Valley CRA Plan Puts Limits on Bureaucracy

Bobbi Feidler’s Nov. 6 article concerning the Community Redevelopment Agency, “Should the CRA Be Used to Help the Valley’s Quake Recovery?”, reveals that she has bad vibes about the CRA’s motives in setting up six Earthquake Recovery Areas to help Los Angeles recover from the earthquake.

Ms. Feidler says the availability of CRA help is “extremely questionable” for owners of single-family homes in the six recovery areas. She speculates that money will not be available until early 1996, or later. If the CRA does its job properly, both comments are incorrect.

Ms. Feidler also says that public services to the Valley will be reduced if the areas are established. This is not true. Our current property taxes will not increase or decrease as a result of the recovery areas. If the city reduces public services, it is because the city cannot budget itself correctly with the taxes it now receives. This is not a new problem, and has nothing to do with earthquake recovery.

What Ms. Feidler doesn’t say is that the biggest problem with the CRA is the reputation of the agency itself as a conniving, power-mad bureaucracy whose main goal is to acquire private property and turn it over to a few favored developers at bargain-basement process. The drafting of its quake-recovery plans in districts other than the northwest Valley is an example of why such a reputation exists.

As now written, the proposed plans in every district except the northwest Valley allow the CRA to condemn property with no public input and to spend huge sums of money on infrastructure improvements that rightfully should be paid for by the city’s public works department. The Northwest Valley Plan does not allow one cent of earthquake recovery area money to be spent on public property or public improvements. The money will be used only as intended, which is to help private property owners and businesses get back on their feet.

The northwest Valley is placing a cap on the amount of money the CRA can use for “administrative” purposes, and will have a permanent oversight committee composed of local residents and businesses to make sure the CRA lives up to its intended role in the earthquake recovery process.

Ms. Feidler has every reason to be suspicious of the CRA. After all, she is one of its commissioners and is privy to its inner workings. But instead of pulling back the offer of help, she should be on a crusade to make every earthquake recovery area plan in the city as restrictive as the one put together in the northwest Valley.

WALTER J. PRINCE

Northridge