Joseph T. Edmiston

Joseph T. Edmiston, 37, is the executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state-funded agency formed in 1980 that works with the National Park Service to create public mountain parks in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area by buying up private parcels. The recreation area stretches from Griffith Park to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County. Q: What is the relationship between the conservancy and the National Park Service? A: We’re both in the land-buying business in the Santa Monica Mountains. The initial concept for the national recreation area was that the National Park Service would buy the wilderness-oriented lands and the state, through the conservancy, would be buying some of the areas closer in--some of the smaller areas that for one reason or another were not suitable for Park Service acquisition.

Reality, of course, has a way of dealing an unkind blow to planners’ grandiose plans. Starting with (President Jimmy) Carter’s all-of-a-sudden conversion on cutting the budget deficits in the spring of 1980, he rescinded all of the money that had been appropriated (for the Santa Monica Mountains) at that point--some $20 million, as I recall. The Park Service was faced with the first of what has become the annual budget jolt. The 1981 budget (for local acquisitions) had zero in it.

So there was considerable pressure for us to move in and fill the void. There was no way in the world we could do that--we could not and would not. But now we have a relationship where we are frequently moving in advance of the Park Service and buying land and holding it until they get an appropriation to reimburse us. Q: At the beginning, in 1980, what was your ultimate vision of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area? A: That is still the vision we have today--the ability to find open space and wilderness within a 45-minute drive of most people in Southern California. We have a vision that people will have the same great feeling they have in national parks, of being out in nature. The feeling . . . that “God, no wonder this is the place. No wonder this is the mecca, the Shangri-La.” Q: You don’t get that feeling on Rodeo Drive? A: Yeah, sure you get a feeling on Rodeo Drive. But I look at it the way the pioneers, the original land-baron types, were feeling. These people got up on the promontories and they saw the ocean stretching out in front of them and they saw the flatland, they saw the mountains. And they said, “Great things are going to happen here.”

Especially in Topanga State Park, where you’re looking out over the Palisades, the entire sweep of the bay. On most of the days that the original pioneers looked out, they could see Catalina Island in one direction and Santa Cruz and Anacapa in the other direction. And when the Santa Ana (wind) blows the smog away, we can still see that.

There’s a real feeling that this city has got something that no other city has, which is a wilderness wedge that goes right down almost through the heart of the city. Q: At the beginning, how much was planned to be acquired? A: The national recreation area boundary encompasses something like 155,000 acres. Originally the plan was to acquire 80,000 additional acres. Now we’ve reduced the amount to 40,000. We started out with a base of 33,000 that were publicly owned, mostly by the state. What we had planned has been cut about in half. Q: And why did it change? A: Political reality. Budgetary reality. If the (Reagan) Administration had their druthers, they’d snap their fingers and the park would disappear. The Interior Department doesn’t feel the responsibility for parks that are not in wilderness areas, that are near the people. That concept . . . is perceived as a distinctly liberal concept, at least in Washington.

The David Stockman green eye-shade boys in the Office of Management and Budget and the Jim Watt “sagebrush rebellion” guys took a look at this and said, “This is what’s caused the problems.” They figured out that committing to buying parks where people live was of necessity going to be more expensive . . . and all of this was going to have an impact on the federal budget.

If you have a site to create a new national park in Nevada, you can probably buy up a fair amount of the entire state of Nevada for what it costs to buy a few thousand acres in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The philosophy of this park is that even though there are some extremely beautiful areas, one of the most important things is that lots and lots of people will be able to see it. Q: Even before these latest budget cuts, some properties must have been lost as parks before the Park Service could buy them. A: Let’s start closest to downtown. The old Teamster tract (of about 400 acres) . . . was ultimately sold for $7.2 million. It became Beverly Park Estates. Something like 148 homes were ultimately approved. That’s just west of Franklin Canyon, and that was to have been part of our large cross-mountain park. We lost that one in 1980.

It looked like nice, gentle rolling hillside. There are houses there now. Phase 2 has been graded, and it looks like, you know, one of those open-pit copper mines.

Moving west, one of the areas that was a real tragedy was part of the original Bob Hope ownership, where Las Virgenes Road meets the Ventura Freeway. That area, about 1,200 acres, was sold by Hope to a company called Currey-Riach, and that company has now gotten approval for acres and acres of commercial, light-industrial and residential (development).

