Conservancy May Reclaim Idle Funds for Horse Trail

The city of Los Angeles was told Wednesday it could lose more than half of the $144,000 in state grants it received in 1986 unless it begins work this month on a 4-mile Hansen Dam equestrian trail.

During an outdoor meeting near the proposed trail Wednesday, horse riders said they did not understand why it has taken more than two years to get past the planning stages of building the trail. They said every time they questioned government officials about the delay, someone would blame someone else.

In April, 1986, the city was awarded a $77,500 grant from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for trail improvements. The city has until June 30 to use the grant or the money must be returned, said John Diaz, an analyst for the conservancy.

Another $66,500 came from the state Department of Parks and Recreation. Odel King, state parks project officer for Los Angeles County, said the state will give the city until 1991 to use that money.

The riders accused representatives of the city Department of Recreation and Parks and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the dam and surrounding land, of intentionally blocking the project with unnecessary and expensive changes.

“It’s like they sit up all night and think of ways to block this,” said Andrea Gutman, who has been riding horses in the Hansen Dam area for 22 years. “If they can do something easily, they will. But if they can’t, they don’t want us on their backs.”

Joel Breitbart, a city parks department planner, said the $144,000 originally allocated is not nearly enough to get the job done. He estimated that the project will cost more than $400,000.

Breitbart said closer scrutiny of plans for the trail prompted new requirements: the corps wants a fence to keep horses off the dam wall and, in January, decided it wanted a longer bridge across the dam spillway; and the city wants a fence to keep horses off the nearby Hansen Dam golf course.

But at Wednesday’s meeting, Breitbart agreed that the city will start the trail soon and “at least make it usable” by the end of the year.

It was a concession that pleased, but did not placate, the riders.

“Based on past experience, I think they will all go back and sit down and decide it will cost too much and isn’t possible,” said Gini Barrett, who owns four horses.

Barrett said the small section of trail is especially important because it would complete a loop of the dam. Most of that portion of the trail already exists, she said, because construction crews cut roads into the hillsides when they were building the dam.

Several riders suggested that money could be saved by letting riders share a nearby bridge built for the Hansen Dam golf course. But John Ward, a manager for the park department’s San Fernando Valley region, said combining golf carts and horses would increase the city’s insurance liability.

“That would just be unreasonable,” he said.

Diaz said he could not recommend that the Conservancy’s board of directors give the city more time to start the project unless he has a firm commitment--in writing--that the trail will be built this year.

“I’m not going to go back to my board and say, ‘It’s going to be built, but I don’t know when,’ ” Diaz said.

There is disagreement about why the $150,000 estimate, included in the 1985 grant proposal, has grown to $400,000.

Breitbart blamed the Corps of Engineers for adding the larger bridge and the extra fencing.

But Wanda Kiebala, Hansen Dam project manager for the corps, blamed the city for furnishing inadequate plans that did not clearly show where the bridge would be located. She said she did not realize until recently that the bridge originally planned would not be structurally stable.

But Gutman, the rider who helped develop the original plans for the trail, said the corps was involved in discussions about the bridge for three years.

Breitbart said the horse riders, the Santa Monica Conservancy and city and state politicians planned the project without consulting his department and reached the low estimate on their own.

“The amount of money that was allocated, I don’t know where it came from, but it was inadequate to do the project,” Breitbart said.

However, Diaz produced a letter and grant application sent to the conservancy on Nov. 12, 1985, signed by Breitbart, that includes the $150,000 estimate.

When asked about the letter, Breitbart confirmed Diaz had shown it to him, but he said he did not remember writing it. He acknowledged that the estimate may have been a poor one. But he said the old estimate is irrelevant because contractors’ bids have pushed up the cost of the project.