Riordan Seeking State Legislation to Complete Belmont

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has thrown himself into the fight over the Belmont Learning Complex, quietly suggesting state legislation that could remove a major obstacle to completing the now-abandoned downtown high school.

Riordan has declined to speak on the record about his efforts. But sources within the school district and the city administration say the mayor is seeking a pragmatic solution to the protracted debate over the school in the hope of providing badly needed classroom space.

Although he still believes the odds are against Belmont’s ever opening, Riordan’s proposal, the sources said, is legislation that would set requirements for making the school safe, expedite the construction and then protect the district against future lawsuits.

The mayor’s behind-the-scenes efforts could be highly significant. Riordan has not taken a public stance on whether the school should be finished. But he is the chief political backer of the Los Angeles Unified School District board majority that decided in January to stop the $200-million project.

Moreover, the mayor’s support would be a significant plus for the coalition of mostly Latino political leaders and community groups that have backed continued study of the site, which is a former oil field west of downtown.

Schools Supt. Roy Romer, who has repeatedly said he hopes Belmont can be completed, said he likes the mayor’s idea.

“There is a piece of this I think the Legislature can help on,” he said. “If you had a law that said if you build a school to the standards the state requires [and] the state would help in mitigating any liability,” that would make completing the school more feasible.

A state law that would eliminate the school district’s liability for lawsuits over Belmont would remove one of the prime issues raised by Belmont’s opponents on the Board of Education. Board members voiced fears that if the school were opened and children who attended later became ill, those health problems--fairly or not--would be blamed on gases seeping from the oil field, and the district would be sued.

Beyond that, several board members repeatedly have said they do not believe the site can ever be protected adequately from explosive methane and toxic hydrogen sulfide rising from underground crude oil. Those opponents of the school have stuck to that position ever since.

Supporters, meanwhile, have exerted mounting pressure to at least resume a state-supervised investigation that would develop safety measures for the school.

In addition to Riordan’s legislative proposal, Romer has framed a new solution that he hopes can win board support.

Although the superintendent declined to give details of his idea, a school district source said the proposal would provide a method to answer all the crucial questions about Belmont without spending the $1 million estimated as the cost of completing the state study.

The source said Romer’s plan would include one element that has been missing throughout the Belmont saga: a clear statement of the standard of safety that would have to be met to open the school.

The lack of such a standard has been key to an escalating war of words over Belmont that erupted last week when school board President Genethia Hayes suggested that the downtown area may not be environmentally suitable for any schools.

Hayes said that it might not be possible to build new schools near downtown and that some existing schools, such as the current Belmont High School, might have to close.

Her comments contradicted the district’s master plan, which calls for building several schools in the central city area. The remarks touched off a wave of anger in the Belmont community.

“Mrs. Hayes has disrespected our community and has added more fuel to the existing fire,” said Maria Rodriguez, a parent of three children in Belmont-area schools.

Other board members distanced themselves from Hayes.

“She was talking for herself,” said board member Valerie Fields, a steady ally of Hayes. “It’s not an official position.”

But some of those who are trying to revive Belmont said they are delighted that a board member has finally faced up to the consequences of the decision to kill the school.

David Abel, a member of the citizens committee that oversees the district’s school construction bonds, said it was painfully obvious to others that if the Belmont site is “inherently uninhabitable by children,” then other schools atop the same oil field also may be.

But the board, he said, had never before been willing to discuss that connection.

Abel said he hopes that Hayes’ comments will spark a discussion that “will bring some rationality and sanity to what has otherwise been a very politically contentious and paralyzing debate.”

Any discussion of a standard of safety, however, promises to be difficult.

“Nobody’s quite sure what the scientific levels of danger are,” board member David Tokofsky said. “You have different governments picking different numbers. You have an evolving scientific discourse on it as well.”

Besides that, environmental groups and developers have long been at loggerheads on the subject of safety standards, said Jennifer Hernandez, a board member of the California Center for Land Recycling and the California League of Conservation Voters.

Hernandez and Abel participated in a recent series of meetings involving those groups and state officials that tried to work out a consensus on an appropriate level of safety for schools.

“None of it seemed to catch hold with the district,” Abel said. “The district’s people seemed not to want to raise it because they didn’t want to engage in any way or form the Belmont question.”

Now that has changed, he said.