Jose Ugarte, a candidate for City Council district nine which includes USC, said if elected he would work toward \u201ca clean, safe and affordable South Central L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ugarte said he would do that by banning RVs, campers and trailers in his district and advocate for a citywide ban. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt brings a lot of trash,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cIt takes us so much money to clean up RVs, campers and trailers have hazmat crews, clean up feces. It\u2019s just impossible for the city to keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview with Annenberg Media on Sept. 23, Ugarte described himself as the \u201cAmerican dream for South L.A.\u201d and said he found out he was undocumented when he was 17. <\/p>\n
\u201cI got a piece of paper from every single school that I applied to, including USC, that said I had to pay out-of-state tuition because I did not have a social security number,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what that meant at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said his first ID read \u201cillegal alien resident card.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI got lucky that my dad was a resident before I turned 18, so I automatically became a citizen,\u201d Ugarte said. <\/p>\n
He worked for congressional campaigns, on behalf of propositions, California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and City Councilmember Curran Price. <\/p>\n
Ugarte pushed back against the idea of abolishing or defunding the police and said he wants more officers on the street. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re down about 1,500 officers in the city of L.A. I grew up in South Central in the 90s where it was bad,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cI have a three year old daughter that I\u2019m raising here in South Central. I don\u2019t want her to grow up in the same area that I grew up in, it\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he wants city councilmembers to have the ability to directly hire and fire police officers and said he wants more female officers, officers with a college degree and local officers. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing is that 50% of officers live outside the city of L.A.,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cOrange County, Ventura County, San Bernardino County and to me that\u2019s a job to them. It shouldn\u2019t be a job, it should be a career and if we have more local officers who live in the community that they grew up in they mostly respect the community they stay out of trouble they don\u2019t get complaints against them that\u2019s the kind of public safety I want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said he wants more officers on foot, horse and bike patrol. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we talk about abolishing the police and defunding the police it doesn\u2019t work in South L.A.,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cI grew up in a domestic violence household where if you didn\u2019t call a cop and the cop didn\u2019t show up on time people could be killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the city needs to hire more officers rather than paying the officers they have overtime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe give officers double overtime and triple overtime instead of hiring new officers,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cOfficers are human beings. You can\u2019t work on a 20 hour day and still be capable of doing your job. To me it\u2019s not right.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that Measure ULA, also known as the mansion tax, needs to be reformed to exempt affordable housing developers. The measure passed in 2022 with 58% support and puts a tax on properties sold in Los Angeles over $5 million dollars. <\/p>\n
\u201cWere losing all these jobs,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cThat means nobody\u2019s developing. That means we kind of shot ourselves in the foot and the whole goal for this mansion tax is develop more and it\u2019s not working.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ugarte also said that the city needs to pivot how it tackles homelessness from a housing issue to a mental health issue. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you house somebody and they\u2019re not mentally stable to stay in that house and to be under a roof and have rules, no drugs, no alcohol, no paraphernalia, then if they don\u2019t want to stay there they can leave,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem. But they can go in and out and no matter what taxpayers are still paying.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he wants to cut Measure H and Prop HHH money from being allocated to housing and divert it to mental health resources. <\/p>\n
He also responded to his former boss, City Councilmember Curran Price being indicted on federal corruption charges. Ugarte served as a deputy chief of staff to Price based in his district office. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the trial my name doesn\u2019t come up in it at all, a couple of my coworkers do,\u201d Ugarte said. \u201cThey have to go to court and testify. My name doesn\u2019t come up at all because I worked in the district office, local community stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jose Ugarte, a candidate for City Council district nine which includes USC, said if elected he would work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2975,33144,20034,194840,3705,132885,194837,194836,21980,194834,194835,17980,1751,20812,35072,4674,1493,13533,48,52,51,5015,47,5436,50,49,3843,28515,194838,194839,2093,194841,13,1929,43390,6214,1748,5956,111056,93856,194833],"class_list":["post-503601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-2975","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-california-state-assembly","tag-california-state-assembly-speaker-anthony-rendon","tag-campaign","tag-campaign-2026","tag-cd-9","tag-city-council-district-9","tag-corruption","tag-curran-price","tag-defund-the-police","tag-democrat","tag-democrats","tag-district-9","tag-election-2026","tag-election-day","tag-homelessness","tag-jose-ugarte","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lapd","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-city-council","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-police-department","tag-mansion-tax","tag-measure-h","tag-measure-hhh","tag-mental-health","tag-novemeber-3","tag-politics","tag-price","tag-rendon","tag-republican","tag-republicans","tag-south-central","tag-south-central-l-a","tag-south-central-los-angeles","tag-ugarte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}