ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

unfortunately, the peace and respect of Ojai has been lost ... so cannot be preserved.

it must be returned.

with road signage, reduced traffic speeds, and laws and infrastructure giving priority and protection for pedestrians, bicyclists and equestrians.

until the wanton road rage, the daily death threats to children, pedestrians and biyclists is exorcised -- the valley will remain what it has become:

violence on wheels ...

Millennium Twain

this sounds like an incredible panel to hear and an opportunity not to be missed. it seems suggested that this is open to the (paying) public...can anyone confirm that? so far the link to the Report in question turns up a "404 - Page Cannot Be Found" error, and the Ojai Retreat's website has no mention of this event anywhere. how, oh how, to get connected?

what does preserving Ojai mean to me? one facet of it entails being on the progressive forefront of energy creativity and sustainability. as a city, WE CAN sign on the the Mayors' Climate Agreement, and WE CAN adopt a resolution supporting and promoting hybrid, electric, and biodiesel fuel technologies. both of these things are in the works, and i'm glad to be a part of them because we have to have a valley to have a future.

evan -

try: http://www.ci.ojai.ca.us/
and look for: Community and Organizational Assessment Report

I contacted the city and they added a link to their home page. Also, the link in the original post above has been updated. It works now.

What a great topic. Preserving Ojai to me means providing affordable housing for the children who have grown up here so they can stay. It means having a plan so that our schools don't keep getting smaller and smaller and we aren't forced to lay off teachers and close schools. At the rate we are going, Ojai will become a town of wealthy elderly people or wealthy young private schoolers! Our public schools will be a thing of the past. Who can afford to live here anymore? I feel sad that I raised my child in a community she cannot afford to live in. I'm also sad that non-wealthy seniors cannot live here either. Tearing down houses like Mallory Way and replacing them with homes, unaffordable to the middle class, is not saving Ojai. We need a plan to ensure that our children will have a chance to raise their own families here and our seniors will have a place to retire comfortably!

Couldn't agree more, Coleen. Ojai is well on its way to becoming a geriatric ghetto unless affordable housing options for workforce are created.

If my history is correct, back in the teens of the last century, a largely east-coast industrial elite wanted to create and preserve an Ojai that would be an idyllic winter retreat and home for the wealthy. People like Edward Libbey funded Libbey Park, the tower, and the Arbolada. We still have healthy contingent of this style of upper crust, "old-money" folks, who continue to contribute to the maintenance of many of our distinguishing features.

Since then, we have become defined in part by a tradition of leading edge educators, philosophers and spiritualists. Their remnants today help preserve an Ojai that is grounded in nature and community, a place for spiritual retreat and renewal.

We have long had a strong core of conservationists, headed by the Land Conservancy, who work to keep Ojai a place of open spaces and nature.

And we have long been known as a town of artists and impresarios. For decades artists, musicians and others who chose the less lucrative occupations have found a welcoming and affordable home here, one where almost uniquely, it has been possible to make one's living as a working artist. This tradition is one in urgent need of revival - in my own short time here, I have seen a number of working artists leave for more affordable locales. It is a given that young teachers, artists, musicians and others in these more traditional and friendly Ojai occupations will find it a serious challenge to live here. (See Brooks Smother's guest editorial in the OVN published on July 5 - Brooks, a local photographer, and his wife Suzy, a teacher, talk about how they cannot find a future here, because of the outrageous cost. They are moving to Philadelphia.)

All these folks built atop a longtime rancho culture, going back to the pre-Yankee California days, that remains today, manifested in festivals, in agriculture, in our culinary traditions, and even in the common Ojai garden barbeque that we enjoy as a matter of course. Preserving Ojai must mean preserving our rural and agricultural traditions, and preserving our celebratory side.

Today, all this past has isolated something new in the present: Ojai may now well be the last living, breathing small town on the west coast not dominated by faceless cookie cutter chains in its downtown core; a place where one can find one's muse and where finding one's muse is an important animator for our day to day toil; a place of constant and diverse cultural offerings, theater, art, music, hikes, swimming holes, bike rides and pink moments, a real community where you cannot go downtown without seeing friends and neighbors and stopping for a conversation; a place where people are doing interesting things, where a walk down a neighborhood street at 7 pm doesn't show a uniform view of televisions going in the living room in every home; a family friendly place that is one of the last great places to raise children on the west coast. This Ojai needs to be revitalized and preserved for reasons far larger than Ojai - this is the Ojai to which residents and nonresidents alike can lay claim, a cultural treasure unique to California which is fast disappearing.

In all this, Leslie's point is right on: There are many visions of Ojai's preservation, but many of things we are seeing today fit in none of them. National franchises in our downtown core are a good example. High-end condominiums are another; yet a stroll around our downtown core shows a disturbingly large number of these condos under development, with more planned. The idea that to get affordable housing, we must build more housing is another example. Same with parking lots and strip malls; yet, for example, it is my understanding that any new business in the downtown core (that is not formally in the arcade) has to either provide adjacent parking (i.e. think strip mall style) or pay an exorbitant parking assessment - a policy that favors strip mall-style development over a walkable downtown core.

Ojai has been blessed with a remarkable continuity with its past. At this late date, we can look to almost the entire rest of California for proof of what national chains, high-end condos and strip malls do to a town. We might not all instantly agree on what preservation of Ojai really means; but we ought to be able to agree on what it is not.

I see mention in this article of "Mallory Way" The street was named after my great grandfather, who had a small farm and grocery store in Ojai in the early 20th century. I was in Ohai once, in the early 60's to visit an aging relative. I wonder if any Mallorys still live in Ojai.