Re ‘Don’t Loan Slippery Sal a Dollar —She May Grab Your Wallet,’ Editor’s Essay, July 1. Keyword: Richardson
Congresswoman Laura Richardson (D-South Bay, Long Beach) was pulling the same scam that City Manager Jerry Fulwood is using.
If you remember last year , former City Councilman Alan Corlin used the fact that Mr. Fulwood deserved a huge pay raise. In order to obtain that pay raise, poor Mr. Fulwood would sacrifice and give up his $8000 a year car allowance, on his gas guzzling luxury car, in exchange for a fuel-efficient city-owned vehicle. They did this in a City Council meeting, and Mr. Fulwood was praised by three of the City Council members as being a real team player.
I can't believe the community would stand by and let this continue as all of us are paying extreme prices to operate our automobiles in order to just get to work and home.
If Mr. Fulwood used a city vehicle to commute to and from his home last year, his 110-mile round trip each day, based on a City Hall work schedule, he would have placed25,000 miles on city vehicles just for his commute. If he used city vehicles for things other than his commute, then he would have matched or far exceeded the 30,000 miles Ms. Richardson put on her state-owned vehicle in one year.
When an employee receives a car allowance, as in Mr. Fulwood’s case, he receives about $8000 a year, and then he pays for his own gas, maintenance and insurance.
When an employee uses a city-owned vehicle that cost the employee nothing, the city pays $10,000 in depreciation and maintenance costs each year for a low-end city vehicle. In addition, the city pays all fuel costs and insurance.
Presented with these facts, which is the better deal? How much of a sacrifice did Mr. Fulwood make to get his big pay raise?
Also did Mr. Fulwood pull this one over on an unsuspecting City Council?
I don’t think so considering the fact that his two biggest supporters in this, Mr. Corlin and former City Councilman Steve Rose, sat on the City Vehicle and Equipment subcommittee for years. They know what each vehicle costs the city to operate each year.
This was another item that was carefully placed in a two-year budget in order to give them time to make their getaway.
In response, they probably will show us a vehicle that that has low miles and say this is the car Mr. Fulwood drives. He is the City Manager. He can drive any car in the city fleet. This is an old Police Dept. trick used by the department command staff. They would switch department vehicles around when one member lived farther than the others, then switch the vehicles.
Mr. Smith, a retired Culver City police officer, formerly served on the City Vehicle and Equipment subcommittee, representing the Police Dept.
