Open letter to all Members of the Ojai City Council, City Attorney & City Manager.
OPEN LETTER TO Ojai City Council.
March 21, 2023
Madame Mayor, Members of Council, Mr. City Manager & Mr. City Attorney,
By now you must have heard about our "Transparent Ojai" petition calling for transparency in Ojai City Leadership. Our petition has exceeded its goal and is now at over 1,500 petitioners, requesting (among other things) that the DA and AG investigate any reported Brown Act violations, improper use of public office, and collusion between public officials and special interest group Mindful Citizen dba SIMPLY OJAI, FUEL REDUCTION WORKS etc., its principals and related parties.
We are a group of citizens concerned enough to have formed varied alliances with nothing more than our shared goal of furthering honesty, integrity, and transparency in governance, in keeping with the law and best practices. We are your partners in this. Our story has been covered in local as well as national news sources and the interest goes far beyond voting members of the City of Ojai. We believe this is due to the nature and duration of the alleged improprieties.
Requests for investigations were filed in Feb. 2023 with the following agencies, and we believe some investigations to already be underway.
1. IRS, US Dept. of the Treasury
2. Registry of Charitable Trusts, State of CA
3. CA State Treasurer, Fiona Ma
4. Office of the CA Attorney General, Rob Bonta,
5. Secretary of State, Shirley Weber
6. District Attorney, County of Ventura
7. Civil Grand Jury, County of Ventura
cc: Transparent Ojai Petitioners, and all governmental parties above.
If our complaints related to the March 21, 2023 “closed session” in any way, we prefer these matters are dealt with openly, in order to rectify, educate and build bridges for a healthy Ojai.
Moving forward, we hope to be able to affect healthy change in ways that holds all members of the City Council, including staff, more accountable to help restore the trust that’s been eroded of late. Your response to the questions below will be a great place to start so we can work united with you and the residents of Ojai and the Ojai Valley to self-govern in ways that serve an informed majority over special interests.
PART 1.
QUESTIONS For City Manager & Attorney to answer.
1. What, if any, codes of conduct, ethics or training documents, videos or other educational materials does the City offer to its City Council during the on-boarding process?
2. Whose responsibility are HR or other legal matters related to the conduct of council members, staff or contractors?
3. Why was the mayor not punished or reprimanded for sharing confidential attorney-client privileged documents with her Simply Ojai friends?
4. Why were the privileged documents the Mayor shared with Simply Ojai redacted when the City released them to the public?
5. Whose responsibility is it to run closed session meetings?
6. Whose responsibility is it to keep closed sessions on topic?
7. Whose responsibility is it to place the matter of the mayor’s improprieties on upcoming agendas for discussion?
8. Should the city council keep and safeguard minutes, transcripts and/or recordings of closed session meetings?
9. Whose responsibility is it to report improprieties or potentially unlawful activities in a closed session?
10. Given the Mayor does not wish to address her own improprieties, whose responsibility is it to place this important item on the agenda besides her?
11. Would this be done in an open session?
12. To whom does the City Attorney report?
13. Whose responsibility is it to monitor the contract between the City of Ojai and the law firm that employs the City Attorney?
14. How long is that contract and what is the process (if any) for rotating attorneys?
15. Is there anything you need from us in order to treat our request with the respect it deserves?
Please reply to:
C/O (rotating) webmaster:
TransparentOjai@gmail.com
On behalf of petitioners
PART 2: We will conduct a poll for our petitioners and share results with you. Thank you for treating this as 1500 separate requests.