Valley Foes of Secession Fight Back

Peter Goodman of Panorama City is tired of hearing that a new San Fernando Valley city would cut taxes and improve services at the same time.

“It’s a first-class lie,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Louis Robbins of Van Nuys shares Goodman’s contempt for secession. He has lived in the Valley since 1948. He likes Los Angeles and wants the Valley to remain part of it.

“We’ve got Griffith Park, we’ve got the ocean, we’ve got the mountains,” he said. “The desert. The beaches. The Music Center.” The secession effort is “like we’re cutting ourselves off.”

For the first time since the defunct secession movement of the 1970s was resurrected five years ago, some Valley residents are joining forces to fight the proposal to divide Los Angeles along Mulholland Drive. Goodman, Robbins and others trashed Valley cityhood last week at hearings of the commission weighing whether to call a referendum on secession.

And Wednesday night, three dozen Valley residents gathered at a Van Nuys hotel to form the Valley’s first anti-secession group, One Los Angeles.

Guided by professional campaign strategists Larry Levine and Samantha Stevens, both longtime Valley residents, One Los Angeles hopes to end what it sees as the Valley VOTE secession group’s dominance of the debate on whether to break apart the city.

“It’s time for us to start voicing our views,” said Jeffery J. Daar, a Northridge organizer of One Los Angeles.

It’s the first time that Valley VOTE leaders have faced opposition, not from the downtown political establishment, but from their own neighbors.

It also adds a dimension to a secession debate that had largely focused on how often the Valley’s streets were repaved, its sidewalks repaired or its trees trimmed.

The new players talk about civic pride. To them, it’s a matter of principle to remain residents of Los Angeles.

“I love Chinatown, Little Tokyo, the Civic Center,” said Georgia Mercer, a Los Angeles Community College District trustee, Tarzana resident and co-founder of the group. “I want to be part of the support base of that, not just financially, but emotionally. It’s part of me.”

Mercer plans to raise money to defeat secession if the Local Agency Formation Commission puts the proposal on the November 2002 ballot--as many political leaders expect it will.

Valley VOTE Chairman Richard Close said some leaders of the anti-secession forces in the Valley have “a stake in the status quo” at City Hall. Others, he said, must be “happy with the status quo.”

“They think City Hall is doing a great job and can’t be made any better,” he said.

The home-grown anti-secession movement arrives at a difficult time for Valley VOTE, which was sorely disappointed by a draft secession plan released by LAFCO two weeks ago.

The plan called for a Valley city that would employ just 19 people and contract with Los Angeles for all municipal services for at least a year. Key questions on the cost and impact of any future steps toward independence would remain unanswered at the time of the referendum.

Despite the setback, secessionists showed up in force at LAFCO’s hearings to hammer City Hall for ignoring the Valley’s needs.

Sherman Oaks homeowner Charles Betz complained about dialing the 213 area code to reach police officers in the Valley. (“Why do we have to dial 11 digits?”)

Secessionist Dorothy Boberg of Northridge said streets look better in Burbank. (It’s like going from a poor community into a richer community.)

And Pacoima homeowner Marie Harris said her part of the Valley lacks banquet halls with “crystal chandeliers and linen tablecloths.” (“If any other city has a banquet facility, why can’t we?”)

But Valley residents who oppose secession voiced no such concerns. To Phil Leviton, a retired Sherman Oaks accountant, what matters is to preserve Los Angeles as “a great cosmopolitan city.”

“It’s well-regarded throughout the world,” said Leviton, who moved to the Valley 46 years ago. “It has a lot of clout. I don’t see why breaking it apart or balkanizing it is going to do any good for Los Angeles or the Valley.”

Leviton also finds it suspicious that Valley VOTE has refused to disclose the names of all but a few of its donors--among them Galpin Motors magnate Bert Boeckmann and the Daily News.

“I don’t know where they come from, who they are, why they ever started this thing, and it doesn’t smell right to me,” Leviton said.

(Valley VOTE says its anonymous donors fear retribution from City Hall if their names are divulged.)

Some other Valley residents wonder how the new city could make ends meet.

Former bookkeeper Florence Ohrenstein of Tarzana looked over the LAFCO plan, and one thing jumped out at her: the Valley city’s projected surplus of $7 million in a $1-billion budget.

“I’ve called the San Fernando Valley my home since 1952, and I have seen fires, floods and earthquakes,” she said. “One incident, and we would wipe out that reserve in five minutes.”

Mark Kaswan, a Sherman Oaks homeowner and political science student at Cal State Northridge, said it was “pure fantasy” to claim a Valley city could cut taxes and improve services. And he shot down comparisons between the Valley and small cities like Burbank.

“The idea that a city of 1.4 million residents would somehow enable greater local control over local neighborhoods is ridiculous,” Kaswan told the LAFCO board.

He blamed Proposition 13, the 1978 state initiative that restricted property tax increases, for the problems cited by secessionists.

“The cities of California still haven’t recovered from the decimation of their financial base,” he said. “I am reminded of this every time I drive over the ever-present potholes on Magnolia [Boulevard] or ask the principal of my daughter’s school why there aren’t enough lockers.”

Close, the Valley VOTE chairman and a leader of the Proposition 13 campaign, said Kaswan’s argument made no sense.

“You can go to Burbank, which is also subject to Prop. 13,” Close said, “and you won’t find those problems.”