ELECTIONS / CITY COUNCIL : Anne Finn: Councilman’s widow cites her background and nearly 50 years in Valley.

Touting herself as the wife of a former councilman and a resident of the San Fernando Valley for nearly half a century, Anne Finn said Thursday she’s ready and able to fill the seat being vacated this year by retiring Los Angeles Councilman Ernani Bernardi.

“I have the background, the experience, the humanity for this job,” the 77-year-old Finn said at a City Hall news conference.

“You know me. I know most of you. For almost 50 years, while living in the San Fernando Valley, I’ve been active in this great Los Angeles community.”

Finn plans to spend $150,000 on her campaign for the 7th District seat.

She is the widow of Howard Finn, an East Valley councilman who died in 1986 after collapsing from a heart attack at City Hall. About two-thirds of the existing 7th District includes areas once represented by the late councilman.

However, the 7th District is much more racially diverse than the district Howard Finn represented, and in recent years East Valley Latinos have worked toward eventually electing one of their own to Bernardi’s seat.

Asked what her message to the district’s growing population of Latino voters would be, Finn told reporters: “I’d say I’m a member of the human race. I guess you’d say I’m colorblind.”

Despite a 70% Latino population in the district, Finn political consultant Rick Taylor predicted Thursday that only 25% of the voters in the 7th District primary April 20 will be Latino, while 48% of the voters will be senior citizens.

Taylor said the top two vote-getters could both be non-Latinos.

Answering reporters’ questions, Finn refused to say whether she would oppose any bid to extend the life of the city-owned Lopez Canyon Landfill in Lake View Terrace beyond 1996, when its current permit expires. But she did call it a tragedy that the East Valley has so many landfills.

“I probably would oppose it, but I still need more facts,” she said.

On another issue, Finn said she supports an April ballot measure to raise property taxes to hire 1,000 additional police. “It would probably cost only 50 cents per week for a household,” Finn said. But she added that she “would not tell others how to vote” on the issue.

An identical police measure, Proposition N on November’s ballot, got 63% of the vote citywide when a two-thirds vote was needed to win. But in District 7, the measure was considerably less popular, receiving 51% of the vote.

Finn also said she backs two controversial school proposals, both of which tap into deep-seated Valley displeasure with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

One, by state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) would set up a new San Fernando Valley school district separate from the L.A. district.

The other is a proposed ballot measure to give the Valley more clout by redrawing the Los Angeles district’s political boundaries, which were changed last summer.

Under that remap plan, only one school board seat is wholly in the Valley, and the heavily Latino East Valley areas are in a district that includes, and is dominated by, East Los Angeles.