Amend the Calabasas Municipal Code to Allow Eight Horses per Acre

Re: Los Virgenes Trail; Amend the Calabasas Municipal Code to Allow Eight Horses per Acre; & The "Farm House Property"

Dear Council Members,

It is very important to protect and safeguard our historic equestrian lifestyle.

Please allow eight horses per acre, as is the law in every other local jurisdiction surrounding Calabasas. Specifically allow the "Farmhouse Property" to rent horses to the public for trail rides into the public open spaces and parks in proximity to the City. Stop and resend draconian enforcement action against the owners of the "Farmhouse Property" for their attempt to provide visitor-serving uses for our parks. Support the owner’s application for a CUP.

The importance of safeguarding historic trails, equestrian recreation, and the equestrian lifestyle is all the more true in our 21st century video game and TV culture. Our youths are more often than not obese and too often hang out on street corners with nothing to do. Out here in the East Valley of Los Angeles, thanks to our equestrian life style, and active 4-H groups, we have not yet been cursed with gangs. Equestrians riding around their neighborhoods are the best crime watch you could ever wish for. Out here in the East Valley, gangs are now only miles away and all around us. As LA does what LA does best: design and build the most optimum gang environments, gangs will be here soon enough. As outdoor space and recreation is destroyed for higher and higher density, indoor and bedroom communities will continue to expand with obese children stuck in front of TVs and video games, or worse out with gangs.

Out there in the West Valley you still have many opportunities to enhance, and safeguard a viable mix of open space and recreation. The city of Santa Barbara is a great example of firm city planning that showcases and safeguards a variety of outdoor based lifestyles, which also encourage all the related and very strong economic foundation industries and businesses.

The equestrian industry is an over 40 billion dollar a year nationwide industry. In California we are still one of the largest multi-billion dollar industries in the state that brings in a very large array of various and very strong tax bases wherever we are not curtailed by shortsighted and very poor city "planning".

The people who own horses are also amongst the most stable income earners and tax payers as they must feed their passion and love of equines. You will never find their kids hanging out on street corners. Equestrians are a great asset to any community. Cities such as Anaheim, Norco, Chino, and many others are great examples of how the equestrian lifestyle can co-exist safely with great aesthetics in suburbia. Others such as Arcadia, previously one of the horse capitals of the world, once having had many illustrious equestrian industry historic figures, have zoned out what was once a horse industry haven not unlike the images we have of the rolling hills of Kentucky. Today the very famous Santa Anita Race Track is grid locked and land locked on the edge of great recreational opportunities in the San Gabriel Mountains, which are no longer accessible –or barely accessible for any type of recreational activities.

I will include in this letter my request to you regarding the the Las Virgenes Trail. It is very likely one of only two north-south trials at the western end of the Valley that can make the "Rim-of-the-Valley Trail" a reality by connecting the east-west trails in the Northern Valley with their east-west counterparts across the Santa Monica Mountains to complete the Rim of the Valley Trail in the West. Please also consider helping to make The Rim of The Valley Trail a reality.

I hope that you will demonstrate vision in safeguarding a diversity of recreational lifestyles in your area, and especially for equestrians. In so doing, you will actually safeguard your own economic viability, community identity and your tax base, to say nothing of your voters.

Thank you very much for your attention and careful consideration of this very important matter.

Sincerely,
Carol Ford
President
www.vhoa.org