PROFILE / RICHARD ALARCON : Bradley Aide Makes Use of Wide-Ranging Connections : L.A. government: Allies say Richard Alarcon is a strong advocate for the San Fernando Valley. Skeptics think he is preparing for a City Council race.

Richard Alarcon is known by some as “Mr. Network”--the man with a thousand connections.

And the 38-year-old Alarcon, in interviews marking his second anniversary as Mayor Tom Bradley’s San Fernando Valley coordinator, does nothing to discourage this image.

In his fourth-floor office at Van Nuys City Hall, Alarcon recently spoke of a dozen Valley-based community groups on whose boards or advisory committees he sits, groups that solicit his advice on whom to appoint to their boards, and the long list of leaders-in-training he is helping to groom.

“I see him everywhere,” said Sherman Oaks attorney Ben Reznik, chairman of the influential Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. Reznik contends that Alarcon has filled the shoes of his predecessor, Dodo Meyer, whose connections and string-pulling abilities were legendary.

“Dodo was a tough act to follow,” Reznik said. “But Richard’s done it well.”

Alarcon’s network of memberships and connections to Valley organizations are all part of what the dapper father of four and resident of North Hills sees as central to his role as Bradley’s top aide in the Valley.

He says that role involves keeping a finger on the Valley’s pulse, empowering people, particularly the Valley’s minorities, making City Hall accessible and building an ethnically diverse leadership in the Valley.

But some skeptics see Alarcon’s networking as just patronage and back-scratching, with the goal of developing a cadre of well-placed beneficiaries and allies who will help him win Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi’s seat when the 80-year-old lawmaker retires next year.

Others view Alarcon’s membership on the boards of nonprofit, community agency boards as having the potential for conflict of interest, especially because some, such as the Valley Interfaith Council and Habitat for Humanity, receive city grant funds.

Valley Interfaith has a contract with the city’s Department of Aging to run five senior citizen programs in the Valley. Habitat for Humanity recently got a $312,000 grant from the city’s redevelopment agency. Alarcon said he introduced Habitat representatives to officials at City Hall as the agency looked for government funding.

“It doesn’t look good,” said an aide in one council office. “Every agency would like to have a top mayor’s aide on their board.”

This observer, who asked for anonymity, disagreed that board membership is essential to Alarcon’s job of keeping the mayor’s office in touch with the Valley’s thinking, priorities and interests. “You don’t need to belong--just attend the meetings,” this aide said.

Rebecca Avila, city Ethics Commission deputy director, sees a “potential perception problem” if people believe an agency has an “unfair advantage” in competing for city grant dollars because a high city official sits on its board.

But Avila quickly noted that as long as city officials serve without pay on such nonprofit boards, the classic conflict-of-interest problem--illegal use of office for self-enrichment--is not an issue.

Alarcon is not paid to sit on these boards, and says he is careful not to vote on matters involving an agency’s business with the city. On the other hand, Alarcon unhesitatingly says that he taps foundations and corporations to help agencies to which he belongs.

For example, at his urging, Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Panorama City bought an X-ray machine for tuberculosis testing for Meeting Each Need with Dignity (MEND), a Pacoima-based poverty agency on whose board Alarcon sits.

Alarcon, a reserved man, bridles at the suggestion that he is playing politics with his connections. “If I’m creating a network, it’s not for me but for the Valley,” he said. “The mechanisms I’m setting up will be in place long after I’ve left this office.”

But Alarcon does not deny that the idea of running for Bernardi’s seat tantalizes him.

“It is something I’m interested in and am considering,” he said.

The field of candidates for Bernardi’s seat is likely to look like the Ventura Freeway at rush hour. At least half a dozen aspirants are known to covet the position representing the heavily Latino, East Valley district.

And it is to the East Valley that Alarcon devotes much of his time--specifically to the North East Community Action Project and the Valley Leadership Institute.

