COLUMN ONE : Tears, No Love, for Inner City : The riots strained the frayed ties between L.A. and the suburbs. The instinct is to let the city clean up its own mess, but looking the other way may be impossible.

The inner city not being exactly in his back yard, Manhattan Beach City Councilman Steve Napolitano waited through the debate over on-street parking and the annual 10K run before making his pitch to the conscience of suburbia.

“Only a fool ignores a problem in the hope that it’ll go away,” he began. “Our community should commit itself in some fashion, in some way, to the efforts to rebuild Los Angeles.”

The silence was deafening. The item on the May 19 council agenda, as Napolitano put it, “died due to lack of interest.” When he solicited constituent suggestions, he got six, ranging from a “pen pal program” with South-Central kids to a proposition that Manhattan Beach have “nothing to do with those people.”

Getting the message, he put a pair of food and clothing collection barrels in the lobby of City Hall and quietly left it at that.

Just when urban Los Angeles needs them most, Southern California’s suburbanites are more ambivalent than ever about the ties that bind--or perhaps shackle-- them to the city core.

On one hand, there is the desire to do right by the urban poor; on the other, there is the instinct to flee them. The impulse to bail out the inner city for the greater good runs smack into the question of who will pay.

Los Angeles has always been a study in mixed emotions, straining to maintain an urban identity against the mighty pull of its own centrifugal force.

The worlds that separate gang ‘hoods from gated estates can be bridged in a few minutes by freeway. The city limits encompass the homes of hundreds of thousands of Angelenos whose neighborhoods are, in all but geography, suburban. The shifts in demography that have rocked Lynwood and Watts have been no less keenly felt in Anaheim and Van Nuys. Were it not for the suburban yearning for privacy and security, Los Angeles could not grow; were it not for the city’s gritty and glittering core, its satellite communities would not exist.

In the wake of the riots, the city is emphasizing the common ground, with suburbanite Peter V. Ueberroth of Laguna Beach calling on his neighbors for the bucks and votes many say will be a prerequisite for the inner city’s survival. Those concerned about the region’s overall economic health warn that the farther you get from Los Angeles, the more fuzzy the distinctions between its myriad communities become--particularly to potential corporate investors who do not distinguish the inner city from Irvine.

But rarely in the history of this megalopolis have the ties between city and suburb been so strained.

“It’s not easy,” said David Stein, a principal planner for the Southern California Assn. of Governments. “Many of these people have left the city, and dislike the problems they left behind. They see (urban) Los Angeles as big and threatening, and stories of crime and bad education don’t help.”

Besides, says Orange County historian Jim Sleeper, suburban taxpayers “are tighter than bark on a gum tree. And the Los Angeles summer festival, as we down here refer to the rioting, was no incentive for us to cozy up.”

Not that suburbanites felt much warmth for the cities before the riots.

In a 1989 Gallup Poll, only 19% of Americans said they would most like to live in a city. Another poll, done last year for NBC News and Newsweek, found that 51% of Americans opposed raising the taxes of suburbanites to help solve the problems of their urban centers.

“I’ve never been real crazy about L.A.,” said Pasadena muralist Kenton Nelson. “I don’t like fearing for my life.”

Ditto, says Peter Weber, the mayor of Rolling Hills.

“I try to stay away from Los Angeles all the time,” he said. “It’s a big dirty city that’s smoggy and hot, with traffic jams and expensive parking.”

Double ditto, says Orange County’s Scott Peotter.

“If I didn’t have to go up there to meet business clients,” said the Irvine architect, “I wouldn’t go up there at all.”

For these and other suburbanites, this year’s violence reinforced their worst fears about urban life.

“For 18 years,” said Richard Close, a Century City lawyer who lives in Sherman Oaks, “we used to go to Langer’s Deli in MacArthur Park after the USC football games. Well, my family won’t go there now. They decided a couple of years ago that it was too high-risk a place to get a sandwich after a football game, and the riots just cemented that feeling.”

