BUDGET WOULD FUND VALLEY PROJECTS OPEN SPACE, YOUTH PROGRAMS IN ASSEMBLY PLAN.

Byline: Sabrina Decker Staff Writer

The proposed budget passed by the state Assembly includes $2 million to buy land to preserve as open space in the controversial Oakmont V area, plus hundreds of thousands more for projects in Burbank and Glendale.

Although the Assembly's $101 billion budget still has to be reconciled with a version being drafted by the Senate, then signed by Gov. Gray Davis, local officials hope funding for the local land preservation and youth-oriented programs and facilities will remain intact.

``I am overjoyed,'' Glendale Mayor Gus Gomez said Tuesday. ``Any amount of money we can get for open space, for police, or for the Police Activities League, which really affects the kids in the community, or the Latino Students Initiative, I am very happy to hear about.''

Local highlights of the Assembly-approved budget include:

--$2 million, which would be added to $5 million being held by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, to buy land in the rustic 238-acre Oakmont site in the Verdugo Mountains. The land is owned by Gregg's Artistic Homes, which has plans to build several hundred homes on the site.

--$340,000 for a new laboratory building for the nursing school at Glendale Community College.

--$190,000 to complete a documentary trilogy about the Armenian Genocide being produced by Thousand Oaks filmmaker J. Michael Hagopian.

--$75,000 for Glendale Unified School District's Middle School Technology Lab program. The program would expose middle-school students to the entertainment and technology industries through vocational education classes in robotics, video, lasers, music, math and technology.

--$80,000 for the Glendale School District's Latino Initiative, a mentoring program at Toll Middle School and Hoover High School.

--$80,000 for Burbank's Childcare Demonstration Project, part of the new middle-income housing project planned by M. David Paul Associates for the 2200 blocks of North Fairview and North Ontario streets.

--$50,000 for computer equipment for Burbank's Boys and Girls Club Technology Learning Center.

--$40,000 for a 15-passenger van for the Glendale Police Activity League's Youth Program. The program provides 120 low- to middle-income youths with field trips, boxing, basketball and other activities.

--$25,000 for a police officer's memorial in front of the new police headquarters facility now under construction in Glendale.

Other statewide projects in the Assembly's budget would also affect local residents, providing money for street and road maintenance, school and teacher training programs, and tax credits for long-term health care and child care.