Parks Package Has Something for Everyone

On the surface, the $319-million parks measure on the Los Angeles County ballot is very simple. Underneath lies a story of intense behind-the-scenes bargaining at the Board of Supervisors.

For Measure A was carefully crafted to draw maximum support by offering something for almost everyone from young people in danger of joining gangs to seniors needing a safe place to meet.

The ballot measure would raise property taxes modestly--an estimated $6.76 a year for the average homeowner--to pay for an ambitious program to expand parks, buy open space, upgrade recreational facilities, improve beaches, renovate museums and restore cultural attractions.

If the voters approve, all 88 cities in the county would get a piece of the action. Money would be raised to create inner-city parks and riverfront bike trails, preserve scenic mountain and desert lands, protect wildlife habitat and save open space from development.

And it would expand the power and influence of one of the region’s most important park agencies: the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Measure A would extend the conservancy’s reach well beyond the Santa Monica and Santa Susana Mountains to encompass park development along the entire Los Angeles River and its tributaries. And it would give the hard-pressed conservancy, a state agency that buys land threatened with development, a presence across the county as far east as the Whittier-Puente Hills.

“Los Angeles County and its communities are among the most park-poor in urban America,” said Esther Feldman, a former conservancy official and the architect of this measure and two county park measures before it.

Feldman said entire areas of the nation’s most populous county lack parks, open space and recreational amenities. Measure A is designed to change that. “It is extremely vital to the quality of life,” she said.

The $1.1-million campaign to win passage on Tuesday is being underwritten by environmental groups and major cultural institutions, which would be among its chief beneficiaries.

The effort headed by Feldman has taken on new urgency because of fears that a statewide ballot measure to tighten restrictions imposed by Proposition 13 could impose a tougher two-thirds requirement for passage of future park measures.

The opposition to Measure A comes from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which objects to raising property taxes for the next 22 years to foot the bill.

Joel Fox, the group’s president, questioned the wisdom of increasing a park tax while the county faces severe problems in other high-priority areas. “The supervisors were able to put a park tax on the ballot at a time when they couldn’t open the Twin Towers jail,” he noted.

Fox said county voters already agreed in November 1992 to pay higher assessments to finance a $540-million parks program that was also known as Measure A.

Four years later, 24% of the money from that mega-parks measure--almost $130 million--has not been spent because city, county or nonprofit agencies have not sought the funds.

But some of the money raised by the original Measure A has paid for improvements to beaches along the Malibu coast and community swimming pools in the flatlands of the Los Angeles Basin. Funds have been spent to preserve quiet canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains as open space and build a nature center on Santa Catalina Island.

The latest Measure A, though smaller, is in many ways the twin of the 1992 proposition, with an emphasis on upgrading facilities for senior citizens and building parks and recreational facilities for young people at risk of joining gangs.

To that, add money to upgrade landmarks such as the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Natural History Museum. Then, give every city in the county a grant and offer nonprofit organizations a chance to compete for funds.

And when Supervisor Mike Antonovich complains that there aren’t enough projects in his district, simply make the measure bigger. In addition, reserve 15% of the funds to operate and maintain the park facilities.

After all the negotiating was done last summer, four of the supervisors had in the finest tradition of power politics put on the ballot a package of 140 specific projects from soccer fields to hiking trails, basketball courts to wildlife corridors.

Only Supervisor Gloria Molina expressed reservations about asking for another tax increase when the county faces more pressing needs. Lining up to support Measure A was a broad-based coalition of law enforcement and local officials, environmental, senior citizen and community groups.

That coalition was built in large part by Feldman. Her role began six years ago when she was a special projects director for the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, an arm of the conservancy.

Feldman was instrumental in designing the biggest parks measure in the county’s history, an $817-million extravaganza in 1990. She left her job to run the campaign. Although it received 57% of the vote, the measure failed because it needed a two-thirds majority for approval.

Two years later, after state law was changed to require only a simple majority in certain cases, Feldman was again at the conservancy’s sister agency, putting together a $540-million county parks measure for the 1992 ballot. It won approval with 64% of the vote. The county issues bonds to provide up-front funds for park projects. Property tax assessments are used to repay the bonds.

Maintaining close ties to the conservancy, Feldman opened a Los Angeles field office of the Trust for Public Land, an organization that buys environmentally significant properties and sells them to public agencies.

After packaging the latest park measure, Feldman is again at the helm of the Yes on A campaign.

To pay for this effort, the Los Angeles Philharmonic donated $300,000, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. gave $250,000, the Sierra Club and the Trust for Public Land each kicked in $150,000, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation provided $85,000, and $25,000 checks came from USC, the California Museum Foundation and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s campaign fund.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy would be the recipient of a healthy share of the park funds.

Measure A reserves $22.75 million for the conservancy to acquire mountain and canyon lands, streams, trails and scenic areas, and to develop senior citizen facilities and camps for at-risk youth in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Valley foothills. An additional $4 million would be available to acquire land in the vicinity of Stoney Point in the San Fernando Valley, plus $500,000 for the Rim of the Valley Trail.

The supervisors would have the ability to reject any project that could threaten the county sanitation agency’s access to mountain canyons for use as future landfills. And the conservancy, which had been locked in a long and bitter fight with Soka University, could not use the park money to buy land from unwilling sellers.

The conservancy’s Mountains Restoration and Conservation Authority would get $12 million to acquire land and make improvements along the Los Angeles River and its tributaries, including trails for hiking, biking, walking and equestrian use.

