Valley Secession

Re “Goldberg to Seek City Advisory Vote on Secession,” Oct. 22.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg just doesn’t get it. (Or maybe she does and she’s hoping to short-circuit the process. . . .)

I live in the Valley. I don’t know if I want the Valley to secede. I won’t know if I want it to happen until the Local Agency Formation Commission can tell us about the downside costs and the upside benefits.

What I do know is that the costs will have to far outweigh the benefits before I’ll vote against secession. Because I’m completely fed up with paying thousands of dollars in taxes every year to a remote, bureaucratic downtown government whose council members run their offices like 15 fiefdoms in search of self-aggrandizement.

Before Goldberg or anyone else over the hill starts to whine about secession as a “white flight” issue, I suggest that she talk to my neighbors--my black, Hispanic, Korean, Iranian, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Armenian neighbors--to see what they think of life as a resident of Los Angeles. I doubt they’re any happier than I am about the kind of taxes we pay and the kind of services we receive (or fail to receive) in return.

Asking us to vote without giving us all the facts is a foolish notion borne of the hope that, in an information vacuum, the status quo will prevail. But the status quo isn’t working and it must change. The only real questions are how and when.

MARCY M. ROTHENBERG

Porter Ranch

* I live in Los Angeles. However, I had this dream about seceding and now lived in Valley City, Calif.

The dream had a happy ending when Valley City got a professional football team before Los Angeles.

DAVID KOHNHORST

Sunland