A LOOK BACK AT THE YEAR'S TOP NEWS STORIES IN VALLEY.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The homeless are invisible in the Santa Clarita Valley, yet these down-on-their luck residents provided the most stirring local debate of the year, one that reached beyond the boundaries of the community and gave it a black eye.

The city of Santa Clarita's failure to provide shelter for the homeless drew scathing criticism from Los Angeles officials, angered that their neighbor opted to bus its homeless out of town rather than deal with the problem. Santa Clarita countered that the problem was small and a regionwide issue and that it had offered $35,000 to help find a solution.

Eventually the county stepped in and on Christmas Eve, a handful of people with no place else to go slept in a hastily erected shelter in Canyon Country.

The failure by a community of riches to provide a safe place to sleep for its less fortunate neighbors - especially as the season of good will approached - earned the battle the No. 1 spot in the Top 10 stories of the year in the Santa Clarita Valley.

In its annual unofficial poll, the editorial staff of the Santa Clarita Daily News ranked the news of 2004 to come up with the list. Criteria included the event or events themselves, their impact and the reaction in the community.

The shelter debate stood out because it came to a head after five years marked by an inability to come up with space for relatively few numbers. It showed NIMBYism at its worst, a local government's effort to appease its taxpayers in spite of a real need and big-city politics when the city of Los Angeles refused to take in Santa Clarita's homeless at a proposed shelter in Sylmar.

No. 2 on the list was another troubling story - a spike in crime in a community long viewed as a safe haven. No question Santa Clarita remains among the safest cities of its size in the nation. But a string of crimes that included the brutal rape of an Iraqi veteran, the beating death of a 5-year-old girl at the center of a custody dispute, a spate of carjackings and an attack on a woman jogging on a Valencia paseo made people think twice about locking their doors and watching their backs.

Good news took the No. 3 spot - the opening of the performing arts center at College of the Canyons. The 7,500-square-foot, 900-seat center opened Oct. 16 with a gala and has been boasting success in its first season. In 2005, a second building for music and dance will open next door.

And fourth place was good and bad news - good news for safe drivers, bad news for those who don't quite get what red means when it comes to traffic signals. Five city intersections were fitted with cameras that snag blatant red-light runners, and in the first several months, hundreds of tickets were issued. The citations are tough to fight because they include a picture of the offending car, its license place and a close-up of the driver.

And more good news and bad news - good if you already have a house and plan to sell, bad if you're in the market to buy. The No. 5 story of the year was the skyrocketing housing prices, which finally began to taper in the past few months. The average price of a home surpassed the $500,000 mark as homes sold at a torrid pace, breaking sales records month after month. Condominium prices also increased, drawing concern that the community once viewed as affordable had begun locking out the first-time buyer.

A perennial on the Top 10 list returned. Three major brush fires swarmed around the Santa Clarita Valley, but fell to the bottom half of the list because while dramatic, no homes were lost and no serious injuries reported. Fires raged in July in Placerita Canyon, Acton and in the Angeles National Forest near Lake Hughes, sparking fears of a horrendous fire season, fears that lessened through the summer and fall when the weather turned unexpectedly mild.

Just before dawn on Sept. 27, a woman in her 20s dropped off her hours- old son at Fire Station 123 in rural Sand Canyon, surrendering the newborn under a program aimed at saving babies from Dumpsters or a similar fate. The woman, anonymous under program rules, showed immense courage, fire officials said, touched by their chance to ensure an infant a safe home.

``It's bittersweet, but we feel good about what we did,'' Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Richard Weise said at the time. ``The end result is the child is taken care of.'' This proof that government can touch lives earned this story the No. 7 spot on the list of the year's most compelling stories.

In the No. 8 spot was government at its more dubious. The Newhall County Water District, a small, rather obscure water retailer, fought Goliath water interests and lost, and won, then called it a draw. The story involved the district board's challenge of the larger Castaic Lake Water Agency's Urban Water Management Plan, required by the state to show whether water is available to meet the demands of development.

Newhall Water lost its first court challenge, then won on appeal, but effectively rescinded its stand when an independent study it commissioned showed an adequate supply. Coincidentally, some say, the agency that oversees municipalities in the county sought to dissolve Newhall Water, then backed off, though rumors are strong the issue will resurface in 2005.

The belly button - or one high school's drive to cover it - came in ninth. Fed up with fashions that left little hidden, Hart High School clamped down on immodest and other inappropriate dress at a time when teen fashions tested every limit. Campus officials didn't mess around and their drive to cover students up during school hours won interest from other local high schools where dress codes were widely ignored.

Hart High also rounded off the final spot on the Top 10, but this time because it lost the battle. The school's football dynasty fell in 2004, losing to both Valencia and Canyon high schools after a string of 65 league wins. Valencia, winning its first Foothill League football championship, went on to the championship game earlier this month, where it lost soundly to Mission Viejo. Canyon's Cowboys took second in league and the mighty Hart Indians fell to third place.

There's no question this list is subjective, but it does reflect what valley residents talked about in 2004, along with incidents that shaped the community. Needless to say there were some also-rans. Among those were the moving of Old Glory, a giant centuries-old oak resituated in Pico Canyon after county officials insisted nature was in the way of a highway. The actual moving, on Jan. 9, was anticlimactic after two years of battles to save the tree.

Also considered and prompting a call for a Top 15 list were the proposed closure of Castaic Lake when state and county funding ran short, the openings of two high schools and a junior high, a settlement of a discrimination suit by Six Flags Magic Mountain and, lastly, Paris Hilton's trip to the Stevenson Ranch Wal-Mart to hawk her book.

Patricia Farrell Aidem, [phone]

pat.aidem(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1) Division fire Cmdr. Jack Froggatt yells for a crew to pull back as flames engulf Placerita Canyon on July 19.

(2) The opening of the 7,500-square-foot, 900-seat arts center at College of the Canyons made No. 3 on the Daily News list.

(3) Valencia's Shane Vereen, front, outruns Canyon High's Bob Jiminez in a November game. Valencia won its first Foothill League football championship in 2004.

(4 -- 5) At left, sheriff's deputies handcuff a kidnapping and rape suspect; above, a camera at a crossing awaits traffic-signal scofflaws.

David Crane/Staff Photographer