Supervisor wants Oak Park to get its fair share from Ventura County





By Sylvie Belmond
belmond@theacorn.com

As a new year dawns, Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks wants to make sure that Oak Park residents get a fare share of county services.


  Budget shortfalls, public safety concerns and quality of life are among the chief issues on the minds of most citizens, she said.


Now that Oak Park is built out, residents are primarily concerned with quality-of-life issues. Ventura County plays a vital role in Oak Park, according to Parks.


Her job, she said, is to look out for residents to ensure they don’t pay too much for the services they get.


Not everyone believes that Oak Park is getting its fare share of the county’s services. Todd Haines, who chairs the Municipal Advisory Council (MAC) in Oak Park, said the council is very concerned about insufficient law enforcement.


"The sheriff is ripping us off," he said, adding the MAC plans to put more pressure on the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department for greater coverage in the community.


Although Oak Park has about 17,000 residents, only one deputy, who also covers other unincorporated areas, patrols the community.


"There is absolutely no excuse to have so little coverage. They owe the people of Oak Park an explanation for why we pay so much and get so little," Haines said.


"The sheriff has ignored us and it’s now time we get a minimum of two full-time patrol deputies in Oak Park," he said.


Recently, however, the sheriff’s department has been active in Oak Park. It has cracked down on graffiti and drug activity after residents expressed their concerns at a MAC meeting last month.


Parks and/or her assistant, Jan Osterhaven, attend the meetings to ensure that they’re in touch with the needs of residents, and they referred the recent complaints about graffiti in Oak Park to the sheriff’s department. "They’ve since done some superb detective work in tracking down the taggers," said Parks, who’s confident that apprehending the suspects will help to reduce graffiti vandalism.


However, budgetary constraints and an ongoing lawsuit will require creativity and perseverance on the part of the supervisors to maintain adequate law enforcement in unincorporated areas.


Sheriff Bob Brooks and District Attorney Greg Totten are currently suing the board of supervisors because of allegations they altered the funding formula of Ordinance 4088, thereby reducing the growth of public safety budgets.


Ordinance 4088 allocates the county’s share of a statewide half-cent sales tax to the sheriff’s department, district attorney’s office, probation agency and public defender’s office.


"I have hope that the sheriff and district attorney will drop their lawsuit against the county and negotiations will allow funds to be spent where they should be, on law enforcement instead of on lawsuits," said Parks.


Others Oak Park residents are concerned about aesthetics.


"Those of us who live in the oldest areas of Oak Park are discouraged and disappointed about the lack of efforts by Ventura County to maintain our sidewalks and parkways," said Harvey Kern, who’s lived in Oak Park for many years.


People who live on those streets in the community of Oak Park, Kern said, no longer take pride in maintaining their homes and landscaping because the adjacent public areas are in disrepair.


However, the older portions of Oak Park also don’t have homeowner associations, which regulate what can and can’t be done in a neighborhood, and Haines feels that’s part of the problem.


"So people are allowed to do things they couldn’t do if they had an HOA," Haines said.


The upside is that residents have a lot of freedom, and they don’t have to get HOA approval for everything.


Mitigating traffic congestion near schools is also a top priority for Parks. The county recently obtained Safe Routes to School funds, and it has plans to use some of that money in Oak Park to make roads near schools safer and to encourage walking.


To provide timely emergency services, the county will add a paramedic unit to the Deerhill Fire Station on Jan. 14. "This location will give residents greater access to emergency services when they’re most needed," she said.


Parks also said that she’ll continue to object to water rate increases in her position as a board member of the Triunfo Sanitation District and that her office will continue to have an open-door policy. "Communication between residents and our office is our highest priority," she said.


As the population in Oak Park ages, Kern hopes the Park and Recreation Department and school leaders find ways to meet the needs of local families in the coming years. "The Oak Park Library and the community center can play leading roles in this area," he said.


Traffic issues extending outside of the boundaries of Oak Park are also a concern, said Kern, pointing to an impending 101 Freeway/Kanan Road interchange improvement project in Agoura Hills.


"Many of us are worried about the expected traffic issues as construction begins on the interchange because Kanan Road is the primary ingress and egress for Oak Park," said Kern.



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