Second in a series
Re “Bruised, Not Beaten, Crenshaw Vows to Continue Tunnel Fight”
[img]1929|left|Damien Goodmon||no_popup[/img]Reflecting on last Thursday’s huge letdown at the Metro Board meeting when members declined to make a call on a light rail tunnel at the end of the Crenshaw Boulevard-to-LAX line, Damien Goodmon, a leading advocate, said “that meeting was perhaps our best opportunity in the last two years to get this done. But it was not our last chance.”
Even though County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, called the Crenshaw neighborhood’s most powerful elected ally, pronounced the tunnel catatonic at best, Mr. Goodmon, executive director of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, is pinning his next best chance on the group’s lawsuit against Metro. Aug. 15 is the next hearing.
“And a new mayor (Eric Garcetti) has been inaugurated,” he said. “There is reason to be hopeful.”
He turns up the palms of his hands when he recalls, frustratedly, the Metro Board saying repeatedly that it lacks the funds to build what Mr. Goodmon says would be a $60 million project.
If you were a Board member, “why would you not think, ‘Hey, this is $60 million. Why not go to D.C. and get some kind of grant funding for it,’ a trip former Mayor Villaraigosa undertook numerous times? Let’s go to the state, where we have powerful elected officials? Let’s see if we can’t have a conversation with the L.A. City Council. They put in $55 million last month. Let’s see if they can’t come up with another $60 million.
“The Board didn’t even allow us the opportunity to try last week.
“Look at all the things that have been going on with Metro for the last 11 months,” Mr. Goodmon said, alluding to the “hidden information” that one finalists among building bidders said the tunnel could be constructed within the estimated cost. But this has not yet been publicly acknowledged by Metro, and the Board’s CEO, Art Leahy, recently denied a public records request by Mr. Goodmon’s group. “He could not give us the records we sought, but this is what is so frustrating,” Mr. Goodmon said. “Mr. Leahy did not prohibit Board members from going upstairs to his office and looking at the documents.”
When Mr. Goodmon met with elected officials, he encouraged them to examine the documents. “Do it, and you will see for yourselves what we already know,” he told them. All to no avail.
On the day of the meeting, Mr. Goodmon’s allies emailed Board members, distributed pertinent information to them. “But,” he said, shaking his head, not one question about it.”
From here on, “it is just about what we do.”
Mr. Goodmon pledged file a request for an inspector general’s investigation of the Metro Board.
“What has been going on with them stinks,” he said.
