Creating a County a Recurring Dream on the Border : Government: Some residents want to split from Los Angeles and Ventura and form a jurisdiction with common social, political and environmental interests.

Among some residents in the communities along the line that divides Ventura and Los Angeles counties, there has been a recurring vision for years: to split off and start all over again.

The dream has been to unite Thousand Oaks, Oak Park and Bell Canyon in Ventura County and Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Hidden Hills in Los Angeles County into a new county bound by common political, environmental and social interests.

Most recently, unhappiness over the problems that come with straddling the county line has sparked a proposal by Oak Park to move the city of Agoura Hills into Ventura County so that the two communities can be merged.

“We live in the same valley, we shop in the same places, we use the same roads to get in and out of the community,” said Ron Stark, a leader from Oak Park who supports the move. “These people have more interests in each other than they have in any other part of L. A. or Ventura County.”

The proposed merger of Oak Park and Agoura, a possibility viewed as unlikely by Ventura County officials, is only the latest example of the movement that has surfaced occasionally in the Conejo and Las Virgenes valleys since the early 1980s.

One of the first studies on a new county was made in 1982 by the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce after park and school officials in Thousand Oaks complained that they were sending too much money to Ventura County and getting little back.

“There was a wild idea to create a Chumash County, which would go from the ocean to Simi,” Agoura Hills Mayor Fran Pavley recalled.

But the idea was abandoned after the study concluded that it would have cost at least $1 million just to get it to the ballot.

Two years later, the idea was revived briefly when two members of the Thousand Oaks City Council got mad at county transportation officials for proposing to widen the Ventura Freeway in Oxnard rather than Thousand Oaks.

They threatened to secede and take the eastern part of the county with them.

“It was a bluff,” recalled former Councilwoman Madge L. Schaefer, who is also a former county supervisor.

But it worked. The county decided to widen the freeway in Thousand Oaks.

In the Antelope Valley, meanwhile, business leaders last year discussed mounting an effort to break away from Los Angeles County and form a new high desert county. But they later decided not to pursue the issue after concluding it had little chance of success.

The problem is not a lack of desire, said Howard Brooks, executive director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade. Business leaders believe they would be better off with local control, but doubt they could win the required countywide election to secede from Los Angeles.

More recently, the Conejo Future Foundation, a research group based in Thousand Oaks, decided to study the pros and cons of forming a new county as a way of providing regional government. That study is expected to be completed in June.

Longtime residents say the continuing thinking on creation of a third county reflects two major concerns.

One is a feeling among some residents that county governments in Ventura and Los Angeles have neglected the communities on their outer fringes.

Thousand Oaks officials have complained for years that they were shortchanged after contributing taxes to the county for the construction of a library. The city finally built its own library for $9 million in 1982.

Another example of neglect has been the cost of county fire protection, some officials say. Councilman Alex Fiore said Thousand Oaks still pays about $3 million more each year for fire protection services than it gets from the county.

The neglect has been felt on both sides of the county line, others say.

Westlake Village spent five years trying to get Los Angeles County to fix a blocked flood control channel that empties into Westlake Lake. Last year, the city finally decided to do the work itself at a cost of $300,000.

In addition to the financial issue, there is an environmental motive to the talk of a third county that reflects concern about disappearing hillsides and oak trees in the Conejo and Las Virgenes valleys.

In Calabasas, residents are still smarting over the Baldwin Co.’s plan to remove 1,800 oak trees to make way for 550 houses, an action that has the approval of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Mayor Dennis Washburn said that decision, as well as others by the supervisors, pushed the city to finally incorporate last year--too late to save the oaks.

The boundary that divides Los Angeles and Ventura counties dates back to the 19th Century, when land grants were made by the Spanish. Ventura County was part of Santa Barbara County until it broke off in 1873.

There was little reason to change the lines before urban sprawl reached the Conejo and Las Virgenes valleys. But today, the hillsides once occupied primarily by cattle and sheep are populated by about 176,000 people, about two-thirds of them in Ventura County.

In Ventura County, Thousand Oaks is the largest of the communities that line the freeway corridor. The city incorporated in 1964 with fewer than 3,000 people; now it has about 104,000 people stretched between Newbury Park and Westlake.

On the county’s southeastern borders, next to Los Angeles County, are the unincorporated communities of Oak Park and Bell Canyon.

About 13,130 people live in Oak Park, a bedroom community made up of young families. About 1,500 people live in the horse ranch estates of Bell Canyon, where the main access road leads into Los Angeles County.

Next to Thousand Oaks is the Los Angeles County city of Westlake Village, an older community of residents who relocated from Los Angeles in the mid-1960s when one of the area’s first artificial lakes was built. It incorporated in 1981 and has 7,455 residents.

