Group Studies Pros, Cons of a New County : Government: The effort is described as an attempt to find solutions to problems shared by cities in the Conejo and Las Virgenes valleys. Creating a new jurisdiction is called difficult.

A group of civic and business leaders from Ventura and Los Angeles counties is studying the pros and cons of forming a new county that would stretch from Calabasas to the Conejo Grade.

The study by the Conejo Future Foundation is an attempt to find solutions to problems shared by cities in the Conejo and Las Virgenes valleys, Executive Director Carolyn Kopp said.

The foundation, a 20-year-old Thousand Oaks-based research group, has no authority to create a new county and does not intend to come up with recommendations. And the chances of creating a third county are highly unlikely, county officials said.

But foundation officials say they are responding to concern from business and community leaders that representatives in county government have not been responsive to their constituents.

Last month, the unincorporated community of Oak Park proposed moving the Los Angeles County city of Agoura Hills into Ventura County so that the two communities could merge.

“There’s a feeling that the areas are on the fringe and are not getting their share of attention and action and funding,” Kopp said. “It’s an issue of much interest and concern.”

A study of the pros and cons of creating a new county will be presented at a forum to be held at 7:30 p.m. April 9 at Southern California Edison Co., 3589 Foothill Drive, Thousand Oaks. Public comments will be compiled in another study to be issued in June.

According to a preliminary study, proponents of a new county would have to collect signatures from at least 25% of the registered voters to place the issue on the ballot.

The governor would then appoint a panel to examine the feasibility of establishing a new county and how it could support itself. If it passed those hurdles, the issue would have to be approved by more than 50% of the voters in each county.

Stan Eisner, executive director of the Ventura County Local Agency Formation Commission, said the process is nearly impossible, “and I would say that’s an understatement.”

Still, the seven communities in the Conejo and Las Virgenes valleys--Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Bell Canyon, Oak Park and Thousand Oaks--believe that they have much in common.

About 175,000 people live in the communities linked by the Ventura Freeway. They are bounded by the Santa Monica Mountains on the south and the Santa Susana Hills on the north.

The idea of a new county “would make sense because it certainly would be smaller, and we would know the area better,” said Berniece Bennett, the mayor of Westlake Village and a member of the task force studying the new county.

The boundary that separates Ventura and Los Angeles counties has been a source of confusion ever since cities began forming along the county line, she said.

Thousand Oaks, the largest population center in the valleys, incorporated in 1964. It later annexed the Ventura County half of the housing subdivision known as Westlake Village.

When the Los Angeles County half of Westlake Village incorporated in 1981, residents on both sides still thought of themselves as belonging to the same city.

“There was a lot of confusion then, and there still is today,” Bennett said.

Ventura County has never studied the formation of a new county.

The closest an agency got to studying a new county was in 1982 when the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce examined a proposal to lump the newly formed cities of Westlake Village and Agoura Hills into Ventura County, said Nancy Grasmehr, a former aide to then-County Supervisor Ed Jones.

“There was a lot of contention at that time. This area, the park district and the school district were sending too much money to the county of Ventura and not getting enough back,” she said.

Stephen J. Rubenstein, executive director of the chamber, said the idea was dropped after officials discovered that the effort to change county boundaries would cost at least $1 million just to get it to an election.

Still, talk of merging cross-border communities has never died.

In 1986, talk of a Conejo County surfaced again after residents discovered that tax money would be spent building road projects in the western part of the county rather than the east, Rubenstein said. That talk eventually died down.

“The fact of the matter is, I don’t care about some arbitrary political line,” he said. “Our neighbors are Agoura Hills, Westlake and Calabasas. We all have to live here together.”