ELECTIONS : Slaying Shifts Focus of Campaign to Gangs

When a gang member’s errant bullet smashed through a window last Saturday and killed 60-year-old June Guin in her living room, the City Council election campaign suddenly acquired a compelling issue.

Even the incumbents, Mayor Charles H. Storing and Councilman Joe V. Alderete, said that people are fed up with gang violence and graffiti, and that something should be done about it.

The challengers, Sally Ann Holguin-Fallon, Robert Manderino and Bernard Acton, used the occasion to aim some criticism at the council for doing little to allay a growing sense of malaise in the city of 36,955 residents.

“This is a wild one,” said Storing, referring to this year’s campaign. He is completing his 28th year on the council.

“Things are out of control in La Puente,” said Holguin-Fallon, a former professional pianist who runs a local scholarship fund. “We can’t go a week without something terrible happening, and many times it simply goes unreported.”

The council has come up with only Band-Aid solutions, said Holguin-Fallon, who wants to be the city’s first female council member. She proposes anti-gang, anti-drug and parent education programs, including a community-based volunteer-run theater for teen-agers.

“Instead of seeing graffiti on the walls, let’s see their names in lights on the marquee,” Holguin-Fallon said.

Acton, 47, an accountant, says there isn’t enough of a Sheriff’s Department presence in the city, which does not have its own police department.

“Particularly in the downtown area, I’d like to see officers patrolling the streets to make the area safe,” Acton said.

He proposes more use of law-enforcement volunteers--as block watchers or citizen patrols--and better use of resources to free money for more sheriff’s deputies. “We can be more economical with the funds we spend,” Acton said.

Manderino, 36, a purchasing manager for a steel fabrication company and a former Mormon bishop in La Puente, stresses his experience with youth groups, as well as with social-service agencies. He also takes a dim view of spending at City Hall, citing a council-approved raise of more than 15% for City Manager Robert G. Gutierrez last year.

Like other cities in the area, La Puente is experiencing revenue shrinkage and increasing expenses. The city dipped into reserves last year to balance its budget.

Manderino criticizes the current council as being anti-business because of its approval of increased processing and licensing fees to raise revenues.

“The incumbents have not done anything of significant merit,” he said.

Acton and Manderino, who say they are pro-business, are running as a slate.

Alderete, who is finishing his first four-year term on the council, stands on his record of opposing new taxes in the city, including property and utility taxes.

He cites the planned opening in December of a new senior-citizens center as one of the chief accomplishments of the current council. As for crime and gang violence, Alderete says the Sheriff’s Department is doing a good job.

“They just can’t be on every street corner where all these gangbangers are shooting,” he said.

Storing, 69, the patriarch of politics in La Puente, worries about what he perceives as a new anti-incumbent spirit in the city. “The more Congress screws up, the more people blame everybody in public life,” he said.

Storing, serving his ninth one-year stint as mayor, says the council has attacked the gang problem with all its resources, including establishment of a graffiti abatement program with a crew that paints walls on short notice. “Crime, drugs, gangs and graffiti--they’re the overriding concerns of everybody these days,” Storing said.