Picus Clashes With West Hills Founders

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus angrily denounced West Hills leaders who held a demonstration Tuesday against her and against the adoption by more neighborhoods of the community name they insist should be theirs alone.

More than 100 protesters chanted “Hell, no, we won’t grow,” and carried pickets in front of Picus’ Vanowen Street office. They complained that Picus should have included residents of their area in her poll to decide where the eastern boundary of West Hills will be drawn.

Picus said she was indignant at the demonstration and contended that West Hills leaders “adamantly insisted” that they be kept out of the poll.

West Hills was created in January after residents petitioned Picus to rename their neighborhood, which then was a portion of Canoga Park. Now they want to keep out other neighboring residents. Some Canoga Park homeowners, meanwhile, wish to extend the West Hills boundary to include their neighborhood--but no farther.

“I am angry that the leaders of the West Hills Property Owners Assn. have been trying to confuse and deceive the public, hoping for a negative response to the possible expansion of West Hills,” Picus said in a statement released by her staff during the protest.

“If there’s any deception involved, it’s from Ms. Picus’ office,” said Joel Schiffman, the association’s president, adding that his group did ask to be polled.

Picus’ words were her harshest since she became embroiled in the West Hills controversy. To try to settle it, Picus last month agreed to poll Canoga Park residents between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the current West Hills boundary, at Woodlake and Platt avenues, and abide by that poll.

“She wants to please everybody, but she can’t,” demonstrator Irving Gilbert, 70, said of Picus.

“The situation has been difficult for us all, but especially for me,” Picus’ statement said, “because I was elected to represent ALL of the citizens of the 3rd District.”

In another development, a significant number of people living between West Hills and Fallbrook Avenue, in the so-called “Open Zone,” have not received Picus’ questionnaires, which were sent Sept. 11, said Picus’ chief deputy, Sharon Schuster.

But Schuster said that she expected the questionnaires would arrive at those homes by the end of the week.

As the Picus poll increasingly takes on the character of a political campaign, “Open Zone” leader Lil Younger already has volunteers asking residents for handwritten letters. Flyers have twice been dropped in that neighborhood in the past two weeks. And residents have seen a caravan of cars with passengers shouting from megaphones and several hundred signs urging, “Vote to Fallbrook.”

Younger said: “We have to hold the line at Fallbrook.”

East of the Open Zone, signs exhort “Vote Topanga.” Those signs also number in the hundreds, said James C. Fedalen, a community leader for that cause.

As the issue has become more heated, some signs in that area have been torn down. And there was one sign that mocked, “Vote to Saigon,” Fedalen said.

People talk about the issue from across the counter at Cavaretta’s Italian Groceries, a Canoga Park delicatessen, said co-owner Paul Nunneri, 28. Most think joining West Hills will increase their property values, he said.

“The name West Hills sounds better than Canoga Park,” Nunneri said. “Anything with ‘Hills’ sounds good.” He said he has no opinion on the poll because he doesn’t live there.

He lives in Mission Hills.