Council May Declare Boulevard Blighted : Thousand Oaks: City may expand Redevelopment Agency and mandate a $120-million bond issue.

At an emergency meeting tonight, the Thousand Oaks City Council will open the door to incurring $120 million in debt by declaring Thousand Oaks Boulevard a blighted area and expanding the Redevelopment Agency that serves the four-mile strip.

Mayor Judy Lazar called the session after the council deadlocked 2 to 2 on the issue early Wednesday morning. Councilman Frank Schillo left the meeting an hour before the vote to get some sleep before an early morning flight to Sacramento.

Aware that Schillo has supported extending the Redevelopment Agency’s life, Councilman Alex Fiore urged the two naysayers, Councilwomen Elois Zeanah and Jaime Zukowski, to bow to the council majority’s wishes and change their ballots. But they refused, forcing the mayor to call a special meeting.

“You know what the ultimate vote is going to be,” Fiore told his rivals. “I am really disappointed we could not dispose of this.” He added that Zeanah and Zukowski need not waste their time showing up for the 6 p.m. meeting in City Hall, since they will inevitably lose the vote.

The Thousand Oaks Boulevard Redevelopment Agency has long been a sore spot, both for the divided council and the city at large.

Funded by property taxes from businesses along the boulevard, the 14-year-old agency has picked up almost half the tab of the $63.8-million Civic Arts Plaza. It has also funded a host of smaller projects, including affordable housing and landscaping along Hampshire Road.

But now, the agency’s cash flow is dwindling. In fact, the Redevelopment Agency owes the city $5.4 million for payments on the Civic Arts Plaza.

Once its debts are paid off, the agency will generate only about $34 million over the next 15 years, Redevelopment Associate Paul Farr said. That sum would not be enough to cover planned improvements, such as an auditorium for Thousand Oaks High School and new sidewalks on the boulevard, Farr said.

To generate more funds, the Redevelopment Agency could go into debt by issuing $120 million worth of bonds, which would be paid off over the next three decades with property tax dollars. Of that sum, $85 million would go to spruce up the boulevard and $35 million would support low- to moderate-income housing.

Floating bonds would not raise property taxes. But it would ensure that tax dollars from the boulevard are used for improvements to the commercial strip, rather than being doled out to various services, redevelopment officials said.

That prospect, however, angered some area business owners, who said they did not want their tax dollars subsidizing cosmetic changes.

“I’m more concerned with having enough police if I get robbed than with having a park bench out in front of my store,” said Wayne Caywood, owner of Malibu Fish N’ Tackle. “Sure, there could be some improvements along the street. But I’d rather worry about fire and police protection first.”

Ventura County administrators are quick to air similar concerns. They have long complained that redevelopment agencies siphon property taxes away from the county’s coffers and choke off funding for vital services.

Although the Redevelopment Agency passes 20% of the property tax dollars it collects to the county and roughly 5% each to the school and park districts, the bulk of the money stays in the boulevard area. The Ventura County auditor’s office estimates that it would have collected $19 million more from boulevard businesses over the last decade if the Redevelopment Agency hadn’t stepped in first and appropriated the dollars. This year alone, the fire district lost an estimated $1.2 million.

“Taxpayers are being hurt and having more and more assessments imposed on them because the Redevelopment Agency is taking money away from the fire district and other services,” Zeanah said.

But Fiore flatly rejected that argument.

“For years there has been an outflow of our gold to other communities in the county, and it’s just not right,” he said. “This is one way to balance the books and keep some of our money here.”

By extending the Redevelopment Agency, Fiore, Lazar and Schillo hope to generate enough funds to plant more trees, improve street lighting, create additional parking, and make the boulevard more accessible to wheelchairs, bicycles and pedestrians.

“I think we do need a face lift,” said Tracey Benedict, owner of the boulevard’s Bookaneer used-book store. “We need uniformity in the style of buildings and we need better sidewalks.”

Zeanah and Zukowski, however, say the boulevard is hardly blighted. As proof, they point to a consultant’s study indicating that businesses on the main commercial strip generate more sales tax revenue than either The Oaks shopping mall or the Auto Mall.

Yet fans of redevelopment agencies insist that the boulevard needs a boost that only public investment can provide.

“Those who oppose this don’t want any progress in the city,” Schillo said last week. “They think we should stop everything the way it is now. Well, cities don’t stand still--they either go downhill or they improve. I’m for constant improvement.”