11/05/03

LC031105


Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Tough decisions now that the fires are out in southern
California's mountain communities. Who gets to rebuild and who
might be told no?

Dennis Hansberger>> There is a school of thought that says, no,
you shouldn't rebuild. The question is, well, then, if that's
the case, whose responsibility is it? Should the property
owners simply forfeit their properties? Should the government
buy up their properties and make them public properties?

Val>> And then, making the grade. Los Angeles students' scores
are up. We'll talk with the man who signs the teachers' report
cards in Los Angeles, Superintendent Roy Romer.

All that and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Hello, I'm Val Zavala. Later in the program, we'll take
you to a Los Angeles landmark that turns ninety-five:
Philippe's, famous for its sawdust floors and French Dip
sandwiches.

But first, a question of whether to rebuild in the aftermath of
California's devastating wildfires. As Philip Bruce reports,
many communities have a lot riding on the answer.

Philip Bruce>> Now this was just one home, I guess, right?

Dennis Hansberger>> It was.

Philip Bruce>> Dennis Hansberger has heard some people say that
nothing could have stood in the way of the fire, but he wonders
if that's true. And this devastated neighborhood in the hills
north of San Bernardino only makes him more curious. Why did
some things burn while others didn't and are there some lessons
here in the ashes on how to avoid another disaster in the
future?

Dennis Hansberger>> I believe that most of these homes were not
hardened against fire because they were built long enough ago
that they just simply didn't have the kind of standards that
would have made it possible for them to survive the fire.

Philip Bruce>> Hansberger roamed these woods as a youngster.
Today he's a County Supervisor representing San Bernardino's
mountain communities and, in the aftermath of the crisis,
Hansberger is asking questions. Were the fires made worse
because the county was too lax? Did hodgepodge planning and
building codes allow this neighborhood and countless others to
be packed with homes that were easy targets? In short, did the
county allow growth to happen in areas where homes should have
never been built? Hansberger knows some of his constituents may
not like the questions, but he says the answers are crucial.

Dennis Hansberger>> During the fire itself, obviously our focus
was on putting the fire out and save lives, save property.
Number one objective, save lives. Number two, save property.
And certainly try to manage the fire in a way that gives us the
healthiest possible forest. But now the discussion changes. It
changes to should we rebuild and, if so, how should we rebuild?
A legitimate issue. There is a school of thought that says, no,
you shouldn't rebuild and the question is, well, then, if that's
the case, who's responsibility is it? Should the property
owners simply forfeit their property? Should the government buy
up their properties and make them public properties? How should
that be done?

Philip Bruce>> A little further up the hill, a prime example of
the fickleness of the fire that raced through Waterman Canyon.
A home is gutted, but a newer outbuilding built according to
modern codes is still standing.

Dennis Hansberger>> This is absolutely gone. Every bit of it.

Philip Bruce>> Well, why do you think this made it and this
didn't?

Dennis Hansberger>> I think because the eaves are closed. It's
a newer structure and it didn't have any access to get inside to
burn it. Now why it didn't have any access, I don't know. It
looks like somebody pulled a board off of there to maybe stop
some fire that tried to get in there.

Philip Bruce>> But the fact remains that probably an older home
next door is gutted and this thing largely survived.

Dennis Hansberger>> My guess is that the home was older than
that structure and you can see there's some fire on that corner,
but it didn't actually get inside the structure. Those enclosed
eaves apparently kept that fire from actually getting up
underneath that and actually igniting it. It was working on the
back side here, but it didn't get it.

Philip Bruce>> It scorched it pretty good.

Dennis Hansberger>> It did.

Philip Bruce>> Do you think people in San Bernardino County,
after this fire, will look at this as being an example of what
you're talking about and support these kinds of changes in
building code?

Dennis Hansberger>> Yeah, I do. I believe that they will. I
really do think that people are very sensitive to the idea. If
you give them evidence of why they ought to do it, I think they
will do it.

Philip Bruce>> Is this evidence?

Dennis Hansberger>> Well, I think this and others, yeah, right.

Philip Bruce>> Down the street, more examples of how the fire
had plenty of easy fuel to leap from one piece of property to
another.

