Campaign to Incorporate : Panel Draws Calabasas Map

A committee promoting cityhood for the Calabasas area has agreed on the boundaries of a 30-square-mile city that would reach south into the Malibu coastal area of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The Calabasas Cityhood Study Committee will ask county officials and local voters to approve creation of a city on unincorporated land in the far western San Fernando Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains, the chairman of the committee, Bob Hill, said Monday.

The map was to have been formally approved by the committee’s 29 directors at a meeting last Thursday, Hill said, but the legal description was not completed in time. The map and description will be mailed to them today, he said, for vote by mail ballot.

The committee launched the cityhood drive in April, 1985, arguing that incorporation would prevent the area from being swallowed someday by Los Angeles or Agoura Hills, and that residents would get better services for their tax money.

“If fire protection and police protection were in our hands, we’d upgrade what we have, or at least the local people would make the decision instead of having it mandated by the supervisors downtown,” Hill said.

“Right now, various taxes are collected from our community and they go to the county or the state and get allocated back to us. A local community can do a better job of handling its own funds rather than have the money go through three or four other agencies, which don’t send back 100% of the money.”

The proposed city would be bounded on the north by Ventura County. It would be east of Agoura and Agoura Hills and just west of Woodland Hills, part of the city of Los Angeles. The boundary would reach south into the Santa Monica Mountains to include the community of Monte Nido south of Mulholland Highway.

The proposal must be submitted to the county Local Agency Formation Commission. If the commission accepts it, the proposal goes to county supervisors, whose approval is needed to hold an election.

Under state law, supporters also must collect about 2,000 signatures--25% of the about 8,000 registered voters living within the boundaries--on petitions asking that the proposal be put to a vote.

Backers hope to have the issue on the ballot in November, 1987.