Plan Approved for Population Growth of 611,000 by 2010

The City Council adopted a plan Wednesday to accommodate 611,000 more people in Los Angeles by 2010, and agreed to conduct six-month reviews of whether transportation improvements are keeping pace with population growth.

The reviews were approved to address complaints by slow-growth advocates that the plan does not protect neighborhoods if growth overwhelms freeways, streets and commuter rail lines.

“The city can’t guarantee that certain state funding and federal funding is going to occur and that these transportation improvements are going to occur,” said Councilman Jack Weiss, who with Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski proposed the periodic reviews.

The so-called Citywide General Plan Framework does not regulate land use, a task left to 35 community plans. Instead, the plan sets overarching goals for housing, sewers, transportation and other infrastructure to ease the impact of population growth.

Though the plan acknowledges that the city has traditionally received $240 million annually from federal, state and local agencies, it notes that the money is not guaranteed for future years.

The council could enact growth controls if the periodic reviews find transportation funding is inadequate. But slow-growth advocates wanted the plan to include an automatic mechanism for putting a brake on development if there isn’t enough money for transportation.

“Why don’t we have things in place in the plan to mitigate as it goes along?” said Joan Luchs, president of the Cahuenga Pass Residents Assn.

Polly Ward, head of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., said the provision for periodic review, including input from a network of fledgling neighborhood councils, is a step forward.

But Larry Teeter, an attorney for homeowner organizations, said he plans to file a lawsuit alleging that the plan conflicts with state law because it does not have a mechanism for curtailing development.

“The undeniable gap between transportation funds and planned development places the city on a collision course with a provision of [state] law which requires that development and transportation resources be consistent and correlated in the general plan,” Teeter said.

Teeter represented environmental groups in a successful suit against the city earlier this year. The suit argued the plan did not take adequate steps to show it could protect neighborhoods from significant population increases.

The judge in that case gave city officials a choice among limiting development, stepping up construction of infrastructure or adopting a legal finding that some unavoidable traffic problems are acceptable when weighed against the social and economic benefits of growth.

The council adopted that legal finding Wednesday, to the chagrin of slow-growth advocates.

Pam Cook, a vice president with the federation, said the city has not been willing to control growth when faced with negative impacts, so she is skeptical about the six-month reviews.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn said the reviews will help, but that the city’s transportation systems are already overburdened.

“You just cannot get from there to here anywhere in this city. It’s frustrating,” she said.