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By Lowell C. Brown
I may be fairly typical of a certain segment of San Fernando Valley voters. I'm a professional (attorney), live in Northridge, work on the Westside and am pretty much wrapped up in work, family, Little League and church activities.
For me, Valley secession was always something going on in the background. Frankly, I never quite got it. I was frustrated with the Los Angeles Unified School District and sympathetic to efforts either to break up the LAUSD or somehow make it more responsive. But Valley secession? I just didn't see it.
And yet, somewhat to my surprise, I became a happy, ardent supporter of Valley cityhood about one month ago. Here's what happened:
In my Northridge neighborhood, we have become increasingly concerned about Van Nuys Airport, which is right in the middle of the Valley. The number of large jet aircraft landing and taking off there has skyrocketed -- pun intended -- over the past 10 years or so. We frequently see 737s, flying low, right above our house.
I do not think I am a NIMBY kind of person saying, Not in my back yard. But, along with many of my neighbors, I became interested in a few questions:
What are the reasons for the apparent change in airport traffic? [Adding more jets] Is there anything that can be done to regulate arrival and departure times? Must the planes fly so low, right over residential areas and from many directions? Is Santa Monica Airport having this same problem? Or is that neighborhood being favored because of its Westside location?
I went to some public meetings. I learned that there are city officials appointed to listen to citizen concerns about the Van Nuys Airport. They were appointed by persons like former Mayor Richard Riordan who do not who live in the Valley. In fact, I don't think any of the officials -- or those who appoint them -- live in the Valley. I am told Riordan maintains a jet airplane at Van Nuys Airport. I suspect many of his large contributors do, too. I wonder if Mayor James K. Hahn's contributors are Van Nuys-based jet owner?
I was new to this process, and my participation was a real education for me. The city officials there showed what seemed to me to be a remarkable level of condescension and contempt for the concerns expressed by the local citizenry.
After a few efforts, I lost interest in further involvement, thinking it was pointless. The moneyed interests from other parts of town seemed intent on using the Van Nuys Airport for their own purposes.I figured that was just the way it goes in a big city like Los Angeles.
I know, I know -- I should have stuck with the issue. But I am not an airport activist by any stretch of the imagination. It's hard to find the time to fight entrenched interests, and I was just a concerned citizen who wanted to learn and have a voice.
The airport issue remained dormant in my mind. Then I noticed, with some surprise, newspaper articles telling me that a vote on Valley secession was apparently a real likelihood. Well, I thought, this might really happen; what would it mean?
As I read further, I learned that, with secession, the Van Nuys Airport would become a responsibility of the new Valley city. A light went on in my head. The citizens who live closest to an issue and are most directly affected by it would be the ones deciding how to resolve that issue. What a concept!
Perhaps the decisions made by a Valley city about the airport would not be to my liking, but at least some guy from San Pedro or some wealthy jet owner from Brentwood would not be deciding issues directly affecting me and my family.
Then my thinking went beyond the airport: What about police issues, street maintenance, traffic regulation, zoning issues, maybe even school-related issues? With secession, all these problems could be tackled directly and ultimately decided by people who live in the Valley. This seemed like an eminently appealing idea.
And so I called up the Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment office and did something I rarely do: I volunteered to help the Valley VOTE group.
Now that I am watching this issue closely, I am noticing that at least one Los Angeles newspaper seems dedicated to making fun of Valley secession and those who support the idea. I hope that in the debate on this issue over the next five months, voters will see that Valley secession is not just a silly idea.
Instead, it's a proposal for good, responsive local government. It's hard to make fun of that.
Lowell C. Brown lives in Northridge
For more than three months, Los Angeles International Airport has enjoyed the best police protection money can buy, and it hasn't had to pay a penny for it.
The people of Los Angeles have been footing the bill in terms of the financial cost and in terms of reduced police protection everywhere else in the city in the face of soaring crime rates. It's time for that to change.
There's no doubt that LAX needs all the security it can get, and if it takes the Los Angeles Police Department to provide it, so be it. But at question is who should pay for that protection, the people of Los Angeles, or Los Angeles World Airports.
By the end of the fiscal year, the LAPD expects to spend more than $15 million above and beyond its $45 million overtime budget, largely because of the extra manpower it needs to guard LAX. The taxpayers of Los Angeles will ultimately have to bear that cost, even though the taxpayers of Los Angeles have never received much assistance from LAX.
In the early 1990s, then-Mayor Richard Riordan tried to transfer LAX revenues to shore up the deficit-plagued city budget. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that federal law requires that all money raised at the airport stay at the airport.
Fair is fair. If LAX cannot pay into the city's general fund, then L.A. and its taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for its security. While the city obviously needed to do its part during the crisis days immediately following Sept. 11, long term, LAX's burden must not become the burden of all Angelenos.
A lot more than money is at stake.
The LAPD reports that since Sept. 11, it has had to divert more than 200 officers to LAX. That means that the department, which is already 1,100 cops short of its authorized force, has had to take officers off the streets and out of the city's most crime-infested neighborhoods. It has had to scrap crucial anti-crime units and task forces.
Predictably, the result has been a sudden burst in crime. The number of homicides has jumped 9.2 percent citywide and 22.4 percent in the San Fernando Valley. he city's taxpayers and its neighborhoods need relief, and LAX should provide it by paying for the LAPD's services. The extra cash would help the city salve its hemorrhaging budget and compensate for the diminished patrols.
Officials at Los Angeles World Airports would no doubt bristle at the prospect of paying for the LAPD's services. They would point out that since Sept. 11, LAWA has been running a deficit of more than $13 million a month, and thus plead poverty.
But before Sept. 11, LAWA was rolling in $1 million-a-day surpluses, which it spent freely for junkets, consultants and other unnecessary indulgences. Perhaps if the airport bureaucracy scaled back its money-wasting apparatus, it could both balance its books and pay for its own security.
Even if it couldn't, the federal government is lending airports however much money they need to stay afloat until the aviation industry recovers. LAWA could borrow the necessary funds for LAPD protection, thus relieving its drain on the city's depleted treasury, and repay Washington when it's back in the black.
Protecting LAX should be part of LAX's own cost structure, not a cost for the people and neighborhoods of Los Angeles. For more than three months, the city has been a very good neighbor to LAX. It's time for LAX to return the favor.
IN BRIEF / ORANGE COUNTY
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