentration of birds have been seen around Mallory Way. The EIR will further analyze the impact that removing the trees would have on other wildlife species, according to the study.
Rincon Consultants is currently accepting comments from the public for the EIR for the Mallory Way Bungalow project until 5 p.m. on Nov. 3. Comments can be mailed to Schmidt at the Community Development Department, 401 S. Ventura St., e-mailed to schmidt@ci.ojai.ca.us or faxed to the city at 640-1136. For more information call the City Planning and Community Development Department at 640-2555.Members of the public also raised a number of complaints about losing much-needed affordable rental units in Ojai.
The city’s initial study of the Mallory Way project states that buildings on the site could be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the California Register of Historic Resources and the City of Ojai Landmarks as a remnant of the post-war automobile tourism era in Ojai. Those impacts will be studied further in the EIR, according to the initial study.
Pat Doerner, chair of the Historic Preservation Commission, said that commissioners had decided in 2006 that the Mallory Way cottages had veered far from the motor court that was built in the 1940s. They had been turned into family homes and the swimming pool that was once part of the motor court had since been filled with cement. If it had been declared a historic landmark long ago, it would have been protected. But since it hadn’t, some pictures of the cottages for the Ojai Valley Museum would suffice.
Jeffrey Becker of the Matilija Investment Group said that an exhibit will be created for the Ojai Valley Museum, not only telling the story of the Mallory Way Motor Court, but also of post-World War II tourism in the Ojai Valley. In addition, the group is preserving and restoring six of the cottages, and adding an onsite commemoration plaque and garden area telling the history of the site.
As to the loss of affordable housing, city manager Jere Kersnar stated in an interview in July that while the existing units are often referred to as affordable housing, many of them are studios that are listed at higher than the affordable bracket.
Matilija Investment Property LLC, the ownership group, has proposed to destroy 18 of the 25 existing rental units and construct 23 new units in their place, with the result of 30 total homes in the proposed Mallory Way community.
While the unofficial affordable rentals will be destroyed, the owners plan to provide seven affordable units, two for moderate-income tenants, and five designated as affordable housing for very-low-income occupants. Those seven are not only considered a sufficient replacement, but also grant the applicants a density bonus for making 24 percent of the housing units affordable, according to the initial study. With that density bonus, they are allowed to build two more housing units than the city’s general plan normally allows in the 3.58-acre Mallory Way property.
The recent study has also raised some concern about the project because it calls to remove 49 of the 88 trees at the site. While 14 of them were found to be unhealthy or unsafe by the consulting arborist, Paul Rogers, 35 of them are healthy trees to be removed to make room for the development. Of those 35, 11 are Ojai’s cherished oak trees. According to the trunk diameters of those oaks which range from about 5 to 19 inches, the trees probably range from around 4 to 40 years old according to Mark Crane of Mark Crane’s Tree and Arborist services in Ojai.
The applicants propose to plant 116 new trees as a mitigation measure, 34 of which are native oaks, according to Becker. But Crane said that volunteer trees are much more likely to survive than those that are grown in a nursery. Trees that have sprouted from acorns have survived natural selection and tend to survive well without human interference, he said.
The initial study of the proposed project also notes that while the site has not been officially identified as a migration corridor, a concentration of birds have been seen around Mallory Way. The EIR will further analyze the impact that removing the trees would have on other wildlife species, according to the study.
Rincon Consultants is currently accepting comments from the public for the EIR for the Mallory Way bungalow project until 5 p.m. on Nov. 3. Comments can be mailed to Schmidt at the Community Development Department, 401 S. Ventura St., e-mailed to schmidt@ci.ojai.ca.us or faxed to the city at 640-1136. For more information call the City Planning and Community Development Department at 640-2555.

