South Gate City Council
De La Torre was elected to the South Gate City Council in 1997 and served until 2004, serving as mayor for two of those years. He represented the city on the Executive Board of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, where he played a key role in developing plans to improve the I-710 Freeway. He served on the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Mountains and Rivers Conservancy where he supported the preservation of open space throughout the district.
As Mayor, he worked to improve relations between the city, the community, and the police department. He helped build new parks, addressed budget issues, helped to improve the transportation infrastructure, and improved senior programs and education for the city's children. In order to alleviate overcrowding, De La Torre fought for new and better school facilities. He fought for honest and effective government, and led South Gate residents in a grassroots campaign to recall corrupt elected officials, stabilize the city's financial condition, and rebuild public trust.
Read more about this topic: Hector De La Torre
Famous quotes containing the words south, gate, city and/or council:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus’ gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty is, my lady sweet, arise;
Arise, arise!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“He bends to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed to Nature, and not to city watches. He takes the pace of seasons, plants and chemistry. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)