Valley Perspective : Approaching the New Year With Some Not-So-Lofty Expectations

At this time last year, in this space, we noted the San Fernando Valley’s high and low points of 1994. It was just too easy, especially in a year in which the Glendale City Council briefly (and outrageously) decided to end its pigeon problem by hooking the birds up to automobile tailpipes and gassing them. We have decided to increase the degree of difficulty this year. On this, the final morning of 1995, we have come up with a list of expectations for 1996--and we fully expect all this to be accomplished.

Number One: We will have a San Fernando Valley Rail-Subway-High Tech Bus-Car Pool-Shuttle-Buggy-Or-Something project on which everyone can agree for at least one year.

Number Two: Said plan will still be in place, unaltered, as of December, 31, 1996.

Number Three: The 13-member Metropolitan Transportation Authority board will, in fact, behave like a board and concern itself with policy matters, long-term planning, and related issues. Thus, it will allow the strong, decisive new MTA chief executive officer (whomever that might be) to handle day-to-day management and operations.

Number Four: The myopic “60 Minutes” program will have the decency to send out from the East Coast a reporter who understands that nearly everything in Southern California is built on or near an earthquake fault, not just the Red Line subway tunnel. Perhaps they could find someone who knows, for example, that the island of Manhattan sits on seven earthquake faults.

Number Five: Crime will drop (as it has in 1995, 1994, 1993, 1992) and residents will actually believe that crime has dropped.

Number Six: The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, the elected officials of those localities, and most residents will agree on a reasonable way to upgrade the facility while addressing valid noise concerns.

Number Seven: Those wonderfully severe sentences for graffiti vandals (as much as nine months in jail, 100 hours of graffiti cleanup, and $34,000 in restitution in one instance) will continue.

Number Eight: That some Los Angeles politicians drop their silly idea to turn over the names and mug shots of people arrested for soliciting prostitution, so that they can be broadcast over a public access cable channel.

Hey--cable TV is bad enough already!

Number Nine: Motorists will realize that the kind of lousy driving skills (at 55 mph and below) that have given the Valley one of the city’s highest accident rates mean that the new 65 mph freeway speed should be approached with great caution.

Number 10: Lancaster school district officials will have school enrollment forms that avoid such questions as how long the mother’s labor lasted, and whether the child was breast fed or had any “problems” in the first year of life.

Number 11: Edwards Air Force Base and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control will find a way to speed the cleanup of toxic wastes at the base. (As of August, only 10 of 419 waste sites had been been addressed.)

Number 12: The Los Angeles City Council will continue to offer reasonable incentives to entertainment firms, such as those in North Hollywood, which are fueling the region’s economic recovery.

Number 13: The double murder trial of Lyle and Eric Menendez will end in a verdict.

Can you imagine going through this a third time?

Number 14: We won’t receive any more Letters to the Editor addressed to “The Times Valley Addition.”