PUBLIC FORUM : BELMONT DOOMED FROM START.

Your photo of 1903 oil fields, at what is now the Belmont Learning Center site, once again stirs up memories of the endless problems of illness and death suffered by families that had homes above these fields in the early 1920s and '30s. From 1921 to 1940, my parents lived in the same home on Court Street, which is now in the center of the new Belmont site. I was born in 1923.

My mother died at an early age of Parkinson's disease and lung cancer. Until now I never thought of why she died so young. Breathing problems and chest pains were common among children - with long lines at the Yale Street Clinic.

The smell of sulfur and other odors prevailed on a daily basis, and pumping oil wells in back yards were common sights.

It's difficult to believe there is nothing intentional about the indifference and the ignorance of so many involved in Belmont. To promote the area for a school is to promote a tragedy waiting to happen.

They come from Sacramento aboard their white horses pointing fingers. Where were they when the ground was broken? When the first shovel turned?

Ignorance still prevails. Very little has changed. Ninety years later the same mentality among officials continues into the next century.

The losers, once again, are the children.

- Jack Baukman

Van Nuys

Good for you, Steve

In wholehearted support of the effort and the decent uphill climb Steve Allen is organizing, let us all give him and the Parents Television Council everything we have. This is truly a crusade for the lives and souls of our youths. It is the very future of our country and our society.

The top people in the entertainment, media and TV fields also have families. They also have the impressionable young. Even though money is everything, it is not the answer to one's well-being. The example is in the statistics of the children of the rich and famous and how many are in the same life-destroying condition our youths are - and for the same reasons. In fact, they have an additional burden: They have no financial excuse. The corruption that destroys our young destroys theirs.

- John Piccola

Sylmar

Bulldoze the LAUSD

Re ``LAUSD may bulldoze homes'' (Daily News, July 5):

I read the article this morning with revulsion and contempt. The Los Angeles Unified School District is itself a toxic swamp of fraud, waste, bald-faced greed and failed ideas. It spews out fumes in every area - from building schools on dump sites to embracing ideologically bankrupt ideas, like ``whole language'' teaching without basics, fuzzy math, social promotions, environmental wacko propaganda and touchy-feely self-esteem courses. In the meantime, grades have fallen and California's schools rank even lower than Arkansas'.

According to a letter last week, LAUSD already owns millions of dollars worth of available real estate, but that won't do. Not content to destroy the future for L.A.'s kids, officials of the LAUSD now want to stick it to the adults. If you think for one moment that affected residents in the cross hairs of the district will receive ``fair market'' value for their property, you're deluded - and perhaps should be on the school board.

Whatever happened to property rights, without which you have no basis for the other rights that follow?

Meanwhile, downtown, in LAUSD headquarters, plush-bottomed drones marvel at the view from $3,000-a-month offices and decide which parcel of real estate they'll condemn to build new monuments to themselves and their so-called progressive ideals.

The view from the working slob's doomed front porch is just the dirt kicked in his face by the school district.

Perhaps it's time the public aimed the bulldozers at LAUSD and rid itself of this festering menace before its destructive forces ruin any more lives.

- David Gregory

Van Nuys

Consult this

I've often wondered just what a consultant or analyst does. Did the LAUSD hire one of these to study the conditions surrounding the Belmont fiasco?

I read every day that there are analysts for everything from toothpicks to broccoli. There are consultants for investments, automobiles, retailers, streets cleaners, tree-planting, fruit pickers etc. Millions are paid to these entrepreneurs who do nothing but confirm what has already been logically thought out and decided.

In many cases, consultants are those who have lost jobs and feel they can use their expertise to help others. I have no quarrel with the legitimate and well-schooled individuals who are vital to certain industries, but there are so many who only pretend to be experts and garner their incomes by falsely advising and advertising their so-called abilities.

And what's more tragic is that former senators and congressmen, upon leaving Congress, join up with the tenacious lobbyists to attempt to usurp the efforts of their ex-comrades in destroying legislation that would benefit the country. And they call themselves ``consultants''

- Earl D. Horwitz

North Hills

High-flying boycott

Invariably, after a national holiday, such as the Fourth of July, many will bemoan the fact that so many homes don't fly Old Glory. Either many are too cheap or too lazy to do so and, of course, they are just being unpatriotic. My flag wasn't up but for none of those causes.

I became so incensed at President Clinton for giving us Clinton's War in the Balkans that I flew my flag upside down: the signal for national distress. My wife would have no part in it, and she told me so in no uncertain terms. She still likes him. So we compromised - no flag until inauguration day 2001, when this national nightmare will finally end.

This man is not well. You'd think he would have learned from Vietnam, where he refused to serve, and from my war, Korea, that you avoid foreign civil wars. Chelsea Clinton's son, should she have one, will be serving in Kosovo if he doesn't follow in his grandfather's footsteps. In other words, we'll be there forever.

- Paul Wasserman

Northridge

Where's the patriotism?

Recently when I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew a driver's license, I arrived prior to the 8 a.m. opening of the office. I was surprised that only one person came out to put up the American flag. I thought it was customary for two people to do this: one to hold the flag and one to attach it to the lanyard to run it up the pole. Surely, there are two people who are available at this time. In addition, this person was not careful that the flag didn't touch the ground. Apparently the flag had not been folded properly when it was taken down the day before.

I am not a former armed serviceman, but I was dismayed that so little reverence was displayed by a state office employee in uniform.

One hopes that changes can be made.

- Ben C. Thomas

Burbank

Cable, Lies and Internet

Re ``Cable-Internet fight'':

Covering Whitewater has certainly sharpened the skills of journalists. The article contained more lies and denials from more politicians and lobbyists in fewer column inches than I have ever seen in my life. It was pure journalism, devoid of electoral content. In a city whose motto is ``money talks,'' the facts (and figures) were allowed to speak for themselves.

- William S. Pirone

Sherman Oaks

Who does Gore think he is?

I'm sorry, but is Vice President Al Gore telling the majority of Californians, who voted against affirmative action, that we were and are wrong? Who does he think he is - coming out here and telling us we don't know how to vote or how we in California feel about prejudice in hiring or college admissions? We want blacks, whites and others all to all get the same chance.

- C. Wulff

Sylmar

Key to decency

Re ``Rock won't get city's gold key'' (News Lite, June 26):

Congratulations to Mayor Lynn Wood Wilson of Georgetown, S.C., for refusing to honor Chris Rock with the gold key to Georgetown because the comedian is ``too vulgar to be honored.''

Mayor Wilson displayed a sense of common decency rarely seen today when he publicly refused to honor an offensive and vulgar performer.

Common decency and common sense are lacking in the entertainment industry today. Perhaps if more people spoke out, as Mayor Wilson did, and refused to honor entertainers and patronize entertainment that promotes gratuitous sex, violence and vulgar dialogue, maybe the entertainment industry would get the message and start cleaning up the product.

- Jeanette Jones

Los Angeles

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Photo: Oil wells teem along First Street in the early 1900s. The forgotten wells left a legacy of risk for the future Belmont site.

Seaver Center for Western History Research