Cindy Nexon – Realtor

WHAT THE ACORN DOESN’T TELL YOU

Groveman, Wolfson, and Washburn Remand the Water Park Issue to Parks and Rec Commission
In spite of the fact that the April 28th city council meeting dealing with the water park proposal had such robust turnout that the council chambers were filled and people were sitting out in the lobby, Mayor Groveman, and Councilmembers Wolfson and Washburn voted to continue the issue to “community-based public workshops,” not of the full water park project, but the reduced project alternative of “just a pool” that carries with it the same fee-based, restricted access, the highly visible “sea of cars” parking lot next to the creek, massive concrete decking, fencing, grading, retaining walls, and a 4,000 square foot building with food concessions, offices, a community room for parties, storage of equipment and chemicals, thus laying the infrastructure for potential future expansion of the facilities.

81%-98% of Residents Oppose the Water Park
Mayor Groveman said he wanted to continue the issue to public workshops because he didn’t feel the community had spoken, though an overwhelming 81% of the speakers attending the meeting were opposed to any water park component at de Anza Park and Councilmember Maurer said she had never experienced such a deluge of mail and personal contacts, with 98% of the people opposed to the water park. Of those speaking in opposition, many were HOA presidents representing large blocks of the community, including Saratoga Hills, Malibu Canyon Community Association, Steeplechase, and Calabasas View. Kim Lamorie, president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, represented over 20 homeowners associations in the Federation’s unanimous vote against the water park proposal. A Malibu Canyon-initiated survey conducted to counter charges that community leaders were not representing the views of their residents, showed 92% of respondents were opposed. Other residents brought petitions signed by hundreds of adults and kids showing similar levels of opposition.

Nonresidents and City Employees Favor the Water Park
Of the seventeen people who spoke in favor of the water park, at least eight speakers were not even residents of Calabasas. They were from Woodland Hills, Topanga, Agoura, and Simi Valley and had come to urge Calabasas to build more facilities for them to use. Six speakers were city employees with a vested interest in supporting city proposals because they are paid by the city to run programs here.

Discounting those who are not Calabasas residents or city employees left only seven people speaking in favor of the water park, with two of the seven in favor of a pool, but not a water park,. (One person, however, wanted not only a water park at de Anza but also an amphitheater and a skateboard park.) Six of the seventeen speakers in favor of the water park were associated with the Tri-Valley Roller Hockey League located exclusively at de Anza Park, which, coincidentally, is where the Parks and Rec staff office is located. Although one would expect staff members to work impartially to implement the wishes and needs of city residents, and not lobby for speakers to support the issue, the Parks and Recreation Director’s threat in the staff report that “[i]t is staff’s intention to add more programs at de Anza Park.” seemed to blatantly disregard community opinion, and his presentation at the city council meeting was more of a persuasive essay in favor of the water park than a factual presentation of costs and options. Several speakers noted misleading and inaccurate information in the city’s “facts” and renderings of the facility.

Wolfson Wants More Opinions
Councilmember Wolfson missed much of the public comment due to a family emergency, but when Washburn asked if he needed time to listen to the commentary from the community before making a decision, Wolfson declined the need to do so because he was familiar with the public’s positions from the many letters and e-mails he had received. Nonetheless, he wanted to “move it forward for public workshops because I think that’s really an arena where everybody can give their opinion…”

“You will have more opportunities to be heard and not just to shout down the city council in whether we want to proceed with the process or not,” agreed Washburn.

Bozajian Hears the People
Councilmember Bozajian apparently got the message residents were trying to convey and didn’t need further clarification. “It would be a waste of time from my prospective because there is nothing that can come out of it that would convince me to vote in favor of what’s been proposed…I would feel it pointless to waste staff time additionally and the community’s time, and, frankly, our time in discussing this issue further and will not be voting to hold public hearings.”” He offered three reasons he would not vote for any version of the proposal:

Esthetics and environmental issues
“Those are probably the most important to me…If we alter the park in this manner, this is not something that is going to be easy to take down or change if we decide we don’t like it…Part of the feature of this particular park is its open space and natural beauty, where it is located, the rural nature of the area…When you consider the nature of the area and the community, the traffic concerns, the esthetic concerns, and noise concerns, the lighting concerns–all of those are going to have a significant impact and I wouldn’t want the park to be altered so significantly.” He expressed reservations about the “just a pool” component “for some of the same reasons on a lesser scale.”

