Q & A : L.A. Council Race: Bernardi vs. Hall

Councilman Ernani Bernardi and challenger Lyle Hall are in the final stretch of their runoff race for the northeast San Fernando Valley seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

Voters will decide next Tuesday whether Bernardi, a 28-year council veteran, will retain the 7th-District post for another four years.

His opponent, Hall, 49, a city Fire Department captain, placed second to Bernardi out of a field of eight candidates in the April primary. His campaign motto has been, “It’s time for a change.”

Bernardi, 77, has vowed that if reelected, he will retire after his next term. Most of the candidates he and Hall topped in the primary have endorsed him; so has a new coalition of Latino leaders. He has characterized Hall as a “Johnny-come-lately.”

The two have attended eight public forums since the primary. In interviews with The Times, they were asked these questions:

Q What new ideas do you have to combat graffiti?

BERNARDI: We now have six sandblasters in my district, and I was involved financially in four of them. I also provided the Sylmar Graffiti Busters $1,000 to hire professional help to train them. There’s an ordinance of mine that should be in committee soon that’s going to place the responsibility on the industrial and commercial property owners to notify us immediately when graffiti appears on their facility. We’ll take it off with the organizations we’ve got, but those organizations will now be paid.

HALL: Generations of kids are being raised with no regard for the rights of other people or responsibility for themselves. We’ve got to teach morality and ethics in the schools right from the start. We need to educate people that kids aren’t allowed to have spray paint. We have developed with the Sylmar Graffiti Busters a good program that should be replicated. The council office should be identifying concerned citizens willing to start that kind of operation. We’ve been getting a piecemeal approach: We’re getting wet-blasters bought and put in different areas, but without the program in place it’s not successful.

Q How could the city’s effort to remove abandoned cars from streets be improved?

BERNARDI: The quickest way is to eliminate the 72 hours that we’re required to post before towing. If we start acting in a shorter time period, then these people that park them on the street, and once they’re tagged then move them to the next block, that will stop. The Department of Transportation is improving substantially, at least in my district, but we’ve got to get the people in the city government tuned in with the public, that the public doesn’t want to tolerate this anymore.

HALL: If the city’s program was working properly, then I wouldn’t find them when I was walking precincts. We could establish a bounty for each car that is picked up. It could be used by the Boy Scouts, by the Rotary, the YMCA, the different groups. If we had a more responsive council office, one call to the council office would take care of those things. If there was an abandoned-auto form that was given to any city employee that’s going to be out driving around, that could be a method of identifying more.

Q Drug dealing and gangs continue to be major problems in the northeast San Fernando Valley. How can they be stemmed?

BERNARDI: Drugs and gangs are interlocked, no question about it. I know everybody’s first logical answer is that you’ve got to provide jobs, but first you’ve got to take the profit out of the drug dealing. That means a more aggressive effort’s going to have to be made with respect to the customers. We’ve been successful, in a limited length of time, by making our office budget available to bring back police officers who are off duty because we won’t pay them overtime. But it’s going to require more police officers, more prosecutors, more courts and more jails.

HALL: Technology has made crack the fast-food drug of the ‘80s. Each and every hoodlum out there can augment his or her income by selling this drug. I think we have to reduce the demand for drugs. DARE is a super program, but DARE starts in the fifth grade. By the fifth grade, we’ve lost many of them. It’s important to have athletic events, for teamwork and cooperation, but you’ve got to couple that with education, a support system. It also takes more police. If we took those double-officer cars and made one of them police reserves instead, we would have a dramatic increase in the availability of police officers.

Q Residents frequently complain about police response time. How would you improve that?

BERNARDI: You’ve got a territory up in the northeast Valley that’s more than 60 square miles. When they make an arrest, then they’re not available. We have to improve the arrest techniques, requiring them to be involved in less paper work. The formula for numbers of officers is predicated on the crimes--they’ve also got to crank in the distance that officers have to travel. We ought to also expand our one-man car program. For normal patrolling in the neighborhood, a one-man car is enough.

HALL: The Foothill Division has made tremendous gains. They’ve reduced the average hot call response time from 9 minutes to about 7 1/2. But if somebody’s pounding on your door, if somebody’s breaking in, that’s a long time to wait. That can be minimized not only by adding the extra officers, but by bolstering the reserve program and looking at the deployment policies. Satellite offices also can be effective.

Q What should be done about the scores of substandard, illegal dwellings such as garage conversions and add-ons--throughout the northeast Valley?

BERNARDI: We have an ordinance that will deal with that, that will make money available to people who are living under these unfortunate conditions, that will impose heavy fines on the people who are feeding off them. At least we’ll give them enough money to try to find an apartment. We’re trying to figure out means of maybe upgrading the kind of housing that they’re living in--garages and trailers.