Dennis Hansberger>> The things you look at when you drive
through those neighborhoods is that you find wood fences
everywhere. Very few block walls. Modern communities today
tend to have concrete block walls and those are very protective
and they don't catch on fire where, in many of these instances,
it appears that the fence may have been the first thing to catch
on fire. You have an old dry cedar fence and it catches on fire
very easily. It ignites the trees and gets into the home.

Philip Bruce>> And then there are the trees, dense stands of
timber that surrounded most of the homes here. The county has
no jurisdiction over the adjacent national forest, but it has
full authority to regulate private property such as this.
Hansberger wonders if it's time to require homeowners to thin
out their trees for everyone's sake, but he knows that whenever
politicians start talking about cutting trees, some people get
nervous.

Dennis Hansberger>> Certainly it draws people out who say, wait
a minute, you're just trying to cut down our forest. Well,
first of all, there's a certain lack of logic in even making the
statement. There's only one reason that people are in those
mountain communities. They love them. They're there because
they love the forest. No one who's removing timber from their
property is doing it to make money. They're doing it for a
variety of safety issues and forest health issues. But nobody
goes to live in the mountains in order to have no trees. That
just isn't true.

Philip Bruce>> So far, the debate has not reached the
homeowners. Most are still suffering from shock and scores have
been left homeless. Larry Patterson is one of the lucky ones.
His house survived. Now he looks around Waterman Canyon and
tells stories of what used to be.

Larry Patterson>> People that lived in this house here, retired
school teacher. This was a nice big shop area. He had his
motor home parked here, a garage, a workshop. You'll see
remnants of a wood-burning stove. He did a lot of woodworking.
He had probably one of the most unique pieces of property in
this canyon because his property was on both sides of the creek.
From here, you would take -- right through there, there used to
be a foot bridge that would across the creek over to where his
house was at. Beautiful home, large home, multi-level home.
They were up in northern California on a fishing trip with their
motor home. They weren't even here. They didn't get out with
anything. Like he told me, sixty-eight years of memories gone.

Philip Bruce>> You're aware that some people say that homes
shouldn't be built in areas like this where it's very dense and
very thick. What do you say to that?

Larry Patterson>> Well, I'd say they probably make a good
point, at least in respect to maybe the density and so on. Like
I say, I've only been up here for a short period of time, so I
probably wouldn't, you know, be the right one to ask that
question. I lived in the valley down below for thirty-one years
and we decided that we wanted to get out of the city, so to
speak, and moved up here. Quiet, little more peaceful, closer-
knit, but there's a lot to be said about that.

Philip Bruce>> One thing is for certain, in the aftermath of
this disaster, the way has been cleared to deal with tough
questions that may have been too hot to handle before. That
means, while others argue about what the Feds or the state
should have done or will do about bark beetles and dead trees,
San Bernardino County will focus on how these neighborhoods
should come back and even if they should come back at all. How
likely do you think that scenario is that you will see small or
even not so small areas in this region of San Bernardino County
not ever being built back?

Dennis Hansberger>> Very unlikely. I think that people who
live in these areas are, for the most part, they love the area
and they are risk-takers and they understand the risk. They
don't want to lose the gamble, if you will, but they do
understand there's a risk associated with it. They tend to be
people who accept that there's a risk in living here and that
this forest will come back and they will be here.

Val>> One of the biggest challenges facing the counties is the
cost of the cleanup. Some of the debris and even some of the
ashes are considered toxic waste, so they can't be hauled to the
nearest landfill. Counties have to find a place for it and find
a way to pay for hauling it there.

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Val>> It's been about three years since Roy Romer, the former
governor of Colorado, took the helm of the nation's second
largest school district. It's been quite a challenge. LAUSD
was mired in low test scores, school construction fiascos and
teacher and classroom shortages. So how have things gone?
Well, one thing has improved dramatically: student test scores.
I talked with the LAUSD Superintendent to find out more and to
find out if the momentum can be sustained.

Roy Romer>> Well, we just got our test scores back and I really
have them here. You can see that, in the elementary grades, in
four years, we have advanced almost two hundred -- 180 -- API
points. We have been increasing our scores at a rate almost
twice the rate of the state of California.

Val>> And API stands for? Remind people what that is.

Roy Romer>> It is the test that we use in California to how
well you're doing academically. The top score you shoot for is
eight hundred and you can see in our elementary schools that,
four years ago, we were 520. We're now right at seven hundred.
So we have gained that ground.

