ValleyVote Update for 3-28-01 |
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Here are the comments to LAFCO by Jeff Brain in response to their release of the Initial Fiscal Analysis. The report shows that Valley Cityhood is viable and will not negatively impact Los Angeles. We will be creating a searchable and quick loading html file on our website in a few days.
For 20 years the people of the San Fernando Valley have felt short changed by City Hall. Whether your talking about the number of police on the streets, money for street repairs, or state and federal grants being allocated to the Valley’s poor the Valley has long felt neglected and left behind by the city’s decision makers. In May of 1996, Valley homeowner leaders and business leaders came together and decided to explore the benefits of reorganizing Los Angeles into two smaller cities – a new valley City and a new smaller more manageable Los Angeles city. Today’s release of the LAFCO report culminates a five year struggle by San Fernando Valley residents.
Many residents throughout Los Angeles are unhappy with what they see happening in their neighborhoods. Many residents throughout Los Angeles believe that Los Angeles has simply grown too large to be properly managed. Los Angeles with 3.6 million residents has a greater population than 25 states. Los Angeles covering 462 square miles is so large you can fit St Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Manhattan all within its borders. Support for reorganizing Los Angeles into two or more smaller cities has grown provided it is feasible and will not have a negative financial impact.Today with the release of the LAFCO report it is made clear for all the world to know. Reorganizing Los Angeles into at least two smaller cities – a new Valley city and a new smaller more manageable Los Angeles is feasible and it will not negatively impact Los Angeles or its residents financially.
The issue driving the Cityhood sentiment is Local Control. Whether you live in Hollywood, the Harbor, the Valley or any other part of Los Angeles, people want to control their own destiny. It is the same in every community. Study after study shows that smaller cities are more efficient and manageable. The truth is if the Valley becomes its own city, a new smaller Los Angeles will be more manageable and reap the same benefits of local control, more responsive government, and more efficient government sought by the people of the Valley. It will be good for all of Los Angeles and its residents.
Yet, we hear that some council members may want to use water as a threat to keep the Valley from attaining its independence. We hear that some at city hall want to use certain public services as obstacles to keep the Valley from attaining its independence. We hear that some union leaders, even though union jobs and their benefits are protected and many rank and file workers support a new valley city and a smaller more manageable Los Angeles may wage a campaign to stop the Valley from attaining its independence.
In the United States, however, we do not hold people against their will. If the 1.4 million residents of the San Fernando Valley want to form their own independent city, and it will not hurt the rest of the Los Angeles financially, then the Mayor, the City Council and other opponents should put their own personal interests aside and allow democracy to have its day. If we were talking about some foreign country where 1.4 million people were struggling for independence we would be sympathetic. If some government or dictator tried to prevent independence by threats of withholding public services or intimidation we would look unfavorable toward that government or dictator. The same should hold true for here in Los Angeles.
The Valley has waited 20 years for this opportunity and will not let the issue of dividing a computer system, sewer system, threats about withholding services, or intimidation be used as a means to block democracy and turn us back. The people of Los Angeles are stockholders in this city and all its assets. Valley residents and non-Valley residents alike have an equity right to the services. They are not the property of the city leaders to be used a bargaining chips against their own citizens.
If the people of the San Fernando Valley after reviewing all the facts decide that they want to form an independent City and its not going to hurt Los Angeles financially, than Mayor Riordan and honorable Council Members we ask that you respect the peoples right to democracy and compassionately let the people of the San Fernando Valley go.
Valley VOTE congratulates the LAFCO commission and PFM their consultants on an excellent job and the timely work schedule they have met. This report is a job well done and a credible and historic document. Valley VOTE also would like to thank Mayor Riordan and the City for cooperating with LAFCO in the Study and making the necessary data available.
As we are seeing this nearly 400 page [currently a slow loading 60sec at 33k PDF] report for the first time just like many of you we are not in a position to comment on how specific assets, liabilities, revenue, services etc have been allocated. Over the coming days and weeks Valley VOTE and our consultants will review the details of this historic LAFCO report and we will submit our comments back to the LAFCO commission outlining where we agree and disagree with how certain issues were handled.
The big news for today, the news Valley residents and Los Angeles residents have waited five years to hear - it is feasible to reorganize Los Angeles into two smaller cities- a new Valley City and a new smaller more manageable Los Angeles without negatively impacting Los Angeles. No money will be taken away from Los Angeles residents or the poor as a result and we firmly believe that in forming a new Valley City and a smaller more manageable Los Angeles everyone wins. It is a win-win regardless of where in Los Angeles you live. Thank you.
