Chamber vs. the city

The Agoura/Oak Park/Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce has adopted the strange tactic of buying ad space to publicly nag Agoura Hills elected officials. I don’t know of any other city where this phenomenon occurs.

The Chamber’s present issue, school funding, is a non-issue. Last March, the community wisely taxed itself. Measure E, the $98 per year parcel tax, was more successful than expected. Its success led to district-wide class size reduction.

The local Chamber of Commerce seems to lack knowledge of the division of funding responsibility between local and state government. While police, fire, local infrastructure and zoning regulation are all the funding responsibility of the city, education is not. Educational funding is a state responsibility.

If the Chamber is sincerely concerned about funding our schools, it will use its ad space to urge Gov. Schwarzenegger to return to the schools the $3 billion of Prop. 98 funds he borrowed and did not pay back. Jack W. Koenig Agoura Hills