Yaroslavsky as Lame Duck a Concern to Community : Sherman Oaks: Area leaders wonder how post-quake rebuilding will fare in councilman’s final six months.

The election of Zev Yaroslavsky to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors comes at a tricky time for Sherman Oaks, leaving community leaders trying to rebuild from the quake wondering how the lame-duck status of their city councilman is going to affect their efforts.

Speculation on the subject varies widely.

“I think it will motivate him to get a lot of work done in the next six months,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., who said he was confident that Yaroslavsky would “turn Sherman Oaks around” in that time.

“In the six months remaining, I don’t think he is going to have much time or focus to put a lot of energy into something new,” said Nancy Schmidt, president of the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce.

The earthquake caused $160 million in damage to Sherman Oaks, making it one of the hardest-hit communities in the Valley. Seventeen apartment buildings were destroyed in a two-block area, countless stores were wrecked on Ventura Boulevard, and expensive houses slid down hillsides.

In an economic aftershock to the quake, business plummeted after local customers fled their red-tagged homes. Progress has been so slow that even today many apartment complexes show little evidence of reconstruction.

Last week, Yaroslavsky announced that he wanted to gauge community reaction to making Sherman Oaks a redevelopment area, one way of providing badly needed repair funds. Under that scenario, repairs would be paid for by the increase in property taxes that is expected as a result of improving the area.

Alisa Katz, Yaroslavsky’s chief deputy, said she believed that few, if any, properties would need to be seized through condemnation, the redevelopment action that tends to be the most controversial.

Fred Gaines, a co-chairman of the Sherman Oaks Town Council--a newly created coalition of the community’s major organizations and leaders--said the proposal concerning redevelopment confirmed that Yaroslavsky and his staff will display the same zeal and activism as he believes they demonstrated immediately after the quake.

“First of all, Sherman Oaks is still part of his (supervisorial) constituency,” Gaines said. “His (new) boundary lines are just an expansion of his City Council district and will probably include all of his City Council district. In terms of his accountability to his constituents, it’s the same group of people.”

The race to succeed Yaroslavsky has already begun. Michael Feuer, executive director of a legal-services group, and Ryan Snyder, a transportation consultant, already have filed papers to begin fund-raising, and four others are said to be interested in the position. The council district includes Westwood, the Fairfax area, Bel-Air and Van Nuys, in addition to Sherman Oaks.

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“Which side of the hill the person comes from will really determine which side they’ll support more,” predicted Ron Mitnick, governmental affairs committee chairman of the Sherman Oaks chamber. “As soon as the candidates are identified, we will certainly be talking to them and working as quickly and diligently as we can . . . to make sure they keep us in mind and help us as much as they can.”

Before Tuesday’s election, Mitnick had joined other Chamber of Commerce officials in complaining that Yaroslavsky had done little to address Sherman Oaks’ earthquake woes. He helped organize a planned June 29 town hall meeting on earthquake recovery to encourage community leaders to fill that perceived leadership void. After the election, however, many of the same officials changed their tune, predicting that the lame-duck councilman would now have to begin addressing their concerns.

The main reason for their shift is that, beginning Election Day, Yaroslavsky’s aides telephoned chamber and other community leaders to tell them about the redevelopment idea and another recovery program, which they said was in the works for the past month.

That second program was developed to expand the city housing department’s loan assistance program for owners of quake-damaged property, including a larger portion of Sherman Oaks.

Yaroslavsky’s aides invited leaders to a meeting to discuss the proposed programs on June 21.

Mitnick questioned the timing of, and motives behind, Yaroslavsky’s recent communiques.

“It strikes me as very odd that a program that was supposedly being worked on since the beginning of the year was mentioned yesterday, and the chamber had no idea that this was coming down the pike,” Mitnick said in an interview after the election. “To me, that’s a political move, it’s posturing, it’s being done on Election Day.”

“I think (Alisa Katz) felt that we were stealing her thunder. That’s why they wanted to have their meeting before ours,” Mitnick said.

Katz described Mitnick’s assumptions as “absurd” and then added, “We’re doing this because we’re looking for the best and most effective program to assist in the recovery of Sherman Oaks. . . . We’re working with the chamber on these things. We have invited many leaders of the chamber and we’re looking forward to their input. They are a key player in this.”

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Katz said Yaroslavsky’s office has done much to get Sherman Oaks back on track after the earthquake, including helping businesses get the necessary permits to rebuild, pushing for a city ordinance that reduced bureaucratic hurdles for people who wanted to reconstruct their properties, and working with local chambers to apply for a $250,000 economic development grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Asked how active he believed Yaroslavsky would be in the next six months, Barry Wegman, executive vice president of the chamber, was among those taking a wait-and-see stance.

“On a scale of one to 10, about a five,” he said. “I don’t know what his program is, so it’s hard for me to say. If he comes out and has a real proactive program, I’ll change my mind. I’m just happy he’s coming out with something.”