ELECTIONS THOUSAND OAKS COUNCIL : Candidates Dig Into Concerns About the Local Environment

They drive home from Los Angeles. They drive home from the San Fernando Valley. Or maybe they only go from one end of Thousand Oaks to the other at the end of their workday.

But regardless of where they came from, residents of the Conejo Valley share something, a kind of end-of-the-day stretch expressing satisfaction with their surroundings.

They breathe clean air, they play on open fields with their children and they are surrounded by a landscape of striking peaks and rounded hills.

They want to keep it that way. To voters, preserving their treasured environment is essential. And as the six candidates for Thousand Oaks City Council vie for the open council seat, they are peppered with questions and requests from residents.

Voters want more soccer fields, more baseball diamonds, more equestrian centers, more golf courses and more trails for walking and running. Above all, they want a guarantee that the spectacular view out their living room windows is not going to replaced by a development.

These are tall orders. Given budgetary and growth constraints, fulfilling them all is nearly impossible.

“In the real world you just don’t get everything you want,” candidate John Ellis said. “You don’t get all the conveniences of a metropolitan city and still get to keep the pigs in the front yard.”

All the candidates say they favor balance in preserving the environment, but they offer widely varying approaches to gaining it.

Real estate broker and engineer Ellis would build taller buildings, concentrating development and leaving more space open. Attorney Trudi Loh is intent on coming up with new revenue sources for the park district. Homicide detective Mike Markey, having watched his sons’ Little League teams struggle to find places to play, would push for more athletic fields.

Businessman Ekbal Quidwai would stick closely to the city’s General Plan, cutting fat from other areas of the budget to use on environmental issues. Ramaul Rush, a juvenile dependency court investigator, would make protecting streams and wildlife a top priority. And mobile carwash owner Lance Winslow said he wants to attract more environmentally friendly companies to Thousand Oaks.

For whomever is elected to the coveted fifth council seat, a crucial step in protecting the environment will be working in close collaboration with the area’s park district.

Formed in 1963, the Conejo Recreation and Park District owns and manages 35 parks, six recreation centers and sponsors more than 2,500 programs for residents in Thousand Oaks.

The park district has a general fund budget of $7.8 million this year. But because it is a special district, the state has dipped into the park budget over the past few years to fund schools instead. Since 1992, the district has been forced to slash its number of full-time employees from 103 to 75, and it has lost $2.5 million in property tax revenue to state cuts.

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The cuts have resulted in a moratorium on acquisition and development of new park facilities, which includes athletic fields. Without creative community--and City Council--input, the district cannot continue to grow and improve.

In addition, the Conejo Open Space Conservation Authority, a joint venture between park district and city which funds and manages open space acquisition, is also up against a financial brick wall. Although the agency has gained widespread notice for its innovations in land acquisitions--it won the top environmental award from the California League of Cities last year--it has not been able to make any purchases since 1993.

Because there is no more money to acquire land--completing the ring of green around the city--the agency has to rely on gifts and deals with developers to grow.

Acquisitions from major developments, such as Lang Ranch and Dos Vientos, will add to the agency’s cache of open space in coming years. But once the agency gets the land it has been promised by developers, it will have to build trails and parking lots, hire more rangers and expend money just to maintain the treasured acreage.

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“There is a lot more to it than just having it,” said park district General Manager Tex Ward, who also serves as the co-administrator for the Conejo Open Space Conservation Authority. “You’ve got to take care of it.”

Candidate Quidwai blames the lack of money for parks and open space on the city’s inappropriate spending elsewhere, particularly on construction of the Civic Arts Plaza. “Money is being spent left and right to sustain that building,” Quidwai said. “It’s just a waste of money.”

Loh, who has won the endorsement of the local Sierra Club, said she would focus on finding revenue sources for the district and the Conejo Open Space Conservation Authority.

“The biggest crunch obviously with respect to open spaces has to be coming up with a plan to ensure an income stream,” Loh said. “We cannot rely on the tax base we’ve had in the past from the state. We’ve seen they keep sticking their fingers in it.”

Putting in a golf course at Broome Ranch might be a solution, she said. Golf courses are generally good sources of income, she said. And though they are manicured and landscaped, they are still appealing environmentally, Loh said. But she prefers to wait for an environmental review of the property before making any final judgment.

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Markey agrees with Loh on Broome Ranch, saying he would consider a golf course if the environmental review allows it, but Quidwai and Ellis are both opposed to putting a golf course there.

“I do not think a golf course belongs on that land,” Ellis said firmly.

He said the community cannot afford to buy any more open space. But there are still ways to get land, he said.

“You can always coerce land from a developer,” Ellis said.

Loh said the city has not been tough enough in negotiations with developers in the past.

“Why do we have so many projects that don’t abide by the general plan?” she said. “The reason is that we have given away too much, we have not required adequate mitigation. We have allowed things to fall outside the guidelines we established.”

Two Newbury Park developments--the Cohan property now in litigation with the city and the proposed Seventh-day Adventist project--could and should be renegotiated to get more open space, she said.

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Markey said most of the major development is already in place, so the city cannot count on acquiring much more land at developers’ expense. But when he looks around at the empty hillsides that drew him to Thousand Oaks, he is already satisfied, he said.

“I’m standing out here at Conejo Valley Days right now looking at the hills,” Markey said in a telephone interview. “I can turn around in a circle and I see hills everywhere. I don’t feel like I live out in a city, I feel like I live out in the country.”

Rush said he is grateful to arrive home every night after spending the day in the San Fernando Valley. He would make preserving Thousand Oaks’ environment a top priority as council member, he said.

“I would primarily be concerned about traffic conditions and air pollution,” Rush said. “We also have to preserve our riparian and wildlife habitat.”

The city should consider building more athletic fields, Rush said. Markey agrees with him on that point, saying there are not enough playing fields in Newbury Park, where he lives.

After complaints from Newbury Park residents about parking and noise violations, the local Little League lost use of fields at Sequoia Intermediate School, and that void has yet to be filled. A community group is working with the district to build more soccer fields, but Markey said more baseball fields are needed as well.

“This is something that is a priority for me,” Markey said. “It’s not something that should go on for another three years.”

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Loh and Winslow also favor more athletic fields in Newbury Park and in central Thousand Oaks. Winslow also thinks the city should build a park for skateboarders.

Overall, Winslow takes a conservative stance on the environment, focusing his attention more on attracting “clean businesses” in the Amgen mold to Thousand Oaks, rather than seeking additional land acquisition.

“I’m not a radical Sierra Club type,” Winslow said. “I don’t think that is the right way to be. You need a balance. Sierra Club people forget people have to live and earn a living. How do you have good quality of life without a job?”

At the other end of the spectrum is Quidwai, a strong supporter of the ring of open space who considers himself politically aligned with Councilwoman Elois Zeanah on environmental issues.

“You should try to follow the general plan as much as possible,” Quidwai said. “There better be a very good reason or community benefit in order to deviate from it.”

Loh, the Sierra Club’s choice, says being pro-environment does not preclude being pro-business.

“Too often we hear too much campaign rhetoric about people who are pro-environment being anti-business,” she said. “That’s hogwash.”

“I think it is important for people to understand that a sound financial base and prosperous business community can go hand-in-hand with protecting the environment,” Loh said.