Although Emanuel Pleitez is running a grassroots campaign and is currently not favored to win, he has developed interesting ideas that are worth considering regardless of who ultimately wins office.

Pleitez is familiar with the Office of the Mayor, having worked twice for current Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, but the ideas that he is campaigning on are fresh and innovative.

This board was particularly interested in his ideas on mayoral involvement with higher education institutions and improving public transportation.

Pleitez has a clear idea of how the mayor’s office should partner with higher education institutions such as UCLA. He focuses on developing research partnerships between the universities in Los Angeles and also on developing classes for the public to learn more workplace skills such as technology use.

These classes would be run throughout the city and involve a variety of different topics that are necessary in today’s workplace – Pleitez mentioned data analysis and technology specifically.

Although this board thinks that the workshop classes may be unfeasible in the current financial climate, the idea of spreading more education opportunities is certainly worth considering.

Pleitez also said he plans on increasing public transportation options in the city, which he sees as leading to greater growth in communities such as Westwood.

However, instead of focusing on the creation of the “Subway to the Sea,” a large subway project to extend the current metro system to Santa Monica that has faced many problems in the past, Pleitez said he thinks more focus should be placed on increasing buses and bus routes in the city.

Pleitez seemed very cognizant of the difficulty involved in building these types of projects and how draining they are on city resources, something the other candidates did not focus on. He also said that he thinks a partnership between public funds and private equity is necessary to complete projects such as metro rails or subways.

Both of these ideas provide a unique and valuable perspective compared to the other candidates’, and may actually work toward solving the transportation problems L.A. faces.

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