The CRA’s Record

Re: “Heady Plans, Hard Reality,” Jan. 30.

Thank you for exposing the Community Redevelopment Agency’s feeble attempts to eliminate blight in North Hollywood. CRA rhetoric is composed of grandiose promises, but objective analysis continuously reflects an agency that makes little impact at best and is thoroughly incompetent at worst.

The CRA likes to show off trendy coffeehouses and bourgeois lunch haunts as an indicator of its success. It doesn’t seem to understand that quality of life is not measured by the froth of a cappuccino, but the number of meaningful job, housing and educational opportunities.

The northeast San Fernando Valley is about to become the next victim of the CRA with a proposed $500-million project covering over 11 square miles. The CRA and its accomplice, City Councilman Alex Padilla, discredit those who are concerned about the CRA’s inept ways. [Arrogance] such as this takes a lot of gall when the CRA joins forces with nonprofits such as L.A. Family Housing to build low-income buildings that cost over $205,000 per unit in a market where condos sell for under $130,000.

Unfortunately, 20 years from now Padilla will be politicking in some other area of government; the CRA bureaucrats will have buttressed their pensions and the people of the northeast Valley and North Hollywood will be trading nightmare stories about the monumental promises of the CRA.

THOMAS HOENER

Panorama City

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Hallelujah! The Times’ hard-hitting condemnation of the CRA’s make-believe role in improving the quality of life in Los Angeles is most welcome, and a refreshing, honest look at the incompetence and ineffectiveness of L.A.’s most secret shadow government.

The Community Redevelopment Agency has been a leech feeding off Los Angeles property taxes since 1948. The $117 million spent by the CRA to “revitalize” 740 acres in North Hollywood for the past 21 years has resulted in almost nothing to improve the area, but has been a magnificent cash infusion to pay high-priced salaries for hundreds of CRA lawyers, consultants and staff members.

Unfortunately, our City Council has already authorized the CRA to continue to borrow money for North Hollywood “revitalization” and CRA salaries until the year 2014, and has also authorized the CRA to confiscate a total of $536 million in local property taxes to pay off the loans and interest. Those property taxes would otherwise be spent for badly needed citywide services such as street repairs, health care, more police and fire protection, and higher pay for school teachers.

The Times has done a real community service by exposing the CRA for what it is. I only wish the series would be required reading (and memorizing) for every brain-dead member of the City Council.

WALTER N. PRINCE

Director, Northridge

Chamber of Commerce

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Re “Election of Redevelopment Critic Nullified,” Jan. 19.

Who the hell is the ethically challenged-to-their-eyebrows Los Angeles City Council to nullify an election because the candidate, Glenn Hoiby, had the nerve to remind nonprofit organizations that they must follow the law? Those of you in the Valley and other places considering secession: This is your government at work. Your choice is to live with it or leave it. It cannot be changed.

RICHARD BUSSELL

Santa Clarita