Thousand Oaks to Consider Public Scrutiny of Land Sales : Appraisals: Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski says the process needs better monitoring. An opponent calls it ‘overkill.’

For a dry, rather technical issue, it’s generated quite a philosophical debate.

Thousand Oaks council members tonight will consider new guidelines for handling city-owned land. But their discussion will touch on a much broader question: when does citizen input help, and when does it hinder?

Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski has proposed asking residents to get involved in the arcane appraisal business, by screening the professionals who size up the value of city-owned property. By appointing taxpayers to monitor the appraisals, she said, the city will ensure that the land valuations are conducted openly and honestly.

Her political foes beg to differ.

Trusting city staff to oversee the land transactions, they argue that a citizens task force would only gum up the process of selling surplus property. Residents might not understand the real estate business, and training them would take time and money.

“I see it, frankly, as a huge case of overkill and over-expenditure,” Councilwoman Judy Lazar said. “We can board and commission ourselves to death. If we have good staff, their business is to select honest, qualified appraisers.”

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The dispute echoes last week’s controversy about the city budget. Councilwoman Elois Zeanah suggested forming a citizens task force to check Thousand Oaks’ books.

But since the city already hires a professional auditor to scrutinize the budget, Councilman Frank Schillo dismissed the proposed community task force as redundant. And he said he resented the suggestion that city staff needs supervision from a group of lay people.

Schillo repeated those objections in a new context on Monday, as he rejected Zukowski’s call for a community panel to review land transactions.

“I hate the insinuation that our staff has done something wrong,” Schillo said. “If she thinks they have done something wrong, I’d like to see the proof.”

Schillo also opposed Zukowski’s suggestion that citizens evaluate the credentials of appraisers, draw up a list of the best qualified and require city staff to rotate jobs among the professionals,

Such frequent switches could become disruptive, Schillo said, as no appraiser would have a chance to perfect the specialty of evaluating city-owned property. “Wasting all that experience doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Thousand Oaks has no formal guidelines on handling the 555 parcels of city-owned land.

Many of those parcels are simply slivers of pavement acquired for widening streets or building sidewalks.