By PATRICK MCGREEVY, Times Staff Writer
Twelve years after promising to build a sixth police station in the San Fernando Valley, officials announced Monday that bulldozers will begin grading a site in Mission Hills this week for the new LAPD station, with construction expected to be completed in 2003. The project had been hamstrung for more than a decade by a lack of funding and debate over the best location. The Los Angeles Police Department recently acquired title to the three-acre site at 11121 N. Sepulveda Blvd., just north of the San Fernando Mission.
"This is important because we desperately need another division in the San Fernando Valley," said Councilman Hal Bernson, whose district includes the station site. "We are happy it is getting started. Hopefully, it will help reduce crime." The five existing police stations in the Valley each cover an average of 45 square miles, more than twice the area policed on average by non-Valley police stations.
Officials say the Foothill and Devonshire divisions will be helped the most by the new station. Emergency response time averaged 10 1/2 minutes in the Foothill Division last year and 10 minutes in Devonshire. In comparison, officers responded in an average of seven minutes in the Newton Division outside the Valley. "The creation of the North Valley Community Station will allow the department to reduce the coverage area of the other five stations," said Sgt. John Pasquariello, an LAPD spokesman. "It is anticipated that this reduction will result in a decrease in officer response times for call for service throughout the San Fernando Valley."
Police Chief Bernard C. Parks is scheduled to join Mayor Richard Riordan, Bernson and others for a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday. Grading is scheduled to begin the same day. Although work will not be completed until long after Riordan leaves office in July, the mayor has set a high priority on getting the project started during his term.
"It really focuses on one of his priorities,
which is community policing," said Peter Hidalgo, a spokesman for Riordan.
The City Council last year allocated $3 million to
buy the site and $1.3 million for design work for the 54,000-square-foot station
and to grade and prepare the land. The LAPD hopes to seek and award construction bids
this summer so that the station can begin operation in September 2003, said Sgt.
Patrick McAree, the project manager for the station.
City officials plan to obtain the remaining $12 million for construction through debt financing to be approved when the contract is awarded.
The money for buying and preparing the site came from 1989's Proposition 2, a $176-million bond measure that included the promise of funds for a sixth Valley station. However, other police projects turned out to be more expensive than expected, so the city ran out of bond funds before it could build the North Valley station.
That failure to deliver on the promised station was seized upon by Valley civic leaders, who fought subsequent police bond measures over the last five years, contributing to their defeat. "They know they won't be able to get police bond issues passed in the city until they deliver on this project," said Harry Coleman, president of the North Hills Community Coordinating Council.
Typical of the scare tactics opposing a new valley city. Ms. Dai in two letters fails to acknowledge that the DWP is now owned by all the current residents of Los Angeles and the Valley residents will still own about 35% of the DWP after the Valley becomes a city.
On March 19, blackouts occurred in Northern and Southern California due to the sudden onset of high temperatures. These blackouts affected the cities of Beverly Hills, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Covina, Pomona, Irvine, Newport Beach, Chino, Visalia, Banning, Kern and other areas -- but not Los Angeles and other municipally owned utilities.
What more do people need to be convinced that if they vote to secede from the city of Los Angeles, they could be facing blackouts, too, and higher electricity rates? Even if LAFCO's secession study for the San Fernando Valley proposes a joint-powers agreement, there is no guarantee the City Council will agree to this or that the city will not sue to protect its water rights and DWP assets. Why risk it?
Meiling Dai Sunland
San Fernando Valley residents who espouse secession should seriously consider if paying higher water and electricity rates is worth it. As long as the Valley remains an integral part of the city of Los Angeles, it is entitled to the benefits of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's affordable water rates compared with Metropolitan Water District rates.
If the Valley does secede, DWP will charge residents 15 percent higher water rates based on a city ordinance that requires areas serviced by DWP outside of Los Angeles to pay a water surcharge. It is also [In her anti secession opinion] likely that a seceded Valley will pay higher electricity rates. Are you willing to pay the price for secession?
Meiling Dai Sunland
Kudos to the Santa Clarita City Council for doing the work that the Los Angeles City Council has long neglected: protecting people from having a dump in their back yard.
On Monday, Santa Clarita officials accepted a new, 10-year contract with the city's existing garbage haulers, Santa Clarita/Blue Barrel Disposal and Atlas Consolidated. In so doing, it rejected an offer from Browning Ferris Industries that would have sent the [LA] city's trash to Sunshine Canyon, the landfill it operates in Granada Hills, which Los Angeles has given a green light to expand massively.
BFI had presented Santa Clarita with a sweet deal: a 20 percent rate cut and a promise to turn over land it owns in neighboring Elsmere Canyon, thereby ensuring that the property would never be used as a dump.
Santa Clarita's City Council rejected the offer for a number of reasons, chief among them being a high level of public satisfaction with the service that Blue Barrel Disposal and Atlas have provided over the years.
