CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS / 12th DISTRICT : Campaign Strategies Diverge on Issue of Porter Ranch Plan : Hal Bernson: The incumbent claims that bureaucratic checkpoints will give the city ‘the ability to ratchet down the amount of development.’

His sponsorship of the Porter Ranch Specific Plan may cost Hal Bernson his Los Angeles City Council seat. But if it does, it will be because the plan is misunderstood by many and actively distorted by his adversaries, the 12th District lawmaker contends.

In a recent interview, Bernson, who is seeking a fourth term in the June 4 runoff election, defended the controversial Porter Ranch plan, calling it the city’s “lowest density” and “most restrictive” development plan ever.

The biggest lie being told about the plan is that it gives immutable building guarantees to the developer, Bernson said.

In fact, many additional city approvals are needed before the developer can build the 3,395 dwelling units and 6 million square feet of commercial space authorized by the plan. And each step of the way, there are checkpoints that enable policy-makers to monitor and regulate the flow of development at Porter Ranch, city officials say.

“This is just a plan, not a project,” Bernson repeatedly said.

Of the plan’s interim checkpoints, the toughest requires the developer to obtain a “project permit” from the city Planning Commission--and possibly from the council--every time the developer proposes to build a commercial structure of more than 40,000 square feet.

Still, questions remain: How tough are these regulatory checkpoints? And, most important in the context of an election, who should be entrusted with overseeing their use: Bernson, an unabashed supporter of the plan, or his challenger, Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein, a sharp critic?

The Porter Ranch Specific Plan, a blueprint for one of the largest potential developments in the city’s history, obligates the developer to mitigate the traffic generated and sets up regulatory checkpoints to ensure continuing city control over the development, Bernson has argued in defending the plan.

Among these obligations and checkpoints cited by Bernson:

* A requirement that the developer build ramps to and from the Simi Valley Freeway and help pay for a computerized signaling system at more than three dozen intersections in the northwest San Fernando Valley, including 11 as far south as Devonshire Street. Beverly Hills developer Nathan Shapell, the main figure in Porter Ranch Development Co., has said the traffic improvements will cost $50 million or more. Bernson has also used those figures, but city traffic analysts have never put a price tag on these improvements.

* A requirement that all Porter Ranch commercial building projects over 40,000 square feet obtain a special project permit from the Planning Commission, a five-member panel appointed by the mayor. The commission’s decision on any permit could be appealed to the City Council. On the basis of a traffic study required for each project permit, the city also may impose extra traffic mitigation measures that go beyond any of those enumerated in the plan. “We haven’t signed any blank check over to the developer,” city Planning Supervisor Frank Fielding said.

* A requirement that full state funding to expand the Simi Valley Freeway in each direction by one lane be available before permits can be issued to build more than 1.5 million square feet of commercial space at Porter Ranch. A total of 6 million square feet of this kind of development is authorized.

Although not unique to the Porter Ranch plan, the developer also will need nearly two dozen city approvals to subdivide his huge property. Each application must undergo an environmental review--and possibly a full, time-consuming environmental impact report.

These regulatory checkpoints provide a strict and workable system for controlling the Porter Ranch project as it unfolds through construction in the next 20 to 30 years, Bernson has said.

“You have the ability to ratchet down the amount of development with them,” Bernson said recently. “This plan gives you that flexibility.”

Gideon Kanner, professor emeritus of land-use law at Loyola Marymount University, said recently that the council has “many opportunities to waylay the landowner” between now and actual construction of the Porter Ranch project.

While planning officials agree that the plan gives policy-makers flexibility, they also say this formative document sets limits.

In general, policy-makers are bound--absent new, contrary information--to make decisions consistent with the intent of previous decisions regarding the same property, said Robert Sutton, a top city Planning Department executive. In this way, specific plans set a powerful precedent.

Deputy City Atty. Claudia Culling, who helped draft the plan, said of the intent of the plan’s interim controls: “The point of these was not to stop projects but to allow them to go ahead as long as they had sufficient traffic-mitigation measures.”

Meanwhile, although Bernson has sought to reassure fearful homeowners that the Porter Ranch project can be controlled at its checkpoints, he is vague about how and when he would use these devices. “I’m not going to make decisions based on a hypothetical,” he said.

Bernson also predicted that the Porter Ranch commercial area, which has aroused the most ire of local residents, may finally be built to 1.5 million square feet, not the 6 million permitted by the plan. Builders never build to the maximum allowed, he said.

But if only that much were to be built, why were the plan’s limits not set lower? “It’s too limiting for an area that size, and it would foreclose the possibility of opportunities in the future,” he said.

None of this consoles Korenstein. The plan’s development authorizations are far too sweeping, and the key to making Porter Ranch a responsibly sized project is to overturn the plan, not work within its framework, she contended.

“Major changes must come out of the Specific Plan,” and “only minor changes” can be achieved by working within its structure, she said.

And even if she cannot overturn the Specific Plan, Korenstein insists that voters could trust her to be a demanding supervisor of its implementation. If Bernson is reelected, the guarantee is that “everything about the project will go through,” she said.

But Bernson, who has been council planning committee chairman for four years, contends he is better fit to enforce the plan “because I know more about land use than anyone. I’m willing to do it, and I know how to do it. Look at my district. You don’t see runaway development there.”

Attacking Korenstein’s planning inexperience, Bernson added: “When you don’t have the knowledge and experience yourself, you’ve got to rely on others. Do you want to depend on someone you don’t know to help make her planning decisions?”