Westlake Village Calls Special Election : Voters to Decide Mobile-Home Issues

The City of Westlake Village will hold a special election in April to decide whether a mobile-home park should be allowed to expand and begin selling spaces to tenants.

The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to hold an election April 19 to resolve a growing dispute over Oak Forest Mobile Estates. The city approved ordinances last fall that would allow the park to expand by 35 units, to 197, and to begin offering park residents the chance to buy their spaces.

But a group of Westlake Village residents who said the expansion would spoil the view from their luxury Southridge Trails ridge-top homes circulated two petitions seeking to have the ordinances repealed. Led by Daniel Murphy, a wholesale carpet dealer, the Committee to Preserve, Protect and Maintain Westlake Village Zoning gathered enough signatures to qualify the measures for referendums.

Under California law, the City Council had to either repeal the ordinances or allow voters to decide.

The council agreed to let voters decide whether to repeal an ordinance that commits the park owners and the city to work together to expand the park and allows tenants to purchase their spaces. The council refused, however, to allow a vote on a second ordinance, which changed the zoning for the park to enable the expansion to occur.

City Atty. Michael Jenkins said the city should not place that issue before voters because passage would create an illegal discrepancy between city zoning ordinances and the city general plan, which also was amended to allow for expansion of the park. The general plan amendment was not challenged by the petitions.

The City Council adopted the ordinances as part of the settlement of a $1-million lawsuit filed against the city by Oak Forest owners, who contended that rent-control laws, which applied only to the mobile-home park, deprived them of their constitutional property rights.

Park tenants and the city have for years sought to have the park owners sell spaces to residents. The owners have wanted for some time to expand the park. The lawsuit settlement combined those two interests and compelled both sides to work to achieve them.

As part of the settlement, rent controls will be phased out over the next five years whether or not the measure passes, City Manager James E. Emmons said.

Richard D. Slehofer, vice chairman of the committee, argued that failure to put both measures on the ballot would “circumvent the constitutional rights of Westlake Village residents.”

Slehofer warned that the committee may mount another initiative campaign seeking to modify the discrepancy between the general plan and the zoning law. That would force the city to hold another special election, he told the council.

The April special election will cost the city $10,000 to $15,000, Jenkins said.

If the one ordinance on the ballot is repealed, the park owners will still be free to expand and convert to private ownership, said George Kimball, an attorney for the owners. But they would not be compelled to do so.

The owners are unwilling to sell the mobile-home lots to tenants unless the park is permitted to expand, Kimball said.

The referendum has created odd bedfellows. Residents, city officials, and the park owners, who formerly clashed over the mobile park issue, have pledged to work together to defeat the initiative. Council members will write the ballot argument against the measure, which requires a simple majority for approval.

Park resident James Henderson called Murphy and the other petition campaign leaders “willful and selfish people.” Murry Wagner, a resident of the mobile-home park, said the homes of Murphy and others mar the view of the ridge above the mobile home park. “Should we have initiated petitions” to keep their homes from being built? he asked.