Valley Commentary : School District’s Lesson: When All Else Fails, Sue : The LAUSD’s attempt to invalidate the Warner Center Specific Plan shrouds an agenda aimed at having business rescue officials from their own mismanagement.

First, the longest recession in 50 years. Then a 6.8 earthquake. Now, the Los Angeles Unified School District is attacking the San Fernando Valley.

Just as the Valley is starting to recuperate, LAUSD threatens the recovery with a lawsuit filed last year against the city of Los Angeles aimed at extracting millions of dollars in additional fees from developers. The suit, which has citywide implications, is scheduled for trial in a few weeks.

LAUSD is suing the city to invalidate the city’s Warner Center Specific Plan, alleging that its environmental impact report does not include adequate steps to mitigate the impact of the project on air quality, noise and traffic at public schools. The suit asks for millions of dollars right now, before any development takes place, to provide air-conditioning and air-filtration systems (and lifetime maintenance of those systems) at Canoga Park High School and Parkman Middle School.

*

In effect, the school district is looking to others to solve its financial problems instead of addressing its own mismanagement. This is not the first time LAUSD has tried to sue a local government for this purpose. Its pattern is to sue and then agree to withdraw the suit for a sum of money. The city of Los Angeles says it won’t tolerate LAUSD’s threats, however. It is standing by the Warner Center Specific Plan and the environmental impact report for several good reasons.

The plan is designed to guide further development at Warner Center in Woodland Hills. The area it governs does not include the controversial Warner Ridge project just east of De Soto Avenue.

The specific plan was approved by the City Council on June 30, 1993, after an eight-year process in which residents, businesses and governmental decision-makers reached a consensus--an unusual event for even the smallest projects. Of all those involved in dozens of workshops and hearings, only the school district opposed it. City Council member Laura Chick, whose district includes Warner Center, called the plan “a crucial blueprint for balanced growth in the San Fernando Valley’s most important commercial center.”

Clearly, any real detrimental impacts on schoolchildren that may result from the plan should be mitigated. In approving the environmental impact report, the City Council expressed confidence that they had been. The city attorney also stands by the report and promises to defend the city vigorously against this harassment.

The plan creates a $9-million “neighborhood protection fund” to be collected from developers. It will provide money to constituents, including the school district, for mitigation measures beyond those specified in the environmental impact report. The fund will be directed by a committee appointed by Chick. The principals of Canoga Park High School and Parkman Middle School sit on the committee.

State law also allows school districts to assess developers 27 cents per square foot of commercial development. That means $6 million for LAUSD from Warner Center. With the student population shrinking in the West Valley, the school district doesn’t need the money to build new schools but can use it at existing ones for such items such as air conditioning, landscaping and maintenance.

Are the school district’s finances so poorly managed that it can’t find the resources to provide air conditioning at two schools without suing the city or hitting up developers for more money? It doesn’t send a friendly message.

*

Neither the city of Los Angeles nor real estate developers are in any economic state to bail out LAUSD. The business community is still reeling from the recession and huge earthquake recovery costs. The LAUSD lawsuit puts a cloud over the entire Warner Center area just as a few glimmers of light are appearing.

The schools, the city and the business community should be working together to solve the educational and economic problems of the area. Instead, the school district is spending taxpayers’ money on litigation. If it wins, it is certain to try this tactic again. The business community has always been willing to pay to protect our schoolchildren and campuses, but we resent the school district’s adversarial and wasteful approach to getting someone else to pay its bills when it ought to be addressing its own fiscal incompetence.