New City Sees Land Battles in Its Future : Calabasas: Voters overwhelmingly approve incorporation. But county supervisors retain the authority over pending developments.

For Calabasas residents fighting mountainside development, the crucial battle is won, but the war goes on.

Despite their overwhelming victory in an election to establish Calabasas as an independent city--aimed at freeing the community from the zoning authority of the County Board of Supervisors--officials of the new city predicted Wednesday that land-use confrontations with the supervisors will continue.

On Tuesday, 91% of the Calabasas residents that took part in the election voted to establish the county’s 88th incorporated city, selecting five of the most active leaders of the incorporation drive as their first City Council--Lesley Devine, Karyn Foley, Bob Hill, Marvin Lopata and Dennis Washburn. The election brought a high turnout of about 45% of the 9,292 eligible voters.

Each of the newly elected council members say the birth of the city will not end their clashes with supervisors over growth in the Santa Monica Mountains. Supervisors still have authority over many pending developments both inside and on the borders of the new city.

A top priority, they said, will be to defeat a county proposal to use tax money to pay a developer for a school site and parkland that the developer had promised to donate to the community.

Still, they say, the formation of the city gives them a new advantage: the power of elected officials with a mandate from the voters.

“We’re wearing different hats now,” said a jubilant Lopata, who served as treasurer of the cityhood committee for five years. “We are not going as just a bunch of homeowner associations. We’re going as a city.”

Washburn, the top vote-getter in the election with 15%, said the new city will also be able to hire a city attorney to represent the community in county proceedings.

“Now the playing field is level. We can afford to hire a gun to represent us,” he said.

County officials are considering a request by The Baldwin Co. to be reimbursed for a school site and parkland the company had pledged to donate to the community. The money would come from a special tax assessment district that has been created to improve roads, flood control and gas piping.

But the new city’s officials are outraged that the developer would seek payment for the land, which was offered as a gift to the community to silence public opposition to Baldwin’s plan to build 550 homes, a church and a shopping center on 1,250 acres of rugged land, some of it in a county-designated Significant Ecological Area.

“We need to address the supervisors and make very, very clear how we feel about the gift that was given to our community,” Lopata said. “We need to make our position known very loud and very clear.”

“We’ll have to do our homework,” said Hill, who served as president of the cityhood committee for five years.

The newly elected council members have been working together for years, and most said they anticipate no political battles among themselves. While working together for cityhood, they said, they have become a family--sometimes fighting and squabbling among themselves but maintaining a united front in the face of outside threats.

“We all have an affinity for one another,” said Foley, who wept with joy after her victory was announced. “We are all in accord in our philosophies.”

The primary source of tension on the new council might unfold in differences of “style and rhythm,” predicted Arnold Sank, who served on the executive committee of the cityhood movement but did not run for the council.

Dave Brown, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, said: “There are differences. I do not think they are cut out of the same cloth, but they work together well. I don’t see any developer being able to divide them up on major planning issues.”

The new city will not officially exist until the county Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees the creation of new cities, certifies the election results. That action is expected to occur in four to eight weeks.

In the interim, the council members-elect expect to interview candidates for city jobs, draw up a wish list of projects, and find office space for a city hall so the government can begin operating immediately after certification.

As the two top vote-getters, Washburn and Hill each won four-year terms. The other three were elected to two-year terms.