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

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.

Mayor Furey was a noteworthy absentee at the ExxonMobil Town Hall held shortly after the recent explosion. His stated reason for not being there was that he was in Sacramento and could not attend. Turns out, that justification may not hold water.

It can be tense in the anxious atmosphere existing in the aftermath of a significant public emergency like the ExxonMobil incident.  As state Senator Ben Hueso commented at a recent hearing, “People are very afraid, and with very good reason.” It is times like this that more than ever people need honest answers from their government leaders.  Resident Brad Commisso exemplified that need at a recent Council meeting as he stood to express his concern about the toxicity of the soot and ash that snowed upon his property.

In the midst of his remarks, he paused for a moment to inquire how many of the City officials had attended the ExxonMobil Town Hall meeting held a few days after the explosion.  Few raised their hands. As Commisso was expressing his displeasure at this absence of leadership from City Hall he was interrupted by Mayor Furey who explained, “First of all it was not our meeting, it was ExxonMobil’s meeting.” In reference to his own absence, the Mayor then went on to say, “I was in Sacramento that day so I couldn’t be there.“

The one glaring problem with the statement is that it does not appear to be wholly accurate.  Information obtained from the Southbay Workforce Investment Board (SBWIB) reflects that he was not actually in Sacramento at the time of the meeting as he had indicated.

Earlier in that same Council meeting, Mayor Furey had explained that he traveled to Sacramento to attend an executive meeting of the California Workforce Investment Board where a request from the cities of Torrance and Lomita to realign themselves with the local SBWIB was approved. The agenda for that meeting indicates it began at 10 am and was set to conclude by 12 pm.

Flight information obtained through SBWIB reflects that Mayor Furey returned to LAX from Sacramento shortly after the meeting on Southwest Airlines Flight 607. Records for that flight show that it left Sacramento at 1:12 pm (PST) and arrived to LAX at 2:25 pm.  The Town Hall meeting in question did not begin until 6:00 pm. If not in Sacramento as he had indicated, where was the Mayor during the Town Hall meeting? How come he did not attend?  And, much more importantly, why did he mislead the public about his whereabouts?

The lack of forthrightness by Mayor Furey on this issue is troubling as it undermines the faith people are putting in City Hall to provide them with honest answers. It begs the question that if he would mislead the public about his absence at the Town Hall, then how can we trust that he is not being deceptive about other important matters?

Perhaps there is good cause for this apparent discrepancy.  If so, I would welcome it. Barring such, however, it would appear that Furey’s absence at the Town Hall warrants further explanation.