Belmont Tarpaper

With several new board members elected to the Los Angeles Unified School District and a no-nonsense operating team starting to take stock, hopes have been raised, at last, about overhauling the schools. But just when it appeared that logic and reason were filtering back into the district, along comes last week’s vote to kill the disastrous Belmont Learning Complex.

Admittedly, determining whether the half-built project, which sits on a former oil field west of downtown, would be safe for students was a tough call especially given the clumsy initial attempts at safeguarding the property. Additional cleanup efforts would only add to the final cost and not satisfy the legion of environmentalists who essentially have opposed completion of the school under any circumstances.

Apparently, the refashioned board signed onto that proposition even rejecting a well-reasoned recommendation to turn the half-completed project into a new district headquarters as well as other uses. In other words, the board has concluded that the $200 million project must die.

Of course, it’s much easier to kill off old ideas than to embrace new alternatives, so district officials are now struggling to find other sites to replace the 5,000 seats the high school would have provided. There are no easy answers: most of the areas under consideration are either too small or have their own environmental or legal problems. This is what led many parents of Belmont students to push for the new school; despite the health concerns (which, by the way, are open to widely divergent opinions), the school was seen as the best prospect for their kids.

This is where the board went wrong. Don’t kill something off unless you have a better prospect waiting in the wings. And by all accounts, the district doesn’t. Meanwhile, Belmont won’t die a quick death. There is a growing pile of litigation to deal with, not to mention the question of what will happen with the property. Will it be sold to private interests? How much additional mitigation is required? Will it prove safe enough for office workers and shoppers?

Given the number of so-called brownfield sites that cover Los Angeles, our guess is that the Belmont site is salvageable and that the district’s decision is yet another example of too many interests gumming up the decision-making process.

Addendum

Leadership strains also are being felt within the local host committee making preparations for this summer’s Democratic National Convention so much so that Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is getting more involved in the process. There have been reports of bickering among members of the committee, mostly as it relates to fund-raising efforts (the group is only $9 million short of its $33 million goal).

It’s a good bet that with Riordan’s help, there will be little trouble coming up with the extra money. The bigger question is whether the mayor can unify this very diverse group of powerful Angelenos so that important planning questions can be resolved. It’s all about leadership and commitment, and L.A. has seen examples of the city working very well (with the 1984 Olympics) and very badly (with the pro football bid). At stake is a badly needed image enhancement that, considering the planned media coverage, should not be squandered.