LOCAL ELECTIONS : Prop. 180’s Defeat Puts the Squeeze on Parks Agency : Santa Monicas: Conservancy faces layoffs. Purchase of land in Topanga Canyon is now in doubt.

A day after voters rejected a $2-billion bond measure to buy parkland, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy found itself Wednesday in a familiar situation: underfunded and under fire.

Proposition 180 would have directed more than $85 million to the state agency to acquire open land in the Santa Monica Mountains between Griffith Park and Point Mugu.

Instead, the conservancy and a sister agency--the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority--will be forced to lay off more than one-third of their staffs and put off critical property acquisitions as their limited funding dwindles even further, said Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director.

Even so, Edmiston refused to concede total defeat. He said the conservancy is still owed more than $13 million by the National Park Service for other acquisitions in the mountains and still has small amounts of cash in accounts earmarked for special projects.

“We’re not going to sit back and say, ‘The people have spoken,’ and let the environment of Santa Monica Mountains go down the tubes,” he said.

But Proposition 180’s failure puts into question whether the conservancy will be able to pull off what was heralded a few months ago as one of its greatest accomplishments: the last-minute, $19.9-million purchase of Canyon Oaks Estates, a huge swath of Topanga Canyon proposed for development.

Some critics outside the agency doubt whether the conservancy will be able to come up with the $5.8 million it still owes on part of the property before next year, when the developer is entitled to propose a new project on that parcel.

And even some of the conservancy’s staunchest allies grumble that the high-profile purchase of Canyon Oaks was a high-priced mistake that leaves the agency without enough money to buy other important parcels at a time when vacant land is at its lowest prices in years.

The $19.9-million cost of Canyon Oaks was the highest price paid for a single property since the conservancy was created in 1979.

Conservancy officials conceded when they bought Canyon Oaks in April that they did not have enough money to close the entire deal. They even put other acquisitions on hold to come up with the initial payment of $14 million.

They counted on Proposition 180 not only to round out the remainder of the Canyon Oaks money, but also to put back on track the other purchases, which some contend are of greater ecological and recreational use than Canyon Oaks.

“Too much of the conservancy’s money has gone into politically sexy projects and not enough of it has gone into real parks,” said Dave Brown, a Calabasas city planning commissioner and member of the conservancy’s board.

Edmiston conceded that the Canyon Oaks purchase essentially depleted the conservancy’s cash reserves from the last voter-approved infusion of parks money, Proposition A. But, he added, the conservancy’s mission is to acquire property, not to hoard its resources.

Moreover, Edmiston said, “It is really premature to sound the death knell” for the purchase of Canyon Oaks.

Counting on Proposition 180 was not unrealistic, he said, because voters in the past have been willing to fund parkland measures. Political consultant Mark Litchman, who has worked for the conservancy, said most parks agencies have no choice but to rely on voters to stay alive.

“There are no major sources of private funding for acquisition of open space,” Litchman said. “It’s a long fight, and it’s not up or down on one vote.”

Yet it is already a difficult time for the conservancy, which is under fire from some of its political overseers in Sacramento over its attempted condemnation of Soka University’s scenic Calabasas campus.

The conservancy wants Soka’s property, at Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road, to serve as a visitors center for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The school, however, refuses to sell and the two have been waging a legal fight that is now under consideration by the California Supreme Court. Soka, meanwhile, has lobbied state legislators who oversee the conservancy to try to stymie the condemnation proceedings.

There is speculation among parks advocates that the conservancy’s recent land acquisitions--Canyon Oaks included--have had more to do with winning political friends than saving open space.

Edmiston dismisses such criticism and says the price of Canyon Oaks was justified. “An honest evaluation of the resources is going to show that the Canyon Oaks property deservedly held the position that it did,” he said.

Even so, the purchase of Canyon Oaks disturbs many who follow the conservancy’s actions--some of them impatient property owners who are still waiting for the agency to follow through on purchasing their land.

For one thing, the real estate appraisal for Canyon Oaks was prepared in 1992, when land values were higher than current prices. Several independent property appraisers contacted by The Times said vacant land values in the Santa Monica Mountains have dropped significantly in recent years--perhaps by as much as 30%.

The final purchase price of Canyon Oaks was just $300,000 less than the $20.2 million set by the 1992 appraisal. Because of the rapidity with which the deal was closed in March, there was no time to update the appraisal.

State real estate officials said, however, it might not have made a difference because the developer--a Disney family trust--probably would not have sold at a lower price.

“Under ideal circumstances you might want a fresh appraisal,” said Bob Meier, the state’s senior real estate officer. “But I suspect the deal never would have been done with a lower appraisal. This property was in planning for 16 years.”