Torrance City Council – A Town Hall Style Conversation About Local Politics

Updated data provided by the City reveals that McCormick is operating in breach of the emergency services contract they secured with Torrance after a controversial decision by the City Council to award them the contract last November.  That decision led to locally owned Gerber Ambulance, the previous emergency transport provider for the City, recently closing it doors after nearly three decades serving the residents of Torrance.

McCormick was the only evaluated bidder for the contract that committed to meeting Torrance’s requirement of an 8 minute 92% of the time emergency response. City staff cited that commitment by McCormick as a key differentiating factor in scoring McCormick higher than the other offerors. After several months of evaluated performance it appears, unfortunately, that McCormick is not living up to that commitment.

The data provided by the City included 775 completed “911” emergency calls received in the month of January 2015. Of those 775 calls, McCormick had a response time above the 8 minute requirement on 103 of them for an on-time response rate of 86.7%. Of those 103 late responses, 13 of them took over 15 minutes.  One call in particular took McCormick an astonishing 54 minutes to respond. The data set includes 60 calls where response time data was not provided. If you assume McCormick was on-time for all of those calls, the on-time percentage only rises to 87.7% – significantly below the 92% requirement.  Data was also requested for the month of February, but it was not provided by the City.

As a reference point, Torrance Fire Department (TFD) submitted a notice of default letter against Gerber ambulance for failing to meet the response time requirement. In that letter, TFD cited Gerber’s average response time of 88.9% over nearly a two year period as cause for their default.

Gerber was also blasted by public officials for failing to implement a CAD to CAD interface link with Torrance’s computer aided dispatch system. Councilman Weideman cited that issue as a key reason for ruling in favor of McCormick and was quoted as saying, “If the customer says ‘You have to integrate with our systems as part of the contract,’ you have to do it.”  McCormick is also now in breach of that same requirement as City officials confirmed they have yet to complete the interface even though they were contractually required to do so within the first 90 days of the contract.

Gerber was able to achieve a 88.9% response rate even though it was standard practice for them to be called “code 2” (no lights and sirens) to the scene almost exclusively. Rumors have persisted in the community that TFD has allowed McCormick to respond “code 3” (lights and sirens) more often in order to aid their response times. Torrance stopped short of providing information that would clarify the issue, despite a public records request specifically requesting the data, by responding that they do not keep statistics on whether the ambulance is called Code 2 or Code 3.

McCormick’s continued non-compliance to the contract leaves the City in an extremely awkward position. Many councilmembers cited Gerber’s non-compliance with the contract as justification for making the award to McCormick. Councilman Rizzo even suggested to one blogger that Gerber’s non-compliance opened the City up to huge liabilities. Given those concerns previously aired toward Gerber, what should the Council do now that McCormick is in breach of the contract for the very same reasons and has response times that are worse than Gerber’s?

At last night’s meeting the Council approved by unanimous vote a proposed development for a 7-Eleven convenience store at the corner of Torrance and Madrona. The site is currently occupied by a Valero gas station. The matter was brought before the Council on appeal after the Planning Commission had denied the project by a unanimous 7 to 0 vote. The Planning Commission had cited 7-Eleven’s insistence on selling beer and wine as a key reason for denying the project as doing so would put them in violation of a City ordinance prohibiting the sale of beer and wine within 300 feet of an established liquor store. In anticipation of the hearing before the Council, 7-Eleven agreed not to offer beer and wine sales at that particular location.

Several residents spoke at the meeting against the project citing various concerns including increased traffic, crime, and homelessness. Some also expressed safety concerns such as kids at the Plunge wanting to cross the busy Torrance and Madrona intersection to purchase slurpees. Most of the speakers, however, decried the take-over by big business of small locally owned enterprises as they worried that the opening of the 7-Eleven could force 3 to 5 neighboring stores, including the adjacent liquor store, to close.

The mother and two daughters of the family that owns the liquor store all spoke. One daughter, who attended South High and is now raising her own children in Torrance, spoke of her family’s roots in Torrance and claimed that they had collected over 1,000 signatures opposing the 7-Eleven.  In an emotional plea verging on tears, another daughter said she “felt like small business was being bullied by big corporations.” The mother spoke about how they were relying on the continued operations of the store to fund their retirement and how if the 7-Eleven opened that it would mean that her “American Dream is gone.”

Mayor Furey was unsympathetic. Speaking with regard to the reference made to the American Dream he stated, “If that’s the American Dream, it frightens me. That is such a tired looking property.”  Those comments seemed to create a stir in the room, but after decorum returned, in part due to the presence of an armed officer, Mayor Furey gathered himself to further offer that it was not a negative to have something clean and new there and that residents should wait and see before entering a panic situation.

