Ojai City Council WTF, Part I: The Characters

This week, get to know Ojai City Councilwoman Suza Francina — and a bit of Ojai history.

Hello readers! I’ve decided the best way to present this story is by first introducing the main characters. We’ll proceed through the Council members in alphabetical order.

Suza Francina is an author, yoga teacher, bicycle enthusiast, and our current longest-serving City Council member. I think it’s fair to say that Suza is an Ojai icon. Here’s my reasoning: this is a woman who, in 1981, gave birth to her daughter with family friend Beatrice Wood watching. Wood had never seen a woman give birth before, Francina wrote.

Francina was first elected to the Ojai City Council in 1996, after an unsuccessful 1994 campaign. Her first term on Council culminated in her mayorship¹ in 2000, and a new (sometimes derisive) nickname: Mayor Moonbeam. After a twelve-year interlude, Francina ran for Council again in 2012, albeit unsuccessfully. In 2016, she ran again. This time, she won. Francina’s now serving her third four-year term on the body. She’ll be up for reelection in 2024, but she hasn’t decided if she’ll seek another Council term.

Suza Francina via OjaiCity.gov

Francina was born in Holland in 1949 and her family moved to Ojai in 1957. Her Dutch background is clearly reflected in her politics and lifestyle. And over her long history in Ojai politics, Francina has survived multiple challenges to her power. During her mayorship in 2000, she recalls a group of Ojai citizens encouraging her to step down from the mayor position during a dramatic, city-wide debate over oak tree management (which culminated with a man in a tree, refusing to come down). “They said I was creating too much controversy,” she recalled, [and] “it would be better for Council if I stepped down.” This 2000 LA Times article recounts the basics of this saga, and Francina’s viewpoint:

“Oak branches in this artsy, bucolic town keep falling on people, and officials are trying to figure out an environmentally friendly way of stopping it.

“An oak dropped a 24-foot-long branch on three people attending a concert in Libbey Park. No one was seriously injured but the incident sparked new debate between those seeking to protect the oak trees and those trying to keep the trees from flattening people.

“‘If you don’t want to take the risk of an oak tree limb falling on you, don’t sit under an oak tree,’ said Ojai Mayor Suza Francina, a tree lover known here as Mayor Moonbeam.”