Grass-Roots Unrest : Wilmington, Westside Areas to Join in Bid to Secede From L.A.

The Wilmington residents had talked about cityhood for nearly two hours when Jean McKenna, a small, soft-spoken schoolteacher, stood up to say what many in her town have been grumbling for years.

“There’s only one way we can go,” she said. “And that is up.”

McKenna’s comment came near the end of a meeting Monday night where about 80 Wilmington residents, increasingly frustrated with their community’s treatment, decided to push forward on two fronts in their campaign to secede from the city of Los Angeles.

First, they decided, they will continue local efforts to withdraw from the city, such as collecting petitions, contacting lawmakers and holding meetings.

More significantly, after listening to Westside residents who also want out of Los Angeles, the New Wilmington Committee decided to organize disgruntled communities throughout California in the hopes of easing state laws that restrict secessions and incorporations.

The decision to both fight City Hall and lobby the Legislature followed a discouraging report by a county official on the community’s chances of seceding from Los Angeles.

“I’m being very frank with you about the roadblocks,” said Ruth Bennell, executive director of the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, a state-chartered agency overseeing annexations and incorporations.

To withdraw from the city, Bennell explained, Wilmington must first get the Los Angeles City Council to adopt a resolution identifying the amount of tax money that would be transferred to the community if it became a city. To date, she said, no community has ever received such a resolution, let alone one like Wilmington that links Los Angeles to a major revenue source: in this case, the profitable Port of Los Angeles.

But if the tax resolution were to be passed and enough of Wilmington’s voters then signed petitions for cityhood, Bennell said, LAFCO would still have to study the financial implications of Wilmington’s incorporation. Under state law, she said, the agency would be required to determine not only how the new city would support itself but how its seceding would affect the city of Los Angeles.

The list of hurdles, Bennell said, helps explain why no community has ever mounted a successful move to secede from Los Angeles since LAFCO was formed in 1963. “Talk is one thing. Applications are another,” she said.

Bennell’s report clearly dampened some spirits in the audience. “We’re in a Catch-22 because the city of Los Angeles . . . already has a veto stamp,” said John Robinson, one of New Wilmington’s veteran members.

At the same time, Robinson and others saw Bennell’s report as a reason to revise their strategy for cityhood. Perhaps, the New Wilmington members decided, the way to win their goal is by joining other secession movements in Los Angeles and throughout California.

“Maybe it’s time for the New Wilmington Committee, for all the communities, to form an association . . . and maybe we’ll see all the communities have the same problems,” said committee chairman Howard Bennett, whose idea was quickly embraced by the group.

Specifically, Bennett said, the Wilmington group will contact cityhood committees throughout California about pressing for a state law that will make incorporations easier. In that way, he said, cityhood activists might mount a formidable lobby in Sacramento rather than just battling for incorporations in the courts.

“We’d lose a lawsuit,” Bennett said. “So the only thing for us to do is rewrite the law.”

The plan was unveiled after several cityhood activists from the Westside communities of Venice, Westchester and Playa del Rey urged New Wilmington’s members to continue their efforts at secession.

“We are here because we have gotten nowhere with the city of Los Angeles,” Venice’s Rex Frankel told the Wilmington audience. “And we are here tonight to tell you we are in solidarity with you.”

Citing their own list of complaints with the city, the five Westside activists told the Wilmington residents that Los Angeles has grown too big, its lawmakers too distant, for local communities to have any say in government, from police services to land use.

“I challenge you to find anyone in the city of Los Angeles who is very happy about their service . . . except for developers,” one Westside activist, Leonard Warren, told the Wilmington residents.

The comments from their Westside counterparts struck a chord with the Wilmington crowd. “It sounds like your story is our story and we have to work together,” Wilmington’s McKenna said.

Even, she and others agreed, if the work takes the group all the way to Sacramento.

“This may sound ambitious, but it’s not impossible,” New Wilmington’s Bennett said of the plan to join forces with other communities.

“I think there are enough insane people in this room to try it. And I’m one of them,” Bennett said.