Conservancy Bill Moves to Senate Floor

A bill to extend the life of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy by four years was sent to the Senate floor Thursday on a 6-2 vote of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.

Without the bill, the conservancy, which buys parkland in the Santa Monica Mountains and foothills bordering the San Fernando Valley, will go out of business on July 1, 1986.

The Assembly-passed bill by Assemblyman Gray Davis (D-Los Angeles) was amended, however, to restrict the conservancy’s ability to buy surplus public property that becomes available in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.

Under the amendments, the conservancy would not have first rights on properties that are zoned for commercial or manufacturing uses, or on those set aside for “affordable” housing. Virtually all areas the conservancy is interested in are zoned residential.

The amendments removed the opposition of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who had wanted to strip the conservancy of its option to buy land owned by government agencies at the price they paid for it, Davis said. Antonovich wanted other government entities, such as school districts, to be free to sell their land at market value.

“We were willing to reach an accommodation with the supervisors to ensure better working relationships in the future,” Davis said of the amendments he wrote into his bill.

The Legislature had invested the conservancy with the power to buy surplus land at bargain prices because it recognized the need to preserve the dwindling open space in Los Angeles, Davis had said during earlier hearings on the bill.