Thousand Oaks City Council

A former candidate for Thousand Oaks City Council who was arrested after disrupting a candidates forum with a bullhorn settled the matter Wednesday by paying a $200 fine. Daniel Avila, 25, pleaded no contest to a charge of disturbing the peace by using offensive language. Originally he also faced a charge of disrupting a public assembly, but that was dropped and the remaining misdemeanor negotiated down to an infraction, similar to a traffic ticket. "The D.A.

A candidate for Thousand Oaks City Council was arrested on suspicion of disrupting a public forum by telling organizers he had purchased a gun. Daniel Avila, 25, was arrested Tuesday at the Los Robles Greens Golf Course banquet room about 8 p.m. after becoming upset that he was denied a chance to participate in a candidates' forum sponsored by the Thousand Oaks-Westlake Chamber of Commerce.

Following a contentious six-hour public hearing, a split Thousand Oaks City Council voted early Wednesday to approve plans for a $40-million town center to be built next to the Civic Arts Plaza. The council voted 3 to 2 shortly after midnight to approve the restaurant and shopping complex that has been in the planning stages for years. "If you measure success based on aesthetics, this will be the most beautiful project anywhere in Thousand Oaks," said Mayor Robert L.

The scales have tipped in a friendly Ventura County rivalry that often decides the most crime-free big city in America. Bragging rights for 2003 will likely go to the leafy suburb of Thousand Oaks, instead of neighboring Simi Valley. One of those two white-collar enclaves on the western flank of Los Angeles has claimed the mantle as the safest city in the U.S. with at least 100,000 residents for 12 of the last 14 years, with Simi Valley usually holding the edge.

Expecting the state budget deadlock to drag on until fall, the Thousand Oaks City Council is expected tonight to consider raising the pay scales of more than 150 city workers and giving council members a 10% pay hike. "It's the right thing at the right time," Mayor Pro Tem Bob Wilson Sr. said of the proposed salary adjustments for city workers. "They do a good job and they will continue to do a good job whether they got a raise or not.

After a nationwide search, the Thousand Oaks City Council's slow-growth majority stayed in house in choosing a chief architect of the town's principal planning blueprint to be city manager. Community Development Director Philip E. Gatch, 62, begins Aug. 1 as the permanent replacement for MaryJane Lazz, who retired from the city's top administrative post in May. Finance Director Candice Hong, who has served as interim city manager since April 1, will return to the finance job.

Saying the issue of affordable housing is too complex for quick solutions, the Thousand Oaks City Council has decided to form a citizens committee to study the objective of creating less expensive homes and apartments for those challenged by escalating prices and rents.

Kathy Maurice and her family moved to Thousand Oaks nearly four decades ago when she was in the third grade. She remembers having to wait for builders to complete her parents' three-bedroom, two-bath house, which cost less than $30,000. Today, properties in the older Newbury Park neighborhood where she rents a home sell for upwards of $450,000.

With education dollars from Sacramento jeopardized by the state budget crisis, the Thousand Oaks City Council is poised tonight to approve spending $3.1 million to help the local school district make improvements to athletic stadiums at three high schools.

After removing $1 million tied to demolishing one of the city's oldest schools and delaying $262,000 in salary adjustments, the Thousand Oaks City Council on Tuesday night approved a budget for next fiscal year. The nearly $168-million budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 is part of a two-year financial blueprint that anticipates revenue and expenditures approaching $158 million in fiscal 2004-05. "We're really happy that we have a spending plan in place.