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

The Optimized Street Sweeping Program is once again coming before the Council this Tuesday. At the meeting, the Council will decide whether to implement the ticketing program for the remaining half of the city that has yet to see the increased signage. The program was initially discussed and approved at two meetings held in mid-2014. At the time, the city sold the program to a skeptical and disgruntled public using the following talking points:

Talking Point #1: We are being forced to do this.  We have no choice.

“We have very few options here.  We’re not doing it because we want to spend money…This is an environmental thing that is mandated that we do.  It is not something we just came up with as our own idea.” (Mayor Scotto, April 22, 2014) 

“The State Water Board has established criteria and they have allowed us no leeway.” (City Manager LeRoy Jackson, April 22, 2014) 

Talking Point #2: Not doing it will lead to hefty $10,000 per day per location fines.

“If you pick and choose what you will do, and then they [the Regional Water Board] decide too much is going down the storm drain, it doesn’t matter what we say we’re getting fined and $10,000 a day is a lot of money.” (Mayor Scotto, April 22, 2014) 

“A failure to comply with the regulation will result in a fine of $10,000 per day per location of each violation.” (Deputy Public Works Director Craig Bilezerian, May 20, 2014)

Talking Point #3:  All cities, not just Torrance, are being forced to comply.

“I sit on a Board for a lot of the cities in LA County … In all of the discussion from other cities I haven’t heard one thing that is different from what we are doing.” (Councilman Brewer, May 20, 2014) 

“This is not only Torrance. Everybody is doing this.” (Mayor Scotto, May 20, 2014) 

Talking Point #4: The city will not make money off the parking tickets.

“I’ve heard a lot of comments where people say we are just doing this to raise money. That’s the furthest thing from the truth, the furthest thing.” (Mayor Scotto, May 20, 2014) 

“A parking ticket [fine] is evaluated on how much it takes to write the ticket and buy the equipment.  In theory that’s the exact cost it takes the city to do it so if we reduce the fine, the city would actually be losing money. (Mayor Scotto, May 20, 2014) 

Talking Point #5: This will lead to cleaner streets.

Evidence is mounting, however, that these talking points are nothing more than propaganda pushed by the city in an effort to pacify residents who are upset with the proposed program.

The City of Rancho Palos Verdes, for example, continues to operate a Street Sweeping program where streets are swept only once per month and where streets are not lined with no parking for street sweeping signs. How can Rancho Palos Verdes continue with a much more lax program if supposedly the Torrance program is a mandate that every city is doing? How come Rancho Palos Verdes is not subject to those same $10,000 a day per location fines?

The answer to that may be that those fines are really only an idle threat as they have yet to materialize in Torrance despite the program being over 2 years behind schedule. Indeed, Councilman Goodrich had an exchange with city staff last December that appeared to contradict the city’s previous position on the subject.

The discussion at the time was whether the Council should suspend the issuance of street sweeping parking tickets during the Christmas holidays. Goodrich queried staff, “My understanding is that the fines we could be faced with should we exceed our TMDL’s are not yet in effect, is that correct?”  Public Works Director Bob Beste responded by saying, “Yes, that’s correct. They are not in effect.”

In another severe blow to the city’s stance, it would appear the increase in tickets has led to substantially more money in city coffers. The staff report for the item notes a 141% increase in the number of tickets issued since the program was implemented as they went from 6,801 citations in 2014 to 16,416 in 2015. At the $44.34 rate that the city receives for each ticket the amount equates to $727,885.44 received in 2015.

This increase in revenue has apparently come with no corresponding increase in costs to administer the program as the the same staff report acknowledged that:

“There have been no increases in staffing in both the Public Works and Police Departments, nor has the city added vehicles to its fleet since the program inception.” There are no proposed changes to do so.”

Questions also exist as to whether the program has actually even led to cleaner streets. At the April 2014 meeting Public Works Director Bob Beste claimed that the street sweepers were already cleaning 220 tons of trash a month (which amounts to 2,640 tons a year). The current staff report states that the city was only able to clean 2,570 tons in 2015. Other, more technically based studies, have also criticized the efficacy of the program.

The city also initially claimed that the entire program would be funded through a $1,745,800 grant received from the proposition 84 Stormwater Grant Program and matching city funds of $517,866.04 from the Sewer Enterprise Fund. They now require an additional $809,300 from the General fund and another $145,293 from the Sewer Enterprise Fund to finish implementing the program. The completion date has also moved out from the initially planned date of December 2014 to the currently planned date of February 2017.

The significant increase in cost to implement the program as well as the cause for the 2 year delay were not explained in the city staff report.

