A LOOK AHEAD * Though overshadowed by the Valley’s breakaway effort, a drive by San Pedro and Wilmington to leave Los Angeles could lead to a fight over control of the port. A lot is riding on the . . . : Harbor’s High-Stakes Secession Bid

Lured by promises of a rosier future, the small, independent cities of San Pedro and Wilmington in 1909 joined themselves to their burgeoning neighbor to the north, port-hungry Los Angeles.

Now they might get out again, led by activists in these contrasting harbor-side neighborhoods of picturesque hillsides, historic waterfronts, towering refineries and grimy industrial districts.

Riding on the coattails of a larger, better-known secession effort in the San Fernando Valley, proponents of a separate city in the bustling harbor area have taken the first major step toward their goal. They have collected signatures from well over 25% of the registered voters within the proposed city’s boundaries and plan to file them with county officials within the next week or so.

If all goes well during the next arduous steps, the as-yet-unnamed proposed town’s fate could be put before voters in the spring of 2002--at the same time Valley secessionists hope to put their proposed breakaway to a vote.

Although San Pedro and Wilmington are home to only about 140,000 of Los Angeles’ nearly 3.5 million residents, the harbor area cityhood effort nonetheless has enormous economic and political implications. That is because it contains a large swath of Los Angeles’ industrial base, including the Port of Los Angeles, one of the world’s major trading centers and an asset that Los Angeles would undoubtedly pull out all the stops to keep.

“All the city of L.A. cares about is the harbor,” said Andrew Mardesich, a leader of the secessionist group Harbor Vote who was born and raised in San Pedro, one of the city’s oldest and most colorful communities.

“They make decisions they don’t have to live with. . . . We want to have control over our communities,” added Mardesich, echoing views often heard in these enclaves some 25 miles from City Hall.

Attached to the rest of the city by a long, blocks-wide strip (officially named Harbor Gateway but disdainfully dubbed “the umbilical cord,” the harbor communities are worlds unto themselves.

There is San Pedro, begun as a fishing village settled by Slavic and Italian immigrants, many of whose descendants, such as Mardesich and Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., still live in town. It incorporated in 1888, an event commemorated with a 100th birthday celebration in 1988.

A few decades back, notorious waterfront dives were frequented by sailors who gave the community an international, if dubious, reputation; most of the bars have long since been torn down for redevelopment projects in the community’s struggling commercial districts.

As canneries and shipyards closed over the last decade and the Navy moved out of neighboring Long Beach, San Pedro’s downtown and other commercial districts languished. But real estate prices have climbed in hilly residential neighborhoods, some with spectacular views of the harbor and the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

San Pedro’s 75,000 residents remain an eclectic group, and many swear they would never live any place else. They pronounce it San PEEdro; say San PAYdro, and you instantly reveal yourself to be an ignorant outsider.

According to city estimates, whites make up 56% of the population, Latinos, 33% and blacks and Asians about 5% each.

To the northeast is San Pedro’s grittier, poorer cousin, Wilmington. Founded by railroad magnate and port pioneer Phineas Banning and named after his home town in Delaware, Wilmington incorporated in 1872. For several decades after joining Los Angeles, the little community enjoyed a port-related prosperity. But things began to decline after World War II. As the port grew, Wilmington endured increasing pollution, noise and other problems but saw little of the tax revenues generated by the harbor, oil refineries and other industries in town, local activists say.

Today about 90% of Wilmington’s 60,000 residents are Latinos, many of them poor, living in a community dominated by industry and its byproducts, such as giant shipping containers and auto wrecking yards. Residents ruefully dubbed one particularly tall stack of shipping containers “the Matterhorn,” and have long complained to City Hall about illegal junk yards and streets without sidewalks.

Concern About Getting Fair Share From L.A.

Carlos Villalobos, 73, has lived in Wilmington since he was 6 months old and runs a tax and notary business there. He helped Harbor Vote gather signatures for the cityhood drive and also favored an earlier effort to form a separate city for Wilmington alone.

