Town Councils Give Communities a Chance to Be Heard : Government: The advisory boards reflect a ‘grass-roots uprising’ created to empower and safeguard rural northern L.A. County.

Something besides tumbleweeds is sweeping across northern Los Angeles County: representative government.

In the past three years, 10 communities in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys have elected advisory boards known as town councils in an effort to gain influence “down below” on matters ranging from traffic congestion to development. Another six communities may soon join them.

Like the groundswell of populism that pundits say is occurring nationally, the town council movement is a “reflection of the disenchantment with politics as usual,” said David Mars, a USC professor of public administration.

Lacking the necessary tax base to incorporate as cities, communities ranging from rural Leona Valley to suburban Stevenson Ranch are “trying to find a way to gain control over their own lives” in the fastest-growing region in the county, Mars said.

The first town council in the area was voted into office three summers ago in Acton, a once-tranquil hamlet north of Santa Clarita that nearly doubled in size during the past decade to 1,471 residents.

Then Leona Valley, a village of about 600 small ranches where a developer wants to build 7,200 housing units, formed a town council in 1990. With the help of Leona Valley resident Mary Ann Floyd, who later founded a loosely knit coalition known as the Assn. of Rural Town Councils, nearly every other unincorporated community in the northern part of the county has since gotten into the act.

The movement is even spreading across the county line into the high desert communities of Mojave and Rosamond in Kern County.

“It’s a grass-roots uprising, similar to the Ross Perot movement,” says Mike Hughes, a member of the Acton Town Council. “With urban Los Angeles making decisions about our rural lifestyle, and the nearby cities trying to annex everything in sight, people have lost control of the government. We decided it was time we stood up and took it back.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents northern Los Angeles County, said he has encouraged the formation of the councils because they provide a ready gauge of community opinion.

Rather than having to determine whether business leaders or homeowner groups represent the community’s interests, he can turn to the elected councils.

“Town councils alleviate a lot of conflict and build trust,” Antonovich said. “They’re a very positive sign.”

With five to 10 members chosen in homespun elections, where votes are hand-counted and the results posted in local cafes, the councils meet once or twice monthly and conduct community referendums on issues of local concern.

Although they cannot make laws, the councils have managed to make a difference.

The Acton Council, for instance, persuaded McDonald’s Corp. to spend $55,000 to design a fast-food restaurant in keeping with the Old West look of the semi-rural community, which still does not have a traffic light, said Art Herrera, the local franchisee. The restaurant ended up resembling a saloon topped by an old-fashioned water tower and had a hitching post in the back for equestrians.

The Leona Valley council succeeded in getting the county Regional Planning Commission to support an ordinance designed to preserve the rural nature of the 40-square-mile area west of Palmdale. If approved as expected in July by the Board of Supervisors, the ordinance would establish a community standards district requiring most lots in the area to be at least 2 1/2 acres.

Other communities, including Littlerock, Green Valley and Acton, plan to use the councils to lobby for similar ordinances, members say.

“They’ve been more willing to listen to us since we’ve had a council,” said Amy Hurst, corresponding secretary for the Green Valley Town Council, which represents about 1,000 residents of the mountain community west of Palmdale.

Earlier this year that council applied for and received a $19,000 grant from the state Department of Water Resources to reinforce the banks of a half-mile stretch of Dowd Canyon Creek to prevent flooding, Hurst said.

But the council occasionally has trouble even “getting a letter out because we’re all unpaid volunteers and no one has a typewriter,” said Hurst.

Some councils also have difficulty raising funds to pay for distributing newsletters or election notices. Most rely on small donations, but in Leona Valley a local veterinarian donates about $700 annually in profits from cat and dog inoculations to the council, Floyd said.

Despite their folksiness, town councils sometimes run into the same problems that plague more entrenched governments. For instance, Acton residents in April ousted an outspoken member of the Town Council in a recall election that the loser argued was rigged. The council, which is not bound by the state’s open meetings law, has recently begun meeting in private to discuss sensitive planning issues, much to the ire of critics.

Jurisdictional squabbles also have surfaced. For instance, in Littlerock, a bedroom community of about 12,000 residents east of Palmdale, the Town Council claims to represent an area that includes Sun Village to the north. But some residents of Sun Village, a multiracial community founded by blacks in the late 1940s, plan to break away and form their own council to preserve their community’s identity, said resident Lundia Washington.

If successful, their first goal will be to rename Littlerock High School, which is in Sun Village, to either East Valley High School or Sun Village High School, Washington said.

Growing pains aside, the biggest problem facing northern Los Angeles County town councils is their lack of clout with the state agency responsible for evaluating annexation efforts by cities including Palmdale, Lancaster and Santa Clarita, said Floyd, president of the town council association.

“We give town councils about as much credence as a homeowners group,” says Ruth Benell, executive officer of the state Local Agency Formation Commission. “They have no official standing.”

Last August, the Leona Valley Town Council was unable to prevent LAFCO from allowing Palmdale to take the first step toward annexing the 11,500-acre Ritter Ranch, where developers want to build a 7,200-unit housing project. Palmdale has already approved an environmental impact report on the project.

The town council association plans to seek state legislation to gain authority over such local planning matters, Floyd says.

It’s too soon to tell whether the group will succeed, but the rural communities, she says, “must become more politically savvy and join the real world, whether we like it or not.”

Rural Democracy

Nineteen town councils have formed or are forming in Los Angeles County.

Formed more than two years ago: 1. Topanga 11. Acton 18. La Crescenta 19. Altadena

Formed within the past two years: 2. Stevenson Ranch 3. Castaic 5. The Lakes 6. Green Valley 7. Leona Valley 8. Antelope Acres 9. Quartz Hill 10. Agua Dulce 12. Littlerock

Now forming: 4. Neenach 13. Sun Village 14. Lake Los Angeles 15. Pearblossom 16. Llano 17. Juniper Hills