Seized Horses Strain Humane Society

2008-10-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

Three family members arrested on suspicion of cruelty to animals

By Sondra Murphy
After acquiring 14 horses in late September from a Lockwood Valley ranch, trepidation over the safety of the remainder of the animals compelled officials to return with a search warrant Wednesday.
“The Ventura County Humane Society was very concerned about the remaining horses,” said spokeswoman Kathleen Kaiser. “When the sheriffs arrived, they found an additional 38 neglected horses, as well as carcasses of dead horses in the nearby forest.” Of the original 14, one mare has died.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Ross Bonfiglio, deputies served the search warrant as part of an ongoing investigation and made three arrests in a cruelty to animals case involving malnourished and emaciated horses on a 21-acre Lockwood Valley ranch.
The joint operation included the use of four veterinarians as well as members of the U.S. Forest Service, Ventura County Animal Regulation, the Ventura County Humane Society, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, Emergency Evacuation Rescue Team, and several volunteers.
During the search of Cochema Ranch, located in the 16,000 block of the Curtis Trail, deputies recovered evidence and arrested Ernie, Joan and Cecelia Bor. They were arrested on suspicion of numerous counts of felony cruelty to animals, according to Deputy Bill Hollowell of the Lockwood Valley Station and each has posted $10,000 bail. After an assessment of the animals, 38 more horses were deemed to need off-site care. Some were voluntarily relinquished by ranch owners and others were impounded by the Humane Society. The remaining 57 horses were left at the ranch and the area was designated as a temporary animal shelter with those horses held under the care of Ventura County Department of Animal Regulation until the ranch owners returned Thursday. According to director Kathy Jenks, the care of the remaining horses will be closely monitored.
Shelter officials estimated that it would take a minimum of $100,000 to bring the horses back to health. “We have 38 new horses on shelter grounds right now,” said director Jolene Hoffman at the Ojai shelter. “There are a lot of pregnant mares and we’ll have to put together more piping to secure them. We’ll also need horse shelters and funds to provide veterinary care and food.”
The time factor for recovery is a significant part of the cost. “This could be six to nine months of trying to get these horse back to health. The weight goes off fast, but you have to be careful about putting it back on to avoid colic,” said Hoffman. The shelter also must take care in how they supply the corrals, avoiding shavings or hay bedding usually provided. “When they’re starving, horses are going to eat anything they can get.” Hoffman said they also need manure scoopers known as “apple pickers,” large wheelbarrows and large water containers able to hold about 500 gallons.
Kaiser added that the Human Society property has the space to accommodate the horses, but pipe corral and supplies would be needed to tend to the animals. “We usually board horses, like in cases of fire, and take care of them until we can evacuate them out, but we’ve got to keep these now.”
The cost will create a burden on the Humane Society, which relies completely on public donations for the services it provides. “We really need the support of horse lovers and horse groups in the area to get their help,” said Kaiser. Due to the wild nature of the rescued horses, the shelter will not be able to use volunteers during the rehabilitation of the animals.
The horses had grown feral and proved hazardous to round up. “When you’re dealing with starving horses that have not had proper care, it becomes very dangerous,” said Hoffman. “All of a sudden, this head mare shifted and came so fast that a forestry officer was hit full on and she went down. All of us are absolutely devastated. She’s a great lady and we were standing right next to her when it happened. The Sheriff’s Department officers were incredible, the way they took care of her.”
Injured was Heather Campbell, Forest Service special agent, who was airlifted to Ventura County Medical Center. Campbell, who serves the Pacific Southwest Region and is assigned to Los Padres National Forest, was knocked to the ground and suffered a head injury during the incident. “She is in stable condition and is most likely going to be in the hospital for several days while being evaluated,” said Kathy Good, Forest Service public affairs officer. “Heather is a character and a lovely person.”
Despite Campbell’s injury and the sad state of the horses, Hoffman was pleased with the dedicated group effort of so many agencies in the rescue. “It was incredible working with such a great group,” said Hoffman. “(Ojai Police Chief) Chris Dunn was there too. We are very, very fortunate here in Ojai to work with him.”
For more information about assisting the Ventura County Humane Society with this horse rehabilitation effort, call the shelter at 646-6505.

Extensive Vandalism Found At Villanova Prep

2008-10-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Suspects named, arrests expected soon

By Sondra Murphy

Renewing a football rivalry can be good for a small town like Ojai, but the return of Villanova vs. Nordhoff competition has also brought out an unpleasant side in a few people.
Vandalism against Villanova Preparatory School's quiet campus in the early hours Friday morning has the valley talking about the spray painting of a statue of St. Thomas and other destructions perpetrated. Extensive graffiti insults referenced NHS and the football game and Villanova's pool and football field were also damaged.
Sheriff's Detective Mark Burgess said Monday that, contrary to rumors circulating throughout the community, the FBI is not involved in the investigation and it is not considered to be a hate crime. As many as eight suspects have been identified as participants in the vandalism and will be interviewed later this week. Details were not released pending inquiry.
"We were investigating the whole thing on Friday," said Nordhoff High School assistant principal Susana Arce on Tuesday. "We're letting the police take the lead because it is a criminal investigation. Today, the detectives are on the way up from Ventura. We do intend to see that justice is done. No one is trying to sweep anything under the rug. The school will act appropriately."
Burgess said Villanova officials would determine what legal action is pursued. "It will depend on what the prosecution wants," said Burgess. "We want to investigate kids who are possibly involved and see what their part is and then see what Villanova wants to do."
Materials used in the vandalism were salt, manure, bleach and paint — -notably Nordhoff's colors of blue and gold. Most everything had been cleaned up by Monday and no permanent property damage was reported.
"We were appalled by what we saw and ashamed that anyone from Nordhoff was involved in this," said Arce. "I can tell you there are some very ashamed students and parents. We talk to the kids about pranks, especially around the end of the year. We tell them things that start off as kind of a joke can end up being very damaging. This is really ugly."
The disappointingly puerile incident taints an otherwise healthy competition that culminated in the first cross-town football game in 33 years and brought the community together at Ojai Valley Community Stadium to root for their teams.
The type of paint used on the statue is proving troublesome to remove. "It looks like they used an oil-based paint that leached into the marble of the statue and the blue tinted into the marble," said the Rev. Gregory Heidenblut, Villanova president. "It's just a statue, but to us it's very special. It could be compared to how we might feel if someone desecrated a statue of Abraham Lincoln."
Nordhoff's athletic director contacted Villanova Friday offering help in cleaning up the mess but, according to Arce, was told the Villanova campus staff had the cleanup under control. "It was a gesture of good will," Arce said.
Heidenblut said that they were initially most concerned with the safety of students in light of the graffiti subject matter. Particularly upsetting to the Villanova population were the sacrilegious comments left about Jesus Christ and Jews. "If someone is capable of doing this, are they also capable of doing violence to our students?"
Security had been arranged for the 131-acre Villanova campus and school officials are looking into what broke down. Heidenblut said that they, too, are waiting for police to finish their investigations before deciding what action they would like to pursue. "On Friday, when we talked with our students, our headmaster handled this very well. We prayed for the students, faculty and families to start a healing process. The whole community is affected by this unfortunate incident."
Still, Heidenblut is optimistic. "From the first minute, the olive branch was there between (Nordhoff principal) Mr. Musick and me," said Heidenblut. "We're thinking of ways to put this behind us now and how students can learn from this experience. I truly believe that good will come out of this. I hope that this will be a thing past and Ojai will never experience this kind of thing again."