Community reaction
“The overwhelming majority of the Calabasas citizens and residents who contacted me were opposed. I did get several communications from people outside the city who were in favor….I’m elected to represent the citizens of the community…

Maurer Agrees With the 98% Opposed
Councilmember Maurer started by asking staff some questions posed by the public about how chlorinated water would be handled. Groveman, however, in spite of his frequent admonitions about the importance of civility, which apparently do not extend to those who consistently disagree with him, interrupted Maurer’s comments and criticized her question. No longer intimidated by the “need for consensus,” i.e. lack of dissension, however, Maurer went on:

“I have never been inundated with so many e-mails, stopped so many times in every corner of the city, regarding this issue. I haven’t seen it happen–ever. And, in the six years that I’ve been on this council, and the more than 12 years that I’ve been attending de Anza on and off for hockey, I have never had anyone approach me asking for a pool.”

She revealed that the membership arrangement at the Tennis and Swim Center of allowing nonresidents to use the facility because it was funded with county money has been a topic of continuing informal discussion among city council members and suggested restructuring of county funding with Calabasas dollars to change the membership.

In summarizing the public comments she had received, Maurer showed the only two reasons being given for supporting the project were reasons that were not particularly top priorities or needed de Anza park for their fulfillment and that other priorities and options existed.

“Fun for kids and good for swimmers are the two top reasons I’ve heard again and again for doing it.
The reasons not to do it? I have pages of reasons not to do it.” She went on to itemize some of them, such as encroachment into the Mediterranean chaparral ecosystem, 150 parking places, 700 additional visitors a day during the summer, noise, traffic, environmental impacts, and expense, “We haven’t given our own employees a raise in over three years because we’ve been telling them that we have to be fiscally conservative right now…I can’t imagine going forward asking for any resources on this matter when the opposition is so clear…This doesn’t fit at de Anza…I think we need to reopen discussions with LVUSD and be creative with other pool solutions.”

Groveman Can’t Figure Out What the Community Wants
After limiting public comments to one minute per person, not providing extra time for HOA representatives as is the standard practice, and not allowing attendees to cede their time to community spokespersons, Groveman discounted the standing-room-only crowd that could not even fit inside council chambers, 81% of whom spoke in opposition to the water park, announcing that “I’m not going to deprive a whole bunch of citizens who know nothing about this…of a chance to speak…I want to hear everybody…We’re not up here to get scared by numbers…Community debate–that’s what this is all about–not just good, well-intentioned people who made it here tonight or who have sent a lot of different e-mails on both sides.”

The restraint of public comment and the tone set at the meeting dealing with the water park issue contrasts markedly with Mayor Groveman’s handling of public comment at the council’s April 14th meeting dealing with the Calabasas Lake crowd. At that meeting, Groveman not only did not enforce any time limits, he asked speakers how much time they thought they needed and even allowed multiple speakers to come back and comment more than once. One speaker received 12 uninterrupted minutes, another 8 minutes. Four speakers took 5 minutes; two others had 4 minutes each…and then they were all allowed to come back and speak again. Although there was much cheering and applause for speakers occurring at that meeting, Groveman did not threaten to take people out of the meeting for being disrespectful as he did at the water park meeting when the public murmured objection to the Parks and Rec director’s mistake in characterizing Deer Springs as having only three homes with swimming pools, suggesting that the westside residents of those “older homes” with “smaller footprints” were in need of aquatic resources on their own side of town, perhaps because it is the city’s erroneous impression that the overcrowding at the Tennis and Swimming Center is caused by westsiders. In fact, however, aerial photos show the west side of Calabasas has no fewer than twenty-five community pools and countless single family residences with pools.

