Downey mayor has a challenger in City Council race

DOWNEY — Downey resident Alexandria Contreras has announced her candidacy for city council.

Contreras, 26, will make her bid for District 1, going up against sitting mayor Blanca Pacheco.

A Warren High School graduate, Contreras briefly moved away for work purposes after having been raised in the city.

“I started off doing non-profit fundraising in Boston,” said Contreras. “Then that job took me into different organizing, community engagement type positions that took me everywhere from Arizona, to Virginia, New Mexico.”

Eventually, however, Contreras says that she decided that she wanted to come back home and “bring everything that I learned.”

“I’ve been keeping up with local news, and what’s going on,” said Contreras. “I got a job here as regional organizing director with California YIMBY, to work in housing advocacy state-wide.”

Contreras acknowledged she may not be familiar to many residents in the traditional sense.

Instead, she has spent her time focused on volunteer work, mainly centered around homelessness and housing.

“I did the homeless count. I work with a couple of organizations - more Greater LA County organizations - to work around housing,” said Contreras. “I’ve done volunteer work with Ktown for All, SELA, and then a couple other LGBTQ groups where I just attended the membership type things and donate where I can.”

Contreras added that she felt that there were not many of these types of groups within Downey, and that many of her organization efforts were to bring similar opportunities to younger people.

“I guess I wouldn’t be involved in the traditional volunteer model that most people expect people to see in, because the things that I’m looking for - and that I know a lot of other people are looking for – just simply aren’t here,” said Contreras. “I want to bring them here, so that way people can get involved.”

She says that it was a “lack of leadership in City Council” that motivated her to run.

“After organizing here for a year – also growing up here, being loosely involved with things that are going on – not a lot has changed,” said Contreras. “I wouldn’t describe Downey as ‘this is a happy city, this is a great place for us young people to do things.’

“There wasn’t a lot for us to get involved with. I want that to change, because Downey has a huge potential to be a happy city, and there is a huge potential for us to grow that way. But in order to make that happen, we have to be more of an inclusive city…”

Contreras’s platform is one of making Downey just that: “a happy city.” Her main points are split between public safety, community engagement, environment, and housing.

“I’m not going to promise to make problems erase overnight, but what I can promise is that I will work my best to make Downey a happy city for everyone to live in and enjoy living here,” said Contreras.

One of her ideas she hopes to bring to the table if elected is to reimagine how residents move through city space.

“I bike everywhere now…it takes about 25 minutes for me to bike from one end of the city to the other,” said Contreras. “Now imagine if we had the infrastructure in place that allowed people to walk and bike safely…imagine if City Council had made that a priority a decade ago.

“We wouldn’t be experiencing the same kind of frustration I believe we are experiencing right now, and we would also help foster more of a sense of community, because people are not stuck in their cars.

“We give so much public space to cars, that we forget about the people in them.”

Of course, housing is also a major part of her campaign.

“Every 10 years, the Southern California Association of Governments – which basically makes up all of LA County and a little bit more – basically they create a formula, they get data from all the various cities, they plug in the data into this formula, and then they get the regional housing needs allotment,” said Contreras.

“Every city gets ‘X’ amount of homes that they then have to build within the next eight years, essentially. The city of Downey has a number of almost 7,000 homes that we have to build within the next eight years.

“Part of my platform is with all these homes that are going to be brought, how do we smartly plan in the city for these homes to bring smart growth…and also with all those new homes, we’re going to need better protections for the renters who live here.

“Downey is almost a majority renter city…and we don’t have enough protections for renters here in the city. That’s a shame, because renters are community investors; just because you rent, doesn’t mean that you are not invested in the community you live in.”

While COVID-19 is preventing Contreras from hitting the campaign trail in a traditional sense, she does have virtual events planned for the near future.

She can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as at her website alexfordowney.com.