Homeowners Brief L.A.’s Top Planner : Topics Range From Traffic to Trash

Daniel entered the lion’s den on Saturday and emerged with an earful.

Daniel was Daniel Garcia, president of the Los Angeles city Planning Commission, which plays a key role in community development. The den was the hillside home of Richard Close, president of Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. The lions were two dozen representatives from San Fernando Valley homeowners associations.

“Normally, he sees us on a case-by-case basis,” said Close, who came up with the idea for the conference two weeks ago during a meeting with Garcia and another Sherman Oaks representative.

“Today we gave him a Valley point of view. He’ll come away from this knowing our overall concerns,” he said.

Wide-Ranging Concerns

The concerns ranged from specific items, such as heavy traffic on back streets during rush hour in Van Nuys, to citywide issues, such as what to do with trash.

Garcia’s five-member commission, made up of private citizens paid a small fee, recommends to the City Council what limits should be imposed or waived for development of the city’s 800,000 parcels of private property.

The commission comes under enormous pressure from homeowners and commercial developers and rarely pleases everyone, Garcia said. As he put it Saturday, “We tend to get dumped on.”

The homeowners’ representatives applied some of that pressure, softened only slightly by the living room setting, the coffee and pastry.

‘Out of Touch’

Describing the planning commission’s stance on development, Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, said: “You’re totally out of touch with the real world.”

But Garcia insisted that growth is being controlled. Propelled by recent legislation and passage of Proposition U, the slow-growth initiative, he said, Los Angeles will by 1988 restrict commercial development on parcels adding up to an area equal in size to Chicago and in population to San Antonio.

Tom Patterson, representing North Hollywood Residents Assn., complained about what he called the commission’s overgrown, understaffed offices and files, which he described as a puzzling maze. “It’s impossible to get anything resolved down there,” he said.

Garcia said more staff positions will be added to handle the huge task of revising community plans, most of which are out of date.

When the city was criticized for failing to put teeth into efforts to control billboards and signs, Garcia replied: “The planning commission came out a lot more negative on billboards than the City Council did.”

In other instances, he redirected the homeowners’ ire to their representatives on the City Council.

Mini-malls met with universal derision. “I think they’re terrible,” Garcia said. And lobbyists for developers drew even more negative comments from the homeowners.

Garcia acknowledged, “I talk to lobbyists from time to time, but a lot less than you think.” He said developers and homeowners are heeded only in proportion to the strength of their arguments.

Broad View Encouraged

Garcia chastised the community representatives for focusing so heavily on local concerns that they lose sight of their role as part of a larger city.

As an example, he mentioned widespread community opposition to the expansion of garbage dumps, such as Mission Canyon Landfill in the Sepulveda Pass, and the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery Project, or LANCER, trash incinerator proposed for a South-Central site.

“There are only two things you can do with garbage,” he said. “You can put it in the ground, or you can burn it.”