2000 Events May Shape Valley for Years to Come

While the year 2000 may be filled with zeros, it’s far from empty when it comes to the potential for big, new developments for the San Fernando Valley.

From the courtroom to the classroom, the year promises events that will shape the future far into the new millennium, changing the very nature of where we live.

A new subway will open. Elections will mean new leadership. And the Valley will move further down a path that could lead to its becoming a city and school district--or districts--separate from the rest of Los Angeles.

“It’s going to be a very exciting political year in the Valley,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer, who is already campaigning for city attorney in the 2001 election.

The secession movements--plural since drives now exist for separate cities, schools and transit districts for the Valley--will advance further, though no actual decisions on the splits will happen for years.

The push for a municipal divorce to transform the Valley into its own city takes a big step forward this year with an unprecedented study on the consequences of secession. The study will be one of the Valley’s most closely watched political issues, because it eventually will decide whether Valley secession is put to a citywide vote.

The Local Agency Formation Commission, the panel charged with conducting the study, is scheduled to select an expert consultant in February to oversee the work. The study will begin a short time later.

The study’s launch will quickly force Los Angeles to divulge a mountain of data on city operations and finances--information that will be used by secession backers, who have only talked in generalities up to this point, to put forward a detailed blueprint for the Valley city they are proposing.

Legal action is almost guaranteed. There surely will be tussles over the data itself. The secession group Valley VOTE has expressed fears of a potential whitewash by city bureaucrats. City leaders, meanwhile, have voiced concerns about the costs of compiling data that in many cases they do not have.

Once the skirmishing is over and the work is done, LAFCO will use the result to judge whether the breakup can be placed on the ballot. But that would be a long way off--at least two years, maybe twice as long--so voters will not be deciding the issue soon, if ever. Under state law, secession elections can only take place in even-numbered years, so if the study is not done in time for the 2002 ballot, it is pushed back to 2004.

Nonetheless, those pushing secession say they hope for an early vote. Richard Close, chairman of Valley VOTE, said he believes both supporters and opponents want to give voters their say on the matter.

“It’s in everyone’s interest to let the voters decide,” Close said. “That’s going to be almost a motto.”

Education

On the education front, the nascent movement to dismantle the nation’s second-largest school district will almost surely grow.

Although spearheaded by Valley residents and aided by Valley VOTE, activists from the Eastside and Westside have joined efforts to dissolve the 710,000-student district, which has been plagued with problems such as toxic contamination at the Belmont Learning Complex and two schools in South Gate. For more than a decade, groups in the Valley, Carson, Lomita and South-Central Los Angeles have advocated forming separate school districts.

As a growing number of politicians promise a study of the effects of a school district breakup, supporters hope to gather and submit to state officials signed and verified petitions--a move that could help prompt legislation and support among local and state school board members. Logistically, however, the effort could take years, maybe even decades. Some, however, hope that both the school district and city secession votes appear on the same ballot in 2002.

Transportation

Another new development, one figuratively and literally more concrete than secession, is the opening of the Red Line Metro linking the Valley with the rest of the city via an underground tunnel running 900 feet below the Santa Monica Mountains.

The new subway will mean changes for many people in the Valley. Most affected will be those living and working in the areas immediately around the two new stations in North Hollywood and Universal City, both set to open in June.

“This is the crowning achievement of the Red Line project,” said Dennis Mori, deputy executive officer and project manager for the Metro Red Line. “It’s the capstone of a decade of construction.”

Other transit issues include the continued fight to create a separate Valley transit district to better serve commuters and the effort to ease congestion in the crowded 405-101 freeway interchange.

Charter Reform

The new year will present some major challenges to Los Angeles City Hall, including implementation of a sweeping charter reform measure, resolving the decade-long dispute over noise at Burbank Airport and pursuing new measures to keep crime in the Valley on the decline.

City officials have to begin creating neighborhood councils throughout the city, as called for by a charter reform measure approved by voters in 1999.

While crime has decreased dramatically, Deputy Mayor Bill Violante said one priority of the city is to make headway in 2000 on construction of a sixth police station in the Valley.

