Threat to Ventura Blvd. Beautification Feared : Improvements: Planning Commission recommends a 94% cut in fees that are charged developers on the thoroughfare.

The Los Angeles Planning Commission on Thursday approved a proposal to drastically cut the fees that developers pay to improve Ventura Boulevard, the San Fernando Valley’s main street, raising the possibility that much of the beautification program will be left unfunded.

The change, which still must be approved by the City Council, angered some neighborhood homeowner groups. But it pleased developers, who saw their share of the bill for improvements cut by 94%, from $125 million to $8 million.

The commission proposed cutting the cost of the overall plan by two-thirds to $77 million. The original estimate was $222 million, but $74 million of that turned out to be a mathematical error.

Critics complained that the sharp reduction in fees that developers will have to pay for permits to build on the boulevard left parts of even the replacement plan with no clear source of funding, raising the possibility they may never be carried out.

“Why lead people to believe that you’re going to solve their parking problems and their blight problems and their traffic-flow problems when you in fact have a budget of $76 million and a plan to fund only $7 million of it?” asked Jeff Brain, chairman of a citizens panel overseeing the plan. He used figures for the plan’s cash component, without real estate contributions from developers.

According to Brain and other neighborhood leaders, the commission voted to effectively take away the only reliable way to pay for $69 million of proposed parking, shuttle buses and other programs for which the homeowners groups had fought long and hard.

“We might as well wipe those improvements off the slate,” said Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino.

*

Ken Bernstein, planning aide to City Councilwoman Laura Chick, said, “It puts into question whether those improvements will be completed in the near future, and it tells the community that they have to go out and raise the funds themselves, through an assessment district or some other mechanisms, because ‘trip fees’ will no longer be available for those purposes.”

Developers, however, applauded the decision. “I think it’s a good proposal,” said Fred Gaines, an attorney for several developers who have appealed their fees.

“It accomplishes the goals that were set forth when the matter was sent to the Planning Commission--to correct the errors, simplify the process and keep the fee to a minimum, but still provide financing for the needed intersection improvements.”

For the past several years, many builders have appealed the “trip fees” they were assessed in return for building permits. The fees, based on a calculation of how many automobile trips on the boulevard a given project would cause, were meant to be spent on improvements laid out in the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan.

Adopted in 1991, the 20-year master plan called for additional turn lanes at 30 intersections to improve traffic flow, community shuttles to ferry passengers along the boulevard and new trees to shade the street’s shoppers. The appeals for relief from the fees tied up the money, however, and developers complained that the high fees were blocking most normal growth on the busy commercial street, thus further reducing fee income.

For more than a year, the city Planning and Transportation departments have struggled to find a way to lower the fees without gutting the plan.

Last month, the Planning Commission recommended that developers be required to pay only for additional turning lanes at 19 intersections and the parking spaces that would be lost due to the new lanes, sharply reducing the builders’ share of the costs.

The plan replaces the trip fees with a charge based on the square footage of new projects. The amount depends on where along the 17-mile corridor the project is built, but it averages $1.69 per square foot. The trip fees averaged about $11.75 per square foot.

The commissioners kept their comments brief Thursday as they signed off on decisions they made a month ago and reviewed the new calculations by the Department of Transportation. But they have said in the past that they wanted to avoid overly high fees that would drive away businesses. They also felt that developers should have to pay only to mitigate the environmental impact of their own projects.

*

The commission recommended that the other items be paid for through assessment districts and by the city, county and state governments. But no such funds have been appropriated.

Assessment districts, in which property owners or merchants in a given area are charged fees to pay for street improvements, are a largely untested method of financing such projects in Los Angeles. Many of those involved in the planning issue believe that the City Council would balk at imposing an assessment district unless a majority of the area’s owners or merchants agreed.

Bernstein said that more changes could be in store when the plan gets to the City Council.

“I think it’s very possible that some council members will be looking for some middle ground between where we were before, with the very high trip fees, and the commission action, which significantly changes the philosophy of the plan,” he said.