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DEEGAN ON LA—-The City Charter allows it. The Pacific Palisades community could benefit from it—local rule acquired by secession from the City of Los Angeles and its politicos.
As the Palisades begins its recovery what better time to rise from the ashes like a phoenix and brand itself as an independent city in Los Angeles County. Making it manageable and responsive to its community, with a City Hall “hands off”.
Eighteen years ago, voters in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and San Pedro came close to seceding from Los Angeles because they felt the city politicos weren’t delivering a fair share of resources and representation to them.
While the ballot measure to amend the city charter to allow this secession was defeated, it spawned the creation of the Neighborhood Council system as an attempt to give communities a way to participate at City Hall. Over the years it has grown into a stale and coopted fig leaf where the city pretends to “listen” to the community concerns about issues that affect them.
You can live in “LA” and not be part of LA City but benefit from being in LA County. Look at Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Culver City and West Hollywood as small-sized cities surrounded by, but independent of, the greater city of Los Angeles. These cities are manageably sized and being run successfully without any concern for what the City of Los Angeles wants.
The county, the most populous in the United States with 9.6 million residents, is run by a board of five supervisors. It is the most powerful and relevant political organization in the region.
The county’s response to the Altadena wildfire has been well handled by supervisor Kathryn Barger, the BOS chair.
No one is quite sure who the “leader” of the Palisades recovery movement is: the mayor makes a titular claim. Her “recovery czar” Steve Soberoff has recently attracted bad press like a magnet for his, and her, bad judgement.
He’s already a lame duck whose shelf life was set by the mayor at ninety days.
Several government and independent entities and consultants have thrown their hats into the ring as claimants that are looking for a seat at the Palisades recovery table.
To qualify for a ballot measure that would certainly be needed to allow the voters to decide on a secession question requires the signatures of verified voters. The threshold is a percentage of the number of votes in the most recent gubernatorial election.
Ballot measures to bring reform are a way of political life in LA. In the 2024 election there were measures covering such questions as creating an Independent Redistricting Commission to set council district political boundaries every ten years, another to increase the independence and authority of the City Ethics Commission, and a third to streamline pension plans for some city workers.
A bigger political earthquake could be why not have a bigger “new city” in LA County by expanding the boundaries to include Brentwood, giving the Pacific Palisades-Brentwood city borders of the 405 on the east, the 10 on the south, Mulholland Drive on the north, and Santa Monica on the west.
The upper income households would be able to sustain a large tax base to pay for their municipal services, and they would be unburdened by the politicos at LA City Hall and free to do what the residents they represent want.
(Tim Deegan is a civic activist whose Deegan on LA weekly column has been a feature of CityWatch for 11 years. Tim writes about city politics and communities. Tim can be reached at [email protected].)
