News Update: In the thick of it
Digging into the discord at the Ojai City Council
First, I want to say thank you to my new subscribers. I’m grateful for your support and am excited about the work ahead.
Onward to City Council!
Over the past week, I’ve conducted hours of interviews and waded through innumerable city staff reports, legal briefs, and meeting videos. I’m happy to report that all five Ojai City Council members have agreed to speak with me for the forthcoming Ojai City Council, WTF?! series, as have multiple former city officials. I expect that the first chapter of this series will be complete within the next two weeks.
In reporting this story, I’ve come to appreciate that 2023 hosted two concurrent political crises in Ojai: one at the Ojai Unified School District, and one at the Ojai City Council. Both crises, in my view, are rooted in the City’s lack of affordable housing.
In retrospect, the crisis at OUSD was relatively straightforward — the Board was required to make $3 million in budget cuts by a date certain following two decades of declining enrollment. The ongoing political battle at City Hall is far more convoluted, but much of it centers around a controversial housing development agreement — the Becker Group’s “Ojai Bungalows” — which included 27 units of deed-restricted affordable housing. The developers have since withdrawn from the agreement.
Notably, both the School Board and the City Council were called out earlier this year by Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko for violating California open meetings law The Brown Act. Nasarenko found that both had unlawfully discussed public business in private.
In the case of the City Council, the Brown Act fracas (video below) began in January — when newly elected Councilwoman Leslie Rule revealed information from the Council’s closed session meetings and an alleged conflict of interest by Mayor Betsy Stix.1 After City Attorney Matthew Summers prevented Rule from reporting the events of the meetings publicly, Rule’s full statement was published by the Ojai Valley News. Nasarenko, for his part, said they were all in the wrong. “The Council’s closed-session discussions violated the Brown Act, as did Councilmember Rule’s disclosure of those discussions to the media instead of the Office of the District Attorney,” he said in a statement.
Nine months later, the fight over Rule’s disclosure continues in civil court — and it’s getting costly.
On September 7th, a collection of Ojai residents arrived at Ventura County Superior Court for an early morning hearing. Unfortunately, these neighbors represented both sides of the aforementioned legal fight. The plaintiffs, seven Ojai Valley residents2, seek “declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent additional illegal disclosures,” by defendants Rule and her attorney in the matter, Jon Drucker (who is also an Ojai Valley resident). Readers can download the complaint below.
There are City Council members on both sides of this battle — Councilman Andrew Whitman (elected in 2022), submitted a declaration in support of the plaintiffs (available below). Whitman stated that Rules’s actions in January “damaged the ability of the City of Ojai to utilize closed session to receive confidential advice from legal counsel.” He further alleged that “it is also possible that Councilmember Rule's disclosure of confidential information was an effort to curry favor with the developer.”3 Rule refutes that allegation. Ojai resident Barbara Bowman recently cited Whitman’s declaration in the case against Rule as part of the rationale for a campaign to recall Whitman from office. See what I mean by convoluted?
And what did Ventura County Superior Court Judge Benjamin Coats have to say in the matter? According to Kimberly Rivers’ reporting, Coats said his tentative ruling is in Rule and Drucker’s favor due to “a lack of evidence” on the plaintiffs’ side. He has yet to issue a final ruling — I’ll keep you posted.
And why does this all matter? Because this one legal battle is part of a much larger fight over affordable housing4. Because, ultimately, we’re witnessing a war between competing factions at the Ojai City Council, and their dispute is about competing visions for the future of Ojai.
Before I close today, I should mention that I have a very personal connection to City Hall — my father, Andy Belknap, was the Ojai City Manager from 1989 to 2001. During those years, my opinion on City Council meetings was quite simple: deathly boring, as if the members were the adults in Charlie Brown.
I share this because a) people often ask, and b) it seems prudent to share that I’ve known long-time Ojai public servants like Suza Francina5 since I was a literal child. I don’t believe that history impacts my ability to report the facts objectively, and I have no intention of interviewing my father for this piece — he hasn’t lived in Ojai for more than a decade. He is, however, a subscriber to This Little Valley (Hi, Dad!).
Miscellaneous reporting notes:
After speaking to Mayra last week, I was curious about how many OUSD students are currently unhoused. In the 2023-24 school year, 48 Ojai Unified students “lack a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence,” said OUSD’s Alexandra Mejia-Holdsworth.
The Ojai Valley News reported Thursday that an invasive pest known as the Asian Citrus Psyllid (ACP) carrying the citrus greening disease Huanglongbing (HLB) has been detected in Ventura County. I reported on HLB’s march toward Ventura County back in 2017. This disease is credited with decimating Florida’s citrus industry and there is no known cure.
The Ojai City Council is set to adopt an ordinance to protect elephants within city limits during its next meeting Tuesday, September 26th.
The U.S. Government will shut down October 1st, unless a federal spending bill is passed. I don’t pretend to know if the government will *actually* shut down, but I can offer some insight into the process. When I worked for the federal government from 2009-2014, I experienced one shutdown and many near misses. During my time at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, my colleagues and I spent weeks preparing for potential shutdowns, only for the crisis to be averted at the final hour. In October 2013, hundreds of thousands of government employees — including myself— were barred from going to work for two weeks. I sat at home and watched Netflix, worried I was going to run out of rent money, and then received two weeks of back pay for doing absolutely nothing. Seems pretty stupid, right?
If you enjoy these reports, please recommend This Little Valley to a friend. That’s all for now — I’ll talk to you next week. 💛
In short: Rule reported that Stix recommended the City hire attorney Heather Minner of San Francisco law firm Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger for a second opinion on the City’s options with regard to the Becker development agreement. The agreement was approved 4-1 by the previous Council. Stix was the lone vote in opposition. According to Rule, Stix disclosed during the closed session that she received Minner’s name from local attorney Sabrina Venskus. Venskus also represented the non-profit Simply Ojai in their lawsuit to overturn the development agreement — a severe conflict of interest, according to Rule. Stix, for her part, says, “I got three references and researched them and made the best choice, I stand by that. We got great advice.”
David Byrne, Vickie Carlton-Byrne, Leslie Ferraro, Douglas La Barre, Joel MaHarry, Thomas Drew Mashburn and Gerald Schwanke. Notably, Sabrina Venskus (footnote one) represents the plaintiffs.
The Becker Group
Both sides here claim to support affordable housing. We’ll dig into that one next time.
My favorite Suza Francina memory involves riding in the truck bed of a pick-up during the 4th of July parade with an assortment of former Council members and city officials, including my Dad. Suza demonstrated yoga moves along the parade route. I was delighted — still am!