Inglewood Police Chief Gets Another Bonus & Mayor's Assistant Heads New Department

Someone in City Hall isn’t having a good weekend. The Inglewood City Council agenda for April 9th is out and one of the closed session items is for an employees dismissal. There are a handful of employees, who have been walked off the job, yet remain on the city payroll. Some for many years.

The city will amend Agreement No 18-058 for Remy Moose Manley LLP to have their contract increased to $550,000 for legal services related to the proposed Clippers arena.

Despite approving TWO different version of an updated salary ordinance, the Human Resources department “forgot” to include a $23,000 POST certificate bonus for Police Chief Mark Fronterotta. Mysteriously, the staff report made it onto the city council agenda without the required legal and financial review. This is in addition to the bonus he received in January with other members of the city’s executive team.

The police chief’s salary became a hot button topic of last weeks council meeting when a resident blasted the council for heaping such a high salary on Fronterotta and referenced articles written about it.

Residents, including this author, believe the council heaps such a large salary on the chief due to him abdicating many of his duties to Mayor Butts. If Butts wanted to continue to play the role of police chief, he should immediately step down as mayor.

As the Finance department prepares to give 2nd quarter budget numbers, they are making serious adjustments to the budget. Expenditures have increased, due to an additional $4 million approved for operations and projects including over $719,000 for additional security in the Office of Emergency Services. Revenue has decreased by over $1 million dollars. This creates an $80,000 surplus for FY 2018-19.

Finally, Inglewood residents will finally hear from Acting Housing Manager Melanie McDade, regarding the proposed rent stabilization ordinance on April 16, 2019. McDade’s salary was also a hot button topic at last weeks council meeting which Mayor Butts wasn’t happy about.

Unfortunately, the council insists on having this crucial presentation while residents are at work. The bigger question is how does Melanie keep get jobs she is neither qualified for nor has any prior work experience doing?

The city warrant registers shows we will spend $5,000 for seating for 50 people at the State of the City address despite previous board members citing nefarious acts of fiduciary mismanagement by Chamber executive Erick Holly. Inglewood Mayor James Butts has NO problem with bestowing taxpayer money, on his friends, as long as he gets what he wants.