Candidate for
Council Member; City of Hawthorne

Alexandre (Alex) Monteiro's Vision for New Hawthorne "United we can make Hawthorne Glorious" Your Voice can Change Hawthorne! Goals: 1) To improve the quality of life for our citizens; 2) Increase Hawthorne Business development plan and opportunity to create new jobs; 3) continuing to increase Safety in our community; and 4) continue to Improve Education for our children. There are several key reasons why I decided to run for City Council. The first reason is to offer my experience as a community organizer and advocate of the people. For twenty years I have worked to improve the quality of life for every citizen regardless of their socio-economic status or race. As a councilmember, I will continue to advocate for the people and find alternative options other than taxes to fund our City services. Hawthorne's funding has been "hand to mouth" for years. While the City has been balancing its budget thanks to tough fiscal management and employees' personal finance sacrifices, we all know that with the State's poor finance policies and continuing decrease in revenues, we have to assume that there is a possibility of continuing deficit for the next fiscal year (FY2010-2011) and beyond. This is driven by structural issues including revenues increasing at a slower rate than the rate of expenditures. The City's longstanding tradition is to cut expenditures as needed to approve a balanced budget. Uncertain funding over the years has strained Hawthorne's ability to pay for all of our needs. There is great demand for a variety of City services. Residents have expressed that they would like to see more affordable housing, community policing programs in our streets and parks; Safe route to school for our children; pedestrian friendly city with more sidewalks and bike paths; more efficient public transportation; and more afterschool programs for our youth. Many would like more City recreation opportunities that currently are constrained by space and finance limitations. While the City has been successful in locating grants to supplement tax revenues, there are challenges in providing for all of the demand. I would like to find ways to upgrade our commercial tax base, including our business environment on Hawthorne Blvd., Prairie and Inglewood Avenues. With that comes my second reason why I am running for council? My community development experience would be a unique addition on the Council to assist with Hawthorne's future community development and business plans. As a city council, I would offer a more open perspective for a downtown Central Square on Hawthorne Blvd and expand other new businesses in the city. We need public and private partnerships and open debates of the following: 1) Debate about the best uses of the old mall has been longstanding and sometimes contentious. I support an open planning process that is directed by the City, which will include the property owner and public participation to develop plan options for our new downtown central square that will include an open and walking mall with several ethnic villages that makes Hawthorne a "City of Good neighbors" and a diverse community.

2) The old police station could be a combination of Housing and business development project that will serve as senior village housing and single room occupancy for youth that are coming out of foster care systems. This village will have a walking trail for our retirees, and a business center that would provide our youth with job opportunities, and those seniors who like to be active an opportunity to work and mentor our youth in developing their trade skills for the future. Hawthorne`s senior population is silently struggling paying their monthly high mortgage or rent and utilities. We need to develop adequate and affordable housing for our seniors and provide transitional housing for youths that are transitioned from foster care to self independency.

3) Another vacant building that could earn Hawthorne national recognition such as SPACE X, is the former Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center. With the help of the new owners, the County, State, and Federal agencies we can propose three programs in the area of health education and urgent care services.

a. Health care Services: Create a county running urgent care that would decrease demand for services at the emergency rooms at Harbor UCLA and the LCM. This will give Hawthorne's residents a greater rate of survival in a life-threatening situation. Residents will not have to commute 12 -20 minutes to receive medical attention. In a medical emergency, every minute is vital and often difference between life and death.

b. Nursing Training Program: How Can we do it? By proposing a partnership with the UCLA or USC nursing training programs in conjunction with SBWIB, County, State and Federal Health and human services to create a nursing training center that will recruit and train nurses. As you know across the country as well as in California, there is a shortage of nurses. By creating this center with the proposed partnership, we will give Hawthorne an opportunity to graduate nurses that will serve the country. The federal government has grants for such programs through several Departments such as: Health and Human Services, Education, EDD, Homeland Security, Federal One Stop Programs, and even the Department of Defense. How would we attract potential students? By offering free housing. The tower that RFK was building! Bring HUD and other departments to help us rebuild the tower into studio apartments that will house the students as they train to become nurses. Upon completion of the program, most of these nurses will work here (city, County, and California) for at least 2 years in community clinics and public hospitals to pay for any expenses as well as to give back to the community for their free housing and possible free education.

c. Work in partnership with public and private businesses and foundations to create a Senior Living Center for our elderly citizens that cannot care for themselves. It will be an opportunity for newly trained nurses to get work experience by working with the nursing staff and the proposed urgent care facility. In conclusion, these programs will create jobs, affordable housing, new business, volunteer opportunities, and other potential rewards to improve the quality of life for the residents of Hawthorne. Third Reason: Safety: As public servants, we must guarantee the safety of all citizens. Safety will be one of my top priorities. We must continue to modernize our police force. Equip them with the best tools to fight crime; especially crimes committed by gangs, offenses or violence against women, seniors, and children; identity theft/ fraud; new device crimes in our streets, such as cellular phones, personal computers, and other street crimes. We need to continue to strengthen our police department by giving them the additional human and financial resources that they need. Create more community policing programs to fight crime in all areas of Hawthorne, especially Moneta Gardens and our parks. Fourth Reason: Education: Education has been at the heart of my success and I truly believe that quality education for our children is the key to socio-economic triumph. If you work hard and take responsibility in your children's education, you are giving them a change for a better life. It is apparent that a majority of our public schools, especially the public high schools are not living up to their commitment to educate all of our young adults that need the finest skills and knowledge to continue their education and compete in this 21st century worldwide economy. We need new ideas that will create 21st century classrooms. Classrooms that combine technology, math, science, and language arts with innovative educational curriculum that provides regular social and emotional learning opportunities. Research demonstrates empirical evidence that what is needed today in our educational system in addition to higher academic standards are the five core competencies of social and emotional learning, which are: self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decision making, self-management, and relationship skills building. As a city councilmember, I will advocate to enhance the capacity of our youth to successfully manage life's tasks in the areas of learning, forming relationships, solving everyday problems, and adapting to the complex demands of growth and development in today's world of technology and the 21st century workforce and global economy. In addition, we need to prevent droup-outs and increase the rate of high school graduations. These are my reasons for running and vision for a new Hawthorne.