Bernson’s Foes Decry Brochure : Porter Ranch: Election challengers call mailer on controversial development inaccurate and misleading.

A campaign brochure by Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson describing the controversial Porter Ranch project as “environmentally sensitive and economically sound” is being criticized by his five election opponents as inaccurate and misleading.

“The big lie is what this is,” said businessman Walter Prince of Chatsworth, one of the councilman’s challengers. “Bernson’s big lie.”

Bernson campaign manager Hal Dash maintained Friday that the brochure is accurate and that the $2-billion development is well-planned and will be a boon to the community.

The ranch project is a central issue in the April 9 city primary election, in which Bernson faces the largest number of rival candidates since he won his northwest San Fernando Valley council seat in 1979.

Under the Porter Ranch plan, nearly 3,400 dwellings and 6 million square feet of commercial space will be constructed on the mountain slope north of Chatsworth. Bernson was the project’s chief City Hall sponsor and has accepted more than $55,000 in campaign contributions from its developer and his business allies.

Dash said thousands of copies of the brochure have been mailed in recent days to voters in and around the Porter Ranch area.

Opponents said Bernson sent the brochure because he knows that he is politically vulnerable on the ranch issue and is trying to put the best possible face on it.

“To win his campaign, he has to say something to the people to make them think Porter Ranch is a gift to the northwest Valley. . . . I guess his assumption is that the voters aren’t too intelligent,” said another challenger, Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein.

Dash denied that Bernson is worried about political fallout from the ranch, saying the councilman put out the brochure because he was “sick and tired of misstatements and misinformation” about the project being disseminated by opponents.

“We knew from the beginning that they would cloud and distort this issue,” Dash said. “We are clarifying issues and highlighting issues. We’re not afraid of Porter Ranch. It’s a decent plan. It’s just being clouded by opponents,” he said.

The brochure compares two city plans for the Porter Ranch region--the 1974 Chatsworth-Porter Ranch District Plan and the Porter Ranch Specific Plan adopted last year. It indicates that the new plan--which Bernson supported--significantly reduces the number of houses and commercial space that can be constructed.

But Prince and others said Bernson distorted figures from both plans in order to make the version he supported look better.

Prince said that although the mailer said the 1974 plan would have allowed 4,232 residences to be built, it originally allowed only about 2,400.

Prince also challenged the brochure’s statement that more acreage has been set aside for parks and open space under the new plan.

He said the old plan actually set aside more acreage for parks than Bernson indicates and that the lawmaker inflated the park space in the new plan by apparently counting, among other things, residents’ back yards and land earmarked for freeway construction.

Prince said it is unfair to compare the two plans in the first place. Although the mailer said the new plan contains many community amenities--such as bicycling trails--that the 1974 plan did not, the old plan is a general zoning document and was never intended to give details on such facilities, he said.

Korenstein criticized Bernson for noting that a new fire station will be built under the new plan but failing to mention that an existing one will be closed.

She said the station slated for closure, at Tampa Avenue and Rinaldi Street, is in an “extremely fire-prone area.” She also charged that under a deal with the city, the developer will save several million dollars by not having to install fire sprinklers in new homes built in the ranch.

Bernson campaign manager Dash declined to discuss the individual charges made by Prince and Korenstein but said the councilman “stands by every figure” in the brochure, which he described as “meticulously researched.”

He characterized Prince and Korenstein as “a couple of whiners,” adding that Bernson intends to “flood constituents with information” about Porter Ranch to prevent the councilman’s opponents from distorting the issue for political purposes.