Housing Authority Painting Job Is the Pits, Memo Says
A $2.9-million program under way at the Los Angeles City Housing Authority to repaint 13 low-income public housing projects is plagued by poor workmanship and management problems, an internal memo reveals.
Painters hired by the Housing Authority on a temporary basis over the last two months have failed to scrape and prepare wood surfaces at several projects, according to the March 9 memo obtained by The Times. In some cases, labels were removed from paint containers to make it appear that primer was being applied, the memo said.
The memo was written by Rudy Monterro, a maintenance supervisor at the Aliso Village housing project, who reported in the document that his complaints of shoddy work were “totally ignored” by Housing Authority managers. Monterro was assigned to lead a three-man Housing Authority inspection team that was disbanded Tuesday by Executive Director Leila Gonzalez-Correa.
Monterro declined to comment on the memo or Gonzalez-Correa’s action.
The program, described by Housing Commissioner Arturo Fribourg as “one of the largest painting undertakings to go on in the city at one time,” is among several renovation projects at the Housing Authority that have suffered from poor quality or lengthy delays. Earlier this month, The Times reported that an independent study criticized the Housing Authority for taking up to five years to spend millions of dollars in federal housing improvement funds.
Peeling Paint
In addition, a $342,000 paint job of Nickerson Gardens in Watts, the largest public housing project west of the Mississippi, is peeling on several buildings only months after the work was done, Fribourg said. The contractor, Circle N Inc., abandoned the project before applying the finishing touches and left the country, Housing Authority officials said. And a $6-million contract negotiated in February, 1987, to modernize 481 units at Mar Vista Gardens in Culver City is in jeopardy because the contractor, Dalton Construction Co., is in serious financial trouble, Housing Authority officials said Thursday. Of the 50 buildings that were scheduled to be refurbished by last November, only 33 have been completed to date, records show.
Several Housing Authority administrators said they could not comment on the agency’s painting and construction woes because they are under orders to refer all inquiries to Gonzalez-Correa, who refused to be interviewed.
Gonzalez-Correa, in fact, has asked the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners to formalize her no-comment policy. She requested that agency employees be prohibited from writing or speaking to commissioners, City Council members, government workers and reporters without her permission. But the proposed policy raises legal and constitutional questions involving an employee’s First Amendment right to free speech, said Deputy City Atty. Dov Lesel.
Gonzalez-Correa requested the communications ban a month ago after she and the agency became the subject of intensive publicity after disclosures that she had ignored federal regulations while awarding more than $200,000 in contracts to her friends and to political supporters of Mayor Tom Bradley.
Questions about the painting of the 13 housing projects began to surface in February when Monterro wrote a memo to Faustin Gonzalez, the agency’s modernization director.
Last month, the Housing Authority began hiring 98 painters and 14 carpenters from union halls and 42 tenants to assist in the painting project. The agency elected not to pay a painting contractor because housing officials “made a judgment they could do it cheaper and faster,” said Gary Squier, the mayor’s housing coordinator.
The painting program received $2.7 million from the refinancing of Housing Authority property and $230,000 from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development modernization funds. The price of paint materials was about $400,000 while labor and equipment account for the remaining $2.5 million. Records show that the 702 buildings are expected to be finished by the middle of next month.
Monterro reported in his memo that painters were not preparing wood and priming only part of window frames and doors at Aliso Village, even though the project had not been painted since 1975. Monterro’s inspection committee also found no scraping or priming work at Pico Gardens, no priming at San Fernando Gardens and only partial priming at Ramona Gardens, according to the memo.
Labels had been ripped off paint containers at Aliso Village and Pico Gardens, the memo said.
“On Thursday, March 6, 1989, I went to Pico Gardens at 8:30 a.m. and observed that the painters were setting up to spray an overhang, “ Monterro wrote. “When I inquired as to whether or not primer or a finish coat was being applied, (the foreman) indicated that it was primer. When I asked why the labels had been removed from the cans, (the foreman) gave me a big story and insisted that it was primer. After I tested the material by sticking my fingers into it and smelling it, I told (the foreman) that he was not telling the truth, because the material was a finish material. He then admitted that it was a finish material and indicated that he was just following orders.”
Within the last week, Fribourg said, paint crews at Pico Gardens have been scraping wood around windows and doors.
The paint program has suffered logistical problems as well. At San Fernando Gardens in Pacoima, for example, a rented hydraulic lift was delivered two weeks before the paint crew began working, said one Housing Authority official who asked not to be identified. When the painters arrived, the lift had been hauled away.
In his memo, Monterro stated that Faustin Gonzalez had ignored Monterro’s requests to discuss the paint program. Monterro also wrote that on March 3 he contacted Jorge Rosales, Gonzalez’s assistant, to inform him of his findings. Rosales asked Monterro, “What are you, a spy?” according to Monterro’s memo.
Rosales and Faustin Gonzalez were appointed this week by Gonzalez-Correa as the only supervisors to inspect the paint program.
