CA Governor won’t intervene in Clippers Arena Fiasco

The planned Los Angeles Clippers arena in Inglewood, CA, is no slam dunk. Citing environmental concerns the California Air Resources Board (CARB) doesn’t feel the project meets standards for offsetting carbon emissions.

CARB is an independent body tasked with determining whether the Clippers can adequately prevent a net increase in greenhouse gases and other emissions. State law requires at least half of the reductions come from local measures, such as expanding public transit.

Related: Plans for Clippers arena in Inglewood stall as CARB questions environmental impact

The public transit component can’t be passed locally, because no one is willing to pay for it.

Unlike the Chase Center, in Oakland, CA, who has implemented a water ferry system to mitigate emission and traffic concerns during Golden State Warriors games and select concerts, the city of Inglewood has no public money being pledged by the Los Angeles County Metro Transit Authority (LACMTA) despite Mayor Butts being the organizations chair.

Related: Chase Center ferries: How Warriors fans can beat game-day traffic

Inglewood state legislators also failed at providing additional funding to mitigate traffic concerns in Inglewood.

Asm. Autumn Burke was behind a bill, AB-1060 Enhanced infrastructure financing districts, that she introduced February 2017 but the bill died in January 2018 due to lack of support.

Related: Property owner sues City to block Kroenke-backed special sales tax

Inglewood then wanted to use money from property taxes to fund the people mover but the city’s highly paid consultant had another idea.

The heavily connected consulting firm, Trifiletti Consulting, is helmed by Lisa Trifiletti, a former employee of LAX airport. She presented findings at last week’s regular Inglewood City Council meeting suggesting the city hire a vendor to build a people mover, who wouldn’t be paid until the project was completed and functioning.

The narrative is Inglewood can handle the traffic because of past sports activities hosted in the city.

Looking back, the Hollywood Park Racetrack opened in the 1920’s when the Forum was not in existence. Once the Forum opened, atop of a closed golf course, their venue operated in the evening, while the racetrack operations ended before 5pm.

Attendees of Lakers/Kings/Sparks game had parking access of 3,500 spaces at the Forum and over 10,000 spaces at the racetrack. Those parking spaces no longer exist due to the NFL stadium construction.

The two venues were NEVER simultaneously operating.

The city of Inglewood was forced to implement a permit parking system, in the residential area directly across from the Forum, to prevent residents from having nowhere to park due to events at the venue.

Anyone with eyes, and a half functioning brain, can drive around the Forum and NFL stadium site and see there is a severe parking shortage that Mayor James Butts continues to pretend doesn’t exist. He is insulting the intelligence of long time residents, like this author, and it is severely hurting his credibility with those who know otherwise.

It also didn’t help when Butts and consulting firm The Robert Group tried to turn the Inglewood Park Cemetery into overflow parking for the Forum. Butts ended up co-opting the community page that brought this to the world’s attention and the group moderators have become paid consultants and members of the Inglewood Airport Area Chamber of Commerce to silence their criticism of the project.

Inglewood will be unable to justify eminent domain action down Prairie Ave., because the stadium and arena are private projects.

Mayor Butts and his council colleagues have turned the city, and our finances, upside down, to put a feather in Butts cap for returning the NFL to the Los Angeles market, which Butts failed to properly plan out.

Inglewood residents continue to regret the day they signed a petition asking for the NFL to come to Inglewood.

If Steve Ballmer really wants his arena in the city of Inglewood, he will need to convince Stan Kroenke to become a joint partner in building the people mover down Prairie. Only question is, will it have a stop at the Forum?