City of East L.A.?

Supporters of a movement to incorporate East Los Angeles as its own city are aiming to put the question to voters next year.

“We’re barely on first base,” said Oscar Gonzalez, president of the East Los Angeles Residents’ Association, the primary booster of the effort.

The association, which has formed a 52-member cityhood committee, plans to release next week a report by Los Angeles firm Burr Consulting, which studied the economic feasibility of a City of East Los Angeles.

Gonzalez said he could not yet reveal the report’s findings, but hinted that it found the area could support itself through its tax base – a key issue for the cityhood campaign. “It’s an incredible sign that a Latino community is not only vibrant, but viable,” he said.

A Mexican-American enclave of some 135,000 residents, East Los Angeles is a 7.3 square-mile unincorporated area of Los Angeles County governed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. It is not part of the City of Los Angeles. Since 1961, three attempts to incorporate East L.A. have been mounted and failed.

As its own municipality, East L.A. would form its own city council and local government and thus be better able to control its own destiny, Gonzalez said. It would continue to use the county’s services such as fire and police.

The Association’s next step is to gather the 8,000-plus signatures, 25 percent of the area’s 34,000 registered voters, to put the measure on the ballot. A second, more detailed study on the effects of the measure would also be commissioned.

 

- Christina Hoag