Secessionists Toast Successful Petition Drive

Wearing pacifiers on their lapels and talking excitedly about “the birth of the nation’s sixth-largest city,” leaders of the San Fernando Valley secession movement feted their volunteer petitioners Sunday and braced for an impending showdown with Los Angeles’ establishment.

Drinking and noshing at Valley Presbyterian Hospital to celebrate the success of their signature drive, members of Valley VOTE--the group pushing for a study and possible vote on divorcing Los Angeles--lauded their accomplishment with a throng of Valley political allies.

“Clearly, the Valley has come together,” Valley VOTE President Jeff Brain said as volunteers trotted out boxes wrapped in red ribbons containing the 205,000 signatures the group gathered. Valley VOTE officials said they expect to turn over the petitions on Wednesday to the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission.

But leaders of the breakaway movement warned the crowd of 200 that Valley cityhood was still a long way away--and that the most contentious fights loom.

“We cannot fool ourselves, we have a long battle ahead of us,” said Fire Commissioner David Fleming, a Studio City attorney once nicknamed “Mr. San Fernando Valley” by Mayor Richard Riordan. “There are those in city government that . . . have had the power for years, and they’re not going to give it up. They’re going to fight.”

Though Valley VOTE has maintained from the outset that it advocates only a study on secession, the talk Sunday focused strictly on the attributes of a Valley city. Organizers screened a promotional video touting the Valley as a full-flowered urban jewel, no longer the sprawling suburb it was stereotyped to be. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) and former Assemblywoman Paula Boland even jokingly suggested their surnames--”Bolandville” or “Sherman Oaks”--as naming fodder for the potential metropolis of 1.6 million.

Some secession advocates also appeared to address concerns that secession may negatively affect the northeast Valley’s largely Latino communities, saying support for studying a breakup was strong in all areas.

“This is equally supported by the entire Valley, and we have made an effort to reach out to the entire Valley,” Brain said.

The signatures collected by Valley VOTE, which also employed paid petitioners, far surpass the 132,000 or so needed to kick off a secession study. The petitions have yet to be verified by county election officials, however. If a study is conducted and shows that secession is economically viable, the breakup proposal could be on the ballot as early as 2000.

For Police Commissioner Bert Boeckmann and many of the longtime secession advocates in attendance, the mere thought that the movement had gotten this far was cause for celebration.

Boeckmann--a prominent Valley car dealer who was part of a group that pursued secession two decades ago, only to be thwarted by legislation that gave the City Council the power to veto breakup drives--credited Boland with reviving the crusade in Sacramento.

Though Boland ultimately failed in her efforts to change the law, two other Valley Assembly members--Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) and Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks)--succeeded last year. Secession can now take place if a majority of voters in both the Valley and the rest of Los Angeles agree to it.

“We know it is still a long journey,” Boeckmann said, “but for those of us who’ve been here 20 years, it’s a great step.”

To help get the study off the ground, Boeckmann and Fleming--perhaps the Valley’s greatest political kingmakers--have set a goal of $1 million for their fund-raising group, the San Fernando Valley CIVIC Foundation. A secession study, to be overseen by LAFCO, is expected to cost at least $1 million, and secession advocates probably will be asked to pay for at least a portion of it.

“This city is too big to be manageable,” Fleming said. “I look at Burbank and Glendale, and I think maybe we can provide better services that way.”