Joe Edmiston, the executive director of the conservancy and its sister agency, said the supervisors turned to the conservancy for help because it had a track record of developing public access to a stretch of the river upstream.

At least $2.5 million would be set aside to acquire land and build a new camp for at-risk youth in the Whittier-Puente Hills. The conservancy operates such a camp in the Santa Monica Mountains to give inner-city youth an introduction to nature.

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Measure A

Los Angeles County voters are being asked to raise property taxes to pay for a $319-million program to improve existing parks and cultural facilities, provide funds to buy more parkland and open space and fund anti-gang efforts and senior citizen centers. Additional funds would be provided to maintain park facilities. The average homeowner would pay $6.76 a year for 22 years, according to the measure’s backers.

A partial list of projects is presented below:

Cultural Facilities:

-- Hollywood Bowl: $18 million

-- Los Angeles Zoo: $12 million

-- Exposition Park, including California Museum of Science and Industry and California Afro-American Museum: $12 million

-- Los Angeles County Natural History Museum: $5 million.

-- Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, San Pedro: $2.8 million .

-- John Anson Ford Theatre: $1.5 million.

Acquiring Open Space:

-- Santa Monica Mountains: $17.75 million.

-- Los Angeles River and its tributaries: $12 million

-- Baldwin Hills park expansion: $11 million

-- Puente Hills wildlife corridor: $10 million

-- Santa Clarita Woodlands/Rim of the Valley Trail: $5 million

-- San Fernando Valley/Stoney Point Park expansion: $4 million

-- Rancho Palos Verdes/Portuguese Bend area: $4 million.

-- Whittier Hills/open space acquisition: $2.5 million.

-- Rolling Hills Estates/natural lands: $1 million

Bay and Beaches:

-- County beach improvements: $8 million

-- Reduce urban runoff to Santa Monica Bay: $4 million

-- Santa Monica: Enhance beach access and coastal parks: $1.7 million

-- Ballona Lagoon Preserve: $1 million

-- Malibu/Restore pier: $700,000

-- Hermosa Beach/Develop, expand, rehabilitate pier and waterfront plaza: $1 million.

Park Projects

Funding for $131.5 million in park projects, including $35 million in grants for every city and unincorporated areas of the county.

Antelope Valley

Palmdale/Anaverde Basin Sports Complex: $2.5 million

Lancaster/Prime Desert Preserve: $1 million

San Fernando Valleys and Northern Valleys

Agoura Hills/Calabasas: Regional Community Center: $1 million

Sepulevda Basin Recreation Area: $2.8 million

Burbank/Stough Canyon Nature Center: $800,000

Santa Clarita/Regional Park: $2 million

Castiac Lake: $1.7 million

Newhall/Hart Regional Park: $1 million

Vasquez Rocks County Park: $1.2 million

Sylmar/El Cariso Regional Park: $1.7 million

Hansen Dam Lake: $1.8 million

Glendale/Adult Recreation Center: $1.6 million

Metropolitan Los Angeles

West Hollywood/Plummer Park: $1.1 million

Elysian Park: $1.9 million

MacArthur Park: $1.5 million

City Terrace: $2 million

Franklin D. Roosevelt Park: $1 million

Develop L.A. Inner-City Parks: $5 million

Housing Authority Recreation Areas: $2.3 million

Compton-Slauson Regional Park: $2 million

Jesse Owens Regional Park: $1.7 million

Inglewood/Centinela Park: $1.7 million

Cudahy-South Gate: L.A. River Sports Park: $4.2 million.

San Gabriel Valley

Altadena/Loma Alta County Park: $1.2 million

Pasadena/Hanamonga Watershed Park: $1 million

San Gabriel/Smith Park: $1.7 million

Rosemead/Garvey Park Recreation Center: $1 million

Monterey Park/Barnes Park: $1 million

Duarte/Pamela Park Pool: $1.5 million

Whittier Narrows: $3.3 million

Whittier/Gunn Avenue County Park: $2.3 million

Pico Rivera/Community Center: $1 million

La Mirada/County Park: $1.3 million

Southeast and South Bay Area

Cerritos Park: $1.4 million

Long Beach: Westside Park, $3.9 million; Downtown, $3.5 million; Belmont Plaza Pool, $2 million

Torrance/Wilson Park Sports Complex: $1 million

East County

Claremont/Community Center: $1.2 million

El Monte/Civic Center Park: $1.5 million

San Dimas/Bonelli Regional Park: $1.2 million

Seniors:

Culver City Senior Center: $1.6 million

Central Area: $2 million

East Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley: $1.6 million

Youth and Anti-Gang Efforts:

Los Angeles/For parks in densely-populated, highly urbanized areas with with high population of at-risk youth: $7 million

South Los Angeles/For parks serving youth or at-risk youth in the densely populated, highly urbanized areas in the central Part of the county, including Watts, Willowbrook, Florence and Athens: $2 million.

East Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley: $1.6 million

Whittier/Puente Hills: Acquire and develop at-risk youth camp: $2.5 million.

Gardens:

Los Angeles Arboretum: $1.4 million

South Coast Botanical Gardens: $1.3 million

Historic Sites:

Pio Pico State Historic Park/Whittier: $2.5 million

Grants:

$14 million in competitive grants to public agencies or non-profit groups for trails, senior citizen facilities, urban tree planting, graffiti prevention, rivers and streams, and acquisition or restoration of natural lands.

Source: Text of Measure A