Valley Secession Group Divided Over Mission Statement

Valley VOTE, the group that supported legislation making it easier for the San Fernando Valley to secede from the city of Los Angeles, has its own Internet site, an executive officer, a pair of attorneys and a permanent office on Ventura Boulevard.

What it does not have is an agreement among all of its executive board members on a mission statement.

The group plans to launch a petition drive to prompt a government study on the viability of a Valley secession. If the study shows the Valley can survive on its own, county officials may put Valley secession on a citywide ballot.

Until now, the group’s mission statement has identified it as a coalition that “will work to ensure that residents of the San Fernando Valley have an opportunity to vote on Valley independence by forming a separate city.”

But Valley VOTE co-founder Jeff Brain asked the group this week to consider adopting a new, simpler statement that deletes any reference to a vote on secession.

Instead, he proposed that the group’s mission statement be changed to “support a study of cityhood for the San Fernando Valley.” Period. End of statement.

The existing mission statement, Brain argued, is “muddy” and implies that the group supports secession when the group has taken no official position on secession. But other members of Valley VOTE didn’t care for the change. “We don’t just want to study it,” said Valley VOTE member Gerald Silver. “We want to bring it to a vote.”

Valley VOTE treasurer Bruce Bialosky agreed, saying: “I don’t see how we can divorce ourselves from that second step to put it to the vote of the people.”

There was no agreement when Valley VOTE co-founder Richard Close put an end to the debate and suggested a committee meet later to write a new mission statement.

War of Words

The sparks continue to fly in San Fernando where a dispute between Mayor Raul Godinez II and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills) over the city’s safety record has become increasingly personal.

“When the congressman sends out a mailer that is intended to make me look bad in front of the voters, it’s hard to not take that personally,” Godinez said this week.

Godinez was referring to Berman’s latest anti-crime mailer in which the congressman asked voters “Is improving public safety more important than Mayor Godinez’s public relations campaign?”

The bad feelings began in December when Godinez, who is always sensitive about San Fernando’s image, said a Berman mailer overstated crime problems in the small northeast Valley city of 24,000 residents.

The mayor fired off a letter to Berman, pointing to a 20% drop in crime in San Fernando over the last three years and accusing the congressman with contributing to unfairly negative perceptions of the city, which recently launched a $200,000 campaign to improve its image in the business community.

“I’m surprised and disappointed it has turned into a personal thing. I guess this is retribution for offering a little constructive criticism,” Godinez said.

Berman said his comments were not meant to sting Godinez, but merely to inform constituents that Berman was committed to reducing crime in the northeast Valley, which, despite recent gains against it, remains unacceptably high.

“I want to make it clear that I think San Fernando is a great city. They have a great Police Department and it’s a living example that small is sometimes better,” said Berman.

“But the notion that hiring a public relations consultant is a substitute for trying to do better is absurd. Nothing is more important for San Fernando’s image than doing everything it can to reduce crime,” Berman said.”

Despite the rhetoric, both men insist they will work together for the good of San Fernando.

“Maybe we just need a little face-to-face meeting to clear the air,” Godinez said.

Trash Talk

Congressman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R--Santa Clarita) asked Browning-Ferris Industries, a Houston-based waste collection service, to donate its plot of land in Elsmere Canyon to Angeles National Forest.

Los Angeles County officials have designated the 900-acre canyon parcel--south of the Santa Clarita Valley near the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways interchange--a future landfill site.

In a one-page letter sent to the company, McKeon said the property should be preserved because “such a trash dump would be a devastating blow to the environmentally sensitive land within Elsmere Canyon as well as the adjacent community.”

McKeon wrote the 1996 legislation that blocked a plan for adjacent forest land to be combined with the BFI plot to form a larger $190-million dump in the canyon.

Arnie Berghoff, BFI vice president, said Thursday that a number of issues will eventually influence how BFI uses the Elsmere site or whether it uses it at all.

