Not a metro meeting, but a cut and pasted metro logo.

On December 5 and on December 15 I went to two Transit Oriented Development (TOD) meetings sponsored by the City of Inglewood. Many of us in attendance were under the impression it was a Metro sponsored meeting or at least co-sponsored by Metro. There was a Metro logo on the PowerPoint.

During the first meeting it was stated by several participants that the TOD (transit oriented development) should be around the Forum and the Hollywood Racetrack since that's where the draw would be.

This was brought up repeatedly by residents.

Even the presenters (with identical red badges with their first names in tiny type) asked us what we wanted, since having a draw would make people come to your city. Creating a draw to your city, that's part of TOD. We again stated we had a draw, the Forum, Hollywood Park and the restaurants on Century, so possibly it would make more sense to have TOD there.

The presenters (who I can't say who they were, since they didn't identify themselves with anything more than a first name) kept stating variations of: That was a nice thought, but now we're talking about this location. We are talking about Labrea and Florence.

We assumed that their redirection was owing to this being in relations to Metro and the rail.

Though some of us wondered why TOD development wasn't being planned around West Blvd.

At the second meeting the presenters were proactive and on offense in regards to why they gave us Labrea and Florence as the only "choice". We were informed that the rail was the reason that we were here and that we needed to stay on topic.

I would think that would mean that this had something to do with Metro.

A resident Bill said that he didn't want to make a choice, because this isn't really a choice since the spot for TOD and the interpretation of what TOD was seemed to already be made for us.

Lots of talk of movie theaters and big box stores by people who didn't live in Inglewood kept being pushed.

Later calls to Metro to question about this meeting were met with, "They [City of Inglewood] could have copied the logo from the website."

I don't know what the point of this meeting was. I don't know what Inglewood was trying to do. All I do know is that at the meeting I only found out the city planner was the city planner and was at the meeting, because an Inglewood staff member who I happened to know pointed her out to me during the second meeting:

"That's Linda Tatum, she's the city planner."

Why would you hide your job title of city planner? Why would you only go by your first name?

Do you think building up credibility doesn't matter in Inglewood? Do you think we should just be grateful that we got some croissants?

My group stated that we wanted:

Protected bike lanes
A trolley up Manchester
Shuttle service that goes in a radius around the upcoming station.
Frequent bus service on Labrea, Manchester and Florence
The train to be underground

I don't know if the people with first names in tiny unreadable type and red badges will take our thoughts into consideration. They weren't the options, but these were our choices.