Voters Deserve a Voice

Under the democratic system, we elect representatives to make decisions on our behalf--big decisions and small ones, easy ones and tough ones. But when a particularly controversial situation comes along, one that involves millions of public dollars but no particular time urgency, we see nothing wrong with asking the voters for specific advice.

That’s why we support the Thousand Oaks City Council’s plan to hold an advisory vote on whether to build a public golf course and recreational facility in Hill Canyon. A few loud voices have dominated the six-year debate over this issue. It is proper for all registered voters to be heard before elected officials decide whether to move ahead.

No one disputes that Hill Canyon is a lovely place, a rugged retreat linking Wildwood Regional Park and the Santa Rosa Valley at the northwest corner of the city, dappled with wildflowers and carved by the Arroyo Conejo. The question is whether building a golf course, nature center, picnic area and equestrian and hiking trails there would invite legions of new visitors to enjoy it or would destroy it altogether.

Hill Canyon is hardly untouched. Near its top sits the city sewage disposal plant that last year dumped 86 million gallons of raw waste into the arroyo when El Nino floods washed loose an aging pipeline. Cars have been abandoned and trash dumped along its trails; target shooters and off-road enthusiasts have abused its solitude.

Yet its 284 acres are home to the endangered Lyon’s pentachaeta, a member of the sunflower family, and the threatened Conejo Dudleya, a succulent, in addition to many less imperiled species of flora and fauna.

The joint powers authority of City Council and park district officials who came up with the plan has taken extraordinary steps to be nature-sensitive. They hired a golf architect known for his environmentally conscious courses and asked him to keep grading and turf areas to a minimum and to work around the canyon’s oaks and wetland habitat. Yet even this careful design would affect 28 acres of wetlands and 75 acres of farmland and require the uprooting of more than three dozen oak trees.

Concerns that the plan might increase flood hazards downstream grew after the same deluge that burst the sewer pipe also eroded the banks of the Arroyo Conejo. Had that erosion damaged a multimillion-dollar golf course rather than a wild creek bed, even good intentions to keep the creek in a semi-natural state might have been washed away too.

There’s little question that Thousand Oaks needs to build a second public golf course somewhere to ease gridlock at the 36-year-old Los Robles Golf Course, which logs 87,000 rounds each year--an average of 240 every day. As an extra incentive, a golf course is that rare recreational facility likely to make money, enough to support its own upkeep and that of other parks as well.

When the City Council meets Tuesday, we encourage it to proceed with the advisory vote on Hill Canyon--but also to offer voters several other options for where to put a new public golf course. Voters deserve the opportunity to say more than yes or no.