In Retrospect/1987 : A Still-Growing L.A. Enters 1988 With Energy, Conflicts

Contrasting images of 1987--workers beginning to dig the new subway and the homeless digging in on Venice Beach--are reminders that the past year left the Los Angeles area with plenty of unfinished civic business.

More tall buildings went up. The economy--driven by continued government contracts and Pacific Rim trade--seemed strong. But periodic signs of discontent, including electoral upsets, homeowner and business owner anger at the homeless, showed that not everyone shared the booster vision of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and other politicians and business leaders.

Change-minded voters transformed the Los Angeles City Council into an aggressive, multi-ethnic body, somewhat suspicious of growth and dominated by ambitious politicians ready to question the policies of the mayor. Bradley, undeterred by a 1986 gubernatorial defeat, losses by two of his candidates in 1987 City Council elections or his 70th birthday, prepared to run for a fifth term in 1989. But by year’s end, challenger Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles city councilman, had raised much more money for the race than the mayor, whose policies he strongly attacked.

Hahn’s Lingering Illness

At the county Hall of Administration, liberals, outnumbered 3 to 2 on the Board of Supervisors, were weakened even more by the lingering illness of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, recovering from a stroke. That put conservatives firmly in command of a county government which has the main responsibility for local solutions to such health and social problems as AIDS, the homeless and health care for the poor, including large numbers of immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Of all the developments, start of work on both Metro Rail and a trolley line from Long Beach to Los Angeles may well be the most lasting achievement of Los Angeles’ maze of local government agencies in 1987.

Opposition within the Reagan Administration weakened, unlocking large amounts of federal funds, and by Christmas, construction crews and big machines were underground, digging the stations and tunnels for the first leg of Metro Rail, from Union Station to Alvarado Street. Other crews laid tracks for the Long Beach line, financed with local tax dollars.

In a simpler time, the first shovels of earth for the two projects would have touched off huge civic celebrations, as when water arrived in Los Angeles from the Owens Valley in 1913 or the day in 1939 that a half million people showed up for the opening of Union Station.

‘Dream of Empire’

Those civic achievements occurred when Southland growth was such a deeply held belief that it overshadowed the most calamitous events. “It is a dream of Empire coming true before our eyes,” said the chairman of the Metropolitan Water District in 1939, on the occasion of Colorado River water reaching Los Angeles. His vision of a bright future was undimmed by still sizable numbers of Depression unemployed or the war that had started in Europe earlier in the fall.

In 1987, Empire had come true and many residents, as shown in elections and public opinion polls, were unhappy with the outcome. Hard times for the poor, traffic congestion, Santa Monica Bay pollution and the intrusion of high-rise office buildings and large commercial structures in residential neighborhoods had brought harsh reality to the 1939 dream.

The worsening of traffic congestion downtown, on the Westside, in the San Fernando Valley and on the freeways prompted large numbers of complaints to political leaders and at the ballot box.

Discontent over traffic, and the growth that caused it, was considered by political experts to be a main reason for the defeat of well-known Los Angeles City Councilwoman Pat Russell, the council president who had long represented a coastline area from the airport north.

Presence of Homeless

The presence of the homeless was another source of discontent and is high on the list of 1987’s unfinished business.

The issue showed the inability of government, private enterprise or the charity system to solve a growing social problem. A lesson of 1987 was that the problem was too big for any single level of government and certainly for even the most generous and well-intentioned churches, synagogues or social service agencies.

At year’s end it was clear that only an effort by all levels of government, plus the private agencies, could provide even minimum help to those blanketed under the loose term “homeless,” who are a combination of unemployed victims of an increasingly technological economy; alcoholics and drug addicts; the mentally ill and just plain criminals. The year that began with Los Angeles police sweeping the homeless from Skid Row streets and was punctuated during the year by bitter controversy over the homeless Venice Beach residents, finished with a cold spell that sent government agencies and charities hustling to find temporary shelter.

Traffic is also on the top of the unfinished-business list. Small steps were made in either alleviating congestion or providing an alternative to the automobile, including the start of construction of Metro Rail and the Long Beach light rail line. Los Angeles and the South Coast Air Quality Management District each moved to force businesses to encourage car-pooling and use of mass transit. Los Angeles sponsored new commuter bus lines and the way was cleared for a new transit district in the San Gabriel Valley that sponsors said would be more responsive to riders and would encourage more bus use. The new district planned expanded use of private carriers.

Public transportation provided the best example of unfinished business. Despite months of revelations of bad management and inefficiency, the main transit organization in the area, the Southern California Rapid Transit District, remained in the same form it was at the beginning of the year, a bill to reorganize transit in the county having been vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian. When riders reach the bus stops Monday for the first day of commuting of the new year, political leaders will still be trying to find a way to make the bus system more efficient.