INSIDE INGLEWOOD-Inglewood City records indicate that Mayor James T. Butts’ March 16, 2013 promise to “insulate 1,000 houses in 2013” may have drawn its numbers from contracts worked out and paid for as far back as 2007. The insulated units under review involve the city’s severely problematic Residential Sound Insulation Program (RSIP).
According to a number of city council documents that were discussed and approved at city council meetings dating back to 2007, some of the RSI Phase Groups mentioned on the city’s report dated April 8, 2014 were groups that had been started and may have already been finished before Butts ran for mayor in 2010.
The report, which has the lengthy title of “Report on the Progress of Completed Sound Insulation Construction in Accomplishment of the Mayor's and City Council's Goal of 1,000 Residential Units in the Twelve-Month Period of March 2013 through March 2014 (Report No. 5),” appears to indicate that it is primarily Butts’ promise. The report, which was trumpeted at the Tuesday, April 8 Inglewood city council meeting, appears to have been documented with figures that fail to tell that many of the insulated homes were partially done, if not already complete,d prior to Butts’ mayoral term.
Four prior reports showed very little progress. The Report No. 4 (dated December 3, 2013) stated “As of this report the RSI Program has…completed 423 residential units.”
Eloy Morales, Jr., the council person for District 3, said on Tuesday night that “[i]n the past, we have only done 400 in one year—and this is going back 10 years.” He did not explain how the RSI department was suddenly able to do approximately 575 homes in approximately three months.
According to the City of Inglewood documents that have been approved by Morales and Butts, however, a unit could be a single window in a 10-plus apartment building in one of the 22 Phase groups started as far back as 2007. One such document is the mayor and city council’s March 12, 2013 redefinition of a “single-family dwelling” to include apartment buildings with more than 10 apartments.The letter sent from the Residential Sound Insulation Department was approved by the mayor and city council just four days before the mayor embarked on his “1,000 homes” promise campaign at the March 16 town hall meeting.
Since then, Chronicle staffers have photographed a number of two-story, half-block-long apartment buildings being insulated by contractors identified as those hired by the city to perform such work and at addresses identified on city contracts approved by the mayor and city council.Many of the buildings’ apartments had just one or two windows and were owned by developers whose offices are situated outside of Inglewood—and in some cases, outside Los Angeles County.
Original RSI bids dating back to 2007, 2010, 2011 and early 2012 corroborate that most of the Phase Groups that the mayor has proclaimed were part of the “1,000 homes” promise were indeed already in the pipeline long before the mayor had even left the City of Santa Monica to work for LAX—both of which were before he ran for mayor of Inglewood.
According to city agendas during former Inglewood mayor Dorn’s administration, a number of the same groups mentioned in the April 8 “1,000 homes” report were awarded in 2007.
Other documents show that some of the RSI Phase Groups in last Tuesday’s report were paid when Butts was still moving into city hall. Archived documents on-line calling for certified workers to fulfill the positions, posted by the contractors Inglewood awarded the RSI work, corroborate the dates.
When asked if RSI contractors are paid before or after finishing their respective work, Inglewood Assistant City Manager/Chief Financial Officer David Esparza answered, “They are paid as they progress through their construction schedule.”
Some of the contractors that remain performing the work were paid back in 2011 and perhaps as far back as 2007.
He also said that “it takes 180 working days to complete a construction cycle.” Such a cycle, he added, is best described as a construction group–which in the documents is described as a Phase Group.
Esparaza was brought on board the City of Inglewood staff in October, 2012 and “took over” the RSIP in March, 2013. He clarified that “since [I] took over the program, none of the [Phase Groups] that were started during [his] time went over 180 days.”
The RSI Program is funded by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that was meant to provide homeowners of single-family residences with sound insulation to mitigate the air and noise pollution caused by air traffic at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).In El Segundo, Ontario and the unincorporated areas of Lennox, Del Aire, and Athens in the County of Los Angeles where the RSIP was instituted, the program was and/or continues to be successful. In Inglewood, however, the program stalled nearly two decades ago when $27 million in the RSI construction funds went missing.
The funds have yet to be accounted for, which has led to a great many problems for Inglewood and a great many homeowners dying while awaiting sound insulation that many believe will not be fulfilled.
It is not the first time that Butts has made promises that turned out to be patently false in a similar manner.
Earlier this year, Butts announced that he had acquired a new round of FAA/LAWA funding for the RSIP. It was discovered that the funding was simply an old award from 2006—years before Butts had run for mayor.Moreover, the mayor’s claim that the funding entailed $7.07 million was also found to be false, as the years-old balance that he had simply reacquired was approximately $5 million. (In 2006, the $5 million was denied owing to LAWA’s determination that “[t]he remaining $5 million was never delivered due to Inglewood’s improper allocation of funds per the [Letter of Agreement].”)
● The story about that $7 million bamboozle was published at CityWatch.
(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a monthly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com) Photo credit: Teka-Lark Fleming.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 30
Pub: Apr 11, 2014