While Wolfson, as mentioned above, didn‘t feel it necessary to review the public comments that he missed at the meeting because he already knew the prevailing opinion from all the e-mails and letters he had received, Groveman didn‘t apparently know what the community‘s prevailing sentiments were from either the written communications he had received or the public comments . “I don’t represent just the good people who come here motivated…I don’t just support all of you. We all support a lot of people who didn’t make it here tonight. We don’t know what their thoughts are.”

Maurer voiced the public’s fear that allowing even “just a pool” would create growth-inducing infrastructure that would open the door to later development increases.“You start with a pool and then you add on and you add on…”

Although she was again interrupted by Groveman, who tried to twist her words, “So you don’t even want to consider if the community wants ‘just a pool?’” she suggested that if there was such a desire, “Let them respond back to us at this point that they want a pool. Let them come to the next council meeting and bombard us or start e-mailing us. At this point 98% of the communication and the stops in the grocery store and everyone who has approached me from all areas of the city have been ‘What are you thinking?!’”

Washburn also revealed another public fear–that the issue on the agenda was actually a phased development as is so often done when developers have a big project with a lot of community opposition. “We’re talking about a three- or four-phase water park in de Anza Park. “ (emphasis added)

Washburn Defers the Decision
Washburn almost looked like he was going to break the Three-Musketeer Voting Block and vote with Maurer and Bozajian: “Because of the debate tonight, I can’t support the specific development or resources to explore a water park, pool, or some aspect of that in de Anza as it currently is assessed in the packet that I’m looking at tonight,” but then suggested deferring the issue to the Parks and Rec Commission to “examine anew what the city needs in the way of swimming resources…”

Although the public thought that was exactly what the city council was supposed to be doing that evening in its examination of the issue, Washburn did open the door to considering other sites for a community pool. “It could very well be that a pool at de Anza is a better answer or it could be that there are other places in the community to deal with that.” (emphasis added)

Maurer, however, recognized the extraordinary amount of communication the public had already offered the council on what the city needs in the way of swimming resources, “I think we’ve gotten enough advice here tonight.”

How to Reduce Public Input
After Wolfson clarified that the Parks and Rec Commission was being directed to “discuss the need for a pool on the west side of Calabasas based on the Parks and Rec Master Plan and, if there is a need, where would they locate that pool…” Groveman quickly added the typical developers’ strategy of dividing the community into small groups and conquering them by stretching out the process until they wear out the opposition’s ability to abandon their jobs and families to continue to show up at meetings to weigh in on the matter: “And they should have enough hearings to come forward with good recommendations.”

Maurer objected with barely restrained incredulity at the disingenuous nature of her colleagues’ comments, and challenged the Parks and Recreation director, “You must have done research on where a pool could be located on the west side…how many options are there? There aren’t any!”

The Parks and Recreation director admitted at the beginning of the meeting that the previous Parks Master Plan became outdated in just four years and had very little community input or feedback, though the city is now trying to hold residents to comments made in 2003. Interestingly, however, the public has never seen a published copy of the 2003 community survey that Parks and Rec conducted. It seems to have been only orally interpreted at a city council meeting.

The General Plan community workshops held on Friday evenings that had so little attendance also come to mind as an example of the Divide, Stretch, and Conquer method, as do the General Plan Advisory Committee meetings held on third Thursdays that compromised Federation delegates from attending General Plan workshops and the General Plan committee members from attending Federation meetings.

NEW SURVEY
In order to accurately represent your views at the community-based public workshops, we need to know what they are! Please visit our survey page for a link to our current survey and tell us what you think about the new water park options.

NEW DUES STRUCTURE
The MCCA board and attendant community members voted at the May meeting to simplify the Malibu Canyon Community Association’s dues structure, which will result in a savings for most households. Rather than charge $10 per adult in a household, with a maximum of two voting adults allowed per household, the revised amount will by $15 per household, with the same maximum of two voting adults allowed per household. Dues are, of course, still voluntary, but greatly appreciated for the minimal operational costs we have.After eight years serving us, our treasurer has retired, so dues can now be sent to MCCA’s president until we elect a new treasurer:

Mary Hubbard
5411 Ruthwood Drive
Calabasas, CA 91302