Agency Clears Way for Vote That May Give Birth to City

In a move that stunned even cityhood supporters, incorporation of a 14-square-mile part of Calabasas was approved Wednesday by the Los Angeles County agency that oversees the creation of cities.

The Local Agency Formation Commission rejected a prediction by its executive officer, Ruth Benell, that Calabasas would spend $1 million more than it would take in during the city’s first year of operation.

Instead, taxes generated by Calabasas’ prospering local economy will more than make up any shortfall, the commissioners said.

Supervisors Must Vote

The 5-0 commission action set the stage for a possible June, 1988, incorporation election for Calabasas residents. Before the election is held, however, the matter must go to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a hearing and a vote.

The proposed city would be bounded by Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills on the east and Agoura Hills on the west.

It would include the communities of Calabasas Park, Mulwood, Calabasas Highlands, Malibu Canyon Park and Saratoga Hills, which have a combined population of nearly 21,000.

The commission approval caught members of a 2 1/2-year-old Calabasas cityhood committee by surprise.

Incorporation supporters had attended Wednesday’s meeting hoping to win more time from the commission to rebut Benell’s figures.

Because state law sets time limits for incorporation proceedings, however, committee members had been braced for the worst; they expected outright denial of their incorporation request, blocking another attempt for one year.

“We all had black arm bands in our pockets,” said Robert Hill, chairman of the committee.

Benell, whose analysis of Calabasas’ estimated budget led to the commission’s rejection of a Calabasas-area incorporation application in 1981, said earlier this month that the city would have the $1-million shortfall if allowed to incorporate this time.

“If the residents feel the need for a local government rather than county government, it would seem to be more logical to annex to the adjacent City of Los Angeles than to form another city along the Ventura Freeway corridor,” she concluded in a report prepared for Wednesday’s meeting.

Cityhood boosters told commissioners that Benell’s revenue figures were out of date because they were taken from 1985-86 fiscal year tax records.

Businesses Moving In

Since then, several large businesses generating taxes that would go to the city have opened in Calabasas, said Doris LaViolette, the cityhood committee’s vice president.

They include a motel that last year netted $132,000 in transient occupancy taxes and a business park and an auto dealership that contributed sales taxes of $316,000 and $107,000 respectively, she said.

Dennis Washburn, another cityhood committee vice president, unfurled charts that had been hand-printed on butcher paper to list the committee’s projections of first-year revenue of $3.5 million and expenditures of $2.8 million.

When all 1986-87 taxes are counted, “the budget comes out balanced,” Hill said.

He said that Calabasas boosters did not blame Benell “for the figures that land on her desk” suggesting that incorporation is not economically feasible.

Commissioners agreed that the area should be incorporated.

“The area is a very viable area for cityhood,” said one of them, James DiGiuseppe, a former judge from Tarzana.

“I think probably an April or June election is in order,” concurred Commissioner Henri F. Pellissier, a Whittier businessman.

The action also surprised Benell. She said she would have to return to the commission next month with a specific cityhood resolution for panel members to sign.

In the meantime, she said, she will double-check the Calabasas residents’ figures.

After the meeting, elated incorporation supporters hugged and kissed each other. They promised that their budget calculations will withstand the scrutiny and predicted that Wednesday’s good fortune is a preview of what is in store for their new city.

“I’ve always believed in cityhood, but I can’t believe this,” said one of them, Calabasas Park resident Myra Turek.