We the People Rising have been blasting the corruption and lawlessness in Huntington Park for the past two years.
Only now is the Los Angeles Times getting involved investigating the corruption?
What took them so long?
They published a story about Karina Macias' illicit connections one week before the March 7, 2017 municipal elections. Either the article was too little too late, or the voter fraud was just so overwhelming, that Macias and Avila were going to prevail, regardless.
I am going with the latter, although I would not be surprised that most of the voting public in Huntington Park did not bother to read the revealing accounts in the press regarding the dial-a-ride hustle in their own city.
Adam Elmahrek wrote another hard-hitting account in the LA Times going after Huntington Park's corrupt city council:
When the Huntington Park City Council changed its senior citizens
dial-a-ride contractor last year, it raised some eyebrows in the community.
Not just eyebrows. Voices and fists were raised at the Huntington Park City Council meetings last year, too. Unfortunately, the political awareness which comes with voter outrage did not follow through.
The council selected Metro Transit Services for $600,000 a year with
annual increases, even though the firm’s bid was was nearly $200,000 a year
higher than what the incumbent contractor, Fiesta Taxi, bid.
WHAT?! Yes, indeed, the Huntington Park City Council took the poor, working-class residents to the cleaners, and then some. Such is the result of a community where 45% of the residents are illegal aliens, and the voting public refuses to vote!
The October decision was the second time city leaders had awarded a
contract to Metro Transit Services.
HA!
Metro Transit hired as its general manager Mario Beltran, owner of a
political consulting firm that worked for a campaign committee that promoted
the council majority. He had no experience in transportation and a criminal
record involving misuse of campaign funds and filing a false police report. It
also hired Councilwoman Graciela Ortiz’s brother, an unpaid volunteer to his
sister’s council campaign.
Mario Beltran, the eminence grise for all things corrupt in the South Eastern Los Angeles County region.
Council members say these connections played no role in their decisions
to award contracts to Metro Transit, which they thought would serve the
community well.
Charging the residents of the city $200,000 more a year--that constitutes serving the community well?
Really?! They're either delusional, or demonic!
City officials said in a staff report that they analyzed Fiesta Taxi’s
bid and concluded that the vendor had given an inaccurate price quote. Based on
the level of service and Fiesta Taxi’s rate, the bid should have been more than
$600,000 annually — just slightly more than Metro Transit’s proposal, the staff
report said.
Sure it was ...
City Manager Edgar Cisneros said at the council meeting that Fiesta
Taxi’s service had consistently exceeded its budget. The city later completed a
study of the service and made cuts that records show brought costs under
control.
Cisneros is not exaclty a hero, either. He is very big in the left-wing LGBT, open borders movement:
Cisneros is not exaclty a hero, either. He is very big in the left-wing LGBT, open borders movement:
There were no scoring sheets — a standard document in local government
contract bidding — available at the meeting to show how and why both
contractors were ranked, something Fiesta Taxi’s representative, Marco Soto,
pointed out during public comments.
So, the city council claims that the Fiesta Taxi bid was wrong, and would have cost the city of Torrance far more than the bidder had claimed, yet at the same time they refused to provide information demonstrating the cost adjustments.
This is corruption and fraud writ large. Don't the voting citizens of Huntington Park have any sense of regard for their well-being? From what I heard in the city, the homeowner are just going to leave the city and live it at that.
The only council member against Metro Transit was so concerned about
the vote that he threatened to report it to authorities.
“I will talk to the D.A. about this,” Councilman Valentin Amezquita
told his colleagues at the meeting. “Don’t erase the [council meeting] video.”
Of course, this man, Valentin, was kicked off the city council in the March 7, 2017. Voter fraud!
Let's not forget that the incumbent Macias and her favorite Manny Avila had big money and major endorsements from corrupt special interests in the LA region.
In an interview, Amezquita said he couldn’t get an explanation for how
staff concluded that Fiesta Taxi’s price quote was inaccurate and questions why
Metro Transit was selected.
The mayor at the time, Graciela Ortiz, dismissed Soto’s concern about
the lack of scoring sheets. She emphasized at the meeting that the complaints
about Fiesta Taxi’s service as a good reason to change contractors. By Soto’s
count there were three “verified complaints” from residents about Fiesta Taxi’s
service.
Three complaints. Are three complaints worth $200,000?
“Three people is three people too much, in my eyes,” Ortiz said.
“You’re telling me about the scoring sheet, but please understand we represent
the residents of Huntington Park.”
HA! That's a good one, Graciela!
City records show complaints rose sharply after Metro Transit took over
the dial-a-ride service, going from a handful to more than two dozen within a
few months.
WOW! Three complaints and the city spends $200,000. For all that extra money, the complaints have risen sharply. What a bunch of rip-off con artists!
Council members say that’s because they are more closely tracking
complaints since Metro Transit got the contract.
But Cisneros, the city manager, was also unhappy with how Metro Transit
was responding to concerns from residents. An elderly woman said she was left
stranded in the middle of a rainy night with no Metro Transit drivers to pick
her up, and the city manager grew increasingly frustrated when the company’s vice
president, Victor Caballero, failed to respond.
They are all buddy-buddy with the corrupt city council. There has never been any intention that these city councilmembers wanted to do what is best for the citizens of Huntington Park.
“This is concerning and unacceptable,” Cisneros wrote in a Feb. 14
email to Caballero.
