Backers Lobby to Salvage Cityhood Bid for Calabasas

Hours away from a crucial deadline, supporters of cityhood for Calabasas on Monday urgently lobbied officials in Los Angeles and Sacramento to salvage their 2 1/2-year-old incorporation effort.

Incorporation committee leaders asked members of a Los Angeles County agency that oversees the creation of new municipalities to preserve the basic boundaries of their tentatively approved 14-square-mile city when a final vote is taken Wednesday.

They also urged Gov. George Deukmejian to sign a bill into law today that will cut fire protection costs, eliminating the major financial problem for the proposed 21,000-resident community.

Cityhood boosters said both actions are necessary to keep their lengthy incorporation campaign from unraveling before residents get a chance to decide whether to form a new city at the southwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley.

The incorporation committee was surprised and angered last week by a new financial analysis prepared for the county Local Agency Formation Commission. The LAFCO analysis projected a $236,763 first-year budget deficit for Calabasas.

At the same time, the panel learned that two major landowners within the proposed city were unexpectedly clamoring to get their properties removed from the boundaries. On July 22, when LAFCO tentatively approved the boundaries, subject to the new budget analysis, no opposition from landowners had been registered.

The fire protection bill, sponsored by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), would slash Calabasas’ first-year fire protection costs by up to $1 million--more than enough to overcome the projected deficit.

Time Running Out

Davis’ Senate bill was unanimously approved Thursday by the Assembly after being passed earlier by the Senate. To help Calabasas, however, it must be signed into law before the 9 a.m. start of LAFCO’s meeting Wednesday. LAFCO members have said that unless the governor has signed Davis’ measure, they will not accept that it will lower the proposed city’s costs.

Officials at the governor’s office said late Monday that the bill was on Deukmejian’s desk, but that he was in Los Angeles and not expected to return to Sacramento until 2 p.m. today.

A spokesman for Davis predicted that Deukmejian would sign the measure this afternoon.

“It’s looking great,” said Davis aide Eric Rose. “So far, there’s been a lot of support, but no opposition to the bill in writing or in phone calls. The governor’s people are doing us a favor by reviewing it early. We feel confident the governor will sign it by 5 p.m.”

Cityhood committee leaders, meantime, scheduled meetings with LAFCO members Monday and today to plead their case.

Committee Vice President Doris La Violette said her group supports one landowner’s request to withdraw from the city, but will fight the proposed departure of another.

The committee feels that the Morrison Entity should be allowed to exempt several hundred acres on the north side of the Ventura Freeway because the site of the luxury home development would be split by the city boundary. That would require the developer to seek zone changes and building permits from two jurisdictions, La Violette said.

However, the panel is opposed to the withdrawal of 1,300 acres in the Calabasas Park area requested by the Baldwin Co., she said.

Loss of that land could jeopardize inclusion of two long-established neighborhoods and a new commercial zone, all at the west edge of Calabasas, unless the boundary is drawn in a wandering, complicated manner to encompass them, she said.