New San Fernando Valley COG Enables Valley ‘Place'-Making

At the end of May the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors officially actuated the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments. What exactly is the significance of this new COG?

Robert Scott: The significance is that it caps a number of years of effort on the part of all the participating jurisdictions to put together a coalition that can represent this region of two-million-plus in a way that it hasn't operated in the past. Most importantly, it gives us an opportunity to sit down with neighboring cities and develop strategies in areas where we can all agree.

Who will be the members of this new Valley COG?

Robert Scott: The members of the COG include a portion of the city of Los Angeles, the seven Los Angeles City Council districts in the San Fernando Valley; the two supervisorial districts for the county of Los Angeles, those of Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich; and the cities of Glendale, Burbank, San Fernando, and Santa Clarita.

David, you've long been active in pressing for a Valley COG. What compelled its acceptance in the end?

David Fleming: It's reminiscent of the position that Bob Hertzberg has taken for years-that there is a growing need for regional governance in California. We have so many problems that cross jurisdictional boundaries. A problem along the I-5 impacts Santa Clarita, Burbank, San Fernando, the city of Los Angeles, and, indirectly, Glendale. If we didn't have something like a COG, we wouldn't be able to effectively coordinate efforts.

My hat is off to Bob Scott for all the work he's done, not just to form this COG, but also to make the San Fernando Valley its own statistical area. This was a mighty effort that took many, many years and a lot of frustration. Finally now we have seen victory, and I'm excited about what's going to happen with this COG in the years to come.

What will be on the Valley COG'S agenda? Is it truly as much of a game changer as David is suggesting?

Robert Scott: It certainly has the opportunity to be. We work in the civic realm; we have taken some of the investment that has been made by the private sector into our organization and translated it into something in the form of regional leadership that didn't exist before the Northridge earthquake, when the Valley Economic Alliance was first established.

Over that time we've developed partnerships working with the public sector and achieved many things that we wouldn't have otherwise accomplished. The COG is another step in the right direction because it's a governmental agency without adding another layer of bureaucracy. Instead, it brings the existing elected officials together in a single forum to cooperate in advocacy on behalf of this region.

Typically, events in Los Angeles emanate from the center of the city or the center of the county-Downtown Los Angeles. The approach is simply different there. It's not right or wrong; it's just a different perspective. Now we have standing to officially weigh in. For example, opportunities that may have been missed because they were seen from a different point of view or by a different governing body.

This agency has the opportunity to look at what's important to the San Fernando Valley, not to the exclusion of the city of Los Angeles, but rather picking up on opportunities that have been missed in the past.

Give an example of the issues the COG will first address.

Robert Scott: One of the things that everybody agrees on is addressing AB 32 and SB 375, the greenhouse gas statutes. Regional strategies may have been more difficult for some of the smaller cities to develop by themselves, but working together as a group, they can begin to deal with these situations. In some cases it's a question of advocacy; in some cases it's a question of developing information.

One of the big issues about this organization is that it can officially generate information that had previously been gathered only on a semi-official basis. At the moment, we're completing the I-5 Corridor Study, which is an economic development initiative that has been going on for the last nine months, funded by SCAG, and giving us a roadmap for the new council of governments to follow, should they adopt it. Everything is subject to what the new Council of Governments Board of Directors decides to do. We're just here to facilitate that process.

Bob, as a former chair of the City of L.A. City Planning Commission, will the Valley's distinct identity be enhanced by the COG?

Robert Scott: In the ten years I was involved, the Planning Commission frequently dealt with cross-jurisdictional issues like annexation. For example, Calabasas was interested in annexing portions of the city of Los Angeles, and we were forced by policy to take a fairly parochial view. The same can be said for the individual council districts. They tend to be very parochial.

We're hopeful that part of this is to promote conversation across jurisdictional lines, including conversations across City Council lines. It's very rare that there is an official setting in which the seven council members that represent the San Fernando Valley can sit down and talk specifically about Valley issues. The city has made some efforts in the past to have meetings within the Valley, with Valley-oriented topics on the agenda. The effort was there, but it hasn't necessarily been in a form where representatives of the San Fernando Valley can sit, meet, and talk, not only among themselves and the jurisdictions of Los Angeles, but also with the neighboring jurisdictions.

