Ojai City Council moves to closed session after public comment alleging Brown Act violations and rising legal fees

The Ojai City Council adjourned to closed session after a resident raised allegations of Brown Act violations and questioned the rise in city legal fees, and the meeting agenda listed a closed-session performance evaluation of the city attorney and potential litigation tied to code enforcement at 1117 Sunset Place.

Renee Roth, a resident who spoke during public comment, told the council she believes past Brown Act violations have not been adequately acknowledged. "My comment has to do with the Brown Act violations that, I feel have not really adequately been addressed," Roth said. She added that "some people within the council even denied that there was a Brown Act violation," and called the lack of public acknowledgment "deeply concerning."

Roth also said the city ttorney fees have escalated in recent years. "I'm also concerned about the over $1,100,000 in city attorney fees where we used to skate along on, you know, 300,000 up to a half a million dollars, and now we're up to 1 point, probably $2,000,000 in legal fees," she said.

City Attorney Summers announced the closed-session topics before the council recessed. Summers said the public agenda listed three items that fall in two categories: "public employee performance evaluation regarding the city attorney position" and two items related to litigation concerning the same site. He described the second and third items as "initiation [of] litigation in 1 potential case and anticipated litigation related to the disclosed facts and circumstances" regarding code enforcement at 1117 Sunset Place, and noted both items concern the same property.

During a brief follow-up, a council member asked why the second item was not described more specifically on the written agenda. City Attorney Summers replied that the "agenda language matches the Brown Act's requirements," and added that the city could provide more detail in the written agenda "if directed by the council." The discussion in the transcript did not show the council issuing any formal direction on that point.

The council then moved to adjourn into closed session; the transcript records the move to close but does not include a public roll-call vote on the adjournment. The closed-session items as announced were limited to the matters Summers described; no public deliberations or votes on those items were recorded in the transcript excerpt.

The matters flagged for closed session—the city attorney performance review and potential litigation tied to 1117 Sunset Place code enforcement—could affect ongoing legal strategy and personnel matters but were not resolved in the public portion of the meeting. The council's publicly stated next step in the transcript was to recess to closed session for those items.