Flores Pledges to Intensify Efforts on San Pedro Issues

While speaking plainly about her interest in higher office, Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores focused Thursday on the problems and future of San Pedro in a speech, pledging to redouble her efforts to address the community’s development, traffic and crime.

Before the largest-ever crowd to attend her annual State of San Pedro breakfast address, the harbor-area councilwoman told an estimated 230 civic and business leaders that she remains open to the prospect of running again for a state or county post. Last fall, Flores lost a bid to defeat Secretary of State March Fong Eu.

At the same time, Flores’ 20-minute speech was clearly aimed at proving she has not been too distracted by campaigning to look at--and respond to--community concerns.

That attention, she said, is shown by progress in slowing San Pedro’s once-rampant rise in apartment and condominium construction. While permanent land-use limits are being drawn, she said, she backed efforts to temporarily protect single-family neighborhoods from new multiunit projects.

Since a local advisory committee recommended, and the council approved, an interim limit in land-use law 17 months ago, Flores said only three multiunit projects, all triplexes, have been approved for development.

Similarly, she said, the future of development along Pacific Avenue, San Pedro’s central business district, and the Beacon Street redevelopment area are under review by citizen advisory committees charged with preventing the drive for economic growth from disrupting the community’s small-town appeal.

Downtown San Pedro, she added, has already been the focus of special attention, and city plans now include more than $3 million for new parking lots and a $500,000 trolley system.

To address continuing complaints about traffic congestion in the community, Flores pointed to the ambitious plans for a new truck-and-train transportation corridor between the port and downtown Los Angeles. The project, to run along Alameda Boulevard, will receive $80 million from a statewide bond measure passed last November, she said.

Though acknowledging concern over the increase in crime, particularly crimes committed by street gangs, Flores emphasized that the Police Department’s Harbor Division continues to have the lowest volume of serious crime among the city’s 18 stations.

And with the city of Los Angeles in a budget crisis, Flores suggested that enhancing police services in San Pedro will be difficult.

Nevertheless, Flores promised in broad terms to push for improved police services despite a partial hiring freeze in the Los Angeles Police Department. “I will do everything I can to maintain and strengthen police services,” she said.

Flores’ address was well-received by the breakfast crowd, many of whom have known her since her days as former chief deputy to the late harbor-area Councilman John S. Gibson Jr. Indeed, one measure of Flores’ reception was the cordial question-and-answer session that followed her speech. During that session, Flores took about 10 questions, with two supporters essentially asking, “When will we be able to vote for you for higher office again?”

Flores responded that ever since her bid as the Republican candidate for secretary of state, “I have seen my name on every short list for every job, including mayor” of Los Angeles.

“But we’ll have to wait and see what happens,” she said.

Flores’ remarks during and after the breakfast speech left no doubt that midway through her third-term on the City Council, she is actively considering her political options. “I haven’t foreclosed on anything,” she told reporters after her address.