Effort to Add Pacoima to Job Grant Tabled

With a deadline fast approaching, Councilman Alex Padilla saw his efforts Wednesday to include Pacoima in an application for a federal youth program wither without the needed support from the City Council.

Padilla has been pushing for Pacoima to be added to the city’s application for a $12-million federal grant that would provide job training and placement for youths 14 to 21. Watts and East Los Angeles have already been proposed for the application.

Instead of approving Padilla’s request, the City Council voted to send the idea to committee for further review. The delay does not bode well for Pacoima’s inclusion, given the Sept. 30 grant deadline.

“It’s certainly not what I was hoping for,” said a disappointed Padilla. “By it going to committee all it’s going to do is create another bureaucratic obstacle in getting this grant application out, but the fight’s not over. It just means I have to fight my fight in committee now.”

Parker Anderson, general manager of the city’s Community Development Department, which is compiling the application for the federal Youth Opportunities Grant sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, said Pacoima is worthy of federal money for youth programs, but this particular application favors communities with concentrated poverty.

Based on 1990 census data, Watts has 57% of its youth in poverty, East L.A. has 47% and Pacoima has about 37%, he said.

“If you put the aggregate together, Pacoima lowers the poverty level,” Anderson said of the community’s impact on the application.

The Valley is at a disadvantage with this type of federal grant, Anderson said.

“The difficulty is that it is such a large geographic area that the poverty is not as concentrated geographically. So when you have these federal grants that talk about high-density concentrated poverty, the Valley is always at a disadvantage when the feds use those criteria.”

Though it is little consolation, the council approved other sections of Padilla’s motion directing the Community Development Department to review ways to improve Pacoima’s future grant applications.

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Councilman Mike Hernandez, who got his district’s East Los Angeles area added to the application in a last-minute motion last month, offered to assist Padilla with a search for potential federal block grant funds to pay for a youth job training program.

Anderson said his department can explore the possibility of tapping federal Community Development Block Grant funds in January; funding is disbursed in April.

But Hernandez’s offer of assistance also made it clear to the council that expanding the application to include Pacoima would drop the poverty rate, and thus jeopardize the city’s competitiveness.

Padilla and Councilwoman Laura Chick cast the only votes against sending the issue to committee.

“I don’t understand why the northeast Valley was not included in the beginning,” Chick said. “This city needs to remember the needs of the Valley, to remember [former Councilman Richard] Alarcon’s fight to get the northeast Valley an empowerment zone.”

Padilla concurred that Pacoima is “systematically disadvantaged” because its poverty rates and federal empowerment zones are smaller compared with Watts and East Los Angeles.

“We don’t get our fair share,” he said. “For me there’s no additional argument; Pacoima should be in the application.”

Nationwide, 25 federal youth job grants will be awarded, officials said. Other potential applicants include Long Beach, Santa Ana and Los Angeles County.

The Youth Opportunities Grant is $12 million the first year, with up to $48 million available over five years.

President Clinton introduced the youth program when he toured Watts in July.