Supervisors Grapple Over Olive View : Redistricting: A plan puts the Sylmar hospital in Antonovich’s area, but Edelman wants to keep it.

Both county supervisors representing the San Fernando Valley are unhappy with the proposed new boundary lines for their districts in the northeast Valley, setting up a potential conflict when the board makes the final decision.

Supervisor Ed Edelman said Wednesday that he was concerned by the Supervisorial District Boundary Review Committee’s plan to return Olive View Medical Center, located in Sylmar, to Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s 5th District.

At the same time, the rest of Sylmar and the northeast Valley would remain in Edelman’s 3rd District, home to many of the poor Latinos who use the public hospital.

“If most of the patients are coming from my area to the hospital, I want to be involved in making sure the hospital provides the kind of services that should be provided,” Edelman said. “If you represent the area, it’s a little easier to do that.”

Antonovich spokesman Dawson Oppenheimer acknowledged that dividing the area is awkward but said the flaw lies in allowing Edelman to retain the northeast Valley while carving Antonovich a larger portion of the highly Republican West Valley as compensation.

Antonovich’s appointees to the boundary committee had proposed giving the entire northeast Valley to Antonovich.

“We would have liked to have seen that happen, but the votes just weren’t there,” Oppenheimer said. “Of course, there are some problems that exist every time you split major communities of common interest.” The changes were approved Monday evening by the Boundary Review Committee.

The new boundaries must be approved by the supervisors before Oct. 1 to reflect the population gains established by the 1990 census. The supervisors said they would raise their objections when the issue comes before the whole board.

It will be the second boundary realignment in less than a year, leaving county offices cluttered with maps of various proposals.

A federal court-ordered redistricting enacted in March stripped most of the Valley from Antonovich and awarded it to Edelman.

Oppenheimer said Antonovich covets Olive View because he led the drive to get the hospital rebuilt.

The original hospital was destroyed in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and only a metal frame had been erected by the time Antonovich took office in 1980, Oppenheimer said.

The new hospital opened in 1987.

“Mike has a certain proprietary feeling toward Olive View,” Oppenheimer said. “It wouldn’t have been there without him.”

Edelman said he understood Antonovich’s investment in the public hospital, but added, “he can still point to it as one of his successes . . . whether it’s in his district or not.”

Some northeast Valley residents testified at Monday’s boundary committee hearing that splitting the hospital from the representative of most of the people it serves could lead to problems.

Chiefly, said activist Ruben Rodriguez, Antonovich would not be politically accountable for hospital inadequacies because the voters most affected by those problems would live outside his district.

Even those who backed the plan to give Antonovich the entire northeast Valley expressed reservations about giving the supervisor only the hospital.

“It would be better for all of us to be as together as possible,” said Bert Corona, executive director of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a North Hollywood-based national educational and support service organization for immigrants.