The company’s nearby Sunshine Canyon plot of land straddles the border of the city and county of Los Angeles. BFI operates a landfill on the portion of that property beyond city limits, and company officials await word from the city on whether it can extend the landfill across the city border, Berghoff said.

In addition, “the future use of this property would be determined by a comprehensive economic and strategic review,” Berghoff wrote McKeon in a one-page response to the donation request.

This BFI review, for which no completion date is set, would include evaluations of BFI’s competition, Berghoff said.

“Review of the Elsmere Canyon property cannot be completed until the issue of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill extension is resolved,” the letter to McKeon said.

Mystery Solved

It was starting to look as if county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky would wind up unopposed in his upcoming bid for reelection--the filing deadline for candidates for the June election is today at 5 p.m. and until Thursday no one other than the veteran local pol had signed up.

Then came the mystery candidate.

He informed the media that he would announce his candidacy on Thursday, but, he told them, he would remain anonymous until then. The media, he said, could meet him outside the cappuccino bar on the plaza in front of the County Hall of Administration at 3:30 p.m., if they wanted to find out who he was.

So, with ominous looking clouds overhead, a group of reporters and curious county employees--including Yaroslavsky aide Joel Bellman--gathered outside to wait.

The candidate, though, was late.

He turned out to be Shane McLoud, a Santa Monica resident who teaches third grade at Figueroa Street School in South-Central and previously served as a policy aide to former county Supervisor Deane Dana.

McLoud, who will turn 30 on Saturday, stopped to hug his grandmother and say hi to his Aunt Patti, who had driven down for the occasion from her home in Ventura County.

“I’ve been told I must be crazy to be running for county supervisor,” he said, standing on the plaza steps in a dark-green blazer and tie.

McLoud, who grew up in Tujunga and La Crescenta, calls himself a political moderate. He was Dana’s transportation advisor, and makes a point of using public transportation and attending meetings of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

An admirer of the late Cesar Chavez, he nonetheless spoke passionately against some issues long supported by labor unions, such as seniority programs and across-the-board raises for county employees.

He said he supported putting the question of the San Fernando Valley’s secession on the ballot.

He acknowledged that he didn’t even have enough money to put a candidate’s statement on the ballot.

“I don’t have $50,000 to do a mailer,” he said. “I think I can raise about $5,000.”

Running Out Front

Yaroslavsky, meanwhile, has begun running in earnest, making a point of stressing his two key campaign issues--health care for children and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority--at meetings and photo opportunities in different parts of his expansive 3rd District, which ranges from Pacific Palisades to the San Fernando Valley.

“I never assumed I would run opposed,” said Yaroslavsky, who said he is most proud of the work he and his fellow supervisors did in responding to the county’s financial crisis over the past three years.

He distanced himself from ever-increasing rumors that he plans to run for mayor when Richard Riordan leaves office in 2001, but declined to say definitively that he would not seek the job.

“I have no plans to run for any other office,” the supervisor said. “There has been more speculation about me running for mayor in the last 20 years than about where Saddam Hussein’s germs are.”

But, he said, “I would never say never to anything.”

Just Say No

The campaign for U.S. Senate is about to get very interesting.

Republican Irwin Zucker, a 65-year-old Sherman Oaks resident, announced his candidacy for the post this week with a promise to accept no campaign contributions.

“I will not seek or accept any campaign contributions,” he said in a new release. “Don’t even try to bribe me.”

Zucker, a student at Valley College, said politicians who accept contributions are “worse than street hookers” who repay contributors with tax dollars.

He conceded that his position is “unorthodox” but said: “In politics, even the appearance of corruption must not be there.”

How does he expect to pay for mailers and television time to promote himself over candidates such as Sen. Barbara Boxer, businessman Darrell Issa, state Treasurer Matt Fong and Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor)? Zucker hopes his unique spin on issues such as campaign financing will catch the attention of the media, providing him free coverage.

His motto: “Zucker or hooker, you have a choice.”