April 29, 2005

Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa

     Antonio Villaraigosa visited with a small but dedicated group of Wilmington supporters on April 10 at the Maya Restaurant on Avalon Street. The ever-energetic Councilman recalled a moment four years earlier when he was carried on the shoulders of union members in the ILWU hall in Wilmington. During the last election he had lost San Pedro by a wide margin, but won Wilmington with 80 percent of their vote. Essentially, his stop in Wilmington was an opportunity for him to say thanks to these hardcore supporters and explain how he will give people a voice in their government and include everyone in the process.
     “People want a voice in their government,” the former Assembly Speaker said. “They want to be able to make decisions about what their community looks like.” Villaraigosa explained that this was a universal impulse, the desire for a government that listens and works with them to build and improve their community as they see it. The Councilman pointed to City Controller Laura Chick’s study as proof that this wasn’t the case in the current administration, saying that, according to the report, “there were just two districts where most of the appointees to commissions came from: the 5th and the 11th. As if he were sounding bell tolls he said, “Not the 15th where the Mayor’s from, not the 14th where I’m from, or the 8th or the 9th or the 10th in South Los Angeles—but two districts.” In a city changing before our very eyes, Villaraigosa, in a subtle dig at the Hahn administration, stressed the dire need to draw in all sections of Angelenos into the political process and restore trust in government.
     Villaraigosa put out a call that it was time for a mayor unencumbered with baggage and with the energy to spare to tackle today’s problems. He closed his speech referring to what Angelenos want after serving as City Councilman and crisscrossing the city on the campaign trail saying, “They want somebody to talk straight to them and talk tough. If you want to ask me about traffic ...one of the things I’m going to say to them is there’s not an easy solution to all these problems.” The councilman then quipped, “If there was, somebody would have done it a long time ago...It’s gonna take sacrifice, it’s going to take people coming together... a lot of the problems that we’re facing right now, we’re all a part of the problem.”

Woman: Well, Antonio, everybody is on the bandwagon about crime and gangs and injunctions—all this other stuff and building new jails...and it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, because I think if our kids went back to our summer programs, we would not have a lot of these problems and wouldn’t need so many jails. (applause)

AV: A very good comment. Let me tell you where I absolutely agree and then let me tell you where—I do believe that this city is the most under-policed city in the country. And I have said that I want to add a thousand more cops, but I want most of them, or many of them, a good percentage of those new cops to do community-based policing. Foot patrol, bike patrol, you know, expand our connection to the community. And very important—it’s not just police, it’s prevention. You know, you said something—maybe we share the same philosophy. Someone took a chance on me. I was, you know, an at-risk kid, I lived in a home of domestic violence, my mother worked two jobs, she loved us but you know she was never home. She was always working.
     She would get home at 7 p.m. I had nowhere to go. You know, it was the ‘60s— there were teen posts, the neighborhood youth corps, there was the CETA program. We had all those little things. If you did a little work, you know at school they used to make fun of me because at school I used to work as a janitor. They used to say he was my father, right? I had a little job, I had a little money. There was the YMCA and the Boys Club. I got to go to camp, do things that gave me experiences. You know you are absolutely right... Martin Ludlow, if you haven’t heard, he’s a council member, he’s been talking about just what you said. I am very supportive of doing a couple of things. He’s talking about doing a department for prevention and intervention programs. I’m not sure we need a department, but we need to elevate the importance and coordinate all of our resources that we’re spending now, private, public, partnership efforts, because Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA’s after school programs—we’ve got to get kids off the streets. It needs to be every bit as much a priority as getting cops.

Man: I’m Richard Havenick and I live in San Pedro, and I’ve been working with the Harbor Community on Air Quality, I have a question...a drive toward action and specifics.
     The situation goes like this. In 2001 the air down here was 1500 times the maximum levels that were cancerous. Excuse me, that was in 1999. In 2001, Mayor Hahn said there would be No Net Increase over 2001 levels. In 2004, we had no plan to get to No Net Increase—we asked for one. We got one that was less than convincing, and we’ve been working since June, actually, largely thanks to the efforts of the community and to Noel Parks more than anyone else. Thanks to the community, we’re making progress on air quality. It only occurred thanks to the hard-working people of the community.
     The situation is I’m grateful to Mayor Hahn for his motivation to air quality and cleaning up both our waterfronts. But we have a situation where leadership actually was necessary—is necessary—in picking the executive director of the Port, of the Harbor Commission over the Port, and of the Mayor over the Harbor Commission’s direction.
     So the situation is there’s a motivation to support the status quo.We have jobs, thanks to the shipping companies, the railroads, but there’s a drive to the status quo with an inertia and a motivation that’s hard to break. We need some leadership and some specific action that’s going to break the hold that these constituents—not the community—but that these people have on our city. Is there specific action you might take that addresses our commission, the executive director, and leadership of the Port?