Val>> Elementary is most dramatic, but you've also --

Roy Romer>> -- We're coming up on the middle school. If you
just quickly look at this chart here -- let me move it over --
is that this is an indicator of what percent of our schools met
the target because each of them have a target. Ninety percent
of our elementary schools did, seventy-one percent of our middle
schools, but look where we came from. Twenty-seven to seventy-
one change in one year. High school, we moved from thirteen
percent to fifty-five percent in one year. Summary? We're
really doing very much better. There's great progress. We have
a long way to go, but that's the good news.

Val>> Why? How are you able to do it?

Roy Romer>> It is very direct instruction. It is real training
of teachers. It is making coaches available school by school.
It is emphasis upon math and language arts, reading and writing.
And it is using diagnostic testing. Periodically we'll diagnose
the good test, like taking an x-ray. Using that not for high
stakes for the kids, but to improve instruction. In other
words, really paying attention to measurement and using the
results of measurement to help improve our practice.

Val>> Well, some people would say you must just be teaching to
the test and that's why they're being so much better. How can
you make sure that's not the only thing happening?

Roy Romer>> Teaching to the test is okay if it's the right
test, but we are not just teaching the test. We are teaching to
standards. California has a very good set of standards and we
clearly say in this period of time -- let's take fourth grade
math. We're going to teach these standards the first ten weeks,
these standards the second ten weeks. We take a test at the end
of each to see how well we do and so we can improve performance.
In other words, it is really rigorous instruction. It's paying
attention to improving the quality of instruction and it's
changing the culture which everybody says, whoa, wait a minute.
We can do a lot better and we expect to do better.

Val>> So if the good news is that test scores are up across the
board, most dramatically in elementary school where it matters a
lot, by the way, because that's what sets the trend, what can
you predict for the future? Does this mean, wow, in 2005, we're
going to be higher than the California standards?

Roy Romer>> We're coming up, but I want to say that we're still
very much too low. We have a lot of work to do, particularly in
middle school and high school.

Val>> So we're still below the California --

Roy Romer>> -- that's right, but the key thing is what
direction are you going and how fast are you changing? For a
long while, this place was not doing as well as it ought to.

Val>> It was mired year after year.

Roy Romer>> We are now breaking out of that and we're making
gains. These are spectacular. There's probably no other urban
district that has made that degree of change in elementary in a
four-year period. Now we have more things to do. We're going
to create smaller schools, but we're all facing a very tough
budget in the next twelve to twenty-four months.

Val>> Well, that's what I was going to ask you. What is the
biggest threat to this trend, which is a very positive --

Roy Romer>> -- I'm going to have to cut $500 million out of
this budget just because of the state of California's economic
problems. It's going to hurt. We've got to find a way to do
that where we don't stop this core growth. We'll get that done,
but it is not easy.

Val>> Tell us a little bit about that, about the impact of the
state crisis.

Roy Romer>> Well, the state is looking at about a $20 billion
dollar shortfall still. We've got a new governor and we're
going to have to wait and see what they will do about it. But
regardless of what they do, even before they make any further
changes, we know that we are $500 million short of balancing our
budget for next year.

Val>> You've got $500 million out of how big a budget?

Roy Romer>> Five and a half billion, so it's about nine
percent.

Val>> You've got to cut about nine percent?

Roy Romer>> I've got to cut nine percent, but I can't cut
classroom teachers. Therefore, I've got to cut a whole lot of
other places much more than nine percent. That's just the real
world I live in.

Val>> What's the fundamental problem with California's way that
we finance education?

Roy Romer>> They passed Proposition 13 which took away the
property tax base, in the large part, and then tried to replace
it with an income tax based upon the false economy of the
technology boom. So when the boom fell off, they didn't have an
adequate tax base. They still don't.

Val>> Well, we kind of fooled ourselves in a way.

Roy Romer>> They really did. They relied upon income tax and
capital gain to carry themselves at a period of population
growth and we just simply don't have a stable and adequate tax
base for public schools. We need to get it. We are not paying
what most states pay per student to educate children. We just
aren't.

Val>> We're spending less.

Roy Romer>> We're spending less. We need to get it higher.

Val>> I see. So the only way to do that is to really secure
the funding in a much more realistic way.

