Down in the Valley

It is never calm in the San Fernando Valley.

At any given moment, kamikaze activists are raising hell over a pot full of issues that include, but are not limited to, crime, sex, billboards, barking dogs and whether or not God favors a new church in Chatsworth.

I have attended neighborhood meetings more volatile than campus riots, in which all forms of human decency are suspended while otherwise amiable folks roll on the floor with their hands locked on each other’s throats.

Ladies whose normal mode of protest is limited to turning off the “Phil Donahue Show” in a fit of mannered pique end up swearing like stevedores over plans to close a mini-mall.

It really doesn’t matter who or what the enemy is, so long as it is chewable; sometimes they even eat each other when they are caught up in a feeding frenzy with no other adversary in sight.

That, however, is not currently the case on the western end of the Valley. If you look closely at the chubby guy splashing cheerfully amid a school of circling tiger sharks, you will notice it is Hal Bernson.

You remember Hal. He’s the former Northridge T-shirt salesman who prides himself on being God’s best friend on the L.A. City Council.

Hal is the guy who tried to rid the Valley of moral filth by declaring war on topless bars (the topless bars won) and then suggested the way to clean up crime in a Northridge housing project was to move all the Mexicans out.

It wasn’t worded exactly that way, but we all knew what he meant. Get rid of the Latinos and it’s good-bye crime, hello happiness.

At any rate, Bernson is not having a good summer. In July he was accused of violating campaign-funding laws, and in August he is the object of a recall move for allegedly conspiring with land developers to concrete the Valley.

The accusation by Common Cause that the councilman spent campaign money where he shouldn’t has passed with hardly a gasp of surprise.

However, the charge that he sleeps with land developers could get him tossed out of office. Better he should have slept with his secretary than to cozy up to builders at a time when they are viewed with less warmth than a Jew in Jordan.

As a result, Hapless Hal is the target of an organization called CURB (Citizens United to Recall Bernson), led by a lanky, slow-talking guy who is madder than hell and not going to take it anymore.

His name is Walter Prince and he owns a custodial business in the Valley, though at the moment his full-time job is trying to get rid of the man he believes is politically beholden to people who build things.

It is Bernson, says Prince, who is responsible for wall-to-wall apartments in an area of Northridge once zoned for people with chickens and happy little children playing in large yards.

It is Bernson, says Prince, who wants to tear down a Chatsworth hill where old people stroll to build a shopping center six times the size of the Northridge Mall.

And it is Bernson, says Prince, who wants to condemn 100 acres of land that include his custodial business and turn it over to land speculators.

“That last thing did it,” Prince drawled the other day in an upstairs office over a small garment factory where rows of ladies hunch over sewing machines. “I always knew he was being paid by land developers to do what they want, but this is too much.”

Prince, 53, says the recall idea came to him not in a dream but at a meeting. Bernson was being ripped apart in absentia when a man yelled, “Recall the s.o.b.!” Well, actually, he didn’t use initials.

“I went home,” Prince says, “and said to myself, ‘Why not?’ ”

Now a small army of volunteers is gathering 18,000 signatures on petitions that urge bouncing Bernson into the twilight zone.

I wanted to talk to the councilman about this but his press secretary, suggesting I am not a sweet person, said her boss would discuss urban growth but not the recall.

“Traffic,” Bernson Himself Said Wisely when he came on the phone.

Traffic?

“People aren’t objecting to land development, they’re objecting to the fact they can’t get to work in the morning.”

Ah-ha.

“Traffic,” he said again, as wisely as the first time.

Then he hinted darkly that there are forces afoot that exploit growth problems for political advancement. “Not everyone,” he said, “is honest and legitimate.”

Prince wants Bernson out for that very reason and has summoned other sharks to join the feast. Whether or not they will join remains to be seen, but the circle around the guy bobbing in the water does seem to be getting tighter by the minute.