Signal of Change

There’s a tension in town these days, with residents sensing that their hidden hamlet is perched on the edge of something momentous, possibly disastrous.

“Maybe it’s the beginning of the end,” longtime resident Cara Bernstein said. “The end of what Ojai is known for.”

The end isn’t in place yet, but it could be by late July.

That’s the proposed completion date for Ojai’s fourth traffic signal, which the City Council is expected to reluctantly approve next week after months of civic debate.

Although traffic surveys have recommended a street light at the intersection of Montgomery Street and Ojai Avenue since 1985, and 375 residents petitioned City Hall to install one last summer, this town of 9,000 doesn’t bow easily to the mighty automobile.

Ojai is a haven for urban refugees and the spiritually attuned who jealously guard their open space, who design roads and sidewalks around trees and who fight any attempt to widen the precariously narrow roadway into town. On Wednesday, the day after the council votes on the stoplight, Ojai residents will celebrate “Bike Day” by eschewing motorized transport entirely.

The street light is “opening a can of worms,” resident Deni Albright protested. “As soon as they put the light in, they’ll want another and another . . . We’ll end up just like every other town. If people want street lights, go to Ventura. There are plenty of them there.”

Not much happens in Ojai--Johnny Carson used to read from the town’s police blotter for comic relief on “The Tonight Show”--but whenever something does happen, everyone has a strong opinion about it.

“People are actually fighting over a street light?” asked Lou diGiacomo, a visitor from Altadena dining in a local bistro. “That’s amusing.”

The one thing most everyone agrees on is that no trees should be cut down during installation. Thankfully, only minor pruning will be required.

“That’s important,” City Manager Andy Belknap said.

The history of traffic lights in Ojai is a short one.

The first one was installed in the late 1960s to cries of protest from local purists. Two more were installed in 1987, with similar results.

With an average of 22,000 cars a day driving through town, and about 30 fender benders--one involving a pedestrian--in the past two years, town leaders decided it was time to do something. That was in 1993.

The first design submitted for the new signal was deemed too ugly for Ojai. A current one significantly reduces the amount of aesthetically questionable cables and metal poles.

But book store owner Bobby Houston says he still sees the Orwellian shadow of Big Brother hovering over the stoplight issue.

“It’s Caltrans,” Houston said. “They do whatever they want. They widen roads and take down trees.”

For him, the stoplight is a symbol of urban anonymity.

“Rather than interacting and cooperating with one another when we drive by, we’ll just be obeying a machine.”

Frequent visitor Gayle Engle of Ventura worries that the signal will disrupt “Ojai’s spiritual energy and higher consciousness.”

“There is a certain aura about Ojai, an energy that flows from here.” Engle said. “A stoplight might interfere with that flow. Stoplights are authoritarian.”

Tell that to Karin Carden, 62, whose eyes still mist when she talks about the time she “thought (she) would make it” across Ojai Avenue. She didn’t. Two years later, she has a metal bar in one leg and walks with a limp.

“It has nothing to do with spiritual flow,” Carden said, pointing to the fateful crosswalk--just two blocks from the proposed Montgomery Street signal. “This is a commercial area, but the cars drive very quickly.”