Rusty pipes, fire-hazard stoves at Senior Center were approved by Planning Commissioner George Dotson

The cumulative safety hazards of the Osage Senior Villas have been a part of daily life for the center’s residents shortly after the City of Inglewood, the Redevelopment Agency and Planning Commission declared, “The project was completed and received a certificate of occupancy” in June 2003.

On October 4, 2005, the aforementioned agencies signed the “Release of Construction Covenants Certificate (formerly called a Certificate of Completion) of the project.” However it was not disclosed that there were “numerous revisions, change orders and building modifications were necessary...” and that the “Osage Senior Villas Limited Partnership, LLC (OSVLP) also contends that the building modifications and change orders have resulted in a project cost overrun of 15%...” from a letter from the city administrator’s office. The city administrator at the time was Mark Weinberg.

Weinberg has since been retained by the City of Inglewood as a consultant under a contract to receive nearly $70k annually.

Weinberg was also investigated by the LA. County D.A. for his involvement in a HUD scandal that found then-mayor Roosevelt Dorn guilty of embezzlement. Dorn was the chairman of the Redevelopment Agency responsible for the HUD scandal and the Osage Senior Villas approval.

With such cost overruns as mentioned in the 30 March 2004 document titled “dda amendment 1” and such a vast shortage of basic materials that this journalist was allowed to photograph in detail, one wonders how it is that shorting residents of the senior citizen in a manner that certainly costs a good bit now—and could result in injury and death—where all the money went. There are no stove-top exhaust pipes over the stoves, the air conditioning/heating unit pipes discharge into the bathtubs and there are no A/C vents in the hallways throughout the building.

Councilman Mike Stevens, in whose district the Osage sits, has attempted numerous times to resolve the many safety and security problems. His prime concern has been to have shower bars installed. While investigating the shower bars—which were never installed despite the RDA and City of Inglewood officials approving the project at its “completion”—it was discovered that the bathtubs were kits and not properly built. As such, shower bars can not be installed without significant remodeling. It was just one more question of how “cost overruns” occurred but cheap and nonexistent materials were marked on the blueprints and itemized on the invoices that were paid off nearly a decade ago.