Second of three parts
Re “Goodmon Explains Mayor Villaraigosa’s Flip on Light Rail”
[img]1929|right|Damien Goodmon||no_popup[/img]That the Metro staff, which advises the Metro Board, turned down the offers by three of four contract bidders to build a tunnel at the end of the Crenshaw light rail line within the budget guidelines “is a statement about the staff’s obtuseness,” says Damien Goodmon of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition.
“It also shows that Metro lacks sensitivity to community concerns and lack of sensibility to the capabilities of reputable contractors.”
For two years, the Metro Board dismissively told the hundreds of South Los Angeles residents attending their monthly meetings that they only could afford stations and tunnels in other parts of the city, that to do so on the Crenshaw line exceeded their budget.
Then the wall of resolve began to crumble at last month’s meeting when Mayor Villaraigosa and the four votes he controls suddenly jumped the tracks and decided, well, yes, they could afford to build a station in Leimert Park Village.
But that is only half of what the city’s most prominent black community has been begging the powerful transportation agency to do. They want the tracks to curve underground for 11 blocks at the south end of the line for safety reasons involving pedestrian school traffic and the flow of business during the five years required to build the tracks.
Mr. Goodmon, who has been leading the South Los Angeles charge, seeking the two accommodations taken for granted elsewhere, previously said the station won approval because Mayor Villaraigosa finally felt “pressured” to do the right thing.
Can this kind of political lightning strike two straight meetings – can South Los Angeles residents win the tunnel vote at the next Metro meeting a week from tomorrow?
Who Knows the Outcome?
Mr. Goodmon says, logically, he cannot be sure. “In view of what the contractors have said, we would hope that Antonio Villaraigosa (who will be termed out three days later) or Mayor-elect Garcetti see that as a new opportunity to work with this community so the region can see a project that will be a long-term benefit for us.”
Metro CEO Art Leahy, along with Mayor Villaraigosa, also is in the crosshairs of this dispute because it was Mr. Goodmon’s research that uncovered the crucial information about the contractors, which, the community organizer says, Metro has been trying to hide. Is there any shame or pressure attached to Mr. Leahy for the next week’s public meeting?
“Absolutely,” says Mr. Goodmon. “He is going to show himself. We are completely reasonable in calling for his resignation or for him to be fired. Once these (contractor) documents become public – we heard back from the MTA they don’t want to release them until after next week’s vote – how convenient for them? – it will be clear that this is bureaucracy at work.
“This is Leahy defending his butt. Let’s be specific. The board in May of 2011 rejected both the station and the tunnel because Leahy said they would be $400 million to $500 million extra. From that, we called Villaraigosa everything under the sun. The board acted on the numbers Leahy had given them. We said Mayor Villaraigosa was betraying us. We organized a great number of influential African American leaders to tell our people to vote against Measure J (the mayor’s pet project), and it failed. And (only) now are we finding out the number (asserted by Mr. Leahy) doesn’t hold up, that he was exaggerating by five-fold.”
(To be continued)
