SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS : U.S. Funding Drops for Recreation Area

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area will receive $4 million next year under the terms of a House and Senate conference committee agreement--considerably less than the park has received for any fiscal year since 1988.

The $4-million figure in the Interior appropriations bill was expected since both the House and Senate had voted to appropriate that sum for the recreation area.

Park supporters said they were pleased. “I feel very good about it,” said Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), a leading House proponent. “No matter how you slice it, there’s just very little money nationwide for acquisition of new parkland.”

At the same time, park advocates amended language in the Senate appropriations bill that at one time had stipulated the funds could be used only to buy Paramount Ranch in Agoura, the former site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

The new Interior conference bill specifies that the $4 million would be used for properties in Zuma and Trancas canyons and upper Topanga Canyon as well as Paramount Ranch and along the Backbone Trail that traverses the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains from Will Rogers State Park to Point Mugu.

The restrictions were inserted in the spending bill preemptively in response to concerns raised by Soka University, which is opposing park officials’ efforts to acquire part of its property near the intersection of Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway for a visitors’ center and park headquarters. Park proponents said they wanted to forestall a restriction they considered harmful to their ability to obtain properties as inexpensively as possible.

Soka has sought language for the last three years banning any federal funds from use in condemnation proceedings. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that buys and manages land in the mountains in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, had begun the condemnation process to obtain about 245 acres of the school’s land. Soka, meanwhile, wants to expand its campus into a liberal arts college.