Chewing Over a Year’s Worth of Work
Sandwiched neatly between Halloween and Thanksgiving this year is another auspicious occasion: the one-year anniversary of Valley@Work.
Last November, we set out to explore the breadth and tremendous variety of the business community in the San Fernando Valley region. Along the way, we’ve covered (uncovered?) everything from nudists in Topanga, to patent-infringement lawsuits, to confusing telephone bills.
Given that it has been 12 whole months, I think it’s high time that I wrote a book about my experiences.
It’ll be about lust, intrigue and the search for Valley business trends.
There will be a movie (Halle Berry will play me).
It will have a theme song: “Don’t Cry For Me in Arleta . . . “
Producers will be clamoring for a sequel.
To help them along, we decided to take this opportunity to update you on some of the stories we’ve shared during the past year and to offer some observations on the Valley business scene.
Without question, no story generated more reader response (outrage may be more like it) than the Sept. 21 article about a Granada Hills woman who belatedly discovered that for years, she unknowingly had been paying GTE a monthly fee for renting a rotary phone that she had stopped using a decade ago.
When Wilma Ker’s longtime beau, Sam Hollander, questioned a line on her phone bill that read “equipment rental,” he unknowingly opened the flood gates for dozens of complaints from readers who said they’ve been charged for everything from nonexistent phone lines to not having a long-distance provider.
“I nearly cried when I read your story,” e-mailed Marlene Cristal, who said her mother was charged $13.60 per month for rotary phone rental. “I couldn’t get them on the phone fast enough.”
Unlike, Ker, Cristal said that in her case, no refund, even partial, was offered.
Ker got credit for six months worth of fee payments, but she wants more. And she said she’s still planning to pursue the matter with the state Public Utilities Commission. The first thing is to wade through a 28-page package from the PUC, complete with instructions and forms that may ultimately lead to a hearing before an administrative law judge.
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“I’m just kind of sick of the whole thing,” Ker said.
GTE spokeswoman Julia Wilson said Monday that, coincidentally, the mammoth telephone company is now in the process of changing its bills to make them more understandable.
Notes have gone out to 12,000 customers, and will eventually go out nationwide, explaining that “equipment rental” means “rotary phone rental.” Hooray!!
Wilson said the move is part of the company’s regular efforts to improve customer communication, and had nothing to do with media reports.
Meanwhile there’s a new wrinkle. Eagle-eyed Hollander found still more irregularities on Ker’s phone bill. On a recent bill, Ker was billed by an unauthorized long-distance carrier. She contacted GTE, which agreed to remove the charges. She again thanked Hollander for being her diligent bill detective.
“He studies these things rather assiduously now,” she said.
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One of my favorite columns looked at the David vs. Goliath battle brewing over, of all things, window treatments. On Feb. 2, we talked with inventor Douglas Domel, whose tiny Chatsworth firm is engaged in a big patent-infringement fight with Hunter Douglas, one of the nation’s leading window-ware manufacturers.
Domel, president of Harmonic Design, said he invented a remote control device that opens and shuts mini-blinds and shades (but not drapes) and that Hunter Douglas lifted the design. Hunter Douglas denies the charge.
Domel said the case has slowly been chugging down the legal track, with numerous depositions completed. The first actual hearing is scheduled for January.
“I think our chances of prevailing have gone up,” he said last week. “Most of the depositions have gone well for us. We’re even more confident than ever that this thing’s going to go well for us.”
Domel’s firm is typical of many in the Valley, started by someone with not much more than a notion. And while it’s sexy to write about the Disneys of the world, it’s also important to keep tabs on the fate of businesses that make up your base.
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Some things I’ve noticed during the past year:
* There needs to be more diversity at gatherings of the Valley’s leading business groups. Too often, while attending a Chamber of Commerce this or a VICA that, I scan the room and spot, at most, a half dozen faces that look like mine.
In a San Fernando Valley that is, by one group’s estimate, majority minority, I should see more. Many more.
Martin Cooper, who recently organized a business forecast conference for the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn., acknowledged as much during a candid assessment of the crowd at his gathering.
“Do we have a disproportionate number of white faces in a community that has a lot of black and brown faces? Absolutely,” said Cooper, surveying a ballroom crowd waiting to hear Mayor Richard Riordan. “Is there an awareness that we need to move forward to having more appropriate representation? Absolutely.
“It’s not the kind of change that takes place quickly.”
* Valley business--big and small--needs to step up its efforts to rebuild the area’s failing schools. The future of Valley business depends on a well-trained work force. With the city school system in crisis and many techno-phile jobs going begging for want of workers, the need for more business involvement couldn’t be more clear. It’s not about lofty goals, it’s about self-interest.
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Some businesses already have made a start, like Precision Dynamics Corp. in Pacoima, which recently hosted three-dozen minority students as part of a career-day program.
More need to join in.
* The city of Los Angeles and the region’s leading developers need to work harder to create more affordable housing. A recent survey from the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center, an arm of Cal State Northridge, noted that the region is becoming increasingly poor--edging up from 11% in the 1990 census to an estimated 16.6% in 1997.
At the same time, housing prices in the Valley are on the rise, with home prices climbing at a rate of 7% to 9% per year. Apartment vacancy rates are at a 15-year low. Given the laws of supply and demand, it may not be long before even modest apartments are out of reach for many.
That should be a concern to any business that wants workers, and wants them to get to work on time.
David Fleming, chairman of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, promises to make housing a front-burner issue.
When we have this conversation again next year, we’ll see how much ground we can gain.
Meanwhile, enough of this ruminating. There are more naked businessmen in the city . . . er . . . make that, more business stories in the naked city.
And we won’t find them sitting around here gabbing.
Let’s get back to work.
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Valley@Work runs each Tuesday. Karen Robinson-Jacobs can be reached at Karen.Robinson@latimes.com.