“I’ve always thought it was a good idea to get out of L.A. Here we have this great harbor and these refineries that make a lot of money, and all we end up with is the truck traffic and the soot from the ships,” Villalobos said.

Neither of the then-cities of San Pedro and Wilmington had the resources to develop the harbor when residents voted to join Los Angeles, which promised to build a modern port and provide schools, police and other services.

These days, complaints abound about not getting their fair share of city services, about having no control over zoning and other decisions, about not being heard at City Hall.

They are the same sentiments voiced by other secessionist movements, notably in the campaign to carve a new city of 1.2 million in the San Fernando Valley, but also in Eagle Rock, Westchester, West Los Angeles and Hollywood, where cityhood drives are either underway or being considered.

Part of Harbor City, a smaller, less well defined blue-collar community lying west of Wilmington and north of San Pedro, has joined the Harbor Vote campaign.

Few political leaders are publicly criticizing the secession movements, which still have a long way to go before reaching the ballot, and organized opposition has yet to surface.

One notable exception is Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who maintains breaking up the city is not the answer.

“The mayor believes secession will not ensure anything but another big bureaucracy, and he believes it is in the best interest of the city for all parts to stay together,” said Jessica Copen, a Riordan spokeswoman.

Riordan’s alternative is to reform city government, and he is campaigning hard for a new proposed City Charter that goes before voters next week.

For Wilmington activists Bill and Gertrude Schwab, however, charter reform cannot compete with the local controls cityhood would bring.

“If we were a city of our own, we wouldn’t have to take this,” said Gertrude Schwab, citing city plans to build a sea breeze-blocking wall near the waterfront, a protracted battle to get sooty coke storage domes covered and a long-unfinished community center at Banning’s Landing, Wilmington’s only accessible slice of waterfront.

Svorinich, the San Pedro native and Los Angeles councilman whose district includes the harbor area, has supported the Harbor Vote efforts as a way to see whether cityhood is financially viable, and he lobbied for a 1997 state law that removed the City Council’s power to veto any secession effort. But he has not taken a stand on secession itself.

Despite their fervor, secessionists have a rough road ahead. Once petition signatures are verified, the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission must begin a detailed study of the fiscal viability of the proposed city and of the rest of Los Angeles. The commission would sort out how to parcel out municipal assets and liabilities, decide how to tote up who owes what for bond debt, public buildings, streets and sewers, and how to provide services, including water and electrical power.

No one has yet found a way to pay for the study, expected to cost several million dollars if all the proposed Los Angeles secessions are handled together. The next hurdle would be the ballot box.

Riding the Valley’s Coattails

Harbor secessionists readily acknowledge their debt to leaders of the better-organized, better-financed campaign in the San Fernando Valley.

“Thank God for the Valley,” Mardesich said, “Until they came along, this was all just a big dream.”

Secession leaders believe that having two--and possibly more--efforts on the same ballot would enhance their chances because they need approval from majorities of voters in both the proposed new municipality and the rest of the city. They could run coordinated campaigns and could help each other find ways to pay for a feasibility study, for example.

Looming large in the harbor area secession movement--if it succeeds--is the certain fight over the Port of Los Angeles.

Secessionists say they would try to take it with them, pointing out that the state owns most of the harbor lands and waters and leases them to Los Angeles through a tidelands grant. But Los Angeles has invested millions in port development, including the $29 million it shelled out for improvements not long after the 1909 annexation. Those improvements are worth $250 million in today’s dollars, the Local Agency Formation Commission estimated in an overview of issues involved in the secession movements.

The state--and possibly the courts--would have the final say, and many observers do not give the proposed new city very good odds.

“The issue of where the harbor will go will have much more impact than any issue in the Valley secession,” said Barry Glickman, Svorinich’s chief of staff. “I’d say [Harbor Vote] should make a run at it. But it’s a long shot.”

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Breaking Away?

Activists in three harbor-area communities are trying to break away from the city of Los Angeles and form a new municipality of about 140,000 residents. San Pedro, Wilmington and part of Harbor City would make-up the new independent city.