Breakup Backers Undeterred by Poll Results

Pointing to the results of a new Los Angeles Times poll, city officials Tuesday labeled Hollywood secession a flop and said the San Fernando Valley breakaway effort is already stalling months before the Nov. 5 vote.

Secessionists countered that their campaigns are just getting underway and wrote off the poll results as irrelevant.

In Hollywood, Hollywood VOTE founder Gene La Pietra held a festive ribbon-cutting to open the offices of his new Hollywood Independence Committee, and said over the strains of a live band that he wasn’t going to win just Hollywood’s freedom, but that he would soon start a parallel campaign--to break Hollywood schools out of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“A poll is a poll. You’re going to have a poll every week from now till Nov. 5,” he told a small gathering of supporters at an office strip he owns on Santa Monica Boulevard, now painted bright red, white and blue and decorated with stars and large letters reading, “Hollywood Independence.com.”

He invited Los Angeles residents to come see the current state of Hollywood for themselves.

“Once they see how neglected Hollywood has been, and how ignored it has been by the city of Los Angeles, they’re going to support this as the right thing to do,” he said of secession. “These polls will change like the tide coming in off the ocean.”

Valley secession supporters struck a similar theme: “We are confident that when voters have the real facts--not just the spin of the downtown power brokers--they will choose independence,” said Laurette Healey, co-chairwoman of the San Fernando Valley Independence Committee.

The Times poll showed that fewer than a quarter of Hollywood voters support the secession of their area, and that 59% of voters citywide are against it. Meanwhile, Valley secession, leading 52% to 37% in the Valley, is lagging citywide, with 47% of voters opposed and 38% in favor.

Hahn Encouraged

Mayor James K. Hahn called the numbers encouraging.

“I never thought the support was there for Hollywood secession,” he said. “Clearly people are not happy being stuck in that boundary.”

Councilman Eric Garcetti, who represents much of Hollywood, said he is eager for a secession election. “To use a Hollywood analogy, it feels like this blockbuster we all heard about is turning into a big flop,” he said.

Union Joins Opposition

Also Tuesday, the union representing Los Angeles police officers announced its opposition to secession, asserting that public safety would be jeopardized if the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood broke away.

The Police Protective League joins several other unions representing city workers that have said they will oppose secession.

“After careful study, the [league] has come to the conclusion that the answer to Los Angeles’ crime problems clearly isn’t secession,” said union President Mitzi Grasso. “If secession passes, the public will get less police services. If they want ‘same level service,’ it will cost them more.”

Valley secession leaders predict that an independent city would have better police services as it gained local control of deployment and streamlined city bureaucracy.

City officials said poll results for Valley secession indicate that people are beginning to see the pitfalls of leaving Los Angeles behind.

“If you look at the trend from previous polls, it’s moving in the direction that indicates the more you know about secession, the less you like about it,” said City Council President Alex Padilla, who represents the East Valley.

Leaders of the Valley’s homeowner and chamber of commerce groups who support secession dismissed the poll, saying support for the breakup movement is much stronger than indicated.

“The poll in no way reflects the sentiments of the hundreds of people I’ve spoken with who are fed up” with L.A.’s bloated bureaucracy and unfair treatment of the Valley, said Gerald A. Silver, a retired community college professor and president of Homeowners of Encino.

But Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and a former secessionist, called the results “an eye-opener.”

“I see the secession movement starting to slow,” said Schultz, who last month came out against breaking away because he believed that Van Nuys was slighted in the council districting plans for a new Valley city.

“It didn’t seem like secession would be better for Van Nuys,” said Schultz, who supports a borough plan being considered by City Hall. “If we can make L.A. a better city, why not keep it together?”

Meanwhile, the City Council voted Tuesday to formally request that the Local Agency Formation Commission reconsider putting Hollywood secession on the Nov. 5 ballot.

In addition, city officials said LAFCO’s proposal to have the Hollywood city pay the remainder of Los Angeles $21.3 million the first year to cover the revenue lost in the split is inadequate. Los Angeles would need $86 million to $100 million to be made financially whole, a consultant for the city said.

Speaking at Tuesday’s council meeting as he was being confirmed for a city commission post, honorary Hollywood mayor Johnny Grant said the secession movement is on its last legs.

“I think they peaked already and [support] will go even lower,” he said. “The people of Hollywood just want to remain a part of the city of L.A.”

The Hollywood secession campaign has been propelled by the money and efforts of La Pietra, a millionaire nightclub owner who says he wants to be mayor of a new city of Hollywood.

Street Campaign

On Tuesday, he said he would start sending several hundred people out on the streets each day to talk to Hollywood residents and would continue to pour cash into the campaign.

“We’ll spend at least $1 million and whatever it takes to make it happen,” he said.

La Pietra said that in the next couple of weeks, Hollywood secessionists will begin collecting signatures for Hollywood schools to split from L.A. Unified. He expressed hope that such a proposal could be placed on the ballot soon.

The odds are against him.

State law requires school secession activists to collect signatures of 8% of those who voted within the proposed new district during the most recent gubernatorial election at the time they began circulating petitions.

Once signatures were collected and verified, the 11-member Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization would study the issue, hold public hearings and submit the proposal and a recommendation to the state. State officials would then study the issue further, hold hearings and, finally, decide whether to call an election.

Within the last few years, the state has rejected proposals for Lomita and the San Fernando Valley to split from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

A plan to remove Carson’s schools from the district made it to the ballot, but was rejected by voters.

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Times staff writers Kristina Sauerwein and Massie Ritsch contributed to this report.