Gypsy Moth Threat Seen In Ojai

2008-10-02T17:23:00.000-07:00

Inspectors step up hunt for feared pest, seven found in Ojai Valley so far

By Daryl Kelley
State inspectors began this week a survey of the Ojai Valley to determine the extent of a summer infestation of gypsy moths, a pest that can devastate oaks and other hardwood trees, officials said.
Seven alien gypsy moths, apparent hitchhikers on recreational vehicles from the northeastern United States, were discovered in traps north of Baldwin Road between June 17 and July 22, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
No more have been found since, officials said.
But the summer catch was serious enough to prompt this fall’s survey to find out if gypsy moths are laying eggs locally, then to kill them before the resulting baby caterpillars eat many times their weight in leaves.
Since the summer discoveries, the number of traps in the four-square-mile area around the catches has been increased from 14 to 144, said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the Department of Food and Agriculture. The state usually maintains two traps per square mile in the Ojai Valley, he said.
In addition, there will be 10 state inspectors assigned to the survey, he said.
A single gypsy moth caterpillar can eat 1 square foot of leaves every day, experts say. And they have wrought devastation on vast swaths of woodland of the northeastern United States and the Great Lakes regions since migrating from Europe in the 1800s.
Once a tree is repeatedly defoliated, it is susceptible to disease, and often dies.
Two gypsy moths were discovered in Meiners Oaks in 2000, and eradicated by the state before establishing a permanent population. Four more were discovered in the Ojai Valley last year, Lyle said.
“It is important to detect and eradicate gypsy moth infestations while the population is still small,” says a Food and Agriculture flier announcing the survey that was recently sent to local residents.
“If a larger infestation were to develop in Ojai,” the flier says, “the gypsy moth caterpillars would threaten oaks in this region as well as other hardwoods, evergreens, man-zanita, cottonwood, willow and others.
It is also a threat to forests and agri-cultural crops such as fruit trees.”
Generally, however, gypsy moths are not a big problem for farmers in California, said Susan Johnson, Ventura County’s chief deputy agricultural commission. So far, every outbreak of gypsy moth infestation in this state has been eradicated, state officials said.
“It’s not an agricultural pest, it’s a pest of open spaces and viewsheds,” Johnson said. “It infests oaks and hardwood trees.”
Masses of eggs, appearing as buff-colored felt, are found on trees and on transportable items such as RVs, outdoor play equipment, barbecues and campers, according to state officials.
New infestations are primarily caused when these items are moved from infested areas such as the eastern United States, where millions of gypsy moths strip broad stands of trees and bushes each year.
The moth threat has prompted concern among local landowners, such as the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, which oversees more than 1,930 acres of open space.
“It’s definitely worrisome,” said Stevie Adams, a biologist who is project manager for the conservancy. “One reason these non-native invasive species are so successful is that other local plants and animals haven’t evolved to compete with them.”
Still, at this point, the number of moths discovered — and the fact that none has been found recently — indicates that they’re “still controllable,” Adams said. “But if something isn’t done to make sure they don’t establish a population here, then we’re very concerned.”
That’s because the moths tend to target the very types of native trees the conservancy is spending its time and money trying to restore.
The state is moving on the problem. Adams said she was contacted early this week by Food and Agriculture inspectors asking permission to inspect for moths on conservancy property along the Ventura River north of Baldwin Road.
“We really hope everyone gives them permission to do that,” she said.
If they’re still around, gypsy moths should be laying their eggs right now on trees and on “almost any outdoor object,” according to the state flier.
The eggs are laid in masses that are light yellow-orange in color, often on the bark of trees. Any sighting should be reported to a state pest hot line at (800) 491-1899, officials said.
“What will determine if there’s a breeding population is the egg mass survey,” said Johnson of the county agricultural commis-sioner’s office. “They lay their eggs right now and they generally hatch in the summer.”
If a population of moths is found, it can be attacked with an organic insecticide, she said.
“That is the standard if you have a breeding population,” she said.
Also, a quarantine may be established against the gypsy moths, Johnson said. That would amount to inspecting motor homes at the California border if they are arriving from infected areas, she said. And local inspectors would follow up in Ventura County to make sure none of the pests remain on the vehicles or equipment that were in infected regions. Those areas stretch from Maine to Wisconsin to Virginia.
“They may do visual inspections on mobile homes and patio furniture,” Johnson said.
If 10 moths or more are found in a breeding season in one area — such as the Ojai Valley — and there is evidence that the moth population is growing, a quarantine may be imposed, said the state’s Lyle.
In the Ojai Valley, as inspectors call for permission to scan local property, they will be armed with government identification, officials said.
“Property owners will be notified in advance,” the Food and Agriculture flier said. And they were this week.

