Interview Throws No Light on Soka Decision

The Jan. 10 interview of Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, is so full of baloney that it belongs in a deli.

Your reporter did bring one major fact to light: “Edmiston is the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.” It’s not supposed to be that way. The executive director is supposed to answer to the board of directors. But here it’s pretty much the other way around. It’s the tail wagging the dog.

Edmiston is capable, smart and a doer. He is also a loose cannon with no accountability and he has made some terrible mistakes. Sometimes he outsmarts himself. He has a tragic history of bad deals in the Santa Monica Mountains.

As for his board’s rejecting the Soka compromise, that decision was a setup. Having been given the scenario of that vote three days in advance, I was not surprised. The deal was to make heroes of certain conservancy board members in the eyes of the anti-compromise people.

But the conservancy is just one of three members (two are park agencies in Ventura County) of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. The authority is the actual litigant opposing Soka in the condemnation matter. The scenario called for it to vote to approve the compromise, and that would make it a fact, a done deal.

However, as my source advised me would be the case, there was an unexpected hitch in the scheme because of squabbling on the MRCA board. Lost in the instant euphoria (by the anti-compromise folks) was the fact that the authority didn’t vote on the matter at all. It still hasn’t. Those who should know believe Edmiston will make at least one more run at a compromise. Not incidentally, Edmiston is the director of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

Edmiston claims the conservancy does not have enough money to pay what he believes a jury would award Soka in the condemnation case. Plenty of well-informed people do not believe the money isn’t salted away for such an event. In either case, if he didn’t have the money in reserve, he shouldn’t have filed the lawsuit in the first place.

It is my belief that he is prepared to sell out property owners and other concerned citizens by working out a compromise and in the process blight the finest piece of land in the Santa Monica Mountains forever so that he can take moneys earmarked for purchase of the Soka property and spend it on less-desirable properties. The term “Machiavellian” may someday change to “Edmistonian.”

WILLIAM P. WELLS

Calabasas

* Joe Edmiston has continued to get into bed with developers and sell out the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in the name of “free” open space.

His latest episode is promoting the Ahmanson Land Co. “mini-city” in prime habitat and endangered species acreage if Ahmanson Land Co. will help acquire, at public expense, two parcels of land less valuable than Ahmanson Ranch and which are, for the most part, valueless for development--all in the name of reaching his goal of 100,000.

The Ahmanson Ranch development will destroy what is one of the last historic ranchos in Southern California, gridlock streets in the West Valley and Calabasas and most of all set a poor precedent--creating development in the specific area the conservancy was created to protect.

VINCE CURTIS

Sherman Oaks