CREATING 5TH VALLEY DISTRICT TOP PRIORITY OF CITIZENS PANEL.

Byline: Rick Orlov Staff Writer

Creating a fifth City Council district wholly within the San Fernando Valley was the top priority of a citizens committee looking at how to change political boundaries, a city panel was told Thursday.

``The No. 1 basic principle we had was, there needed to be a minimum of five districts wholly within the Valley,'' said John Emerson, chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Redistricting.

That resulted in a recommendation to move the district now represented by Councilwoman Ruth Galanter to one in the central Valley, Emerson told the council's Ad Hoc Committee on Redistricting that began its deliberations Thursday.

The proposal also tightens and consolidates a number of communities within the Valley, including having the Van Nuys Airport and surrounding community in one district.

Emerson and staff aides said the need for adding the Valley district on the 15-member council was due to population shifts that have made the Valley the most rapidly growing area of the city over the past decade.

The 21-member citizen's panel, called a historic development in opening reapportionment to the public, was created under the new City Charter to propose new political boundaries after extensive hearings and outside of the direct politics of the City Council.

``This is something almost unheard of,'' said Councilman Jack Weiss, who chairs the council committee on reapportionment. ``You brought together citizens to deal with the most political of issues, a task which was almost exclusively performed behind closed doors.''

Weiss, who fought hard to maintain his current district that is about 40 percent in the Valley, said he hoped to continue the commission's policy of holding a series of hearings around the city to take public testimony.

Next week, Weiss said he plans to hold a hearing to take testimony from a second citizens panel on boundaries for the seven-member Los Angeles Board of Education.

There will be a number of legal issues to be dealt with before the City Council gives final approval to the plan by July 1, including the contentious question of when the new districts take effect.

Galanter has argued they should not take effect until after July 1, 2003, when the new terms of office take effect - similar to what is done in state and federal elections. Others, however, have argued that the new boundaries should take effect as soon as they are drawn.

``This is an issue we have to look at more closely,'' Weiss said. ``There are arguments on both sides on what we should do.''

Also, there are other political efforts under way to change the map by individual council members.

Councilman Nick Pacheco, who serves on the ad hoc panel, has indicated he wants to gain a larger portion of downtown, and he advised Emerson and the citizens panel to not take offense at any changes made.

``Our job is to take your map and do what we are charged to do under the charter,'' Pacheco said. ``It is not showing disapproval of any work done by you.''

Councilwoman Jan Perry, another member of the special committee who represents the downtown area that Pacheco is eyeing, indicated she is prepared to accept the map as proposed by the citizen's group and avoid any political maneuvering.