Such sentiments dismay people such as Inglewood businessman Mark Sinaguglia, who worries that his community has been lumped in the public mind with the most devastated areas of South Los Angeles.

Inglewood, he notes, was relatively untouched by the civil unrest, despite its proximity to some of the hardest hit riot areas. Yet suburbanites of all ethnic backgrounds perceived the riots as a minority uprising and will now avoid his mostly African-American and Latino community out of racial fear, Sinaguglia says.

And he is not the only one. The city, in the weeks immediately after the riots, felt the need to initiate an ad campaign promoting Inglewood as a safe place to visit. Sinaguglia, who was president of the Chamber of Commerce at the time, reported a sharp drop in party bookings at his Mayflower Ballroom.

“I go into South-Central to do business all the time,” he said. “But some people will drive 20 miles out of their way to avoid the area.

“The other day, a lady called and . . . asked how to get to my business,” Sinaguglia said. “I said: ‘Take the Manchester Boulevard off-ramp.’ She said: ‘The Manchester Boulevard that burned in the riots?’ I had to tell her that Manchester runs for miles and miles, and we were nowhere near where the problems were.”

The political consequences of such biases are evident in national and local polls that show suburbanites pin responsibility for rebuilding the inner cities on the people who live there.

When the Los Angeles Times Poll asked Southern Californians in May what single action they thought would best prevent a recurrence of rioting, 50% called for more moral leadership from inner-city residents. And when CBS News asked Americans for the underlying cause of the urban unrest, “government neglect” was outpolled by “a breakdown in family values,” 43% to 35%.

Political analyst William Schneider, moreover, says Americans in general doubt that anyone knows how best to solve the problems of the inner cities--and that goes double for government.

“If you say to suburban voters: ‘Give your money to this or that agency, and they’ll rebuild L.A.,’ they won’t believe it,” Schneider said. “They believe the government won’t have the foggiest idea what to do with the money--and if they do get an idea, they’ll end up wasting the money anyway.”

That was the position taken by Orange County’s elected representatives in Washington, who this summer voted against a $495-million package of emergency loans and disaster relief targeted at Los Angeles and Chicago. Instead, the conservative congressional delegation rallied behind “enterprise zone” legislation proposed by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach).

Although the aid bill passed, the stance taken by the Orange County legislators was symbolic of suburbia’s resentment at its tax dollars being spent on social and economic problems in urban areas.

“Sometimes people pay their taxes and don’t really mind that they’re going to useless causes,” Cox said during a recent KCRW-FM call-in radio show. “On the other hand, many people complain a great deal when they see that their money is going down a rat hole.”

Interviews with suburban Southern Californians bear him out, though urban advocates insist that the inner city cannot be rebuilt without private investment and public spending on such things as expanded policing, job training and tax breaks for skittish businesses.

“With budget crunches all over, I can’t get real enthusiastic about sending money to L.A.,” said Howard Brooks, executive director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade. “The people in that community burned down their community,” said Brooks, a 12-year resident of one of Los Angeles’ newest and fastest-growing suburbs. “I’m sorry about that. Why’d you do that? (But) we’ve got people up here standing in line for food. They’ve got master’s degrees and six kids and they’ve never been unemployed in their lives, and they’re standing in food lines. We’ve got to worry about them.”

Orange County’s Peotter, a father of three, also speaks for those who believe that the inner city should clean up its own mess.

“There’s absolutely no way I want to contribute at all to the rebuilding of L.A. in any manner,” he said. “I’m against handouts in general--particularly when the problem is within the community.”

In the San Fernando Valley--which falls within Los Angeles city limits despite its quintessentially suburban reputation--there were signs of sympathy for the inner city in voter support for Charter Amendment F. In Councilwoman Joy Picus’ 3rd District, the police reform measure received 54% of the vote.

But Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Assn., believes that the Valley voted against former Chief Daryl F. Gates, not for the inner city. “Proposition F wasn’t about some suburban recognition of responsibility,” he said. “It was about term limits.”

