Communities Get a Lesson on Separating From L.A.

Taking their cue from Valley VOTE, residents from communities outside the San Fernando Valley on Saturday plotted their own strategies to break away from Los Angeles.

Activists exploring secession drives represented areas including West Los Angeles, South-Central, Eagle Rock, San Pedro, Wilmington, Westchester, Mar Vista, Playa del Rey and Venice.

The community representatives talked strategy in Sherman Oaks with Jeff Brain, president of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, at the group’s Ventura Boulevard headquarters.

During the nearly three-hour session, Brain advised the breakup backers on how best to navigate the course that could lead to dismantling the nation’s second-largest city.

He spoke about how to build consensus among competing interests, gain support from grass-roots organizations and power brokers in Sacramento, and draft and circulate petitions.

As Valley VOTE discovered, activists may find that collecting signatures is the most difficult aspect of a secession campaign.

*

Gov. Pete Wilson on Wednesday signed legislation giving Valley VOTE an additional three months to gather signatures on its petition for a study to break away from Los Angeles.

Without Sacramento’s intervention, the fate of the Valley movement appeared uncertain. Valley VOTE had collected about 137,000 signatures, technically enough to launch the study, but about 20% less than what the group felt it needed to ensure it met the requirement after invalid signatures were tossed out.

The deadline extension to Nov. 27 may give the group enough time to collect the additional signatures.

Brain also instructed the community representatives on how to answer skeptics’ questions regarding taxation and municipal services, deal with the media, motivate volunteers, create an Internet site and make posters and fliers to get the word out about their secession campaigns.

“We were giving them the benefit of our experience,” Brain said after the meeting.

“It is important for them to stay united and move forward because we are keeping pressure on the city as a whole to reform itself and explore options,” he said. “[The city] will be better because we have these efforts throughout the city. It is important to know what other groups are feeling and that it’s not just us.”

Although the leaders of the secession movement, collectively called Alliance for Self-Determination, have met regularly for two years, their efforts have taken on greater meaning now that Valley VOTE is in the final phase of its petition drive.

“We are waiting for you to be successful, so that we can be successful,” said Howard Bennett, co-chairman of HarborVote, seeking a cityhood feasibility study for the communities of San Pedro and Wilmington.

To be successful, the organizations must draft a petition and collect a required number of signatures from registered voters living within the proposed new city.

If the petition drive is successful, the Local Agency Formation Commission would study the viability of the new city and its impact on the remaining city of Los Angeles.

If the agency decides to place the issue on the ballot, the proposal must win approval of a majority of voters in Los Angeles as well as in the proposed area before it can become a separate city.

“We are in line to start,” said Bennett. “Once Valley VOTE’s petition drive is over, we will be ready to start ours.”

Similarly, the Westside Cityhood Coalition said it is gearing up to launch its petition drive in January.

“Many voters say they like L.A., but they hate the city government,” said David Tuttle of the coalition. “We are giving them a chance to stay in L.A., but in West L.A.”

The proposed city would extend from Mulholland Drive south to include Los Angeles International Airport and from Pacific Palisades east to include Hollywood, he said.

Adrian Dove, president of the California chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, a national civil rights organization, said South-Central residents are taking a position of “active passivity.”

“We are looking to see what happens after the Valley peels off,” he said. “What is remaining will be a smaller, more viable city that is simply called Los Angeles.”