Council to Consider Awarding 424 Allotments for Development : Thousand Oaks: Impact on police services should be considered prior to process, councilwoman says.

How many hours do police officers spend protecting each home in Thousand Oaks?

That’s the question Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski wants answered before the city plunges into the annual development allotment process and starts handing out permission to build new houses, apartments and condominiums.

At a public hearing on Tuesday, the council will consider awarding developers a total of 424 allotments, each representing one residential unit.

Most have already been promised to MGM Ranch and Dos Vientos Ranch under development agreements signed years ago. But staff is also urging the council to grant 45 allotments for a townhouse complex on Hillcrest Drive and another 13 for a similar project on Haigh Road.

Under the city’s slow-growth law, each project must receive allotments before construction can begin. To determine which projects should get the allotments, planners each year consider two dozen issues.

They look at whether the project can be effectively and swiftly served by existing fire stations. They examine how the development would affect traffic on city streets and local freeways. And they study details from architectural design to wheelchair accessibility to the impact on oak trees.

But they never consider how the project might strain police resources.

And that omission troubles Zukowski, who has repeatedly expressed fear that new development will tax an already strapped Sheriff’s Department.

“I would like an assessment of how much it costs to serve each additional unit,” Zukowski said at last week’s council meeting. “I don’t feel we’ve gone far enough in precisely determining the costs” of new development.

Her fellow council members, however, argue that the city already takes care to provide for the safety of all residents.

Council members consider population growth--including projected development--when drafting a budget for police services, Councilwoman Judy Lazar noted. Last fall, to keep up with demand, they added four police officers and three civilian law-enforcement employees.

“We maintain a very, very safe community,” Lazar said.

What’s more, crime prevention specialists in the Sheriff’s Department routinely evaluate development proposals to make sure projects are designed safely. They may recommend planting lower shrubs or eliminating dark corners, for example, so the complex will be less appealing to crooks.

Finally, developers must pay hefty fees for each bedroom or square foot they build--money that goes to support schools, parks and also police.

Projects requiring special attention, such as a new road or water reservoir, are saddled with additional mitigation fees.

“The developers are, in effect, keeping up with any demands on the system that their projects might create,” said Elaine Freeman, a Thousand Oaks consultant who specializes in land-use planning. “It’s not as if projects go forward without analysis of the impacts.”

But Zukowski contends that the city’s impact reports often focus just on the first few years of a development’s life--how much it would cost to widen a road or expand a playground to accommodate the project.

“Development fees are like a shot of adrenaline, but after five years we find that the city’s putting out more than it ever received,” Zukowski said. “We’re looking at the very short term.”

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp agreed. “Obviously, if we keep building all these projects, that adds to the workload of law enforcement,” she said. “And we haven’t had the staffing to keep up.”

The city’s development allotment system, refined in 1990, requires planners to rank projects on a scale of one to 10. Developers get extra points for providing amenities such as bike trails or energy-efficient homes. They earn low ratings for creating traffic jams or chopping oak trees.

Projects that rack up the most points are deemed the most beneficial to the city, and get first crack at the development allotments.

Thousand Oaks allotments were coveted in the mid-1980s, but demand has sagged with the sinking economy. This year, planners have recommended saving 53 of the city’s 650 available allotments until the housing market rebounds.

Even when allotments are granted, they often just collect dust on builders’ blueprints. Many projects approved by the council and awarded allotments never reach the ground-breaking stage, due to a poor economy or bankrupt developer.

Given the volatility of the housing market, “We don’t agree with having development allotments in the first place,” said Dee Zinke, executive officer of the Building Industry Assn. “It’s not necessary to artificially constrain the market.”