In either case, the city will be watching closely in November, when Los Angeles voters will be asked to raise their property taxes to expand the Los Angeles Police Department. And if there is a new spirit of urban solidarity in the Valley, it has yet to make itself evident in the police tax debate. Already, Valley leaders have said they will not support the proposed levy unless they can be assured that they will get their fair share of police.

Meanwhile, among the Valley’s affluent, there is renewed--if idle--talk of seceding from Los Angeles, its bureaucracy and its schools and creating a private, suburban city with a school system of its own.

“On the surface, there is this: ‘Let’s reach across the ocean and shake hands, reach out.’ That’s the surface comment you get here,” said Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino and a Valley activist. But underneath, he says, many of his neighbors agree with him that “the Valley is getting shafted” by a local government that uses it as a cash cow to support the troubled megalopolis over the hill.

“The grass-roots feeling is that no one will help anyone unless they help themselves. That’s the view of many people in the Valley,” Silver said. “They see the high-crime situation, the drug situation, the crime situation out of control, the situation of families and the out-of-control birthrate. I think people are saying, ‘Why should I underwrite those costs?’ ”

And yet, many suburbanites acknowledge that the city’s problems tug on their heartstrings. “I don’t think anyone in this area could have watched the riots on TV and not felt that they were a part of Los Angeles,” said Manhattan Beach’s Napolitano. “Everyone’s concerned about the future of L.A.”

Napolitano said that he had hoped for more than the lukewarm support garnered by his May 19 speech. But in the weeks since the collection barrels were set up “they’ve overflowed with donations. There was so much stuff last week, they had to put the surplus in the conference room.”

“I guess we just had to come up with something that people in the community could agree on,” Napolitano said. “Because we don’t have money to throw at the problem. Everybody’s strapped. So money just couldn’t be it.”

Handouts notwithstanding, many--in the suburbs and beyond--warn that urban problems do not stop at the city limits. Even the farthest-flung suburbs are grappling with unemployment, gangs and drugs, residents and experts say. Tall hedges and gates have not kept homelessness and racial strife at bay.

“We are a big city right here,” said Ben Reznik, a prominent San Fernando Valley land-use attorney. “Anybody who thinks breaking away from Los Angeles, either the city or the school district, (is the way) to maintain suburban lifestyle is not living in reality. Very few people now understand that the Valley has 600,000 Hispanics and that we have a substantial black population . . . that we have every minority . . . represented.”

Others say that suburbia has sound business reasons for bailing out the inner city. Local companies are the first to acknowledge that Los Angeles is, in many ways, one big marketplace.

“Even businesses that aren’t necessarily located (in the areas where rioting occurred) will draw their future employees from that area,” said John Nunn, a senior vice president with Irvine-based American Savings Bank, which has set aside $1 million to help with the recovery efforts. “All businesses benefit when there’s an educated, trained employee base.”

And economic consultants warn that investors judge suburbs by the geographic company they keep.

“My clients don’t distinguish Compton from Pasadena too readily,” said Jock O’Connell, a consultant to foreign businesses planning expansion into the United States. “They regard all of Southern California as a problematic area, and this predates the riots. When you stand in New York or Hong Kong or Vienna or Berlin, you don’t distinguish between communities that, from your perspective, are right next door. My sister in Maine calls me at home in Davis every time there’s an earthquake anywhere in California.”

Such sentiments have dissuaded Vern Lawson Jr., who directs an organization that recruits business to the Antelope Valley, from playing up the riots to outside firms. His community’s fate, he has come to realize, is inextricably linked to that of Los Angeles.

Besides, he says, he does not dislike the city all that much.

“My wife would leave me,” Lawson confessed, “if we moved to an area so far out that we couldn’t get to a Dodgers game.”

Times staff writers Tammerlin Drummond in Orange County, Lorna Fernandes in the South Bay, Vicki Torres in the San Gabriel Valley and Carol Watson in the San Fernando Valley contributed to this story.