Resolve for a New Year

With noisy fanfare and quiet toasts, San Fernando Valley residents welcomed in the new year on Friday night. But come Monday morning, it will be time to get back to work on the problems facing the Valley, problems that didn’t go away when the clock struck midnight.

Consider cartoonist J.D. Crowe’s look back at 1999, on the page opposite this one. (Who better than a cartoonist to put the year in perspective?) All those events from last year carry over into 2000.

The Burbank Airport framework agreement still faces an advisory vote, a Burbank City Council vote and who knows how many lawsuits.

Valley secessionists continue to look for new worlds to divide, the most recent one being the Los Angeles Unified School District.

And although we may not see much of Monica Lewinski this year (but don’t count on it), we’ll see plenty of Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), whose role in President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial attracted contributions to his reelection campaign--but could also cost him votes.

If we can’t start the new year out with an all new slate of issues, maybe we can at least aim for fresh perspectives and a we-can-solve-this attitude toward the challenges facing the Valley.

Here are our suggestions:

Airports. Noise continues to be a problem at both Burbank and Van Nuys airports. Two proposals on the table--the Burbank framework agreement and new rules recommended by the Los Angeles Airport Commission to reduce the number of older, noisy jets at Van Nuys--are steps in the right direction and deserve support.

Both proposals are better than what’s in place--or not in place--now. And both are better than waiting the years it would take, if history is any judge, to craft new agreements.

Beyond that, area leaders need to take a regional approach to the problem of air traffic, including a fresh look at how Palmdale Regional Airport can help meet the growing demand for air service.

Economic development. The 1999 announcement by the Walt Disney Co. that it will build a new “creative campus” on the site of Glendale’s old Grand Central Air Terminal was especially good news for entertainment workers, a mainstay of Valley employment, who are worried about runaway production to Canada and other foreign markets. With construction business booming, the overall economic upturn carries over into 2000, but so do the problems. More effort needs to be put into helping the poorer sections of the Valley share in these economic good times.

Note to Councilman Alex Padilla: Busing pro-development voters to a key committee election on a controversial redevelopment plan is not the best way to persuade skeptics. That’s the wrong direction to be moving on the learning curve.

Higher education. The importance of the Valley’s three community colleges and of Cal State Northridge can’t be overstated. The Valley’s economic vitality depends on their ability to educate workers, and the Valley’s sense of community is enhanced by the transformative experience of higher education, particularly given California’s profound demographic shifts.

Overall, 1999 was a good year for the schools. Valley College, long a success story, spent last year celebrating its 50th anniversary and looking ahead to the next 50 years. Pierce College got a new president and is expected to unveil a working plan for its farm next month. Cal State Northridge also selected a new president, who will come on board in June. Which brings us to Mission College, where an aborted search for a new president caused hard feelings in the surrounding community. The best way to repair the rift is for the Los Angeles Community College District board and chancellor to find a first-rate president to meet the needs of the growing, changing northeast Valley.

Housing. The rise in home values is good news for homeowners but not for renters and those trying to scrape together enough money for a down payment. The Valley needs more quality low-income housing, including affordable rentals. It needs creative thinking to build multifamily dwellings and housing mixed with business. Neighborhoods need to get over their not-in-my-backyard attitudes toward low-income housing. Homeless and poor families aren’t coming from out of the area, they’re in the area, living paycheck to paycheck until an illness or a broken-down car stretches them too thin.

Quality of life. Credit the West Valley Girls Softball League and the American Civil Liberties Union for reaching a settlement with the city in 1999 that opened up new athletic fields for girls and boys alike. There were other quality-of-life victories last year, such as a decision by the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners to preserve Chatsworth Reservoir as open space and the reopening of the lakes at Hansen Dam Recreation Area. But more is needed--more parks, more playing fields, more open space, more cultural amenities--to make and keep the Valley a vibrant and attractive place to live. And poorer areas of the Valley need even more basic amenities: potholes filled, street lights fixed, neighborhood parks maintained safely.

Secession: Last year, Valley VOTE (Voters Organized Toward Empowerment) collected enough signatures to trigger a study of secession, which must be completed before a breakup can be placed on the ballot. The Local Agency Formation Commission, the panel charged with conducting the study, will first hire a consultant. All this waiting around sent Valley VOTE jumping on the bandwagon to break up LAUSD. But Valley residents have more time to see how the recently passed city charter reforms and neighborhood councils will work and whether there is a more constructive alternative than taking a sledgehammer to the nation’s second-largest city.

Schools: There are dozens of plans being bandied about for splitting up the school district, including at least half that many for Valley districts alone. But the immediate need is for new schools to ease crowding, and finding places to build new schools calls for creative thinking. We like the LAUSD’s recent proposal to build 11 primary centers in the east San Fernando Valley and convert two middle schools to grades 9 through 12, or the idea of reopening Prairie Street Elementary school near CSUN as a high school.

If our suggestions have one thing in common, it’s a belief that if all sides are willing to sit down together and to think not only of themselves, then creative solutions can be reached. Maybe even in this new year.