Nothing succeeds like Cityhood
Venice was an independent city for 20
years until residents voted on Oct. 1, 1925, by 3,130 to 2,215, to be annexed by
Los Angeles. A movement for secession started almost immediately. The election
was marred by threats to restrict the water supply and by Angelenos moving into
Venice just to vote for annexation.
By Jim
Smith
The Bloom is off the Rose. When
Venice voters elected L.A. Councilmember Bill Rosendahl and Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa last year spirits soared that at last our concerns would be
addressed in City Hall.
Not so.
Since then, corporate terrorists have
forcibly evicted scores of Venetians at Lincoln Place and the wheels are in
motion to virtually give away 3.3 acres of valuable public land at the MTA bus
lot to greedy developers. If evictions were body counts, Venice could give parts
of Iraq a run for their money.
So why
are we still on the outside looking in? Bill Rosendahl, who must spend a large
amount of his time on our small part of Council District 11, tries - and tries
hard - to help. His failures can help us to understand how big money runs L.A.
Developers and corporate interests act behind the scenes while their front men,
like City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, ride herd on the city council.
Meanwhile Mayor Villaraigosa - the
golden boy of the media - has not had much time as Rosendahl to hang out with
Lincoln Place tenants. The one unplanned encounter he had with them, at a
meeting of Del Rey homeowners Dec. 6, apparently so unnerved him that he’s
still hasn’t gotten over it.
As
reported in the January Beachhead, the Mayor had to listen to a number of
Lincoln Place tenants who crashed the meeting after being evicted from their
homes earlier that day. They begged, they pleaded, they told heart-wrenching
stories to no avail. Villariagosa felt blindsided by the
encounter.
These are the best political
leaders we are likely to get for a long, long time. And yet, they are either
helpless, or seduced by Big Money into inaction while Venice is literally
bulldozed out of existence. If only we had our own
city.
Our only hope to regain any
control over our community life may well be to regain Venice cityhood. Since the
1920s, when we lost our autonomous city by dubious means there have been
efforts, which began almost immediately, to regain it. Polls and surveys
beginning in the 90s, through a couple of years ago, show overwhelming support
for cityhood among Venetians. The only qualm we have is that it can’t be
done.
Indeed, it is a hard road to
regaining community control. LAFCO, the Local Area Formation Commission,
requires that any area that wants to secede must jump through a number of hoops,
including an affirmative vote by the non-seceding portion of the city. In 2002,
the San Fernando Valley voted to secede, but the rest of L.A. voted against it,
thereby dooming the effort. There might be an easier way in which Venice can
reestablish its cityhood. I’ll get to this later in this
article.
But first, how would a City of
Venice benefit its residents more than the current situation where we are only 1
percent of the City of Los Angeles? It’s likely that a city government
where 100 percent – not 1 percent – of the constituents are
Venetians would show more concern than the downtown crowd who cater to the 99
percent who don’t live in
Venice.
Example 1: Lincoln Place. At
this writing, neither tenants, nor our community, nor City Councilmember Bill
Rosendahl have gotten anywhere with the entrenched bureaucracy that runs Big
Brother (Los Angeles has many of the characteristics of a man - acquisitive,
power hungry and with delusions of grandeur, while Venice is obviously a woman,
as our poets have always maintained).
Efforts to obtain City historical
status for the 700 remaining garden apartments at Lincoln Place hasn’t
gotten to first base. Neither has a proposal for the positive use of eminent
domain to save the affordable homes in the midst of a housing crisis.
Contrast this with a homegrown
historical commission and a city council that would meet within walking distance
for most of us and is made up of our neighbors. The City of Venice could have
sent the greedy corporate landlord, AIMCO, packing months - or years - ago, and
restored this vital source of low and moderate-priced
housing.
Example 2: The MTA lot.
Readers of the Beachhead well know that an attempt to give public land to a
private developer is underway.
A City
of Venice Planning Department and City Council could have made short-work of
this convoluted scheme. The City of Venice could have made it clear to the MTA
that the deal wouldn’t fly, and then could have entered into negotiations
to buy the parcel or trade other city-owned facilities to the MTA, which the MTA
could then have sold to buy itself a new bus lot somewhere outside of
Venice.
Can a City of Venice be
financially viable? Venice currently has a population of 40,000 or a little
less. In L.A. County there are 88 cities, at least half, or 39 of them, have
populations smaller than Venice. See
<www.laalmanac.com/population/po03.htm>.
Nearly all of these cities function
well and without scandal (or at least no more scandal than the City of Los
Angeles).
The financial viability of a
City of Venice would likely rest on two main pillars - rising property values
and tourism. Property taxes are the largest single source of revenue for the
City of Los Angeles, and many other cities as well. Coastal-area land is likely
to continue to be highly valued even through boom and bust cycles.
As a major tourist attraction, our
beach is also a revenue source. A City of Venice could take steps to make it
even more enjoyable to tourists by providing easy access by means of shuttles,
pedicabs and other alternatives to a visitor rather than having to spend half
the day trying to park.
Venice could
reactivate Abbot Kinney’s model of small hotels and bed and breakfast
facilities that encourage overnight visitors who would increase revenue for the
city and its residents. Of course, all of this is up to the citizens of Venice,
who would be able to live in a self-governing community for the first time in
many decades.
What else could a City of
Venice do? Make this a real center for the arts with more public art and murals,
wandering poets and minstrels, exhibitions and art schools. We could reclaim
public space by turning some streets and our traffic circle into parks. We could
hold fiestas and celebrations at the drop of a hat.
Under current law it is nearly
impossible to form a new city, since the entire City of Los Angeles would have
to vote to approve it. But laws can be changed. All that would be required would
be an amendment that former cities (like Venice) would be exempt from the
requirement that the entire city give its approval. After all, only Venice voted
to become part of Los Angeles back in the 20s.
A number of candidates are vying to
represent Venice in the State Senate and Assembly. Let’s insist that they
pledge to introduce such a bill if they want our support in the election.
In an increasingly corporate and alienated
world, small cities may be our salvation.
Posted: Wed - March 1, 2006 at 02:46 AM