50 Volunteer to Petition : Backers Begin Push to Make Calabasas a City

Claiming enthusiastic support from homeowners, backers of cityhood for the Calabasas area said Tuesday that they will begin circulating petitions among voters in two weeks.

More than 50 people volunteered Monday night to carry the petitions, which will ask Los Angeles County supervisors to hold a November, 1987, incorporation election in a 30-square-mile area at the west end of the San Fernando Valley.

The volunteers were among 200 people who showed up for a $15-a-plate incorporation kickoff dinner held a few steps outside the proposed city limits at Calabasas’ Sagebrush Cantina.

“That turnout means there’s grass-roots interest,” committee member Doris La Violette said. “It was an enthusiastic, very interested group of people.”

Cityhood backers said the dinner raised about $2,000, which they said is a third of the amount needed for filing fees and campaign costs.

Worried About Annexation

The cityhood campaign was launched 1 1/2 years ago by residents who worried that their neighborhoods were threatened with annexation by Los Angeles or Agoura Hills.

But campaign leaders said Monday night that incorporation also would allow Calabasas residents to improve local services and gain control over development.

They promised homeowners that cityhood will not be accompanied by increased taxes.

“The tax question is the first thing everybody asks,” committee member Madeline Williamson said. “The answer is, incorporation absolutely will not raise taxes.”

A song extolling Calabasas’ historic past as a stagecoach stop was previewed during the dinner.

Williamson described the song, which calls Calabasas the “Last of the Old West but First in My Heart,” as the incorporation drive’s “anthem.”

Once the petitions are circulated in the seven major Calabasas neighborhoods, the committee will have six months to solicit the signatures of 25% of the area’s estimated 8,000 registered voters.

La Violette said the group hopes to collect about 2,500 names in six weeks.

The cityhood request also must be reviewed and approved by Los Angeles County supervisors and the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission.

The proposed city would border Woodland Hills on the east, Hidden Hills on the north and Agoura Hills on the west. The suggested city limits extend southward to the Monte Nido area at the upper edge of Malibu Canyon.