Hawthorne Press Tribune The Weekly Newspaper of Hawthorne Herald Publications - Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lawndale, El Segundo, Torrance & Manhattan Beach Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 - July 30, 2015 Inside This Issue Certified & Licensed Professionals.......................4 Classifieds............................2 Community Briefs...............2 Food.......................................5 Hawthorne Happenings....2 Legals............................... 6, 7 Pets........................................8 Police Reports.....................7 Senior....................................4 Sports....................................3 Weekend Forecast Friday Partly Cloudy 80˚/68˚ Saturday Partly Cloudy 80˚/68˚ Sunday Partly Cloudy 81˚/69˚ LAX “Fans in the Stands” Show Support at Special Olympics Team LAWA volunteers, along with friends and family, will be “Fans in the Stands” supporting the Special Olympics athletes during the World Games. Each volunteer has been assigned an athlete to cheer for and support, thanks to fundraising efforts from employees and airport police. Photo courtesy of LAWA/LAX Community Relations. Council Questions Dubious Housing Repairs and Moves to Reform Budget Transparency By Derrick Deane While the City Council faced a full agenda that included five opening presentations and a closed session time out midway through to celebrate Mayor Chris Brown and Councilmember Angie Reyes English’s birthdays with cake and ice cream, the council eventually tackled a dubious spending proposal and discussed reforming budget transparency moving forward. The four hour session featured a few heated moments, including when both English and Councilmember Alex Vargas vehemently questioned a resolution to supply non-profit company TELACU with $876,000 of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) money to make repairs to a 75-unit low-income senior housing structure. “This is a non-profit organization, but we have nothing to do with them,” Vargas said. City Attorney Russell Miyahara explained that the city council approved a HUD funding to TELACU in 1987 when the building was first built. Since then, the building has developed structural issues from the second level on up, primarily the floor sagging in various portions. “It is a very lengthy process for TELACU to apply for this HUD money and get to this point,” Miyahara said. “They have to go through us to cancel the old note that was approved and create a new one to get the funding.” Vargas also pressed to find out how the inspection came about in the first place. “Was it a surprise inspection or one that was scheduled?” Vargas asked. Neither City Manager Arnie Shadbehr nor Housing Director Hamid Pournamdari had an answer with Pournamdari saying, “This is the first time I’m hearing about this building.” Councilmember English pressed further with a number of questions. “Why are we so involved with this project? TELACU should be doing the upkeep on this building,” English said. “This is a management company, so shame on them that they have gone along without maintaining it.” Miyahara attempted to ease concerns from both councilmembers. “The way the resolution is worded, both myself and the city manager will be checking in on it,” Miyahara said. “There won’t be an impact to the general fund since this HUD money.” Regardless, Vargas still expressed concern that this might be a gimmick to gain money from the city and requested further information about the building. The council ultimately decided to table the matter and circle back to it at another time. One can’t blame the councilmembers for being extra cautious in terms of funding projects considering recent months of bad press concerning shady accounting and budget issues. Toward the end of the meeting, the council agreed to approve an ordinance proposed by Mayor Pro Tem Olivia Valentine that would essentially makes all funds and budgets transparent for anyone to access. “This proposed ordinance is designed to prevent a key problem we are now having, wherein reserve funds were used to pay operating expenses without prior approval” Valentine said in opening up the discussion on the matter. English was the first to raise a few issues with the ordinance, particularly on a provision in which bank statements would be required to be made available to show general fund spending and reports being made available to the media, labor groups, neighborhood associations and any other person or entity that requested a copy of the report. “That’s a sensitive issue,” English said as the mayor agreed with her. “It’s privileged information. I don’t have an issue with the city website because we have something similar already. To make mention of media and labor groups, I would strike all of that out. I would be okay with posting on the city website. There is a lot of sensitive and privileged information that we’re allowed and I think it’s something we need to uphold.” Miyahara said that he would make a change to the wording to appease English and Mayor Brown’s concerns and say, “the reports will be non-confidential reports that will be made available on the city website.” Vargas lauded Valentine for bringing the resolution together and said he supported it, “110 percent.” “It’s no secret that you guys will expect me to vote for this,” Vargas said as he made reference to “kicking and screaming through the last year and a half” about finance issues. Vargas said that we was concerned about the “reckless hiring of personnel, the raises, the promotions,” and the “reckless spending on things that didn’t have any value to the city.” “It’s about good governance,” Vargas continued. “It’s unfortunate that the recent raid on the reserves has led us to this situation where we’ve had a big catastrophic situation that we’ve had to remedy.” Meanwhile, English said that while the resolution is needed to get the city back on track, she pointed out that all the information the resolution attempts to make public is already accessible. Crime also was brought to focus as a couple of residents talked about criminal activity around the northern area of the city. In her closing remarks, English suggested banning the sale of alcohol in the city after 10 p.m. “I have been out and about talking with community folks and this seems to be a concern,” English said. “Considering out [heightened] issues in regards to crime, I’m not saying it’s all due to alcohol, however anything to deter helps.” She also addressed the matter of fireworks in the city after a number of citizens complained at the previous council meeting by suggesting that the city freeze any pending firework stand applications and eventually move toward removing fireworks sales from the city all together. The council also agreed to use $951,000 of Measure R money to fund local street repaving, $21,000 for tree trimming from an allocated fund, and $10,441 to Zumar Industries from an allocated gas tax fund. A purchase of a mobile trailer for the police department was also approved as well as the purchase and upgrade of the city cable editing system and upgrade storage for video archival footage for the cable department. • On the front of the July 23, 2015 edition of the Press Tribune, the photo of Good Neighbors Day should have been attributed to Lauren J. Peters. We regret the error.
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