Road a Bed of Turmoil for Neighbors of Adult School

Not even half a mile in length, the snaking stretch of Waverly Heights Drive near the Conejo Valley Adult School could be the most contentious strip of road in this city.

A curvy, narrow street in an old neighborhood, Waverly Heights is the setting for a long-standing dispute among traffic-wary residents, their City Council representatives and the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Physically, a metal schoolhouse gate divides two seemingly irreconcilable camps: On the south side of the gate live residents who, along with city leaders, claim the leafy little street can’t handle the adult school traffic, pollution and litter. Due north are students and school district officials who see a thriving adult education program in a suitable existing facility.

The ideological gulf between the groups cannot be easily spanned.

But at a rare joint meeting of the Thousand Oaks City Council and the Conejo Valley school board--scheduled for Feb. 27--elected leaders will try to remedy the Waverly Heights traffic woes, which were exacerbated five years ago when nearby Montgomery Road added speed bumps.

“This is, without a doubt, one of the most frustrating and challenging issues I’ve dealt with since I’ve been on the council,” City Councilman Andy Fox said. “My hope is that we can come to an agreement in a manner where we continue to provide adult education for our community, where we address the issues of the residents and where we get through it with a degree of mutual respect and civility.”

If firmly held beliefs are any barometer, solutions will be scarce.

Residents such as Sal and Jo Terrusa--who for eight years have lived 100 feet from the school’s back gate--want the adult school shuttered and classes moved to another site. After all, the retired Los Angeles-area teachers say, the building was built as a 600-student elementary school that fit into their horse-friendly neighborhood. It was not designed as a bustling adult education hub where most of the students drive to school.

“The school has grown and grown and grown,” said Jo Terrusa, pointing to a calendar she has painstakingly made of Conejo Valley Adult School class schedules. “They have grown very subliminally, without . . . .”

” . . . Without anyone checking them,” her husband said, finishing her sentence.

At the very least, the Terrusas say, they want the school’s back gate locked for all time, diverting traffic from Waverly Heights.

A Waverly Heights homeowner since 1972, Bruce Hyatt has seen the campus’ many incarnations: elementary, junior high, vacant, continuation high school, school district storage space and adult school.

The soft-spoken Hyatt has seen his neighborhood change accordingly.

“It was a very quiet and safe neighborhood when we came here,” the retired Rocketdyne engineer said. “Over the years, it’s become kind of a dangerous place, especially for young children who sometimes toss a football in the streets or for older people who might walk their dogs. It’s not the place that it once was.”

Not an advocate of closing the adult school, Hyatt also supports blocking the back gate, though he suspects residents on Montgomery Road would suffer as a result.

The Terrusas are fed up. If the city and school district can’t solve the problem, they say, perhaps the courts can.

At the other end of the spectrum is adult school Principal Dave Woodruff, who says his school serves vital community needs and that a few nearby residents are unappeasable.

“I think we’ve done everything imaginable and possible to mitigate the traffic problem and to be good neighbors and still have the school here,” Woodruff said.

To wit: Teachers regularly beseech students to drive slowly through the neighborhood. Classes have been staggered to decrease the traffic burden at any one time. There are never more than 300 students on campus at a time, Woodruff said.

Beyond that, speed bumps have been added at each of the school’s two entrances. Even the loathsome back gate--once open every day but Sunday--is used only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays now.

Personally, Woodruff said he would welcome the addition of speed bumps on Waverly Heights itself, but some residents argue the bumps wreak havoc on horse trailers.

While the flow of Honda Civics and Ford Escorts may be heavier than some residents like, there is no real traffic problem, Woodruff contends.

The city’s statistics tend to back him on that point.

While traffic is dense on Waverly Heights, it’s not any faster or more dangerous than motorists face in most Thousand Oaks residential neighborhoods, according to John Helliwell, the city’s traffic engineering division manager.

“There’s not an accident history here,” he said. “The street has had one hit-and-run in the last two years. . . . But we can’t measure misses. We can only measure accidents. The only thing we can do is measure data, not personal experiences.”

While the Terrusas dispute the city’s traffic calculations, the adult school principal says the numbers vindicate his school.

“I’ve probably thought of every solution possible short of closing the gate or having no people here,” Woodruff said. “I don’t know exactly what would satisfy [residents]. This is a school site.”

Complicating the matter is the fact that state--not city--laws hold sway with school districts. That fact, Fox said, can be tough for City Council members who want to respond to the needs of their constituents but who can only consider solutions such as adding speed bumps or blocking off streets.

“It’s the school district’s [jurisdiction] 100%,” Fox said. “We don’t have a policymaking role with respect to the school district--there lies the frustration. The community comes to the city about traffic problems, which the city can usually address. But the reason there is this traffic problem is a school, which we don’t have control over.”

On the main, Fox sides with residents, saying the long-term solution to the traffic dilemma is closing the school.

Not very likely, school officials say.

It would be fiscally foolhardy to move the adult-school program--which is popular, makes money and has no place else to go, Woodruff said.

“I think closing the school is ruled out,” Supt. Jerry Gross said. “That has been suggested, but there’s got to be another way to redirect traffic. It might be off-site parking, or it might be another option we haven’t thought of yet.”

One option that appeals to trustees and Gross will probably meet some resistance in this city devoted to open space. That option involves building an access road through Waverly Park--which abuts the school to the east--that would connect with a thoroughfare such as Avenida de las Flores or Janss Road.

“The only real solution is to put a road in there,” school board President Mildred Lynch said.

Her colleague, trustee Richard Newman, said he also supports a new road, but is open to hearing other suggestions.

“I don’t want to short-circuit the discussion process,” he said. “I don’t want this to be an issue where positions have solidified before anyone had listened to anyone else’s point of view. I want to hear what they have to say.”

Constructing a new road would require a coordinated effort among the school district, park district and the city, Fox said. Under a newly adopted open space ballot measure, adding a road might even require a public vote.

“That would be an extreme solution to the issue,” Fox said. “But I also recognize that closing the school is an extreme measure to ask the school district to take--they’ve put millions of dollars into that site.”

What’s important, Fox and Newman agreed, is for all players to enter the meeting with an open mind and their best Sunday school manners. The very fate of city-school district relations could be at stake.

“There’s no easy solution to this,” Fox said. “What’s important is that elected officials stay away from the finger-pointing and placing blame. That’s unfortunately what it deteriorated to” when the traffic problem was discussed at a fall council meeting.

That rough-and-tumble council meeting concerns some school trustees, who prefer to conduct less confrontational meetings.

“They virtually went berserk in public, and I don’t hope to see that again,” Newman said. “I think that would damage relations with the school district for years to come over--in essence--speed bumps.”

Trepidation aside, most players express a quiet optimism about the upcoming joint meeting.

“Reasonable people can almost always come up with solutions to these kinds of problems,” Gross said. “The city and the school district are very reasonable kinds of people and are really committed to what’s best for this city and this school district. I firmly believe that.”