Redevelopment Agency Extended in Thousand Oaks : Business district: Tempers flare as council members argue whether the city should declare part of a boulevard ‘blighted’ in order to capture tax money.

With tempers crackling and insults flying across their raised dais, the Thousand Oaks City Council has voted 3 to 2 to extend the life of the city’s Redevelopment Agency.

“Madam Mayor, you are so wrong it is pathetic,” said Councilman Alex Fiore, raising his voice and chopping his hand in the air as he rebutted Mayor Elois Zeanah’s argument against the agency at Tuesday’s meeting.

Fiore teamed with fellow council members Frank Schillo and Judy Lazar in supporting the agency’s extension, while Zeanah and Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski opposed the measure.

At issue was whether the city should declare a four-mile stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard “blighted” in order to capture tax money from that business district that would otherwise be disbursed among county, state and city agencies.

The four-mile section of the boulevard runs from the Los Angeles County line to near the Janss Mall, and includes such prosperous business landmarks as the Auto Mall and the North Ranch shopping center.

The council has hashed over the argument many times before, through proposals to continue and expand the agency, public hearings, and, finally, Tuesday night’s deciding vote. Though voting lines were drawn well before the latest showdown, the debate was marked by council members’ barbed exchanges.

The city created the Redevelopment Agency in 1979, a year after Proposition 13 passed, sharply curtailing the amount of money cities could collect from property taxes. At the time the ballot measure passed, Thousand Oaks did not levy any property taxes, and the passage of the measure made it nearly impossible for the city to start, City Manager Grant Brimhall said.

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Under the Redevelopment Agency, the county continues to receive a base amount of taxes, set when the agency was formed 14 years ago, but the city collects every dollar generated by rising property values.

The agency passes 20% of that money to the county, plus 5% each to the school and park districts, but the bulk of the money stays within Thousand Oaks. Half of the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza now under construction has been funded by redevelopment money, as has a host of other projects, from cosmetic improvements to affordable housing.

While funding those improvements, the agency has diverted $72 million from county coffers over the years, a fact that has left angry county officials still unwilling to give their consent to the agency’s latest expansion.

Thousand Oaks is negotiating with the county over the extension.

Originally, the Redevelopment Agency was to have collected $265 million by 2010, and then disband. But council members Schillo, Lazar and Fiore contend the city will need to extend the agency’s life to 2023 to finish the face lift of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and pay for such amenities as an auditorium at Thousand Oaks High School and a stadium at Westlake High School.

On Tuesday, much of the debate centered on whether Thousand Oaks is blighted.

“You talk about ‘There’s no blight!’ ” Fiore said to Zeanah. “I recently drove down the boulevard and wrote down the names of 25 parcels that were extremely blighted--and that’s not even counting one dozen or more storefronts that could use some sprucing up.” Fiore refused to release the names of the parcels, saying he did not want to publicly embarrass their owners.

Lazar said the term blight is a matter of perspective. “What we consider to be blight in Thousand Oaks may not be considered blight in other neighborhoods,” she said. “But what we consider reasonable development might be considered blight in Beverly Hills. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Zeanah and Zukowski argued that by extending the Redevelopment Agency, the city is in effect writing itself a blank check, with no accountability to the public of how it is spent.

“There is a crisis of confidence in government, and a lot of it is due to the way in which we spend the public’s money,” Zeanah said. “These are staggering figures here, yet there are no emergency needs. I feel if the city is going to take this Gargantuan step, it should get public approval.”

Zeanah said city officials were dodging their responsibility to the state and the county by “siphoning off” funds to the Redevelopment Agency. But Schillo countered that state and county needs were of little concern to him. “I am not a state representative. I am not a county representative,” he said. “I am a city representative and I am judged on what I bring to this city.”

Added Lazar: “We have to look at our responsibility as locally elected members of our community. Frankly, I have no interest in representing the interests of the county or the state.”