THE TIMES POLL : Residents Say Life in Valley Is Worsening, Blame Crime

Residents of the San Fernando Valley, where a third of the city’s population live, believe that the quality of their lives has grown worse and they tend to hold local elected officials responsible for the decline, a Los Angeles Times Poll has found.

A sense of gloominess emerged from the statistics as 63% of those surveyed said they are worse off today than when they moved here, and 56% said they disapprove of the way local officials are handling the issues that affect their lives.

Nearly two-thirds said they are considering moving away within the next five years, yet almost half of that group said they would remain if elected officials were able to improve conditions in the Valley. In 1989, a similar Times Poll found that, countywide, about half of those surveyed said they had thought about moving from the Los Angeles area in the past year.

The poll, conducted Aug. 11 and 12, asked Valley residents to assess factors affecting the quality of their lives, to rate the job public officials have done with those issues and to look ahead at possible solutions.

Overall, the greatest concerns were crime and traffic congestion, followed by drugs, affordable housing, excessive growth, the environment and education.

“I grew up in this valley, I went to school here and everything, and I’ve seen it deteriorate. . . . Politicians don’t care. They’re not doing anything to stop it,� said Colleen Radtke, 28, of Sylmar, a secretary and single parent whose responses were typical of those who answered the survey.

Local government in the Valley, population 1.3 million, was blamed for the problems by 36% of those polled, trailed by state government and businesses and the federal government.

The local officials, asked to respond to the same survey, tended to agree that the quality of life in the Valley is worse. They also acknowledged that they are responsible for finding solutions to the region’s problems, but they were much more likely than the general public to defend their performance, saying they are doing all they can.

Respondents--who live in communities stretching from Woodland Hills to Burbank--gave local elected officials relatively high marks in only two areas: providing parks and attracting cultural events to the Valley.

Despite the increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity in the Valley, the findings indicate a strong meeting of minds, crossing boundaries of age, race, sex, income, marital status, profession and political persuasion.

Asked for proposed solutions to the problems affecting their lives, residents said crime could best be solved by adding police, pollution could be lessened by increasing penalties on polluters and education could be improved by dividing the Los Angeles Unified School District so that the Valley can govern its own public schools. They said they were willing to call for these changes even if it means paying higher taxes.

Perhaps most surprising was the response to options for dealing with traffic problems. Asked to choose from a list that included building a cross-Valley rail line and expanding the freeways, residents preferred rail by a 3-1 margin.

Despite the overwhelming sentiment that quality of life had declined in the Valley, respondents generally were satisfied with their immediate neighborhoods.

“I live my life and I’m still kind of far from the problems,� said Candida Saltos, 31, who moved from Ecuador to an apartment in Burbank 11 years ago. “Where I live is quiet but if I go one block from here it’s different. There are more people on the streets, without anything to do.�

Those who recently moved to the Valley were more likely to say their quality of life had not changed much, while those who had been there longer than five years were more likely to say their lives had changed for the worse.

The poll involved interviews of 1,113 people chosen at random by computer to represent a cross-section of Valley residents. The poll was conducted by telephone last weekend, under the direction of Times Poll Director I. A. Lewis. The margin of error is four percentage points in either direction.

A look at responses on crime shows that only a third of those polled said they believed that local elected officials are doing all they can to deal with the problem. Seventy percent said crime had made their lives worse.

Linda Layton, 51, a medical transcriber in Pacoima who works at home, said there has been more police activity in her neighborhood over the years.

“We have fences around our park which we didn’t have before; they’ve found bodies in our park,� Layton said.

As solutions, the poll found the widest support for adding more police officers, followed by establishing a separate department to deal only with gangs and spending more money on drug intervention programs.

When asked how traffic had affected their lives, 80% of the respondents said it had made their lives worse and, in another question concerning local elected officials, only 31% said they believe that officials are doing a good job dealing with the traffic problem.

When asked to suggest solutions, developing a cross-Valley rail system was favored by nearly 40% of those polled, followed by encouraging business leaders to stagger work hours, selected by 19%, and expanding the freeway system, chosen by 12%.

Almost two-thirds of the Valley residents surveyed said they believe that officials are doing all they can to provide parks and recreational areas, and 41% said they approved of their efforts to bring cultural events and entertainment to the Valley.

As further evidence that people are largely satisfied with the availability of leisure-time pursuits, about a third said parks and cultural activities had improved their lives. Only a handful said their lives were adversely affected.

More than 40% favored slowing or stopping commercial or residential construction, with nearly half of those calling for the most extreme measure listed in the poll: an end to growth through an outright ceiling on new housing developments and apartment buildings.

Yet a third of those questioned said commercial development such as office space and shopping centers had improved the quality of their lives, and 13% felt the same way about residential development. Many more said development had no effect on their lives.

Residents ranked environment toward the bottom of the list of factors affecting their lives, yet in response to another question, three-quarters said air pollution had made their lives worse. The South Coast Air Quality Management District was mildly surprised with the results, because the agency’s scientists believe that the smog problem is improving.

“Maybe people are just hearing about it a lot more so their impression is that it’s worse,� said SCAQMD spokeswoman Claudia Keith.

Fewer than a quarter of the respondents said public officials are doing all they can to address problems in the public schools. Yet more than half also said education had no affect on their own quality of life.

Nearly a third were in favor of decentralizing the 610,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District into more manageable chunks, although this sentiment was much stronger in the West Valley, at 40%, than in the northeast Valley, at 22%.