Inglewood District 1 Council Member Mike Stevens

The holidays are upon us, and it is my gift to you to work for the residents of District 1 and make Inglewood shine as we all know it will.

Imagine this: An Inglewood city council made up of representatives truly interested in the betterment of this city. Such a city council may have loudly protested from the beginning when L.A. County Metro presented to Inglewood a poorly designed light rail line with nearly all rail crossings at major street arterials at grade level. Such a city council may have closely monitored the LAX Residential Sound Insulation program and made sure there were no “management break- downs” over the course of two full decades. Such a city council may have ensured that funds budgeted for infrastructure maintenance—like repaving our city streets— were spent properly. Such a city council would have made sure that all the residents of this great city would have received the services they deserve, from the taxes they pay.

Does such a city council seem like a dream? It doesn’t have to be merely a dream.

One if By Land
From the examples above, let me answer a street-level question that many District 1 constituents have asked me. “What are all those spray painted white dots on the damaged areas of our side- walks and driveway aprons?” It was a question posed to me when while I was campaigning in 2011.

Although many of the dots may be gone, the question remains, and I believe I’ve found the answer: It appears to have been an election campaign ploy. The former District 1 council member, Danny Tabor, was responsible for the dots. It was during his campaign for Mayor in 2010, and Tabor had the former City of Inglewood Lead Engineer Emilio Murga oversee a team to spraypaint all of the large and easily visible white dots on the sidewalks and driveway aprons. The intention may well have been to make it look like the City of Inglewood was about to embark on a major sidewalk improvement project. The reality was that there was very little money in the budgets of 2008 through 2010 for sidewalk and driveway apron re- pairs. Nevertheless, the dots were applied and in some places can still be seen.

Two if By Air
Perhaps my fourth or fifth battle for better government was my creation of “LAX Expansion No” (LAXEN). It was a five-year, two-front battle. On one hand was the fight against the negative effects of LAX and aircraft traffic levied on Inglewood and the neighboring communities. On the other hand was to get the City of Inglewood to use the FAA and Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA, which owns LAX) noise mitigation funds to sound-insulate and air condition residents’ homes instead of using it for land recycling to bulldoze homes and sell the land to politically connected developers. LAXEN was comprised of nearly 7,000 members, with more than 500 of them being active participants, and we ex-
posed what Inglewood was doing with the money. City management, led by the mayor at the time, had no choice but to begin to sound- insulate residents’ homes.

After three months as a Council Member I had my first Town Hall meeting in June, 2011. One of the topics was a review of the current status of the Inglewood Residential Sound Insulation (RSI) program, brought about because so many District 1 residents expressed their concerns to me about program mismanagement. I invited the manager of the local Wyle Labs office, Ms. Wozniack, to speak at the Town Hall.

According to the company’s website, Wyle is “one of the nation’s leading providers of specialized engineering, scientific and technical services to the Federal government and a variety of commercial customers, Wyle serves its customers in the areas of test and evaluation.” Wyle is also one of the City of Ingle- wood’s RSI engineering contractors.

She was to present to Inglewood residents the problems with the City of Inglewood RSI program as she knew them, so we could start working on solving them in keep- ing with the tenet of good government and transparency. In my opinion, she did a fine job. Soon after that first Town Hall, the City of Ingle- wood sent a letter threatening a lawsuit to Wyle. The letter alleged disparaging remarks made about the City of Inglewood sound insulation program by Ms. Wozniack. After receiving the letter, Ms. Wozniack and her superior, a one Mr. Martin, were terminated by Wyle.

In August 2011, during an open session of a city council meeting, the mayor requested a management review audit of the Inglewood Residential Sound Insulation. In October 2011, a heavily redacted management review audit report was given to the council in an executive session; the document was stamped “confidential.” In March 2012, an unedited copy of the same management review audit was released. Both the censored version (from October 2011) and the uncensored version (released in March 2012) were given to me with the caveat they were confidential material and could not be shared with the public because they were distributed in closed session. Nevertheless they validated everything—and then some!—I have ever told the public about the “mismanagement” of the funds meant for the residents via the Inglewood Residential Sound Insulation Program.

There are residents who have gotten old and passed away waiting for their homes to be sound-insulated. In the uncensored audit report mentioned above, most of the problems that had been noted in my June 2011 Town Hall meeting were confirmed and enumerated— including a recommendation to do a detailed financial audit of the RSI department. I submitted a Council Initiative to Council to do just that in August 2012. That initiative requested a detailed forensic audit of the RSI department so we could expose deeper problems and start work on solving. Unfortunately it did not get the support of my colleagues. See my website at www.councilmanmikestevens.com/council-initiatives for a copy of the “Sound Insulation Forensic Audit” initiative.

Three to Get Ready
The following are some examples of the mismanagement by my predecessor Danny Tabor and his colleagues of the Inglewood RSI program, directly causing at least $60 million in lost City of Inglewood Residential Sound Insulation program funding to date:

1. No grant requests were made by the City of Inglewood for funds in from LAWA, which resulted in $27 million to be lost. (See page 8 of the LAWA report: http://councilmanmikestevens.com/residential-sound-insulation/CBAStatusReport2010.pdf)

2. Another $8 million of Sound Insulation funds were spent illegally on a Redevelopment Agency project in the late 2000s (On page 3 of this document, see the city manager’s report detailing the losses: http://councilmanmikestevens.com/residential-sound-insulation/Weekly_Report-January122012-8 milliion charge to RSI sb redev.pdf)

3. Single Audits, required by the FAA for continuing to receive federal grant dollars, have not been filed in many years (since 2006). I have yet to receive written notification from Inglewood city staff that the reports have been filed and accepted by the FAA.

This pattern of “incompetence” regarding the city’s “mismanagement” of federal grant money meant for Inglewood may still be on hold owing to late filings and inaccuracies. The result appears to be the loss of anywhere from $20-$40 million and counting of lost and delayed funding. (On page 33 of this 34-page document, see the letter to FAA from Inglewood city manager Artie Fields: http://councilmanmikestevens.com/residential-sound-insulation/ Weekly_Report-November10 2011 grant reports way behind letter from
Artie.pdf)

On Oct. 29 at the District 1 Community center, I attempt- ed to have a special meeting about the 11/30/12 Council Agenda Item DR-2, which addressed two new sound insulation programs. More than 500 concerned residents showed up to find out about the new LAX contract language. What occurred was yet another example of authoritarian members of our local government suppressing information. In what was per- haps a first in Inglewood politics, the entire Inglewood city council attended a town hall meeting. Coincidentally,the meeting was disrupted by the arrival of the L.A. County Fire Dept. This event was reported on the front cover of the November 2012 edition of the Morningside Park Chronicle.

After much work to expose the problems to the public, current city management— led by the mayor—finally admitted there has been “mis- management” in the RSI department and began working towards solutions. Unfortunately, the problems and what caused them were again covered up, and some of our elected officials continue to spend your tax dollars to maintain that cover-up to this very day.

Please stay tuned for the next chapter of “A Vision for a Better Government in Inglewood.”

I’m sure it will succeed!

As always, please call my office at if you need my assistance.

Happy Holidays!
Councilman Mike Stevens, City of Inglewood.