Chick to Create Citizen Panels for Input on Planning Issues : Government: The councilwoman hopes ‘balanced’ advisory bodies put an end to land-use fights she’s encountered since taking office.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick is proposing to set up three citizen panels to advise her on local planning issues, which she hopes will be an antidote to the bitter land-use squabbling that has sometimes marked her first months in office.

Chick predicted the panels would “change the balance of power” in the 3rd District by bringing to planning debates a new set of voices and interests, including those of business leaders.

Land-use issues are too often dominated by a “small handful” of people who may or may not be representative of the community, Chick said in an interview this week.

Although the junior councilwoman refused to say if her complaint was aimed at curbing the power of vocal homeowner leaders, Chick asked a group of politically active architects earlier this week: “Why should I only hear the voices of homeowner presidents,” as she explained her intent to make her planning advisory panels “balanced and broad-based.”

“I want to spread the power around,” Chick said in a later interview. “Now not enough of the community is involved. A small handful of people now have a lot of power. That’s not meant as a criticism but as a statement of fact.”

Still, Chick’s office is consulting local homeowner leaders, including Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. President Don Schultz and Encino Homeowners Assn. President Gerald Silver, both of whom she has quarreled with recently, to help identify prospective appointees to the three panels.

Silver said he was pleased to be consulted, but also skeptical.

“I don’t want to prejudge her, but right out of the box she offended our community by putting in a drive-through Burger King on Ventura Boulevard,” Silver said.

“If her intent is to bring real decision-making down to the grass-roots level, that’s good,” Silver said. “But if what happens is that we end up with business interests overriding all others, that’s bad.”

Walter Prince, a community activist from Chatsworth, said his experience with a similar planning panel was not encouraging. That panel was set up by Councilman Hal Bernson and one of its mandates was to review the huge Porter Ranch project.

“It was not representative of anybody but Bernson’s friends,” Prince said.

Bernson’s Porter Ranch panel was “a rubber stamp for Bernson,” complained Prince, who opposed the massive project. The panel, however, did recommend major cutbacks in the project’s size that were later adopted by the council.

Bernson, the influential chairman of the council’s Planning and Land-Use Management Committee, has several such panels operating in his district and he has often urged his colleagues to set them up in their own districts.

But Robert Gross, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, welcomed Chick’s idea.

“Now, there exists too much of an adversarial relationship between residents and business--we should reduce that,” he said.

Instead of hurting the homeowner movement, Chick’s plan could help it by making it a more effective partner in the debate, he predicted.

Ann Kinzle, executive director of the Reseda Chamber of Commerce, also praised Chick’s initiative. “It’s a fantastic idea,” said Kinzle, who complained that the chamber’s position was not always adequately considered by Chick’s predecessor, Joy Picus.

Chick said she intends to establish the three Neighborhood Advisory Planning Councils by the end of November. One panel will represent the communities of Van Nuys, Reseda, Encino and Tarzana; another, Canoga Park and Winnetka, and the third, West Hills and Woodland Hills.

Only 3rd District residents will be eligible, she said.

During her four months in office, Chick already has fought a number of land-use battles in her district.

Chick locked horns with Silver’s Encino group over the Burger King, and with Schultz and his followers over proposals to set up a day-care center and a grocery store in the western portion of Van Nuys. During the bitter flap over the day-care center, two dozen local neighborhood foes picketed a Chick meeting, carrying signs calling her a carpetbagger and urging her removal from office.

Chick also got into a land-use fight with local merchants and residents when she entertained the idea of establishing a city-sanctioned site for job-seeking day laborers in Canoga Park.

Commenting on these troubles at her meeting last Wednesday with the architects, Chick said she wants to “take the politics out of planning” and believes panels will help accomplish that by giving all parties a chance to work quietly behind-the-scenes on land-use problems before they become “visceral, nose-in-the-face” public battles between developers and homeowners.

“I want smooth sailing,” she said.