Board Postpones 6 Planned Courthouses : Building: Supervisors vote to complete only the Chatsworth facility and one near LAX. The Antelope Valley will receive funds to rent space.

Faced with a shortage of funds for courthouse construction, Los Angeles County supervisors agreed Tuesday to indefinitely postpone six projects on which they already have spent millions of dollars and to complete only two buildings--one in Chatsworth and the other near Los Angeles International Airport.

The 4-1 decision came despite the objections of Supervisor Mike Antonovich and local judges and attorneys, who had lobbied heavily for an $80-million courthouse in the Antelope Valley to replace a severely crowded facility there. The decision also displeased residents of Chatsworth, who have sued the county to block construction of a $51.5-million facility in the western San Fernando Valley.

Construction of the courthouses in Chatsworth and Westchester near LAX is scheduled to begin in September and be completed in two years.

The board’s action indefinitely postpones construction of six proposed courthouses that already have cost the county $16 million in land acquisition, design and other costs. They are located in Lancaster, North Hollywood, Pasadena, West Los Angeles, South Bay and Santa Monica.

Two other projects in southeast Los Angeles and Long Beach that have cost the county nothing to date were also delayed indefinitely.

As a stop-gap measure, the county will lease space for traffic cases and other non-criminal matters to free up courtrooms in the Antelope Valley, South Bay and Santa Monica until there are sufficient funds to build new courthouses.

“I guess we’ll be able to afford to rent two closets now,” said Lancaster Mayor Arnie Rodio, who testified before supervisors in favor of the Antelope Valley courthouse.

But county officials say they will spend up to $500,000 annually in the Antelope Valley, enough money to rent a commercial building for non-criminal matters.

Courthouse construction funds come from a designated portion of general court fines, court-imposed traffic school fees and parking citations. After rising through the late 1980s, the annual revenue for courthouse construction has been dropping steadily since 1989. Annual revenue fell from $25 million that year to $16.5 million in the last fiscal year.

The county would have faced deficits of up to $312 million over a nine-year period if it had continued with plans to build all 10 courthouses, partly because over the years projected costs have gone up dramatically.

The supervisors did acknowledge the need to replace the 30-year-old Antelope Valley courthouse, which is so small that cases frequently are transferred at least 52 miles south to other facilities where courtrooms are available.

A group of judges representing the Los Angeles Superior and Municipal courts had also recommended earlier this fall that the board build the new Lancaster courthouse before the one in Chatsworth, because rapid growth in the Antelope Valley has outstripped the capacity of the existing building.

But the supervisors chose to go ahead with the projects in Chatsworth and near LAX instead, largely because the county has sunk about $40.2 million into those courthouses, compared to only about $5.8 million in the Lancaster project.

The lawsuit filed by Chatsworth homeowners is not considered a significant obstacle because county attorneys have estimated that it will only cost about $100,000 to fight, said Chief Administrative Officer Sally R. Reed.