War, arts dominate council talk
By Jesse Phelps

Art and war are two topics often linked and both were on the table at Tuesday night's Ojai City Council meeting.

While no shots were fired and no masterpieces created, progress was made toward the creation of a tax ordinance to finance an increase in public art. The council also heard public comments petitioning the city to take a stand against what some consider an unjustified upcoming conflict with Iraq.

Others consider the war effort essential. Mayor Joe DeVito expressed disappointment in those in favor of what, in his eyes, is an anti-patriotic affront to the people making decisions and those serving in the military. DeVito cast the council's lone vote against drafting a resolution opposing the war.

The first major agenda item of the evening concerned street lighting and sidewalk safety. The council passed a resolution to direct Public Works to continue to increase assessments by $46,000, which would provide additional revenues to pay for increased Edison lighting, energy and maintenance costs, street tree safety maintenance and conservation costs for sidewalk safety repairs.

Next up came the great debate on art and whether or not it should be subsidized by the government. A hot-button issue between conservatives and liberals everywhere, the debate took center stage after several citizens in the community made impassioned pleas for the council to adopt a municipal code creating a "percent for public arts" program.

Mayor Pro Tem Sue Horgan was the lone dissenter as the council voted four-to-one to pass the ordinance with a slight amendment to its original wording. Because the change was made, the item will come back as a consent calendar item to be rubber-stamped at a future meeting.

Horgan, in her impassioned dissenting opinion, said, "I am an art lover and I do support the arts in Ojai. The benefits of public art are immeasurable, innumerable. However, I think a different way of looking at it is that we can achieve these goals on our own, without an ordinance. This is an attempt to legislate the love of art. To me, it seems like a tax and a very expensive one at that."

As an example, Horgan cited the layers of bureaucracy that would be created and the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa remodel, saying, "If they had done their renovation after we passed this ordinance, the fee we would have charged them would have been over $600,000."

"Yeah!" cheered local sculptor Jan Sanchez, her enthusiasm echoed throughout the seats by her comrades in the artistic community.

Councilwoman Rae Hanstad provided a tasteful opposition to Horgan's view. "It's time to make public art part of our cake," she said, "And not the frosting."

Soon it was on to the more mundane topic of upgrades to the backstop building and the construction of new restrooms at Sarzotti Park. A grant offsets the cost by 70 percent and the city will pick up $56,000 of a total $273,000 bill for the project, which passed unanimously.

Some features of the project would be a new fence line protecting children from the adjacent parking lot and new cooking equipment, onsite phone service and a PA system for the upgraded backstop building, in addition to the new restrooms.

In other action, an agenda item regarding the allocation of community block grant funding was discussed but no final decision was made, and the regularly scheduled meeting of April 18, 2003 was canceled due to what will be a lack of quorum.

City Attorney Monte Widders reminded council of the impending changes to the state's second-dwelling unit, or granny flats, laws, to go into effect July 1. Widders said he may bring a request to council before then to request a moratorium on the building of such units in the event an ordinance complying with state law cannot be drafted in time.

The meeting was adjourned, at the request of councilwoman Carol Smith, in honor of the hundreds of people who lost their lives 75 years ago in the St. Francis Dam flood in Santa Paula. According to Smith, it was the second worst disaster in the history of our state, after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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