CALABASAS : Delay in Parkland Work Questioned

Calabasas officials are demanding that the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy account for $750,000 it received three years ago under a development agreement for a subdivision. The money was earmarked for parkland improvements near the project, but the work has never been done, city officials learned.

“I don’t like this at all,” Calabasas City Councilman Marvin Lopata said at a meeting during which the council was working out final approval terms for Baldwin Co.-Village Properties’ 550-home subdivision at the end of Parkway Calabasas.

The conservancy owns 624 acres of parkland near the project, which it acquired in 1991 from Baldwin as part of the development agreement.

Under the terms, the developer must pay the conservancy a total of $1.5 million for replanting of native plants.

But the conservancy has so far spent very little of the money. Conservancy officials said they want to wait until the subdivision is finished so they have a better idea of how best to restore the area.

“Sure, we have had a lot of time to deal with it, but there are so many other fires that our staff is putting out,” said Paul Edelman, a staff ecologist for the conservancy.

He said most of the money is in the bank, earning interest.

“Nothing is being lost,” he said. “We’re socking it away for a rainy day.” Some of the money, he said, has been used to pay staff who worked on the project.

“We’ve just been nibbling at it,” he said.

The financially strapped state agency has come under fire from critics who say it is spending more on land than it can afford.

Edelman said Baldwin’s second $750,000 is about four months overdue. Baldwin officials said they will not pay the rest of the money until the conservancy spends the first installment. “There is nothing additional that we can do at this point,” Baldwin representative Nick Gorely told the council.

After some discussion, the council voted to require Baldwin to pay $50,000 as each phase of the project is done until the second $750,000 installment is paid off.

Calabasas officials said they have a stake in the outcome because many of them were involved in the negotiations with Baldwin before Calabasas incorporated in 1991. Lopata served on a cityhood committee that was involved in the negotiations.

Baldwin initially pushed for a much larger project, which the cityhood committee opposed.

Meanwhile, the area has been regrowing on its own with all the rain over the past few years, Edelman said. Also, he said, sheep that once grazed in the area have been removed. “If you drive by on the Ventura Freeway right now it looks outrageous,” he said. “The oak trees are healthier, there are no bare spots.”

The conservancy has various options about how to use the $1.5 million, said Edelman.

The agreement, he said, calls for restoring native vegetation such as grasses and shrubs. “Probably the first thing we would do is arrest any kind of serious erosion that is occurring.”