Conejo Post

That about sums it up!  The Conejo Valley is small enough so that you can get around and make friends throughout the valley, and big enough so that there are all sorts of choices and variety.  And, we are adjacent to the big city… Los Angeles, and also adjacent to a fun place…Malibu, and close to unique places…Ojai and Santa Barbara.

This is my first post for the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s on what I like or what I think needs improvement in the Conejo.  Please comment on this too and share your thoughts, either in the comment area below, or by emailing to ConejoPost@yahoo.com.

My most favorite thing about the Conejo being small enough, is that an individual can make a difference.  After I moved to Oak Park 10 years ago, I eventually met neighbors and others who were active in the community and who had been able to make quite a difference.  Some had been able to save lands for a National Park.  Others served on a city council, a municipal advisory council, or a special district board, and were doing good things. 

The point is, these people were not distant and removed, to only be read about in the newspaper.  They were friends and neighbors, like you and me.  Which meant to me, that if they could make positive contributions to the Conejo Valley, or a portion of it, so could others, including me.

That was way cool for me to realize, and so I started attending the monthy meeting of my local MAC.  In the process, I learned a lot about my community and made some friends.  Then, I became aware of the fight to save Ahmanson Ranch for a park, and threw myself into that campaign in early 2002. 

I answered the call of Rob Reiner’s group, Rally for the Ranch, to ride their bus up to Seattle that spring, to lobby shareholders of Washington Mutual not to develop the Ahmanson Ranch property.  The bus trip was a crash course in the issues surrounding this proposed development.  I became inspired to also work with Save Open Space/Santa Monica Mountains in the effort, and attended and commented at all the Ventura County hearings on the Ahmanson development that fall.

As we know, sadly the development was approved by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors in December, 2002.  Then, amazingly, the state decided to buy the land for a state park in the late summer of 2003!  So, I believe the effort made by so many of us, both in Ventura and Los Angeles County, made a difference after all.

And, I think it was important that the Conejo Valley was small enough so that activists could be heard and large enough so that we could be noticed.

Posted by Janna Orkney