City wants the village, but not the school

Your editorial last week asks the questions, "It's hard to understand, for example, how city officials can move full steam ahead with Agoura Village but at the same time oppose the new Heschel Day School on the city's eastern border just a few miles away. Won't Agoura Village bring just as much traffic as the school? How can the city be in favor of one development and not the other?"

It's very simple to understand why the city is in favor of the Village and not the school.

The Agoura Village project benefits the entire community while the Heschel School compromises a unique well-established existing one for a small private interest.

The Village is in an appropriate location for a large commercial project; the Heschel School is not. The city can oversee that the Village gets built as planned and approved in a reasonable time. With the Heschel School they cannot. Heschel School wants to start and build as they go, starting with temporary buildings and no deadline for permanent structures or project completion.

Heschel School is depending on the city of Agoura Hills to foot the bill for access infrastructure, yet the city has no say in the school's planning. Old Agoura, the community that is most affected by the school, is adamantly opposed to the Heschel School project in that location. The city recognized and supports the valid concerns of this community.

The Los Angeles County Planning Commission ignored all the official concerns of the city of Agoura Hills and approved the Heschel School project with all of its unmitigated issues. In their hast to shirk their duty and pass the buck to the LA County Supervisors for a political vote, they left the door wide open for a lawsuit on those same unresolved issues.

There is some common ground that the Agoura Village project and the Heschel School have when it comes to planning, though. They both rely on a magical "roundabout" to solve all their traffic problems. Steve Casey Agoura Hills