La Canada Flintridge Still Maturing : 10-Year-Old Gains Stature as a City of Affluence and Legislative Clout

When Caltrans announced in the early 1970s that it would route the Foothill Freeway through the unincorporated Los Angeles County territories of La Canada and Flintridge, residents begged state and Los Angeles county officials to oppose the project.

“We went to congressmen and supervisors. Everybody said, ‘Not our problem,’ ” recalled James Reynolds, a longtime foothills activist.

The reception would be different in 1986, Reynolds believes. He and others say that, in the wake of cityhood, La Canada Flintridge has become a well-organized municipality known for its white-collar affluence and legislative clout.

Wednesday will mark the 10 years since La Canada Flintridge incorporated--a decade since a coalition of housewives and company presidents, schoolteachers and attorneys succeeded in creating a city to ward off possible annexation by Pasadena or Glendale.

In that time, conservative, affluent, anti-development city leaders have consolidated their power and worked zealously to preserve the area’s semi-rural character.

Horse-Owning Popular

Horse-owning is popular and protected. Industry is prohibited. Financial reserves of $10.2 million--almost three times the city’s annual $3.8 million budget--feather the civic nest. And proposals for hillside housing developments or shopping centers are, for the most part, met with hostility.

“We saw huge condominium developments going up in Glendale and we didn’t want to be like that,” said Jane Hogle, a planning commissioner who was active in the cityhood drive. “We’re a mountain valley up here.”

That’s about the first thing one hears when talking to city residents--that people in La Canada Flintridge cherish the isolation and independence of their quiet bedroom community at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Although La Canada Flintridge is only 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles, it might as well be light years away. At night, residents leave their downtown banks and high-rent office spires and hurtle home along state Highway 2 past the commercial bustle of Glendale, cutting north through the bare San Rafael Hills and Verdugo Mountains to emerge in their remote hillside city with rolling, manicured lawns and ranch-style homes.

There, the average family votes Republican, owns a home worth from $200,000 to $450,000 and, at the time of the 1980 U.S. census, had a median annual income of $37,822, more than twice the Los Angeles County figure of $17,551.

La Canada Flintridge is also overwhelmingly white. The 1980 census found that, in a city with just over 20,000 residents, there were only 25 blacks, 678 Latinos and 572 Asians. There has been no influx of minorities since then.

Many of the city’s movers and shakers belong to the La Canada Flintridge Country Club, which perches high in the foothills and on a clear day commands a spectacular view of the city.

The image of affluence was reinforced last year when La Canada Flintridge gave back almost $600,000 in federal funds earmarked for revitalization of slums or for programs to benefit low- or moderate-income residents. The problem: There was no blight or poverty to fight.

Even so, don’t look for marble staircases or brass doorknobs at La Canada Flintridge City Hall. The city’s offices are in a modern but nondescript building on Foothill Boulevard manned by 10 employees. Biweekly City Council meetings are held in a lecture room at Descanso Gardens, a county-owned botanical preserve.

Ten years into cityhood, plans for a more formal City Hall are still up in the air. The city owns a half interest in the $1.2-million historic Lanterman estate and has considered turning it into City Hall. But the city will not inherit the other half interest until the death of Lloyd Lanterman, the last member of the family that founded the community.

Like many small cities, La Canada Flintridge contracts out for many of its services. Los Angeles County provides law enforcement and fire prevention, and residents arrange for their own trash pickups.

For La Canada Flintridge, the last decade has been a time of maturation. In the early days, meetings sometimes dragged through the night because of squabbles among officials and residents over matters such as property line adjustments and size restrictions on awnings.

‘Compatible Council’

“It’s a very compatible council,” said Mayor O. Warren Hillgren, who has been in office since incorporation and was reelected to a four-year term in April.

But 1986 has been a tumultuous year for La Canada Flintridge. In April, after a name-calling campaign, voters rejected a proposal to give residents the right to veto large commercial and housing developments.

That proposal, Proposition A, was prompted by plans of the Sports Chalet, one of the city’s biggest retailers, to expand and build a 9.5-acre shopping center. The Sports Chalet later withdrew its plans under fire from homeowners, but company President Sam Allen said he will submit a new proposal in 1987.

La Canada Flintridge is about to begin its most ambitious project since cityhood, revitalization of its main thoroughfare, Foothill Boulevard, which now is dotted with fast-food restaurants, 13 empty storefronts and some run-down businesses.

A proposal to beautify the street would cost as much as $5 million, more than the city’s annual operating budget, and officials aren’t sure how to finance it. One option under study is formation of a redevelopment agency.

“Redevelopment is a dirty word in this city,” Hillgren said. “But we definitely need to look at it and every other alternative if we’re going to get on with this plan to upgrade Foothill Boulevard.”

Sewers are an even filthier word in the city. La Canada Flintridge is the last remaining urban area in Los Angeles County that has no sewer system: About 85% of the city’s households rely on septic tanks, leach lines and drain fields. Proposals to construct sewer lines twice have been defeated at the polls.

City Manager Don Otterman said that the state Department of Health may eventually force the city to install sewers if septic tanks continue leaking toxic waste into the ground water. Water from the city’s two wells is already blended with purer water to bring it up to health standards.

Despite its financial reserves, La Canada Flintridge has few ways of raising money for projects such as sewers. The city never levied property taxes, and thus does not receive a share of the post-Proposition 13 state property tax funds that are doled out among cities that formerly collected such taxes.

