Like a Bad Penny - A Bookend of Bullshit

Ojai City Council Series Part `VIII

Ugh, this again.

The meeting ran almost six hours long.

SIX HOURS!

The Mayor Pro Tem F tried to get it to end before the last item on the agenda was presented as did The Councilmember R. They were outvoted three to two. T.M.P.T.F. left a few minutes after that anyway. She packed up her stuff and without a word to anyone just left! I mean, can you do that? Well, I guess you can, ‘cause she did.

This is Part VIII of my continuing series on Ojai Politics. (If you’re just coming into this series, you can start here with Part I - Pluto Misogyny Showdown at City Hall)

I don’t think I would have lasted so long there myself if there had not been another ongoing and coordinated attack against Mayor Stix perpetrated by, you guessed it, Name Redacted, who had to be heard on the consent calendar, right at the beginning of the meeting, even before public comment began, just so he could try to stick it to the Mayor. Again. He then closed out the night with another pileup on her regarding the item she added to the agenda. A bookend of bullshit.

It was gross, and I said so when I got up to the lectern to try to air the stench out of the room. This was my third time at the mic because once again it seemed on a couple of issues that many speaking were there to try to bring conflict and divisiveness to the room, not all, but many.

The meetings had been without a lot of drama the last few times, so I should not have been surprised. We were due, especially as we are in this sticky place with Pluto Retrograde in Capricorn. What’s that sound I hear? Oh, that’s the sound of the Trump family being outed as the conpeople they are and having their business licenses revoked. The upside to Pluto in late-stage Capricorn. The downside is all of the suffering along the way.

Mayor Stix had the AUDACITY as a woman in power to use her power once again to place this item on the agenda: That the City Council receive a report from Mayor Stix regarding the creation of a Youth Council

Nice, cool, getting kids involved when our democracy is in jeopardy. I am all for it. I thought this one would be easy breezy. Name Redacted and his small posse had other ideas.

Again with the conspiracy theories.

“Mayor Stix is going to program these young people to believe what she does turning them into puppets!” (I am paraphrasing. Frankly, it was so ridiculous, I am not going to relisten to the meeting and transcribe it. Okay, fine, when you get to the bottom of this piece there is some direct transcription)

Plus, I thought Mayor Stix was the puppet. Can a puppet also be a puppetmaster? These people have got to get some new material or maybe just STFU once and for all.

The removal of Name Redacted was relitigated more than once, the conversations initiated by The Mayor Pro Tem F and The Councilmember R.

There were some important things that happened. The business did get done despite the detractors.

The council voted unanimously to fund the city’s efforts in facilitating a temporary housing solution for our unhoused encampment which is currently set up on a piece of the 8-acre city hall campus. This will entail bringing in services to the camp, potentially revamping the camp, and hiring someone to manage the situation, and these beings, unhoused in a city where those with excess wealth live right near them.

The public comments were largely in support of helping these people. I got up to comment on the reminder that the “they” being spoken about are beings, some of our most vulnerable and that we as a whole benefit when we take care of one another. “Most of us are one major crisis away from finding ourselves in the same situation”.

I directed a comment to the community in response to some of the dehumanizing language I had observed regarding these beings. There is a perception that people are unhoused as a result of their “bad choices” or that they are dangerous to those in the community.

Here are the top 10 reasons for people becoming unhoused in our country.
Stagnant wages
Unemployment
Lack of affordable housing
Lack of affordable healthcare
Poverty
Lack of mental health and addiction treatment services
Racial inequality
Domestic violence
Family conflict
Systemic failures (see items one through nine)

Step one is to support our unhoused population at their current location at city hall. Step two will be the creation of transitional housing at another location working in collaboration with the county.

The council then moved onto the ATP (Active Transportation Program) issue, which has become a years-long project created to make Ojai more bicycle-friendly and to connect my neighborhood (Meiners Oaks) to Ojai proper with lane reductions on Highway 33 and the addition of bicycle lanes. The city was awarded a grant to fund this project, and it has moved very slowly, in part due to COVID, and in part due to some of the community’s negative response to it.

Change is hard.

There were two choices the council was faced with - continue with the completion of phase one and then move on to phase two or scrap the project entirely and return the grant money.

I left as public comment was wrapping up to come home and let the doggies out. We’d been there for over three hours at this point. When I returned a half hour or so later, Jon was in the parking lot waiting to greet me. They were on another break. The council voted to continue the ATP project.

Here in Ojai, we are doing our best to address and heal problems locally that also need to be taken care of nationally. The nation is lagging behind our efforts, it seems. So the onus feels like it’s on each one of us individually to make these changes including what feels like making some sacrifices while the corporations and banks still get to run wild and do whatever the hell they want.

Take the single-use plastic ban, for instance. Now, I, for one, am all good with this, but if actions like this are not paired with radical environmental and climate change legislation at the national level that would put the corporations in check, we are going to continue to see much greater suffering. The sacrifices will come at the expense of the loss of our ecosystem.

