Newly Elected Councilman at Work Before Taking Office : Politics: Alan Lowenthal tells constituents in a crime-ridden area that he will work to create police substations and community planning boards.

Alan Lowenthal, the surprise winner in last week’s Long Beach City Council election, will not take office for another three months. But already he is calling press conferences and vowing to take action on his campaign promises.

Surrounded by a small group of elderly and disabled residents in the courtyard of a crime-infested apartment complex, Lowenthal said Thursday that he will immediately start crusading for the establishment of a police substation in the neighborhood and the formation of community planning boards.

The brown stucco apartment building at Orange Avenue and 7th Street was one he visited during the dogged campaign walks that helped him wrest the district from the well-financed, longtime incumbent, Wallace Edgerton.

“They are desperate. They are frightened,” Lowenthal said of the tenants, who told him of living with robberies, shootings, attempted rapes, sleep-destroying boom box music and intimidation by drug dealers. “They are under attack.”

Lowenthal faces an uphill battle in getting police substations. Often discussed in the past, they have always fallen victim to budget restraints, which are tighter than ever this year. Saying he plans to meet with city and police officials about the issue, Lowenthal called for a “thorough study” of how police resources are used. Some decentralization, he suggested, might be more cost-effective.

He also promised to start meeting soon with neighborhood groups to talk about the formation of community boards to advise him on development and planning matters. “Neighborhoods must have more control over development,” Lowenthal said, adding that he would not support projects opposed by the community.

The setting for Lowenthal’s press conference underscored his differences with Edgerton. The 2nd District, which picked up part of downtown and one of the nation’s busiest ports during last year’s reapportionment, includes waterfront homes but also many high-density apartment buildings. The apartment complex is home to the kind of people Edgerton has repeatedly said Long Beach has too many of--the poor who are drawing some sort of government subsidy.

Indeed, one of Edgerton’s campaign themes had been the need to change the “demographics” of Long Beach and to cut the city’s use of federal housing subsidies. He often attacked Lowenthal as a radical who wants to bring more poverty housing to the district, setting off bitter campaign exchanges.

That all faded in the post-election glow of victory, however.

Saying that his telephone has not stopped ringing since he won, Lowenthal noted that Edgerton, along with Mayor Ernie Kell, an Edgerton ally, had called him.

“I was moved by his statement to me,” Lowenthal said of Edgerton, thanking the veteran councilman for his graciousness. Lowenthal even spoke of “the immense contribution of Wallace Edgerton over the last 17 years. He tried to downzone neighborhoods. He helped fledging neighborhood associations in the 2nd District.”

First elected in 1975, Edgerton was the only incumbent defeated in last week’s primary. The two other councilmen up for reelection, Clarence Smith and Thomas Clark, were forced into June runoffs when they failed to get at least half the vote.

Both Smith and Clark were the top vote-getters, with their strongest challengers trailing more than 10 percentage points behind. But the third-place contestants grabbed enough of the vote to deny the councilmen victory.

Smith will face Doris Topsy-Elvord and Clark will have to beat Charles G. (Jerry) Westlund in contests that promise to grow more fiery as the June 2 election approaches.