Chamber to Bow Out of Festival : Conejo Valley Days: The annual event will be run by a committee of volunteers and nonprofit groups starting next fall.

The Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce has agreed to relinquish control of Conejo Valley Days to the volunteers that help put on the event, ending years of community squabbling over who should run Thousand Oaks’ annual western bonanza.

On Sept. 30, 1994--four months after next year’s festival ends--the chamber will officially turn control of the event over to a committee of non-chamber volunteers and nonprofit organizations. They say they can run Conejo Valley Days cheaper and more efficiently than the chamber has.

Traditionally, Conejo Valley Days has been organized by the Conejo Valley Days Committee, a group affiliated with the chamber. Recently, some old-time volunteers have complained that the chamber exerts too much control over the event and its finances--at the expense of nonprofit groups and volunteers who help stage the festival.

“The chamber’s been billing us for everything they did--paper, stamps, man-hours, everything,” said Linda Graham, the festival’s volunteer financial adviser and budget coordinator. “We can get somebody else to do it for a lot less.”

Chamber officials say they want to get out of the festival business because the economy is still floundering and the chamber needs to devote more time and energy to helping local businesses. “Our time is really better spent helping the business community,” said Bob Young, a member of the chamber’s board of directors.

About 30 years ago, it seemed only natural for the chamber to take over sponsorship of the event from what was then called the Conejo Valley Activity Committee, said Mary Ann Keller, a Thousand Oaks resident who has been involved with the event almost since its inception 38 years ago.

The two organizations were both small operations that shared the same office and the same outlook on Conejo Valley Days, she said.

“The event started out for the purpose of (all profits) going back into the community,” she said.

Over the years, Conejo Valley Days proceeds have funded campus projects at local high schools and gone into the coffers of local social service organizations, event volunteers say.

Event organizers have begun disagreeing, however, on whose festival it is. Conejo Valley Days belongs to the community, volunteers say. Chamber members disagree.

“This is a chamber event,” said John Kohlbrand, Conejo Valley Days’ vice chairman and a member of the chamber’s board of directors. “There is a group that has taken a proprietary interest in it, and it has lost sight of the fact that when money comes in, it is chamber money.”

Kohlbrand said that while the chamber still gives some event proceeds to local service groups and charities, it also ensures that it is fully reimbursed for its expenses since it has carried all the liability.

The dispute came to a head this year, when chamber officials on the Conejo Valley Days Committee adopted a new rule removing voting rights from anyone who had been on the committee for six years or longer. The change took the vote away from some longtime volunteers.

Kohlbrand said the change was necessary because attendance was erratic and the committee often lacked a quorum. Also, he added, chamber members grew frustrated watching committee members taking votes and signing contracts in the chamber’s name, when often they had no allegiance to the chamber.

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Volunteers, however, said the new rule was a ploy to reduce the power of old-time Conejo Valley Day organizers. So the volunteers revolted.

“We said, ‘Fine, then you run it yourself,’ ” Graham said. “We told them, though, that if they relinquished control of it in 1995,” then the volunteers would help the chamber run the event next spring.

Last week, the chamber agreed to turn over sponsorship to a new nonprofit organization, the board of which will probably be made up of many longtime organizers.

Chamber officials say this will be best for all involved.

“The chamber needs to focus on revitalizing and restoring the economy,” said Steve Rubenstein, the chamber’s executive director.

Added Gary Heathcote, president of the chamber’s board of directors: “When you are talking about an event of this size, you can’t rub two people together and get them to agree on any decision. This is a better event with a nonprofit organization running it.”