Inglewood Mayor James Butts sold the opening of an NFL stadium, to the city’s 100,000 residents, as the savior of the city’s finances. Butts constantly regurgitates the city was on the brink of fiscal insolvency when he was elected in 2011, and because of his experience, leadership, and vast knowledge, he single handedly turned the city around by amassing a “record” city reserves, despite six of the last city budgets being in the red.
During the August 3 city council meeting the city will declare a Fiscal Emergency and call for a special election in November of this year.
The City held a special city council meeting July 30 where they awarded a one-year, $5 million contract to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department for law enforcement services related to events taking place at SoFi Stadium. The $5 million was taken out of the city’s reserves. Two weeks prior, on July 14, the city took $1.1 million from the reserves to pay outstanding invoices to the Sheriff’s department, for stadium services dating back to September 2020, and awarding a $1 million one-year contract to the Hawthorne Police Department, for event services too.
Both meetings occurred between 8:30 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. to ensure Inglewood residents were unable to voice their concerns over how much taxpayer’s money was going towards a project that was allegedly self-financed by Stan Kroenke.
“You’re having a development that is being paid for, 100-percent capitalized by the developers,” said Butts. “They’re willing to pay up to $8 million per year to provide for increased public safety, park staff, maintenance of the parks, maintenance of the roads out of their pocket. The only things that’s required is that at some point when we make in excess of $25 million in a given year, that we begin to pay back those costs that they have front-loaded for us that, ordinarily, a developer would not have to touch.”
Willing?
The City has refused to provide details under a Freedom of Information Act/CA Public Records Act request for all invoices submitted for reimbursement to SoFi Stadium for events held during the 2020-2021 NFL season, despite fans not being able to attend due to COVID restrictions.
Newly elected City Clerk Aisha Thompson has been dispatched to community events to register voters for a “November” election, and when asked what election was taking place, she has routinely declined to answer.
The Inglewood Airport Area Chamber of Commerce (IAACC) has posted a new #InglewoodVotersMatter initiative, on social media, pledging to go door-to-door speaking to Inglewood residents, to register them to vote as well.
Both Thompson and the IAACC executive director are in their respective positions because of Butts.
The August 3 staff report details the 2020-2021 budget shortfall has swelled from $9.7 million to $12.09 million “allegedly” due to the pandemic and as a direct result the city wants voters to increasing taxes in two areas.
Voters will be asked to increase the property transfer tax, to a sliding scale, to pay for emergency services (police and fire), ease traffic, address homelessness (the city has zero homeless shelters), and provide general services.
Voters will also be asked to increase the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) from 14% to 15.5%, to keep the city clean, address affordable housing, maintain (non-existent) anti-gang programs, senior services, and other city general services.
This is problematic because the City has a pattern of spending money as if there is plenty of it in the bank.
Taxpayers have pledged millions to a first-time homebuyers program, bonuses to executive staff, upgraded the city’s fleet, attempted to remodel the Inglewood Police Department’s locker room, and outsourcing law enforcement services due to a severe staffing shortage in our police department.
The shortage is due in part to lackluster recruiting, and a mass exodus of senior officers. Taxpayers are also paying for signage for a citywide permit parking program that the developer was supposed to pay for.
When exactly are the “benefits” from the stadium suppose to kick in?
Taxpayers are entangled in multiple lawsuits related to the mayor’s reckless behavior: sleeping with a subordinate, allegedly sexually assaulting a city consultant, and nearly killing an LAPD motor officer, a mother and her child when he made an illegal turn on a red light while driving a car registered to the police department.
Taxpayers provide the mayor with an auto allowance he declines to use, making residents liable for the gas, insurance and liability.
To our knowledge, the City has yet to formally accept nearly $35 million in funds from President Joe Biden’s recovery plan.
Related: Lawsuit alleges Inglewood created fraudulent financial picture to lure NFL team
Former Budget and Accounting Manager Barbara Ohno said the city was “painting a fraudulent picture of the City’s finances” to lure the NFL to Inglewood. It appears she was right.
