SHERMAN OAKS : Residents Want Say in Redevelopment

Residents here said at a community meeting this week that they want more local control over a proposed Sherman Oaks redevelopment project than it appears the city is willing to grant.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) said at a meeting of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. on Wednesday that he supports the residents’ request.

“My bias is not for neighborhood input but neighborhood control,” Hayden said. “The law is ambiguous. You bargain for what you can get.”

The Community Redevelopment Agency has proposed that a community advisory body be established in Sherman Oaks so that the public will have an opportunity to comment as the plan is carried out. The City Council is expected to decide whether to approve the project in mid to late November.

The citizens committee could take the form of either a Community Advisory Committee, which would only have an advisory role, or a Project Area Committee, which would have more legal power. A Project Area Committee, for example, has the power to reject a redevelopment plan, a decision that can only be overridden by a two-thirds majority of the City Council.

Alisa Katz, chief of staff to City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, said Sherman Oaks will have a Community Advisory Committee because project area committee members must live, rent or own property in the project area. Yaroslavsky wants involvement by a broader segment of the community, Katz said.

Yaroslavsky supports the idea of the committee having the power--while Council District 5 is without a City Council member--to reject individual projects that the CRA proposes within the redevelopment area. That decision could only be overturned by a two-thirds majority vote of the City Council.

Council District 5, which includes Sherman Oaks, will be without a council representative for about seven months beginning Dec. 4, when Yaroslavsky leaves office to become a Los Angeles County supervisor.

Some residents want the committee to have the power to reject any individual project that the CRA proposes within the project area.

“What does Zev have against us having say-so in the area?” one woman asked Katz during the meeting. “The project is going to be here for 40 years. Zev is going to be gone in two months. . . . We’re the only ones who are going to be here for 40 years.” Yaroslavsky opposes granting the committee veto power because he believes the panel would have authority without being accountable to the people whose lives its decisions would affect. The only person who should have that power is the council member, he said.