Ojai Public TV Access May Be Over

2008-10-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

Fate of local cable programs in hands of city as providers now franchise with state

By Nao Braverman
Beginning in January, Ojai’s public access station will be in the hands of the city, which still has little if any spending money to spare.
Local public access Channel 10, offering everything from John Wilcock’s low-budget video travelogue, to lectures by the late philosopher and spiritual speaker J. Krishnamurti, may be showing nothing except government meetings in the coming year.
Public access cable services provided by Time Warner, which have dwindled over the years, will be terminated at the end of December, according to Time Warner’s spokesperson Patricia Fregoso.
While the city will administer airings of local City Council and Planning Commission meetings on Channel 10, no specific plans have been made regarding what will happen to the rest of the channel’s airing time in 2009, according to city manager Jere Kersnar. Time Warner Cable will still provide the channel capacity on Channel 10, but the city is responsible for managing that. With little funding for such an operation, the city’s options are limited, added Kersnar.
AB 2987, the 2006 Digital Infrastructure and Competition Act had consequences unforeseen or overlooked by the legislators who passed it.
The 2006 bill, which proposed to equalize competition among cable providers by allowing them all to franchise with the state, instead of its cities, will result in wiping out a number of public access stations in California. It will take nothing short of a huge community effort to cooperate with the city and resurrect Ojai’s public access station, which has been minimizing services over the years, according to Carole McCartney, who coordinated Ojai’s station for many years before leaving her position in May 2007.
The new legislation, often referred to as DIVCA, offers a sweet deal to telephone companies and cable providers, allowing them to access new customers without having to deal with city officials. But, in turn, cities such as Ojai can no longer ask much of cable providers that serve them, according to Randy VanDalsen, vice president of the Buske Group, a telecommunications consulting firm.
Over the years Ojai’s public access station has diminished from a full studio with cameras and editing equipment for members of the public, to one Time Warner employee who transports DVDs and SVHS tapes to the public access station in Westlake Village.
Before Time Warner had the option of a state franchise agreement with the Public Utilities Commission, it would have had to create an agreement with the city of Ojai. City officials could then have the power to negotiate certain local services such as the maintenance of Ojai’s public access station. But with the new legislation, all Time Warner owes Ojai is 5 percent of its revenues, minus local costs, from Ojai customers, and an additional 1 percent of these profits to be used specifically toward public access.
Kersnar said that the city has been getting about $70,000 each year from Time Warner’s franchise fees. The additional 1 percent, or about $14,000 a year, won’t amount to much, and is certainly not enough to run a public access station.
Time Warner’s franchise agreement with the city, which has been extended time and again, expires in November. In January, Fregoso told an Ojai Valley News reporter that the company was still deciding whether or not to sign a franchise agreement with the city or the state. But now, with their new interpretation of the legislation, she says the company has no choice but to go with the state.
While cable companies can legally sign an agreement with a city, there is no reason why any of them would choose to do so, said VanDalsen. It’s much easier for large corporations not to deal with the financially burdensome local requirements of each California city if they can forge a simple agreement with the state. VanDalsen says he expects to see a number of California’s public access stations close in the coming years.
Lee Fitzgerald, who has been airing a local news show on Ojai’s public access station for about 14 years, said that while city officials knew about the legislation, local residents were kept in the dark.
William Roberts, president of the American Vedic Association, said he found out about the closure just recently when he brought his regular Vedas philosophy videos to the public access studio to be aired on Channel 10.
“I brought in six months’ worth of videos to be aired and I was told that they would only be showing them for the next three months,” he said. “After that they weren’t sure what was going to happen to Ojai’s public access.”
There certainly isn’t want for material on Ojai’s station. The local shows aired on Channel 10 include “Truth for Living” from Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Ojai, the “Dr. Lee Fitzgerald Show” and a disaster preparedness program sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ojai-West, to name a few.
But Kersnar says that he is not even sure if the city will have the resources to manage a bulletin for local events without Time Warner’s public access station.
So anyone who wants to post an announcement or event on television might have to run their DVD all the way down to Time Warner’s station in Westlake Village, where the announcement will be aired on Channel 25, after Westlake Village runs its programs.
Kersnar said that decisions will be made at a discussion regarding the future of Ojai’s public access station scheduled for the City Council meeting on Oct. 28.
Nothing can be done unless the community rallies together and organizes their own station, said McCartney.
Fitzgerald also airs his show out of CAPS, a nonprofit-run public access station in Ventura. That station, which is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and updated equipment is a nonprofit that partners with the city for public access television services in Ventura.
“It’s definitely possible to do the same thing in Ojai, we just have to have cooperation from city officials,” he said.
Fitzgerald said he plans to propose plans for such an endeavor at the Oct. 28 meeting.
Public Works director Mike Culver said that AT&T has also shown interest in breaking into Ojai’s market but with a state franchise agreement they won’t have to provide any public access television services to Ojai either.

