Community Center Gains State Funding

Sheila Kuehl said she held her breath early Friday afternoon as she scanned the list of items that Gov. Pete Wilson had cut from the state budget at the eleventh hour.

“It’s sort of like looking at a casualty list,” said Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), the speaker pro tem of the California Assembly. To her relief, the line item she was searching for had survived the governor’s fabled blue pencil.

That means the new community center for Calabasas and Agoura Hills will soon receive $1 million in state funds, twice the amount city officials had requested.

“I’m totally in awe,” said Greg Johnson, the Calabasas community services director, upon hearing the news.

Last year, money for the joint community center was sliced from the budget at the last minute. This year, Kuehl doubled the request to $1 million and stepped up her lobbying effort.

“After the eradication of that line item last year, it seemed to me that there was a possibility that I hadn’t made a good enough case,” said Kuehl, who represents the area in the Assembly.

This time around, Kuehl said, she emphasized at-risk youths and the diversity of the population the center would serve.

Wilson signed the budget Friday.

The $4.6-million center is under construction on Malibu Hills Road, on the border of Agoura Hills and Calabasas.

Two weeks ago, city officials gathered at the site of the center to accept a $100,000 donation from Countrywide Home Loans and to urge other businesses to follow suit.

The state funding will enable the cities to finish building and furnishing the community center.

“I just didn’t really expect it to happen,” Johnson said. “To get a windfall like this is totally unprecedented for us.”