Owners of Unlicensed Horse Stables Protest City Order to Seek Permits : Crackdown: North Valley operators say the cost of complying would force some off their land or out of business.

Stable owners in the northern San Fernando Valley who illegally board horses protested Saturday against a municipal crackdown prompted by a group that claims to represent their licensed competitors.

Prompted by complaints from the Alliance of Licensed Stable Owners and Operators Inc., the city of Los Angeles recently cited 18 stables from Chatsworth to Tujunga that lack business licenses or zoning permits to board more than two horses.

The city gave the stables’ operators 30 days to either request more time to comply, or to obtain the proper documents at an estimated cost of $10,000 to $15,000.

The alliance filed the complaints to reduce unfair competition, said Robert A. Graham, the group’s attorney.

He declined to divulge members’ names, saying they feared retaliation.

But stable owners and their supporters, including state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), said the stables perform a public service by boarding horses cheaply, and questioned the identity of the alliance’s backers and their motives.

“It’s just a front for land speculators who want to chase off small-business people,” Katz said in a telephone interview. “I can’t find anyone who is licensed who has ever heard of this group. The whole thing is bogus.”

But Graham denied that any developers belonged to the group and said the opposition only raised the question to cloud the issue.

“My clients spent the time and went through the aggravation of complying with the law, and consequently they often have to charge higher boarding fees than those who don’t,” Graham said. “That’s not fair.”

The identities of at least two people associated with the alliance should be available by Jan. 8, the deadline for the group to register the corporation and its agents in Sacramento, Katz said.

Regardless of who is behind the complaints, the illegal stables will have to be brought up to code, said Arline DeSanctis, a spokeswoman for Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents part of the northeast San Fernando Valley.

In some cases, that will mean renovating barns and complying with conditions governing hours of operation or dust control, said Richard Hovious, a principal inspector for the city Department of Building and Safety.

Katz, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, said city officials can make it easier for the stable owners to come into compliance by dispensing with some fees and hearing the cases jointly.

About 80 people who gathered Saturday at the Sunland-Tujunga municipal center to protest the crackdown vowed to collect 10,000 signatures on a petition urging the city to investigate the alliance, and, in the meantime, issue a moratorium on the citations.

The crackdown will force some stable owners out of business and a handful to sell their land, they said.

“If we lost the boarders, we’d lose the house,” said Linda Rowen, who boards 21 horses for monthly fees of $150 to $200 apiece without the proper zoning permit at her ranch in Tujunga.

“A lot of those horses would end up as horse meat on some table in Japan because their owners couldn’t afford to board them somewhere else.”

But others said stricter enforcement of the zoning and licensing regulations will prevent illegally run stables from mistreating animals, which occasionally occurs.

“I pulled my horses out of an unlicensed stable because they were getting short fed and dropped 300 pounds apiece in weight,” said Bill Park, a board member of the Arabian Horse Assn. of the San Fernando Valley who also attended the meeting. “That probably wouldn’t have happened if the stable was licensed.”