The arrogance of money and power in government often signals an end to meaningful citizen input. Has this occurred in the city of Calabasas? You decide.
When a year-long effort by citizen volunteers to update the General Plan is usurped by city staff inserting, after the fact, their own recommendations, including halfamilliondollars a year disguised as “workforce housing,” which is not housing at all, rather a free money program with no payments or interest for a select few at city hall; when $41 million is spent on a palatial civic center that can’t even house its own oversized staff (Agoura Hills spent $10 million including the land); when another half-million is spent over six years on a forprofit film festival, but not onecent given to support a local nonprofit student film festival; when senior staff drafts a resolution with provisions that ignore fundamental constitutional rights, and the City Council adopts it (No. 2008-1127); when resident concerns for the future of their neighborhood’s rural character which the city once promised to preserve are ignored; with over $21 million in reserves, controlled from the top down by a brash, oligarchical clique of arrogant, selfanointed despots, it begs the question: Who has allowed this to happen?
Three City Council seats are up for re-election next March.
Toby Keeler
Old Topanga
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