The city of Inglewood held their last council meetings for the year yesterday which includes some surprises. After posting the council agenda, a special agenda was added, for a 3pm start time, which included more money being poured into the city coffers on behalf of Murphy’s Bowl LLC. Only problem is the city stopped recording the minute the moment Mayor James T. Butts Jr. opened the special council meeting.
In addition, consultants attached to the project saw significant contract extensions approved as well.
Steve Ballmer, of Murphy’s Bowl LLC, pumped an additional $1.6 million to the city’s bank account to increase services provided by select consultants.
The funds received from Murphy’s Bowl go directly into a specific account code so it is confusing why work related to Ballmer’s proposed arena is being disbursed from the General Fund and NOT from the account code created for such services.
Lisa Trifiletti’s consulting agreement increased to $1.8 million dollars. As a direct result, she held a scoping meeting on a proposed monorail that was primarily attended by business owners seeking contracts and not residents giving their input. Trifiletti’s website lists contact information to an email address that doesn’t accept incoming inquiries and a phone system that no one answers. The source of funding comes from the General Fund and Proposition A.
The Griffith Company will recieve $5.5 million from undisclosed grant and Proposition A funds for construction related to Inglewood Transit Connector construction. This connector is solely for the use of a monorail to get people to the NFL stadium and proposed NBA arena.
City Manager Artie Fields peculiar signature graced a contract with LAZ Parking LLC, for shuttle services to the NFL stadium. The contract details how those attending NFL stadiums will be parking all across LA County and LAZ will shuttle them into Inglewood. LAZ has the option to terminate the agreement if they find themselves operating at a net operating loss.
None of these items were listed on the initial council agenda.
At the same meeting, Mayor James T. Butts Jr. and his council colleagues, complained about the general fund having to subsidize the water department and promptly increased water fees with zero discussion of how many letters were received in protest to the water rate increase. Mayor Butts cited it as the “right thing to do” and promptly called for a motion.
One by one residents came forward to complain and were regularly interrupted by Mayor Butts which decreased their public speaking time.
Residents also remarked that the amount of heavy trucks coming in for construction are tearing up our infrastructure. They also complained about the extraordinary amount of legal fees the council continues to approve.
One resident specifically commented that Mayor Butts is invading residents privacy by listening into our phone conversations.
2UrbanGirls will continue to monitor the city’s website should more last minute council agenda’s pop up between now and December 31st.
If you go to the 1:41:54 second mark of the council meeting video, you will see that the city’s video team, consisting of Yakema Decatur and Thomas Bunn, took away residents right to know what was said during the meeting, because the video abruptly ends as soon as Mayor Butts opened the special meeting.