Sepulveda Homeowners to Present Petition to Name Area North Hills

Homeowners trying to secede from Sepulveda said Monday they will present Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson later this week with a petition signed by more than 2,800 residents who want to rename their neighborhood North Hills.

Residents west of the San Diego Freeway began the secession campaign last fall to dissociate themselves from what they regard as crime-plagued neighborhoods east of the freeway.

Bernson has said he will approve the name change if it is supported by a majority of homeowners west of the freeway. Michael Ribons, a real estate broker who organized the movement, said that since September his group has collected more than 2,800 signatures supporting the name change, representing more than two-thirds of the property owners in the proposed community.

The new community would be bounded by Lassen Street on the north, Roscoe Boulevard on the south, Bull Creek Wash on the west and the freeway on the east.

Bernson spokesman Ali Sar said that after the councilman receives Ribons’ petition, staff members will begin to verify the signatures before setting in motion the process to recognize the neighborhood as a separate community. He was unsure how long the process would take.

Ribons said changing the name of the area west of the freeway makes sense because it is distinctly different from the east side. “The differences are significant,” he said.

West of the freeway, Sepulveda consists almost entirely of single-family residences, while several streets on the east side are lined with apartments and condominiums. Los Angeles police have said they keep no crime statistics that differentiate between the two sides of the freeway. In 1989, however, police erected traffic barricades in two neighborhoods on the east side to counter drive-by drug dealing.

But there are also several pockets of large, single-family residences on the east side, north of Nordhoff Street. Residents in those neighborhoods tried initially to thwart the secession movement, contending that their property values would decrease and chastising proponents for not helping to clean up the area. In recent months, however, many have sought to join Ribons’ group and have their neighborhoods included in the proposed North Hills.

Longtime Sepulveda resident Val Rowsey said residents on the east side are also circulating petitions to change their neighborhood’s name to North Hills. Their petitions are separate from Ribons’ because the area east of the freeway is represented by Councilmen Joel Wachs and Ernani Bernardi.

Even if the neighborhood is ultimately recognized by the city as a separate community, it may still be called Sepulveda by the post office. Ribons said residents want a ZIP code separate from Sepulveda’s, but Postal Service spokeswoman Ann Hanson said such a change would require extensive studies and the change would be made only if it proved cheaper for the post office.

In the meantime, she said, if the name change is approved the post office would deliver letters with a North Hills address if they had the Sepulveda ZIP code--91343.