Where the Sidewalk Ends
Council members struggle to bring street lights and sidewalks to outlying Valley towns, but infrastr
By Joe Piasecki
Life in the 'burbs comes with certain expectations - well-paved streets, nice sidewalks, and a street light or two for starters. But that's not always the case in America's largest suburb, the San Fernando Valley.
Take Alex Padilla's home out in Pacoima, for example. There's no sidewalk in front, and the whole street goes dark at sundown. Not the kind of modern conveniences you'd expect for the home of a member of the Los Angeles City Council. Padilla represents Pacoima and other Valley neighborhoods, and is one of several city leaders on a back-to-basics mission to bring Valley infrastructure into the 21st century.
"That's what people care about," says Councilmember Wendy Greuel, who represents the Valley neighborhoods of Sunland, Tujunga, and Sherman Oaks.
"When I knocked on doors while I was campaigning, most people weren't talking about high public policy issues. People had lived on a street 40 years and never seen it repaved or got that stop sign they'd been asking for for a decade," says Greuel, who's a little bit honored that some call her "The Pothole Queen."
While not the only Valley policymaker making her name on taking care of "the city knitting," as it's often referred to in smaller towns, Greuel has become one of the forerunners of brick-and-mortar politics by pioneering L.A.'s 50/50 sidewalk program. The plan gives property owners the prerogative to get sidewalks repaired in a month - if they're willing to pay half the cost.
Of course, that's the city's job, but good luck getting it done in this lifetime. Work orders are backlogged about 85 years, says Greuel. In 1998, a citywide parcel tax that would have raised $700 million to speed up sidewalk repair failed at the polls, leaving only about $9 million per year for emergency sidewalk repairs.
Truth is, many are willing to pay. Though it sticks homeowners with bills in excess of $1,000, the 50/50 plan has become so enormously popular that after just a few months the city had to start turning people away. The trend has expanded to other services, too. Not long ago, Councilmember Greig Smith sent a memo to his Northridge, Chatsworth, and Granada Hills constituents that they could hire city work crews to fix busted curbs and potholes by paying overtime costs for city employees.
This, however, does not address the fact that many neighborhoods with bad sidewalks and other problems are low-income areas, and thus the least likely to be able to pay for it themselves. In these instances, Gruel and other Valley council members have used federal Community Development Block Grant money to boost available funds. But they admit there's not enough money there to do it all. As former L.A. Deputy Mayor Brian Williams, who now serves as Pasadena's assistant city manager, put it back in 2003, "Which would you rather ? have, a street light or a police officer?"
In November 2002, these issues gave significant momentum to the Valley secession movement. The perception was, among vocal secession proponents, that the Valley was being left behind in terms of infrastructure and many services.
"That perception is based on some reality, but you're seeing progress on all fronts," says Bill Mabie, spokesman for Padilla. As evidence of that progress, Mabie cites Padilla's street light project.
Though the city has 220,000 street lights, those only illuminate two-thirds of city neighborhoods, says Ed Ebrahimian, director of the city's Bureau of Street Lighting. At least part of the reason for the shortage is because street lights are another service L.A. residents pay for out of their own pockets on top of property taxes. Homeowner fees for street light installation usually run $1,500 to $3,000, and maintenance assessments are about $50 a year.
Another reason could be the Valley's massive sprawl. A city report under former Mayor James Hahn put a price tag of some $580 million on lighting up the entire Valley, though some at the time criticized the report for taking into account some affluent neighborhoods that resist such urbanization.
"We're trying to find the funds to build all of this, and it's not cheap," says Mabie.
To make sure his neighborhoods catch up, Padilla has also tapped Community Development Block Grant funding as well as money from the city's Street Furniture (bus bench advertising) Fund to cover the cost of installing some 700 permanent street lights on blocks where a majority of residents have agreed to pay maintenance fees. But so far, that hasn't included his own street.
Understanding this problem takes a little knowledge of history, says Kevin Roderick, author of The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb, and creator of the Valley Observed blog (www.americassuburb.com). When the Valley started growing in the 1950s and 1960s, zoning codes requiring developers to provide community infrastructure weren't around. Referring to places like Pacoima, he says, "Those are kind of leftovers from a previous era, and you could make the case those neighborhoods have been left behind."
"It's a core issue in our district - we need more street lights and sidewalks," says Stacy Bellew, spokeswoman for Northeast Valley Councilmember Tony Cardenas. For one thing, relative darkness is not only a public safety concern, it also leads to illegal trash dumping in the district, especially in the district's omnipresent dark alleys, she says. That's why Cardenas spends a few hours most weekends pitching in with neighborhood volunteers to pick up junk, like old furniture, dumped on the street - around 4,600 tons of it since he took office, says Bellew.
All of this brings us back to secessionist claims that the Valley was getting the shaft. "If anything, secession was kind of a wake-up call to those not in the Valley that if you want us to be a part of the city, you have to reach out and work with us. I think the message was heard loud and clear," says Mabie.
To Roderick, however, all that secessionist talk about the Valley not getting its fair share of resources doesn't add up. For one thing, large parts of the Valley, especially wealthier neighborhoods in the west, don't face these problems. Distribution of these resources is more uneven within the Valley itself than it is compared to, say, Westside communities such as Westwood and Brentwood, he argues. While the Valley's west was for secession, the east was strongly against it, which should lead one to believe something was a little off.
Gruel disagrees, saying, "I believe there was a legitimate concern. They were right to question whether the Valley got its fair share."
Many people were looking to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed massive infrastructure bond for help, but even in its current, scaled-back form, the $68 billion infrastructure bond focuses on large projects like roads, railroads, and schools, but wouldn't offer much to cities to use for small-scale neighborhood improvements, says Mabie.
At the national level, President Bush has requested that $1 billion in Community Development Block Grant funding - money that could be used to further pave and light up the Valley - be removed from next year's federal budget, reported Reuters. More than $10 billion from CDBG funds are already earmarked as Hurricane Katrina aid for the Gulf Coast.Published: 03/30/2006
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
