City Is Vague on Warner’s ‘Specific’ Fees

Los Angeles city officials are lagging far behind in collecting and spending millions of dollars for public improvements around Warner Center, city records show.

The Woodland Hills commercial center, the business hub of the west San Fernando Valley, has generated more than $8.6 million in fees and interest since 1993.

The fees are designated in the Warner Center Specific Plan, which governs building in the area, and most of it is designed to provide civic improvements to accompany private development. But in several areas, performance has fallen short.

Recently, city officials proposed reducing the business fees they charge for new developments, arguing that unfavorable market conditions at Warner Center justify the changes.

Some of the tangles in the Specific Plan:

* A $1.8-million fee owed by developer Jerome H. Snyder for Warner Marketplace, a local shopping center, which has been overdue since 1998. The fee is assessed in part to cover the negative impact of traffic generated by new development.

* One key neighborhood improvement program has accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars, but no improvements have been implemented, city officials said.

* Records are in disarray, to the extent that a ride-sharing program that promotes carpools, vanpools and other commuter-friendly measures has received $1 million or $2 million, depending on which city department is asked.

When asked, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents the Warner Center area, said she would push for explanations.

“I want to see my questions answered in writing by the Department [of Transportation] to see a clear explanation of how the money has been spent,” Chick said. “I think they’re slippery.”

She also is concerned about the debt from Snyder, who has contributed more than $8,500 to Chick’s political coffers. She is running for city controller.

“It’s a pretty sloppy accounting practice, it seems to me, that it sits unresolved for so long,” Chick said.

“I had been told it was all resolved by Snyder,” Chick added. “I’m certainly aware Jerry Snyder is a supporter of mine, but that is irrelevant in terms of collecting money and making tough phone calls.”

Snyder is known for developing a number of high-profile Los Angeles business offices and shopping centers, including Santa Monica’s Water Garden II.

Allyn Rifkin, an engineer with the Department of Transportation, acknowledged that the city was lax in pursuing Snyder.

“In retrospect, I think we should have gone after the debt more aggressively,” Rifkin said. He said he should have referred the matter to the city attorney’s office. “I’m just embarrassed we didn’t do it right away.”

Snyder had planned to pay off the debt through an unusual credit transfer planned with Rockwell International/Boeing North American Inc., a Warner Center-area landowner.

When Snyder purchased property at Canoga Avenue and Victory Boulevard, Boeing agreed to transfer a portion of credits it had accumulated against city fees to Snyder.

The transfer has not taken place, so Snyder is $1.8 million in arrears. Originally, Snyder told the city the transfer would be completed by October 1998.

According to city records, since 1999 the city has only contacted Snyder once about the debt, in January 2000.

In a recent interview, Snyder said he never saw that letter, and until recently he thought Boeing independently settled the matter years ago.

Rifkin said he spoke with Snyder after the letter was sent. Snyder told him at that time that there was a disagreement over how much of the highly valuable credit Boeing would hand over, Rifkin said.

Some of the Warner Center money is supposed to fund a neighborhood traffic mitigation program designed to keep urban traffic out of residential areas. About $350,000 has been collected, and a plan to spend the money should have been drafted seven years ago, said city transportation engineer Nader Asmar.

But to date, the mitigation program exists only on paper.

Current and previous board members of the Woodland Hills Homeowner’s Organization said their attempts to determine the reason for the delays have been frustrated.

“[City officials] have done nothing to even try to alleviate traffic in residential areas,” said Shirley Blessing, a member of the board of directors of the homeowners group. “At the very least, tell us how much you’ve collected, how much you have spent, and how much money is available today to use for neighborhood protection.”

The neighborhood program originally was designed to help shield communities from urban traffic--cars in the busy urban center cutting through residential streets. But the area has seen far less growth than expected, so there has been less need and demand for the program, Chick said.

Board members of the homeowners organization disagreed, saying their repeated requests have gone unheard. “These issues have been voiced as constant concerns at each and every public hearing, I guarantee you,” board member Gordon Murley said. “And Mrs. Chick’s office has been unresponsive to all of it.”

Bob Gross, former president of the Woodland Hills Homeowner’s Organization, said he and other committee members asked repeatedly about the program, and were told there was a problem paying for the city’s staffing and overhead.

Specific Plan guidelines prohibit funds collected for the neighborhood program from being used for anything but residential street improvements. Now, city officials want to take up to 10% to pay administrative expenses.

Officials originally discussed using up to 40% of the fund to pay for an additional employee to handle the program, Rifkin said. All other employees are paid directly by the city.

City documents show that a separate general administrative fund for Warner Center, with a balance of up to $74,000, has not been tapped since 1995. Rifkin said he would not use it for the neighborhood program.

“City departments are in my view notorious for looking for various ways and pots of money for paying for overhead,” Chick said. “I want to make sure we put money into actual mitigation and not double-dip and overcharge.”

After The Times contacted the parties involved in the Snyder debt, representatives of Boeing, Snyder and the departments of City Planning and Transportation met on the issue.

All parties now say they expect the transfer to be completed in the next few weeks, but a letter from Snyder’s company in 1998 offered a similar promise.

“Until I get documentation, from my point of view this thing is still up in the air,” Rifkin said.