This Is No Way to Work

Imagine wearing a hard hat and surgical mask to work because your office is still cracked and dusty from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Sounds pretty unappealing, but that’s what some of the 160 workers assigned to Van Nuys City Hall do every day as they work in a building that’s surrounded by chain-link fence, covered with hasty patches and full of menacing cracks.

That’s no way to work and the Los Angeles City Council should take quick steps to improve the lot of employees at the building. That means either relocating them or just making some proper repairs. The city is studying which choice makes the most fiscal sense, but it should decide soon. Already, the city has located available office space nearby. Some of it is so close that employees could walk from their existing parking spaces. And the head of the city’s real estate office supports the move.

The hitch: Relocating the workers for three years would cost about $3 million. Plus, city inspectors say the 62-year-old building is structurally sound. As the head of the Valley’s Building and Safety office told Times reporter Hugo Martin: “I’d rather be in that building than a lot of other buildings.”

Fine, but plenty of other workers don’t share that view. And who can blame them? The building is a dusty mess, hardly conducive to good work. Some city officials want to wait a few years to renovate the building until after a complete revamping of the Van Nuys Civic Center is finished. The $35-million project includes a new municipal building with shops and a parking structure.

If the project were scheduled to be finished in a year, The Times would support keeping employees working in Van Nuys City Hall just as it is. But the new municipal center won’t be finished until at least the spring of 2000. That’s too long to keep employees in shoddy quarters. The $3 million to move them to proper offices would be 5% of the $60 million the city allocated to move workers from the main City Hall downtown as that building is renovated. Employees in the Valley deserve the same treatment. Move them or fix their offices.