Meet The Candidate: Illece Buckley Weber

AGOURA HILLS, CA — “I’m a nudge,” said current Mayor and City Council candidate Illece Buckley Weber when asked about her qualifications for the job. “I don’t give up - I just keep trying to work with people to find solutions we need.”

From there, Buckley Weber talked about how she pushed the Agoura Hills City Council to find the money necessary for the Medea Creek naturalization project, which removed about 425 linear feet of concrete in the creek and replaced it with natural plants.

Buckley Weber, an attorney with a civil litigation practice in Westlake Village, joined the council in 2011, was re-elected in 2015 (a year she also served as mayor), and has been the city’s current mayor since November 2019. She also served on the City Planning Commission from 2006 to 2011, and currently serves as the Agoura Hills representative to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Advisory Committee.

Buckley Weber said that her top priorities moving for the next four years are environmental conservation, fire readiness, and surviving COVID-19 with local businesses intact. As a mayor and eight-year councilmember, she’s had quite a bit of experience in all three categories.

She has led a number of environmental conservation initiatives, the drafting and adoption of a citywide Climate Action Plan, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city through solar panels, more electric charging stations, and other initiatives. In addition to the Medea Creek project, Buckley Weber helped obtain funding for a stormwater treatment plant to clean the water coming out of the city; helped the city obtain 36 percent of its electricity through renewable sources through the Clean Power Alliance; and is currently supporting the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Overpass, a bridge for local wildlife to cross over the 101 Freeway, among several others.

“The young people in our community and worldwide made it perfectly clear - they marched in the streets to save our planet,” she said. “This generation of high school kids are motivated and they’re willing to get out there and do what they need. They have all kinds of priorities, and one of them was to push my generation into saving the planet. And I’m gonna answer to that.”

Buckley Weber says she has also worked to maintain the city’s rural, small-town character. “It would not surprise me if developers in town thought they had to cross their t’s and dot their i’s to get something past me,” she said. “In my opinion, the developments that come forward after they’ve worked with us - the decision-makers, not just the staff - we get better homes and we get better developments, and what I mean by ‘better’ is they’re more compatible with the vision for Agoura Hills.”

Buckley Weber describes this vision as consistent with the character of the city. “What I envision is rustic-modern, in terms of aesthetics, there’s community spaces so that people can engage and gather, that it’s very pedestrian-friendly, that it’s bike-friendly, that we maintain our views of our mountains, that we maintain our heritage oak trees,” she said.

Buckley Weber points to her vote against Cornerstone, a proposed 8.2-acre retail, office, and residential development at the corner of Cornell and Agoura roads, which she said she felt contradicted that vision. At the same time, she says that constituents have voiced support for developing Agoura Village as long as it adheres to the city’s character, and that she voted for a review of the Specific Plan.

Buckley Weber also said that she will push “until I am no longer on this planet” for Phase 4 of the Triangle Ranch development to be maintained as open-space.

With another aggressive fire season underway, Buckley Weber said she is proud of the work the city has done to prepare. She pointed to finishing the Woolsey Fire Task Report, upgrading the city’s notification system to reach more residents in more ways should a fire break out, working with the counties and neighboring cities to create a regional evacuation plan, working with Senator Stern’s office on a home-hardening project, and working with the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station to improve evacuation routes and ease the crossing of Agoura Road. She said that she is also proud the city was able to work with the county to rebuild the Jess Thomas Bridge less than six months after the Woolsey Fire so that residents are not stranded.

“We feel like we did a great job,” she said. “There’s always room for improvement - we’re looking at even more ways to get the communications out there, make sure the communications are consistent, and we’re ready for the next fire. And there will be one.”

Much of Buckley Weber’s second tenure as mayor will be likely remembered for the COVID-19 pandemic. Buckley Weber said that her top priority during the pandemic was to help local businesses survive the resulting economic fallout, and said she felt the city did everything it could to help its businesses. She said that the city was one of the first to allow restaurants to operate in public outdoor spaces, which was then expanded to retail businesses, and then to houses of worship. The city has also relaxed signage regulations, provided $2000 grants to small businesses, and continued to extend commercial eviction moratoriums. In June, each member of the city council visited every restaurant in the city.

In terms of COVID-19 response, Buckley Weber said that she has confidence in the Los Angeles County of Public Health, and the city has closely followed their guidelines, though it never shut its parks down.

The city’s budget and tax revenues took a major hit during the pandemic, and Buckley Weber said that the city had to use just under $1 million of its reserves and lay off or furlough city staffers in order to balance the 2020-21 budget. Buckley Weber says she does not expect the city to have to dip into reserves when they review the budget in October, but may need to at some point during the coming fiscal year.

“We’re a pretty conservative council in terms of budget, so we all had to put on hold some our pet projects that mean a lot to each one of us,” she said. “I don’t think we took any project off the table, we just pushed it off to another year.”

Buckley Weber has been endorsed by a number of local figures, including Councilmembers Deborah Klein Lopez, Chris Anstead, and Linda Northrup; Congressman Ted Lieu; State Senator Henry Stern; L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuhl; and a number of current and former planning commissioners, former mayors, LVUSD board members, nearby mayors, and a host of community leaders.

For a full list and to learn more about her campaign, visit https://www.reelectillece2020.com/.

This article originally appeared on the Agoura Hills Patch