Council Reinstates Quarterly Newsletter

Looking to increase communication with residents, the City Council will reinstate “On the City Scene,” a newsletter detailing city programs and activities.

Council members voted 3 to 2 to spend about $45,000 a year to put out the quarterly newsletter, which will be mailed to every Thousand Oaks household. Councilwomen Elois Zeanah and Linda Parks objected, with Zeanah saying the money could be better used elsewhere and Parks saying the city should save money by producing a semiannual newsletter instead.

“I just have a problem coughing up this kind of money,” Zeanah said.

The newsletter was shelved in the early 1990s due to concerns that it was potentially in violation of state election laws governing the use of taxpayer money, because it could be considered a mass political mailing.

But City Atty. Mark Sellers wrote in a memo to the council that “provided no elected council member or office is named, identified, featured or pictured” in the newsletter, it was not against the law.

The newsletter issue did not go by without the council’s trademark bickering. When Zeanah argued that such a publication would cost too much, Councilman Andy Fox replied, “We just spent many, many thousands of dollars for a waste-water consultant to tell us what we already knew,” referring to the escalating costs of the ongoing fight over the upgrade of the city’s sewer plant.

“The waste-water remark is totally off-base,” Zeanah shot back, and the meeting soon broke down completely.

The first issue of the four-page, two-color newsletter will come out early next year. Among the possible topics for the first issue are city and community web sites, new city budget plans and code compliance programs.