Treasurer Wanda Brown also discusses the city’s overzealous spending, and when she warned the council publicly, she got her mic cut off and removed from participating in council meetings altogether. Butts and the council also reduced her salary.
The last time the city declared a fiscal emergency was in 2010 which led to city employees being placed on involuntary furlough, reduced services, including the closure of a fire station.
Inglewood voters will go to the polls in 2022 to elect representatives for District 1 (George Dotson), District 2 (Alex Padilla), and mayor (James Butts).
Voters will have to ask themselves how has the city actually prospered, under Butts, when we are right back in the same position we started in, when he was elected nearly a decade ago.
3 Comments
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OMG please read the staff report for this foolishness!
Please especially notice the bottom of page 7 where the tax rate of “local comparable” cities is used to convince us we need to vote yes. Most definitely we are not expected to!!
Not only does staff suggest the our taxes are lower in a table where they declare our .55% or $5.50 per $1,000 sale price is less than Pomona and Redondo Beaches $2.20 per $1,000 but also Santa Monica’s 3.00 per $1000 (on homes up to 5 million sale price).
Clearly this expert wisdom is why Inglewood is in a financial mess…….
Consider the areas the staff report uses to discover the comparable “local cities” used to justify a tax increase !!!!
Please share for all of us to understand in what ways is Inglewood similar to :
58% White only Berkeley —- which is 378 miles away (one very long bike ride) with 73% residents holding a Bachelors or greater educational degree and an average home price of $1.5 million. (Starter homes on avg only $764,000)
Or
The Beach Cities of
Santa Monica -which is 75.9 white only with an average home price $1.73 million and 67.9 % having a Bachelor’s degree or greater educational degree
Redondo Beach with a 71 % white only population, an average home price $ 1.73 million where 60.8 % hold a Bachelor’s degree or greater
Who knew our executive management staff and accounting gurus didn’t know that 5 is a bigger number than 2 already ? (Yes only picking on staff and Giving free pass here to the council since clearly we pay them to say yes upon command no thinking expected).
Note: USCensus reports used for demographics of ethnicity and education /Redfin used for avg house price
PLEASE VOTE NO Let them know they will not be given more money to throw away on foolishness
First the obvious. Yes, the pandemic has had a very negative affect on many city’s financial stability… However… Most cities didn’t have, as Butts REPEATEDLY bragged, the #1 concert venue in California, didn’t have a construction project the size of the So Fi Stadium, didnt have a metro line going in and those other cities didn’t have up front money and a promise of 100,000,000 in community investments from the Clippers. Inglewood HAD those things, and we had Butts REPEATEDLY saying that those things were making the city more and more prosperous and more financially secure than most other cities (even though the yearly budgets didn’t look to good and we were borrowing money from the general fund LONG before the pandemic). So why, with all these “tremendous” and “unheard of” improvements in Inglewood, why is Inglewood not more financially stable, even during the pandemic? Could it be that all these things were not really the big deals that the mayor always claimed. Could it be that these big projects were benefitting the developers and the billionaires more than Inglewood’s residents??? Looks like.. The fact is that, over the last decade, Butts has served Inglewood’s residents a steady diet of pie-in-the-sky when he has REPEATEDLY tried to justify all the sweetheart deals to developers, when he negotiated financially low to mediocre contracts with them, when he lied and said those deals would cost residents nothing, and would in fact be a windfall for the city, and when he put businesses and homes on the “eminant domain” chopping block, when he threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars on frivolous lawsuits and repeatedly supported police that murdered innocent people. Under James Butts. Inglewood’s residents taxes have gone up, we’re burdened with more traffic, usually higher levels of crime, more fees, and soon most of us will have to pay for permits to park in front of our own homes. All I have to say is, given a choice, I’d choose ANYBODY BUT JAMES BUTTS FOR ANYTHING!