The ingenuity of the Do-it Center's owner in attempting to keep his home improvement monopoly here on the east side of Thousand Oaks almost makes me chuckle. He obviously felt that he didn't have a compliant City Council that would buy his "small businessman" story, nor did he feel he could successfully challenge the environmental impact report.

The owner of the Do-it Center felt that the best alternative was to draft an initiative that would stop a competitor from coming to the area and then cloak his self-interest by adding residential and other commercial projects over a certain size to the initiative.

Population drives retail sales.

No retailer in their right mind would want to stop population growth unless their bigger fear was a competitor coming to the area. Where was this "civic-minded" person 15 years ago before the influx of office buildings and the residential build-out of our city?

At the City Council meeting on Feb. 5, Mr. Jim Aidukas, who is an associate with Englander and Associates, reluctantly admitted that his firm was being paid by Do-it Center. He also admitted that Englander and Associates is advising the proponents of the traffic initiative.

If you go to the website for the Do-it Center you realize that the owner is no little businessman as he might claim. He owns nine Do-it Center stores throughout California, a highly successful wholesale lumber business and the Patio World chain of outdoor furniture stores.

This Patio World chain is the same one that came in a block from our beloved Zender's and drove them to another area.

Talk about hypocrisy. Tom Davies Westlake Village