PLANNING PANEL TAKING WRONG TRAIL IN OUR VALLEY.

Byline: Kimit Muston Local View

I want to make it clear that this column is not about horses. It's not that I dislike horses, although I personally would not own a creature that is legally entitled to more living space than I am. I don't mean to insult horses, or those who love horses so much, they've built their entire lives around them, enduring the enormous expense, the enormous flies and the enormous amount of shoveling required to care for these four-footed equine manure machines - it's just that this column is not about horses.

It's about the city Planning Commission - speaking of an enormous amount of shoveling - and the vote the commission made the day before Thanksgiving to amend the rules for areas zoned for residential horse-keeping, a grand total of 10 square miles of the Valley, including parts of Chatsworth and Lake View Terrace, Porter Ranch and Shadow Hills.

Ten square miles ain't much, but the land under immediate consideration is minuscule by comparison, just 10 acres near the corner of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Chatsworth Street - just a few blocks from where Roy Rogers ranched 60 years ago and not far from the Stage Coach Pass Road, where 150 years back, real stage coaches were held up by real desperados.

Today's crooks use lawyers and campaign contributions, they make a lot more money and they never go to jail. They also wear white hats in public, so it's harder to spot them. Roy would have known how to stop these guys if they hadn't chased him out of town a long time ago, forcing him to retreat to Victorville, dragging the mummy of his golden palomino horse Trigger with him - which is ironic, since by the time these desperados are finished, Trigger may well be just about the only kind of horse allowed in Chatsworth. Stuffed.

I could spend the rest of this column detailing the details of the Thanksgiving turkey amendments, such as resident horses and ``priority'' zoned neighborhoods and compatible land uses, but it's simpler to just say that although the Planning Commission didn't explicitly zone Chatsworth for glue factories, the word from on high to horse owners is, ``Hop along, Cassidy. Your days are numbered.''

Horses simply take up too much space. They represent a way of life that Los Angeles can no longer afford. The excuse is that there will be 6 million new residents in this city over the next 20 years, and the Planning Commission views horses as some kind of ruminant threat to their ability to house all those people.

The problem with that view is that in the specific case of the 10 acres, we're not talking about housing for the masses. Ted Stein, local political kingmaker and developer, wants to construct a grand total of 21 single- family houses on his seven acres. Under the old rules he would have been allowed to build only 16 houses. Just down the street, D.J. Properties wants to build 10 houses on three acres of land, which originally had been zoned for eight.

In almost any other neighborhood these would be considered oversize lots, even though they don't meet the requirements for horse-keeping. It's understandable that Mr. Stein and D.J. lobbied for these amendments to increase their profits. But why change the rules for the entire city to achieve a 20 percent increase in density on a couple of small pieces of property at the edge of town?

I may not be a city-planning wizard, but isn't a new development in Chatsworth more of a drain on city resources in terms of street maintenance, traffic congestion, air quality and toxic-waste production than a home of the same size on the same-size lot built closer to the city center? Perhaps even within walking distance of mass transit instead of along a single bus route?

Why not build 30 new homes on oversize lots in the middle of downtown? Let's make a new neighborhood instead of another football stadium or a parking lot. Of course, nobody downtown asked for these new homes but then, nobody in Chatsworth did either.

The Planning Commission clearly has plans, and not just for Chatsworth but for all of us. And clearly, it decided some time ago that the residents of L.A.'s neighborhoods don't know what's good for them, while the commission does.

Boy I wish Trigger would come back. Maybe he could explain to these people just whom is supposed to be riding whom, here.