Ojai Skate Park Plans Ramp Up

2008-10-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

Next step is for design to go back for planners’ approval

By Nao Braverman
If the Ojai’s skate park is being built for local skateboarders, then the skaters themselves should be involved in critiquing the park’s design, planning commissioners agreed at Wednesday night’s planning meeting.
“It’s been a really long time since I’ve been on a skateboard,” said Commissioner Troy Becker. “I would look to working with the kids in the community and whatever elements that they think are necessary.”
Fortunately Site Design Group staff already had planned to coordinate with Ojai’s youth.
The preliminary design presented to both the Planning Commission and Parks and Recreation Department Wednesday night had been scrutinized by a number of local skateboarders during two workshops on Sept. 13 and Sept. 22, where participants told Site Design Group staff what they wanted in their park.
The design they came up with was a transition-style park with street plaza-style features. A transitional park allows skateboarders to skate their way between various elements, within the park, explained Jeff Gibson, a Site Design Group representative.
Ojai skaters also wanted features that you might find in the street so it feels like they are skating a plaza or some other urban scape.
As an in-ground park, it is designed to begin 1 foot below grade, so skateboarders would skate down into the approximately 12,000-square-foot area.
While planning commissioners were interested in incorporating landscaping, Gibson explained that skateboarders wanted to get as many elements in the space they were given as they possibly could. Landscaping could be added to the surrounding areas to provide some shading for spectators, however.
With Ojai’s style and aesthetics in mind, the proposed design includes an entry wall with a community-donated art piece.
As the park is below grade, spectators entering the park would get an optimal view from above as they walk in, said Gibson.
Sasha Wolfe, the only voice of dissent, brought a bag of fresh vegetables to protest the loss of more than half of the community garden with the skate park’s expansion.
Skate Ojai member Wendy Hilgers assured her, however, that she and some skaters would be glad to start a new and improved community garden after construction of the park.
The existing garden could use a fresh start, she told commissioners.
Bob Daddi, another member of Skate Ojai added that the entire area surrounding the community garden needed to be cleaned up, and that the skate park remodeling would offer a good opportunity to do so.
Commissioners agreed. Always concerned about fencing, the planning commissioners said they would be in a better position to comment on the skate park barrier when they had a better idea of how it would be used. That depends on how the park will be managed and whether it will be supervised, said Becker.
But such decisions will have to wait until the skate park’s design is reviewed by the City Council.
“I think what we need is a sub-committee of kids,” said Commissioner John Mirk. But Gibson said they already had the whole skateboarding community involved.
One local skateboarder attended the planning meeting to urge Gibson to include one popular element that wasn’t in the design presented.
Local residents can review the design by visiting the company’s web site at sitedesigngroup.com.

Casitas Scores Victory In Appeals Court

2008-09-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Ruling could be worth millions, set precedent for other federal ‘takings’

By Daryl Kelley
After a series of setbacks in a costly 2005 lawsuit, the Casitas Municipal Water District scored a legal victory potentially worth tens of millions of dollars last week when an appeals court panel agreed that the federal government had seized district property by forcing it to provide water for a fish ladder built for the endangered steelhead trout.
In a split decision, the three-justice panel also ruled that Casitas was not entitled to reimbursement for $9 million the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation forced it to spend to build the fish ladder on the Ventura River.
But property rights lawyers said that the 2-to-1 ruling could still carry nationwide significance if it remains in place after an expected request by state and federal lawyers that the case be reconsidered by the full 11-justice federal appeals court in Washington.
“Casitas’ position has been vindicated,” said Washington attorney Roger Marzulla, a property rights specialist who represents the water district. “This ruling says that when the government takes water from private use that’s a property taking.”
And J. David Breemer, a principal attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights group in Sacramento, said the Casitas decision “is very important because it says your water can’t be taken without you being paid for it.”
Before last week’s ruling, Breemer said, the presumption was that the government had a right to take water being used by a private party without compensation to satisfy federal environmental law, such as the Endangered Species Act.
“Now the presumption is that they’ve got to pay for that water,” he said. “The (legal) burden’s on them to make sure they’re not taking water without compensation.”
If the Bureau of Reclamation is forced to pay for water to operate the fish ladder, the bill could total $1 million to $2 million a year, officials said. That compares with Casitas’ annual budget of $15 million.
Casitas estimates that it takes at least 3,200 acre-feet of water a year to guarantee that the steelhead migration can occur. The district charges farmers $371 an acre-foot for water and residential customers $444. It also estimates that it would cost at least $600 an acre-foot to import water for the fish ladder during a prolonged drought.
That means that the value of the 3,200 acre-feet is at least $1.12 million and as much as $1.92 million, said Casitas representatives. (An acre-foot of water meets the needs of two typical households for a year.)
Lawyer Marzulla said that a water appraiser and broker hired by the district has placed the total value of the water the district could lose for the fish ladder over decades as at least “tens of millions of dollars, and it could go as high as $80 million.”
But Casitas is not counting its money yet.
Indeed, the five elected directors of the water district are split 3-to-2 on whether it’s a good idea to continue with the suit.
Last year, the board majority voted to press the litigation for a third year despite a steep $500,000 cost and repeated setbacks, while the board minority said the suit was a waste of money and would undercut the Endangered Species Act if Casitas won.
That split persisted this week.
“We’re not doing this because we’re opposed to the Endangered Species Act,” said board President Jim Word. “We’re doing it because the cost of this water should be borne nationally and not just by people in our district.”
Director Bill Hicks said the appeals decision shows Casitas was right to persist with the suit.
“It’s vindication,” Hicks said. “This decision says you can’t just come in and take somebody’s water without paying for it. I don’t want to hurt the federal government or the Endangered Species Act, but I think our ratepayers should be made whole.”
Pete Kaiser was the third in support of continuing the suit.
But Director Russ Baggerly, who along with Richard Handley, voted to end the suit last year, said the district’s case is far from decided.
Although siding with Casitas, the appeals panel sent the case back to the claims court for more argument by both sides, he noted. And Baggerly said he expects lawyers for the state of California and the federal government to appeal the panel’s decision because the bulk of state and federal law does not support it.
“I don’t think anyone should get too excited about this decision,” Baggerly said. “This is the first time Casitas has won anything in all of these decisions by the court. And this case is certainly not over yet.”
State and federal lawyers maintain that the water Casitas gathers in its reservoir is owned by all of the people of California and not by the water district, and that it can be used by government agencies for the common good without compensation. It fact, that procedure is common when enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
Last year, a federal claims court judge agreed with that argument, ruling that a constitutional property right was not involved when the federal government required Casitas to provide water without compensation.
The claims court judge ruled that the Casitas case had to be considered under federal law that deals with the government’s simple regulatory constraint of water use, and not as a “physical taking” of private property. Water agencies have rarely, if ever, won compensation in a case argued under such rules, officials have said.
But now, after the appeals panel decision that Casitas water was constitutionally protected property, the case appears wide open again.
The panel’s majority ruled: “We have reversed … based solely upon our determination that the governmental actions at issue are properly analyzed under a physical takings rubric.”
But a third justice, in dissent, found that a physical taking had not occurred, citing California state water law and the legal doctrine that water rights are held as a public trust by all people and not as individual property.
Attorney Breemer, the property rights advocate, said he expects government lawyers to ask for a review of the panel’s decision by the full 11-justice federal appeals court in Washington. They have 10 days to make that request, Marzulla said, but that motion must be based on the argument that the appeals panel “overlooked a critical issue of fact or law.”
For now, the water district’s lawyer said, “Casitas’ position has been vindicated.”
The Casitas district provides water for about 65,000 people and nearly 5,700 acres of farmland in the Ojai Valley and Ventura.

