Inglewood residents have begun meeting with the City Clerk’s office to obtain nomination forms to run for the office of mayor, two city council seats, and four school board seats. We are not impressed with ANY of the people currently occupying these seats.
The last time George Dotson and Alex Padilla were on the ballot was 2017. Most of the school board members up for re-election haven’t had to raise any campaign funds: Naomi Hammond, Brandon Myers and Ernesto Castillo.
City Clerk Aisha Thompson has failed to make the clerk’s office more transparent when you have to literally BEG her office to release records related to the campaign finance forms showing where candidates funding is coming from.
If you look on the state’s website they aren’t there either. These candidates like to run based on their “experience” however, what are they doing?
For starters, the community was in a uproar over a school closure in Morningside Park (District 1). Not a single elected official over the school board defended the communities desire to keep the school open. Naomi Hammonds repeatedly declined to speak on the issue due to a “conflict of interest”. Brandon Myers was available for photos and behind the scenes phone calls but nothing more. Ernesto Castillo, well I wouldn’t know what he looked like if it weren’t for his photo on the school district’s website.
Inglewood residents should be tired of the lip service and make radical changes to the makeup of the entities elected to represent US. Instead they represent the interests of the mayor and County Administrator. In short, we are electing Black and Brown people who are working against Black and Brown people.
“When Mayor James T. Butts took office in his first term, we had a whole Community Affairs Section with at least one Senior Lead Officer (SLO) per beat. Then it went to 2 per beat. Pre-Covid, Butts and the Chief [Mark Fronterotta] have taken them away and have left groups like ours doing our jobs alone. We have “liaisons” that help now when available. Most of the time, they don’t show up or have to leave because it’s no longer their only job. We acknowledge when we are short staffed but even when we were short staffed under a different council and chief, we still had more help. We now have none. We helped the mayor get up there and he not only showed us disrespect but also pulled all of our help from us and our residents. Time for change!
ALLIANCE / ALIANZA Neighborhood Watch Block Club
Here is the breakdown of votes for 2017. Hopefully it helps others on the fence about running actually spring into action.
City-of-Inglewood-General-Municipal-Election-April-4-2017-Final-Count