Reaction Angry : Prison Issue Fuels Push for Cityhood

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s proposal to transform city-owned land in Saugus into a state prison will boost a campaign to unify the unincorporated communities of the Santa Clarita Valley into their own city, leaders of the cityhood campaign predicted Thursday.

Their reaction blended with a chorus of anger from residents who vowed to fight the mayor’s recommendation that a major penal facility be built near their homes.

Neighborhood residents, many of whom had only minutes notice that Bradley would announce the plan in Saugus, converged on the site as the mayor arrived there for a press conference.

The crowd along Bouquet Canyon Road quickly swelled to more than 250 people. Mothers with young children in tow waved hastily printed signs with their free hands as they chanted slogans protesting the plan to sell 520 acres owned by the City of Los Angeles to the state for a prison.

Cheers for Antonovich, Wright

At press conferences after Bradley’s departure, residents cheered Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich and Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) as they contended that the Santa Clarita Valley was being victimized by the mayor’s political rivalry with Gov. George Deukmejian over prison crowding, among other issues.

“I moved out here to raise my kids in a better environment,” said Saugus resident Wendy Bittick, 30. “I’d be afraid to let my kids play in the yard. When I heard about the plan, I felt like I wanted to cry.”

Fearful residents complained that a prison has no business in an area of middle-class homes that has attracted thousands of young couples, many from other parts of the county, because they believed it offered safety and a relaxed, family life style.

They also complained that property values would plummet and that Bouquet Canyon Road, the only thoroughfare in and out of the Saugus area, would become choked with traffic.

“There’s no way Bradley is bringing a prison into my son’s backyard,” fumed Mike Tell, 32, who moved to Saugus from Alhambra four years ago with his wife and son. “What you have here is young families who can finally afford a home. It’s time the Santa Clarita Valley pulls together.”

Galvanizing Force

Leaders of the group that earlier this month announced the campaign for cityhood contended that Bradley had unwittingly given them an emotional issue that will galvanize support for combining the communities of Newhall, Valencia, Saugus, Canyon Country and Castaic into the county’s next incorporated city.

Supporters believe that the communities would have greater control over development and other matters, such as a prison location, if they are unified under incorporation. As it stands now, they are heavily dependent upon the county to make such decisions and look after their interests.

“Bradley handed us a rallying point,” declared Louis Garasi, a Valencia plumbing supply manufacturer and one of the drive’s organizers.

“This is exactly the kind of a thing that can happen to us if we don’t have our own local government,” he said. “The local residents in this particular situation are completely disenfranchised.

“This came as a complete surprise to us,” Garasi said. “It’s ridiculously inappropriate because it would be in the middle of a residential neighborhood.”

The campaign for cityhood has been promoted as a means of gaining local control over development and fostering the area’s own political identity. A petition drive, the first step in the county’s incorporation process, is scheduled to begin Nov. 11, organizers said.

Since 1962, there have been three attempts to form a city in the Santa Clarita Valley and two attempts at seceding from Los Angeles County altogether in order to form a new county. All of the efforts failed.

‘Nobody Wants a Prison’

“It takes an issue like this to create the unity we need,” said Jim Shutte, the president of a Canyon Country lumber yard and a drive organizer. “Nobody wants a prison in their backyard.”

Bradley’s proposal also seemed sure to draw the opposition of powerful development companies that own thousands of acres in the rapidly growing communities of the Santa Clarita Valley.

“It’s the most bizarre thing we’ve ever heard of to plop some prison on that property,” said Gloria Casvin, an official of the Newhall Land and Farming Co., which owns 27,000 acres in the Santa Clarita Valley and Ventura County.