VanderKolk Angered by Leaders in Oak Park : Annexation: The supervisor criticizes community activists for suggesting that county officials are unresponsive.

Ventura County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk on Thursday lambasted Oak Park community leaders for suggesting that county officials have ignored them.

The remarks that incensed VanderKolk came last week at a meeting of the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council. The five-member council discussed the possibility of moving the southeastern boundary of Ventura County to include Agoura Hills.

The change would allow Agoura Hills to annex Oak Park and satisfy the community’s desire for cityhood.

In turn, Ahmanson Ranch, the site of a proposed housing development, would be moved from Ventura County into Los Angeles County.

VanderKolk, whose district covers southeast Ventura County, said the proposal was a surprise because it had never been discussed with her or her staff.

She said she was particularly upset by published comments made by Oak Park council members Duane Skavdahl and Ron Stark.

In an interview last week with The Times, Stark said, “We’re tired of the county stepping all over us.”

“They’re trying to tell my constituents that we’re not representing Oak Park well, and I really resent that because we do a good job,” VanderKolk said.

“For them to sit there and say the county is stepping all over them is so patently false.”

VanderKolk said she may meet personally with the advisory council at its March 17 meeting.

Skavdahl, who brought up the Agoura Hills proposal, was unavailable for comment Thursday.

Stark defended his comments and characterized VanderKolk’s response as an overreaction.

“I’m not saying the comments were directed at her personally,” Stark said. “For the past 25 years, Oak Park has had problems with getting things done with the county.”

For two years, residents of Oak Park, a community of 13,000 people, have debated whether to become Ventura County’s 11th city.

Community leaders said they suggested merging with the Los Angeles County community of Agoura Hills because, in their view, they have had little control over county services or developments approved by the county.

Last year, for example, Ventura County planners approved a church that had a 65-foot-high steeple, despite massive neighborhood opposition, Stark said.

County officials have also refused to install stop signs on street corners that residents consider dangerous.

“The county says you can’t have a sign until somebody dies,” Stark said. “County government is sometimes too far away to see the problems that we have.”

John Kruer, another council member, said Oak Park leaders expressed frustration with county planning and code enforcement officials long before VanderKolk was elected in 1990.

“I don’t think she should feel it’s an attack on her. It’s a statement to the county that we’re dissatisfied with certain entities in the county, not necessarily the supervisor,” he said.

But county officials have indicated that it may be too soon for Oak Park to become an independent city.

In a letter sent this week to all five members of the municipal advisory council, VanderKolk pointed out that she helped commission a $5,000 county study that found that cityhood for Oak Park “was tenuous at best” in terms of tax base.

The county is planning to conduct a more detailed study of whether Oak Park can support itself as a city.

Late last year, members of a cityhood committee that included Oak Park leaders agreed to look at the possibility of annexing the area into neighboring Thousand Oaks.

But a consultant who would examine the annexation proposal has not been hired.

VanderKolk said members of her staff have spent many hours researching cityhood and providing clerical support to the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council without charge.

She said she is willing to look at Oak Park’s desire to merge with Agoura Hills.

“We’ll probably start looking at it, if there’s a bigger push,” she said.