Playing the Shell Game

Last week’s tentative settlement between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the city of Los Angeles over development in Warner Center could not have come at a better time. As the real estate market again heats up, the school district’s lawsuit threatened to make development overly tough in one of the areas best designed to accommodate it.

The school district sued the city after the City Council in 1993 approved the Warner Center Specific Plan, a long-term guide for development in one of the San Fernando Valley’s most commercial centers. Specific plans encourage and control growth by giving potential builders and nearby residents a set of rules that govern everything from how tall buildings can be to how much developers must pay to offset negatives such as traffic, air pollution and school crowding. The plans establish reasonable certainty.

The school district’s beef with the plan was that it failed to adequately consider the impact of new development on local schools--particularly Parkman Middle School and Canoga Park High School. In short, the district wanted money to install air conditioning and better soundproof walls. An appellate court agreed and invalidated the plan, which cast doubt on the future of projects in Warner Center. Some critics suggested that the district’s lawsuit amounted to extortion--a threat to halt development unless it got a bigger cut.

Welcome to the politics of growth in an era when the public is reluctant to foot the bill for public necessities such as schools, roads and sewers. The bill for these essentials doesn’t go away. It just gets shifted onto newcomers. Cities, counties and school districts tack those costs onto new development. So the school district was simply playing the fiscal shell game as it has been played for the past 20 years.

It’s not a game we condone but it’s one forced by budgetary realities. Under last week’s deal, the district won’t block new development as it awaits a supplemental report detailing how much developers should pay to fund improvements at the schools. In the meantime, the district will pay for the projects with money from Proposition BB. That’s fair. The deal should go forward.