Fox Wants the Public to Reach Out and Pick Plaza Project

It could be the dawn of direct-dial democracy.

Hoping to kick-start stalled plans to develop a city-owned lot east of the Civic Arts Plaza, Councilman Andy Fox has proposed a novel approach to finding a solution: Ask developers to submit proposals for the east side of the plaza and pitch them to the public during the weekly televised council meetings.

Then allow residents to call a 900 number to say yea or nay to the plans.

“It’s an interactive process,” Fox said of the push-button proposal, which the council will consider at its March 4 meeting. “People would vote by way of phone what they support and what they do not support. It’s really representative government at its [most grass roots] level, with the community having a direct voice in what they’d like to see done with their property.”

But, privately, critics dub the plan “Dial-A-Developer” and worry that people who are motivated to call a 900 number may not be representative of the entire community. Even worse, some fear that an unscrupulous developer could flood the lines and tilt the touch-tone results in favor of a particular plan.

“I certainly want to avoid any chance of manipulating the process,” said Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, who takes a dim view of the proposal. “No one is on record as more in favor of soliciting broad-based community input than I am, but no one wants it to be manipulated any less than I do.”

Fox dismissed that suggestion, saying that it would be statistically impossible for anyone to taint the results if 20,000 or 30,000 people called in.

“It certainly is worth a try,” Mayor Judy Lazar said. “It’s a fun way to go, but we’d have to make sure that something’s done to ensure a broad base of participation and a broad base of knowledge about this.”

All council members say they favor increasing the community input on what to do with the land, bought for almost $9 million in the real estate boom of the late 1980s.

Development of the 11 1/2-acre lot has sputtered to a halt. After a year of planning, the council shot down a proposal from Kilroy Industries of El Segundo for a 90,000-square-foot, two-story movie and virtual-reality center plus restaurants, offices and shops. The project, council members and civic leaders decided, was too large for the site.

*

To make sure the next proposal is appropriate for the plaza and palatable to the community, Fox looked to the interactive approach.

“It seems to me that using the conventional methods [of gauging public support] have not worked,” he said.

Under Fox’s proposal, the bidding process for developing the so-called private side of the Civic Arts Plaza would begin anew. With only the barest of requirements--park restrooms, a children’s museum and a police resource center--developers would submit their preliminary visions for the site.

City staff would check into the development firms--making sure they had enough resources to fund a large-scale project--and whittle the field of contenders to a manageable four or five. The final few would have a month to meet with the community, business leaders, architects and others to ready their projects. Kilroy Industries need not revamp its plans, Fox said.

Then it would be show time, with developers pitching their projects for 40 minutes or an hour during a council meeting. Knowing that they were pitching their projects to the public--instead of just the council--would prompt developers to be innovative and responsive to residents’ concerns, Fox said.

To increase the number of people seeing the pitches, Fox advocates doubling the number of times the meeting is rebroadcast to eight.

When calling in, residents could give a thumbs up or down to each project rather than selecting a single favorite. This would allow the city to tabulate which plan appeals to the most people, Fox added.

The council would not be bound by the call-in results, he said, but would get a feel for community sentiment.

The city could foot the bill for the plan, which a Pacific Bell spokeswoman said would cost about $1,400 a month. Or, Fox said, the 50 cents a call could support the anti-drug DARE program or the library.

Councilwoman Linda Parks said she had several concerns about the plan, including the cost and any efforts to limit the number of plans that residents could view.

“I would be probably more inclined to support it if it’s free, because that’s the basis of our democracy,” she said. “When we vote at the polls, it’s free.”

*

Knowing that not every Thousand Oaks resident watches council meetings on Thousand Oaks TV, Lazar and Parks said they would support further community outreach.

“I think that instead of dialing in your choice, I’d prefer that citizens who may not watch the meetings have a chance,” Parks said. “I like the idea of having the plans on display at the library or City Hall and then having people write in or call [council members] with their comments. I don’t know if a fair representation of the community would be dialing in.”

Added Lazar: “I think it certainly is worth exploring. Whether or not it would work, we’ll have to see.”