City officials have long lobbied for a policy change that would allow them to obtain a share of the across-the-board 1% property tax levied by the state.

State and county officials say the city’s efforts are not insignificant.

‘Politically Savvy’

La Canada Flintridge is “politically savvy and they know how to get things done in a low-key professional manner,” said Ollie Blanning, a senior deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the area.

State Sen. Newton R. Russell, (R-Glendale), said he was impressed by La Canada Flintridge’s recent efforts to acquire 95 acres of wilderness parkland called Cherry Canyon. City officials traveled 20 times to Sacramento and lobbied successfully for $1.7 million in state funds that helped it buy the land, which was in two parcels, near Descanso Gardens.

It was to obtain this type of influence that La Canada Flintridge residents incorporated in 1976.

Several earlier attempts at cityhood had failed, most notably in 1964 when Flintridge opted out. La Canada then was dealt several blows when it was unable to stop a large hillside development or to reroute the Foothill Freeway, which forced the removal of 500 houses there.

In 1974, concerned that development would eventually erode their way of life, civic leaders trotted out the possibility of cityhood again.

‘We Wanted Control’

“We wanted control of our own destiny,” recalled Kent Frewing, one of the city’s founding fathers. He was in the majority: cityhood breezed through with 72% of the vote.

Most of the city’s founding fathers say that the unincorporated communities of Flintridge and La Canada were being eyed hungrily by Glendale and Pasadena in the mid 1970s.

“We were kind of looking down the barrel of a gun,” Hillgren recalled.

But some longtime residents say that the cityhood advocates exaggerated the threat of annexation to serve their own ends.

“It was a scare tactic,” said Chris Valente, who in the early 1970s served as “honorary mayor” of La Canada.

Privately, some residents say that the incorporation drive had racist overtones. Some residents were afraid that a court would order busing among school districts--La Canada has had its own school district since 1960--that would send inner city students their way. That fear was an impetus for formation of a city, which would be able to oppose busing more successfully than an unincorporated territory, they said.

But city officials say busing was never a real issue. The major fear, they say, was that the communities would be swallowed up by their neighbors.

Neither Glendale or Pasadena ever made direct overtures to La Canada or Flintridge, but both cities opposed La Canada Flintridge incorporation.

Pasadena Had Eyes on Lab

Pasadena did try to annex NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories--which lies 95% in La Canada Flintridge and 5% in Pasadena--but was turned down. To this day, however, JPL uses a Pasadena mailing address, which irritates some La Canada Flintridge officials.

One of the leaders of the opposition to cityhood, Warren Peterson, recalled that he feared council members might encourage large developers and apartment buildings.

But Peterson said that, “As of today, it looks like incorporation is working fine.”

Last year, the city passed an ordinance deleting the hyphen that had inadvertently--and incorrectly--been placed between La Canada and Flintridge by a clerk when the city incorporated.

In explaining the action, council members said the hyphen connoted separation between their communities.

Today, schools are an issue, but not because of busing. Since 1974, enrollment in the La Canada Unified School District has dropped from 5,000 to about 3,000. Three of the district’s seven schools closed. Some teachers were laid off.

A district study projects that enrollment will continue to decline 1% annually until 1990, when it will begin rising slowly again from kindergarten through sixth grade.

Housing Costs Cited

City officials say the school district’s enrollment decline stems in part from the cost of housing--many young families with children cannot afford to move there, Otterman said. For a period in the late 1970s, the population actually declined about 1% a year, although it has stabilized since 1980.

School and city officials now predict a hillside baby boom as couples who postponed childbearing in favor of careers begin having children.

One such couple is Bonnie and Duane McCreery. She is an interior designer; he is a sales representative. Now in their mid 30s, they have lived in La Canada Flintridge for 10 years and have a 1-year-old son.

“We wanted to live in a community instead of a big city where you didn’t know anyone,” Bonnie McCreery said. “Here you’re in a suburb but you’re so close to the city. This is the best of both.”

When their children reach school age, they will be able to choose between sending their children to the highly rated La Canada Unified School District--whose pupils regularly score in the top 10% on state achievement tests--or to one of the city’s many private schools. One of the more exclusive is Flintridge Preparatory School, which charges $5,400 a year, boasts rigorous academic standards and sends 99% of its students to college, a number to Ivy League schools.

‘Find College Easy’

“Many of our graduates find college rather easy after Flintridge,” said John McCarthy, the school’s director of finance.

Although many of the youngsters are high achievers, some residents wonder whether the city’s teen-agers may get into trouble because they have too little to do. Drinking parties with 200 or more participants, typically thrown while parents are out of town, have long been a tradition among the city’s teen-agers, much to the ire of law enforcement officials.

The parties drew mainly wrist-slapping until this summer, when a 17-year-old fell to his death from a second floor balcony. Shocked parents and officials quickly passed a law that prohibited pay-for-admission parties and began discussing how to steer the city’s youth away from alcohol and drugs.

A task group appointed by the City Council tossed around the idea of a teen disco or a community center where youths could gather, but no firm plans have been made.

Voytek Dolinski, assistant principal at La Canada High School, traces some of the problem to the nature of the community.

“There is an availability of nice homes, and the families are not always at home . . . , he said. “I’m sure that that affluence of the community contributes to teen drinking.”