How to resolve AdBlock issue? Publisher's letter: Why subscribe?
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- Published: Friday, 18 September 2020 10:00
Please subscribe to your Ojai Valley News today!
Rights, when not exercised, eventually cease to exist. Our right to a free press is written expressly in the very First Amendment, and is as fundamental to our American values as freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
When news organizations are in trouble, democracy is in trouble. Your local news source is essential because of its function to inform and defend the interests of the people. Ideological barriers are broken down when neighbors get to know each other as people. A well-informed citizenry makes better decisions and actively engages in its community.
Editorial: Council must address Ojai risk from fire
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- Published: Friday, 11 September 2020 09:18
As the sun rises red in the morning, while our eyes sting and more than 2.5 million acres burn across the state, devastating small communities such as Shaver Lake, the Ojai Valley News is again requesting the Ojai City Council to heed the 2-year-old advice of the Ventura County Fire Department.
At the City Council meeting of Sept. 8, the mayor and council brought no meaningful recommendations forward to address the concerns in the 2018 Ventura Fire Department letter. They must address the threat to our community from “large patches of unburned hazardous fuel (vegetation)."
EDITORIAL on Opinion page: Rethinking policing
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- Published: Thursday, 27 August 2020 17:41
Rights we take seriously:
— The right to peaceful public assembly.
— Innocent till proved guilty.
Nationwide, law enforcement is facing increasing public scrutiny due to horrific abuses of power, as exemplified by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25, and the latest shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin on Aug. 23.
Only two months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a ban on strangleholds. That is just the beginning of the changes needed. The Ojai Valley News calls upon the governor to make good on his call for the creation of standardized crowd-control measures. Tear gas is a chemical weapon banned in warfare by the Geneva Convention, yet permitted for use against Californians exercising their legal rights.
Secret court of LA
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- Published: Friday, 21 August 2020 12:23
Are you one of the 14,500 potential parties who missed the Aug. 17 case-management conference in the Ventura water adjudication lawsuit? (Remember the card we just got from the city of Ventura saying it is “not pursuing active litigation”?)
It turns out we were supposed to miss it, along with future proceedings related to this matter, because the “real” players attend the court in the safety of a group phone call (LACourtConnect) to which the public and media have no access.
The public is being effectively shut out under cover of COVID. A private adjudication court that clearly benefits the city of Ventura has been created. The Ojai Valley News can use your help to change that.
Editorial: Killing 15,228 trees under cover of COVID, Aug. 7
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- Published: Saturday, 08 August 2020 11:01
Ojai Valley News photo by Perry Van Houten
In late May, while Ojai residents sat at home sewing masks, the U.S. Forest Service — an agency of the Department of Agriculture — not wanting to miss an opportunity to harvest a crop (this time our national forest) before it may burn naturally, rolled out its “Reyes Peak Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project” to cut 15,228 trees, in the name of “health.”
Editorial on OVN OPINION page: Ventura water postcard unpacked
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- Published: Friday, 17 July 2020 15:09
Was any Ojai resident comforted by the glossy postcard: “Update from the city of Ventura”?
We wanted to be. First, they “hope” (we all need hope these days) that we and our “loved ones are staying safe and healthy” — friendly… then comes a lie in bold lettering:
OVN Editorial on OPINION page: Vision for transportation equity
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- Published: Friday, 05 June 2020 11:22
Who would intentionally build a tiny four-lane highway in front of a high school and a hospital? It was part of a larger plan by Caltrans to build four lanes out to Santa Paula, Carpinteria and Ventura that the Citizens to Preserve the Ojai fought against and won in the late 1960s.
Understanding its history gives perspective on how the only four-lane stretch of road in the area came to be.
The bully next door: OVN editorial on OPINION page 5-22
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- Published: Friday, 22 May 2020 11:14
Thinking the city of Ventura is going COVID-broke and learning to love their neighbors? Not a chance! Casitas Municipal Water District is forced to lawyer-up to defend the Ojai Valley against the city of Ventura’s water grab.
In the midst of a pandemic that is wrecking local economies, the Ventura City Council is grappling with a $12 million deficit.
Pandemic Groundhog Day? 5-15 OVN Editorial
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- Published: Friday, 15 May 2020 11:55
Welcome to Day One, again. The goals of the state and county have changed without notice. When the stay-at-home order began, we were told the intention was to “flatten the curve” — that deaths were inevitable, but we could stem the overflow of hospitals and mortuaries by staying at home. The new standard for counties to move to the governor's "Stage 3" for reopening is now zero new deaths for 14 straight days.
Public health and advocacy
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- Published: Friday, 08 May 2020 11:57
Numbers don’t always tell the whole story. The Ojai Valley News has asked Ventura County Public Health to disseminate more relevant facts about the current status of COVID-19 patients in the Ojai Valley, and in which cities the deaths have occurred. The numbers from Public Health of COVID-19-positive patients continue to go up on its city-by-city chart, even while the number of active cases has dropped to 160 as of May 6 (if you do the arithmetic yourself). While you won’t hear it from county Public Health since it refused our public records request, the Ojai Valley News has learned there is currently one active case in the Ojai Valley and no deaths, to date.
OVN Editorial on OPINION page May 1: Considering lives and livelihoods
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- Published: Saturday, 02 May 2020 20:57
The Ojai Valley is winning the fight against the coronavirus with zero active cases, to date, but we are losing in the economic battle of our lives. All counties are being treated the same, regardless of the threat level they face. A total of 846,000 people in Ventura County are locked down, 151 people are currently diagnosed with COVID-19, and the countywide death rate is two people per 100,000.