The Inglewood City Council will approve invoices for the Taste of Inglewood Big Game Festival during the March 1 city council meeting. The four invoices will cost taxpayers $110,000.
The event was a huge success and drew crowds from all over on Friday and Saturday. The lightest day was Thursday evening.
The city supported local businesses The Flavor Table, and Martin’s Cocina y Cantina, who served the entertainers and VIP dignitaries a true “taste” of Inglewood, and It’s Your Party provided support with logistics and setup.
The peculiar invoice is the one from LAZ Parking, who provided shuttle services during the three-day event.
The event on Thursday was 6pm – 10pm, and Friday and Saturday the event ran from 12pm – 6pm.
The city promoted the “free shuttle” service which only ran from 2pm -8pm, and from the parking lot at Faithful Central Bible Church to Market and Regent.
According to their invoice dated Feb. 15, they billed the city $29,600 for shuttle services for the three days.

After reviewing the invoices, so many questions came up.
How did they perform 90 hours of labor each day? $200 an hour for a supervisor? Why the huge discrepancy between the labor hours and shuttle service hours? Management fee?
The staff report was signed by Public Works Director Luis Atwell and City Manager Artie Fields, despite the invoice not having backup documentation of how many riders were actually served, and actual hours worked. [view full invoice]
LACharterBusCompany.com is offering 56 passenger vans for far less than what we paid per day to LAZ parking.

LAZ Parking’s parent company purchased the City’s parking enforcement provider Serco, in 2021, assuming all duties and responsibilities under their existing agreement, including securing the employment of Bill Thompson, who previously worked for the Forum, after retiring from IPD.
The City awarded LAZ a two-year agreement, with six one-year options, during a special city council meeting held Dec. 17, 2019. The contract appears to be padded with “management” fees, that vary based on where the shuttle service is provided.
The City makes its money from the net operating income.

The 1st quarter budget numbers are out and the City is roughly $9.9 million in the red, despite an influx of money accepted from the Biden Administration during the Feb. 15 city council meeting.
Also despite the “alleged” windfall from Super Bowl 56.
According to the 1st quarter budget accompanying staff report, the budget deficit will be shored up by the city’s reserves.
7 Comments
Well someone keeps voting for these jokers
Thanks for sharing. This doesn’t look right but why are we not surprised? You know the council will vote unanimously to pay it. Corrupt.
First thank you for putting links to the actual City of Inglewood Documents …
No Bully Jimmy it isn’t misinformation! This is what you will have your team vote for.
Now on for the reality check …
Hells Bells is Louis Atwell our $250,000.00 per year public works / assistant city manager one of the Inglewood Unified 95% of students not proficient in Math????? Or does he think we are?
Or is this the slick reason our children are not being taught – to enable the smoke and mirror kick backs to easily go sailing through the city piggy banks straight into the friend / family / campaign buddy / or billionaire pockets ?
Does that sound brutal ?
Okay word problems are scary but go get your crayons so we can figure this out together.
The event was advertised on the many REALLY BIG BILLBOARDS as lasting certain hours :
Thursday 6pm to10pm that is 4 hours
Friday 6pm to 10pm another 4 hours
And Saturday 12pm to 6pm 6 more hours
That is a total of 14 hours
Since we know some people are slow pokes we will add another hour each day
Now we have a total of 17 hours .
So now let us divide 17 hours into the total invoice amount for these 3 days which shows $29,640.00.
Come on we know you can do it long hand, but go ahead use the smart phone— the drum roll answer is ….!!!!!!! $ 1,743.53 per hour. !!!!!!! Yes really try a different crayon to check your work.
We know you can do it $ 1,743.53 x 17 equals $29,640.01 okay one cent off yes — rounding those decimals is super scary.!!!
Oh lookie there —-we were charged 90 labor hours each day even when one day was longer hours? Hmm?
Doesn’t this sound a lot like the BIG BAD WOLF in the Red Ridinghood Story ? Granny such big invoices you charge and the response is THE BETTER TO TAKE FROM THE TAXPAYERS AND GIVE TO SPECIAL FRIENDS MY DEAR ?
Yep we paid each hour what we should have paid for an entire day…..could that be why James Butts doesn’t want the Treasurer talking to residents.
Oh come to think of it Heartless, Brainless, no-courage maybe we are living a hybrid of both these…..
I’m so sick of Butts and Council using tax payers money to fund the festivities they like and their friends companies instead of investing in our residents and small businesses. Why are tax payers paying for transportation to the arena’s? That is the responsibility of the arena owners. Residents aren’t benefiting from this. Why are tax payers paying to have extra police at the arenas? Once again, we aren’t benefiting from that. Our city seems to be entangled with a corporation and that is illegal. We need new leadership ASAP bc some major adjustments need to be made.
It’s hard to determine police costs since it’s a payroll expense, however, outside agencies will submit invoices for their service. Stay tuned.
Keep in mind the issue isn’t neither the event, nor the companies hired. The issue is the appearance of an inflated invoice that typically wouldn’t be scrutinized by the public. This is NOT an issue with the TOI organizers but the appearance taxpayers are being gauged on that shuttle invoice.
Amazing how they dry up our money. Assholes