Fragmentation of Communities a Remap Fallout

For two years, Carmel Whitman lobbied City Hall to pave the dirt street in front of her North Hollywood home. Like many people with a municipal gripe, she prodded her councilman, Joel Wachs, to take up her cause.

But just when it seemed Wachs’ staff was swinging to her side, along came redistricting of the Los Angeles City Council. Her councilman became John Ferraro, a newcomer to San Fernando Valley politics.

“Now I’m going to have to start all over again,” the 38-year-old housewife grumbled Wednesday. “I’m worried that this will get lost in the shuffle. These councilmen are just getting to know North Hollywood.”

Whitman’s frustration illustrates a problem facing many East San Fernando Valley residents who now must begin pleading their cases to different council offices. In many instances, their first task is to determine in which district they have landed, a difficult prospect these days given the way new district lines wind across the East Valley.

5 Serve 2 Communities

The problem is especially acute in North Hollywood and Van Nuys, each of which is represented by five council members under the redistricting. Aides to several council members said they have received scores of calls from area residents with problems, asking at which office they should seek help.

No other communities in the city have been parceled out among so many council members, city planning officials believe.

It is not a case of a complex district pattern replacing a simple one. Even before redistricting, residents of the communities might have had a hard time figuring out who their representative was.

Before redistricting, North Hollywood was in three council districts, those of Wachs, Ernani Bernardi and Howard Finn, who represented the council’s 1st District until his death last month.

Now, North Hollywood is no longer in the 1st District, but three new council members have pieces of the community: John Ferraro and Michael Woo, the architects of the latest remapping, and Zev Yaroslavsky.

Van Nuys, which previously was represented by Bernardi, Wachs, Marvin Braude and Joy Picus, now is partly in Yaroslavsky’s district also.

Other Areas Split

Most other communities in the East Valley have been split as well. For example, Studio City now has three council members--Wachs, Ferraro and Woo. Previously, Wachs was the lone representative.

The splintering of North Hollywood and Van Nuys has provoked debate among homeowners, local business leaders and council members as to whether the influx of new councilmen will dilute the political strength of those older Valley areas.

“No one got the chop job we did,” said Tom Paterson, president of the North Hollywood Residents Assn. “My opinion is we’re at the losing end of this because, in any one council district, North Hollywood is not going to be a significant part of a councilman’s constituency.”

Hundreds of Valley residents attended public meetings to protest the redistricting, which was approved by the council Sept. 12 over Mayor Tom Bradley’s veto. It increased the number of districts wholly or partly in the Valley from seven to eight, but cut the number of council members residing in the Valley from five to four.

The plan, praised by Latino activists, came in response to a Justice Department lawsuit against the council contending that its districts split Latino neighborhoods--weakening their political clout--in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The city settled the suit by removing the 1st District from the Valley and creating a 69% Latino district north and west of downtown. On Monday, a federal judge accepted the plan and dismissed the lawsuit.

“I didn’t know about it,” said Bruce Cain, a Caltech political science professor hired by the council to draw district lines, when told of the fragmenting of North Hollywood. “I assumed that we cut it in two.”

Cain said that city officials did not provide him with maps showing community boundaries.

“Nobody is intentionally trying to divide North Hollywood into five parts, but, in this exercise, the notion of community identity had a lower priority than maintaining population equality (among districts), protecting minority interests and incumbency,” Cain said.

The Los Angeles Planning Department does not give the city’s 70 communities any official status. Instead, the department in the 1960s collapsed the communities into 35 “planning areas,” each of which would have consistent development guidelines.

“Community is an archaic concept around here,” said Jeff Beckerman, a planning department statistician.

Nonetheless, the division of Valley communities has angered local activists, who say it strikes a blow at their efforts to increase community identity.

‘Community Primary Factor’

“Community should have been the primary factor in dividing council districts,” said Linda O’Connor, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn.

“There’s nothing sacred about Van Nuys,” she said, but communities “usually have a certain socioeconomic base that should be the basis of a council district.”

Neighborhood groups also complain that the division of communities makes it difficult to coordinate support for everything from zoning changes to more frequent street sweeping.

“Trying to get two councilmen together on an issue is hard enough, let alone five,” said William Denton, president of the Toluca West Homeowners Assn., a North Hollywood group.

Some activists, however, believe the Valley--and its individual communities--will gain influence at City Hall because the area can now claim a majority of the 15 council members as representatives.

“There is no Sherman Oaks or North Hollywood. It’s all one city called Los Angeles,” contended Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

In the case of Sherman Oaks, the plan removed Wachs but added Woo and Yaroslavsky as representatives, increasing from two to three the number of council members for that community.

‘He Has to Listen’

“Previously, Sherman Oaks could not put pressure on Woo. Now he has to listen to us because he has been assigned a portion of Sherman Oaks,” Close said.

“Hopefully, we’ll start out with three councilmen who will be concerned about our problems.”

Even Paterson, an opponent of the remapping, said having five council members representing parts of North Hollywood may give residents more clout in citywide issues of particular interest locally, such as curbing noise from nearby Burbank Airport.

The redistricting increased the number of council members covering sections of Ventura Boulevard, the Valley’s preeminent commercial strip, from three council members to six.

Close said the additional council members will give communities along Ventura Boulevard a stronger voice in continuing the limits on high-rise development adopted last year.

Ferraro, echoing Close’s assessment, predicted that the additional representatives will prove to be a boon to Valley political power.

“A council member is concerned about all parts of his district. You don’t want 30% or 20% or 5% mad at you. If you don’t take that attitude, you don’t stay in office long,” he said.