CARVING APART CITY OFFICE WON'T BE PICNIC IN PARK.

Byline: Rick Orlov Staff Writer

From the nation's largest swimming pool at Hansen Dam to the operation of beaches in San Pedro, breaking up the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department for three new cities would be a legally and technically complicated proceeding, officials said Thursday.

Hampered by long-term contracts to operate Hansen Dam and the Sepulveda Basin with the Army Corps of Engineers and bond projects requiring the city to provide services, a consultant to the Local Agency Formation Commission was also told that any new cities would also need special expertise for projects.

``We only have two people in our environmental section,'' parks General Manager Ellen Oppenheim told LAFCO consultant Craig Hoshijama. ``How do you divide up one-tenth of a person?''

Hoshijama has been going through a several-month process analyzing how Los Angeles provides its services and whether it can be divided if new cities are created in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and the Harbor area.

Leaders of the various secession efforts have discounted such problems in the past, saying negotiations would resolve most of the differences and that any new city would be able to hire enough city workers to manage the various programs.

Oppenheim tried to explain the confusing budget system used by the Recreation and Parks Department, which has a direct budget of some $118 million. However, that does not include the hundreds of millions it will be spending over the next 25 years on various building programs that are funded through voter-approved bond measures and grants.

``It makes it difficult to make sense of exactly how much is being spent when so much is ofudget,'' Hoshijama said.