PUBLIC FORUM : BERNARDI: LAUSD MISUSES FUNDS ON LAWSUIT.

Thank you for your editorial of April 10 (``He's still fighting'') supporting my effort to enforce the stipulated judgment that former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, the City Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles school board, the Community Redevelopment Agency and I approved 20 years ago. The judgment placed a $750 million cap on the amount of property taxes the CRA could spend on the downtown redevelopment plan.

Your editorial took the city, the school board and the CRA to task for wasting at least $500,000 of scarce property taxes paying private attorneys to help them increase the cap to $7.1 billion, even though legally and morally their efforts are wrong.

In my opinion your editorial did not go far enough. Appearing immediately above the editorial recognizing the court's ruling was a separate editorial bemoaning the fact that the voters felt they had no choice but to bite the bullet for the children and vote in a huge $2.4 billion bond measure to bail out the L.A. Unified School District and pay for repairing and updating facilities that have fallen into such an inexcusable rate of disrepair due to the mismanagement of, in the words of the Daily News, ``a cadre of inept politicians and administrators.'' Shame.

As an example of the school district's misuse of its funds, the school board has used the children's money to pay outside attorneys to file costly, extensive briefs before the trial court and the Court of Appeal demanding that the judges give the CRA the right to raise the property tax spending cap without a vote of the people.

The school board has nothing to lose if the $750 million cap remains. But if the cap is raised to $7.1 billion, the state will have to pay the school board $1.7 billion for what it loses to the CRA and city and county taxpayers will have to pay an additional $6.35 billion or cut back on services to make up for what they lose in downtown property taxes to the ``Taj Mahal'' CRA.

When does the recall begin?

Ernani Bernardi 

Van Nuys

Ernani Bernardi served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1961 to 1993.

Unfair to Zacarias

Regarding the portion of your editorial (``Unfinished business,'' April 14) dealing with the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education's appointment of a new superintendent:

I take strong exception to your reference, ``The board must bite the bullet and select a superintendent without regard for racial and ethnic politics, which some groups want to inject in the process.''

Furthermore, you stated that ``board members must show the courage to stand up and make the hard choices despite the political consequences.''

Anyone watching the superintendent search this past year obviously would see your insidious negativity against Dr. Ruben Zacarias. It is obvious to everyone that most Latinos support Zacarias. Too many people can't get past the fact that it's not only because he is an American of Latin descent, fluently bilingual and sensitive to the 70 percent Latino student population, but the parents and community leaders also recognize that he is an ambassador for all the children in the LAUSD.

Many parents, teachers, administrators and community members who are of other than Latin descent also support Zacarias. He is a man of strong moral character, undeniable integrity and great vision.

Zacarias doesn't have to ``step on people's toes'' to be strong, ethical and productive. He is an independent thinker and problem solver.

I implore the board of education to look past their political agendas of all the special interest groups and individuals.

- E.J. Pridonoff

Studio City

DA's office rebuked

Let me get this straight (``Judge throws out sex-assault case against deputy,'' Daily News, April 11):

A women accuses a sheriff's deputy of raping her, and instead of thoroughly investigating the case, the county suspends, then arrests the deputy and keeps him locked up for five months, all this because of evidence given by a woman of questionable character with alcohol and financial problems, which would have been found out if the investigators for the District Attorney's Office had done their job properly.

I only hope that the District Attorney's Office goes after this woman with the same zeal that it used on the deputy's case.

- Dan Towers

Van Nuys

Dog's death

The April 12 news item (``Who, or what, killed Pal?'') about the skinning of a dog in Encino, whether it was the work of a coyote or not, should alert us to the fact that animal abuse is widespread and occurs in many ways.

From the dog left abandoned in an apartment without food or water by tenants who were so proud of it as a puppy, to the cats intentionally boarded up inside the wall of a building to die because there were ``too many'' of them, to the dogs roaming the city streets without a collar and identification tag, animals are mistreated and neglected too often.

The sad fact is that much of humanity is far from humane.

- Mark Schuster

Panorama City

What short memories we have. Doesn't anyone recall the hysteria a few years back when an identical problem was occurring in Westlake Village, only with cats?

Local animal activists were sure a ``satanic cult'' was responsible, fueled by reports in the media. It wasn't until the coyote was seen attacking a cat that the hoopla died down.

Let's not waste our efforts again and concentrate on the real culprit before a child or another small animal is attacked. I live in a hillside area and can hear packs of coyotes howling on a regular basis. When they start coming into residential neighborhoods they need to be dealt with in a timely manner. Our scarce city resources need to address the true problem and not go out on a witch hunt.

- Matthew Schaaf

Granada Hills

I very much appreciated the excellent, balanced article addressing the controversy surrounding the death of Pal the pug.

In the article, Peter Persic of Los Angeles Animal Services attributes the tremendous level of concern over this dog's horrendous death to an emotional response on the part of the animal activist community. His implication that outrage over this incident is restricted to animal activists dismisses the legitimate concern of many outside of that community who value life and feel revulsion at the torture and killing of any living being.

Pal's death is not strictly an animal activist issue. It is an instance of incredible inhumanity that calls out to all concerned people of goodwill to be redressed.

- Sherrie C. Woodbury

President

Little Angels Pug Rescue

Pasadena

Prop. 209 sustained

I agree with Joe Gelman's April 13 piece on the recent overturning of U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson's blocking of Proposition 209 (``Judge can't beat people's will in civil rights initiative''). This proposition was passed by a majority of the voters. It should never have been blocked because, as the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has declared, it violated no laws or the Constitution.

Many defenders of set-asides say standards are never lowered to allow less-qualified applicants to get jobs. This has been shown to be false by the reduction of standards required for many jobs that tout affirmative action.

Discrimination due to race and sex is still illegal. It is not fair to someone who has worked hard but fails to get a job he or she is qualified for due to quotas. The United States must keep its competitiveness high. Many countries are gaining on and may soon surpass us in productivity. It is time to promote excellence, not mediocrity.

- Paul Cortez

Woodland Hills

Camarillo State Hospital

Regarding ``State hospital in twilight,'' Daily News, April 6:

Gov. Pete Wilson's decision to close Camarillo State Hospital is as low a blow that any politician can deliver to one of the most vulnerable groups in society. I don't know how Wilson can live with himself. He must not have a heart.

Former Gov. Earl Warren lived in the days when the Republicans had principles. He must be constantly rolling over in his grave knowing the mess that Wilson has gotten this state into.

- Ed King

Los Angeles

`Diatribe against Christianity'

Harry Schwartzbart's ``Religious right vs. public schools'' (Saturday Commentary, April 12) was not a dialogue but a diatribe against Christianity.

In this article Christians are depicted as anti-education, when the opposite is true.

Herein lies the weakness of his viewpoint. Any research will reveal that the first educational system in America was founded and implemented by the Christian community. Out of the 108 colleges founded in America, 106 were founded upon the Christian faith. In 1787, the United States Congress declared in the Northwest Ordinance that ``Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.''

Separation of church and state was never an issue with our Founding Fathers. Rather, the church was highly esteemed in its function to train, equip and educate the people. Judeo-Christian values, standards and ethics were part of the fabric of the educational system in early America.

Schwartzbart states that the public school system is under attack. On the contrary, the minds of our children have been under attack by the public school system for the past 40 years by being spoon-fed the anti-God, antimoral, antifamily, antivalues, anything-goes worldview.

William and Denice Beal

Granada Hills