Porter Ranch Is Expected to Win Approval : Development: The City Council’s final vote on the massive project will come Tuesday, and neither side anticipates that concerns about school sites and traffic studies will change the predicted outcome.

A last-minute flap about the developer’s commitment to provide new schools and the appearance of a mysterious traffic study predicting highway chaos have caused problems for the Porter Ranch project as it approaches a final vote by the Los Angeles City Council.

Still, several City Hall lawmakers predicted that the 1,300-acre project of 3,395 homes and 6 million square feet of commercial development will win easy approval Tuesday.

Even foes predict that one of the largest single developments in the city’s history will sail smoothly through the council. “Council members are telling us . . . that they will defer to Bernson on a land-use issue in his district,” said Roger Strull, a leader of PRIDE, the homeowners group opposing Porter Ranch. The project area lies within Councilman Hal Bernson’s 12th District.

It will take a lawsuit--which his group is prepared to file--to stop or downscale the project, Strull predicted. The Porter Ranch Development Co. project is expected to provide housing for 11,000 people and jobs for 20,000 by the time it is completed in 20 years.

Westside Councilman Marvin Braude said there has been very little lobbying in the days before the vote. “I’ve personally not been the target of much ear-bending,” he said. “I think it’s been very modest given the magnitude of the project.”

Planning deputies for two other lawmakers, who asked that they not be identified, said the project has been a “non-event” for their bosses. “A year ago it was different--the developer and residents were all here. But now there’s nothing. It’s like there’s been burnout or maybe everybody thinks they’ve said or done everything they can on the subject,” one of the deputies said.

If there are fireworks, they probably will come over the schools issue. At a City Hall hearing in late June, Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein, who represents the north San Fernando Valley, urged the city to require the developer to set aside more land for schools, and over a longer period of time.

The developer had agreed to set aside until the year 2000 a seven-acre site for an elementary school. Korenstein said that wasn’t good enough, noting that there might not be enough houses built by then to warrant opening a school. The elementary site--plus another of 15 acres for a junior high--should be set aside until at least 50% of the project’s houses are occupied, she said.

Several lawmakers, including Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, had appeared sympathetic to Korenstein’s request.

Bernson tried to put the school flap to rest Tuesday by pressing the Los Angeles Unified School District to agree to use school fees collected from Porter Ranch for an elementary school in the area. Although the developer is required to pay as much as $17 million for school construction, the district is not required to use this money to construct schools in Porter Ranch.

If the school district does not accept his plan, it will only prove that political ambition motivates the school-based foes of the plan, Bernson said. Korenstein has hinted that she may be interested in running against Bernson next year.

Korenstein was vacationing last week and could not be reached for comment on Bernson’s plan. But those familiar with her views say she will probably challenge the plan at Tuesday’s hearing, and will have the support of Valley PTA leaders.

Others say Bernson has gone the extra mile to satisfy the school district.

“The big question was the schools and I think that’s been addressed now,” Flores said last Friday. “Not that I won’t be willing to hear the concerns of the project’s opponents.”

Meanwhile, project critics last week seized on a mysterious study--only part of which was leaked to reporters--that painted a portrait of abominable future traffic conditions in the entire Chatsworth-Porter Ranch area.

The study, done at the city’s request, said that if all the development permitted by the proposed Chatsworth-Porter Ranch District Plan were actually undertaken, the area’s streets would be swamped. To accommodate traffic, Topanga Canyon Boulevard would have to be widened to 20 lanes; De Soto Avenue to 14 lanes; and Winnetka and Tampa avenues to 10 lanes each, the study said.

Bernson and city planning officials quickly disavowed the traffic analysis. It was incomplete, they said, based on incorrect numbers, presented only a worst-case scenario without taking into account traffic mitigation measures (such as car-pooling and traffic signal systems) and that much of the traffic flood predicted was coming from the surrounding communities, not just the Porter Ranch project.

Enough of the study’s text was available to reporters to appear to give some credence to Bernson’s view of the research. City planning officials also said they did not have the full text of the study and thus could not share it. Dick Kaku, the president of Kaku Associates, the Santa Monica-based firm that produced the study for the city, failed to return several phone calls for comment placed over a two-day period.

Strull, the PRIDE leader, said the study showed that traffic in the North Valley will be a catastrophe.