The community action project was set up as an experiment by United Way after the community agency determined that its resources were not reaching all areas of the San Fernando Valley, especially the East Valley.

Alarcon is chairman of the project, which has a fluid membership of dozens of East Valley community activists and an annual budget of about $40,000 for projects in the city of San Fernando and the communities of Sylmar and Pacoima.

For example, as the city was still smoldering from the fires set during last April’s civil unrest, the project determined which emergency projects it might undertake to alleviate tensions in the East Valley and to channel minority community frustrations.

Six projects were chosen, including an East Valley voter registration plan.

Alarcon’s critics say the voter registration drive could easily have become a thinly veiled Alarcon-for-City-Council vehicle. Alarcon denies that this was the motive.

United Way’s board did not approve the plan, holding that it would be an inappropriate use of charitable donations. It was a rare rebuke to a project endorsed by Alarcon, who is widely known for his diplomatic ways.

Another of the group’s post-riot projects was providing scholarships to fledgling East Valley leaders to attend the Valley Leadership Institute. Alarcon is vice chairman of the institute. The organization seeks to nurture new leaders in the Valley through classes offered by its officers, including Alarcon.

Institute interns have included people such as Monica Castaneda, business manager of MEND, the East Valley group that Alarcon heads. Castaneda, who says she was once a weakling in her dealings with people of position and power, got a scholarship from the North East Community Action Project to attend the institute program.

Other graduates: Linda Jones, a Pacoima activist and president of the Valley chapter of the Black American Political Assn. of California; Marianne Haver Hill, executive director of MEND; and Irene Tovar, a longtime East Valley Latino activist.

“I can’t take it away from him--he has helped hold the door open to let others of us in the minority community get in to sit down at the table” of power, said one longtime East Valley community activist who asked for anonymity and is generally an Alarcon critic.

Alarcon also is uniquely situated to nurture and flatter the Valley’s leadership by providing it with posts of power at City Hall.

For example, Alarcon names Corrine Sanchez, head of El Proyecto del Barrio, a Pacoima job-training agency, and Bonny Matheson as persons Bradley has appointed to municipal posts with his help. Sanchez is on the city’s Transportation Commission and Matheson is on the convention center board.

“Since he had strong roots in the East Valley’s Latino community, there was a concern when Richard was initially appointed by the mayor about what kind of sensitivity he might have to the Valley’s more affluent areas,” said Rob Glushon, an attorney and president of an Encino homeowners group. “But that’s a test he’s passed.”

Glushon said he has found Alarcon to be a useful ally in a recent push by West Valley groups “to cut through red tape” and get the city parks department to open a gym at Balboa Park.

Although work on the gym was almost finished, the department refused to open it until the contractor had completed some minor work, leaving local youths with no place to play while the contractor and city quibbled, Glushon said. With a nudge from Alarcon, city parks chief Jackie Tatum has agreed to open the gym earlier than normal, Glushon said.

Alarcon insists his emphasis on the East Valley “has not been to the exclusion of the rest of the Valley.”

Others are not sure.

Robert Scott, president of United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, said he wondered about Alarcon’s even-handedness during the recently concluded school board redistricting controversy.

Alarcon, a former president of the Valley chapter of the Mexican-American Political Assn., has been allied with Latino civil rights groups that backed the recently adopted school redistricting plan that many, including the United Chambers and the Valley-based 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn., believe will dilute the Valley’s voice on the school board.

Although Alarcon bowed out of the coalition when it shifted its focus from state and national to local redistricting, Scott believes Alarcon has failed to improve what many see as the stepchild status of the Valley at City Hall.

Reznik, however, sees Alarcon as a strong advocate for the Valley.

“I don’t think he’s content at all that the Valley is treated like a second-class citizen,” Reznik said. “I think he’s got a lot of commitment to the Valley. He may have political ambitions. But his heart is in the right place.”

Hill, executive director of MEND, agrees. “He’s one of our best evangelists,” Hill said. “No, let’s say he’s one of our best PR people.”