In a recent interview, 1st Ward Alderman
Manny Flores touched on some of the goals and challenges for his
young administration.
Ald.
Manny Flores speaks with some of his constituents in Wicker
Park. Photo courtesy of Floresforfirst.com.
Key goals “I think community involvement, just getting
people involved in their government. Reducing crime. Making sure
services are being provided.”
Biggest challenges “You’re always going to have some
crime issues and really not the type of violent crime or anything
like that, but really dealing with quality of life issues. You know,
burglaries, graffiti, [and] nuisance type crimes. Trying to work
to abate that type of conduct, that type of behavior is always a
challenge. And really just to make sure that we continue to go forward
with the progress and you don’t see any type of letdown by
way of community participation.”
Focus on diversity
“That’s one of our strongest points
of our office. We have a very diverse office staff. I myself have
a very diverse background. While I’m an attorney by trade,
I come from a very blue-collar family. I am technically, if you
were to consider me in the census, I would be down as a minority.
I am 100 percent Mexican. I’m bilingual. We have young interns,
we have people who are Caucasian, we have people who are Hispanic.
It’s a very broad group and I think that enables us to work
with that broad diversity that you see in the ward.”
Issues in Wicker
Park “The number one concern for every neighborhood
would be safety. You could be in Wicker Park or you could be in
Humboldt Park, ultimately the biggest concern is the safety of the
streets. And again it could a matter of gang crime or a matter of
someone stealing the mail, at the end of the day its still crime
and that’s going to be relevant to the person who lives there.”
Gentrification “That’s an age-old
gripe and the bottom line is that you’re
going to have discontent on both sides. A community can either be
very divisive or it can be a very tight community. It all depends
on how people treat themselves and how people treat their neighbors.
I try to encourage people to get to know their neighbors …whether
they’ve lived there for 40 years or whether they’ve
lived there for six months.”
Balanced development “That’s when you look at urban planning
and land use principles and you apply them and you analyze the type
of developments being contemplated. You need a vision about what
the neighborhood could look like and what it should look like. And
not just today or next year, but five and ten years down the road.
You want property to increase in value, but a real increase and
not one that’s buoyed by a hypothetical transaction because
at some point the bubble is going to burst.”
A changing neighborhood “When you start changing and making drastic
changes to a neighborhood, not only are you changing the face of
that particular area, you’re also now adding demands that
were not contemplated before. Ensuring
that you have adequate infrastructure, because if your streets are
too narrow then you’ll create traffic congestion, you’re
going to have parking issues, you’re going to have density
issues.”
Doing his job I love my job. This is something that I have
been striving for all my life. Now is this the culmination of my
public service career? I don’t think so, but that doesn’t
mean that I’m already planning on running for office.”
