Tranquil Town Roiled by Recall Campaign : Development: Charging sellout, foes of a planned PriceCostco store seek to oust pair on City Council. Their adversaries call it the politics of hate.

Emotions are running high here over a PriceCostco store to be built in the northwest part of town, marring this community’s image as a sleepy place where disagreements are often resolved over a game of golf.

Residents who couldn’t name one City Council member a few months ago now are opening their checkbooks to a recall movement against two council members who in April voted to let the store into this tiny, upscale community of 7,740.

Opponents of the project need 1,274 valid signatures--or 25% of the city’s registered voters--to place the recall on the ballot.

Many opponents of the project say they feel that their elected officials have sold out to development interests.

“The citizens have lost control of government,” said Frank Abundis, a leader of the recall group. “Basically, we allowed it to happen because of the apathy.”

Council members, in turn, accuse Abundis and others of waging a campaign of misinformation in a plot to win two vacant council seats in November. Recall organizers, they say, have poisoned the town with their politics of hate.

“They are opportunists who will try to seize the moment and push their own agendas,” said Douglas R. Yarrow. He and Councilwoman Kristine R. Carraway are the targets of the recall.

Don Robinson, a banker who lives in Westlake Village, said he believes many people in town support the council’s decision. He has formed an organization called Westlake Village Citizens Against the Recall. “We’re getting calls constantly from people who want to get involved,” said Robinson, who ran Yarrow’s campaign in 1994.

Two other council members who voted in favor of the project, Mayor Kenneth E. Rufener and Berniece E. Bennett, have chosen not to seek reelection. Councilman James Emmons abstained from voting because he manages a shopping center near the site.

PriceCostco plans to build a 136,000-square-foot store in a 296,000-square-foot shopping center at Lindero Canyon Road and Thousand Oaks Boulevard. It is part of the Westlake North Specific Plan, approved in 1989, that allows for 1.4 million square feet of offices, a business park, shops and condominiums on a 130-acre tract just north of the Ventura Freeway and about half a mile from the Ventura County line.

Opposition to the project came to a head after an article in the Thousand Oaks Star, which appeared a few days before the April vote, reported that Rufener had called the project a “done deal” at a public meeting. Rufener says he was misquoted.

The mayor said that what he actually said at the meeting was that PriceCostco met all the requirements of the development agreement and that the city was legally required to approve the project.

Opponents of PriceCostco, Rufener said, have chosen to ignore the fact that the city would be liable for as much as $3 million in penalties if it failed to keep its end of the bargain.

On the night of the vote in April, council chambers were overflowing with residents, with many people watching the proceedings from television monitors outside.

During a stormy meeting that lasted into the early-morning hours, jeers from the crowd often drowned out council members’ remarks. The mayor rapped his gavel repeatedly for silence and admonished the crowd for refusing to respect the “democratic process.”

The audience responded with boos. In the lobby outside, a boisterous crowd chanted, “No PriceCostco.” Rufener finally asked sheriff’s deputies to quiet the protesters.

Later, after many in the audience had gone home, the council approved PriceCostco’s proposal.

“Many of the people who attended the City Council meeting were attending a hearing for the first time, and were frankly shocked at the lack of deliberation,” said Jim Shaw, leader of a group that later sued the city to block the project.

Critics of the council say that its failure to provide a larger meeting hall that night--and the fact that there is no appeal process for council decisions--demonstrates that the council often ignores the will of the majority.

In this case, critics say, the council has gone too far to appease real estate and development interests.

After the vote, opponents of PriceCostco divided into two groups--one, headed by Shaw, which wanted to sue the city, and another, headed by Abundis, which wanted to pursue a recall. Some PriceCostco opponents say privately they believe that Abundis’ group is obsessed with punishing council members.

Shaw said he didn’t want to make too much of the split, however.

“I don’t want this to be seen as an acrimonious split between two groups,” he said, adding that the lawsuit group does not oppose the recall.

In August, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied the group’s request for an injunction, stating that a new environmental impact report was unnecessary. Shaw said his group is undecided about an appeal.

PriceCostco opponents, Rufener said, have conveniently ignored the project’s history. He related how, in the late 1980s, the council saved the city’s cherished, privately run golf course from becoming a business park by voting to support a proposed development agreement, now known as the Westlake North Specific Plan.

The plan allowed the course’s owner, Westlake Associates, to commercially develop another parcel at Lindero Canyon Road and Thousand Oaks Boulevard in exchange for granting the city a 200-year easement on the golf course, which it also owned.

However, according to Abundis, a longtime Westlake Village resident who tried unsuccessfully in 1989 to block the development agreement, the council could have prevented the conversion of the golf course into a business park simply by refusing to grant the zoning change required to do so. Rufener said that while that is true, a future city council could have reversed the decision on the zoning change, and the golf course would have been lost forever.

The civic turmoil and recall effort in Westlake Village are not uncommon, said Christopher Leu, a Cal State Northridge political science professor. Residents of Westlake Village, he said, are like citizens of many cities who are fearful of losing control of their communities.

“It seems to be part of a politics of resentment that seems to be occurring against outsiders, whether it be immigrants or a PriceCostco store,” Leu said. “There is a generalized fear about anything large.”

Fearful of being overwhelmed, he said, residents are becoming more aggressive in their tactics. Many see recall as an effective tool in forcing elected officials to be more responsive to their wishes.

The theory, Leu said, is that “that old, gentlemanly way of politics doesn’t work. You’ve got to be in people’s faces. You’ve got to be threatening.”

Meanwhile, Abundis said his group will oppose Betty DeSantis and James Henderson, two candidates for the vacant council seats, whom they view as pro-City Council. Instead, they will support David T. Woodruff Sr. and Steve Hessick, both of whom were active in opposing the project.

Many residents say they believe that, barring a successful appeal of the judge’s decision on the PriceCostco matter, the issue is dead. Meanwhile, they say, the city should get on with healing.

“If the recall proponents want to run candidates, that’s fine,” Robinson said. “An election process is always a good way for people to air their views, and if they succeed, fine. That’s what the whole process is about.”