HALL: The concept that was approved needs to be pushed. We need a task force of building and safety, fire, health department, city attorney. We need to go street by street through the community and make sure that people are living in adequate and healthful surroundings. We’ve not been developing our housing market. That’s another criticism I have of Ernie: He came out with this blanket ban on large apartment developments. The city of Los Angeles is so diverse you can’t come up with a policy that will be right in all instances.

Q The lack of affordable child care, especially in the northeast Valley, has reached crisis proportions. What should the city do to help?

BERNARDI: Particularly in the low-income areas, child care is desperately needed. There are other ways that the city can get involved. Recreation and Parks is now starting a program that will take these youngsters after school. If it requires more funds to expand that program, we ought to do it. Now we’re starting to use computer terminals so mothers can stay home with their youngsters. I’ve been trying to get the city to embark on that program for seven years, and now they’re finally developing a pilot program.

HALL: There are at least 50,000 kids out there right now who are in need of child care. The city of Los Angeles is a major employer, and it’s disappointing that until this past year the city didn’t provide any kind of child-care assistance for its people. The city needs to encourage through the business tax and the licensing procedures a requirement that major employers include some means of addressing the problem.

Q You both oppose keeping Lopez Canyon Landfill open beyond 1992. But what are the alternatives? Would you push to close the dump immediately?

BERNARDI: The public ought to know what the alternatives are. There’s strong resentment of dumping rubbish in canyons, but if we don’t want to use canyons, then the additional cost could run in the millions of dollars. The other alternatives are going to the canyons outside the city and recycling. There’s also the burning process, and we’re going to have to utilize that. I sure would like to close the dump immediately. But realistically, the other members of the council know that as long as that’s kept open, the heat’s going to be off their district. That’s why we’re facing a tough problem.

HALL: That dump should be shut down immediately. Instead of being the leader, instead of setting an example for the private dumps, we broke the law. At least two people were injured because of it, and local people are suffering. I advocate expanding Sunshine Canyon Landfill. It will expand away from people, into a new canyon that is geologically separated. It would give us 30 to 50 years of time to deal with our problem in a more substantive way.

Q What is the best route for light rail to take through the Valley? What other solutions would you propose to Valley traffic congestion?

BERNARDI: What could serve the people who need it the most would be that line that follows the Southern Pacific, from downtown all the way through Sun Valley, Pacoima and San Fernando. But if we’re going to have fixed rail, then it ought to be subway. The best way to make public transit more available is to expand the bus service and to reduce the fare. We have to do a better job of balancing our growth, not permitting anymore development that goes beyond the city’s transportation system’s ability to accommodate it.

HALL: The obvious best route is the east-west route that ties major employment and commercial centers. It’s going to have to be grade-separated--raised or lowered. But our whole transit policy is geared on the outdated premise that everybody goes to a central point to work. We need a meaningful grid system so public transportation goes somewhere near where you want to go. We need to do more to encourage van-pooling and ride-sharing. We need to have a planning policy that tries to match jobs and housing and commerce.

Q Many northeast Valley residents say they get the short end of city services. Why do they feel that way? What can be done about it?

BERNARDI: When I first moved up there, nothing was being done about all the graffiti, the cars on the street, the traffic lights that they badly needed and stop signs. It’s kind of a helter-skelter zoning. There’s no question that they were being shortchanged. There have been changes in that. We’re getting more stop signs, we’re getting more traffic lights, we’re getting streets paved, we’re getting graffiti removed, we’re moving cars off the street much more quickly. We’ve asked for a new community plan and they’ll be starting on that this summer.

HALL: The haphazard development of Foothill Boulevard, the Lopez Canyon landfill, the potholes, the lack of tree-trimming, the abandoned cars--all point to neglect. We need to have a more responsive elected official and a better-controlled staff. People say they call in, time and time again, and get no relief. It’s nice to trumpet the Band-Aid explanation that $50,000 was donated by his office to the Police Department, but what that means is $50,000 in constituent services weren’t delivered. That’s at least two full-time staff people who could be taking care of problems before they become problems.

Q What are major differences between you and your opponent?

BERNARDI: My concern is with the people in the community. I’ve been independent, recognized as an independent, and I’m going to maintain that. I’m accessible. I go to the meetings. I have a record. All he has is promises.

HALL: I care about the district and its people on a much more emotional and personal level. I’m a lot more aggressive in dealing with problems and their resolutions. I’m a lot less confrontational, more willing to work with people toward a solution and put aside my ego.