And that was on the priority list of the National Park Service. Q: When you go back to those places, what goes through your mind? A: Especially Currey-Riach strikes me, because it was so beautiful. You come down the road from Calabasas, and it used to be this mountain vista would open up in front of you, coming down the Las Virgenes off-ramp from the Ventura Freeway. And you would see this flat, green earth devoted to agriculture and then the hillsides. It was just the most beautiful entranceway into the heart of the mountains. And of course now it’s commercial buildings.

This might sound very schlocky. But my wife is pregnant. There’ll be no way in the world my kid will ever understand what the Santa Monica Mountains looked like when I started this nine years ago or even when he was born this year.

As the prime interest rate now gets down into single digits, people are saying, “Let’s go, we’re going to start building again.” We are absolutely going to lose it. Developers have been stockpiling projects that have been approved but have not been built. This is exactly the time if you wanted to save the mountains, you’d say, “Let’s appropriate the money now, buy the stuff that is really usable for parks, and then let the developers develop the rest.”

(But) at the same time as interest rates are going down, as development is increasing, we have at the state level a governor that says, “I have different priorities.” And you have at the federal level these drastic cuts in every single governmental program. And it’s sure a lot easier to cut the Park Service than the Department of Defense.

We’ve got a window of several years. Unless we take that opportunity, it’s all going to be lost. Q: How many properties is the conservancy now holding for the Park Service? And where are some of the choicest ones? A: About a half dozen.

Let’s start with the Peter Strauss Ranch. That, I think, is our prettiest property, and it’s sort of our flagship property in terms of public use. . . . It’s 68 acres. It’s a lovely spot. It’s accessible and usable, which is rare in the mountains. We have concerts, an arts center, a sculpture garden, art exhibits, hiking trails, nature trails. . . . We have an agreement with the Park Service where they reimburse us half of the acquisition cost, about $650,000. Q: Do you have a deadline for the reimbursement? A: We did. It was several years ago. When they did get some (money), they said: You already acquired Peter Strauss. To reimburse you at this point would mean that we couldn’t acquire any new property, so therefore we’re going to put reimbursing the conservancy low on the priority list. Q: Any other examples? A: Zuma Canyon in Malibu has got to be the premier project. The breakdown is, we paid $6 million, we got $3 million from the state and $3 million from our own budget. They (the Park Service) paid $2 million. For their $2 million, they got the more remote, rugged country, about 800 acres. We got the more developable portion, which turned out to be about 730 acres.

The Adamson Cos. had plans for development, a number of different plans. A hotel was one, or a residential project. . . .

Three million dollars’ worth of our property has to be sold within three years, either to the Park Service or--and this was a condition of the state--sold on the open market to developers, and by that time they’ll love it. Q: In light of the recent Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget law, can you have any optimism that the Park Service will come up with the money? A: Unless people really get fired up, no. . . .

It’s not just Gramm-Rudman. In Sacramento, the governor’s budget this year explicitly and expressly says that the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy will receive no additional capital outlay funding, nor any general funds for salaries, or to keep the office operating, for telephones. . . . We got $15.4 million this fiscal year. Q: And this coming year? A: Zero. At least that’s what the governor proposed. Now we hope that the Legislature will reverse that. Q: Would you cut salaries or lay people off to keep from having to sell land? A: Absolutely. We’re not going to sell the crown jewels to keep people employed. If the question is between selling a gorgeous piece of land and keeping the office open, paying my salary, we just close up the operation. And that is a very real possibility. (In May,) the Assembly and Senate fiscal subcommittees proposed about $350,000 from the general fund for our operating budget, so we can pay the phone bill. We wouldn’t have to close to pay my salary. If the Legislature agrees, the governor could still veto it. But I think that the governor will sign that.

But it looks very bad as far as new acquisitions, buying more land, the bread and butter of what the organization does. What the Legislature--the budget subcommittees--did say was that the conservancy’s projects should be funded from an upcoming bond issue. The problem with that is that of the three natural resource-oriented bond issues that may be on the ballot, none has any money earmarked for the Santa Monicas.

The problem with a separate bond issue is that it has to be passed statewide. The only other localized project that had a statewide bond issue was Tahoe, and even that failed the first time. And the Santa Monica Mountains certainly do not have the international reputation of Lake Tahoe. And the governor has set a limit on the number of bonds that will be sold.

If we miss the opportunity to get money set aside in these bond issues, the next statewide bond will not be until 1988, and we will have two years there of drought. We won’t be able to save any land during this building boom. Q: So at this stage, it’s very difficult for the conservancy to buy anything. So now if the Park Service can’t buy it, the conservancy can’t either, is that it? A: Exactly.