VETERANS ADMINISTRATION PROPERTY / WEST LOS ANGELES HEALTHCARE CENTER

Resolution - The Veterans Administration Property in West Los Angeles has served the needs and interests of veterans for over 100 years. Soldiers returning from all of the last century's wars, from World War I to the Gulf War, have found a center for medical treatment as well as refuge for transition from the horrors of the battlefield to the norms of civilian life. Indeed, the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration (VA) property is hallowed ground to veterans and their supporters. In January of this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs initiated a process that led to the creation of what the Veterans Administration calls a "Plan for the Development of a 25-Year General Use Plan" for the Veterans Administration West Los Angeles Healthcare Center. A committee was formed to oversee the drafting of the Plan, yet it excluded representation from local and state government, as well as broad-based community representatives. While the draft Plan has not yet been released, statements by the Veterans Administration representatives have provided some information. Not only is the secretive and unreasonably rushed manner by which this Plan was created disturbing, but the plan's recommendations are equally appalling. The Plan calls for over 5 million square feet of additional development, 80% of which is likely to be private commercial development labeled "enhanced uses" by the Veterans Administration. Such exploitation of this property not only neglects the needs of the veterans who hope to see the property utilized for direct services, but it also threatens to inundate the surrounding West Los Angeles region with traffic and other environmental impacts that cannot be sustained. The Plan may also be deficient in its compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. Despite the vast scale of development proposed, no Environmental Impact Statement has been included. This is in stark contrast to the General Management Plan recently proposed by the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which calls for a minuscule amount of development and yet was accompanied by an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to implement a reasonable and rational approach to such a Plan, as well as involve the interested community members in the creation of the Plan, including elected representatives, and the failure of the Veterans Administration to fully disclose the Plan's impacts through an Environmental Impact Statement, demonstrate an unprecedented callousness and hubris by ignoring the public's interest. THEREFORE MOVE THAT, the City Council of the City of Los Angeles by resolution hereby express its opposition to the appropriate agencies about any proposal of a plan upwards of 7,000,000 square feet for which no environmental review has been made available, no interaction and no input from appropriate City, County or State agencies has been allowed. FURTHER, the City Council should send a letter to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Senators Boxer and Feinstein and Congressman Waxman urging them to abandon the draft Plan and start the process over with highest level of public involvement, including the participation of representatives from the City and County of Los Angeles, the state of California, University California Los Angeles (UCLA) and community organizations. FURTHER, the letter should also state the Council's recommendation that the Plan maximize the preservation of the property's open spaces, allow only that development necessary to provide direct veterans services, and preclude future commercial development, and; FURTHER, that the City Council send a letter to Senators Boxer and Feinstein and Congressman Waxman, requesting that they carry legislation to amend the Cranston Act (Public Law 100-322) to extend its provisions to the entire 400-acre West Los Angeles Veterans Administration (VA) property.