Fiore Is Thousand Oaks’ Architect of Change : Politics: Councilman will soon end 30 years of service. He’s clashed with some along the way, but few deny his indelible mark.

Congressman? Piece of cake.

Senator? No problem.

President? Don’t sweat it.

Those jobs are nothing compared with a seat on a contentious city council. Dealing with clogged sewers and bumpy roads, irate neighbors and pushy developers has to be the hardest job in politics.

So says Thousand Oaks Councilman Alex Fiore, who has nearly three decades of experience backing him up.

Fiore will formally move into the mayor’s seat Tuesday as he enters the last six months of his 30-year political career. Set to retire in November, he’s ready now to muse on his long years of public service.

His first thought: The job’s a lot nastier than it looks.

“It would be a snap to be a United States senator because your constituents don’t know what you’re doing,” Fiore said. “The city council level is the toughest form of government because you’re eyeball to eyeball with everybody.”

On the city council, you have to reject your bridge partner’s project to build a dozen townhomes on a sage-covered hill. You have to turn down an old buddy’s scheme to build a huge shopping mall in the middle of Thousand Oaks Boulevard. You have to cite your neighbor for hammering away at a deck without building permits.

And as you’re voting against them, you have to look them in the face.

But regardless of friendships, Fiore said, you have to do “the right thing.”

For nearly three decades, Alex Fiore has articulated his version of “the right thing” while leading Thousand Oaks from an cattle-and-sheep town of 15,000 to a stucco-and-red-tile city of 110,000.

From the early 1960s, when he pushed for Thousand Oaks to incorporate, to the early 1990s, when he shaped plans for a splashy cultural center, Fiore has relentlessly molded the city.

And voters have seemingly approved of his leadership.

When he takes over the City Council’s wooden gavel in a brief ceremony Tuesday evening, Fiore will begin his seventh term as mayor. Elected to the council eight times, Fiore was the top vote-getter in all but two campaigns. Even in crowded races, he often received more than 50% of the vote.

Yet he never sought a seat on the County Board of Supervisors, never aimed at a berth in the state Legislature.

“The ability you have to get things done in the city is awesome,” Fiore said. “The further up you go (in the political system), the more you are a lone voice in the wilderness.”

Even his most gung-ho foes--and he has many--applaud Fiore’s dedication to Thousand Oaks.

“He has donated thousands and thousands of hours, and God knows how much abuse he’s taken over the years--including from me--and for that, I respect him,” said Ken Bauer, who organized an aggressive recall campaign to oust Fiore from office in 1991.

Like many of Fiore’s opponents, Bauer first turned against the veteran councilman during the blood-and-guts battle over the $64-million Civic Arts Plaza. In his zeal to build a cultural center, Bauer charged, Fiore ignored concerns about the Civic Arts Plaza’s size, cost and location.

Bauer and others gathered 10,640 signatures in their drive to boot Fiore from the council. But the county registrar disqualified several hundred names, leaving the group 162 signatures short of the number needed to place a recall question on the ballot.

Irate recall proponents challenged the registrar’s decision in court and dragged the issue out for months. Bauer still maintains that the group had enough valid signatures to prompt a vote.

A recall now, of course, is out of the question.

Fiore, 68, plans to retire in the fall. And, already, the accolades are tumbling forth.

“Alex Fiore is probably the most caring, most astute, most sensitive problem-solver who has ever occupied a council seat in Ventura County in the 30 years that I’ve been around,” Thousand Oaks attorney Chuck Cohen said.

But friends and opponents alike have noted a change in Fiore’s demeanor over the past few years. Always gruff and plain-spoken, he has become more cranky, snapping at speakers and shouting down his colleagues on the dais.

“Alex has lost some patience,” said Cohen, a former council member. “He was not cantankerous or difficult prior to three or four years ago.”

Unabashed, Fiore has cocked his hand like a gun and pretended to shoot himself in the temples to signal disgust. He has rolled his eyes and laughed out loud to show disagreement with speakers. During long meetings, he has clipped his fingernails, audibly, into the microphone.

And sometimes he goes beyond body language to lash out verbally.

During one recent exchange, Fiore tore apart the arguments of a speaker criticizing the city’s policy for appraising land.

As Fiore’s tone grew ever harsher, colleague Jaime Zukowski chided him: “I don’t think it’s right to debate the speaker.”

Fiore’s swift dismissal: “I don’t care what you think, Jaime.”

From the audience, Mary Harris shouted: “That was uncalled for, Alex!” Growling at her from his high-backed chair, Fiore responded simply, “Shut up.”

Fiore readily admits that frustration has shortened his fuse.

He’s still in the majority on the City Council. But he has never seen such a bitterly divided set of politicians joining him on the dais, has never experienced such brutal personal attacks during public meetings. And he’s never seen so many gadflies take up so much time at the microphone.

“It just drives you up a wall,” he said wearily.

His method of dealing with the frustration, he conceded, “might be considered abrasive.” But he doesn’t care.