Ojai Council Back OUSD's Tax

2008-09-25T17:15:00.000-07:00

Vote unanimous to support Measure P’s $89 per parcel for local schools

By Nao Braverman
With more than $1 million cut from the Ojai Unified School District’s annual budget, local officials publicly agreed at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, that they believe the community needs to step up and take care of its own schools.
Council members voted in unanimous support of Measure P, which would allow the school district to levy a tax of $89 per parcel within the district boundaries for seven years. The measure, intended to bring the school district out of a devastating financial crisis, is the school district’s last resort, according to school board President Steve Fields.
“We have come to the end of our road,” he said. “We spent much of last spring holding public meetings to discuss potential cuts needed to close this year’s budget gap. We made significant cuts to many areas, including transportation and food service. We were able to keep all of our community schools open and maintain our class sizes. I don’t see how we can make any more cuts this coming year that won’t dramatically impact our children’s education.”
School district officials estimate that the parcel tax could bring in around $400,500 each year for the district’s depleted budget, although the estimate is very rough, said Mike Caldwell, chairman of the committee to get Measure P passed.
The numbers are hard to estimate since the proposed parcel tax would offer an exemption to seniors 65 years and older. With roughly 9,000 parcels in the district boundaries, the school board estimated that about half of them are seniors. That gives them a ballpark figure of about 4,500 parcels at $89 per parcel. The seniors who want the exemption would have to take the initiative to apply for it themselves.
But Caldwell says it was important to allow seniors, particularly those who are on a fixed income or are living solely on Social Security, to opt out.
When a parcel tax measure for the school district failed to pass about three and a half years ago, that was partially because many local seniors campaigned against it, he said. The previous measure proposed a higher parcel tax of $150 per parcel, he said.
“This measure is asking for a very minimal number compared to the current needs of the school district,” said Caldwell.
But Measure P’s proponents are making it as digestible as possible since it needs a two-thirds majority vote to get passed.
With the school district facing financial shortfalls because of the compounded results of the dramatic drop in enrollment and unreliable state and federal funding, the parcel tax the need for funds is urgent, said Fields.
“I know some people question supporting a parcel tax if they don’t have children in the school district,” said Fields. “However, I believe strongly that a community cannot be a healthy vibrant community without a good school system. Good schools maintain property values. Good schools provide workers for our local businesses. And good schools ensure that our next generation will be able to tackle the huge issues that they surely face.”
The school district has already made dramatic cuts in administration and staff and has seen salaries fall in comparison with others throughout the county, said Fields. While the Save Ojai Schools campaign and Ojai Education Foundation have raised considerable funds, they are not enough to maintain the quality education that the school district has offered to local students to this date.
The measure states that it is proposed in order to maintain small class sizes with highly qualified teachers, and keep the existing arts programs, libraries and schools, all which would be in jeopardy without additional funds, according to Fields.
“Clearly this is an issue that faces our community that is of utmost importance,” said Mayor Sue Horgan. “The school board members have done a great job at trying to manage this impossible situation. It is going to take a two-thirds vote to pass, which is difficult to accomplish. I believe so strongly in this important measure.”
Council members agreed and a motion to support the measure was passed unanimously.

Ojai Checkpoint Nets 19 Citations

2008-09-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Deputies check for driver’s licenses on Ojai Avenue just east of El Paseo Road.

