[img]2484|right|James Wright||no_popup[/img]Whomever the short-straw person is at City Hall who tabbed Alliance Industrial Refrigeration Services of Walnut last month to evaluate the state of the supposedly perilous Culver City Ice Arena does not deserve high-fives, or even tall-twos, says an expert in the field.
It turns out that City Hall did not pick the San Gabriel Valley firm with a reputation among its peers as checkered, one longtime inspector said.
City Manager John Nachbar told the newspaper this afternoon that the selection was made downtown, by L.A. County Hazmat.
It turned out to be a bum choice, knowledgeable persons told the newspaper.
To the public, Alliance was championed by Mr. Nachbar and other high-profile leaders around City Hall as the ultimate word in internal rink examinations. That, however, was before Jim Wright of Wright Engineering Associates, Fullerton, drove in from Orange County one day last month, inspected the Ice Arena, and, to his astonishment, compared his largely fault-free findings with Alliance’s error-filled report. Mr. Wright blew so many holes in what he called a “fraudulent” report that Mr. Nachbar and the others were left standing there red-faced, gripping small surviving shards of reliable evidence in their hands.
That embarrassment paved the way for last Friday morning’s volatile, city-sponsored “real” inspection of the alleged public health hazard that City Hall says the arena became, practically overnight. The inspection tour ran as smoothly as a single-wheel bicycle, ridden by the late Ray Charles, in the heat of the Indianapolis 500.
Did the city’s latest “real” expert consultant execute his inspection? Or was he forced to conduct a blurrily, unsatisfactory fast one?
This inquiry would seem a cinch to lure a one-word response, positive or negative. Typical of the past month’s soap opera, it drew neither.
The question remains unanswered this afternoon, one of 75 significant questions that the city has sworn it cannot respond to until another, foggily unidentified time.
Even as this story is being written, City Hall is leaning on rink owner Michael Karagozian to make vaguely forged remedies without having identified a single specific code violation, officials say.
Evidently the L.A. County Hazmat operative — who may have plucked Alliance’s name out of a fish bowl — did not know, as Mr. Wright explained this afternoon, that Alliance specializes in contracting not consulting. Huge difference.
Refrigeration system inspection is a small field, Mr. Wright said. “We know each other.”
After outlasting unrelenting shock waves since he became involved with this drama, he no longer is very surprised by developments, no matter how jolting are the gaffes.
While skating families across the Westside breathlessly await the outcome of a supposedly thorough inspection of rink operations conducted last Friday morning by a highly regarded consultant, the truth about the Alliance story may cause handlers to frequently wash their hands.
And so who wrote the Alliance report that condemns the Culver City Ice Arena?
That tragi-comedy will be related tomorrow as Mr. Wright battles through a jungle of gibberish, as some rink partisans have characterized weeks of inspecific and abstract responses and comments from City Hall.
(To be continued)
