Meet The Candidate: Linda Northrup

AGOURA HILLS, CA — December 2018 was an interesting time to take over as Agoura Hills mayor, to say the very least. Just by happenstance, Councilmember Linda Northrup took over right after one of the most destructive fires in history gripped her city.

Northrup, an Agoura Hills native and real estate attorney who has served on the City Council since 2015 and is running for re-election this year, said she originally had all these “great, shiny things I wanted to do as mayor,” but instead needed to help her community rebuild, both physically and emotionally.

In addition to participating in the Los Angeles County Woolsey Fire After Action Review, Northrup started an Agoura Hills-specific taskforce to review the city’s emergency readiness and resiliency that continues to this day. The taskforce has cooperated with the Council to create more fire-resistant landscaping, made high fire severity zone building standards applicable to all Agoura Hills buildings to make the whole city more fireproof, and prepared informational materials to send to homeowners about easy and cost-effective ways to upgrade their homes’ fireproof status.

Northrup said that she feels that Agoura Hills’ Woolsey evacuation went more smoothly than some of its neighbors partly because a voluntary evacuation for Old Agoura went out early, which allowed the horses to be evacuated before the fire arrived. She said that hour-by-hour evaluations of the various successes and failures of the Woolsey evacuation, coupled with a new emergency notification system provider and “robust outreach” to get residents on the city system, are making the city better prepared.

She also noted that Los Angeles County is helping Agoura Hills and its neighbors develop a system for consistent messaging.

“One of the challenges that we and everybody had was messaging,” she said. “We gave the voluntary evacuation, we were very clear on our messaging, then you have someone at the Sheriff or someone at the County saying well, you know, that’s not included … for the most part people did listen to us, which is a sign of how close-knit our community is and the trust people generally put in the information we put out … it didn’t so much hurt us, but I think the mixed messaging was really difficult in other areas.”

Northrup is also proud of the work the city has done to help residents rebuild damaged homes. She said that she helped hire an ombudsman to help families with total or partial damage to walk them through the process, and the Council waived or greatly reduced most of the city’s permit and rebuilding fees.

In the face of another crisis, Northrup is once again in emergency mode. As local businesses struggle to survive, Northrup helped create emergency ordinances that made it possible for nearly all of them to quickly and freely obtain permits to operate outdoors. The Council 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. Northrup said the Council is currently looking into ways to further help independently-owned businesses, which have generally been harder-hit than chains, and landlords.

“We have done what we can, and frankly, I think our ‘Buy Local’ and other campaigns and continuing the virtual mayors table and really pushing out on social media the need to support these local businesses, because it’s what makes our area so unique,” Northrup said, noting that she and her husband operate a law firm in Westlake Village.

Despite the economic downturn, Northrup said that the city’s finances are in good shape, and the Council produced a balanced budget in August. Still, the council has had to make some cuts to make sure it doesn’t burn through its large reserves.

“Our staff is taking extra furlough days, and our staff is stepping up, and people are taking on extra responsibilities so that we can continue to deliver services and not race through our reserves,” she said. “We want to continue to have reserves because we don’t know how long this is going to happen...but we had a balanced budget and we didn’t have to make drastic cuts. We’ve always had a very lean and efficient staff and so I think we’re in good shape.”

During the pandemic, Northrup has also spent over 400 hours personally sewing nearly 800 masks that she’s donated at doctors’ offices, supermarkets, and all over the community.

“Quilting is kind of my meditation, it’s very relaxing, and so I just switched to making masks - I love it, I find it very creative,” she said.

Yet despite a tenure full of emergencies and rebuilding, Northrup has helped with a number of initiatives designed to restore the environment and preserve the rural character of the city. She spearheaded the creation of rules that require developers to host community forums before they can go before the planning commission, and helped require storey poles on development sites to help residents better visualize the scale of projects.

“The earlier in the process the developer knows what concerns the community has, the better off they are, because all lawsuits do is cost everybody money and delay everything, and the way you avoid that is to start a dispute resolution process before you’re in the final decision-making stage,” she said, noting that she voted no on the Cornerstone development project - a proposed 8.2-acre retail, office, and residential development at the corner of Cornell and Agoura roads - and wants to help restart the next phase of the Agoura Village development plan.

Northrup also helped start a Climate Action Review that Mayor Buckley Weber has helped turn into a Climate Action Plan that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city through solar panels, more electric charging stations, and other plans. She also voted to join the Clean Power Alliance, which helped the city obtain 36 percent of its electricity for renewable sources, and gives residents the choice to opt for 100 percent clean energy. She also participates in a number of community clean-up projects.

Northrup, who is the Council’s first graduate of Agoura High School, has tried to make herself visible and accessible to constituents. She started the Mayor’s Table community forum, which still continues virtually, and has knocked on thousands of doors in past campaigns.

She has endorsements from around the city and region, including Congressman Ted Lieu, State Senator Henry Stern, County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, fellow Councilmembers Chris Anstead, Deborah Klein Lopez, and Mayor Illece Buckley Weber, all but one of the city planning commission (where she served from 2011 to 2015 and chaired in 2015), and many others.

“I hope the people will give me the grace of a second term, because I started a lot of things, I had a lot of things I wanted to do but couldn’t do because of Woolsey,” she said. “I have a lot more to give, and I hope the people agree.”

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