By Lenny Roberts
A driver’s license checkpoint on West Ojai Avenue Thursday morning resulted in 19 citations — eight of which were issued to motorists who were driving without or on suspended licenses.
The other 11 citations were issued to people for either not having a license in possession or for incorrect classification. Those cited for not having valid licenses or driving while suspended had their cars towed and face steep recovery fees.
Senior Deputy Jim Popp, Ojai’s traffic enforcement and accident investigation officer, said a total of 542 vehicles were stopped between 9 and 11 a.m. in front of the old Ford dealership. A large road sign provided by the Oxnard Police Department and set up by the Ojai Department of Public Works was placed between El Paseo Road and the actual checkpoint stating “Driver’s License Checkpoint Ahead.”
The purpose of the exercise, according to Senior Deputy Jim Kenney, one of three motorcycle officers from the Thousand Oaks Police Department assigned to the detail, was to ensure safety.
Kenney explained there is not probable cause required to stop people when staging a driver’s license checkpoint. Further, law enforcement agencies often do, but are not required to provide advance notice of checkpoints to the public via the media.
“The California Vehicle Code requires that anyone operating a motor vehicle on a public highway have a driver’s license,” Kenney said. “During a DUI checkpoint, we try to establish a probable cause.”
Ojai Police Department Administrative Sgt. Maureen Hookstra said statistically, checkpoints of this kind help ensure traffic safety by getting unlicensed people off the roads.
At least one valley resident voiced opposition to being stopped. Entering the city, Jennifer Guernsey was stopped and asked to present her license. When she refused and asked why, it was explained that probable cause was not needed. She argued if announcements were made for DUI checkpoints, prior notification should be made for license checkpoints. “It’s a way to get illegal aliens,” Guernsey said angrily. “They were very condescending and I didn’t appreciate that. The whole process is unconstitutional and a waste of taxpayers’ money when we have all these crimes like drugs.”
Kenney was pleased with the outcome of Thursday’s checkpoint, but did not know if future checkpoints were planned within the city. “This would be considered a success based on the number of cars checked and the people cited,” he said.

Jennifer Moss Makes Ojai Return

2008-09-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

With new name, Earth Friend Gen clothed for downtown bike ride

By Nao Braverman
Jennifer Moss, aka "Earth Friend Gen," arrived in Ojai Sept. 25 for a visit back to her old stomping grounds.
"I am enjoying the sunshine," said Moss, who has traded in her G-string and pasties for a more conservative bikini, at least for today.
Moss left Ojai for Ashland, Ore., in early May, which she says is really beautiful with lots of nice people.
She drove to Ojai in a rented van and arrived today with her bicycle, and a heart-stamped globe, which she carts around on the back of it.
"What I would like to do is get a Dodge Sprinter and convert it to run on bio-diesel," she said.
She expects to be in Ojai for a few weeks, but she's not sure. After that Moss may go back to Ashland for a while, but her plans are up in the air.
"There are a lot of different opportunities in my life," she said. "Once I get my van I want to be a world traveler."
Getting a van and converting it to run on alternative fuels is part of her attempt to focus on tackling environmental issues.
"I want to work with organic farmers and eco-villages," she said. From now on she wants her name spelled G-e-n, which also stands for Global Environmental Network.
She was recently interviewed on NBC (will play after the commercial) and the media focus has motivated her to be a more concentrated spokesperson for love, life and peace, she said.
Moss says she wants to channel the media attention she has recently received toward various, lesser-known environmental and health issues, for which she is a proponent.
"I want to keep working on sharing earth-friendly tips and sharing the naked truth," she said. "For example, most people don't know that canola oil is not healthy … it really isn't good for your body."
She says she is learning to be more peaceful, and to work with people toward positive change.
"A lot of people in this society don't know what I am doing," she said. "They think I want to hurt children or sell myself sexually but it's not true. I was born this way, and I love our children."
What she strives for is to help children, and work with them on creating a sustainable eco-friendly world, she said.
She is staying in Ojai to help a friend fix up his house and organize it for a few weeks, perhaps. After that, she's off to wherever her world-traveling path will lead her.

First Roundup At The OK Drill

2008-09-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

Wayne Francis, emergency coordinator for Area 5 of the Ventura County Auxiliary Communication Service, mans the ham and GMRS radios for the Ojai Valley during the recent CERT drill.

Ojai Valley residents are expected to be more self-reliant and prepared when the next valleywide emergency occurs, be it earthquake, fire or flood.
The local disaster preparedness drill on Sept. 17 went extremely well with no major glitches, according to local officials.
The goal was to establish effective communication methods among citizens, volunteers, the Police Department and Fire Department, in the event of a disaster, said 1st District Supervisor Steve Bennett. With those mechanisms in place, local residents and Community Emergency Response Team volunteers should be able to respond more calmly and efficiently during major catastrophes.
CERT volunteers counted a total of 684 “OK” signs in the Ojai Valley within an hour of the drill, indicating that 684 households are prepared for a disaster and know to put up a sign when a real event occurs. An “OK” sign posted on the window of a house during a real disaster should show that members of the household are safe, and signals CERT volunteers to move on to others in need.
Volunteers divided themselves into nine neighborhood groups to count signs Sept. 17. Local participants were asked to post “OK” signs on their homes for the drill. In the breakdown, Mira Monte volunteers counted the highest number of neighborhood participants, with a total of 225 “OK” signs. Casitas Springs had the least, with no volunteers and no participants, according to the East City area CERT volunteer coordinator, Paul Garth. Meiners Oaks volunteers counted the second highest number of participants, 153 “OK” signs, the East City area, which runs from Signal Street to Gridley Road came in third with a count of 101 signs. West City, which runs from Signal Street to the beginning of Highway 33, counted 84 signs. Arbolada-Foothill volunteers came in next with 46 signs, and the East End of Ojai had 44 signs posted. Oak View volunteers counted 30 participants in their neighborhood and Upper Ojai volunteers counted only one.
The first test of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s reverse 911 system effectively made 12,000 calls in 10 minutes, according to Bennett. The Sheriff’s Department staff will have to work on a few minor technical issues to address unanswered calls, however.
Sean Kellythorne, incident commander for the citizen drill said that the communication between volunteers, the Police Department, and Fire Department went exceptionally well. Members of the Ojai Valley Amateur Radio Club accompanied CERT volunteers on their “OK” sign count and relayed information to Kellythorne through portable amateur radios. He then transferred information to the police and battalion chiefs.
“Fire Department and Police said that the communication between volunteers, the Police Department, and Fire Department went exceptionally well. Members of the Ojai Valley Amateur Radio Club accompanied CERT volunteers on their “OK” sign count and relayed information to Kellythorne through portable amateur radios. He then transferred information to the police and battalion chiefs.
“Fire Department and Police Department officials really see the value of this operation,” said Kellythorne.
“We had over 100 people on the streets which is almost 10 times the amount that the Fire Department could field. To say they were pleased would be an underestimation.”
Garth said that 40 more people signed up for the next CERT training and that local volunteers are hoping to get a much higher count for the drill next year.
“This is a classic example of the community wanting to help itself, and the government helping them do that,” said Bennett. “It was essentially a citizen’s drill that we helped coordinate. It’s the best kind of partnership when the government helps the people help themselves.”
To sign up for CERT training call Bennett’s office at 654-2703. To register a cell phone number for reverse 911 calls go to the county web site at countyofventura.org.

