Hollywood Tryout for Secession to Join Valley Bid on Ballot

Already given the chance to determine the future of the San Fernando Valley, voters will also decide in November whether to let Hollywood break away from Los Angeles, taking with it a chunk of the city’s identity and some of its best-known landmarks, including the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame.

The Local Agency Formation Commission on Wednesday voted 6 to 2, with one abstention, to put the Hollywood secession measure on the Nov. 5 city ballot, alongside the Valley cityhood plan. The commission last week rejected the breakaway move by the city’s harbor area, so Wednesday’s vote completes the secession proposals cleared for this fall’s ballot.

LAFCO’s decision sets the stage for a five-month campaign that could end with Los Angeles breaking into as many as three cities. Together, the Valley and Hollywood make up about 40% of the city’s population of 3.7 million.

“We’ve won today,” said Gene La Pietra, the Hollywood nightclub owner who is leading the secession movement. “This is a small step for Hollywood and a great big step for Los Angeles. The people will get to decide.”

Hollywood secessionists have argued that a smaller city, of 160,000 people, would be better able to attack crime, spruce up the area’s famous boulevards and restore Hollywood to its former glory. Like Valley secessionists, they have argued that Los Angeles is too big to work well.

“We’re actually doing [Mayor] Jim Hahn a favor,” said La Pietra. “When it’s all over, he’ll have a manageable L.A.”

The vote--which prompted supporters of an independent Hollywood to start chanting “Hooray for Hollywood!”--came after more than six hours of debate during which some commission members expressed concern that the cityhood plan was being rushed through without adequate research.

“I’m not comfortable in voting for this,” added County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who abstained. “The bottom line is I believe we are rushing for political reasons or just to get rid of it.”

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, also a commission member, voted to put the measure on the ballot, but warned that “Hollywood is in the middle of the city. You are poking a hole in the middle of Los Angeles.”

Hahn did not attend Wednesday’s meeting, but issued a statement saying, “I am disappointed that LAFCO chose to ignore the residents and businesses that petitioned to be excluded from the proposed Hollywood secession area.”

He said those seeking exclusion “understand that secession will likely lead to higher taxes and reduced services such as police and trash pickup.”

Unlike Valley secession, which has been talked about for decades, the Hollywood independence movement did not begin until 2000. In August of that year, Hollywood secessionists filed petitions with signatures from 25% of Hollywood’s voters, triggering the financial study that found that the area could survive as a city.

A Hollywood city would have five City Council members elected at large, a budget of $183 million a year, and would contract for most municipal services from Los Angeles for at least one year. The council would choose a mayor from its members and appoint a city manager, city clerk and city treasurer. The city would begin operations July 1, 2003.

The city’s irregular borders would stretch in places as far as Laurel Canyon to the west, Hoover Street to the east, Griffith Park to the north and Melrose Avenue to the south.

A new Hollywood city would be much bigger than the Hollywood that incorporated in 1903 but then joined Los Angeles seven years later to get water. But it would be far smaller than the proposed Valley city, whose population would be 1.35 million.

For secession to pass, it must capture a majority of votes both within the breakaway area and citywide.

Los Angeles officials made last-ditch arguments against putting the Hollywood measure on the ballot, just as they did before LAFCO approved the Valley proposal last month. They argued, among other things, that LAFCO had used faulty methodology to determine that a Hollywood city was viable and that its departure would not harm Los Angeles.

The city also asserted that LAFCO had no right to determine that residents of an independent Hollywood would pay the same water and power rates as Los Angeles residents.

LAFCO found that the proposed city’s revenue would exceed its expenditures by $11 million. To maintain healthy reserves, Hollywood would have to reduce costs by $10 million by the third year, LAFCO said.

A new city would have to pay Los Angeles $21.4 million in so-called alimony payments. That would cover the $17.7 million in revenue that Los Angeles gets from Hollywood over and above what it spends on the area, as well as $3.6 million in property transfer taxes that Los Angeles would lose in a breakup.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski and Pico Rivera Councilwoman Beatrice Proo were the two LAFCO members who voted against the Hollywood measure. They said they were not given enough time to consider both the potential pitfalls in the breakup and requests by some neighborhoods to be excluded from the proposed city.

The LAFCO vote creates a new dynamic for the Nov. 5 election.

“It just expands the battlefield,” said Joe Cerrell, a political strategist who has been running campaigns since the 1950s. “Now the mayor of Los Angeles has to fight two campaigns and it spreads his resources thinner. It seems the secessionists have the momentum.”

“We have our work cut out for us,” said Los Angeles City Council President Alex Padilla, who opposes secession. Many Los Angeles residents spoke up at the meeting, some delivering impassioned speeches.

“We have gone from being a city in its infancy to becoming the abused child of a giant metropolis that fattened itself at the table of annexation as its foster children starved,” said Joe Shea, president of Hollywood’s Ivar Hill Community Assn., referring to the 1910 annexation by Los Angeles.

” ... Here comes Hollywood reborn!”

Some at the meeting were upset by the vote.

Developer Tom Gilmore, who has projects in Hollywood, said the secession proposal is full of holes and is being pushed through only to help the Valley win cityhood.

“Don’t use Hollywood as a pawn to make your Valley dreams come true,” he said. “Leave us alone.”

In response to requests from Los Angeles and a Los Feliz homeowners group, LAFCO removed a section of Griffith Park territory from the proposed new city’s boundaries, as well as a small area north of Franklin Avenue and east of Western Avenue, including the gated neighborhood of Laughlin Park, where residents made clear they wanted no part of a new city.

LAFCO also gave Los Angeles continued ownership of six fire stations that would be within the new city. Los Angeles officials said those stations serve broad areas of the city. The commission also ruled that Los Angeles would retain sales tax and parking revenue from the Hollywood & Highland mall, a city redevelopment project.

The panel declined to require that Hollywood council members be elected from districts, despite complaints by Latino activists that the at-large system would dilute Latino voter strength. The activists said they would file a complaint with the Justice Department.

In Hollywood, one anti-secession resident, retired management consultant Richard Mankiewicz, said, “I don’t think people who are supporting secession have any idea what they’re getting into. Knowing human nature and California politics, [the new Hollywood leaders] won’t be much different than Los Angeles’.”

But supporters were thrilled.

“If L.A. continues to treat Hollywood in the same manner [as in the past] with the same service level, secession will probably happen,” said Hollywood businessman Dave Gajda, who owns four buildings and has an interest in two nightclubs there.

Supporters were already in a festive mood at 7:30 a.m., when about 25 of them gathered with pro-secession signs and matching new “City Of Hollywood” T-shirts at the Hollywood & Vine subway station to ride together to the LAFCO meeting.

Times staff writers George Ramos and Sue Fox contributed to this report.