Critics Shoot Down Schillo Proposal

To Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo, the plan he floated last week to revamp the 1992 Ahmanson Ranch deal is just a final attempt to give his constituents a bigger slice of benefits from the $1-billion project.

After all, commuters from Thousand Oaks and Oak Park would bear the brunt of traffic that 10,000 more residents at the county line would cause on the Ventura Freeway, he argued. And his plan would bring $25 million to $30 million to those communities to preserve open space.

But by week’s end, Schillo’s colleagues on the Board of Supervisors said his proposal is a bad idea that won’t fly, because it allows the Ahmanson Land Co. to sidestep a commitment to dedicate 4,700 acres as parkland--the linchpin of the original deal backed by Gov. Pete Wilson five years ago.

“It’s dead on arrival,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said. “The whole rationale for voting for this project in the first place was that 10,000 acres were going into open space. Now we’d lose 5,000 acres. I’m not going to vote for it.”

A variety of other critics described Schillo’s proposal as little more than a publicity stunt to please his 2nd District voters and kick off the one-term supervisor’s campaign for reelection next year.

“This is political grandstanding--a campaign move,” said Mary Wiesbrock, director of Agoura-based Save Open Space, a slow-growth group backing Schillo’s opponent, Vince Curtis, in the spring election.

Schillo said his proposal has nothing to do with reelection.

“That’s just stupid,” he said Friday. “I think my job is to benefit my constituents, and that’s it. I’m trying to help the citizens of Thousand Oaks and Oak Park, and it has nothing to do with elections.”

But to analysts removed from the political fray--Flynn is Schillo’s board rival and Wiesbrock a persistent critic--the Schillo proposal appeals mostly to residents of his district, and could undercut regional efforts to create a permanent wildlife corridor from Santa Clarita to the Pacific Ocean.

“He’s up for reelection next year, so it’s good for him, but it’s not good for the environment,” said Ventura-based planning writer Bill Fulton, author of “The Reluctant Metropolis,” an analysis of Southern California growth that includes a chapter on the Ahmanson deal.

Rorie Skei, a top official at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said the Schillo plan would undermine efforts by state and federal agencies to ring the San Fernando Valley with parkland and separate the urban sprawl of Los Angeles from semirural Ventura County.

“Those properties in the Ahmanson deal are the highest priority,” Skei said. “They have to be in public ownership.”

Touted by state officials as the largest parkland acquisition in decades, the original Ahmanson deal was described by Ventura County supervisors as a unique opportunity to protect thousands of acres of rugged range land forever.

That is why, the supervisors said, they voted 4 to 1 to override the county’s growth-control policies that generally force construction of new communities within cities or next to them.

The new Ahmanson community--3,050 dwellings, a town center, two schools, two golf courses and a hotel--was approved at the Los Angeles County line in an area planned for open space. Even some environmental groups expressed support because Ahmanson and entertainer Bob Hope agreed to turn over 9,949 ranch acres to the public.

But the Hope and Ahmanson partnership quickly fell apart.

And now, five years later, after finally resolving the last of 15 lawsuits challenging the project, Ahmanson is back at the bargaining table with Hope’s representatives.

Under the 1992 agreement, Ahmanson must still buy Hope’s 4,369-acre Runkle Ranch near Simi Valley and his 339-acre Corral Canyon parcel in Malibu and turn them over to park agencies before it can pull grading permits and begin construction.

In a side deal with Hope, park agencies have purchased two of the properties promised to them in the Ahmanson deal--the 2,308-acre Jordan Ranch near Oak Park and 300-acre Liberty Canyon near Calabasas--for about $26 million. Ahmanson itself would deed 2,633 acres of its ranch to the public.

So as Ahmanson resumed talks in earnest with Hope in recent months, Schillo said he began to ponder how he could change the deal to make it better for residents of Thousand Oaks and Oak Park.

Runkle Ranch is so rocky it can’t be developed even if it is not purchased for parks, he insisted. And Corral Canyon isn’t even in Ventura County, he said.

“Runkle Ranch is good for a billy goat, up and down. I don’t know if that’s a public benefit because a few people would be hiking on it,” Schillo said. “So I said, ‘Wow, this deal’s going to happen, so let’s see if I can come up with something to reduce it’s impact.’ We were being shortchanged here as far as its impact on us.”

The irony is that Schillo’s argument echoes those of Los Angeles County communities in lawsuits to stop or shrink the project. The communities argued they would bear the brunt of the project’s traffic and smog, while it would funnel $35 million over 30 years to Ventura County’s general fund.

Schillo, who was a Thousand Oaks councilman when the project was approved, opposed the project years ago too, and last Monday he moved to alter it.

He calculated the cost of the lands Ahmanson needs to buy from Hope at $25 million to $30 million--or $5,500 to $6,500 an acre--based on the estimated value of other open space in the area.

Then he proposed Ahmanson instead spend that money to reduce its project by 500 houses--a proposition Ahmanson immediately discounted--or buy development rights on other vacant lands in Oak Park or the Conejo Valley.

“I think $25 million to $30 million spent in Thousand Oaks and Oak Park is better than spending that money on one parcel in L.A. County and one that’s never going to be developed in Ventura County,” he said.

City and county planners, however, said last week that all developable parcels in Thousand Oaks and unincorporated Oak Park larger than 40 acres have already been approved for construction.

