Northeast Valley

Re "CRA Urges Slicing Valley Project in Half," March 25. The announcement that the Community Redevelopment Agency will scale back its attempted confiscation of 6,835 northeast Valley acres is a sucker play designed to make Councilman Alex Padilla feel the CRA is actually listening to the flood of complaints from his irate constituents. First, Whiteman Airport and the other 2,300 [publicly] owned acres being proposed for the chopping block are a no-brainer. The agency doesn't want government land under any conditions, because it does not generate property taxes and therefore will provide no income to the CRA. Second, Padilla should read Sections 2.1, 3.4 and 5.1 of the CRA's own environmental impact report that repeatedly state only three acres per year need to be developed over the next 20 years "to support and stimulate investment in the proposed project area."

As money woes strain the city's resources, Los Angeles officials have been engaged in a continuing and important discussion: What are the responsibilities the city handles best itself? And what are those the city can, and should, contract out? Some are obvious: The city should run its own police department, for instance. Some are not so obvious. The latest to fall under scrutiny is the operation of animal shelters. There are six scattered across the city that are open to the public and that take in and adopt out thousands of unwanted and stray animals.

An aftershock of the Northridge earthquake, with a magnitude of 3.1, shook parts of the San Fernando Valley from Granada Hills to Woodland Hills on Monday night, a Caltech seismologist said. The earthquake struck one mile north-northeast of Granada Hills at 9:53 p.m., according to Caltech seismologist Jim Mori. No damage was reported.

Los Angeles police officers charged with breaking up loud and unruly parties know the fastest way to find out who is in charge. "Trust me, you hook the deejay, they'll find the owner," said Officer Casey Sbabo. It was after 11 p.m. Friday and more than a dozen LAPD officers ushered out stragglers from the group of more than 150 mostly teenagers -- including suspected gang members -- who helped turn a vast dirt yard in Pacoima into a dance floor.

Now I know what CRA stands for: Community Ripped Apart. As a long-time property and business owner in the northeast Valley, I have a stake in the future of our community. I ran for office, was elected as a member of the Project Area Committee (PAC) and, with an open mind, eagerly sought to learn how redevelopment was going to benefit the area, my neighbors and me. What a joke. I have seen and heard only months of bickering, hidden agendas and misleading statements by the CRA [Community Redevelopment Agency]

A former politician from Santa Monica has been hired by Councilman Richard Alarcon to oversee field operations in the 7th District. Antonio Vazquez, 39, who worked as a planner in United Way's North Angeles region for three years, began his new job as Alarcon's field director on Jan. 9. Vazquez also served four terms on Santa Monica's City Council, two of those years as mayor pro tem.

A work training program for adolescents in foster care was expanded to the northeast San Fernando Valley on Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The Independent Living Program, administered by Penny Lane of Sepulveda, will provide vocational training for 15 youths, age 16 and older, from Pacoima, North Hollywood and Lake View Terrace as well as from Calabasas in the West Valley.

Los Angeles City Council candidates Richard Alarcon and Lyle Hall played endorsement one-upmanship Wednesday, touting their support from various groups and elected officials. Alarcon opened the exchange when his campaign released an endorsement by the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley, a collection of 10 to 15 local Democratic clubs. Hall responded by citing endorsements he has received from both Democratic and Republican elected officials.

Fifteen students could see their artwork plastered on billboards throughout the Northeast Valley as part of an anti-drinking campaign sponsored by the Pacoima and San Fernando Alcohol Coalitions. Students at public schools in San Fernando, Sylmar and Pacoima, along with students at Los Angeles Mission College, have been asked to contribute artwork depicting the theme "Alcohol is a Drug" for a contest to be judged next month.

Sharon Humphrey-Peterson, a self-described political activist from Pacoima, said Thursday that she intends to begin raising money to run for the seat of retiring City Councilman Ernani Bernardi in 1993. Humphrey-Peterson, who worked on the presidential campaign of former Gov. Jerry Brown this year, filed papers with the city Ethics Commission, saying she will raise funds to run in the 7th Council District, which covers the northeast San Fernando Valley.

After pitching its tent in three different communities during the last four years, the San Fernando Valley Fair returns today to the Hansen Dam Recreation Area, where organizers hope to improve flagging attendance. The 58th edition of the fair, which runs through Sunday, is expected to draw more than 60,000 people to its traditional assortment of carnival rides, concessions and horticultural, livestock and home arts competitions, organizers said.

For equestrians living in the northeast San Fernando Valley, nothing means home like dirt trails and horses whinnying in the backyard. But they fear that the horse-keeping lifestyle that has reigned for decades in such communities as Lake View Terrace, Sylmar, Sun Valley, Sunland, Shadow Hills and Tujunga will disappear soon, as developers snatch some of Los Angeles' last patches of open space.

In its drive to become a city, the Valley became one. Not because the secessionists barely carried the day in the Valley, but because the attempted breakaway made the Valley -- and the rest of Los Angeles -- rethink what it is and what it might want to become. "The secession movement has given the Valley a sense of itself it did not have," says Studio City resident Ken Bernstein, founder of the Civic Forum, a nonpartisan group that held numerous forums on secession around the city.

In a sense, Dick Healy has become a prisoner of his fellow Angelenos, who, though famously restless and migratory, thirst for a warm, familiar place. When Healy left the corporate banking business 15 years ago and opened his custom coffee roasting business, he did not intend it to become a coffeehouse where regulars drop in for a few sips of neighborliness while anonymous traffic whizzes past on Ventura Boulevard.

Keeping pressure on the MTA to reform bus service in the San Fernando Valley, a group studying creation of a breakaway bus system got a one-year extension Tuesday. The Los Angeles City Council and county Board of Supervisors gave the group, scheduled to disband Dec. 31, more time to explore the feasibility of a bus system that would break away from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

When Tony Cardenas made the rounds at Los Angeles City Hall last month to promote his candidacy for City Council, he was guided by an intense man with a walrus-style mustache who knows well how to navigate the halls of power. He was James Acevedo--San Fernando Valley political operative, lobbyist, government contractor, developer, power broker. Acevedo, 49, finds himself at the center of an expanding Latino political coalition that reaches into City Hall and Sacramento.

The head of the San Fernando Valley cityhood group said Friday that Los Angeles City Council President Alex Padilla should be ousted because of his removal of Councilman Hal Bernson from a panel studying secession. Valley VOTE President Jeff Brain, who now lives in Glendale, sent an e-mail to dozens of the group's supporters asking whether they would support such a campaign.

The northeast San Fernando Valley used to be the place where the urban momentum of Los Angeles petered out, giving way to ranches, horse trails and foothills. But with an 11.5% jump in population during the 1990s, much of the area has increased in density, a place where a growing working class relies heavily on a thin public transit system. Experts say the northeast Valley is one of the toughest challenges facing Los Angeles County's Metropolitan Transportation Authority.