City Council — January 13, 2026

♪ I will now call the City Council meeting. Will the city clerk please call roll?

Is not here, excuse me. Council Member Newman? Here. Council Member Gutierrez? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Engler? Here. And Mayor Taylor?

Here All right tonight we have one closed session Miss Noonan will you please announce tonight's closed session

Yes mayor Taylor thank you We have one closed session conference with real property negotiators pursuant to government code section five four nine five six point eight regarding 1868 Thousand Oaks Boulevard

All right, there are no speakers on this item. So we will go into closed session now. You. The

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All right, we are back from closed session. Ms. Noonan anything to report?

Nothing to report.

All right before I ask to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I just want to give a shout out to Mr. Engler for a happy birthday yesterday so happy birthday yeah all right now I will ask if you're able to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Ready, begin.

This is the time and place for public comments. Speakers are requested to state their name and community of residence for the record. One individual has requested to speak in pursuant to council standards, that speaker is allowed three minutes. The yellow light displays when you have one minute remaining.

All right. And our first speaker is Ken Lamont. Yeah, please come up to the front. You have three minutes.

Hello Councilmembers, thanks for all your hard work for our city. I appreciate that. I'm a 45-year resident of Newberry Park and it came to my attention that there was the possibility of some rezoning of a property off of Kimber Drive in Newberry Park. I think its 3947 West Kimber. And it's, it has been a church that's up there on the hill. It's been there for years and I was also part of the general plan committee and so very aware of what's happening with the city and pursuing some of the parts of that general plan but I'm also a pastor, been a pastor for 40 years here in Newberry Park And one of the things I learned while I was on the general planning, general plan team was there's not a lot of places left in our valley that are zoned for religious purposes.

And so it's very difficult for church groups who are coming in and looking for properties to find a place to make that happen. They kind of end up having spots in commercial areas and stuff which aren't quite conducive. So I just wanted Let my opinion be known that I would love for that property to stay zoned for that use rather than changing zoning for purposes, whether it be housing or whatever. So that's what I'm here for. I know that there is one school that is looking at that property And actually as a member of the faith community and as a long time pastor for the area, I would love to see that happen.

That's all I'm going to say. Thank you. I knew you looked

familiar. What church are you at? First Christian? Newberry Park First Christian. Okay good to see you.

Yeah thanks guys!

Now I thought there was only going to be one speaker. We have two additionals, so normally I would call the next in line up. So first we have Laura Tribble and then followed by Heather Hamilton if you want to take a seat and follow after Laura.

Hi, good evening. I am a volunteer from 805 UndocuFund and I'm here to give you the board and the City of Thousand Oaks, Newbern Park in Westlake the latest numbers of undocumented or citizens or just immigrants that have been kidnapped off streets since the last board meeting So we had a nice protest on Hollycrest and Lynn, and it was a good turnout. And everybody came out to honor Renee Nicole Good who was murdered in Minnesota by an ICE agent without impunity.

And people were asking me is this really happening in our community? So I hope everybody's listening because yes it is. And since the last city council meeting on 12-925, the known number of kidnappings is 11 That makes it a grand total of 44. Two detained and released, two brothers who were US citizens one of whom was a minor student at Newbury Park High School was abducted by ICE agents and they were driven around then finally released when they proved their status but not before they witnessed ICE brutally kidnapping four other community members in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday December 17th.

And this morning in Oxnard, another incident involving a minor occurred. A 10-year old boy was robbed... I mean, I'm sorry, a 10 year old boy was nabbed by ICE while onlookers begged them to let him go and that he was just a ten year old boy. ICE has grown more aggressive and emboldened lately especially after the murder of Renee Nicole Goode And in this area, most recently an ICE officer pepper sprayed the air intake vent of a peaceful observer here on Thousand Oaks.

I just want to remind the community that there are people here taking care of our most vulnerable and we won't stop. Thank you.

Sorry, I ran in. Let me catch my breath, I seem old and out of breath now. Sorry, I'm just throwing this together.

Take your time.

Thank you. A little cardio workout. My name is Heather. Okay. I am here because it's all honestly just so sad. I have some notes, so bear with me. It's just really concerning that our vice president went on television and called people like me organizing against ICE to keep my neighborhoods, my neighbor safe lunatic fringe and part of a radical left wing network.

