Commissioner Bobbi Fiedler Sees Development of a New CRA

Former San Fernando Valley lawmaker Bobbi Fiedler was recently appointed to the seven-member governing board of the powerful and controversial Community Redevelopment Agency.

The CRA is charged with revitalizing depressed neighborhoods and rejuvenating dilapidated housing and has many tools at its disposal. Some of these tools, such as its power of eminent domain, frighten some community leaders who consider the CRA deaf to their concerns. Officials are considering proposals to merge the agency’s activities with other city departments, such as planning or public works.

Fiedler, a former Los Angeles school board member and congresswoman, rose to prominence as an opponent of mandatory school busing in the 1970s. She talked to Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss.

Question: Where do you see the city of Los Angeles right now?

Answer: I think it has been through a tremendous trauma in the last year and a half or so. Over a long period of time there has been a tremendous amount of deterioration in certain areas of the city that needs to be addressed.

One of the exciting parts about participating as a member of the CRA is that there is a real opportunity to help both individuals as well as communities by making certain that resources go where they are most needed.

Q. What form has that deterioration taken? What examples would you cite?

A. I take a look at what has happened in South-Central Los Angeles since the 1965 riots. Only a tiny amount of redevelopment has taken place there, when there is a tremendous amount of need. There is an opportunity here to see that that kind of situation does not take place here in the Valley in areas like Pacoima, the Van Nuys corridor and perhaps even some of the older areas of Canoga Park. We might be able to use some of these resources in a highly targeted fashion and prevent the kind of deterioration we’ve seen in other parts of the city.

Q. What role would the CRA play?

A. Depending upon what the City Council representatives and the community representatives have an interest in, redevelopment perhaps could play a role in the Van Nuys area.

There is an opportunity within the CRA to rehabilitate housing and develop new housing for low- and very-low-income communities in areas where there is community support for it.

Q. One of the criticisms of the CRA is that it concentrates its resources downtown. As someone from the Valley, what do you think your role will be in convincing the agency that there may be other areas that deserve attention?

A. I think the most important thing for a member of the redevelopment commission coming from the Valley is to work closely with the members of the City Council and the mayor’s office to determine those areas where there is a strong desire for assistance, and then to work as an advocate for those combined goals. One thing people know about me is that if I am an advocate for something, I do it wholeheartedly and I usually get the results I am looking for. Obviously, there are no guarantees, but I am a hard trier.

Q. How would you go about revitalizing a place like Van Nuys Boulevard?

A. First of all, I would talk to Councilman Richard Alarcon, with whom I have had some very preliminary discussions on the matter. He has expressed an interest. Whether redevelopment is the right course of action for that region or not is dependent not only on his support but on the support of the community of which it is a part.

If there appears to be consolidated support for looking at that particular region for redevelopment or revitalization, then I would work with him to see whether there were resources to begin to go through the study parts. That’s another thing I feel really strongly about. When the CRA determines that they want to do something, it is really important that they expedite the studies.

For instance, they just finished spending almost $3 million on a study of the downtown area, which is kind of a plan for the future but does not involve any concrete assets but just simply the planning process. It seems to me that we have got to put our assets into real assets, as opposed to long, involved studies that net us reports but not results.

Q. The CRA has a lot of tools at its disposal. Which do you think are appropriate to use?

A. That’s difficult to say. There are different situations. There is housing, a need for rejuvenated housing, especially in older areas where people don’t have financial resources to be able to improve their homes themselves or even maintain them. There are opportunities for small businesses, depending on the nature of the business and the nature of the demands. Trying to create job opportunities is a real high priority.

Another thing I think is extremely important is making sure we do not lose the small and large businesses that we have here. We have a big problem in the Valley with the loss of the defense industry. There are a lot of small businesses associated with the defense industry that are going to have a really tough time--small machine shops, technical support businesses that are going to have a very tough time staying here. I think we need to create a climate throughout the entire city, not just something the CRA is responsible for, that makes it possible for them to stay and flourish.

Q. A lot of people are afraid of the CRA. They are afraid of its power of eminent domain. How do you ease their fears or the fears of people who might be on the edge of a redevelopment zone?

A. There is no substitute for working closely with the community. Policy should develop from the grass roots up, not from the agency down.

Q. Do you think local support has existed in the past in the Valley?

A. We’ve never really tried it, except for North Hollywood, and North Hollywood has been very divided over it.

It’s understandable. If you own a piece of property, or even lease it, as a small business person and your streets are going to be torn up where you are going to lose access to your customers, obviously you have a direct economic interest that is vital to you. We have to consider those issues very, very carefully. It does not do us any good to go in and put something brand new in and destroy something that is there and is good.

Over my entire career I have been deeply concerned about using eminent domain.

Q. Many people agree that the CRA’s agenda does not always match those of other agencies whose support is critical to make a project work. With that in mind, do you support efforts to have the CRA more closely linked to other agencies?

A. The CRA has been basically run by the same power structure for a long time. Now you have a new group of commissioners who are activist-oriented from all over the city. There are going to be no more automatic policies simply accepted because someone puts them on your desk and says, “Pass it on consent.”

The CRA uses a lot of resources. Those resources need to be as targeted as possible and as carefully spent as possible. One of the areas I expect to work in intensively is budgets. I am interested in knowing a lot about the various projects, how frequently they are amended, how much that affects the cost of the projects to make certain that we do not run our agency a lot like they used to run the Defense Department.