Jubilant Petition Drive Leaders Say They’ll Turn in Signatures This Week

Mention Dick Booker, Joan Gorner and Heinrich (Corky) Charles, and officials at Thousand Oaks City Hall will roll their eyes.

That’s because many consider the trio and their long-simmering battle with city administrators a thorn in the side of municipal government.

The three are leaders of the 1000 Oaks Recall Committee. For the past four months, they have been collecting signatures on petitions calling for the removal of two of the most popular council members in the city’s history, Frank Schillo and Alex Fiore.

This week, those petitions will be given to the city clerk’s office, recall leaders said. Although it will take weeks for the signatures to be validated, recall leaders are already jubilant.

“They will be recalled, there isn’t any doubt,” Charles said. “I don’t think they realize the people badly want a change.”

The trio’s unhappiness with Fiore and Schillo dates back nearly a decade, to about the time the city began planning a new cultural arts center.

Their discontent mounted as the project’s cost rose to the current $63.8 million and city officials added a new city hall. The city in 1990 bought a former wild animal park called Jungleland for an additional $21 million.

Opponents of the Jungleland project say it will end up costing more than $130 million, a charge that city officials deny.

Critics of the recall campaign have characterized the three recall leaders as disgruntled and vengeful citizens who have used questionable tactics to stop the project.

“The recall is just so unjust,” said John Conlan, a former supervisor and chairman of the Stop the Recall Committee. “They’ve made their point of view known for years, and they’ve lost.”

Others who are not associated with the recall petition drive say backers of the recall have a strong base of support.

Former Councilman Larry Horner, who frequently butted heads with Schillo and Fiore over the Jungleland project, said he believes that the recall will be successful.

“Given today’s climate, at least one council member would probably go,” Horner said. “There’s a lot of people out there who say this (project) is a mess.”

Gorner, Booker and Charles say their opposition is based on political, not personal, differences with the City Council.

Gorner, who teaches history and civics at Colina Intermediate School, moved to Thousand Oaks 27 years ago when it was still a town of 25,000. She has openly blasted the city over what she perceives as its weak enforcement of growth controls throughout the years.

Appointed to the city Planning Commission by then-Councilwoman Madge Schaefer, Gorner served for 2 1/2 years until she resigned in 1987. She ran for City Council in 1988, but lost to Schillo and Councilman Lee Laxdal.

As part of the recall committee, Gorner has been most active in the tedious work of gathering signatures and writing information about the campaign.

On many evenings and weekends over the past five months, she has sat in front of supermarkets and shopping centers passing out flyers and talking to citizens.

Gorner said she sees herself sometimes as a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. Several years ago, fellow teachers gave her a long stick to commend her for her tenacity.

“ ‘You can’t fight City Hall.’ People have said that for years,” Gorner said.

“But I believe in education and good government. And when you teach people all day long that there is a purpose to good government, then you cannot sit by on the sidelines to just talk about it.”

Even those who do not agree with Gorner’s views describe her as a hard-working and committed instructor whose work at Colina has earned her well-deserved community recognition.

She has stopped speaking to Fiore because of past arguments concerning a city project.

Two years ago, Gorner requested copies of Fiore’s city expense account records and was told that it would cost her $200. After she complained to the finance director, the city allowed her to see them without a charge.

Charles, 64, a vice president at the Federal National Mortgage Assn., was removed from the Planning Commission by the City Council on a 4-1 vote in 1979.

Fiore said Charles was removed because he used his position to intimidate staff members. Charles maintains that he had personal differences with city officials.

The lone dissenting vote came from Schaefer, the councilwoman who appointed him.

Charles acknowledges that he has angered city officials over the years because he is a former City Hall insider who is now an outspoken critic of the Jungleland project.

Charles has contributed about $9,000 of his own money to different campaigns to block its construction. But he said if the recall campaign succeeds, he will retire from battling the city.

“When we recall these two, we will put two more people on the council who will agree to put the Jungleland issue on the ballot,” he said. “That’s my swan song.”

Booker, 61, is a retired contractor who used to serve on five committees for the city, including citizens groups that reviewed plans for the teen-agers’ center and the city General Plan.

Booker said his motivation for joining the community activists came from seeing citizens’ views repeatedly ignored by the city when he served on those committees.

“I think Joan and Corky and I shared an intimate knowledge of what the city was doing,” he said. City officials “believe the public should stay out of government.”

In 1984, Booker ran for one of two seats on the City Council and came in fourth in a field of 10 candidates.

Since then, he has devoted most of his time to writing the information distributed by the group about the Jungleland project and is considered the chronicler of the project’s history. He works as the office manager for the recall committee.

Although city officials have accused Booker of using the recall to run for office again, he insists that he has no intention of that, even if the recall fails.

“This is the last go-round, at least for me,” he said. “The failure of this recall would indicate to me that there must be some truth that the people in the community don’t care what’s going on.”