So I just want to tell you that that so-called network like what we look like here, we are not lunatics and we are not fringe When ICE vehicles like come into your community, it is terrifying. Everyone here should go out and see what it is like. We are not against ICE agents. We are not against... we are against the terror that they bring into our community.

And at Hollycrest, there are three co-workers who were stopped by ICE at 540 in the morning on Friday December 19th on their way to work. They're working. We are taking people who are providing for their families and their community. Within 24 hours all three were in Tijuana. That is not rumor, that is documented and those are just the cases we know of and the reason we go into the streets and watch because who is the oversight? For any of us who are athletes we have referees for a reason like we have people that say if things are fair and things are not and it is our right as citizens to see what our government is doing to our community members Everyone should imagine what happens to these people. We've all seen the videos and what happens to these people when no one's watching?

We all know that we are, you know, born evil. We are born in sin as a lot of people in here like to say. And if we were born in sin, what do these people who...what we see documented, what did they do when no one is watching? People, especially in our faith communities should talk to people who have been in these detention centers. They are concentration camps they are harming human beings.

It's the dehumanization and the torture of people that we should be worried about. That is someone's husband, someone's wife, someone's daughter, someone's child. And we are taking them and we are hurting human beings. If you would like to deport people, that is one thing. We don't dehumanize and torture people in the United States of America and be the greatest country on earth. We do not do that. That is un-American and unpatriotic.

Thank you.

Does the city manager have any comments on any of the public comments?

Just one quick follow-up on the gentleman that spoke on The Kimber Drive property. I believe you're talking about the one at 39 47 West Kimber, that is a for a church site There's no plans for any rezoning on that property We did have some some schools that were interested in that site It is owned for those religious use but school use is not permitted at that location So that's probably where the confusion Thank you, Mayor. I request we pull item 9H. Move the balance.

And City Clerk, please prepare a vote. Thank you.

And that motion passes five to zero. All

right Mr. Newman with the floor for nine each.

Thank You Mayor I will support this motion and I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve this, but I do have a couple of concerns I want to raise about it. This is an intersection near where my wife and I live so I'm pretty familiar with traffic patterns in this area along Arbella in the area between Moore Park Road and Westlake Boulevard One of the justifications for putting this additional traffic light at Pontus is that it should actually ease traffic. That instead of having a stop sign where cars in all directions accumulate, that a green light will in theory allow for smoother flow of traffic.

I have to say, I have not experienced that in practice. This will be the 10th traffic light between Moore Park and Westlake Inclusive and there have been times, not every time but often where I've hit every single one of those lights There are seven lights alone between West Lake and Moorpark, West Lake and Route 23. And many times I'll hit most or all of those.

And I don't know if there's coordination between the lights. I don't know if we should have that, because the eastern part of Arbella is a six-lane road and some traffic calming is probably beneficial so it may be good to have the lights be out of sync and slow down cars that are going well in excess of the speed limit of 45 miles an hour At this point where this design, it's proposed to go down to two lanes. It goes down to four lanes after 23 and then with this design at two lanes at this intersection I hope the design process will take that flow into account So that's one of my concerns. The other one has to do with additional traffic lights, we discussed this a bit in our staff meeting and just to get it on the public record part of this project in addition to new traffic light at the intersection would be additional street lighting.

I'm not for or against that. I do want to note that there was a citizen, a number of citizens in the area complained a year or so ago about food trucks in the area at night and one of the complaints of residents was that the trucks were giving off light that was going into resident's homes along Arbella. So again, my ask of this is that in the design process the lights are designed and I know there are ways to do this properly to provide shielding, to focus or aim the lights in a particular way but that we not add lights in a way that will again raise this light complaint from residents in the area.

So those are my two asks, but again I am willing to support this measure and with those asks I move that we adopt this item.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions from council? All right with that motion can City Clerk prepare the vote?

That motion passes five to zero.

All right next is our public hearing will City Clerk please open the hearing

Hearing advertised as required by law is open to consider agenda item number 10A, sale of city owned property at 401-403 West Hillcrest Drive and related development agreement. Speakers are requested to state their name and community of residence. Two people have presented speaker cards and pursuant to council standards speakers are allowed five minutes. The yellow light displays when you have one minute remaining.

