October 11, 2018
VOL. 31, No. 87
JAMES T. BUTTS,
Little’s Response to INGLEWOOD INGLEWOOD MAYOR: TODAY
By Francis Taylor, Asst. Editor
EXTRAORDINARY LEADERSHIP Francis Taylor, Asst. Editor
Last week mayoral candidate Marc Little was given an opportunity to respond to several questions related to his candidacy. As of press time last week and this week there has been no response. While he is faced with a formidable candidate, the voters have a right to know more about what he would bring to the mayor’s office. For instance, his apparent recent switch from the republican to the democratic party deserves an explanation. His $150,000 campaign donations from Madison Square Garden are of interest to responsible voters as well as any promises he has made to them for that support. Where is Marc Little?
At the end of this week’s city council meeting Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts noted the absence of any favorable reporting by local daily newspaper outlets about the progress the City of Inglewood has made during his tenure as mayor. INGLEWOOD TODAY is proud to report to the citizens of Inglewood, and the adjacent communities, that under the leadership of Mayor Butts, Inglewood has made extraordinary progress that is second-to-none in the United States. When Mayor Butts’ first term began in 2011 Inglewood was on the verge of bankruptcy with an $18 million structural deficit and only $11 million in reserves. The mayor orchestrated immediate steps including the reduction of 64 employees and placing the remaining staff on a 10 percent furlough every pay period. With the council’s endorsement he eliminated an unfunded Lifetime Retiree Medical program for employees and a dependent and outsourced tree trimming, parking control and street sweeping to cut expenses. When the city’s incoming revenue is less than the necessary outgoing expenses,
they must rely on the use of General Fund Reserves to offset the difference. Based upon the City of Inglewood’s past financial performance, it was projected that General Fund Reserves would be necessary to balance the General Fund Budget, for each year after the election of Mayor Butts. However, as a result of the drastic but necessary measures he initiated, only three of the seven years have actually required
the use of General funds, and despite the false and misleading claims continually made by local daily news publications that Inglewood struggles annually with multimillion dollar deficits. The reality is that under Mayor Butts’ leadership, the city projects conservatively for worst-case scenarios and seldom do the projected deficits manifest by year-end reconciliation. In fact, it was projected that
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY Happy 100th Birthday to Ms. Katherine Johnson, NASA human computer who calculated trajectories for Apollo space missions by hand! 7
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