PR Campaign Against ‘Misinformation’ : Businesses Try to Get Light Rail Rolling

A campaign to promote construction of a trolley line across the San Fernando Valley was launched Tuesday by two Woodland Hills business groups that fear homeowner “negativism” might defeat the proposed commuter line.

The Warner Center Assn. and the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce will donate $15,000 to combat “misinformation” generated by residents who oppose a light-rail line between North Hollywood and Warner Center, group officials said.

“Loud, strident voices have screamed misinformation into homeowners’ ears,” said Raymond Extract, president of the chamber. “They’re convinced this represents a threat, that the clackety-clack will be noisy and vibrations will shake the house. It won’t.”

Chamber directors voted unanimously Tuesday to contribute $5,000 that can be spent for a public relations campaign, Extract said.

“Without light rail, this community is going to die, not only us, but everything west of us. We’re going to strangle,” he said.

The Warner Center Assn., which includes the largest companies in the 1,100-acre Woodland Hills industrial area, has agreed to contribute $10,000, said Roger Stanard, a Warner Center attorney.

“There’s been a lot of concern about all the negativism created,” Stanard said Tuesday. “The impression is no one in the Valley is supportive of a rail-transit system out here and that is not so.”

Stanard said business leaders are “confident that there are a lot of people who don’t show up at Transportation Commission hearings” who support the trolley plan.

Extract said other Valley chambers of commerce and business groups will also be asked to contribute up to $100,000.

County transportation commissioners are scheduled to decide on the Valley’s light-rail project in the fall of 1988. They have looked at five possible routes--along the Ventura Freeway, the Los Angeles River, Chandler and Victory boulevards and the Victory Boulevard-Southern Pacific Coastliner right of way.

“We’ll hire a professional to make the determination where to go from here,” Extract said.

He said homeowners living along several potential cross-Valley trolley lines, particularly the Chandler-Victory boulevards route, “are already screaming at politicians” who are, as a result, “scared to death to take a stand” in favor of the commuter line.