City Council President John Ferraro said the city also may go back to the voters in 2000 with another bond measure for police facilities.

Politics

While there is no city election scheduled in 2000, the year has some major legislative races in the Valley, and Valley candidates for mayor, city attorney and city controller in the 2001 election have already begun to campaign.

In state and national politics, 2000 is ushering in some of the most competitive political contests in years as term limits force established Sacramento politicians to compete with one another for survival, and Republicans and Democrats take their battle for control of the House of Representatives into the streets of the Valley.

With his prominent role in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale) made himself a GOP icon and earned the wrath of Democrats.

Now he is perhaps the most heavily targeted Republican congressman in the nation as he runs for reelection against state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank). Yet, he is also the best-funded congressional candidate in America.

Both Schiff and Rogan should coast through the primary in March, but their fall face-off is widely expected to be one of the nation’s hottest races.

The primary election is where much of the action should take place in the state races, however, as Republicans and Democrats fight it out to represent their parties in seats that swing heavily in one party’s direction. Two of the best races feature term-limited Democratic Assembly members running against each other.

Assembly members Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) and Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), both facing the end of their Assembly careers because of term limits, will square off to replace state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and represent the Westside and West Valley. Assembly members Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles) and Jack Scott (D-Altadena) will duke it out to represent the seat being vacated by Schiff, which includes Burbank and Glendale.

Republicans have their primary fights as well. Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) will try to win the state Senate seat being vacated by Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) in a race against Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels. At the same time, Valley doctor and city redevelopment commissioner Keith Richman will try to fend off GOP challenges from Valley businessman Ross Hopkins and conservative Simi Valley school board member Norm Walker to win McClintock’s vacated seat.

Justice

On the legal front, several major cases involving parents suspected of killing their children are expected to result in emotionally wrenching trials.

Marcos Esquivel faces the death penalty if convicted of torturing his young son and daughter, whom he is accused of killing and burying in Angeles National Forest. A highway patrolman found Esquivel and his lover, Maria Ricardo, and some of his children burying 5-year-old Ernesto in a shallow grave.

Weeks later, another of Esquivel’s children came forward and told authorities that their father had buried his 2-year-old sister, Guadalupe, nearby.

Maria Ricardo and her sister, Petra Ricardo, Esquivel’s wife, bore Esquivel 14 children between them. Both are charged with child endangerment and accessory to murder after the fact and will be tried with Esquivel early this year in San Fernando.

Trial is also expected to begin in San Fernando for Sandi Dawn Nieves, 35, who authorities say killed her four daughters, ages 5 to 12, and tried to kill her son during a bitter custody battle with her former husband. Prosecutors say Nieves, who also faces the death penalty, told her children to have a slumber party in the kitchen of her Saugus home, covered several air vents and set the house on fire.

Michael and Kathleen Gentry, an Antelope Valley couple accused of the starvation death of their severely disabled daughter, will again face a jury this spring. The Gentrys, who insist their 15-year-old daughter died of natural causes and despite their best efforts, face manslaughter and child-abuse charges.

The couple initially faced murder charges, but after a mistrial in May during which a heavy majority wanted to acquit the Gentrys of murder, prosecutors decided to seek lesser charges.

Airport Expansion

Even with a new year and a new century, some issues never seem to go away. The Burbank Airport dispute is one of them.

After seemingly interminable feuding over a new terminal, negotiators for the city of Burbank and the airport reached a historic deal Aug. 3 when they agreed to build a $300-million, 14-gate facility linked to limits on aircraft noise.

No sooner was the ink dry on the pact than critics--including the Federal Aviation Administration, the airlines, Burbank homeowners and Los Angeles politicians whose constituents live under the airport flight path--sounded off against it.

Against this backdrop, those close to the issue say 2000 will be a make-or-break year for the project, which faces a tough vote in the Burbank City Council and scrutiny by the FAA over provisions to shut the terminal building from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. and to ban easterly takeoffs.

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Times staff writers Evelyn Larrubia, Patrick McGreevy and Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.