Thank you. Presenting the item tonight is Deputy City Manager Akbar Alikhan. We also have Conejo Rec and Park District Manager Jim Friedel here tonight, so thanks for being here. Mr. Alikhan, do you want to take it away?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the city council. My name is Akbar Alikhan. I'm joined on the dais by our senior planner, Justine Kendall. Tonight we're here to talk about the disposition of 401-403 Hillcrest Drive specifically to the Conejo Recreation and Park District. Just a little bit of history, I think the council is familiar with the location of this it's located in the center of our city just north of the Oaks Mall off the Lynn Road exit north of Hollycrest Drive.

The site has served As a former city hall from 1973 to 1988, and for the last 23 years has been occupied by the Conejo Recreation and Park District under a 25-year term which terminates in September of 2027. Most recently the council has taken some actions to get to this point. Well, the first one actually started with an action by the Canal Recreation and Park District Board by expressing interest in acquiring the site as its permanent home for its headquarters and Hillcrest Center for the Arts during their March 20th board meeting. A couple months later, the city council authorized a city manager to explore terms of disposition of 401403 Hollycrest to CRPD And over the summer, both the City of Thousand Oaks and CRPD conducted their own independent appraisals of the property.

A couple months later on October 3rd of 2025 staff from both agencies met myself included with our finance director Jamie Boscorino and we were able to reach a tentative agreement on the sale which is reflected in tonight's staff report and recommendation And then on December 2nd, 2025 most recently the City Council declared the property exempt surplus land under the transfer of property to another government agency exemption.

There's a development agreement in addition to a purchase and sale agreement for City Council consideration tonight. The development agreement was a request by the Conejo Recreation Park District to maintain the existing land uses, land use designations in Specific Plan 17 through that very same development agreement. To be clear there is no project being proposed on this site currently.

The proposed DA preserves all land use designations for a period of 30 years, the purpose of which is to preserve the value of that property in the event that CRPD should need to dispose of the site in part or in whole. Furthermore it allows CRPD to borrow against the value of the property as part of their mortgage to acquire the site. Specific Plan 17 designates the existing land, these land uses shown on screen here.

The largest of which, the 27 acres you see in the top row is of course what we refer to as Fireworks Hill, the open space parcel and the parcels that are listed beneath it are the adjacent parcels to the south of it You'll notice there in the street address 403 West Hillcrest Drive and 401 West Hillcrest Drive are assigned to two parcels in particular. The building area represents approximately eight acres of the 62 acres in total.

In the purchase and sale agreement included in your packet tonight, the terms of which convey the property to CRPD for a total sale price of $30.4 million. It establishes a six-month escrow beginning tonight ending on July 13th 2026 or earlier. There are some hurdles that the city would need to meet over those next six months. One would be the approval of the development agreement in front of you tonight in the current action A confirmation from HCD on the surplus lands exemption that I mentioned earlier, that this is a transfer from one government agency to another.

The city will be required to furnish an ALTA survey and conduct that survey over the next couple of months and provide that to Canal Recreation and Park District and then procure title insurance on behalf of the buyer. Staff recommendation tonight, in summary this is a paraphrase from what's included in your staff report. There are six in total. The first is to approve the purchase and sale agreement related to the sale of 401-403 West Hollycrest to CRPD.

Second would be to authorize the city manager designee to execute all documents necessary to effectuate the sale. Third read ordinance and title only and wait for the reading of dagger 2025 7004 Fourth, authorize a budget appropriation and expenditure in the amount of $175,000. This is for the survey that we are required to produce as well as the title insurance.

Fifth, authorize a budget appropriation in the amount of $30.4 million in revenue from the sale of property. I will point out that it's in fiscal year 26-27 intentionally because the escrow would not close until the next fiscal year. And then finally find that all these actions are exempt from CEQA. With that, that concludes staff's recommendation. We are available for any questions along with representatives from the Canadian Recreation and Park District.

And we also do have available for questions finance director Jamie Boscarino and also senior planner Justine Kendall. Anybody want to start with questions? We got none. Okay no questions. We're going to open up for public speakers At this time, we will start with William Maple. And you're going to have five minutes and then following William will be Nelson Buss.

Good evening, William Maple resident Newbern Park Mayor Taylor Members of the council a question Who is the steward of our local resources historic resources? Well that buck stops with you You may not recognize it, but you are our cultural heritage board. This isn't surprising since the Cultural Heritage Board hasn't met in 20 years. That was back when Timber School was designated.