Roy Romer>> Yes, and this is not easy to do. We're going to
have to go back and I think we need to revisit the way we have
handled Proposition 13.

Val>> Oh, that's a sacred cow in California.

Roy Romer>> I understand that. Warren Buffett raised that in
his gubernatorial campaign and they quickly put Warren in the
closet (laughter), but let me tell you, he's a smart man, a wise
man. What we need are people who get beyond the short-term
political gain and say long-term. We've got to have a tax base
that makes sense and it's got to be reasonable. We've got to be
very economical in the way we spend it, but you can't get there
on the cheap.

Val>> Now voters have a role to play in this, I understand,
coming up in March.

Roy Romer>> In March, all of us are going to go to the voters
and say we want to pass another bond. Here's why. We are very
short of space. We need to get these kids to where they have
adequate space to study. We have a shortened school year
because we don't have enough space. We've built 120 schools.
We need to build another forty.

Val>> 120 seems to be doing pretty well considering --

Roy Romer>> -- That's right, but we need to build another forty
and we're going to go back with the bond process to the people
in March and say look at what we've done. We're moving. We're
really coming up. We need to finish this job of building new
schools. We want your help. I think people will do that in
this community because they know that having a good education in
a community is the key to the economy. It's also the key to
property values.

Val>> But how can you convince voters that the school district
will use their money well because there's been Belmont and all
those other problems?

Roy Romer>> Right there it is. If you show that your scores
are coming up, zooming up, that's the proof of the pudding. If
anybody would ask are you getting the job done, there it is.
The second thing is, can you get those buildings built on budget
and on time? We're doing it. First time in a long while, we
are doing it.

Val>> Governor, we're all behind you. We wish you the best.
Thank you so much for taking a little time out of your very busy
schedule.

Roy Romer>> Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> You can argue over how to pronounce it, but there's one
thing that is beyond the name and that is its landmark status
among Los Angeles restaurants. Since 1908, it's been serving up
its sandwiches with a noisy and friendly exuberance. Vicki
Curry visited Philippe's as it turned ninety-five.

Vicki Curry>> In a town as young as Los Angeles, anything over
a few decades old is celebrated, even a sandwich. But this
isn't just any sandwich. It's the famous French Dip sandwich
you can only get at Philippe's. So, Richard, most people around
town call this Philippe's, but that's not exactly the right name
or the right pronunciation, is it?

Richard Binder>> Well, the real pronunciation is Philippe if
you were French, but it's developed in Los Angeles where we call
it Philippe's even though my dad, who worked here forty years,
called it Philippe's. We don't really care what you call it
just as long as you keep coming.

Vicki Curry>> Getting people to come to Philippe's doesn't seem
to be a problem. From open to close, sixteen hours a day,
there's always a crowd lined up at the counter.

>> I've never been in here when it wasn't totally packed.
Every time, every time.

>> Great service, great people, lots of fun.

Vicki Curry>> It's the atmosphere as much as the food that
seems to attract customers and it's a formula that's served
Philippe's well for ninety-five years.

Richard Binder>> It was opened by Philippe Mathieu, Frenchman,
in 1908, moved a couple of times around the city early on,
finally settled at Aliso Street where the 101 Freeway is right
now.

Vicki Curry>> It began as a deli where customers could make
their own sandwiches, but in 1918 Philippe invented the French
Dip sandwich. The exact details of its creation are lost to
history, but a few different stories have been passed down
through the years.

Richard Binder>> It was heard from one of the descendants of
Philippe that a fireman had a piece of stale bread and he told
them to put this in the au jus drippings and that was how the
French Dip started.

Vicki Curry>> Another had Philippe accidentally dropping a roll
into a pan of the roasting juices. The customer, a policeman,
said he'd take it anyway. He came back the next day with
several friends and asked for more dipped sandwiches.

Richard Binder>> He was either a policeman or a fireman. We
don't know and it's way too long ago (laughter).

Vicki Curry>> After nine years of serving up French Dip,
Philippe Mathieu decided to sell the business.

Richard Binder>> My grandfather and his two brothers bought it
in 1927. They had horse stables across the street. Philippe
wanted to go back to France, so they purchased it. We don't
know how much, but we think about five thousand dollars.

