PANEL AGAINST 'SURPLUS' LABEL AT GOLF COURSE.

Byline: Terry Kanakri Daily News Staff Writer

A park district committee has recommended against declaring portions of Simi Hills Golf Course property to be surplus land, a step likely to make it more difficult for residents whose back yards are extended onto public property to buy the land.

Instead, officials are recommending that the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District board evaluate requests on an individual basis from Texas tract homeowners interested in buying the land.

If the land is deemed nonessential for public use, the board will have the option of declaring the property surplus before selling it at $3 per square-foot. However, some reduction in the price may be considered in slope areas where land values may be lower.

"I think this is the best that we can offer now," said board chairman Don Funk, who served on the Golf Committee that made the recommendations. "We're trying to be a good neighbor and we're trying to be fair and not put a huge economic hardship on people. But at the same time, we don't want to give it away. It's public land and we're the caretakers of public land and it's a bad precedent to simply just give it away."

The board in February decided to reclaim encroachments on district land of 22 properties situated from the golf course parking lot south to Alamo Street.

Affected homeowners will have to vacate the encroachments within one year of receiving notice, or they may enter into an agreement to vacate the property when they sell their homes, but no later than Jan. 1, 1999, whichever comes first.

The board also voted to give 21 homeowners, those encroaching on property of limited value, the option of purchasing the public land.

Some of the homeowners said the park district should charge only a symbolic $1 transaction fee.

"Any way you look at it, it's going to cost us money," lamented Louis Sanchez, who faces a bill of $7,875 plus transaction fees for 2,625 square feet of backyard that encroaches on the golf course. "I think they should just give it away or just sell it for $1. They can't do anything with that land. You can't build on it, you can't expand the golf course."

But district officials said giving the land away would be wrong.

"We can't give it away because what would that do to people who didn't encroach at all?" wondered director Gene Hostetler. "Would they start encroaching and expect us to give them the property? We need to put a stop on it and it should have been done a long time ago."

Hostetler said he favors the district selling golf course surplus land at a price less than $3 per square foot, however.

"I think we should take all the circumstances into consideration and come to some acceptable fee for everybody," he said. "To me, $3 per square foot is too high."

The park district discovered last summer that 43 out of 71 lots on Texas Avenue are encroaching onto the 155-acre golf course at 5031 Alamo St. and onto adjacent Simi Hills Neighborhood Park. The encroachments vary from as little as 18 inches to 45 feet in length.

Many homeowners say they were unaware of any encroachments until they read about it in a Daily News report. They claim they were told the land belonged to them when they bought their homes. Others said they have maintained the public land for years, including watering and landscaping it, and wondered why they now should be forced to buy or give it up since the district did not bother to reclaim the land in the past.

Rich Harrison, park operations maintenance administrator, said the Golf Committee recommended against declaring all the affected land surplus because such action would likely result in the agency losing control over much property that currently acts as a buffer zone between the golf course and nearby homes.

"You lose a portion of the buffer zone then you have more balls landing on private property than what you have today," he explained.

The park district board will consider the recommendations when it meets at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Rancho Santa Susana Community Center, 5005-C Los Angeles Ave.