ValleyVote Update for 4-19-01 |
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The city of Los Angeles has made an implied threat to withhold services from a proposed seceded San Fernando Valley. The city has to recognize that the San Fernando Valley has helped pay for these services from the time that they were developed. That goes for the Department of Water and Power, City Hall, all the courthouses, streets and schools.
The city of Los Angeles would be doing the San Fernando Valley no favors as the Valley has already bought and paid for these capabilities. It is more that the Valley should be part owner of all the facilities. It's one more attempt to take advantage of the Valley by the city of Los Angeles.
Robert D. Kessinger Camarillo
Re the LAFCO report on Valley secession:
Mayor Riordan has made a serious mistake in his appraisal of the situation. It is not "we" and "they." No, indeed. The Valley helped to a very large extent to build the DWP, the LAX and Van Nuys airports, the Police Department and the Fire Department. They belong to us as much as they belong to anyone. These are ours. In fact, if the people are as poor in Los Angeles as the mayor believes, the rich people of Canoga Park, Reseda, Northridge, Sepulveda, Pacoima, Van Nuys, Chatsworth, North Hollywood, Sun Valley and Sylmar must have built the whole shebang.
And that is why we are unhappy with the treatment we receive from the other Los Angeles. It is quite possible you should be paying us for water, airport services, library services, police and fire services, and trash services instead. I hope that Valleyites, the poor and the middle class and the few wealthy citizens, get behind the effort to form our own city.
Theodora Howell West Hills
It is understandable why many Valley residents want to secede from the city of Los Angeles due to the fact that the Valley has been shortchanged on public services compared with the income it provides to the city's general fund. However, you also need to understand that there is no guarantee the Los Angeles City Council will agree to contract with a new Valley city for services such as police and fire, or that it will maintain the same rates for water and power that the Valley presently enjoys.
As the Valley will own a considerable portion of DWP and most of the Water facilities of DWP are in the Valley It is unlikely that the new smaller LA City will try to impose it's will to damage the new Valley City. LACFO has the authority under state law to require LA to provide services during a transitional period.
City Ordinance No. 170435 allows the city to impose a water surcharge for
customers who are located outside the city limits.
-- Meiling Dai
Sunland
Re "Size counts." by Josh Rivetz (Public Forum, April 2):
Bigger is not better, as the actions of the LAUSD and L.A. City Council demonstrate daily. Size counts for nothing when Valley taxpayers have no control over our own schools and city government.
Perhaps Rivetz hasn't heard that "good things come in small(er) packages."
Lu Little Northridge
Valley secession is a bad idea. As it stands now, L.A. is the second biggest city in the country. If the Valley secedes, L.A. and the Valley will be third and sixth respectively. I'd rather live in the second biggest city than the third or sixth. Not only that, but if L.A. stays together, it could become the biggest city in the country. [that thought scares me. The last ten year growth has been mainly in the valley, Old LA grew very little. Seems people vote with their feet on what they think is better, the smaller less dense as the Valley or dense urban like LA. That failed model is what you seem to want for the Valley.]
Josh Rivetz Northridge
If the people of Los Angeles get to vote whether the Valley should be allowed to secede, it will never happen. By the time the politicians who are against secession get through brainwashing the people of Los Angeles -- saying that if they lose their "cash cow," the Valley, their standard of living will decrease -- none of them will vote for it. If there are any Valley residents who think otherwise, I own a bridge in Brooklyn, N.Y., that I'd like to sell them.
I think that it is unfair for the residents of Los Angeles to have any say in this matter. The only ones who should get to decide whether the Valley should secede are the Valley residents. Only we should get to vote for or against secession -- nobody else. [The law requires a double vote, the detaching residents and the entire city residents need to approve it. The new smaller LA City will be a better place as they can run their city without influences from he valley. The Divorcé has to be revenue neutral where neither side is hurt.]
Sol Swidler West Hills
These letters show the bad information various groups are putting out concerning a new Valley City and the corrections. Watch for more lies and scare tactics.
Roslyn Johnson fears she will lose her job as a bus driver for the Los Angeles Unified School District when the Valley splits off from the rest of Los Angeles "because then the Valley would have its own school district" ("Valley secession," Public Forum, April 5). Someone is playing a cruel joke on Johnson.
The LAUSD is completely independent from every city and county, and has absolutely no connection to any secession movement. The LAUSD has a gigantic budget of $8.88 billion per year, which includes $3.96 billion for the salaries of Johnson and its other 75,000 employees, plus the meager $568 million it has budgeted for books and supplies. Johnson should not fear being laid off simply because the Valley wants to control its own budget and services. She can vote for secession, and still keep her day job.
-- Walter N. Prince, director Northridge/Porter Ranch Chamber of Commerce
Re Roslyn Jonson's April 5 Public Forum letter on Valley secession:
Opponents of Valley secession are spreading all kinds of rumors to frighten and mislead the public into voting against the San Fernando Valley's freedom from an abusive partner. The Los Angeles Unified School District is not connected in any way to the city of Los Angeles. They are separate entities. Although mayoral candidates talk up what they would do to cure the ills of the educational system, they have no power over LAUSD. This is just typical campaign rhetoric.
Therefore, Roslyn, your job as bus driver is not in jeopardy. As long as there are children, our community will continue to need your valuable services. Is it really fair or in the best interests of justice for an abusive partner to force the other to remain locked in a dysfunctional marriage? That's what Valley secession is about.
Jan Holle North Hollywood
I would definitely vote "no" for the Valley's secession because then the Valley would have its own school district. I am employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District as a bus driver and I drive all over the county of L.A. If the Valley secedes, then it will affect our schools and my job as a bus driver because then the school district would have to lay off numerous employees that serve the Valley. [Even in a new school district was created the new district would be required by law to honor the contracts with it's employees. The same applies to the LA city Employees if a new Valley City is created, No one would looses their job or take a pay cut because a new city is created.]