As far as the city Planning Commission goes, that configuration has been changed from five to nine, and we've added the Area Planning Commissions. We have something like 35, where we once had five. That has changed the complexion of the planning process. Going back to the idea that this organization will be responsible for managing the new San Fernando Valley SCAG planning sub-region, they will be able to give input in the planning process from the headwaters, from the very beginning of the process. Before this, we were confined to public comment periods and small meetings that might take place outside of the neighborhoods and be of little consequence to the overall concept of the plan.

The news coverage of this effort stressed the economic development opportunities for the Valley that might flow from a concentration of attention. What are the economics that gird this effort?

David Fleming: For many years the Valley has been ignored from an economic standpoint. That was one of the reasons we formed the Economic Alliance after the Northridge earthquake. We wanted to bring together business interests and organizations as well as the educational and governmental communities and everyone else involved in economic development.

Today, under the umbrella of the Economic Alliance, we have VICA, the United Chambers of Commerce, and various Valley trade groups, all representing the greater Valley area. This new COG represents a joining together of governments with the private sector to improve the area's economy and quality of life.

The track record over the last 25 years of job creation in the city of L.A. has been abysmal. How might the SFVCOG reverse this trend?

Robert Scott: We can talk a little bit about the research that's been done over the past ten or 15 years by the Mulholland Institute. We've been able to develop reports and strategies, mostly relating to the development of economic clusters. The recent I-5 Corridor Study is an add-on to a previous I-5 report done in 2007. We were identifying areas where the San Fernando Valley has a competitive advantage.

One of the benefits of having a Valley-oriented organization is that we're able to figure out what this particular region can do better than others. A lot of what's been commonly perceived as Hollywood actually takes place in the southeastern San Fernando Valley. A huge share of the aerospace industry is based in the Valley. We've lost some of the larger installations, but many of the contractors and subcontractors are still here. We still have a leadership position if we can transition that particular industry cluster into green technology. There's probably no better place on earth for those industries to thrive because we have the infrastructure and educational institutions to provide the workforce.

There are certain things you have to focus on at different levels. The Valley economy has been looked at from 50,000 feet, but maybe it needs to be looked at from 10,000 feet. That's where the San Fernando Valley COG can drill down and identify those unique opportunities and features of the San Fernando Valley.

David Fleming: Smaller cities like Burbank, Glendale, Santa Clarita, and San Fernando have been engines of economic development. The big laggard has been the city of Los Angeles. Because of the enormous influence of the public employee unions, the city of Los Angeles has not concentrated on measures that create non-governmental jobs and thus a better economy for the area.

I'm hopeful that as the seven members of the L.A. City Council representing the Valley, along with representatives of the smaller cities and the County Board of Supervisors, join together in this COG, the lessons of economic development of the smaller cities will rub off on the rest of the COG members to the benefit of the people and the economy of our region and, therefore, to the economy of all of Los Angeles County.

How might the Valley COG benefit from the Census and pending electoral reapportionment?

David Fleming: I consider the redrawing of new state assembly and senate districts, together with the passage of the open primary initiative, to be important improvements for the state government of California. As far as the new Census figures are concerned, they are going to show greater population densities in our region than we ever dreamed possible. As a consequence, there will be more clout for the greater San Fernando Valley.

If we come together to do a follow-up interview a year from now what will we be talking about in the way of progress and successes for this new San Fernando Valley COG?

Bob Scott: I hope we will have seized a few new opportunities. But, these are slow moving processes-they don't happen overnight. We also have to remember that it's the COG board that decides. We're just the facilitators. If we have a few solid wins, it would be very rewarding for the group of people that have been involved in this-gain some bond funding, win grants that otherwise wouldn't have come to this region, or develop a more coherent transportation policy from the perspective that we live in an urbanizing suburban area, not the bedroom community that some perceive.

By "we" I mean the people of this region, who have felt somewhat disenfranchised in the past. Combining the agility of the smaller cities with the clout of the city of Los Angeles, we will have some new tools to use. We should be able to do things for this region that haven't been done before-things that can even be recognized by a person on the street. I'd like for people to be interested in what's happening in their region. They become disinterested when they become disenfranchised.

David, you have served on Metro, MWD, and as a city fire commissioner. Will the COG a year from now affect the planning and service delivery priorities of these institutions?

David Fleming: Everybody's going to be affected by this COG. Whether it's transportation, water, public safety, or infrastructure improvements, we all have to work together-governments and the private sector-in coordinated fashions to achieve progress. A year from now we will be well on our way to improving the lot of everyone living in the Greater San Fernando Valley. And it's about time.