AV: Let me just say something. You said a couple of things that I wanted to separate. 2001, we made the promise; 2004, we still didn’t have much of anything in terms of any project making that promise happen. I would submit to you—the fact that he was in an election had something to do with the fact that he started moving a little more aggressively than he had in the first year. I’ve got the support of the California League of Conservation voters, the Sierra Club, the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters. They’ve looked at my records...over six years, a 100 percent record on the environment.
     They know that I know enough about the dirty air in this region that 25 percent is coming from this Port, and that the next Mayor’s got to do something about it. Not in the fourth year, but in the first.
     My commissioners—there will be local representation on that commission, that’s very important to me. There will be people that don’t see a contradiction between a clean environment and a good port. And in fact, understand the only way we’re going to have a good well-functioning Port is if we have a clean port. He [Mayor Hahn] says he supports this too...the question is, do you think he’s done enough on it?
     I’ve said that I want to move—you know, with every new contract, I want to move to cold ironing. Why? Because we can’t afford to have that kind of diesel fumes going into our environment. I support the process that you guys are currently engaged in and will push that along if it’s not done by the time I become Mayor. If it is, then I’m going to implement it. I want to work with Long Beach to be a partner too, because, you know, if they’re dragging behind, then that’s not going to be a good thing for us. I think we need to—you know, I authored the Carl Moyer Program, which was a billion dollar initiative, it started at 50 million when I first did it, and it’s an effort to retrofit engines from diesel to alternative fuel. It’s a very important effort. I want to expand that and connect that with the Port, and work with the State. My relationship with the state right now, as a former Speaker, is a good one, so I want to try to draw down those dollars, because I think that they’re important.
     I want to do something about the fact that you have—and this is a tough one—all these trucks working, 8am to 5pm doesn’t make sense, but how we do this in a way that addresses community concerns about 24-hour trucking is obviously something we’re going to have work on. But [these are] all things we’re going to have to weigh, because right now, just doing it eight to five is not working for us, because we’ve got all these trucks waiting and idling in a way that’s not healthy. So those are some ideas.
     My commissioners are going to be people that understand that a successful Port can be a green technology port.

JA: Along the lines of public transportation the question is whether or not you feel more committed to expanding the bus system, the way the Bus Riders’ Union has talked about doing—and it’s pretty much the way the city has gone ever since Union Oil took the Red Car away from us—or whether strategically there are opportunities like this gentleman talks about in terms of bringing in light rail. Like through Alameda Corridor or from the airport to the harbor or downtown LA? You know there’s a spur that goes right off the Blue Line, right into Wilmington, you know? The right of way is there, the tracks are there.

AV: There’s a couple things. I’m a big supporter of the buses and the bus system. I love the rapid buses—they need more dash buses as well. But ultimately we are not going to be able to address the gridlock in LA with buses. You can put a bus behind the bus behind the bus behind the bus all the way down Wilshire Boulevard. and you still have gridlock and so it is ultimately going to mean more light-rail in the city. But it’s a balance—it can’t be only buses. And so I do support the bus riders.

JA: But can it be at the expense of building more freeways?

AV: Yes! That’s what it has to be, I mean because as soon as you build a freeway, and the perfect example is the 105, you fill it up. …more public transit is where we gotta go. Now, we need to get the will to go there. I want to move ahead right away as soon as I become Mayor—start the process on the Exposition line. That line will take you from downtown to Santa Monica, great ridership on there. It makes a lot of sense. I want to look at ideas like the one you just proposed where there is a right of way already and you don’t have to build the right of way. You don’t have to buy, where there are things I think we have to be more creative about looking for those opportunities.

Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa in the parking lot of Maya Restaurant in Wilmington after an interview with Random Lengths Publisher James Allen.  Photo:James Preston Allen.