Local News in Brief : Rent Board Member Resigns

A member of the Hawthorne Rent Mediation Board has resigned, claiming that Mayor Betty J. Ainsworth has undermined the role of the seven-member panel by intervening in a property maintenance dispute.

Mark Young, 34, accused Ainsworth of “using the city’s staff for her own personal vendettas.” In an interview Tuesday, he said she got involved because the rental property at issue is owned by towing company owner Gary Germain, with whom she has had a long-running dispute.

In an interview after Monday night’s City Council meeting, Ainsworth defended her intervention in the case, saying that she felt the problem--which involved the seepage of raw sewage from the rental property--was too severe to ignore until a meeting of the rent board could be called. She said she asked city officials to investigate the property at 11410 Menlo Ave. because the presence of raw sewage “was a hazard not only to the tenants but to the whole community.”

Ainsworth, who lives down the street from Germain’s S & W Towing and Storage Corp., acknowledged that she has tangled with him over the impact of his business on traffic and parking in the neighborhood. But she said that had nothing to do with her involvement in the sewage dispute.

But Germain said the mayor “has been on my case” ever since he was awarded a contract for the city’s police towing business about five years ago. He said the contract had been held by a friend of Ainsworth. He said he has corrected deficiencies at the Menlo rentals and at another rental property he owns on the mayor’s street, and is paying relocation benefits so he can demolish the rental dwellings for other uses.

Hawthorne City Manager R. Kenneth Jue said the sewage problem has been repaired, and that the city is pressing Germain to make other required repairs and pay relocation benefits.