Valley’s Silver Bullet Hits Mark

For many, the battle over widening the 101 Freeway ended when transportation officials, faced with heated opposition, abruptly withdrew the proposal.

But for Gerald A. Silver -- the most public face of opposition to freeway expansion -- the “war,” as he calls it, will “never be over.”

Silver, 71, has been hailed by some and denounced by others as the singular reason why an ambitious $3.4-billion proposal to widen the freeway collapsed in a matter of weeks after a storm of public outcry.

But the longtime president of Homeowners of Encino and the Coalition of Freeway Residents says he can’t take credit for halting any freeway expansion. “I’m not even sure it’s stopped,” he said.

Inside a tidy bedroom-turned-office on an Encino street, surrounded by a computer, an industrial-size Xerox machine and neat shelves full of transportation reports and documents dating to the 1950s, the grandfather of seven spends much of his time doing research and mapping strategies for fights on issues ranging from commercial development to airport noise to freeway expansion.

“I can’t identify a person who’s done more for the San Fernando Valley than Jerry Silver ... to make the San Fernando Valley a better place to live,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. and a frequent ally. “He is truly an inspiration.”

But Silver’s tactics and hard-line positions have alienated some in his own community who say he obstructs progress and is the ultimate symbol of NIMBY attitude.

“Jerry is stuck in about 1959,” said Fred Gaines, an Encino land-use attorney and chairman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. “The 101 Freeway debacle is a good example.... People worked for years to put together that freeway plan, but Jerry scared off a lot of people. For the San Fernando Valley, it’s a disaster.”

The proposal to widen the freeway was the culmination of a multimillion-dollar study and two years of work by transportation planners.

On this much Silver’s supporters and critics agree: Perhaps no one is better equipped for community activism. The retired City College professor of business management, computer science, marketing and journalism now practices with intelligence and savvy all those skills he long taught.

Adept with technology, Silver led the fight against a high-occupancy vehicle lane project for the Ventura Freeway in the late 1980s by harnessing the power of databases.

He developed a mailing list of Valley residents, crunched the data to ferret out a narrow, 21-mile strip of addresses near the freeway and directed a targeted mass-mailing campaign against the carpool lane. The California Department of Transportation ultimately dropped the idea, citing widespread opposition.

To defeat the more recent proposal, Silver created an online community of residents to whom he sent frequent e-mail missives, urging people to call or e-mail elected officials to oppose widening.

By one estimate, about 95% of the flood of recent protest calls and e-mail to Caltrans were spurred by Silver, because the language closely mirrored his professorial rhetoric, according to an agency official.

Some planners and officials declined to be interviewed or would speak only on condition of anonymity, either because their government agency prohibited them from being publicly quoted or for fears that Silver could agitate against their future projects.

“He’s one of the true villains in the mix as to why the Valley’s so messed up, trafficwise,” said Bart Reed, executive director of the Transit Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Sylmar. “Over the years, by bringing in his circus -- the petitions and his picket signs -- he scares people in the transportation community.”

Silver says he is a watchdog for his community. He recalls, with satisfaction, how the protests he led years ago against one Ventura Boulevard project caused delays that drove two developers into filing for bankruptcy. Ultimately, a third developer proposed a smaller project that was acceptable to Silver’s group and was eventually built.

“Jerry’s a formidable person to deal with. He can make your life miserable if he wants to,” said Ira Handelman, a community relations consultant for developers. “But he’s a straight shooter. You know where he’s coming from.”

Silver is known to interrupt meetings and shout down people with whom he disagrees.

His aggressiveness was one reason he was kicked off the board of another homeowner group, the less-militant Encino Property Owners Assn., before he formed his own organization in the early 1980s. The two rival groups have since mended fences.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who met Silver more than 25 years go when she was an aide to then-Councilman Marvin Braude, said Silver has mellowed.

“He can be bombastic and difficult,” said Miscikowski, who represented Silver’s neighborhood until last year’s redistricting. “But over time he has learned.”

Even those who like him, including Miscikowski, say Silver can adopt extreme positions that turn people off.

An example is an Encino assisted-living housing project, which many believed would be a big help to senior citizens who can’t drive. But Silver’s group opposed the project because it mixed high-density residential with commercial use.

“Our goal is to preserve the single-family habitability and lifestyle of Encino,” Silver said.

Despite his group’s opposition, the City Council approved the project, which is now under construction.

In some circles, Silver’s organization is derided as “The Homeowner of Encino” -- a one-man show -- and he is often secretive about the group’s membership.

To rebut such criticism, he showed pages listing hundreds of people he said were members of Homeowners of Encino and offered names of board members.

Many memberships, on pages dated April 2003, appeared to have expired years ago.

Silver acknowledged the expired memberships but said an updated list in his computer shows paid membership for more than 600 households.

He also said hundreds more are paid members of other groups he has organized: the Coalition of Freeway Residents, Stop the Noise and the National Helicopter Noise Coalition, which share the same board with Homeowners of Encino.

Whatever the actual membership, Silver does speak for some in his community -- even some who don’t know him.

His neighbor Batia Oren, a working mother of two who takes classes at night, said she had never heard of Silver. When told that he rallied people against freeway widening, Oren exclaimed that she too opposed it but had no time to do anything about it.

“God bless him,” Oren said. “I’m just sorry I can’t be active.”

Rather than savor his latest victory, Silver is preparing to possibly fight what little remains of Caltrans’ original proposal: small projects along the 101 that include widening ramps, improving nearby streets and adding short-segment, auxiliary lanes for merging traffic.

Even those, Silver said, could have a harmful effect on surrounding communities and must be scrutinized, perhaps stopped.