“If I think your idea is idiotic, I’m going to say it’s idiotic,” Fiore said. “I’m not going to play around like a politician and say, ‘What a creative idea.’ If you don’t like it, tough. That’s my style.”

The flip side of Fiore’s temper is his wit, which flashes irrepressibly.

When someone told the council, after summer vacation, “We missed you,” Fiore responded, “What were you throwing?”

And when a hoarse speaker took a drink from the council’s Thermos, Fiore grinned and said, “Tell us if that’s too strong for you.”

Former colleague Bob Lewis, who served one term on the council in the 1980s, described Fiore as a “very keen wit” who “has always been a delight” even though they often clashed on development issues.

Lewis, like other past and present colleagues, praised Fiore, especially for his fiscal leadership.

A retired vice president and controller at Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne division, Fiore has served on the city’s Finance Committee for decades.

Shunning calculators, he routinely scribbles figures on a legal pad during council meetings, as he double-checks a staff report or pencils out a cost estimate.

His antagonists accuse Fiore of slick tricks--like juggling funds from one account to another to pay the Civic Arts Plaza’s construction bills. He also made enemies with his suggestion that the city dip into a golf course fund to purchase part of Broome Ranch--and then replenish the fund by building a championship course on the wilderness tract.

But despite the criticism, Fiore remains supremely confident that his votes reflect the views of most people in Thousand Oaks.

Alone among the current council, Fiore can vote against a pack of residents without spinning a long justification. The dozens of people who come down to protest certain projects seem, to him, “phony, pre-planned and pre-programmed.”

So he often brushes aside their testimony.

“I try to do what’s in my heart, what I know the people of this city want,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if 90 people come down and say they don’t want a project. It doesn’t matter if they call me names or write nasty letters. I know I’m representing the will of the people.”

The 90 people who come down to protest development, of course, might take a different view.

But Fiore offers an irrefutable response: “I’ve been elected eight times. I’ve got to think that means people generally like what I do.”

If voters tune into city politics, they at least know what he does. For Fiore articulates his views succinctly and clearly, with little of the mumbo-jumbo jargon that muddies most council rhetoric. And his political beliefs are straightforward, although he admits to registering as a Democrat in the early 1970s. Fiore now calls himself a Rush Limbaugh fan and has switched over to the Republican Party.

He believes, first and foremost, in free enterprise.

He believes that business owners have a right to run their businesses as they see fit. He believes that property owners have a right to develop their property. He believes that competitors should duke it out on their own, without government meddling.

“I get tired of businesses being over-regulated, and I get tired of overzealous environmentalists,” Fiore said.

“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like trees, water and clean air, so, to some degree, we’re all environmentalists. But some people just go crazy. They say, ‘Let’s save this little chocolate lily,’ even though if you do that, you can’t give people a place to live. To me, that doesn’t balance out.”

As Thousand Oaks grew, Fiore helped draft the rigid planning standards that kept the community orderly. He still favors strict controls to protect ridgelines and preserve the tidy aesthetics.

But now that just a few vacant lots remain to be developed in the Conejo Valley, Fiore has proved more willing to make concessions.

Whether it’s a bigger sign for Mervyn’s or a few more apartments in an affordable-housing project, Fiore has signaled his desire to relax some of the city’s notoriously stringent codes.

And that trend alarms his opponents.

“Certainly, Alex deserves credit for the careful initial planning of this city,” Newbury Park activist Michelle Koetke said. “But that good work could be undone with all the high-density, huge development he’s been cramming down our throats.

“It seems kind of tragic,” she added. “It’s certainly going to be tragic for the valley unless we stop him.”

Outgoing Mayor Elois Zeanah agreed, arguing that Fiore has begun to violate the principles that guided him--and Thousand Oaks--for decades.

“New leadership is needed now to sustain the quality of life he helped establish in this community,” Zeanah said. “We don’t need a new vision; we just need to implement (the old one), and that means getting tough.”

For his part, Fiore insists that he still cares about the city every bit as much as he used to, and maintains that his votes reflect the views of many people. But he agrees that, after 30 years, it’s time for him to step aside.

Before he retires, however, he’ll serve six months as mayor, presiding over the grand opening of the Civic Arts Plaza this fall. And even after he steps down, Fiore hopes to remain active in countywide commissions dealing with trash and other issues.

Whatever his formal titles, Zeanah said recently: “To many, Alex Fiore will always be the mayor of Thousand Oaks.”

Profile: Alex Fiore

Age: 68

Profession: Retired vice president of finance at Rocketdyne, a division of Rockwell International. Thousand Oaks city councilman since 1964. Longtime member of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District and the Local Agency Formation Commission.

Family: Married 49 years to Katy Fiore, a volunteer at Los Robles Regional Medical Center. Three children, nine grandchildren.

Quote, on plans to retire this year: “Thirty years seemed like a nice round number, and it’s time to give someone else a chance. Plus, you do get tired of some of the letters blasting you.”