Sepulveda’s West Side Officially Becomes ‘North Hills’ : Secession: The debate went on for so long that no one can recall where the chosen name came from.

They are Sepulveda residents no longer.

After years of trying to divorce themselves from what they characterize as crime-ridden neighborhoods to the east, residents on the west side of the San Diego Freeway were officially recognized Monday as a new community.

They chose the name “North Hills”--smack in the flatlands of the central San Fernando Valley.

City Councilman Hal Bernson, who approved the name change after about 86% of residents signed petitions supporting it, announced the secession was official at a news conference Monday on a street corner in the new community.

The drive to change the name was begun by residents who said they were tired of having their quiet neighborhood of single-family houses identified with what they view as crime-plagued streets of apartments on the freeway’s east side. Police have erected barriers across several streets on the east side in an attempt to curtail drive-by drug dealing.

Police statistics show that in 1990 the number of major crimes--murder, rape, robbery, burglary, auto theft and assault--was indeed greater east of the freeway than west of it, with 1,057 crimes reported on the west side and 1,780 on the east. However, the crime rate on the west side rose 2% last year, up from 1,027, even as the east-side crime rate tapered off 1% from 1,808 in 1989.

The secession drive initially drew protests from residents on the east side, and then attracted some residents of neighboring Granada Hills. The boundaries of the infant North Hills could expand northward as early as this summer if residents of southern Granada Hills decide to throw in with the new community.

The name North Hills has been proposed for some time--for so many years that even organizers of the secession drive say they no longer recall how it was chosen. Some guessed that it is a combination of Northridge and Granada Hills. Others said it might be taken from the North Hills Center shopping mall on Devonshire Street and Balboa Boulevard, although the plaza is in Granada Hills, outside the borders of the new community.

Residents said Monday that the new name was not born out of snobbery but out of a desire to have their own community. They said the two sides of the San Diego Freeway are different in character and that a name of their own will build community spirit.

“It’s community pride,” Joseph Abadi said at a brief ceremony Monday.

“It’s a feeling of satisfaction that it’s finally done,” said Michael Ribons, a real estate broker who coordinated the secession movement and financed a large portion of the petition drive.

But whether the new name will make any difference with the U.S. Postal Service remains to be seen.

Residents eventually want a new ZIP code to go with their new name, but for now say they would be happy just to put North Hills in their mailing address. The post office recognizes their neighborhood as Sepulveda and asks that mail be addressed that way.

Rich Younce, director of postal operations support for the San Fernando Valley, said he received a letter Monday from Bernson requesting that the post office deliver mail addressed to North Hills with the Sepulveda ZIP code--91343.

Younce said postal officials will study the request and could make a decision as soon as two months. Consideration will be given to how the change would affect mail-sorting operations and whether there is another community of North Hills elsewhere in California. Another community with the same name would complicate matters because it could confuse postal workers, Younce said.

For now, the boundaries of the new community will be the San Diego Freeway on the east, Lassen Street on the north, Bull Creek Wash on the west and Roscoe Boulevard on the south.

But even before new community signs are installed this summer, the boundaries may change to include residents of south Granada Hills, some of whom decided at a community meeting last month to circulate petitions to join the new community. Mitch Kessler, the real estate agent coordinating the movement, said he expects to turn in the petitions to Bernson by the end of the month.

Residents at the community meeting said they were reluctant to secede from Granada Hills, but added that they were tired of being called Sepulveda by the post office. The problem arose because city and postal officials have different boundaries for the communities. Many southern Granada Hills residents figured they were better off being called North Hills than being classed as northern Sepulveda.

If the Granada Hills petitions are signed by the necessary number of residents, the boundaries of the new community will extend north to Devonshire Street and west to Balboa Boulevard between Lassen and Devonshire.

The original secession movement drew protests from residents on the east side of the freeway, who said the community should work together to clean up problems such as drug dealing and street crime. Those cries have died down in recent months, but in their place have come complaints that the east side of Sepulveda is being unfairly stigmatized.

Residents of eastern neighborhoods consisting largely of single-family houses have said that Sepulveda’s crime problems are concentrated in small areas and that some areas are just as safe as those in what is now North Hills.

And one faction of east-side residents said they would consider starting their own petition drive to rename their neighborhood North Hills too, but that effort died.