Affable Crowd Makes Wachs Feel at Home in New District

Joel Wachs was bubbling. The city councilman’s shotgun marriage with residents of the northeast Valley--ordered by City Council redistricting--seemed to be off to a good start.

“There hasn’t been one nasty person, one angry, one hostile. . . . They want to be friends,” Wachs said Saturday afternoon, as he surveyed the well-wishers at an open house at the Sunland-Tujunga Municipal Building on Foothill Boulevard in Tujunga.

“I haven’t felt this up since all of this occurred,” he said.

Remap Decision

Wachs was referring to the bitterly contested redistricting decision last month that split the late Howard Finn’s northeast Valley district between Wachs and Ernani Bernardi, giving its voters councilmen they didn’t elect and depriving Wachs of much of his political base in Studio City, Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood.

By early afternoon, at least 200 people had queued up to chat with Wachs and to partake of pastries and finger sandwiches. Although Wachs had visited many clubs and service groups, this was his first open house in Sunland-Tujunga, an area with a down-home, rural flavor and about 30% of the voters in the new 2nd Council District. A similar get-acquainted meeting for Wachs’ new constituents in Van Nuys has been set for Nov. 1.

Visitors lined up, sometimes eight or 10 deep, to shake hands, give advice or ask for help.

Old and Young

“Congratulations! I think you’re going to do great,” said Connie Snee, grasping Wachs’ hand. “My thing is, please take care of the senior-citizen buildings in this town!”

A Student Council delegation from Verdugo Hills High School also came by. “We just wanted to say ‘hi’ to you, and let you know who we are,” Will Reinhart, the student body treasurer, told Wachs. The 47-year-old councilman accepted Reinhart’s invitation to address the Student Council.

An elderly man wearing a button declaring “Non-Smokers are Better Lovers” told Wachs in great detail about a problem he is having with car insurance.

A woman wanted Wachs’ autograph.

It was an older and folksier crowd than the ones in Wachs’ old strongholds of Sherman Oaks and Studio City. As a Wachs aide put it, Sunland-Tujunga is full of people who “went to high school here and never left.”

Areas Contrasted

Wachs contrasted the area’s “real sense of community” with the “vast, vast parts of Los Angeles where people sort of come in and go out,” and mailing lists are always out of date.

Several residents told Wachs that the small-town feeling and isolation they prize is being threatened by development.

“In the second largest city in the U. S., that you can have an area like this to live in is just fantastic,” Wachs replied. “Wherever I’ve gone, preserving the life style seems to be the No. 1 issue.”

He promised to put together a task force to review development patterns and the community plan.

The open house also was attended by several Wachs aides, by his diminutive and gray-haired mother, Hannah, and by Councilman Finn’s widow, Anne, to whom many visitors paid their respects.

The sudden death in August of the 68-year-old Finn from a ruptured aorta led the City Council to scrap a former redistricting plan in favor of the new one.

Some type of redistricting was required to settle a Justice Department lawsuit accusing the city of splitting up Latino neighborhoods--and diluting Latino voting strength--in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The redistricting was bitterly opposed by Wachs and Bernardi and by many Valley residents.

“I’m urging the community to get to know Joel,” said Anne Finn. “I think they respect his intelligence and his caring.”

Backing Initiative

At the same time, Finn said, she intends to work hard helping Bernardi on an initiative campaign to bring the council’s redistricting decision before voters next June.

“We were totally ignored,” she said. “Really, it was ‘the people be damned.’ ”

Wachs said he probably has finished fighting the redistricting decision. “We’re all grown-ups, you know. We didn’t prevail,” he said. “And now, we’re going to make it work and turn it into something positive.”

Several at the gathering said they think highly of Wachs but resent having a councilman assigned to them.

Some of the visitors paused before a large map of the new 2nd District on display at the back of the room. The district is roughly Y-shaped, with a narrow toe pointed into Studio City, one arm reaching northeast into the Verdugo Mountains and the other up through Van Nuys.

“That map is ludicrous,” said Eva Sander, a Tujunga resident. “It looks like this,” she said, suddenly thrusting her arms into the air as if confronted by a robber with a gun.

“It looks like it’s somebody who’s being mugged.”