We’re tired, each of us, as we live our lives doing the best we can under the weight of late-stage capitalism where it currently appears that the wealth hoarders are winning. So I get the anger from the people who feel inconvenienced by the lane reductions and the extended time it takes for them to drop their kids off at the high school. I get their anger and yet I see their anger as misdirected. They want to blame and “other” individuals instead of looking at the dysfunctions in our whole system. This was pointed out during the conversation about our unhoused population as well. It’s a national issue that is going largely unaddressed (see again the top ten reasons people become unhoused in this country).

Things really started to go off the rails after the second break. The agenda item was: Discussion – City Council Initiated Revisions to Commission Ordinances

Recommendation: That the City Council review the attached DRAFT revisions to City Commission ordinances that are tentatively scheduled for introduction on the October 10, 2023 agenda, and provide staff with confirmation, edits or other suggestions relating to a variety of Commission-related provisions — structure, membership, operating policies and related matters.

Recap: Interim City Manager Mark Scott read off a list of questions regarding appointments to commissions, terms of service, tying terms of service to city council members’ terms, residents vs. nonresidents, how many votes the Mayor and The Mayor Pro Tem should get, how to handle the need to remove a commissioner, and some other stuff. As they went off the rails I did a little bit too.

The Mayor Pro Tem F got mad at some point and “just wanted this to stop” (paraphrasing from my memory). The Mayor had to ask her to please change her behavior and move forward in a positive manner to get this done.

The Councilmember R got mad that the Mayor and The Mayor Pro Tem would get two appointments and the remaining councilmembers would each only get one. This was like second-grade-fairness-playground nonsense in my opinion, and again was really about her obvious disdain for our Mayor, a disdain which becomes so loud at times it interferes with important business and has caused her to be personally cited with a Brown Act violation (see my upcoming piece on this).

Thank goddess for Councilmember Lang who spoke to the fact that The Mayor and The Mayor Pro Tem are honorifics and due to this should each get an extra vote (meaning appoint an extra person a piece) out of respect for this. Right on, Rachel! (she gets a first name mention for this). She changed the tone of the conversation.

Name Redacted tried to interject from the audience at one point and the Mayor shut him down. He is no longer on any commissions due to his own actions. He still has clearly not come to terms with this.

They came to some level of agreement on the questions asked, enough that the city staff would be able to take it, create a structure, and then bring it back to the council for a final vote. The vote was three to two in favor.

Oh yeah, earlier on we heard about the elephants. Again. This is the third time now that the council has spent time on this issue so The Councilmember R could forward her pet agenda. I’ve been pretty quiet about one aspect of this up until now, but after witnessing her behavior last night, I am going to open my mouth typing fingers. I see this as an abuse of power, for her to use her position to promote something that does not in any way, shape, or form impact the citizens of the city of Ojai or the residents of the Ojai Valley at large. She did this to influence politics at the state level and, perhaps, to forward her own political aspirations as well.

The reason I bring this up is because she accused the Mayor of abusing her power to try to conform the minds of the young people in our community to her own political agenda. If we’ve learned anything from the far right (I am not saying that The Councilmember R is on the far right or even on the right), it’s that they throw out accusations about the very thing they themselves are guilty of. The Councilmember R might do well to pick up her magic mirror, which she had again with her last night, along with her trayful of trinkets, and look at her own reflection.

The Mayor Pro Tem F might as well do the same after suggesting a few months ago at a meeting that the Council should vote on encouraging a group of citizens engaged in a lawsuit against The Councilmember R to drop their suit. This, to me, was an attempt at an abuse of power on an epic scale for our small town.

Buckle up, it’s about to get nasty.

There was one remaining item on the agenda and it was 11:00pm. Name Redacted had tried to get it removed from the agenda when he was given permission to speak prior to public comment. To whomever is listening, please do not ever give him this kind of latitude again. He means no good for our community, in my opinion. He means to divide and infect the space with his misogyny, his hatred of our Mayor, and his sore loser costume.

The Mayor Pro Tem F wanted to end the meeting. She needed to get home to relieve her dog sitter. She also referenced that they had some rule to not start a new agenda item after 10:30pm. She made a motion to adjourn. The Councilmember R seconded with this comment “I am not willing to entertain another agenda item.” The Mayor reminded them that the first time elephants were on the agenda, the 11:00pm hour had been reached that night and they went ahead with that one. She assured them this would be quick.

Then The Councilmember R said, “This is going to be long and complicated. It’s not going to be easy.” - Glaring red flag about what was about to happen.

The motion to adjourn was defeated.

“This is designed to be fast and positive,” said Mayor Stix as she began to read her short report on what she was calling The Mayor’s Youth Council. Please, Google the term if you think her ego is involved in this. It’s very commonly used all over the country, and if that had been Johnny Johnston up there, our former mayor, who happened to be male, using this term, you can bet no one would have batted an eye.

