Klove, Emmons, Yarrow Take Early Lead in Westlake Village City Council Race

Early election returns in Westlake Village showed incumbent City Councilman Irwin A. Shane trailing five other candidates Tuesday in a race for three seats on the council.

Incumbents Shane and Bonnie Klove sought reelection to the Westlake Village City Council, but Mayor Franklin D. Pelletier declined to run again.

Four challengers entered the race for the three at-large seats. They are former City Manager James E. Emmons, vocational education teacher Sybil Nisenholz, office manager Joanne Robinson and homeowner association president Douglas R. Yarrow.

Emmons, Klove and Yarrow were the early leaders, followed by Nisenholz, Robinson and Shane.

Emmons, the town’s city manager from 1982 to 1988, was considered by many in Westlake Village to be a strong contender for the seat left open by Pelletier’s departure.

Westlake Village voters also were being asked to approve an initiative to raise the city’s constitutional spending limit, a measure city officials have said is necessary to finance a planned new library and city hall. The early returns showed overwhelming voter support for the initiative.

Klove and Shane were seeking their third terms on the council. Yarrow said he viewed Shane as the more vulnerable of the two.

The principal issue in the campaign has been Westlake North, a 131-acre development project proposed for vacant land north of the Ventura Freeway.

A majority of the five-member council--Klove, Shane, and Pelletier--have said they want to make a decision on Westlake North next week, before any new council members take office.

If Shane is defeated, and the council does not postpone the matter, the decision would be made by a council with two lame-duck members.

The project is being proposed by Westlake Village Associates, a firm run by Daniel K. Ludwig. It would include about 1.5 million square feet of office space. Ludwig recently scaled back the project slightly, reducing the maximum building height from six stories to five and cutting the number of multifamily housing units from 400 to 250.

But the project has remained controversial.

Klove and Shane were elected after the city’s 1981 incorporation. Yarrow, president of the Westlake Trails Homeowners Assn., recently organized his neighborhood to persuade the council to put a planned library in an industrial park instead of their residential area.