Oil Revenue Bill : State May Yet Help Burbank Get Parkland

Despite missing the deadline for consideration in the state budget for the 1985-86 fiscal year, Burbank may still get state funds this year to help it purchase about 240 acres of hillside property that the city wants to use for parkland.

Burbank Mayor Mary Lou Howard and other city officials spent Monday in Sacramento lobbying for a bill under which state tidelands oil revenue would be used to pay half the cost of buying the privately owned land in the Verdugo Mountains.

The bill, co-authored by Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), calls for Burbank to pay the rest. The value of the land, which is owned by six people, is under dispute.

Burbank officials said Monday that an appraiser hired by the city had said the property is worth $6 million. But developer Sherman Whitmore, who owns 185 acres of the land, said his appraiser had estimated the value of his property at almost $38 million.

“My property is worth that much developed,” Whitmore said. “If you’re not going to allow me to build houses there, you have to pay me what the property is worth when it’s developed.”

Appraisal ‘Out of the Ballpark’

But City Atty. Doug Holland said Whitmore’s appraisal is “completely out of the ballpark. No private person would pay that much for that land. The city would be purchasing raw acreage, not developed, totally improved land.”

The difference between the two appraisals could widen the rift between Whitmore and Burbank officials, who already have rejected two residential developments proposed by Whitmore for the mountain land. Whitmore in March informally submitted two other development proposals while negotiations continued to determine whether the city would buy the land.

Despite Burbank’s request for state funds, Holland said, the city has not committed itself to purchase the land. He said city officials wanted to keep open the option of getting financial assistance if they do buy it.

The Senate Natural Resources Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill today. Holland said the response from legislators Monday was “favorable.”

Howard said that, when she and other city officials lobbied for state funds last month, legislators they spoke with had offered encouragement. But Howard said the city’s proposal had come too late to be considered in the state budget for the current fiscal year.

However, state officials said money for the purchase could come out of the fees paid by companies that drill for oil in California’s tidelands. Those fees go into a “special accounts for capital outlay” fund. The grant would be channeled through the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which would buy and maintain the land.

City officials have wanted to buy the property to preserve as a greenbelt for public recreation. The area is designated as a mountain reserve in the city’s General Plan.

Howard said in a letter to state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, that development of the property would mean the “potential loss of public access to the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor, and the loss of properties which can be developed for picnicking, hiking and other day use.”

Whitmore said Monday that he, too, has a “great sensitivity toward natural resources, but people should have a place to live.”

“The city needs housing resources just like they need a chaparral in the hills,” he said.

The council rejected Whitmore’s initial proposals to build up to 340 single-family houses on the land after hundreds of Burbank residents complained that the development would increase noise and traffic in nearby neighborhoods.