During the discussion, representatives from 7-Eleven noted efforts done to address community concerns such as having employees pick-up trash and adhering to loading and unloading times.  They also cited 7-Eleven’s commitment to the community through charitable donations to local schools and programs.

The Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce joined the 7-Eleven representatives in voicing support for the development. Donna Duperron, CEO and President of the Chamber, spoke claiming that 7-Eleven “offers a safe, clean, and friendly place to shop around the clock,” and that 40 to 50% of 7-Eleven’s employees are hired locally.

A representative from the development company that is proposing to build the 7-Eleven also spoke in support of the project commenting, “I hear about this competitiveness, that’s what America is all about.”

At the March 10, 2015 meeting the Council approved pooling the available Council travel budget for the remainder of this year.  At that same time, they also proposed increasing the allotted budget available to each councilmember in subsequent years.  Councilmembers Griffiths and Ashcraft opposed the measure.  The current non-local travel budget is $1,664 annually per Councilmember and $2,224 annually for the Mayor.  The move to pool the budget was precipitated by a trip the Mayor and Councilmember Weideman took in January to attend the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and meet with leadership from the Coast Guard.

The stated reason the item was brought up was because Weideman had gone over his allotted budget of $1,664 for the trip and needed to borrow funds that were unused from his fellow colleagues on the Council to get reimbursed. Weideman even recused himself from deliberating on the matter admitting that he was “nominally affected” by the result and noting that the “public needs to have a perception of trust and integrity in their leaders.”

Expense reports from the trip obtained last Thursday through a Public Records Act request revealed several irregularities. Weideman’s expense report was for $1636.84.  The total amount of Mayor Furey’s expense report was $2,416.76. The City travel policy adopted by the Council requires that a pre-trip travel request giving a cost estimate for the trip be approved a month prior to the planned travel date. The policy also requires that a final expense report be completed within 10 working days upon completion of the trip.

Per that policy, Mayor Furey’s expense report was completed on 28 January. Weideman’s expense report, however, was not prepared until 13 March – nearly two months after the travel date and four days after I submitted a public records request seeking the information on 09 March. The reason for the unusual delay in preparing the expense report was not explained.

In another peculiarity, the airfare for both Furey and Weideman was reported on Mayor Furey’s expense report. In the meeting, Mayor Furey indicated that they went really cheap on the airfare as his fare was purchased at regular price and it only cost $99 for Weideman’s additional ticket. That statement, however, does not appear to jive with the expense report.

Mayor Furey’s expense report included airfare charges in the amount of $714.60. That amount is consistent with what U.S. Airways (the airline taken by Furey and Weideman) is currently charging for two round-trip tickets from LA to DC.  Strangely, however, there were two airfare receipts.  One was for a roundtrip purchase for two in the amount of $653.40 with a returning flight on 23 January. A second receipt showed a one-way return flight purchased for 24 January making it appear the trip was extended by one day.  Oddly, that flight was purchased using 50,000 airline reward miles from an unknown source.  Only the $61.20 processing fee for using the airline miles, and the initial $653.40 roundtrip airfare, was expensed on the report.

The use of airline reward miles presents several questions. Whose rewards account did they come from? Why not just pay the additional fee to change flights?  Does utilizing reward miles in this way constitute a reportable gift under the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) guidelines?

There were also two hotel receipts for Furey and Weideman – one for 19 -22 January and another for the extra day of the trip on 23 January.  The Capital Hilton charged them $314.88 a night for the 19^th– 22^nd and only $159.16 for that final Friday night on the 23^rd. The Travel Policy also provides a suggested dinner guideline of $30 and requires any variance to that guideline be documented by a written explanation.  Furey and Weideman exceeded that amount slightly on a few occasions and provided receipts but no written explanation for going beyond the guideline.

In opposing the pooling proposition, Griffiths expressed concern that the pooling was unfair as it would penalize those that hadn’t yet used their budget.  He also said pooling reduced the incentive for the Council to be cost conscious and rewarded those that traveled first and traveled more extravagantly.  As an alternative, he suggested that he would be willing to offer any unused funds in his budget at the conclusion of the fiscal year to anyone that had exceeded their budget.

The Council travel budget has not changed since fiscal year 2011-12, but it was as much as $7,500 per Councilmember and $10,000 for the Mayor in 2008-09. Any Councilmember can exceed the budgeted amount for travel with prior approval from the Council as Mayor Furey did just a few months ago for a trip to China. That trip, which was planned for last November, was approved with a budget of $5,000.  Why Mayor Furey and Councilman Weideman didn’t seek Council approval prior to exceeding the budget for their trip to DC, as Mayor Furey did for his trip to China, is something else left unexplained.

The approval to pool the remaining budget will allow the Mayor to attend another U.S. Conference of Mayors event in June without having to seek another travel budget increase from the Council.