Bill to Block Road Extension Clears Committee

A bill designed to prevent the paving of Reseda Boulevard through state parkland above Tarzana and connecting it to Mulholland Drive cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday.

The measure by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) authorizes the state Department of Parks and Recreation to block construction of the roadway if state officials believe that grading for road construction would destabilize the area’s mountain slopes.

By a 5-2 margin, the Senate Natural Resources Committee approved the measure and sent it to the Appropriations Committee.

At issue in debates over the measure is whether the state Legislature should get involved in the bitter local dispute over extending the roadway or whether the quarrel should be left to local officials.

A decade ago, the city of Los Angeles required that a contractor, as a condition for permission to build a luxury housing development, extend Reseda Boulevard southward into the Santa Monica Mountains on a city right of way and pave it. The development, now being built by Harlan Lee & Associates, ends at the boundary of state parklands north of Mulholland Drive.

The city has proposed a 60-foot-wide paved extension of Reseda Boulevard running through Topanga State Park and connecting with Mulholland Drive, according to the Senate Natural Resources Committee analysis of the bill.

Friedman said he is pushing the legislation at the request of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and homeowner groups concerned about the harmful effects of what he called a “four-lane highway.” He told the committee that the measure is necessary to prevent “irreparable harm to a state resource, Topanga State Park.”

Friedman’s bill was originally written to establish a regional park district in Los Angeles County and has already passed the Assembly. But last month, Friedman amended the bill, while it was still before the Senate, to deal with the Reseda Boulevard dispute. If it passes the Senate, it will have to be returned to the Assembly for final passage.

R. Blair Reynolds, a lawyer representing the Encino Hillside Traffic Safety Organization, said the Legislature has no business jumping into a local planning dispute.

“This bill does not belong before the California State Legislature,” said Reynolds, whose group represents Encino homeowners, some of whom say that a Reseda-Mulholland connection would create an alternative cross-mountain route that would drain off many motorists who take shortcuts through Encino residential areas. Many Tarzana residents fear they are right, and that the road would bring heavy commuter traffic to Tarzana streets instead.

The dispute has pitted residents of Tarzana and Encino, neighboring affluent areas, against each other in a quarrel that led to fistfights at one neighborhood meeting.

Daniel C. Preece, district superintendent for the Department of Parks and Recreation, said his agency is opposed to the road but has not taken a position on the Friedman legislation.