Moving Day Arrives for Outgoing Valley Officials : City Hall: Staff members for Ernani Bernardi and Joy Picus sort through decades of awards, photos and other personal items. The new tenants are due Thursday.

Buried within the stacks of old files, plaques and mementos at the offices of two outgoing Valley representatives to the Los Angeles City Council is nearly a half century of history.

The most precious stuff--the photo of Ernani Bernardi and jazz great Artie Shaw, some of Joy Picus’ favorite awards and countless other personal items--will be taken home by the council members and their staffs before the new tenants move in Thursday.

Documents on important issues will be left behind or placed in the city archives downtown.

The rest will be fed to the recycling maw, or the dump.

It’s a process that will take place at least every eight years now that Los Angeles voters have placed a two-term limit on their elected city officials.

The mammoth tenures--32 years for Bernardi and 16 for Picus--that have characterized Los Angeles government will no longer be possible.

As the packing goes on, the mood is somber at Picus’ office in Reseda. Five staff members, none of whom know where they will be working next, step over packing boxes, posters and desktop ornaments and tell phone callers to try again later, unless their problem is urgent.

“The hardest thing for all of us is losing the camaraderie that we have built up here,” said Karyn Palmer, Picus’ chief field deputy. “We have worked so hard and so well together. Losing that is tough.”

There are also lingering sore spots from a bruising campaign against Councilwoman-elect Laura Chick, Picus’ former chief deputy.

“We want the transition to go as smoothly as possible, but their office has not even gotten in touch with us,” Palmer said. “I’m dismayed that (Chick’s) transition person hasn’t called once.”

Reyna Gabin, a member of Chick’s transition team, said Chick’s staff “did not feel the need to speak to (Palmer) personally,” and that they had contacted Picus’ downtown office.

So files on neighborhood issues--potholes that need mending, business concerns and homeowner feuds--will simply be left in cabinets and on computer disks for Chick’s staff members in Reseda.

Some of Picus’ aides hope to see a few pet projects through. Sandy Kievman, for instance, said she will pass along the file on a Canoga Park resident who complained about a bus stop recently placed in front of his residence.

“They could have put the stop across the street where there were no houses, but for some reason they didn’t,” Kievman said. “I wrote letters, I got permission from the church to put the bus stop there, and so far . . . nothing. But if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll see that bus stop moved away from that man’s front door.”

But whether Kievman’s crusade will be continued by her replacement is uncertain.

It’s a situation that will face constituents throughout districts represented by Picus and Bernardi and outgoing council members Michael Woo and Joan Milke Flores, as new representatives take over and old projects hang in limbo.

At Bernardi’s City Hall office, aides still bustle with activity. “We’ll be busy up until the very end,” press deputy Gayle Johnson said. “It’s easier to deal with the process of leaving that way.”

But in the councilman’s personal office, deputy Cindy Varela packs yellowed newspaper clippings, notes on some of Bernardi’s favorite issues and hundreds of photos of officials wearing wide-lapel suits of the 1960s and 1970s.

There are reams of memos and reports on the Community Redevelopment Agency, which Bernardi lambasted from his council chamber seat for three decades, on his urban renewal efforts in the 1970s and on his proposal to limit jet traffic at Los Angeles International Airport in the late 1960s.

Although Bernardi’s staff members said Councilman-elect Richard Alarcon is welcome to the paperwork when he moves to another City Hall office, much of the stuff very likely will end up in storage.

At the councilman’s Sylmar office, field deputy Carolyn Jackson said she and her co-workers plan to leave everything as is.

“I’ve been here 16 years, and I’m just going to walk away . . . they can keep whatever they want,” Jackson said. “Anything that might be useful to the 7th District, it’s going to stay here. We’re going to take our personal belongings and just go. No hard feelings. Life goes on.”