Neighborhood council member blasts L.A. Councilmembers who supported Las Lomas

Dennis DeYoung, a member of the Northridge West Neighborhood Council, recently posted the following to valleynews.com. While his headline says, "Kudos to Greig Smith for killing Las Lomas," he starts off by ripping into Richard Alarcon and the other four L.A. Councilmembers who did not approve striking down the controversial - and massive - Las Lomas development.

DeYoung's posting follows:

Shame on Richard Alarcon and his four other City Council buddies for voting for the horrible and ill-conceived Las Lomas housing project.

Alarcon is completely out of touch with the community and has sold out to the developer and labor unions that championed this disastrous project. Alarcon turned his back on all of the neighborhood councils and other groups that had already weighed against Las Lomas.

If 5,550 homes and 2.3 million feet of commercial space were proposed in Griffith Park (similar terrain and traffic issues), then I'm sure that Alarcon, Jose Huizar, Bernard Parks, Ed Reyes and Herb Wesson would have been appalled and aghast.

This project isn't even located within the city limits, yet Alarcon is afraid of the mere prospect of an unwinnable lawsuit to justify the development.

Perhaps those disgraceful five should have glanced at a map. The project is less than a mile away from the Sunshine Canyon Landfill that the City Council agreed to triple last year and just yards away from the very freeways that collapsed in the 1971 and 1994 earthquakes.

Add to that the scarring of the mountains, adding traffic to an area already choking in congestion, lack of water and electricity and you have a recipe for disaster. This project should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago.

Fortunately, we will never know how many millions of dollars and thousands of lives were saved this week by Greig Smith and the other nine Councilmen who voted to terminate Las Lomas.

We do know that a majority of the City Council had the cajones and smarts to do the right thing for our community. Hooray !

What we lack in our City Council chambers is accountability. I would hope that the few folks who bother to vote will remember how their Councilmen stood on this important issue.

If Alarcon is unwilling to act like a man, then he should find another occupation. Our beloved city needs decisive leaders, not labor union sellouts.

Whoever it was in the planning department that permitted this tragic development to get as far as it did showed the same lack of backbone as Alarcon and both deserve to be relieved of their duties.