With a little over six months on the job, the city’s Planning Director Gail Goldberg told a group of Valley residents and business professionals that staffing, a reorganization of the department and the development of long range plans for the city were the top concerns of her department, along with clearing a persistent backlog of cases that has hampered the city’s development efforts for years. Goldberg was one of three speakers who addressed about 20 members of Valley VOTE, an organization initially formed to spearhead the San Fernando Valley’s secession effort. The group now acts as a kind of watchdog to make certain city officials give appropriate attention to Valley concerns. At times highly critical of the way the department was managed in the past, Goldberg, who assumed her post in February, said that her efforts to move the agenda forward had been hampered by a backlog of planning cases so large, workers did not even know the extent of the problem. Although most of the cases have been dispensed with, about 400 still remain, Goldberg said. Goldberg said clearing the backlog superseded other plans for the department, but with much of that work now complete, her focus has turned to several long range goals including reorganizing the department so that the planners responsible for different aspects of the process are grouped in teams according to geography, a strategy that drew applause from the VOTE group. That way, Goldberg said, the planning department can begin to know the various communities more thoroughly and make decisions that address the different needs of each neighborhood. “The other issue was to begin to do long ranging planning in the city and to engage people in a real discussion about what it was we wanted our city to look like and how we were going to do that community by community,” Goldberg said. About 33 planners so far have been hired, most assigned to long range planning projects, but Goldberg said there are many more openings that still must be filled and additional jobs that must be created to build an effective planning department. Goldberg, who left a similar post in San Diego, said that in that city, with a population somewhat less than the Valley, the planning department staff numbered 150 compared to 30 workers assigned to the Valley’s planning office. “In the next few weeks you are going to see more people out there,” said Goldberg, noting that she expects to locate a full menu of planning department services in the Valley in the next few months. Goldberg was candid about some of the problems she has faced since taking the post and critical of some of the department’s past performance. “Real planning is not just about the plans,” said Goldberg. “I didn’t find any good examples of real planning when I came here.” Goldberg said that community plans should include a discussion of the character of the community and how the infrastructure can support the plan. She intends to add housing and transportation elements to the city’s general plan, and to begin discussions of ways the city can preserve its industrial land as well as how to build a stock of affordable housing. Goldberg said she has put a stop to a long-standing practice of allowing planning department staffers to work a four-day, 10-hour schedule, a decision that has hampered the department’s ability to attract clerical and administrative staff and disgruntled some of the managers. A visit from members of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, a team headed by Arturo Pena, assistant general manager of the agency who was filling in for Lisa Sarno, the interim manager who had been called away due to a family emergency, drew perhaps the most animated responses from those present at the meeting, which took place Sept. 18. Among the issues those in attendance raised were a concern that the neighborhood councils have been “taken over by special interests,” and the problem of poor participation in the councils. Several in the group also complained that Proposition R, a ballot measure that would allow city council members to serve three terms instead of the current two-term maximum, was rushed through without any input from the neighborhood councils. “Why didn’t DONE speak up when Prop R was rushed through?” asked one of the group in attendance? The last speaker on the evening’s agenda was Mark Dierking, director of the Children’s Museum of L.A., who was joined by Dana Katz, development director for the museum. Although construction has begun on the museum, which will be located at Hansen Dam, Dierking said the agency still has a long way to go to raise the money needed for the exhibits. The group has so far raised $38 million of the $53 million it needs to open the museum. “We’re getting a great response through grants and local foundations,” said Dierking. “We’re hoping to get a better response from corporations. It’s a challenge.” Dierking asked the group for introductions “to people who can write checks.”
