Planning Panel Losing a Voice for Pro-Growth : Thousand Oaks: As Mervyn Kopp prepares to leave, he can look back at a record that has earned him a loyal following and has attracted enemies.

At the close of one of the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission’s patented six-hour hearings, Commissioner Mervyn Kopp rolled his eyes, leaned way back in his chair and threw up his arms with frustration.

It was 1 a.m. and Kopp’s veneer--the quiet, pondering commissioner--had slipped away.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, as the planners finished poring over blueprints of the giant Seventh-day Adventist project. “We should be looking for a way to make these things work, not picking them to pieces.”

Although he blurted it out in the early morning haze of a long, technical public hearing, Kopp’s statement sums up a philosophy he has held for four years as the Planning Commission’s strongest advocate of property rights.

Now with his term expected to end this month, Kopp is preparing to leave the commission.

“I feel like I’ve brought some new ideas to the commission and I’m ready to move on,” said the 60-year-old mortgage broker. “But it’s been a fascinating four years.”

Over the course of his term on the commission, Kopp went from a political unknown to a major force in the pro-growth corner. And he developed a reputation for tough talk, a quick wit and a firm philosophical foundation.

He has been a vocal critic of Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, speaking out at council meetings and rallies and drawing the ire of Zeanah’s supporters. He has been a major force behind area business, pushing for the addition of a financial element to the city’s General Plan.

And when it comes to his work on the Planning Commission, the 18-year resident of Thousand Oaks has been simple and consistent: He believes property owners deserve to use their land as they please, so long as they follow the city’s rules.

“It’s easy for us to sit up there and say no,” he said. “If we look hard enough, we can come up with a reason to deny any project. I simply have refused to do that.”

Instead, Kopp has compiled a voting record that would make a fan of any builder.

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He supported the Auto Mall sign, the Circuit City project, the Cohan and Raznick projects in Newbury Park, the Amgen and Janss Mall improvements and dozens of other projects that have sprouted up around the city.

His firm stand on growth--arguably the city’s most volatile issue--has earned him a loyal following. And it has attracted vocal enemies.

“I don’t think there has ever been a planning commissioner with his philosophy,” said Zeanah, who makes no effort to hide her disdain for Kopp.

“He bases his decisions on what he thinks, regardless of what the city’s policies are,” she said. “And he does it in a way that’s intimidating to the other commissioners.”

Commissioner Linda Parks, whose votes most consistently differ from Kopp’s, said she considers him gruff and confrontational.

After one particularly grueling hearing, Kopp sent Parks a letter that she said attacked her for talking too much at meetings. The note, she said, was “a private way of telling me to shut up.”

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But Kopp’s cutting style can slice both ways.

When an architect for Charles Probst pressed the commission to allow construction of an underground bunker on his North Ranch property, Kopp bristled at the plan.

“I refuse to play the fool here,” he said, referring to Probst’s previous violation of a commission ruling. “I don’t know what he would build if we approved this. It could be Barnum & Bailey’s for all we know.”

Commission Chairman Irving Wasserman said he knows Kopp’s reputation for being tough, but said Kopp deserves respect for being honest and firm in his convictions.

“Even though his convictions often differ from mine, and even though he sometimes comes off sounding pretty tough, he’s a nice person and I believe he always tries to be evenhanded,” Wasserman said.

Longtime Councilman Alex Fiore, who appointed Kopp to the commission, said it was Kopp’s blunt honesty that made him an appealing candidate for the planning board.

“He speaks out for what he believes,” Fiore said. “In many respects, I have seen him as a voice of reason on a commission where several of the commissioners are very unreasonable.”

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Developer’s attorney Chuck Cohen said Kopp brought a new and needed approach to the commission.

“Regardless of his style, I think Merv has recognized that planning issues have to take into account the economic interests of the city,” Cohen said. “That has made him an important voice up there.”

In 1991, after working feverishly on two of Fiore’s campaigns, Kopp applied to sit on the commission. His background in real estate, he thought, would bring a unique perspective to the task of planning the city’s development.

“Before I was appointed, it looked like a pretty hum-drum position,” Kopp recalled. “As soon as I moved to the other side of the podium it got very difficult.”

Kopp, who is jovial and good-natured but is prone to employing sarcasm when he’s frustrated, said he quickly learned he needed to be more guarded with his remarks and careful in considering all sides of an argument.

“I realized that the applicant would come in and tell us their project was the greatest thing since the Taj Mahal,” he said. “Then people from the community would come in and talk about all the noise and traffic and crime and pollution.

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“For me, the job was to take all of that, weigh it all together and reach a decision,” he said.

Through this consideration, Kopp said, he discovered that property owners were falling victim to a double standard. Every time a developer wanted to build, he said, neighbors would come in and fight it. That struck Kopp as unfair.

“People kept saying that a project was too big or too dense even if it met all the rules,” Kopp said. “I tell them, if the Chumash had a planning commission, none of us would be here.”

That does not mean, Kopp quickly adds, that he will blindly support any developer or business.

He voted against more signs for The Oaks mall because he thought it would lead to purple and green signs all across the front of the building. He voted against Probst because he said he could not trust someone who had already violated a commission decision.

And he abstained from the Seventh-day Adventist decision as a means of protesting the commission’s refusal to delay the case, holding the hearing without the applicant present.

Kopp has said he believes the decision to hold that hearing was a political ploy and was representative of a disturbing trend that shows divisiveness is increasingly seeping into a process where it does not belong.

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That, in part, has spurred Kopp himself into the political arena. During the last election, he became a vocal opponent of Zeanah, attacking her at council meetings and at political rallies.

He came to one commission meeting wearing a button that showed a “Z” with a slash through it.

“I did not want to attack a fellow city official,” Kopp said. “But there is only so much you can take before you feel you have to speak up.

“I was chafing at the bit,” he said. “I just decided that her philosophy of government was dangerous for the city and I had a right and an obligation to speak out against it.”

Kopp’s decision to go public with these feelings met with strong opposition from his detractors, who argued that such comments were inappropriate from a public official.

“That just struck me as distasteful,” Zeanah said. “He just throws all the rules of protocol into the wind.”

Kopp said that after he steps down, he will continue his involvement in the anti-Zeanah group Citizens to Save Our City and he hopes to spend some time advising future commissioners on the lessons he has learned over the past four years.

But first, he adds with a toothy grin, he will take time away from politics because he is engaged. Kopp, who is divorced with two adult daughters, said his fiancee, Esther Richman, was his childhood sweetheart 41 years ago when they were camp counselors together.

Now, as he prepares to leave the Planning Commission, he says he looks back on the experience positively.

“When I first came on to this commission I thought they spent so much time talking about so little,” Kopp said. “Now I think it’s clear to me that this is a very valuable process, and I was glad to be a part of it.”