Northeast Valley and the CRA

* Re “CRA Looks for Cash Infusion in Northeast Valley,” May 28.

Walter Prince has brought up a basic Los Angeles problem but he does not offer any solution for his well-researched and described program. As I see it, he says that the statewide program for redevelopment of blighted areas, which is working in the city of San Fernando, will not work for the city of Los Angeles in the 7th Councilmanic District, as proposed by the CRA and promoted by Councilman Alex Padilla.

The Northeast San Fernando Valley Project Area Committee is working with the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles in its [East Valley office]. We are planning to review and advise the city councilman and, following his approval, the entire City Council, as to what must be done to revitalize the blighted areas in this underserved portion of the Valley.

As a member of the Project Area Committee, which was elected in December 1999 and has met several times since February, I am pleased to report that a five-year plan presented by CRA staff will be considered. As many facets of the state-mandated redevelopment program as necessary are being looked at, and by the end of the year, we intend to review and to advise the City Council of the CRA’s prepared plan, which was started in 1997 by then-Councilman Richard Alarcon.

[An April 2 letter] by Prince was essentially negative and again wanted to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The essence of this criticism is that the CRA is doing a lousy job, commits the city and its taxpayers to a tremendous debt and service costs, that the CRA is self-serving and only wants this new project for the servicing costs the CRA will receive so that the CRA can continue for another 40 years.

The United Chambers of Commerce, of which I am on the Legislative Action Committee, has asked me to check out Prince’s charges, so as to be able to debate the following issue with him before the [Chamber’s] Legislative Committee and its General Assembly by the middle of June. The question should be: “How can the Northeast San Fernando Valley Project Area be redeveloped with or without the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency’s help?” In this way, a major concern by many people who live, work and play in the northeast Valley can be discussed and progress made toward making Los Angeles better.

ARTHUR SWEET

North Hollywood

* On Jan. 30 The Times ran an excellent article by Patrick McGreevy and T. Christian Miller that documented the CRA’s North Hollywood fiasco (“Heady Plans, Hard Reality”). Now, this same CRA plans its largest project yet near my home in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

For many years, I drove down Lankershim Boulevard and watched the slow destruction of North Hollywood at the hands of the CRA without quite understanding it. After years of CRA control, North Hollywood is eerily reminiscent of the bombed-out cities of Europe after World War II.

Prince’s article spoke of the CRA wasting several hundred million on various projects. Unfortunately, I feel that the average citizen becomes desensitized to such large numbers when discussing government spending.

The seemingly “free” money that the CRA claims to be using is anything but free. This money is actually obtained by floating bonds that do not require voter approval. The collateral for these bonds is our city’s future property tax base, the so-called tax increment. Normally this tax money would be used for schools, police and fire, tree-trimming and many other city services we all require. Each CRA project affects every Angeleno since we all rely on this common tax base.

We all know the true cost of borrowed money, and as Prince pointed out, very little of this borrowed money is actually being used to alleviate blight (redevelopment’s intended purpose). Redevelopment probably even causes more blight than it cures; one need only look closely at the CRA’s North Hollywood project to see the truth of this.

The northeast Valley would be much better off if our City Council would just stop throwing our tax money down the 31 existing CRA ratholes it has already crated. The City Council should stop wasting our tax money by subsidizing rich developers’ projects and spend our property taxes as they were intended to be spent, by providing our basic city services.

In its history, the CRA has rarely concluded a project, probably because it would then have to return the seized tax increments to the city. Would it not be prudent to see if the CRA would even successfully finish some of its other languishing projects before we turn over yet another giant swath of the city to its control?

KENNETH DINE

North Hollywood

* The Times reports that Councilman Alex Padilla plans to ask the CRA not to condemn residential property and evict residents of the northeast Valley (“Citizens Panel Backs Reduction of CRA Project,” March 28). Let’s hope he really does it, and let’s hope they listen to him. They don’t pay much attention to anyone else.

Meanwhile, what is Padilla doing about the small businesses the CRA wants to condemn and tear down? The consultants hired by the CRA recommend bulldozing up to 430,258 square feet of shops and factories, which will result in a loss of 430 local jobs.

What good is it to keep your house if you have lost your job and can’t make the mortgage payments?

MARY ANN GEYER

Sunland

* Re “Larger Home Near Subway Proposed for Valley Clinic,” May 26.

I wasn’t sure whether to be outraged or to laugh at the negative comments expressed by Mildred Weller of the North Hollywood redevelopment citizen’s council in your article regarding the relocation of the Valley Community Clinic in the commercial development across the street from the new subway station. Her comments about the indigents and free clinic clientele are similar to what was said about us when we opened up at almost exactly the same location (pre-redevelopment) some 30 years ago.

Here we are now in 2000, a well-respected organization in the community serving close to 20,000 patients annually, providing comprehensive primary medical care, mental health counseling, optometry, women’s health care, HIV testing, treatment and case management as well as extensive health education, working with neighborhood elementary, middle and high school students and their parents. We have also developed a nationally recognized and highly successful teen pregnancy prevention program reaching thousands of young people in the community each year. The teens who frequent our clinic are exactly the likely customers for some of the businesses proposed for the project. Furthermore, the “indigent” patients we serve are not all the lowlifes she is expecting, but often the hard-working employees of many of the small businesses in the area whose owners cannot afford to provide health insurance for their staff, part-time workers and sporadic workers from the entertainment industry, college students, people whose insurance may not cover some of the services they need (like eye care and glasses) as well as people who want the anonymity afforded by the clinic for services such as HIV testing.

We have over 150 employees who need to eat and shop before, during and after work. We make a major contribution to the community and deserve to be so recognized, not something to be ashamed of.

ANN BRITT

President / Chief Executive,

Valley Community Clinic

North Hollywood