News Update: Ojai City Council, Wtf?!
Introducing the next deep dive. (And no, I don't intend for every series to include a "Wtf." It just felt appropriate here.)
It’s five minutes to 11 pm on Tuesday, September 12th and the Ojai City Council is debating “bodily liberty for elephants.”
After more than a half hour of discussion, the Council voted 4-1 to introduce a new article to the Ojai Municipal Code ensuring “the right to bodily liberty for elephants within the City of Ojai.”1
Why do I mention this? Because I’ve decided that the next long-form story coming to This Little Valley will be called, “Ojai City Council, Wtf!?”
The report that follows represents the first in a series of updates, while I investigate and develop the full story. Future updates will be provided to subscribers only. This piece is a window into my reporting process, a City Council news update, and more.2
Now, back to elephants (I’ll keep it brief). City Councilwoman Leslie Rule — who initiated the discussion — argued that the proposed ordinance would support ongoing legal efforts by groups like the Nonhuman Rights Project. They’re seeking “habeas corpus relief,”3 for three elephants — Nolwazi, Amahle, and Mabu — who are “unjustly imprisoned” in the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. A similar suit aimed to free the elephant known as “Happy”4 from the Bronx Zoo.5 The ordinance is effectively symbolic — a signal of support.
Councilman Andrew Whitman was the sole vote in opposition to the proposed ordinance. “I don’t think this impacts a lot of Ojai residents,” he said.
I really can’t argue with that.
Now, the reason I want to dive into the Ojai City Council is not solely because of their proclivity for unique ordinances, but because the body is plagued by conflict and distrust. Over the past nine months, the body has seen allegations of collusion and Brown Act violations, an ongoing recall attempt, a Planning Commissioner ousting, and lawsuits, lots of lawsuits (and associated legal fees). Now that I’ve analyzed and contextualized the issues plaguing the local school district, I aim to do the same for the City Council. I hope to disentangle what has become a deeply convoluted series of conflicts and identify what really ails the body.
And that’s why I found my way to City Hall on Wednesday morning. After a meeting with Interim City Manager Mark Scott, I took a walk around the City Hall campus — a site where 16-25 unhoused people currently live, estimated Whitney Jenks Nunes of HELP of Ojai.
I wanted to take a look at the conditions myself and get an idea of who is living there. After chatting to one man who would only disclose that he’s from “America,” and a widowed older woman who came to Ojai by way of Malibu, I met a 27-year-old woman named Mayra. She grew up in Meiners Oaks and graduated from Nordhoff High School in 2014.
For the past four months, Mayra has made her home on the side of an unoccupied building on the City Hall campus — the space has three walls and a homemade door. One night, she told me, she woke up with a coyote sleeping at her feet. On August 22nd, when a 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck the valley, Mayra was inside her shelter. The space is so narrow, she said, that when the Earth quaked her head struck the wall. Mayra — who shared that she was born with a disability — acknowledged that she’s seen “a lot of bad,” in her life, but she also sees generosity around her. “I’m the girl everyone looks out for,” she said, gesturing to the tents dotting the City Hall campus.
Mayra’s mother, an immigrant from Mexico, had 12 children and was often struggling to pay the rent, Mayra said. She remembers her mother selling baked goods for extra money and laughed telling the story of the time her mother charged their Meiners Oaks neighbors admission into the family home. The attraction was a televised lucha libre wrestling match. “That was how we paid the rent,” Mayra said.
For Mayra and her family, things changed around 2016, when her mother lost her job as a dishwasher. Mayra stayed in the United States and her mother moved back to Mexico, where she passed away in 2020. Mayra’s father was deported and now lives in Querétaro, Mexico. Her goal is to save enough money to visit her father, she said, “before it’s too late.”
We talked about good times, too. Mayra told me about her time as a student in Ojai and recounted how her mother invited Nordhoff administrators to her quinceañera party — a Mexican tradition celebrating a girl’s coming of age at 15. It was the only quinceañera any of them had attended, Mayra said proudly. She has particularly fond memories of long-time OUSD administrator Susana Arce. “I don’t know where I would be without Ms. Arce,” Mayra said, growing emotional. She remembered wearing a pair of high heels for her Nordhoff graduation ceremony — she tripped and nearly fell as she crossed the stage. “Ms. Arce caught me,” she remembered.
But for Mayra, “Ojai has changed a lot. The people I grew up with are no longer here,” she said.
After spending the morning with Mayra, I kept thinking back to the previous night’s City Council meeting — specifically the time spent discussing the rights of elephants. I don’t mean to imply that’s all they discussed during their five-hour meeting — far from it. I do mean to assert, however, that their time could be better spent.
During Tuesday’s public comment period, multiple locals urged the Council to take quicker action to address the homelessness crisis.6 One Ojai woman, Rachel Hunt, disclosed to the Council that she was homeless in Ojai at age 16. For a time, she said, she lived in the Libbey Park gazebo. Hunt made her way out of homelessness, she said, after being “blessed enough to meet some compassionate people.”
“I’d like to invite the community to be hands-on and go into the [City Hall community garden, where many tents are located] and get to know these people,” Hunt added. They are part of our community.”
Mayor Betsy Stix confirmed that homelessness is the “Council’s top priority,” and a local task force is “working on solutions for our unhoused populations.” Ruth Miller, an Ojai resident of more than four decades, leads the group — the “Ojai Citizens Homeless Task Force.” According to Miller, the task force’s goal is to “establish a shelter where each individual has their own door that locks.” Miller and her group have researched shelter builders, service providers, potential sites, and grant opportunities to support such a project and submitted their report to the City of Ojai on Monday, she said. Miller noted that a Ventura County “matching fund” program provides a “dollar to dollar match” for cities building homeless shelters. According to the Ventura County Star, “the Ventura, Oxnard, and Santa Paula shelters all operate with this funding model, and when the shelter in Thousand Oaks opens, it will too.”
“We hope the work shown in the report works for the city. If not, we are happy to research other options,” Miller said.
Everyone I spoke to made one thing clear: the homelessness crisis in Ojai is worsening, quickly. Miller told me that she recently spoke to an unhoused man who has lived in Ojai for the past 50 years. Nunes emphasized that “we’re seeing more and more seniors come into homelessness.”
Mayra, for her part, left me with this, “it’s gonna get a lot worse.”
This is the first in a series of news updates about the City Council. This research will inform a subscribers-only long-form report called “Ojai City Council, Wtf?!”
The ordinance will require a subsequent meeting (and Council vote) to be adopted.
This is also an experiment — I have no doubt this space will evolve. I welcome your feedback in the comments.
The writ of habeas corpus is a fundamental right that protects against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment, according to the ACLU.
I have to say, it’s pretty hideous that they decided to name the incarcerated Asian elephant “Happy.”
To be clear, the goal is to relocate these elephants to a sanctuary.
Because the issue was not part of the agenda, the Council is prohibited from discussing the matter in detail.