Next door is Agoura Hills, which became a city in 1982 and has 20,390 people. Like Calabasas, which has 28,000 residents, Agoura Hills incorporated after trying for years to take control over development from Los Angeles County.

Hidden Hills, a gated Los Angeles County community made up of affluent residents of single-family homes, incorporated in 1961 primarily to block the westward expansion of Burbank Boulevard. It has 1,729 people.

In most communities on both sides of the county line, at least half the residents commute to jobs in Los Angeles. It is residents from these areas who have fought the hardest to preserve their rural lifestyle while commuting to the downtown area.

“A lot of people are making sacrifices to live in this area and commute far away so children can grow up with relatively clean air and not have traffic congestion,” said Mary Weisbrock, a leader of Save Open Space, an environmental group that includes more than 500 people from Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Amid complaints that both county governments are too far away, one agency that has been able to bring considerable power to the negotiations between developers and government agencies on both sides of the county line is the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

A state agency that oversees 17,000 acres of parkland stretching from Malibu to Thousand Oaks, the conservancy has brokered two major parks acquisitions that affect the entire area.

It purchased 314 acres of the Paramount Ranch near Agoura Hills and helped negotiate a highly publicized land swap that prevented Bob Hope’s Jordan Ranch in Ventura County from being developed.

As part of that deal, which has not yet been approved by Ventura County supervisors, developers have agreed to convert more than 10,000 acres of mountain property in Los Angeles and Ventura counties into public parks in exchange for approval of a 2,600-unit project on the Ahmanson Ranch in eastern Ventura County.

“That’s the effort of the Santa Monica Mountains zone. It’s looking at issues that affect both counties,” said Rorie Skei, a Thousand Oaks resident and project manager with the conservancy.

In addition to their feuds with county governments, some of the communities that border the county line have fought among themselves on development issues.

Two years ago, Thousand Oaks opposed a developer’s plan to build 51 houses in the hills above neighboring Westlake Village because the project would have destroyed a rare plant. The Westlake Village City Council approved the project anyway.

And last year, when Ventura County supervisors approved construction of 315 houses in Oak Park, Agoura Hills residents were upset that traffic from the development would clog Kanan Road, the city’s main route to the Ventura Freeway. So supervisors required the developer to pay $100,000 for road improvements.

Although most experts rule out creation of a third county as a real possibility, there are precedents for establishing more locally based regional rule in the area.

Four years ago, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village and Agoura Hills formed the Tri-Cities group, an informal association of City Council members that meets quarterly to discuss issues the leaders believe they need to solve among themselves, such as building recycling centers, composting facilities and libraries.

Recently, both Agoura Hills and Westlake Village requested inclusion in a proposed regional council of governments that includes only the 10 Ventura County cities. Calabasas also wants to join.

“We see ourselves as geographically and psychologically similar and connected,” Calabasas Mayor Dennis Washburn said.

An example of that psychological connection is in Oak Park, where residents remain confused about the county boundaries, said Duane Skavdahl, chairman of the community’s Municipal Advisory Council.

On any given day, the city of Agoura Hills gets calls from Oak Park residents who complain or ask about city services and don’t realize that they aren’t governed by Agoura Hills.

Agoura Hills resident Marsha Fabiano, 43, says she feels that she has more in common with her Ventura County neighbors than with residents of the San Fernando Valley, who still see her home as the hinterlands.

Fabiano can step over her back fence into Ventura County and across a grassy field to talk with her Oak Park neighbors.

Every once in a while, she said, she wonders why the county line exists. The exclusive three- and four-bedroom tract homes in her Agoura Hills development are strikingly similar to those across the county line.

Most people call her neighborhood Agoura, a name locals called the area before the city incorporated, she said.

She holds a card that allows her to use Oak Park’s library and plays softball in Thousand Oaks. The day-care center she operates out of her Los Angeles County home is filled with children from Ventura County.

“This hill has burned three times,” she said, pointing to the knoll behind her house. “Los Angeles and Ventura fire departments both responded.”

Chuck Monico, an Oak Park resident, agreed.

“When you meet people on a soccer field, you don’t know if they’re from Los Angeles County or Ventura County. They’re just folks,” said Monico, a 15-year resident of Oak Park. “We’re all living in the same area; we’re breathing the same air.”

Merger Proposal

For years, residents of Ventura and Los Angeles counties have talked of changing their boundaries. Oak Park, an unincorporated community of about 13,000 in Ventura County, recently proposed merging with Agoura Hills, a city of 20,390. Agoura Hills would become part of Ventura County.