What is your viewpoint on the Tent Town tiny homes project?

I want to be completely pragmatic about this, because the alternative is the attitude that got us here. Do it, it’s the right thing, damn the consequences, ignore the process, leave the details to management. We can do a thing for the right reason and still do it the right way.

The obligation is real and I am not arguing with it. Tent Town went up on the City Hall parking lot, and taking care of those neighbors became this city’s responsibility. Moving people into a proper shelter was necessary.

What I want people to see is what we signed up for. The city set aside two million dollars to operate it, five hundred thousand a year for four years. The plan for year five is that county or state money shows up. If it doesn’t, that cost lands on the Ojai budget permanently, and permanent costs don’t stay flat. Nobody has put the year five number in front of the public.

Then there is how it was done. The Civil Grand Jury found the city did not run a fair and competitive selection process when it picked its development manager. Not once, twice: for the grant application in January 2024, and again for the contract in May 2025. Working through its written response in August, the council agreed.

I don’t expect a council member to know procurement law. That is what a City Manager and a Community Development Department are for. But not knowing the rules is not the same as following them, and the council is the body that answers for it. Forty years in commercial real estate taught me what a project this size is supposed to look like. This one isn’t open yet and it already has a grand jury report attached to it.

The fix is structural. I want an independent Grant Review Committee that reviews a grant before the city applies, for the long term consequences, the hidden costs and the operating obligation attached to it. A grant isn’t free money if it commits Ojai to millions in ongoing liability that never went in front of the public. And don’t expect staff, management or the council to do that on their own. Nobody wants to be the one who says in open session that this is a bad grant and here is why we shouldn’t apply.