How Not to Mend a City

Last week was not a banner week for consensus in the San Fernando Valley.

The county committee charged with advising the state Board of Education on whether to put the creation of two independent Valley school districts to a public vote deadlocked 5 to 5. The split vote was no surprise given the lack of agreement revealed time and again in recent public hearings on the breakup plan.

Next, the city Cultural Heritage Commission deadlocked over the merits of designating the Chase Knolls Garden Apartments in Sherman Oaks a historic cultural monument. Such a designation--which was recommended by the commission’s chief architect--would at least delay plans by a developer to raze the buildings to make way for new, luxury apartments. The issue now goes before the Los Angeles City Council with no recommendation.

An inability to reach consensus says something about the difficulty of the issues involved. What’s best for Los Angeles’ troubled schools? How can a growing community balance the need for unique--and affordable--housing with the demands of the marketplace?

Lack of agreement also makes clear that the Valley, like the rest of Los Angeles, is not a homogenous, one-solution-fits-all place. And it may well reveal a lack of effective leadership.

All of these explanations came into play in last week’s most prominent example of the wrong way to go about consensus-building. The Can’t We All Get Along Award of the week--possibly of the year--has to go to the citizens advisory panel that is so hopelessly divided over redevelopment that its last public hearing ended in a fistfight.

It’s tempting to point out that the hearing was appropriately held at the Valley Boys & Girls Club, but that would insult too many well-behaved children.

The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency’s proposal for a massive project in the northeast Valley has generated enormous divisiveness. City Councilman Alex Padilla, who represents the area, blames the nay saying on “outsiders,” and there are indeed some die-hard CRA opponents who fight the embattled agency no matter which part of the city it targets. CRA opponents in turn blame Padilla for trying to ramrod redevelopment, in part by busing in voters early on to pack the advisory committee with supporters. There’s some truth to that, too, although winning a majority of the committee hasn’t helped Padilla much.

Padilla now has the option of selecting a new advisory panel--the old one voted last week to disband itself--one that, theoretically, could be more amenable to his plans. But other council members have taken that route and failed to end the controversy. One “disbanded” committee continues to meet to this day, and another, although new, ended up just as opposed to redevelopment.

Padilla has made some welcome attempts to answer critics’ concerns about the proposed redevelopment project by supporting halving its size and limiting the CRA’s controversial condemnation powers. But he hasn’t explained how the CRA can do its job without using eminent domain--or how it would accomplish any more than it has in still-depressed redevelopment areas like North Hollywood.

The naysayers, for their part, haven’t offered anything in the way of ideas about how to help the impoverished northeast Valley without redevelopment. Leaving it to market forces hasn’t worked; what would?

It is only by backing away from entrenched positions and being willing to think creatively that consensus is possible. That is also likely why it is so rare.