Overturned Decisions Frustrate Planners : Government: They say they are still a key link. Thousand Oaks City Council attributes reversals to fiscal and political concerns.

It appeared, at first, to be a stinging defeat.

After a marathon session last month, the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission ruled that Amgen officials could not proceed with a proposed expansion unless they drastically altered their plans.

Yet, as Amgen project manager Ed Bjurstrom headed out of the meeting at 3 a.m., he said he was not fazed by the ruling.

“The Planning Commission has reached its conclusions, but our feeling is that the City Council will see this differently,” he said.

Bjurstrom’s confidence was not unwarranted.

Time and again over the past two years, the Thousand Oaks City Council has shoved aside Planning Commission rulings, attributing reversals to financial and political concerns.

The barrage of turnabouts, including a recent council ruling in favor of Amgen and a vote against a wetlands protection ordinance, has frustrated commissioners and led some council members to question the need for the planning board to review every project.

But unlike the situation in Moorpark two years ago, where planning commissioners actually proposed disbanding because their rulings were so rarely upheld, Thousand Oaks commissioners say they remain an important link in the government process.

Since January, 1993, more than a dozen Thousand Oaks Planning Commission rulings--about two-thirds of those heard by both bodies--have been reversed by the council, according to city records.

The reversals included nearly all of the most hotly debated planning decisions--an auto mall sign, a proposed day-care ordinance, Raznick and Cohan developments, mobile carwashes, a Texaco carwash, the proposed wetlands ordinance and the Amgen project.

There are several explanations why the commission’s decisions have been overturned.

Members of both groups agree that the dispute stems in large part from the two boards’ differing roles. The Planning Commission’s task is to look in detail at projects, while the council looks at broader issues, including the financial impacts of development.

But several commissioners said they have grown increasingly concerned that politics is strangling the process at the council level, pushing developer needs ahead of the expressed will of the general public.

The council, they say, is ignoring a 1989 attitude survey which shows that an overwhelming majority of Thousand Oaks residents support the preservation of open space and oppose development.

“What I see is politics getting in the way of sound planning,” Commissioner Linda Parks said. “At the Planning Commission we’re talking about one thing--the highest and best use of the land. We’re not talking about how much money the land will make for the city or for the developer.”

The claim that developers have a grip on the council has been a regular complaint of Mayor Elois Zeanah, who several times has fought unsuccessfully to uphold commission rulings.

When the wetlands ordinance failed in the council, Zeanah accused her colleagues of caving to the influence of developers. Council members Alex Fiore, Frank Schillo and Judy Lazar all dismissed the charge.

Schillo and Lazar said they did not take campaign money from developers.

Fiore also objected to the charge and said of Zeanah’s voting record: “If you vote no on everything like (she and Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski) have, you would have no city.”

Members of the city’s business and development lobby, in fact, have argued that it is the commission that should be blamed for injecting politics into the process. They say a politically tainted Planning Commission has forced them to appeal the rulings.

“There have been a number of times when the commission has just ignored the codes and we have no choice but to turn to the council,” said Neal Scribner, an architect involved in a number of local projects.

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Scribner said in one case he had a building rejected by the commission because it had three floors, even though it met the code restriction for height.

“They just decided that 35 feet meant two floors, even though that wasn’t in the books,” Scribner said.

Many local developers have become frustrated with the commission because they believe it is not ruling strictly on the codes, said Steve Rubenstein, executive director of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s very costly to have to appeal the commission rulings, but a number of them have felt they had to,” Rubenstein said. “At this point, a lot of people feel this procedure is really mixed up.”

To address the problems, both Fiore and Schillo have said they would support curtailing the role of the commission on big cases, where the council normally is deeply involved in the process anyway.

“In the larger cases like with Amgen, I’m not sure why we’re sending it to the Planning Commission,” Schillo said. “We just end up getting hit over the head by the public who thinks the Planning Commission is the last word on what’s right.”

But planning commissioners strongly disagreed with that assessment, saying the input of the commission is invaluable because of the detail with which they review projects.

“We look at a lot of the small details that might be missed by the staff or the council,” Parks said. “I really feel strongly that we play a crucial role.”

Parks said she believed the split between the council and the commission stems in large part from the conflicting votes of Councilwoman Judy Lazar and her appointed commissioner, Marilyn Carpenter.

Parity between the two bodies is often anticipated because each member of the council selects a commissioner. But Carpenter and Lazar, more than the other pairs, have been voting in opposite directions.

While Carpenter has voted consistently to curb development, Lazar has several times provided the critical vote needed to overturn the commission.

“I think Judy Lazar has changed since she chose (Carpenter) and I think a lot of people see that,” Parks said. “The evidence is there--she’s consistently voting against her own commissioner.”

Carpenter said she wished the two bodies were “more often in sync” and said she believed planning decisions were “sometimes overridden by economic pressures,” but she would not comment on the apparent split with Lazar.

Lazar attributed the split to a simple difference of opinion.

“My relationship with Marilyn Carpenter has not changed one bit since I appointed her,” Lazar said. “She has tremendous experience and I respect her, I just don’t always agree with her.”

Added Carpenter: “I don’t think that means one of us is wrong. None of the issues we are dealing with are black and white.”

Lazar, instead, said the ability for the council to weigh economic and social factors has led to some discrepancies. It is a sentiment echoed by several commissioners, including Chairman Irving Wasserman.

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“It must be confusing to the public, and frankly, it is sometimes confusing to us that the commission and the council are bumping into each other the way they are,” Wasserman said.

“But in many ways the reason we rule differently is because our responsibilities are different,” he said.

The council has the latitude to veer away from codes and the General Plan to accommodate projects that were not envisioned when restrictions were written into the books.

And, added Commissioner Mervyn Kopp, the council can take into consideration a project’s financial impacts, while the commission has to ignore economic issues.

“I find it ludicrous that we don’t have an economic or business element to the General Plan,” Kopp said. “If we did, we might be able to take that into account on a project like Amgen, but for now, we have to pretend it’s not a factor.”

Kopp said such an addition to the General Plan is in the works, and if the commission is able to consider such issues, it may find more parity with the council.

Another possible remedy to the current situation, in which the Planning Commission and council are sending out different messages to the city, involves communication.

Longtime Simi Valley Planning Commissioner Michael Piper said that a similar conflict was resolved in his city when the two bodies sat down together.

“We’ve had problems like that periodically, and it has always helped us to sit down with the council and get a better understanding of their philosophy,” he said.

“Having the council sit down with the commission and give some direction is a very useful way of breaking the cycle of reversals,” he said.

Wasserman said he feels there is enough communication between the two bodies now. He said the commission needs to stick to its job the way it has been doing it in the past.

“I know the procedure appears overly complicated, but if you look at the way we’ve been able to boil down the issues for the council, you would see that what we’re doing makes sense,” Wasserman said. “We may continue to butt heads, but that doesn’t mean the process is failing.”