Council, Conservancy Clear the Air on Brush Removal

There was a showdown this week between the Los Angeles City Council and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy over land owned by San Fernando Valley power broker Bert Boeckmann.

The dispute was over who would clear brush from the property if it was bought by the city for the conservancy--a job the city said would cost about $37,000.

In the end, both sides blinked.

The conservancy agreed to take responsibility for clearing the brush, but only after city officials promised to allow the agency to tap city park bond money for the work.

The agreement prompted the City Council on Tuesday to commit $2.4 million toward the roughly $5-million purchase of the 239 acres owned by Boeckmann in Mandeville Canyon.

Councilman Mike Hernandez had threatened to hold up funding if the conservancy stood by demands that the city pay for brush clearance.

The conservancy, which is paying for its share of the Boeckmann property with state grant funds, originally said the city should pay for the brush clearance, because half the property would be owned by the city.

Hernandez wrote the ballot measure that provided the park bond money, so his position was important to winning council approval.

Bob Blumenfield, a spokesman for the conservancy, said the organization agreed to clear the brush, with the understanding it could apply to the city for park grant funds to pay for the work.

But brush clearance wasn’t the only issue that concerned Hernandez.

He was also mad that the conservancy had balked at giving free office space at its Los Angeles River Center--formerly the Lawry’s California Center--for an LAPD anti-gang program.

Blumenfield said the two sides have agreed to work out an arrangement that would allow the LAPD program to move back into the river center, although he said negotiations are ongoing.

“We’ve resolved all of Councilman Hernandez’s concerns,” Blumenfield said.

Now, the conservancy has to negotiate with Boeckmann, a Valley car dealer, for the sale of his property, which the group hopes to maintain as open-space parkland.

*

SAFETY ZONE: The Los Angeles City Council chambers may have been safer than ever this week after a twin set of metal detectors beeped to life outside.

But in the rear of the room, a security system designed for council brass had fallen down on the job. A new automated key card system--meant to let politicians and their top staff members bypass the metal detectors--was on the blink, leading to a high-powered backup in the hall.

“It seemed like a lot of the council members’ cards did not work,” said Pat Healy, the city clerk’s executive officer. “It was a little confusing.”

Several lawmakers were among the group stuck outside the chambers, including Councilwoman Laura Chick. In short order, security guards collected all the cards and let people in the old-fashioned way. The faulty cards have since been reprogrammed, Healy said.

Meanwhile, the new security measures worked fine for the public, including a regular assortment of lobbyists and gadflies who gamely emptied their pockets of keys and change as they trooped past the metal detectors.

Lawmakers voted to install the $80,000-a-year security system after a gunman wounded six at Riverside City Hall, one of a string of recent shootings in schools and workplaces.

“It’s unfortunate that in this day and age, these kind of things are necessary, but every time I start thinking they’re unnecessary, another tragedy happens,” said Arnie Berghoff, a lobbyist who attended council meetings daily as he pushed for expansion of a Browning-Ferris Industries landfill in Granada Hills. “I actually feel better having them here.”

But on Wednesday, as people flooded the hallways trying to get into council chambers for debates on the landfill and other hot topics, Council President John Ferraro told the guards to forego the metal detectors and simply “let ‘em all in.”

*

THIN TURNOUT: If the troubled Community Redevelopment Agency was hoping to win friends for a controversial project in the northeast Valley by holding a board meeting in Pacoima last week, it might have started by getting enough commissioners there to conduct business.

The meeting--the first in the Valley in two years--flopped when the board failed to assemble a quorum. Only three of the seven commissioners showed up, and the session was delayed for nearly an hour as audience members waited for a fourth to arrive.

The missing board member, Clint Rosemond, never made it--board secretary Aurora Fernandez later said he notified her “at the last minute” that he had a scheduling conflict--but the board lurched ahead anyway before an audience of about 20.

Noting that the hearing was not official, board President Peggy Moore invited people to testify about the redevelopment project and said their comments would be read into the record later.

At least one critic, a man wearing a “CRA, Go Away” T-shirt, refused to speak because of the lack of a quorum.

Other attendees--some of them opponents of the controversial North Hollywood redevelopment plan--blamed poor community outreach by the CRA for the light turnout. Several people said the agency needed to redouble its efforts to reach Latinos who live or work within the 6,835-acre project area--the city’s largest redevelopment zone. The swath of land includes parts of San Fernando Road and Glenoaks, Laurel Canyon, Van Nuys and Lankershim boulevards.

“I think the lack of attendance here is testimony that there is a lack of communication with the public,” said Glenn Hoiby, who chairs the citizens advisory panel on the North Hollywood project. “It is rather typical of many of these meetings that deal with CRA activities.”

The ill-fated meeting was the latest mishap involving the CRA’s northeast Valley plan. The project’s environmental impact report was delayed for a year, and recently some members of a citizens advisory panel, including its vice chairman, suggested that the plan should be abandoned.