Self-serving business interests are behind the drive against Home Depot

It’s been heartening to hear about so many Agoura Hills residents recovering from the early scare tactics used by the business group, masquerading as a "citizens" group, against the Home Depot development.

People are giving the proposal a second look and realizing the huge benefits and opportunities it would give Agoura Hills.

Along the freeway at the edge of town is the perfect place for our city to locate a tax-producing development.

Not only will it give us far superior places to shop than we have now, it will allow us improvements the city has never had before. Recreational facilities, road improvements, Kanan intersection and surrounding areas improvements would become fiscally available.

We now know that the spokesperson for the business owners group, Al Abrams, is a paid "consultant" (who lives in the Valley). The business group has also hired a "top gun" attorney group to push this past us. We are talking big bucks the business group is spending to finance a ballot measure which circumvents the opportunity for citizens’ input on the planning of our own city.

We certainly don’t want to sign any petitions that take away our choice to choose what we want. This is a citizens’ choice, not business owner’s choice.

The ballot proposal by them will forever circumvent our citizens as well as city government input on future developments of this size and even smaller. We should have the right to look at every development on a case-by-case basis, not have a law preventing proper review forever.

Don’t be fooled; refuse to sign any petition that tries to deny our input for our city, and let’s allow citizens to be properly reviewed by the city council, the planning commission and all the experts we pay for at city hall.

It’s their job to scrutinize projects for us, take our input, and if we don’t like what they find out, then we can tell them to turn it down. But citizens don’t deserve to have every future proposal sabotaged by a small group of business owners who look out for their interests only.

We certainly don’t need a ballot issue to take away our rights to decide our own city’s fate.

Thom Bancroft

Agoura Hills