DWP Plans Discounts for Firms in Riot Area : Utilities: Businesses rebuilding or relocating in riot-torn parts of Los Angeles would be eligible for 25% discounts.

Hoping to spur new jobs, Mayor Tom Bradley and Department of Water & Power officials announced a plan Tuesday to slash electric rates 25% during the next five years for businesses that rebuild or relocate in riot-torn areas of Los Angeles.

The proposal to cut DWP rates would be among the largest rebuilding incentives in the city since the riots, city officials said. Even so, some observers said it would not go far in aiding victims of the disturbances.

“I think it’s a significant incentive to those who suffered economically and want to rebuild or want to move into an area that would qualify them for this kind of discount,” Bradley said at a press conference in the riot-torn Crenshaw District.

Later in the day, the city’s Board of Water & Power Commissioners endorsed the plan to discount rates for riot-affected businesses, but delayed a decision on discounts for new enterprises. The plan also must win City Council approval.

The proposed electricity discounts were sweet news to Gilbert A. Mathieu, a business owner whose pharmacy at Western Avenue and 48th Street burned to the ground on the first night of rioting.

“You need all the perks you can get to rebuild, because you’re essentially starting over,” said Mathieu, who has been in business 18 years and is now rebuilding.

But some riot victims termed the proposal too little, too late.

“It’s better than nothing, but it is not really enough for the victims,” said Jay Park, a spokesman for the Assn. of Korean American Victims of the L.A. Riot. “We are still asking the mayor to get some money back from the amount paid for property taxes, city license taxes, etc.”

If all of the estimated 2,000 qualifying, riot-affected businesses in the city were to receive the discounts, the program would cost about $12.5 million over five years, commission President Mike Gage said.

The costs would be passed on to other DWP ratepayers, except low-income, disabled or elderly customers now receiving rate subsidies. The program would add about 4 cents to the average residential bill of $38 a month, said Ralph Carlson, DWP electric rates manager.

DWP serves about 1.3 million electricity customers in the city of Los Angeles.

The proposal would cut base electricity rates for qualifying businesses by 25%. Because most customers have costs beyond the base rate, the cut would translate into an overall discount of about 17%, or $7.65, to the average small business bill of about $45 a month, Carlson said.

To qualify, a business that was damaged or destroyed in the rioting would have to be at least 80% rebuilt by next April, a year after the rioting.

Other businesses could qualify for the discounts if they moved within a year into special “revitalization zones” to be determined later by the City Council.

Some observers expressed doubt that the program would provide the final push to business owners contemplating reconstruction or relocation to inner city areas.

“For energy-intensive businesses, it will certainly help--machine shop operations, the light industrial type of things people have suggested are important and sensible for these neighborhoods,” said Jon P. Goodman, director of the entrepreneur program at USC and an expert on economic development.

“But it’s just one part of a mosaic,” she said. “Every step is helpful. . . . But economic development is really a process of accretion.”

Southern California Edison Co.--the electric utility for most of Southern California outside the Los Angeles city limits--recently launched its own program of discounts to stimulate business in inner city areas.

But that program, about a month old, is aimed only at large industrial firms that move into the Southland from out of state. It provides discounts that start at 15% and decrease over the course of three years.

So far, no firms have applied for the discount, a spokeswoman said.