The City Council could extend a moratorium issued last January that authorized staff time to study land use and zoning issues affecting the city’s nine mobile home parks. The council is scheduled to meet next Tuesday night.

The moratorium was the result of Conejo Mobile Home Park residents asking the council for help after the park’s new owner, Joe Bednar of Agoura Hills, said he planned to close the facility. Homeowners and renters said the closure would have created hardships for them.

There are 102 residents living in the 49 mobile homes on Newbury Road. Thirty-one of the residents are children, 76 percent of them have low or very low income, 19 percent are disabled and seven are on government assistance, according to Richard Erickson, a 10-year park resident.

The 71yearold retired mechanical engineer said park residents have created a nonprofit corporation and have been negotiating to buy the facility.

Park residents need the city to extend the moratorium so they can continue their efforts to purchase the park and to protect the homes of those who could least afford to lose them, Erickson said. “We’re very close to coming to an agreement,” he said.

The closure of the park would reduce the city’s much needed inventory of low-cost housing, he said. State law, however, forbids a city from forcing a mobile home park property owner to continue operating it as a landlord.

Residents of several of the city’s mobile home parks are expected to speak during next Tuesday’s meeting to emphasize the importance of the extension to protect the 1,047 people who live in mobile home parks throughout Thousand Oaks, Erickson said.

Already the nonprofit has spent $1,000 to repaint 15 homes and put a new roof on one of them, he said. The group would like to continue its efforts to improve the property that was built in the 1950s.

According to senior planner Jeff Specter, city staff recommends that the council extend the moratorium an additional year.

Also on the agenda is a suggested closure of a portion of Silas Avenue between Borchard Road and Cindy Avenue in Newbury Park. That road was described by Mahammead Fatemi, city engineering manager, as a longtime traffic hazard.

“It makes unnecessary, dangerous traffic,” Fatemi said.

With an office building going up adjacent to the portion of Silas Avenue on an empty lot at 291 Borchard Road, city staff felt it’s a good time to fix the problem by including a portion of the road as part of the office building project, Fatemi said.

Also on the agenda is a public hearing scheduled for council members to amend the municipal code to allow grading prior to recordation of final maps.

The issue was recently heard by the planning commission and the request was denied. City staff is recommending that the council allow grading before the final maps are recorded, Specter said.