Council Continues to Weaken Measure

Lingering doubts over the need for passage of Proposition U fade with each frantic action by the city to weaken the slow-growth initiative.

The latest in a series of legally questionable maneuvers initiated by the City Council is scheduled for Thursday when the City Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on whether to exempt thousands of properties from the designated zones that would be affected if the proposition is approved.

Capacity attendance is expected at the hearing, scheduled from 1 to 6 p.m. at the Van Nuys Women’s Club, 14836 Sylvan St., Van Nuys, and resuming at 7:30 p.m. in the City Council chambers at City Hall downtown.

But don’t expect everyone to testify, especially not the opponents of the subterfuge, for the commission most likely will follow the council’s example and stack the speaker list to favor vested and special interests.

Neighborhood persons who have attended zone-change hearings in the past involving one insensitive proposal or another know the pernicious procedure well--one of the reasons why some 105,000 signatures were gathered with relative ease to get Proposition U on the ballot.

It is really too bad, because the council’s actions, taken with the blessings of Mayor “I-know-who-butters-my-bread” Bradley, just reinforce the view from the neighborhoods that planning in the city is a cozy Monopoly game being played by politicians and their campaign contributors--and they’re playing it badly, judging by the city’s dwindling quality of life.

One can only hope at this stage of the farce that the Planning Commission will somehow assert its independence, intelligence, respect for the prerogatives of the electorate and faith in a damaged planning process by rejecting the Council’s actions.

And where has our new, squeaky-clean, stand-tall planning director, Kenneth Topping, been during this farce, other than signing the pay sheets for the overtime his staff put in to mail a record 56,000 public-hearing notices to owners of property to be affected?

By taking a stand against the obvious zoning subterfuge, the commission, Topping, and his staff would be doing the council, as well as themselves, a favor and would restore some credibility to the the city’s convoluted and crumbling planning process.

Certainly, the commission, the council, the mayor and the powers-that-be must recognize that the lack of credibility in the process was what prompted the drafting and avid support of Proposition U, and why it most likely will be overwhelmingly approved by the voters.

For the past few years, neighborhoods have been sending the city a very loud and clear message that they are fed up with insensitive, out-of-scale development and the resulting traffic mismanagement, and want some changes in the planning process.

But the city has not been listening. Instead, it has been retreating further into the recesses of its chambers and back offices to manipulate the planning process.

And so now we have Proposition U, the first volley in what amounts to a residents’ revolt.

The proposition might be a meat-ax approach to planning by the public, as it has been characterized by opponents. But that is better than the present stiletto approach of the city.

Actually, as an advocate of a sensible planning process to better direct and shape growth to the needs of both residential and commercial communities, I had worried, when the initiative was first proposed, that it indeed was too sweeping.

Planning exercised properly is much too much of an art to be broad-brushed.

In addition, too often in the past planning by ballot box has had a negative cast, catering to economic and racial prejudices and creating an “us versus them,” time-to-lift-the-drawbridge situation.

(Certainly Proposition 13, which in its way was a planning initiative, has over the years created more property-tax inequities than it originally might have corrected, to say nothing of the damage it has done to public services.)

I much prefer a sensitive process geared to the neighborhood level, where an open forum involving advocate planners and local residents can rationally review development proposals within reasonable guidelines.

In my continuing optimism, there is the hope that properly orchestrated and designed growth can actually create a better quality of life for all, providing needed housing, services and amenities.

Density does not have to strangle a city. When shaped with care and coordinated with transit, it can energize a city.

But it is apparent that a rational planning process does not work in an irrational political system that has been hardened over the years by a short-sighted council, a fumbling planning commission, a self-serving civil service system and a weak mayor.

More than a sweeping zoning change, or an initiative, Proposition U is, in my view, a message of public discontent with the direction in which the cityscape has been drifting. It also is a challenge for the city in concert with communities to begin focusing on the city’s waning quality of life.

If not, we can look for more such initiatives in the years to come as a dissatisfied citizenry comes to grips with a stumbling public sector.

Dreams of a livable city persist. Throughout the city’s history, there have been various laudable efforts to create-- through a distinctive design of a housing development--that elusive sense of community.

Among such efforts in the last half-century have been Crestwood Hills in Brentwood, Village Green (or Baldwin Hills Village to some) in Baldwin Hills and a cluster of so-called Case Study Houses in Santa Monica Canyon.

Now we have the Wrightian Association, a non-profit, no-dues group exploring how to form a building society to develop a housing tract in the design tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright. “It is a dream,” comments the association’s Steve Danforth.

Dreams of such communities have at times in the city’s checkered past turned into nightmares, with problems of personalities, politics, financing and code restrictions. Nevertheless, Danforth has asked that those interested in dreaming along with him contact the fledgling association at 213/874-6397.