But whatever the motivation, its decision was also an act of neighborly kindness. The [Santa Clarita] council could have turned the San Fernando Valley into its very own dump for the next 10 years, but it didn't.
If only we could say the same for the Los Angeles City Council -- the body that's actually supposed to be looking out for the Valley. A year ago, the L.A. council faced a decision similar to Santa Clarita's. Instead of choosing to cart the city's trash out to the desert, where it would have harmed nobody, the council opted to sully the Valley by expanding Sunshine Canyon.
Let's be grateful that the Valley's neighbors are more considerate than its elected officials.
Re "Horse Owners Snort at Home Plan," Feb. 23.
Years ago, after horse owners had been pushed into the last small corner of the San Fernando Valley, they were promised by city government that this final refuge would remain horse country forever. Just to prove it, the city created a document called the Chatsworth / Porter Ranch General Plan. If the general plan is adhered to, then Chatsworth remains horse country and all of the existing horse ranches are protected under its guidelines.
On the other hand, if the city allows a wealthy association of good old boys--Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson; Mayor Richard Riordan; real estate developer and former airport commissioner and harbor commissioner Ted Stein; and Cardinal Roger Mahony--to have their way with the general plan, then several existing horse ranches will become illegal the instant the first shovel of dirt is lifted on Stein's proposed project.
Note Ted Stein converted the nursery at Nordhoff and Woodley which lies directly under the flight plan of the jets landing at Van Nuys to high density home. The new residents now complained about jet noise. Mr. Stein also served on the Airport commission and should have been fully aware of the jet noise.
During the last few days, I've had the opportunity to attend two neighborhood meetings to hear proposals for fighting the church and Stein. At one, held at Chatsworth train depot, several hundred people showed up and many opened their checkbooks to the Chatsworth Land Preservation Assn., one of the groups leading the charge against this general plan change. Other local groups that have rallied behind CLPA are the Chatsworth Equine Cultural Heritage Assn. and Equestrian Trails International.
It will be interesting to see if good can still
triumph over evil in the shadow of the Santa Susana Mountains, where Roy Rogers
and the Lone Ranger once showed us the way.
JERRY ENGLAND
Chatsworth
to one of the few remaining rural areas in Los Angeles by voting to recommend a change to the Chatsworth General Plan to accommodate a non-horse-keeping housing development.
Four houses--the difference between what the developer wanted and what the plan would have allowed--are not going to solve L. A.'s housing shortage. Even if the developer, who obviously has influential friends in the mayor's office and on the Planning Commission, arranges the property such that homes bordering the horse-keeping properties are farther away, it still sets neighbors against each other.
People who purchase property zoned for farm animals know they will be living in an animal-centric community. However, add a few land speculators and soon the animals will have to go to accommodate them. I predict that this decision will unify people who chose to live in areas of L. A. that historically have offered an island of sanctuary in an otherwise faceless city.
It is not by accident that equestrian programs are used to [reach] kids at risk for gangs, humanize prisoners, provide the handicapped with additional opportunities to excel in sports, and heal wounded, isolated souls. Shame on you who are money-, politics-, ego- and power-centric. You all might recapture a life if you had a horse to teach you.
KATHY DELSON Shadow Hills
Why shouldn't our elected officials reject cries of sabotage from LAFCO? They've ignored and rejected the cries from their constituents in the Valley for years. Council members Cindy Miscikowski and Mike Feuer consistently treat the Valley side of their respective districts as children who should be seen as cash cows but never, ever heard.
As for our mayor, the only time he graces us with his presence is when he rides his bike on our streets (patched up for his riding pleasure) or is begging us to stay, not to secede. It's past the time to wean them off our backs and send them packing.
Peter J. Kurt Woodland Hills
The Daily News article, "City officials reject cries of sabotage," (Jan. 12) quotes Nate Holden as stating, ". . . Look at this energy crisis. Where would the Valley be if they didn't have the Department of Water and Power? . . ."
If ever there was a clearer picture of someone more disconnected from the reason the Valley wants out, I have yet to hear it. The point, Holden, is that the Valley paid an unfair share for the DWP, and we are tired of being milked dry.
Bob Driscoll Woodland Hills
* Re "To Stem Secessionism, Adopt a Borough System," Opinion, Jan. 7: Kevin Starr calls secessionism a "duplicative and wasteful" alternative. However, every study of city size finds that smaller cities cost the same, or less, to run on a per-person basis.
Secessionism is not a "half-baked" idea. Starr says, "Great cities do not voluntarily put themselves out of business." The error in his logic is that Los Angeles has failed to provide services that make it a great place to live. Starr concludes by saying that secessionists wish to leave behind all those "urban problems and problematic urban peoples." Unfair. The San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and the Harbor areas have their share of "problematic urban peoples," although I would never use that expression to describe anyone.
SHIRLEY SVORNY Northridge
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