Open Space – A Priority
The preservation of the remaining open space lands within Calabasas and acquisition of new lands for open space designation are consistently identified as the community’s highest priority. Open space is a key component of the City’s character, representing a scenic resource of great value and importance to the quality of life for Calabasas residents. Open space protection contributes to public health and safety, and creates opportunities for public recreation. It also protects significant environmental resources as many of the open space areas within and around Calabasas contain an abundance and variety of sensitive vegetative and wildlife habitats.
General Plan Approach
Please refer to the Open Space Element of the 2030 General Plan, for more information.
The high quality of life for Calabasas residents is dependent upon a high quality natural environment and protection of the area's beauty. The preferred method of managing remaining open space is to set such lands aside in large natural parks or conservation areas. One way that the City has done this, is by zoning certain areas as Open Space – Development Restricted (OS-DR) land. The OS-DR zoning district is intended for areas of the city with existing open space that have been development restricted through the use of deed restrictions, conservation easements or dedications of common open space as part of an approved subdivision. The OS-DR zoning district will also accommodate publicly owned open space land.
However, protecting such resources requires more vigorous action than simply setting them aside. Because the City's fiscal resources are not sufficient to purchase all remaining undeveloped lands, a crucial issue is how to protect environmental resources while recognizing the property rights of private landowners. Thus, the Calabasas General Plan recognizes basic property rights, and limits the intensity of area development to that which is consistent with environmental values and the carrying capacity of the land.
One of the keys to maintaining the overall environmental health of the Calabasas area is to combine open space preservation with environmental design and site planning that works with nature to minimize the loss of such resources, reduce the offsite impacts of development, and restore, where possible, the environmental and landscape quality that may have been destroyed by past actions. To that end and because no two sites are exactly alike, development requirements in Calabasas must demand protection of the environment, but must also be realistically flexible to allow developers and builders to better match their proposals to the environmental and landscape resources of their sites.
Open space in Calabasas should represent an extensive network of protected areas with a high degree of visual and physical continuity, and a systematic order of purpose. As noted above, the preservation of remaining open space lands and acquisition of new lands for open space designation is the highest priority of the community.
The 1995 General Plan identified a target of 3,000 total open space acres for Calabasas. This goal has been achieved and a new goal of 4,000 open space acres has been established. Therefore, in addition to continuing to seek the retirement of development rights for additional lands, improving the management of lands already designated as open space will be a priority for the City. For example, the City does not currently have a centralized mechanism for coordinating protection or management of this land use type. Many open space areas are the result of set-asides that were features of past development agreements. In some cases, management responsibility for these areas has not been made clear as part of the approval process. This situation can be avoided in the future by ensuring that when an open space dedication is associated with approval of a project, management responsibilities are made clear, and possible endowments for management funding are arranged before final approval is given for the project.
Acquisition efforts, which could include a benefit assessment district or bond issue, should focus on high priority parcels. Lands that are potential candidates for acquisition and designation as open space, in whole or in part, include several hillside properties that are current designated Hillside Mountainous (HM).
Tax Defaulted Property Acquisition Program
Under California tax law, failure of a property owner to meet the payment obligation of his or her property tax by the final due date of each year will result in the Treasurer and Tax Collector sending the property owner a notice of impending sale followed by a Notice of Auction. The default opens a 5-year waiting period for residential property and 3 years for non-residential commercial property during which the delinquent taxes, interest, and penalties accumulate until redeemed. At the end of the waiting period, if the tax remains unredeemed, the Treasurer and Tax Collector has the power to sell the property at a public auction.
Cities and other public agencies, however, have the right to request the L.A. County Treasurer and Tax Collector to remove a certain property(ies) from the public auction list and instead sell that/those property(ies) directly to them, without going to public auction. This is known as a Chapter 8 Agreement, which falls under Part 6 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code. The sales price of any property sold under this agreement shall include, at a minimum, the amounts of all of the following: (1) all defaulted taxes and assessments, and all associated penalties and costs; (2) redemption penalties and fees incurred through the month of the sale; and (3) all costs of the sale.
The City of Calabasas actively pursues such tax defaulted properties which have/may become available under the Chapter 8 Agreement, as part of its efforts to acquire additional land which can be designated as community open space.
