Panel Halts Work on Hill Canyon Project

The Hill Canyon Recreational Resources Authority, made up of the members of the Thousand Oaks City Council and the park board, has voted 9 to 1 to stop work on a proposed golf and recreational facility at Hill Canyon.

Councilman Andy Fox made the motion to end the project at the authority’s Tuesday-night meeting.

“I had no sense of where tonight’s motion was going to go,” Fox said. “That’s why I jumped out there early on. I knew I couldn’t support [the project], so I felt obligated to get out there and tell everybody what my concerns were.”

The City Council is scheduled to vote next week to rezone Hill Canyon as open space.

Councilman Dan Del Campo said he will drop a measure from that agenda calling for a public vote on the issue.

There is no need to do so because the Conejo Open Space Conservancy Agency will administer the canyon and protect it as open space, council members said.

Some park board members said they were reluctant to vote in favor of stopping the project but questions about its financial viability led them to support the motion.

“The more and more I’ve looked at it, the more and more concerns I’ve had,” board member Joe Gibson said. “Finances were the big thing with me.”

The lone dissenting vote was Susan Holt, chairwoman of the Conejo park and recreation board.

“I was a little surprised I stood alone on that,” she said. “We went through years of looking at all the issues, studying the issues and getting the correct consultants to advise on this. I’m not sure it was right to drop it right now.”