Finally Everyone Agrees, and for Good Reason

This you gotta see.

Mayor Richard Riordan and City Atty. James Hahn, who probably wouldn’t agree on which way is north, both like this. The mayor and the City Council (excepting Jackie Goldberg), who would make the cast of “Survivor” look as amicable as a scout troop, all like this.

Edward James Olmos, a fine actor, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a brilliant performer, both endorse this.

The love-fest is for Proposition F, the only Los Angeles city issue on the Nov. 7 ballot. If two of three L.A. voters agree, the city could issue $532.6 million in bonds.

Here’s what it wants the money for: 19 new or improved fire stations, eight new or improved animal shelters, and an emergency helicopter maintenance facility at the Van Nuys Airport, whence all of the city’s fire and medical helicopters take flight.

Here’s why the city wants to spend it: Some of these fire stations were built before the Cold War. One opened in 1936, when Amelia Earhart was still flying into Glendale. Like the city’s population, the city’s fire equipment has outgrown its fire stations.

One station must keep its equipment outside, under tarps. At least one station can’t run a computer and a coffee pot at the same time, for fear of blowing a fuse in the ancient wiring. Paramedic ambulances have become the first line of medical care for many Angelenos, and there’s not always safe space for them. The city’s new $4 million air rescue helicopter sits out in all weather because the city’s Van Nuys hangar is too old and small to fit it in.

The unspeakable animal shelters are forced to kill almost a thousand animals a week because of crowding. More room and more low-cost sterilization clinics on the premises could save a lot of four-legged lives.

And here’s what the city’s chief legislative analyst figures it would all cost the owner of an average L.A. house each month: $2.80. One tall latte a month. Less than a bacon-and-egg croissant, hash browns and juice breakfast at Burger King. Less than a newsstand issue of Time magazine, and much less than a copy of Penthouse, even without Paula Jones in it.

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Lucky dogs? Maybe. Lucky firefighters? Almost certainly.

Proposition F is an unusual coupling of needful city services. The Fire Department’s great good fortune this year was not to be lashed to the LAPD on the ballot.

Police and fire, fire and police--a twinning as natural as bread and butter. But that slightly sour smell wafting over the city is from the rotten eggs in the LAPD. The Rampart scandal, however few its leading men, has put the entire department in bad odor. Had the Fire Department found itself sharing Proposition 1 with the LAPD, a voter would have to have Gorgonzola for brains not to think, “I’m voting on a police bond issue while the city is writing checks for millions to Rampart victims? What is wrong with this picture?”

No, the LAPD would not be an easy sell just now.

Nor has the city’s performance on some bond issues inspired confidence. Taxpayers are still rankled by 1989 bond issues that put sprinklers into public spaces all right--but only one building. Another in 1989 (it was a generous year) asked for bonds for two police stations that were never built. The oh-so-urgent 911 measure? The two new dispatch centers may finally be completed 10 years after they were voted in.

This time, the city offers on-time, on-budget guarantees, a management team and a team of citizen-experts--everything short of a money-back guarantee, and maybe the day isn’t far off when we’ll see that too.

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Then there’s the San Fernando Valley, which is to bond issues what California is to the presidency: It’s almost impossible to win an election without it.

Although the San Fernando Valley United Chambers of Commerce endorsed F, many names at the bottom of the no-on-F ballot argument are also Valley names. There are parts of the Valley where a bond issue isn’t really about fire stations or air ambulances or animal shelters. No, it’s a conspiracy to further bind the Valley to a city it wants to divorce, a city it says never loved it but only married it for its land or water or tax base.

Apart from the fact that seven of the 18 stations to be renovated are in the Valley, as are three of the eight animal shelters, here’s a news flash:

Secession already is difficult and expensive. It’s like a kid moving out of his parents’ home, only to discover the laundry doesn’t wash itself, electricity doesn’t come out of the wall for free, and the gas tank doesn’t magically refill itself. And whaddya know, home doesn’t look half-bad after all.

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com