Tempers Rise As Dam Plans Revealed

2008-09-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

50 neighbors downriver from Matilija Dam come out to express fears, concerns about project

By Sondra Murphy
Demolishing Matilija Dam is the easy part. The hard part is deciding where to put the enormous amount of silt and sediments built up behind the dam.
The county invited residents of one neighborhood impacted by the project to a meeting Wednesday at Nordhoff High School to discuss this and other issues.
The Ventura County Watershed Protection District is working with the United States Army Corps of Engineers to remove the dam. The dam has been a barrier between endangered southern steelhead trout and their historic spawning grounds since it was built 60 years ago as a flood-control project.
According to a feasibility study conducted by the Corps of Engineers in 2004, demolition is expected to occur sometime between 2010 and 2012 and will cost, including silt removal, more than $100 million.
Plans to construct a levee west of the properties on Oso Road, as well as a high-flow bypass for the Robles Diversion, were detailed by Ventura County Watershed Protection District’s Peter Sheydayi. He also addressed one of four potential storage sites for silt south of Meyer Road. About 50 people attended.
Also at the meeting were Doug Chitwood of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, project manager Darrell Buxton, environmental services manager Pam Lindsey, and Keith Filegar of the county’s Real Estate Services Division.
Several representatives of various water districts were in attendance, as well.
Conspicuously absent was County Supervisor Steve Bennett, whose valleywide disaster drill was taking place at the same time as the meeting, a scheduling blunder criticized by resident Jodi Heath.
Relocating the removed sediment in the amount of 2 to 6 million cubic yards will be no mean feat. The people who attended the meeting apprehensively sat through the first half hour of slide show presentation reviewing the history of the dam and asked a few questions as the anxiety among them grew more vocal. Besides doubt that the levee, planned to be built south of Meyer Road near the Ventura River trailhead, would serve to protect their community from flooding, several people expressed concern that the levee would, instead, increase the dangers of flooding to their homes and properties by changing the contours of the river bed.
Many were also angry that the project’s 23 participating agencies were now considering their river bottom neighborhood as a disposal area, something that was not addressed in a 2006 public meeting. Previous information indicated that an area near the Baldwin Road bridge would be the disposal site. That zone is still on the list of possibilities, as well as two others downstream near Foster Park.
Still in the design phase, the project also includes flow bypass pipes to move slurry from the dam area and around populated areas to rejoin the river. “Any features that involve construction, involve noise,” said Sheydayi. Several people questioned the odor factor during the process, but no answer was given.
Heath and others also asked about the truck traffic route for delivering dam materials into the proposed disposal site. “It hasn’t been decided yet,” answered Sheydayi, “but probably down Meyer Road … Right now, we’re working with Casitas as to where the route will be. A portion is on federal land and a portion is on OVLC land and a portion is on privately owned land.” Church of the Living Christ largely owns that private property. During the 2006 meeting, project coordinators mistakenly thought the property belonged to the Land Conservancy and so had ruled out the area for disposal.
After the meeting, resident Bob Collins summed up what others had voiced during the two-hour discussion. “They wanted to find a cheap place to dump the stuff,” he said. “They should take that silt and spread it thin. In my 50 years of construction, I’ve never seen it done like this. There are certain fundamental understandings in the industry we just don’t do and we don’t dump trash on people’s property.”
Well safety in the project area was also questioned, but none of the agency representatives had information about exact locations. “There are at least six to eight wells down there and they don’t know where they are,” complained resident Warren Davis.
As the meeting progressed, conversations overlapped, Tempers flared and no one expressed support for the project. Sheydayi informed the crowd that there would be a design oversight meeting on Oct. 2 at 9 a.m. at the VCWPD offices in their Saticoy conference room at 11251 B Riverbank Drive. “Obviously, everybody down river is going to have their own perspective and at those design meetings we will decide what criteria we will use to decide which disposal site to use,” Sheydayi said. For more details, go to matilijadam.org.