Calabasas and Agoura Hills City Councils - Blog #12

The joys of covering a city council meeting is something that every young journalist will learn about working at their first newspaper. I attended many city council meetings while working in Florida as an IHS Intern for the News Herald.

I wrote two or three stories about the Cedar Grove City Council while in town. The most recent one I wrote was about the name of the city. The charter for the city calls Cedar Grove a town while all the signs, stationary and everything else refer to Cedar Grove as a city. When a new city clerk took over and noticed the error he had the item but on the city council agenda. Before the meeting I called the Florida League of Cities and they told me that there was no difference and any local government can choose to name themselves a town or a city.

Another story I covered for about the Lynn Haven City Council was when one member, who was a local principal, took a job in Georgia but was remaining on the Council. One citizen who ran for a seat and lost demanded that this councilmember step down since he was going to be living in Georgia during the week.

Small city council meeting can be extremely boring when everyone agrees on everything and the council goes through the motions of accepting gifts and giving out awards. The councilmembers are humans and unually there are more intersting things going on behind the scenes.

I live in the city of Calabasas so it is interesting to hear about the people that make decisions that have an effect on my life and home. The big recent news is the recent election of Mayor Pro Tem Mary Sue Maurer who was at the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy meeting last night. The history of Calabasas dates back to the Chumash Indians and continues through the citys incorporation in 1991. The city is 12.9 square miles with a population of 23,123. The median age is 38.5 years with an median household income of $93,860 and a average home price of $1,624,522, which is higher than the average for Orange County.

The Agoura Hills City Council seems pretty subdue. The city itself incorporated in 1982 with a population of 23,200. The median home value in Agoura Hills is $647,000 about half of that of Calabasas'.