This past Monday the School Board approved a collective bargaining agreement with SEIU Local 99. SEIU represents approximately 250 of the District’s classified employees which comprise of the District’s custodial staff, grounds maintenance, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers. The agreement provides those workers with a 5% salary increase effective July 01, 2016 and a 4.98% increase in statutory benefits.

Compulsory financial disclosures included in the staff report also revealed that the the District suffered a $529,000 reduction in one-time funds expected to be received from the state. The District had recently announced it was the beneficiary of $14.7 Million in one-time funds.

TUSD solicited community feedback on the use of these one-time monies by sending out a survey to parents on the subject just prior to last November’s School Board election. A community meeting was also held earlier this year at North High School. The School Board ultimately approved uses for half of the funds at a meeting last June opting to hold $7.75 Million of the monies in reserve for future undetermined uses. No explanation was provided in the documentation or at the meeting for why the one time funds were reduced by the $529,000.

The agreement escalates the District’s soaring deficit spending. A month ago, the District approved a budget showing a $13,843,000 deficit for the current fiscal year. Due to the agreement with SEIU, that figure will rise to an astonishing $14,893,000. The increased deficit spending will take a toll on the District’s reserve. In the budget from last month, the reserve was forecasted to plummet to -$6,208,000 by fiscal year 2018-19. Per the agreement with SEIU, that figure sank even further to -$7,514,534.

SEIU Local 99 had generated some controversy in the past election by seeking that the School Board candidates sign a loyalty pledge and requesting that they respond to a lengthy questionnaire on a wide-range of hot button political issues.

Terry Ragins, who won a fourth term on the School Board in the past election, was endorsed by SEIU although it was never made clear whether she actually signed the loyalty pledge. SEIU and other organizations affiliated with classified employees ended up contributing nearly $8000 to her campaign. Teachers unions kicked in another $5000. Those two hefty amounts formed the bulk of the funds donated to her campaign as the total contributions she received according to required campaign finance disclosures amounted to only $14,558.17.  In addition to the union affiliated contributions, Ragins received just over $1500 in individual contributions mostly stemming from other School Board and City Council Members and District employees.

Don Lee, the other victorious candidate in the past election, was not formally endorsed by SEIU, but still received a $1000 contribution from a political action group associated with classified employees. Lee also received $6500 from teacher unions bringing the total donated to the two successful candidates by union affiliated organizations to over $20,000.

The District reached a labor agreement with the teachers union in June that included a 4% raise and a $2800 cash bonus to all bargaining unit members.

At its last meeting held earlier this week, the School Board approved PowerSchool as its new Student Information System (SIS) provider.  As portrayed in the above chart, PowerSchool was by far the most expensive of the six vendors that responded to the District’s solicitation for proposals. The staff report on the item offered no information as to why PowerSchool was recommended over the much more inexpensive options.

School Board Member Terry Ragins attributed the significant price difference to the value added of the alignment piece the PowerSchool system offered. Chief Technology Officer Gil Mara, who lists degrees in Biology and Education on LinkedIn, acknowledged he did not know much about the back end of the system. In that regard he stated, “I know the front end. I know people. My forte is gathering people and walking them through the steps.”

Mara also likened the choice to changing an old tire with a new and justified the recommendation by stating:

“We’re so beyond just changing tires here. We’re really looking for a whole new system, a whole new vehicle. To get there we really just need to do this deep dive. I’d be really nervous just saying alright we can just go with a cheap or mid-level solution…We’re kind of back where we started from because we have a new interface but our practices haven’t changed. We haven’t done what we really need to do to move ourselves forward.”

Board member Mark Steffen also noted the price difference by positing, “the other 4 or 5 options did not really have as robust alignment and best practice kind of system, right?” In response, Mara said it was hard to compare systems but added:

“It’s about doing it right.  We either do this or we do nothing.  We stick with what we have.  I don’t want to go halfway on it.”

In recommending PowerSchool, Mara also cited benefits such as an easy to use gradebooks for teachers that could be accessed on multiple devices and online registration capability for parents which would do away with paper enrollment packets.

According to the staff report, PowerSchool is an advanced student information system (SIS) designed to meet the needs of the district for several years to come.  Reporting attendance, scheduling classes, recording demographics, grading and generating report cards and transcripts are standard functions of any SIS. PowerSchool enhances many of these functions with a completely web-based system with an Application Programming Interface (API) that allows third-party vendors to integrate.  In addition, a powerful online registration portal will eliminate the need for paper registration packets, with an intuitive parent portal. Replacing our current system Q (formerly named Zangle), with PowerSchool, will give extensive tools to the faculty and staff to meet the growing demands for data reporting and communication.

The Board approved PowerSchool by unanimous vote. It is expected that the new SIS will be fully implemented by the beginning of the 2017-18 School Year.