“Point of order”, Mayor Pro Tem F interjected, “Can she really legally continue when it’s past 10:30? This is not an emergency or time-sensitive item.”

“Counsel can vote to suspend the rule and continue,” replied City Attorney Matthew Summers who is present at all meetings. The vote to adjourn had already been defeated meaning they were fine to continue, which the mayor then did.

The Mayor Pro Tem continued to push back, complaining that this was not a priority for the community. As an aside, she cosponsored the elephant agenda item. So again, this is about her need to fight with our Mayor, in my opinion.

Councilmember Lang had some questions about functionality and council involvement.

THEN

“I have a question,” The Councilmember R, tone turned up to 11, “Have you met with a group of high school students?”

She kept asking this, insinuating that the Mayor had some nefarious scheme here to win the young people over to her side or to manipulate them in some other way. Puppet Theatre, The Councilmember R as a puppet for Name Redacted. I mean, I don’t really know. Maybe she came up with this herself. However, the first few speakers were all The Name Redacted and his posse and they all said pretty much the same thing she did. It read like a coordinated attack against the Mayor.

Then The Councilmember R really let it rip, “The reason I’m getting to this is we have public comments from high school students that mirror your accusations against Name Redacted, step by step by step.”

“It’s true!” shouted The Mayor Pro Tem F as the rest of us remaining in the gallery voiced our disgust with the exception of the posse.

The Mayor banged her gavel and tried to shut it down.

“I want to invite everyone to have positive unconditional regard for one another,” said Councilmember Lang

“That’s really nice,” responded The Councilwoman R as she rolled her eyes and then persisted in her obvious and pathetic attack.

Interim City Manager Mark Scott and City Attorney Matthew Summers then interjected and said, “This is not on the agenda,” meaning the relitigation of the removal of Name Redacted.

Public comment began and The Mayor Pro Tem F packed up her stuff and left the building without a word.

Most Public Comments - “Mayor Stix is evil.” “Mayor Stix is trying to manipulate our youth.” “Mayor Stix is an egomaniac naming it The Mayor’s Youth Council.” “Mayor Stix should be burned at the stake.” (okay, maybe I added that here so you get the point).

When Name Redacted got up there again to babble his points, he first had to give them all handouts, as he regularly does. They should start the clock then instead of waiting until he takes the mic.

I filled out another comment card and was pretty sure I’d be called last, which was what I was hoping. I was the last in-person speaker to be called. There was one after me on Zoom.

“At a time when our democracy is under attack, I can’t think of anything better than pulling our younger beings into public service in any way, shape, and form.” I then gestured behind me and to the left, “That coordinated attack against Mayor Stix, that was gross,” I turned my head and looked at them. “Y’all, that was gross. I don’t even know what to say at this point when I see those kinds of things. It’s just terrible. Right? It’s just terrible to watch it happen, the relitigation of events that are settled now, that want to continue to come back and bite Mayor Stix in the ass. It’s gross.” I then proceeded to speak in favor of the youth council proposal.

Back to the council.

Councilmember Lang spoke brightly in support of the youth council with some great ideas including inviting the students selected to come up with another name for the council if they so desired. She also spoke highly of one of the community members who had been selected as one of the adult coordinators with assurances that if the other two named were as she was, they were all great choices. Terry Karabatos owner of Air Pizza will be hosting the monthly meetings at his restaurant.

The Councilmember R voiced her concerns and then said, “I do want to read this letter. This came in…..” She then read a letter from a self-identifying high school student named Henry that had been submitted for the July 11th meeting in support of the removal of Name Redacted. It was a pretty brilliant take and once again reminded us all of Name Redacted’s abuses of power. This, of course, was not her intention in reading it.

After her reading, she said, “This is a high school student who wrote this, and this is not the only one, and the lines are exactly the same. They are your talking points,” as she gestured at the Mayor, “and that is what concerns me, blah, blah, blah.”

“I don’t know a high school student who could possibly write like this,” said The Councilmember R. She claimed there were at least 4 letters like this from high school students that all sounded exactly the same. I scoured through the public emails and could only find two, the one we heard her read and one other from a female student. While she made some of the same points in hers, it was completely different in structure from the one that was read aloud.

First, Henry, if you’re reading this, I am so sorry that a city council member chose to deny your voice and your brilliance and instead accuse you of being a mouthpiece for the Mayor. Truly. She should apologize to you.

To the other high school student who wrote in, thank you for using your voice in our governmental process. You are also owed an apology.

The motion to move ahead with the youth council passed three to one.

After the meeting a fellow female community member said to me about the attacks against the Mayor, “I am really starting to believe this is all because she is female.”

It is.

Misogyny. It can be so hard to acknowledge especially for women who identify as strong because the acknowledgment of it challenges our belief that we can do anything.

None of us want to be a victim of it. We are.

Acknowledging this true elephant in the room does not make any female there less powerful. Acknowledging the truth of this empowers us to heal and become genuinely stronger.

Read Part IX Here