Panel Urged to Create Latino Council District

San Fernando Valley Latino leaders Thursday night pressed for a greater voice at City Hall at a hearing held by a panel that will recommend a plan to redraw Los Angeles City Council district boundaries.

The five-member redistricting panel, which met in Studio City, has the “historic opportunity” to set the stage for the election of the Valley’s first Latino councilman, said political activist Marshall Diaz. The panel could do this by creating a new Latino-dominated district in the East Valley, he said.

Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro said later “there’s no question” that a new Latino-dominated district in the Valley will emerge through the redistricting process.

Homeowner group leaders, who also testified at the hearing, approached the redistricting issue with their own distinct agendas, calling for districts that do not split communities. Several Van Nuys residents complained that their community has suffered because it is split among five different City Council members and none gives them enough attention.

“We want one voice instead of being diluted further,” said Julie Drake Brown of Van Nuys.

Robert Gross, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, also made a plea for uniting his community, now split between two council districts. Gerald Silver, president of the Homeowners of Encino, warned that allowing ethnicity to dictate how the new political boundaries are drawn will lead to the racial Balkanization of the city.

“If we base this on ethnic lines, we’re going to end up with a city that is fragmented and we’ll all be at each other’s throats,” Silver said. “This is no way to build a city.”

The city has a July 1 deadline, set by the City Charter, to adopt a redistricting plan that takes into account the population and ethnic changes that have occurred since the boundaries of the council’s 15 districts were last drawn.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi’s 7th District--which includes Sylmar, Pacoima, Sun Valley and Van Nuys--are expected to undergo the most radical change. It has been the fastest-growing district in the city and now has nearly 40,000 more residents than the optimum population of 232,000--which represents 1/15th of the city’s population.

Al Avila, chief deputy to Councilman Richard Alatorre, the redistricting committee’s vice chairman, outlined the Latino agenda for the 7th District by saying: “The 7th has to shrink, and we want to shrink it in a way that the number of Latinos and the number of registered Latino voters increases.”

Although 62.3% of the 7th District’s residents are Latinos, only 26.2% of its 73,500 registered voters are Latino, according to city demographic data. Some experts believe that Latino candidates are not in a strong position unless a district has 40% Latino registration.

Another factor paving the way for a new era in the 7th District is that Bernardi has said he will not run for reelection in 1993, when his term expires.

The council last redrew the districts in 1986 in a special redistricting debate triggered by a federal lawsuit alleging that the city’s 1980 plan was biased against Latinos. As a result, the council created a second predominantly Latino district immediately north and east of downtown Los Angeles.

The 1986 redistricting plan also placed the districts of eight lawmakers in the Valley--four solely and four partly in the Valley.

Basically, the four all-Valley districts are divided by the San Diego Freeway. At present, the two east of the freeway--Bernardi’s 7th and Councilman Joel Wachs’ 2nd District--have more than their proportional share of the population.

Wachs’ district is the second fastest growing in the city. It now has 21,731 too many residents. As in Bernardi’s district, growth has been fueled by Latinos moving in and Latino births.

Meanwhile, the two all-Valley districts west of the freeway--Councilman Hal Bernson’s 12th District and Councilwoman Joy Picus’ 3rd District--have less than their share of residents. While Latinos make up 48.9% of the populations of Bernardi and Wachs’ districts, they are only 17.6% of the Bernson and Picus districts.

The Valley also contains slightly more than one-third of the city’s 3.5 million people. Theoretically, it could accommodate five exclusively Valley districts.

In fact, a group called Task Force for Our Fair Share is advocating just such a solution. This organization, made up of Valley business interests, complains the Valley does not get an equitable share of city services, in part because it is politically underrepresented. The group contends that the Valley would be better off if it had one more lawmaker who represented an exclusively valley area than four lawmakers representing only pieces of it.

The meeting Thursday at Reed Junior High was one of six public redistricting hearings being held outside of City Hall. The next and last meeting to be held in the Valley is set for 7 p.m. April 7 at Granada Hills High School.