Valley Secession Backers Urge Defeat of Bond Issue

A group of San Fernando Valley secession advocates on Thursday announced their opposition to a police and fire bond measure on next week’s ballot, saying Valley residents should not support more city spending while debating whether to break away from Los Angeles.

Made up almost entirely of members of Valley VOTE, the organization driving the secession campaign, the group No Bonds Now said it opposes the bond measure because it believes the Valley would not receive its proportionate share of bond money and because the added debt could complicate an upcoming study on a breakup of Los Angeles. In a news release, the group even suggested that the measure was a City Hall ploy to “run up the city’s debt and make the process of Valley cityhood more difficult and expensive.”

“If we want to divorce the city, why would we want to buy a house with them?” said Carlos Ferreyra, a Valley VOTE board member. “The bond doesn’t make any sense at this time.”

The announcement from No Bonds Now triggered a quick reaction from Mayor Richard Riordan, who derided the bond opponents as a splinter group of the secession movement and said the bond issue would be good for the Valley as well as the rest of the city. The measure, which will appear as Proposition 1, would pay for $744 million in new police stations, fire stations and other facilities, including a new police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

“First of all, Prop. 1 will add new police and fire stations in the Valley,” Riordan said. “And second, even if the Valley secedes, we’re going to be their next door neighbor. It’s important that the city of Los Angeles be in good shape. People in the Valley work here, go to the theater here, go to restaurants here.”

Coming off his widely lauded State of the City address, Riordan continued to stump not only for the bond measure, but also for his slate of school board candidates. He was joined at one stop by candidate Caprice Young, who is challenging incumbent Jeff Horton.

Riordan would not predict the outcomes in any of the election races, but private polling has suggested that they could be close. One early look at the police and fire bond issue indicated that support was hovering at about 68%, but because such measures require a two-thirds majority for approval, that election could go either way.

School board campaigns typically are characterized by low turnout, so predicting those races also is extremely difficult.

In each of his appearances Thursday, Riordan touted the need for the police and fire bonds. He opened his day with a breakfast for real estate businesspeople at which he championed the measure as necessary to accommodate the growth in the Police Department and to replace aging fire stations. “Too many of our fire stations are almost 60 years old,” he said.

Then he hosted a news conference with a Fire Department pilot who was hurt in a crash last year. Money from the bonds, they said, would upgrade the department’s helicopters and allow for better and safer helicopter responses.

Later, Riordan addressed a large crowd in Los Feliz, where hundreds of residents and local students gathered to celebrate the opening of a branch library. Joined there by City Council President John Ferraro, Riordan was loudly cheered, and he used the occasion to revel in the city’s economic recovery and its library construction program.

He quickly moved to the hot political topics of the moment, admonishing members of the audience to join him in rejecting the status quo in the Los Angeles Unified School District. “We can tolerate failure for our children not one second longer,” he said.

The other important issue of the moment, he said, was the police and fire bond issue. “Say yes to our firefighters,” Riordan urged.

At almost the same moment, however, the Valley group was urging the opposite course.

Leaders of the coalition said they encountered plenty of sympathizers when phoning various Valley groups about the opposition campaign this week, and released a list of supporters, including the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns. and numerous smaller business and homeowner organizations.

Times staff writer Karen Robinson-Jacobs contributed to this article.