Jose Huizar

Although he has been on the job little more than a year, Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar had expected to run unopposed as he seeks his first full term next month. Instead, he finds himself battling a former aide, who mounted a surprise bid for the 14th District seat. Alvin Parra, Huizar's former district director, resigned and threw his hat into the ring just minutes before the November filing deadline, forcing Huizar to roll out a defensive campaign.

Voters in the Los Angeles Unified School District will decide next month on a little-watched amendment to the City Charter that aims to rein in the frenzied nature of school board races with campaign contribution restrictions and term limits. Supporters of the proposed amendment say it is needed to bring the school board in line with other elected bodies.

Andres Cardenas married Maria Quezada in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, in 1946. Young, poor and with little in the way of a future, the newlyweds immigrated to the United States. Andres' education went as far as the first grade, Maria's the second. He started picking crops near Stockton, later became a day laborer and eventually started his own gardening business. He and his wife settled in Pacoima, where they raised 11 children.

The City Council declined Tuesday to put a measure on the November ballot that would have opened the door to a pay raise for members of the Los Angeles Unified School District's elected board but also imposed term limits and campaign finance restrictions. The vote on the motion to put the proposal on the ballot was 6 to 7, two votes short of the eight required for passage.

Shortly after he was elected to the Los Angeles City Council last November, Jose Huizar moved from El Sereno back to Boyle Heights, the neighborhood where he grew up. Huizar began looking around at his boyhood haunts and decided that it would be nice if the old business district in Boyle Heights had a coffeehouse. Part of this was the urban planner in him -- coffeehouses generate pedestrian traffic, which in turn can help bring people back into a neighborhood.

The first surprise of the March 2007 elections for Los Angeles City Council came Saturday morning when Alvin Parra, a deputy to first-term Councilman Jose Huizar, resigned his job and then filed to run against Huizar. "I worked for him for about a year, and what became very clear to me is that Jose Huizar is not the person that he portrays himself to be," Parra said. "He has made it clear that what goes on in the district and field aren't his priorities. He's more concerned with City Hall."

Re "Instant runoffs might be fix for voter fatigue," June 11 Based on the low turnout and high cost of the recent city runoff election -- which involved only two school board seats and one community college position and cost taxpayers about $8 million -- the Los Angeles Community College District has endorsed the concept of change in our electoral system. We have resolved to investigate instant-runoff voting and look forward to the City Council's deliberations on a proposal by Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Jose Huizar.

There will be plenty on the line -- including the Eastern League football title -- tonight when Garfield and Roosevelt play in the "East Los Angeles Classic" at East Los Angeles College. But that isn't always the case when the teams meet. Neither has won a City Section Championship Division title and the game often generates little buzz outside East L.A. So The Times asked players, coaches, community members, administrators and famous alumni from both schools why more than 20,000 people show up each year for the game: 'You might lose all your games, but you win the East L.A. Classic and you still have a good season.

Re "Schools violate junk food ban," May 9 I can almost bet that out of the 70 schools that were tracked down selling junk food by illegal vendors, most were in Boyle Heights. Residents of Boyle Heights have been fighting this issue since the mayor was a councilman and also with our current councilman, Jose Huizar. Check out any school in Boyle Heights and you will find vendors selling all around these schools. How do we get fix this issue if people keep buying from them? Our complaints have fallen on deaf ears at City Council for a long time.

Re "Dead end on Olvera Street," Editorial, July 13 I appreciate The Times' attention to a recent audit released by the city controllers office on the El Pueblo Historic Monument. This important landmark in the city of Los Angeles indeed deserves our attention. Even before the audit's release, I, along with other city officials, had taken steps to transform El Pueblo into a financially self-sufficient venue. As a member of the budget and finance committee, I requested last month that the general manager of El Pueblo begin negotiations with the 61 merchants currently without lease agreements to bring their rents more in line with current market rates.