“Oak Park is completely built out, and all the open-space lands have already been acquired,” county planning section manager Bruce Smith said. “To my knowledge, Mr. Schillo has had no contact with the planning division regarding this issue.”

And Larry Marquart, Thousand Oaks senior planner, said, “On a large scale, there isn’t any land that isn’t committed.”

Schillo, however, said Ahmanson’s millions could be spent on small parcels to complete the broken ring of hiking, bicycle and equestrian trials that surround Thousand Oaks.

Or the money could be used, for instance, to buy development rights from owners in the 2,400-acre Tierra Rejada Greenbelt that separates Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark, he said.

“Saying it’s a greenbelt doesn’t mean it can’t be developed,” Schillo said. A golf course developer contacted him recently about that very subject, he said.

Nor did Schillo exempt approved subdivisions from consideration for purchase.

“There is no doubt in my mind that there are parcels in Thousand Oaks for this,” he said. “If it’s not built on, it’s available for purchase and that’s what I’m looking for.”

Schillo also would favor shifting some of Ahmanson’s cash to Oak Park to reduce class size at schools affected by the Ahmanson project, he said.

Schillo’s proposal appeals to Douglas Hewitson, chairman of the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council.

Although there are only three small parcels in the entire community that are still vacant, Hewitson said he believes it’s good that Schillo reopened the debate on who benefits from Ahmanson.

“He doesn’t need this to get elected,” Hewitson said. “I don’t know of any candidate who’s announced who has a chance against him.”

Despite some ideas, Schillo said he would leave decisions on where to spend the Ahmanson millions to a 12-member committee if the Board of Supervisors is interested in the proposal at all.

So far, the other supervisors don’t seem to be.

Oxnard-based Flynn is against it.

Ventura-based Supervisor Susan Lacey, the lone vote against the project in 1992, believes Schillo’s change would make it even worse.

Camarillo-based Supervisor Kathy Long said she doesn’t know why Schillo would make such a proposal.

“I don’t see the win in it,” she said. “The win on Ahmanson was that 10,000 acres. This was to be a legacy we would leave for the generations, a wonderful contribution to preserving the Santa Monica Mountains.”

Simi Valley-based Supervisor Judy Mikels said she believes the county ought to leave well enough alone--even though Schillo’s plan to preserve the Tierra Rejada Greenbelt in her district might appear attractive.

“I understand where Frank is coming from,” she said. “But I like a bird in the hand. I like the deal as it is.”

Specifically, Mikels said she would like to see Hope’s Runkle Ranch preserved. The Tierra Rejada Greenbelt is already protected by county policies and the cities that surround it, she said.

“Besides, the Tierra Rejada is not virgin,” she said. “It’s farmed. It’s lived on. It’s traversed. Runkle Ranch is still relatively untouched. And it’s a wildlife link and a buffer.”

Mikels said she was aware that her predecessor, Vicky Howard, favored the deal in part because it would keep a Los Angeles County landfill out of a Runkle Ranch canyon.

And while Schillo insists sanitation district officials are no longer interested in that canyon, an agency official said Friday that the canyon ranked among the top four of more than 100 sites analyzed in the late 1980s.

“There is no current activity on it. We thought it was otherwise spoken for by Ahmanson,” said Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts engineer Steven Maguin. “But it still could potentially be a good site.”

As county supervisors lined up against Schillo’s plan, others involved in the original Ahmanson deal also said they oppose any alteration to it.

A spokesman for the Wilson administration said the state Resources Agency would like to see the project built as approved.

“We’re still hoping that the original 1992 supervisors’ agreement . . . is still going to happen,” said Jim Youngson of the Resources Agency. “And that’s what we’re expecting.”

Former Supervisors Maggie Kildee and Maria Vanderkolk, architect of the compromise that allowed the project, said they never would have supported it without the 10,000 acres of open space.

“If those properties don’t come over to public ownership, the whole deal is gone,” Vanderkolk said. “And I don’t know how he is going to maneuver around that. There were a lot of environmental groups that supported this proposal based on the open space, so if you kind of throw that concept away, it seems to me Ahmanson would just have to start over again.”

Actually, county lawyers are analyzing that possibility already, County Counsel James McBride said.

“There are procedural issues and legal issues of whether it can even be done,” McBride said.

Planner Smith said the county would at least have to hold a set of new hearings before the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, amend its agreement with Ahmanson and rewrite its statement of “overriding considerations” that justified changing the county’s master plan.

“And it may have to be something more substantive than that,” Smith said. “Of course, [Ahmanson] would have to make application to us for that.”

Mary Trigg, spokeswoman for Ahmanson, said the company is interested in Schillo’s proposal but much prefers to buy Hope’s properties as promised so it can move forward with construction as quickly as possible.

“We’re still in discussion with representatives from the Hope family,” she said.

But if that option fails, she said, the company would consider Schillo’s recommendation that Ahmanson donate $25 million to $30 million to a trust. The amount seems reasonable, she said. But the company has little interest in reducing the size of the project, she added.

Trigg said Ahmanson is discussing construction deals with several builders.

Indeed, a source close to Ahmanson said the company is far better off closing the deal with Hope than reopening discussion before the Board of Supervisors.

“You open that EIR and you’ve got Mary Wiesbrock just waiting to hold you up in court a couple more years,” the source said. “But the best thing that could happen for Ahmanson would be for Schillo to scare Bob Hope into thinking his deal could go away.”