Calabasas Council Challengers Focus on Need to Limit Growth

In a race that includes a number of neophyte politicos, the campaign for City Council has been marked by incumbents touting their role in establishing the city and challengers calling for new ideas to move the city forward.

Five first-time candidates and two incumbents are vying this year for three council seats, and most agree that protecting the environment from overzealous developers is one of the main issues in the March 4 election.

James Bozajian, a 31-year-old Los Angeles deputy district attorney, is a member of the Calabasas’ Community Policing Advisory Committee that has worked with the Lost Hills sheriff’s station to create crime-prevention programs for residents.

Bozajian said he hopes to continue that effort as a councilman. “The strength of our council lies in its diversity, and I offer a bit of diversity in that I have a law enforcement background.”

Craig Cignarelli, 26, said he decided to run because of his concern that the council was “catering to the special interest of a few people.”

He said he would like to see the city get businesses and citizens more involved with schools, as well as pay more attention to the western end of Calabasas.

Cignarelli said he is aware that people may know him for his friendship with Eric Menendez and for his testimony in the trial of the Menendez brothers, both found guilty last year of killing their parents. “I’m running on the strength of my own convictions,” he said, “and not that of my friend.”

Incumbent Lesley Devine, a founding councilwoman, said she has led the city “kicking and screaming into the 21st century” by encouraging it to create a home page on the World Wide Web.

Devine describes herself as an advocate of conserving the city’s open space. “When some people talk about progress,” she said, “they mean building any old thing. Other people mean bringing their families into a lifestyle that is comfortable.”

She said she would like to see the city improve its stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and wants to find ways to solve traffic problems, especially around the schools.

Toby Keeler said he is a slow-growth advocate who has chastised the current council for ignoring its pledge to maintain and increase the city’s open space.

“I see examples of new construction and new buildings that look just like what we got from [Los Angeles] County . . . and that’s what I thought we would address when we became a city,” he said.

Keeler, 52, is president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, an organization made up of several homeowners associations in the area.

For incumbent Marvin Lopata, 56, the main concerns are public safety and ensuring that the city establish a tax base while maintaining its small-community feeling.

“Certainly we can’t . . . say we got ours, now everyone else stay away, but at the same time, we cannot be in a situation that will not allow us to have the things we all came here for.”

Bob Sibilia said he was moved to seek office because of his dissatisfaction with the council’s handling of the Calabasas Park Centre project.

Sibilia, 38, helped found Save Our City, a group that protested the council’s stand on the project by collecting signatures calling for a referendum. The council ignored the call for a referendum and instead appointed a task force to study the project.

“The quality of life that I wanted when I moved here with my family was being threatened by the high degree of development in the city,” Sibilia said. “I don’t feel comfortable sitting back and presuming City Hall is looking out for my interests and that of my neighbors.”

Another candidate, Michael Tingus, said he wants to serve on the council to put to use his experience as a planning commissioner.

He said his primary concern is city beautification and implementing “traffic calming measures” along Mulholland Highway between Old Topanga Canyon Road and Mulholland Drive.

As an industrial real estate agent, Tingus, 31, said he is aware that some people might label him as friendly with developers, but he said the opposite is true. His experience often enables him to see through “developers’ tricks,” he said.