The Valley would hire its own employees to provide transportation to students to schools. I have been on my job for almost 10 years and I have always thought that it was secure until now. I worry a lot and I don't need the added stress. I hope the voters of L.A. would really think hard about this secession before they vote in favor of it.
Roslyn Johnson Los Angeles
I sympathize with the good people of Northridge, Chatsworth and Sun Valley who want to protect their neighborhoods from those greedy land developers. Those horse owners should be allowed to live the way that they are accustomed to. It is not fair to encroach upon them.
Perhaps they may be thinking of separate cityhood for the San Fernando Valley right now. A new city charter could have provisions in it to safeguard against things like this being done to people. Three million people of Los Angeles are being governed by those 15 bullies from over the hill. It is just not rational.
Ronald R. Rushton North Hollywood
The $68 million secession fee in annual payments from the Valley to Los Angeles as a sort of "alimony" for an indefinite period of time amounts to a coup de grace of subsidized extortion. A city spanking, if you will, for daring to leave the "family" and strike out on our own for independence.
If anything, the city of Los Angeles owes its cash cow, the Valley, back taxes for all the volunteers' efforts and the city services we should have been receiving all the years we wanted to secede. Now, when the rubber finally meets the road, the short-changed Valley is ambushed once again by the City of Angels whose very survival may eventually depend on alimony support payments. {The Divorcé has to be revenue neutral where neither side is hurt. Each new year LA can take more from the valley if we stay, better alimony the continued control by the downtown interests]
Roger B. Huntman Woodland Hills
Dear Mayor Riordan:
With all due respect for your accomplishments in trying to make Los Angeles a better city, isn't it about time to get off your high horse about the people of the San Fernando Valley considering forming their own city?
It's one thing to oppose secession and debate the pros and cons. But it's another to claim the whole process is corrupt and accuse the people pushing cityhood of some kind of moral turpitude.
After the county agency overseeing the secession study found last week that the Valley would be a financially viable city without harming the rest of Los Angeles, you went around town saying, "I think it is downright immoral to abandon the poor people of this city ... (secession) will just leave us with the poor in the city. I think that is immoral."
Aw, c'mon, Mr. Mayor. This isn't about morality, it's about a relationship that has deteriorated to the point that one of the parties thinks it could be happier and live better on its own. It's a divorce question, Mr. Mayor, and you know as much as anybody about divorce. It's not about moral obligations to the other party. It's about living together for mutual benefit and happiness.
When a relationship breaks down to the point the Valley's has with City Hall, reasonable people think about the alternatives. In this case, Valley residents and businesses have supported the rest of Los Angeles handsomely for decades, sacrificed billions of their own tax dollars for a subway to nowhere and for services for other communities while seeing their own neighborhoods and the quality of their lives decline from neglect.
As you yourself have so often noted, the Valley is a community of unparalleled givers, of volunteerism, of people who sacrifice their time -- not just their money -- and give of themselves to help others in need. To insult the Valley as if it were an uncaring community is to perpetuate the culture of disrespect that is so much the source of people's anger.
You have given a lot of yourself to make life better for others, and, given the vastness of your personal wealth, done a pretty good job of looking out for yourself. Was it out of your moral concern for the poor that you bought businesses, fired the workers and moved their jobs to another country? Were your billionaire buddies thinking of the poor and the good community when they sold their companies to faraway interests at a handsome profit and decimated the Los Angeles economy?
Was it morality that drove you to shove the Sunshine Canyon Landfill down the throats of residents of Granada Hills -- or hardball politics and backroom games?
Was it concern for people's health that prompted you to spend $50 million in public funds for a toilet-to-tap water project for the people in the East Valley?
Maybe you shouldn't preach about the morality of others until your own house is in order.
It is no more a sin for you to have a private library of 40,000 books than it is for the owner of a modest bungalow on the Valley floor to worry about his property values and the quality of his life because the city does nothing about a family of eight living in a firetrap granny flat behind his backyard fence.
Voters in the San Fernando Valley swept you into the Mayor's Office, believing your promise to hire 3,000 more cops to make their streets safer and to make government more efficient by privatizing some governmental functions.
Instead, what they've gotten is a scandal-ridden Police Department run by federal authorities and a swollen public employee payroll. You've tried and you've made incremental improvements in trimming our trees and paving our streets. But there's a lot more to what we want out of City Hall than trimmed trees and paved streets.
We want a city that works for the people -- all the people, rich and poor and everyone in between, where the interests of all are balanced and the values of all are respected. We are fed up with influence peddlers, developers, lobbyists, unions and deep-pocket contributors having the real power and the people having almost no say.
Instead of taking refuge behind a hypocritical morality comment, we urge you to get to work saving the city during your final months in office. That's what the people of the San Fernando Valley, of Hollywood, of San Pedro are demanding. This last push to save a united L.A. could be your legacy.
We respect your efforts and achievements.
Respect our yearnings for better government and a better city. That's the moral opportunity that would serve everyone -- whether we find a way to heal our relationship or go our own.
It is interesting to note that Mayor Riordan has designated the residents of the San Fernando Valley as the sole providers for the poor and indigent who inhabit that part of Los Angeles from which the people of the San Fernando Valley wish to extricate themselves.
"If the Valley secedes, why not Brentwood, Bel-Air, Pacific Palisades or Eagle Rock? That will just leave us with the poor of the city. I think that is immoral," says the mayor (March 29). Be careful, mayor, you might have just given Brentwood, Bel-Air, Pacific Palisades and Eagle Rock something to think about.
L.A. Calabro Northridge
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