Many Questions for Many Mansions

* Why is Many Mansions building the so-called Community House when the Shadow Hills apartments are in the red $4.5 million? Will they be asking the city of Thousand Oaks to bail them out?

The city already gave Many Mansions an $8-million bond to purchase Shadow Hills, a low-income apartment complex on Wilbur Road. Will Community House be another financial burden to the city of Thousand Oaks?

Why is our tax money going to the funding of these sour deals? Why did taxpayers have to foot the bill when the Police Mobile Resource [Center] was used to host a Many Mansions meeting on Community House? Why didn’t the city and Many Mansions inform the residents of what they proposed to build before all of the controversy started? If this project is supposed to be such a benefit to the community, why did the city have to use the police mobile unit to promote the project?

Why is Many Mansions such a privileged organization that it will receive the HUD money that Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury, who is not even a Thousand Oaks resident, collects from his mother? And why is it that Thousand Oaks Mayor Judy Lazar and Supervisor Frank Schillo endorse Many Mansions on a commercial on TOTV Channel 10?

Let’s take a good look at the board members of Many Mansions: Jill Lederer, Councilman Andy Fox’s campaign manager, Domino’s Pizza mogul, and donor of $150,000 to the Recall Elois Zeanah campaign; Chuck Cohen, attorney for most of the developers in the Conejo Valley; Supervisor Frank Schillo; Thousand Oaks Police Cmdr. Kathy Kemp; Miguel Osornio, president of Latino advocacy group HOPE. He has asked the city for a $5,000 grant and a $50,000 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to fund a crime-prevention task force in the non-English-speaking community. Isn’t that the job of the Police Department?

The only good thing that has come out of this is that Grant Brimhall has agreed to sign an agreement that Community House will not be used as a drop-in center, or a haven for illegal aliens, but rather affordable housing for single mothers.

SUSANA GRANA

Thousand Oaks