Mayor’s Plan Seeks Citizen Input Before Street Work

THOUSAND OAKS —  Mayor Andy Fox wants to change the way this city informs its residents and business owners about construction projects and road repairs that routinely affect their lives.

Fox is proposing a wide-ranging community outreach program in which city workers would meet with merchants and homeowners before housing-tract development and city repairs take place in their neighborhood. The City Council will discuss Fox’s plan Tuesday.

“What I’m requesting is a whole new approach to citizen participation, and that’s going to take some budgeting of money and staff resources,” Fox said. “But this is just good government. It’s the way things should work.”

Thousand Oaks currently sends written notices to people affected by most major developments or infrastructure improvements.

But Fox wants the city to meet with businesses and neighbors for any construction project of four houses or more and for all city projects that significantly affect a part of town. His goal is to get citizen input on how to make inevitable hassles as painless as possible.

Fox said his proposal comes after several not-so-smooth incidents--one in a residential area, another in a business corridor--where Thousand Oaks angered store owners and neighbors who found out too late that much-needed city repairs were going to cause major problems for them.

In one case, city workers failed to notify residents of the Shadow Oaks neighborhood that they were tearing up their sidewalks. “It created a pretty nasty situation in that area,” Fox said. “There were sprinklers torn out, main water lines severed from homes, all to fix the sidewalks.

“By the end of that, there was so much frustration that the neighbors didn’t even enjoy the improvements that were made.”

Bob Wickens, owner of the International House of Pancakes outlet on Michael Drive, said Fox’s proposal should help other businesses avoid some of the hardships that he and others recently faced in Newbury Park.

With Amgen Inc. expanding its campus off Rancho Conejo Boulevard, Wickens and other merchants found out the hard way that the city’s traffic detours were making it difficult for people to enter their establishments.

“It was a real concern for us in this area,” Wickens said. “Competition is tough already, and this construction is making it even worse.” Wickens and others called Fox and City Manager Grant Brimhall, who listened to their suggestions and sent city engineers to the area to discuss the problem with merchants.

As a result of those talks, city workers have changed the configuration of some turn lanes and made other minor adjustments that, by all accounts, have made a bad situation a little better.

“I think the mayor has a good idea,” Wickens said. “It can only help to get the input from businesses. This is still a problem for us, but it’s not as bad now, and they could have done this from the start.”

That is the point, according to Fox. Few people are going to understand the effects of construction better than the merchants and homeowners who live and work in the area.

“They’re the experts,” Fox said. “This city is 30 years old, and there are going to be a lot of repairs in the future. We need to include them in the process.”

If the council backs his proposal Tuesday, Fox said he will ask city staff to write a plan for implementation.