Heschel West project would strain local coffers

Cleverly concealed among other things, in what the Heschel West School is calling their "Additional Information of Proposed Interim School Student Carpool and Busing Plan," is the request that the city of Agoura Hills foot the bill for 75 percent of Heschel's traffic mitigation.

The cost of this mitigation, traffic lights, road widening, etc., is estimated in the millions of dollars, notwithstanding exacerbating our already massive high school traffic and the obvious impropriety of placing their behemoth campus adjacent to our most rural area and habitat. This of course is a request for the taxpayers of Agoura Hills to compensate for Heschel's decision to place the school where it doesn't belong in the first place rather than find a location where excessive mitigation would not be necessary, much like the alternative sites proposed to them and rejected.

When we are already proposing ballot initiatives in order to raise more money with which Agoura's public schools can buy the most basic of necessities, is it reasonable for taxpayers of this city to pay to support a few hundred children from wealthy families, most of whom don't live in Agoura and wish to attend a school that will cost Agoura's taxpayers millions of dollars?

I urge the City Council to take whatever legal action is necessary to see that at the very least, Heschel fulfills each and every condition imposed by the LARPC before putting in temporary buildings that could be there for decades, and moreover to stop this project altogether until such time as they see fit to accept an alternative location that will not cost our city millions and will not only fail to benefit, but will take money away from, our students.

I urge all parents of the thousands of kids who attend our public schools in Agoura Hills to express their outrage to the City Council that Heschel would have the audacity to even make such a request. Judy Varley Agoura Hills