The Government Is Getting Good at Digging Holes

One of the reasons people hate government is that they can’t get straight answers about actions that affect their lives and property.

This is especially true in the Southland, where a multitude of special districts, authorities and boards are in charge of transportation, education, sewage disposal and many other services government delivers.

I saw a group of unhappy citizens encounter such resistance recently at a meeting in North Hollywood when they tried to pull answers from the Metropolitan Tranportation Authority, which operates commuter trains and buses. The MTA is also building the Metro Rail subway line from Downtown Los Angeles to the Valley.

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The 30 men and women had come to the community room at St. David’s Episcopal Church on Magnolia Boulevard for the meeting, called by a citizens committee involved in redeveloping North Hollywood, which is one of the Valley’s oldest suburbs. At issue was the planned North Hollywood subway station, a keystone of redevelopment efforts.

Three officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were there to answer questions from opponents and supporters of the station. But the session got off to a bad start when the MTA team announced that the man who knew the answers, public affairs official John Higgins, couldn’t attend because he was sick.

Without his presence, the MTA officials answered questions cautiously, falling back on generalities of what had been previously published in the newspaper. One woman wanted to know about removal of the dirt from digging the subway. “John Higgins has the answer,” one of the MTA team replied. When they gave answers, they spoke with the caution of men who feared a bawling out if they strayed from the MTA line.

Many of the gripes centered on MCA Inc., which runs the Valley’s Universal City amusement park and movie studio.

The subway will run from Hollywood through the Caheunga Pass to North Hollywood on a route that takes it through a proposed Lankershim Boulevard station near the entrance of Universal Studios. MCA didn’t like the site and objected to being assessed for the station. So the company invoked a state law permitting a majority of property owners around a subway station to call an election to prevent the assessment, which is being levied on nearby property owners whose businesses would benefit from the subway riders. Since MCA owns 70% of the property around the Lankershim site, it swung the “election.”

It was one man, one vote, carried to the extreme.

Opponents of the North Hollywood station, which would be one stop north of Lankershim, wanted to have an election and kill their assessment district, just as MCA had done. But there are scores of property owners around the North Hollywood site. And opponents--who object to the assessment and the disruption of their businesses during construction--could not round up enough signatures.

The North Hollywood people obviously are victims of a state law stacked against small property owners, and favoring large ones, such as MCA. But the transit authority team offered them little comfort, except to say that they could pay their assessments by installments over 29 years.

MCA came in for criticism on another score. The entertainment giant now wants the site of the Lankershim Boulevard station relocated within about 200 feet of its Universal Studios and CityWalk attractions. If this is done, MCA said it would pay an assessment.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and MCA are negotiating over whether the Lankershim Boulevard station will be relocated. Meanwhile, although the site is undecided, transportation officials told the North Hollywood meeting that subway digging is ready to begin in their neighborhood.

“We’ll have a hole here and we won’t know where it will go?” asked one man. The MTA officials said they were sure the tunnel route would be determined by the time the subway diggers approached Universal City.

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David Mieger, the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s North Hollywood rail planner, told me later that relocating the station, as the entertainment company wants, will add $72 million to the cost of the project and delay completion of the line to the Valley by 22 to 33 months. MCA disputes these figures. Taxpayers want answers.

You’ll have a chance to get them at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 13, when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Planning and Programming Committee meets at MTA headquarters, 545 S. Main St.

It’s a convenient time, right in the middle of the working day. And at a convenient location, right on the edge of Downtown Los Angeles, in the bustling heart of Skid Row. To get there, all you do is find a parking lot, lock your car securely and dash like mad to the MTA building, hoping you don’t get mugged.

No, they don’t make it easy.