Thousand Oaks Council Quarrels Over Unifying Retreat

THOUSAND OAKS — Despite numerous calls for unity and an end to animosity and infighting following this year’s failed recall drives, it did not take long for this notoriously quarrelsome City Council to resume its old ways.

During an hourlong discussion Tuesday night that started with talk of turning over a new leaf but ended with the same old sniping, council members drastically scaled back a proposal by Councilman Andy Fox to hold an out-of-town team-building retreat.

Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, as it turned out, was in no mood to consider Fox’s plan for unifying the council--asking where that unity was when she was fighting a recall bid. She said it would take some time before she could again trust her council colleagues.

“I don’t want to say I’m vindictive,” Zeanah said, “but at the same time, I don’t want to be played for a fool.”

Eventually, council members unanimously agreed to schedule a workshop on council norms in January at the Civic Arts Plaza as they do every year--but this time with help from a professional facilitator. The council’s last recent “standards of operation” workshop, as the gatherings are called, dissolved into an angry shouting match and was abruptly called off.

“If we’re going to boil this down to one aspect, I think we’re wasting our time and kidding ourselves,” said a visibly frustrated Fox, who nevertheless voted for the enhanced workshop, saying he did not want to obstruct the wishes of the rest of the council.

“This discussion alone is a good demonstration of why we need this.”

Council members also voted to table a last-minute proposal by Fox to use the retreat to launch a community-wide goal-setting project similar to Simi Valley’s “Vision 2020.”

Councilman Mike Markey expressed a desire to try smoothing over council relations before launching any new projects, and Zeanah questioned the need for any new goal-setting efforts. Consequently, the council voted to separate Fox’s proposal, dubbed “Community Vision 2010,” from the retreat. City staff will now review the idea and bring it to the council at a later date.

City officials will also return to the council with an estimate of how much it would cost for a proposal by Zeanah to create a computer-generated model of Thousand Oaks as it will look in 2020.

When Councilwoman Linda Parks and Zeanah criticized Fox for wanting to formulate new council projects at an out-of-town retreat that few city residents would likely attend, the council’s fragile truce began to crumble.

“I’m trying to keep this as positive as I can,” said Fox, who maintained that Parks and Zeanah seemed to have orchestrated their criticisms of his proposals and that they mischaracterized his good intentions. “Let me just say [the criticism] was a coincidence that occurred.”

“I’m not sure why Mr. Fox made what I consider to be accusations,” Zeanah later replied.

Fox may find it easy to say “The recall is over” and it is time for city leaders to forgive and forget, Zeanah said, but the unsuccessful attempt to oust her earlier this month, and the deep wounds it left behind, will be extremely difficult for her to gloss over.

In an emotional speech before her council peers, Zeanah described her 10-month ordeal leading up to the Nov. 4 recall election, and the many personal attacks she and her family endured. Other than her ally, Parks, no council member or city official came to her defense, or even called her afterward to congratulate her on her victory, she said.

Instead, a fellow council member taunted her on the dais days before the election, telling her it would be her last meeting, Zeanah said. Another council member disparaged her to a friend, using “locker room” language so crude the friend refused to repeat the remarks to Zeanah, she said. And just before the recall was launched, Mayor Judy Lazar lit into her in a lengthy prepared statement, telling a roomful of former city leaders that she was unfit to serve as mayor pro tem.

Those and similar incidents over the past months have made it difficult for her to take Fox’s and Lazar’s olive branches at face value, Zeanah said, adding that she could not help but question Fox’s motives for proposing a council retreat and a host of new political reforms and community projects.

In addition to the retreat and the “Community Vision 2010” concept, Fox had proposed a “Three-point Plan for City Unity” hoping to address controversial Thousand Oaks issues, such as growth control, campaign contribution limits and the makeup of the council. On Tuesday, however, he said he had reconsidered one-third of that plan--a “slow growth symposium,” and hoped to expand that into “Community Vision 2010.”

In response to Zeanah’s remarks, Lazar said that she and Fox had also been the targets of a rival recall drive, and although it did not collect enough signatures to make the ballot, it left behind plenty of hard feelings as well, she said.

“Mr. Fox and I were subjects of a recall, and I know of you circulating a recall petition against me,” Lazar said to Zeanah.

“I never did that,” Zeanah shot back, suggesting Lazar had perhaps confused recall petitions with some disparaging caricatures of her council foes Lazar, Fox and Markey that Zeanah did indeed distribute. “You have been misinformed.”

After Zeanah said she did not see a need for any special council action following the recall, arguing that civility will not come out of a single retreat, Lazar said she, too, believed the effort might be a waste of time.

“I have some mixed feelings about all of this,” Lazar said. “Mrs. Zeanah, you and I have been here seven years, and we have been through several of these [discussions].”

But Markey told his peers they owed it to the community to sit down and attempt to work out their differences--or at least agree to respect each other despite them.

“We may not agree during the meeting, but we have to agree to disagree and be professional,” Markey said. “I’m trying to be very sincere--I’m being blunt here--but I really don’t think we’ve followed the standards we have in place, all five of us.”