Thousand Oaks City Council to Vote on Enclave’s Gate Plan

They live in a tranquil pocket largely untouched by crime, but residents of Braemer Garden Homes in Thousand Oaks still feel vulnerable.

So vulnerable, in fact, that many are willing to pay $500 each to turn their neighborhood into a private enclave.

For the past year, homeowners in the intimate, upscale tract in Thousand Oaks’ North Ranch neighborhood have been pushing a plan to install electronic entry gates and convert four public streets to private cul-de-sacs.

The City Council will vote tonight on the homeowners’ request to close off their 3-year-old condominium complex. The 80 townhouses, originally priced at about $350,000 each, are on four dead-end roads tucked between Bowfield and Rockfield streets, near a vast stretch of open space.

The Planning Commission deadlocked, 2 to 2, on the gates issue after a public hearing March 1. The deadlock effectively blocked the proposal to install the gates, leading homeowners to appeal directly to the council.

The council could either decide the issue tonight or send it back to the Planning Commission.

Although most Braemer Garden residents are eager to install the gates--even at the price of assuming responsibility for street maintenance--a vocal few decry the plan as absurd.

“I love this community and I want to keep it clean and green and open, and you can’t do that sitting behind a gate thumbing your nose at the world,” said resident Lorrette Weber. “I’ve seen enough bars and gates to last several lifetimes.”

But homeowners who support the gates say they have no choice but to throw up barricades.

They detail a litany of disturbing incidents--raw eggs tossed onto porches, used condoms stuffed into mailboxes, walls defaced by graffiti. A community park across the street, the North Ranch Playfield, attracts suspicious-looking loiterers after dusk, neighbors said.

“There are always oddball people hanging around, sauntering in the park, and they don’t have any purpose (there),” said Carol Pelly.

Bitterly, she offered an earsplitting rendition of the “Yahoo!” whoops she has heard from teen-agers who, she said, cruise the neighborhood in their cars, windows rolled down and stereos cranked up.

“I used to walk my dog in the park at night, but now I don’t because there are people just sitting in cars, or maybe three in a group slouched and wearing shabby clothes, and you wonder what they’re up to,” Pelly said.

With a population of 107,000, Thousand Oaks has more than half a dozen gated communities scattered throughout the city, including several in the North Ranch neighborhood.

Almost all the gates, however, were approved by the City Council or Planning Commission as part of each project’s original design. The proposed Braemer Garden gates would be after-the-fact additions--and might inspire other communities to apply for their own barricades, Mayor Judy Lazar said.

That prospect, and the vision of a city bristling with gates and Do Not Enter signs, saddens some residents.

“We don’t have Crips and Bloods running around here,” said Bill Sapp, a real estate consultant who moved to the complex six months after it opened. “Littering is the biggest problem--kids dropping their Snickers wrappers on the ground. This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Sgt. Bruce Hansen of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that Braemer Gardens is a low-crime area. Entry gates might dissuade some criminals from entering the tract, he said, but they also might deter police officers from patrolling the area.

The security question has generated the most debate, but some residents said the real issue is the impact of gates on property values.

Opponents of the proposal charge the pro-gates faction with using security as a smoke screen. Those who want to enclose the community, they say, hope to raise property values by creating an exclusive enclave.

But a consultant to the homeowners’ group, former Thousand Oaks mayor and Ventura County supervisor Ed Jones, insisted that the gates would not be “a status symbol or something done for prestige.”

The residents “are not putting on airs,” Jones said. “They are doing it for the health, safety and welfare of the community.”

By converting their streets from public to private, residents would assume full responsibility for the costs of sweeping, cleaning and repairing the roads. Several said they had been told that monthly fees would average $5, in addition to the upfront cost of installing the gates, estimated at $400 to $500 per home.

“I want to make sure they’ve explored all the options,” Councilman Frank Schillo said. “There can be an awful lot of cost involved in maintaining your own roads.”

During last month’s hearing, Commissioners Forrest Frields and Irving Wasserman supported the gates, citing security concerns and noting that all the streets in Braemer Gardens are dead-ends, so installing gates would not block traffic.

In the split vote, Commissioners Marilyn Carpenter and Mervyn Kopp disagreed. They urged the community to try Neighborhood Watch programs before resorting to security gates. Furthermore, they said, the gates would be aesthetically displeasing and would create traffic problems.

Members of the City Council said they would not make a decision on the issue until they listen to public testimony.

But Councilwoman Elois Zeanah suggested that “our general philosophy is based on allowing the residents to decide what type of neighborhood they want to live in. We cannot ignore the fact that we have neighborhood crime and nuisance problems we did not have just a few years ago.”