Plan for Landfill Fund Delayed : Lopez Canyon: An L.A. city councilman has been at odds with homeowner groups concerning money set aside for communities affected by the dump.

Under fire from homeowners, Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi on Wednesday won extra time to formulate his plan for spending $700,000 to help communities affected by the city’s Lopez Canyon Landfill.

Bernardi has been feuding in recent weeks with homeowner groups near the landfill about how and in which community the money should be spent.

Despite the delay, several community leaders expressed their continuing unhappiness with Bernardi’s handling of the funds at a council committee hearing Wednesday.

“In many ways, we’ve felt betrayed by Mr. Bernardi,” Irene Allert, a Kagel Canyon resident and a 1990 state Assembly candidate, told the council’s Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee.

On Bernardi’s advice, the panel agreed to take up the matter again on March 25 when, Bernardi said, he will present a concrete plan for spending the money.

The $700,000 is part of a $5-million goodwill fund set up by the city of Los Angeles to help ease the pain for those local communities directly affected by the huge landfill. The fund was one of the conditions that the city imposed on itself to obtain a new five-year permit to operate the dump.

Meanwhile, Bernardi told the committee that he wants to use the $700,000 to finance “a sort of sports center” for young people who are at risk of becoming gang members. The program would be patterned after two after-school sports programs run by the Los Angeles Police Department on the city’s Eastside, the lawmaker said.

But Bernardi said he needs more time to work out details about who would manage the program.

Bernardi said in an interview that he is not precluding the possibility of locating the program in Pacoima. Although Pacoima residents have not been in the forefront of the homeowners fighting the landfill, they are strongly affected by it, Bernardi has said.

Bernardi’s initial plan to have the anti-gang program based at Pacoima Park triggered the current feud between the lawmaker and leaders of homeowner groups in Kagel Canyon and Lake View Terrace.

The Kagel Canyon and Lake View Terrace groups say their communities are affected most by Lopez Canyon, deserve to have the money spent on their areas and are offended that Bernardi has not consulted them about his spending plan.

Eileen Barry, an official with the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn., said that although she respects Bernardi and has known him for 30 years, she has been disappointed by his refusal to cooperate with her community.

Lew Snow, a leader in the Lake View Terrace Homeowners Assn., contended that Bernardi’s office is playing politics with the money.

In a related development, the committee, by a 3-0 vote, approved Bernardi’s plan to spend another $700,000 from the fund to upgrade and expand the Lake View Terrace Recreation Center to include a community room with a 100-person capacity.

Bernardi has said the sports program he wants to sponsor would be similar to the Hollenbeck Youth Center and Northeast Police Youth Athletics League teen-age sports programs. They are coordinated by the Police Department but are largely funded by private donations.

In an interview, Police Officer Mike Howard, coordinator of the Hollenbeck program, said the focal point of his program is a Monday-through-Friday, after-school boxing camp that has about 195 participants.