Council Shifts Lopez Canyon Trust Funds to Gang Project

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a controversial plan by Councilman Ernani Bernardi to take $700,000 from a fund set up to aid communities affected by the Lopez Canyon dump and spend it on an anti-gang program to be sited in Pacoima.

But a residents group from Lake View Terrace, where the dump is located, warned Tuesday that it will sue to overturn the action because Pacoima isn’t eligible for money from the Lopez Canyon Community Amenities Trust Fund.

Bernardi, who has heard the residents’ complaints before, has stated that Pacoima is eligible for the funds because city trash trucks drive through the community to get to the dump.

Bernardi and his staff say the money will be used to buy or lease a facility for housing the Los Angeles Police Department’s Jeopardy anti-gang program at a still-undetermined site in Pacoima.

The trust fund was set up in 1990 when the council gave the city-owned Lopez Canyon a permit to operate for another five years to appease homeowners who have fought the dump. Eventually, $5 million is to go into the fund for community improvement projects.

Meanwhile, Rose Castaneda, field deputy for Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), said Tuesday that she is arranging a joint venture under which her own loosely organized anti-gang counseling program would share funding and housing with the city-funded Jeopardy program.

Castaneda, who says she has ambitions to succeed Bernardi when he retires next year, said her group expects to bring $700,000 of its own money to the venture, acquired through a grant from the prestigious Weingart Foundation.

Castaneda said her anti-gang group will seek the grant through the Foothill Advisory Boosters Assn., a police-affiliated community group. “We’re applying through them, using their nonprofit status,” she said.

Police Capt. Tim McBride of the Foothill Division confirmed that he has had talks with Castaneda and Janis Berman, wife of the lawmaker, about a joint venture with Castaneda’s group. Her group, informally known as the Wednesday Night Irregulars, holds weekly sessions with members of Project Boyz, the youth gang from the city’s San Fernando Gardens housing project.

McBride said he is ready for a “combined effort.” But he also said there is a concern that gang members in Castaneda’s group might use the program to seek new gang recruits from the ranks of the Jeopardy enrollees.

Jeopardy clients are youths who are at risk of entering gangs, while Castaneda’s group deals with actual gang members.

“There may be a way for us to work out a cohabitation agreement,” McBride said. “But as of now, we have not yet formed any partnership or signed any memorandum with them.”