Council Tires of Waiting for Quake Repairs

The Northridge earthquake continues to dog Santa Clarita’s leaders, as the City Council cracks down on property owners who have failed to fix earthquake-ravaged homes.

Without dissent, the council Tuesday night demanded a report from the staff employees before its next meeting on the status of repairs in a particularly hard-hit area of Valencia.

The city suffered $144 million in private property damage in the 1994 quake.

Repairs have been stymied in part by the city’s failure to create a redevelopment agency to provide financial support for earthquake reconstruction. The city’s attempt to create such an agency was stalled when the area’s primary water wholesaler, the Castaic Lake Water Agency, filed suit, charging that the city had failed to adequately address environmental concerns.

The city wants to use property taxes over the next 30 years to finance the redevelopment project. But the water wholesaler, which has a claim on a share of those taxes, said it would lose millions if the agency is formed, perhaps as much as $850 million, a figure the city has challenged as grossly overstated.

Although a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the city’s proposal to create such a district, a state appeals court reversed the decision. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday in a closed-door session to appeal that ruling.

City Manager George Caravalho sought to persuade the water agency to return to the bargaining table.

“I just wanted to say that in the open,” Caravalho said, “to see if something might occur.”

But with the matter likely to be wrapped in litigation for months, council members like Clyde Smythe insisted that repairs on the unsightly homes should not be deferred.

As representatives of the Valencia Hills Homeowners Assn. looked on, Smythe indicated a willingness to raze the damaged homes if no action is taken on property rehabilitation.

“These people have been waiting long enough,” he said to the neighbors demanding that the eyesores be leveled. “It can’t continue, not the way it has.”