Activism Issue Spices Resource Board Election

By some accounts, the most important thing ever to come out of a Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District meeting was Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was an Agoura ranch owner who had never held public office when he was elected a founding director of the Topanga Canyon-based agency in 1961.

Reagan quit after six meetings to be a salesman for an appliance company.

Things at the resource district’s trailer office settled down after the former actor left. And they’ve stayed that way ever since.

The slumbering district could come alive if some of the candidates running for three board of director seats on Tuesday have their way, however.

Two of the four candidates hope to help forge a board coalition that will turn the district into a more effective shield against the increasing development in the Santa Monica Mountains from Woodland Hills to Westlake Village.

Seems an Unlikely Role

Chartered by the state to promote such land-management techniques as erosion control, and hobbled by a minuscule operating budget, such a role would seem unlikely for the tiny Topanga-Las Virgenes district.

But, over the years, the agency has developed skill in evaluating construction proposals in mountainous areas of the 192-square-mile district, the candidates contend.

“I’d hope we’d have more of a watchdog role with Los Angeles County,” said Jill LeClear Workman, 32, an actress and environmentalist from Calabasas who is one of three incumbents seeking reelection Tuesday.

“We have a chance now to evaluate environmental reports. But we have problems making the county accountable for new developments,” she said. “We’re seeing more and more of the effects of water runoff from urban development in the district, for example.”

Perina Wiley, a Malibu environmentalist who is an appointed incumbent, said county officials have ignored recommendations of the resource district.

“It’s very difficult not to oppose many of the projects that come before us,” Wiley, 61, said. “They would devastate and totally change the topography and encroach on the wildlife and destroy our most precious resource, oak trees.”

Wiley said the district can “balance the clout that development interests have in high places” by working more closely with local homeowners associations.

That worries the two other resource district candidates on Tuesday’s ballot.

“The board is becoming a political extension of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation,” said incumbent David N. Gottlieb, a Topanga film maker.

‘Politicizing District’

“It’s terrible. It’s politicizing the district,” Gottlieb, 39, said. He said he sees the work of the district board as conserving the area’s natural resources, not preventing development. “We do work that no other agency fulfills . . . outreach and education on conservation issues,” he said.

Gottlieb said county officials have become “upset with the political nature of the board as it stands now. It’s denigrating the conservation functions of this district.”

Jerry R. Douglas, a Woodland Hills computer retrieval specialist running for the board for the first time, said he dislikes “this tendency to preserve land by political means.”

Feel for Property Rights

“The key is not to automatically oppose everything going on in the mountains. . . . ,” Douglas, 42, said. “I have a strong feeling about property rights. I feel it’s really unfair to change the rules after somebody has acquired property.”

The resource agency, which operates on a budget of about $80,000 a year, is primarily funded by a tax that averages 15 cents a home in the district. The directors are not paid.

The district straddles the Ventura-Los Angeles county line and includes parts of Tarzana and Woodland Hills on the south side of the Ventura Freeway, and Topanga, Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Agoura, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and the eastern part of Thousand Oaks.