Before the recent gutting of the conservation element of the general plan, it stated our historical preservation policy will be historic areas, facilities, natural features must be preserved by a program of legislative controls, tax incentives, direct acquisition by public agencies and private initiative. Preservation through direct acquisition by a public agency is exactly what is before you tonight.

30 years ago as a resident, I requested an evaluation of our abandoned city hall as a local landmark fighting new city hall to preserve old city hall took two years then it seemed as a commodity rather than an heirloom Our old Civic Center easily exceeded all landmark criteria. So in 1997, the Hillcrest Center was designated Landmark Number 10 which wasn't mentioned this evening by staff.

At that point I thought it protected for my children and my children's children and my grandson coming in a couple weeks. I'd love to give each one of you a tour of the site. The MIA POW trees, the namesake Thousand Oaks tree, the old civic council chambers where they could see the whole valley and have a reminder what their decisions impacted. It's a lovely place, 70% of it is open space.

157 people competed for the design that filled the entire Thousand Oaks gem with competition boards. It was truly a lovely visit and asset to the entire Ventura County. With all that said, I believe the sale of the landmark to our park and rec department is a perfect solution but at probably half the requested price The property was donated for free for public use by the Jantz family.

I understand the desire to fund a bigger government center, but you didn't pay a cent for the land. It was a gift. CRPD donated half the construction cost. So they should obviously not pay for one of the buildings. I trust CRPD completely to act as a well-placed steward of the landmark, surrounding park and open space. Please consider a more appropriate $15 million price tag. Anything else appears to forget the large community effort combined to create our first built city hall? Thank you for your time and your service tonight.

Mayor, Council, City Manager, City Attorney. I'm here to speak in favor of this. Some of you may remember I came here roughly a year ago suspecting that some transaction would happen regarding that property. I am extraordinarily grateful to all of you for making this transaction happen. Preserving that piece of land up there, keeping that open space. Keeping that government facility part of our community something that can be used by CRPD to engage our community and to benefit our residents is huge and I am very grateful to everybody that has made that happen One thing I do want to add though is that $30 million price tag that you're asking for it. I hope you spend that money wisely.

I know that this building, this structure has been under consideration for a number of years now as something that we want to change. Originally this cost 68 million to build I believe and since then we found some shortcomings with it Directly next door, a billionaire sits on the rights to build housing, fill out the lakes at some point. And you recently voted to extend his time to not do that.

I know that you think that you can build this as the heart of our town but when you're leaving that empty and letting a billionaire sit on the rights for it and the money for what? You give him $100,000 a year he pays for the rights to hang onto that? At this point, we're not going to see money from him till at least what? 2033 at the soonest. How many of you will still be here at the wheel in 2033 seeing the first dollars come out of that guy's pocket?

We're nearly half a decade in now since approving that project over there. To see the city commit $30 million, $60 million, whatever it's going to be next to redoing this before any of our commercial partners around us want to do that is something I find A little suspect. So what I would encourage you to do is think of other ways that that $30 million can be contributed to our residents, to impact them today and in ways that can benefit the community.

One of the things that I've thought about for a long time is once upon a time we had a city council member who essentially ran his entire campaign on accessibility to Wildwood and reducing the impact to residents there as far as parking went on the streets The only result that I've seen of that is that there's a bunch of signs saying, please don't park on our streets.

Perhaps the city could think about making it more accessible for non-car. people to get into Wildwood Park and other parks in the area. Perhaps we can improve our bicycle accessibility for families, not necessarily recreational riders alone but people who actually ride with their children together to go to these parks. Perhaps we can start creating separated bike lanes within the area. We have a number of streets here that are residential streets that we've decided are throughways Arbalez being one of them we're talking about today, going between from basically the 23 freeway all the way down to Lynn Road. There are houses on that and we've decided it's a thru-way. Jane is another great one. Kingsboro. These streets could be places where we could actually allow the people who are residents within those neighborhoods to get on their bikes and get places so perhaps that 30 million dollars could be used for something like that With that, I'll close.

Thank you very much. All

right, thank you to our speakers. Do staff have any responses to public comments?

No follow-ups, yeah.

And then any additional questions from Council if any? Mikey

or Mayor? Go ahead, go ahead Al. Just to be clear the building does have some sort of historical designation, does it not?

That is correct, Council Member Adam. In April 97 there is a cultural designation assigned to that building.

Adopted when? 1997 or something? April of 1997. Okay, that's what I thought. Thank you.