Vicki Curry>> Philippe's is still run today by the family of
those three brothers, Harry, David and Frank Martin.

Richard Binder>> Frank was the last one to survive. He had two
daughters. My mom, Beverly, and her sister, Helen. So it went
to those two descendants. My dad joined the business in 1950.
He was actually a brewer. His name was Bill Binder. He was
here until 1985. He's eighty-eight. He still comes in every
morning for breakfast and kind of sees how we're doing.

Vicki Curry>> And I assume you're planning on keeping it in the
family for many years to come?

Richard Binder>> Oh, sure, yeah. We have the next generation
now coming in. My brother has one of his sons in here.

Vicki Curry>> But the family business almost went by the
wayside when the Hollywood Freeway came through Philippe's
location on Aliso Street.

Richard Binder>> My family did not own the building or the
land, so all they had was the business. Actually, we were going
to close it down at that time, but a friend of my grandfather's,
Bert Fosdeck, an architect engineer here in the city, found us
some property for him.

Vicki Curry>> Philippe, the Original, moved to its present
location in 1951 at the intersection of Main, Alameda and Ord
Streets. Everything is pretty much the same today as it was
then, especially the famous French Dip sandwiches.

Richard Binder>> It's on a lightly toasted French bread dipped
in the au jus gravy, which is a combination of the beef, the
lamb and the pork drippings. Then that's reduced down with a
hearty stock and then it's further reduced down for another
twenty-four hours until it's such a concentration of flavors
that's really the secret to the sandwich.

Vicki Curry>> Another unique feature at Philippe's is the
service. Everything is prepared at a long counter by one of ten
servers they call "carvers".

Richard Binder>> They call them carvers because the lamb is
actually still carved off the bone. In the old days, everything
used to be carved by knife, but now of course, we slice it up.
We have ten carvers. They all have the same thing in front of
them.

Vicki Curry>> So they take the order and make the sandwich
right there?

Richard Binder>> They get to interact with the customers too
and I think a lot of the people like that.

Vicki Curry>> Many of the employees at Philippe's have worked
there for decades, like Juanita Gonzalez who started in 1968.

Juanita Gonzalez>> When I started working here, I don't speak
not even one word in English. I learned from the customers.

Vicki Curry>> And the customers are what Juanita loves most
about the job.

Juanita Gonzalez>> I have a customer who's come here for
thirty-two years. Now I know what he wants. He just comes in
through the door, I look at him, he goes like this, and I know
what it is (laughter). He didn't change. They make a lot of
friends in here. You know, they sit down anyplace they want.
It's fun. It's something different, right? Yeah, something
different.

>> It's the peoples' eatery here. You can just come by, the
prices are great, you can just be yourself and eat with a
sawdust floor and maybe watch a little TV. They'll have a
basketball game on or something. So it just feels comfortable.
It's just like stopping over at somebody's house.

>> Well, I went to USC and, you know, this is a Los Angeles
landmark. My grandparents took me here when I was a kid and now
I take my friends when they come into town.

>> I've been coming here off and on for about sixty years. I
was very young when I started with my dad here and the other
location which was a couple of blocks down the street. It's as
great as it always was. The only thing that's changed is the
prices and it's still a good bargain. We just enjoy coming
down. It's a lot of fun.

Vicki Curry>> It's that kind of customer that's made Philippe,
the Original, a success for nearly a century.

Richard Binder>> It's something that works. It's a formula
that works. It's a very, very simple formula. We don't have a
lot of things here. We don't offer a lot. The menu is very,
very limited. We only buy the best quality and we try to sell
it for a fair price, and we treat everybody real fairly here.
Normally the place is passed down through generations by their
fathers bringing their kids. You know, grandparents bringing
their grandkids in. We really don't do any advertising, so it's
all word of mouth.

Vicki Curry>> Well, ninety-five years is a lot of word of mouth
(laughter).

Richard Binder>> I guess it is.

Val>> And don't forget to slather on the spicy mustard. That's
our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Tomorrow on Life and Times, it's an air base with no
planes or runways, but it plays a strategic role in U.S.
defense. We'll look at the fight to save Los Angeles Air Force
Base.

>> This area of southern California is where all that brain
power is. We don't want to start being decimated and taken
apart piece by piece because we'll lose it.

Val>> That's tomorrow on Life and Times.