Bell City Council fails to hold meeting

The government of scandal-plagued Bell was thrown further into turmoil Monday night when a City Council meeting was canceled after the afternoon resignation of one member and the failure of another to make bail as he sits behind bars.

The three remaining council members had been scheduled to meet for the first time since last month's sweeping corruption charges were filed.

But Mayor Oscar Hernandez and Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo called in sick as Lorenzo Velez, the only council member not charged with a felony, sat alone at the dais in the city community center as about 100 angry residents waited for the meeting to begin.

"Due to a lack of a quorum, we won't be able to have our regular meeting," Velez told the crowd, some of whom cheered the councilman when he took his seat.

City officials were allowing residents to make public comments even though the meeting had been canceled.

-- Hector Becerra at Bell City Hall

Photo: Councilman Lorenzo Velez sits alone at the dais. Photo: Jay L. Clendenin /Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Jack]

Called in sick... that pretty much says it all, doesn't it? Scared like little chickens to face the angry throngs. Where is all that bravado now?? I'll tell you where, it's gone. Hope it was worth it all! It never is.

[sholmes]

American Corruption is actually worse than 3rd world. America's style is highly sophisticated, hidden, legitimize by politicians through laws and regulations, uniformedly covered up by big group of people, and lost dollar values is astoundingly sky high as it affects world economy. The greed and power robbers are so astronomically breathtaking. As the biggest economy, a tiny dud is actually a big nuclear bang (1% of $10 trillion is big, is it not?)
Third world's style is too obvious and too open to be easily reported by mass media, but the amount of losses and fraud does not affect the world economy.(1% of 20 billiong, is smaller, certainly).
Where in the world you hear about $60 billion caper of Bernie Maddof? 3d world country’s economy is paralyzed, if Maddof lives in 3rd world.
The public entities got to get even with private sectors and that's what we're seeing now. Tour the inside of Los Angeles Department of (money laundering) Water and (Corrupt) Power, and you would feel through. Their audit director is part of the whole racketeering activities.

[sholmes]

In Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), senior auditor Cuejilo goes to office 30 minutes late everyday, sleeping during office hours in the van for an hour after lunch break, doing workouts daily over an hour during allowed 15 minutes morning breaktime , on both regular & overtime days. Staying in men's room for 25 minutes to continue reading morning papers. He tampers out of town audit trips. During predeparture, he reports return flight at later date, but actually get back a day earlier, stay home and getting paid for unreported day-off
But he is protected as he could provide information that threatens the shadow organization within DWP
Add all the hours he cheated and multiply his rate of around $53.00 per hour, the losses should be more than $40,000 a year, not including the pension cost,vacation and health benefits paid by taxpayers.
A double faced foxy senior auditor cheating using his position of power, with blessings of audit director James Tan, while trying to make sure other employees toe the line. How unbecoming isn't it? Only in DWP, you find this business as usual, as long as you're part of scoundrels. "Pat my back & I pat your back"

[sholmes]

http://ens.lacity.org/dwp/agendas/dwpagendas20268542_10052010.pdf
Please check above website, listing many contracts "recommended by chief operating officer Raman Raj, approved by general manager Austin Beutner. Watch the label"no need for discussion" How could these monsters take up almost 40 big dollar value contracts altogether, simultaneously, rushing it to avoid and evade closer scrutiny through due care and diligent review and study? Intentional recklessness!!
Ask them if they could rush contracts if it were their own money? Off course no!! Rush makes big mistake. In big dollar contracts, they have to be closely scrutinized. But no, because they're own pocket is thirsty and hungry.They rush because its taxpayers money and taxpayers are detached from the crooks stealing tax money under pretense of "public" project
Ramn Raj was the consultant to vendor Convergent Group valued at $53 million to automate DWP substations. This project covers around175 substations. Each substations had cost overruns averaging $55,000 allowed as change order by its audit director. Also,the contract cleary said test and inspection fee totalling at the time $1.25 million should be paid by Convergent, but audit director passed it as change order, Etc....

[VELEZ HAD HIS HEAD IN THE SAND!]

While Velez has not been charged, he was as incompetent as the rest of the bunch.

Unlike community members, Councilmember Velez had direct access to everything and still Rizzo was looting the place under his nose. Velez had his head in the sand!

And while he's now trying to portray himself as a defender of the Bell Police Department, the fact is that he voted (in fact he seconded the motion) in support of Rizzo's proposal for a regional police department in June of this year, just weeks before the scandal broke in the LA Times.

And back in April, he seconded a motion to study disbanding the department. See City of Bell Meeting Minutes for April 27 and June 7 at http://www.bellcityclerk.org/publicrecords/meetingrecords/

So he's voted for Rizzo's proposals too, even though he's now trying to distance himself from Rizzo.

The only reason he's survived is because he wasn't getting paid $100K a year.

Velez should go too! He had his head in the sand and Bell needs receivership.

He was part of Rizzo's rubber stamping council - and he knows it.

[Brown needs to call for receivership!]

BELL IS BROKE, BELL IS CORRUPT AND BELL IS UNGOVERNABLE!

ATTORNEY GENERAL BROWN NEEDS TO CALL FOR RECEIVERSHIP NOW!

AND IF HE DOESN'T DO IT, MEG WHITMAN SHOULD CALL HIM OUT FOR IT.

WHAT MORE DO BELL VOTERS AND TAXPAYERS NEED TO ENDURE?

Get some impartial experts in there and throw out the cronies, throw out the crooks, throw out the clowncil and throw out the crooked cops.

Demand receivership and start over now.

[kuruc]

gov. brown should appoint a committee to oversee this city