Valley VOTE is a diverse, Valley-wide coalition of San Fernando Valley residents, educators, business leaders, community activists and organizations who support a LAFCO study (Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission) on the issue of creating an independent Valley City.

MEDIA RESPONSE - 7-14-99

This is the formal response to the written request by the LA Times for us to answer their questions on how Cityhood would affect public safety of Los Angeles. This is to be their first in a series of such articles with the first article on public safety will be published on Sunday 7-18-99

Date: July 14, 1999

To: Miguel Bustillo and Jim Newton

From: Valley VOTE

The Los Angeles Times has raised a number of questions regarding secession and public service issues and requested Valley Vote to take our best guess in answering them.

Now that the LAFCO Study has been funded and the process is getting underway to provide the educational input and materials needed to make an informed decision, it is our position to wait for this pertinent data to be submitted and reviewed before we respond to said questions.

The questions and issues like those raised by the LA Times will be discussed and resolved as part of the LAFCO study process, after LAFCO has received extensive public input and input from expert consultants who have had an opportunity to consider all the pertinent data which has yet to be compiled by LAFCO.

Valley VOTE as part of the LAFCO Study Process will have key opportunities in the future to provide its ideas for handling these issues. But this too will come after the benefit of a public input process Valley VOTE will undertake and after an opportunity to consider all the pertinent data which has yet to be compiled by LAFCO.

Until all the pertinent facts are known and the LAFCO study results are published comments made by officials and even those who are viewed as experts are purely speculative. As this is the first Special Reorganization being considered there are no special reorganization experts and as we have seen in the past, many comments made by officials and others on this process later turn out to be false, or do not reflect a correct understanding about how issues are handled in a Special Reorganization.

It has been Valley Votes' position all along not to speculate on substantial issues where the health and safety of over 4 million people are at stake. It makes good sense, to our leadership, to be wise and wait for the proper input and empirical data, that will result from the LAFCO Study. The LAFCO Study will assist us in formulating responses and opinions on such critical issues. The Valley Vote leadership must continue to act in a very responsible manner because they have been given an enormous task in following through with the wishes of the people.

Valley VOTE and a growing number of other organizations throughout Los Angeles are committed to ensuring that a fair and timely LAFCO Study is completed that will answer the questions raised by the LA Times and all the public's questions.

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