All right then can we close the hearing? We will close the hearing and then I'll open it up for council to discuss or a motion. I'll go ahead and start.

All

right,

thank you Mayor. Nelson thanks for coming down. I know this was a concern for you as it was for other people, as it was for Conejo Rec and Park District and I think the staff, I have to commend them that they have come up with an elegant solution to this whole situation. And William Maple, I hope you feel the same way. It was our intent to sell the property And initially it might have gone to some sort of a private developer or whatever, but we listened to what you had to say. We listened to Conejo Rec and Park and the best decision was made in my opinion. Conejo Rec and Park will own the property. They'll manage the building. There's a lot of potential on that site. I don't know what you end up doing with it, but there's lots of things. It's a big site.

It could work out well. And we just take a city asset and we transfer it into a different asset, that's all. So I think, I have to commend staff for putting this together. It really worked out well in my opinion and I'd like to with that move an A, that would be the PSA and the development agreement for 401-403 Hollycrest. One through six. Did I get that right? Just

say one

through six. What?

Oh, yeah that. Mr. Engler, Mr. Pro Temp Angler

Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor. Yeah I would agree with the recommendation to pass this staff recommendations one through six. I just want to compliment the public when we talked about this as my colleague was saying about a year or so ago. We received input from the public and I think As democracies work, this was a way we were able to recognize that input for that property but also serve the greater public good that we saw.

I'm glad that we had such a willing partner in the Recreation Parks District. Thousand Oaks, we always pride ourselves on what a fine city we have We have that fine city because of our government partners. The Recreation Parks District, the schools all work together and there was a portion in our consent calendar where we gave a pass through money that we received to the schools districts to do improvements on their properties.

That's the type of cooperation that makes Thousand Oaks special and my hat is off to the Recreation and Parks District for being partners in this, this is a real feather-in-the-cap of Thousand Oaks and how we work together as a city

I'll just say something really quick. When we first started as a council trying to figure out what to do with this property, I got a call from Jim Friedel right away asking if I would come visit the site with you and where I really want to commend you. Number one, sometimes it's hard to be early and really become the leader and formulate a plan. You did that so well and you have a phenomenal board that got behind you. And I just want to commend you guys for a job well done This is exactly what we could ask for. We're partners in how we hopefully manage the city well and we appreciate you guys, and you guys really are phenomenal partners for us. Last I know that our supervisor Grell helped with some of the grant money to make this purchase.

Help provide some money for this purchase. So thank you guys Thank you to him and I am very supportive of this motion I think this is a great asset to put into your guy's stewardship. So, thank you We have a motion on the table City Clerk can you prepare vote?

And that motion passes five two zero and your ordinance title is An ordinance approving a development agreement with the Conejo Recreation and Park District relating to city-owned property located at 401 and 403 West Hillcrest Drive, APNs 525-0-060-125, 525-0.053-115. 525-0-053-175, 525- 0-060-135, 5250-053-195, 525-060-085, And 525-0-060115, Thousand Oaks, California. Development agreement dagger 2025-7004

A hundred dollars for anyone that can repeat that. That's good

City manager any remarks? Yeah, just really quickly at the conclusion that I just want to take a minute to acknowledge Akbar Alec on has done some tremendous work and my partner over at the kind of records in Park District Jim cradle in your team This has not been an easy Transaction there's a lot of complexity that underlies all of this It might seem like a simple and directed action, but really it's been said from the dais. This is really in that spirit of partnership very Proud that we're able to usher in that next generation And I'm proud that CRPD will have a home in the long run that they will be in direct control of and watch that grow and fall and I know there's still action by that board later this week, but just wanted to make sure I acknowledge the efforts of that CRPD team and OCKBAR in particular along with all the other support.

Thank you, Mr. Powers and we do this at the beginning of every year. We remember Mayor Emeritus Alex Fiori known as Mr. Thousand Oaks elected in 1964 he served 30 years until 1994 including six terms as mayor. He contributed significantly to the city's master plan and has many places named after him like the Teen Center Alex was a visionary, absolutely. With innovative ideas for our community including the ring of green around the city that we enjoy.

Most Saturdays he could be found at the Jans Marketplace engaging with residents. Alex passed away in January 2002 leaving a legacy of commitment and leadership that remains a vital part of Thousand Oaks history and future. We're now adjourned. Our next regular meeting is January 27th, 2026. Good night, Thousand Oaks.