Tensions mount as holdout equestrians corral legal aid in fight with O.C. Fair board
Tensions between the operators of the Orange County fairgrounds and tenants of the site’s Equestrian Center are mounting, after several occupants received notices this month requiring them to accept recent rent hikes and new contract terms or vacate the premises.
Twenty-three notification slips were posted during a June 15 horse show at the Costa Mesa site, the first public event of its kind since Orange County Fair & Event Center officials took over the management reins from a contracted operator in 2023.
For the record:
4:23 p.m. June 29, 2024An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted OCFEC Chief Executive Michele Richards as saying equestrians wanted to pay the new rental rate. Also, a caption from a December 2023 photo misidentified the individuals pictured as OCFEC employees. They are members of the public.
Recipients were given 30 days to sign new rental agreements — accepting phased rent hikes amounting to a 52% increase by January 2025, when a new contract term would begin — or to pack up their horses, gear and leave the facility.
As of Friday, only two of those recipients had agreed to the new terms. One tenant moved for reasons unrelated to the increase and another 19 returned signed versions of the agreement with multiple edits, according to OCFEC Chief Executive Michele Richards. They were not accepted, and any payments that did not reflect the June 15 phased increase were returned.
“They wanted to pay the old rate, and we refused to accept payment,” Richards said Friday. “We can’t accept payment if we don’t have a valid rental agreement in place. Plus, the payments were in the wrong amount.”
A group of outstanding renters told OCFEC board members in a meeting Thursday they could not accept the new terms, which include a $400 monthly facility use fee for trainers who use the site for lessons and other activities, require a one-time security deposit equalling 50% of the monthly rent of each stall and make occupants responsible for damages on an already aging facility.
“I don’t even know if I can make programs that can sustain the rent increase,” trainer Lisa Sabo said in a public comment. “How can I put [a $10,000 deposit] on facility repairs when there’s so much deferred maintenance?”
Some equestrian tenants further allege board members violated portions of the Bagley-Keene Act — a state law requiring open meetings and providing guidance on how they should be run — to sanction the new contracts while evading protestations by the public.
Gibran Stout, who runs the 501(c)3 nonprofit OC Equestrian Vaulting from the fairgrounds’ center, said when board members approved the rental hikes on March 28 in 3-2 vote, with director Dimetria Jackson abstaining, it violated board policy stating passage of a proposal requires a majority of members present, not a majority of voting members.
Stout and others attempted to speak out on this issue during a May 23 hearing, pulling the final vote on the increases from a consent calendar, in which items are approved in bulk without discussion unless pulled by a director or member of the public.
They also took issue with another item on that May agenda, a motion to approve minutes from the March 28 meeting codifying the 3-2 vote on the rent increases as a passing vote.
But while they waited for their turn to speak, board members called an unscheduled closed session meeting, came back with no report on their discussion (another requirement under Bagley-Keene) and hastily approved the entire consent calendar, eschewing public comments.
“We all went and asked to have it pulled — they ignored us,” Stout said Tuesday, ahead of the board meeting. “They denied the public any further comment, then they summarily approved it. It was shocking.”
Stout wasn’t the only person whose comments went unheard. Attorney Whitney Hodges, a partner at the law firm Sheppard Mullin based in San Diego, was also in the queue on May 23, waiting on Zoom to share her concerns about the board’s recent actions.
“They’d just taken so many things out of order on that agenda,” Hodges recalled Friday. “The point of an agenda is so people will understand how a meeting is going to be run. If you reorder the agenda on the dais, it is chaos.”
After speaking with some equestrians who’d declined to submit to the new contract terms, Hodges drafted a letter and submitted it to the board’s leadership on June 17.
OC Fair & Event Center officials Thursday approved nearly doubling boarding fees for private users, a move they say will help close a funding gap. But equestrians blame a vendor for the deficit.
Explaining multiple instances when the board failed to act in accordance with open meeting laws, the letter calls out board members for unilaterally reducing public comment periods with no explanation and for not providing information on contracts and rental agreements listed in meetings’ consent calendars, as well as providing insufficient notice of general topics being discussed in closed session.
“Before convening in closed session, the OCFEC Board must provide an opportunity for the public to comment at the open meeting on a closed-session item,” reads the letter, which advises the board to correct its violations.
“To do so, the OCFEC Board would need to identify a point before the violation occurred, and then repeat the process from that point forward. To the extent the [board] already engaged in discussions or received information, [it] should include such events on the records to make sure that everyone is aware and has an opportunity to respond.”
Richards on Friday acknowledged receipt of the letter, saying it was forwarded to the office of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta
“We are represented by the state attorney general’s office, and they received a copy of the letter and are evaluating the allegations,” she said, adding that she could not directly respond to Hodge’s claims.
Speaking about the March 28 vote to approve the contract, and whether an abstaining board member should be counted when determining majority approval, Richards said OCFEC board policy contradicted itself, by saying in one section the abstention should be included and the opposite in another section.
To correct the issue, board members in April voted anew on the rent hikes, approving them in a unanimous vote that allowed them to continue a visioning process under which the aging Equestrian Center would be transformed into a more public-facing community equine center called the Ranch.
Although many trainers at the center — even those still unwilling to capitulate to the revised contract terms — have expressed their desire to participate in talks about the Ranch.
Richards said while she still maintains an optimistic outlook in general, she’s not so sure how that kind of collaboration could work.
“Actions speak louder than words, and I just don’t believe there’s much intention to help us realize this vision,” she said.
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