Inglewood Meetings--a Day-and-Night Issue : Government: One of the few cities to hold daytime City Council meetings is being asked to change.

Inglewood’s City Council meetings and those held in most other cities across the county are as different as day and night.

While every other South Bay city and the vast majority of municipalities countywide hold night meetings, Inglewood convenes its council at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday three times a month. One meeting a month is held in the evening.

City officials defend the afternoon meetings, saying the system has been around for decades and permits council members easy access to the city staff during discussions. They add that there is little public clamor for change and that some residents are afraid to attend nighttime events.

Councilman Garland Hardeman is challenging that logic. In what he calls an attempt to encourage greater citizen participation in government--and what his critics call a matter of personal convenience--Hardeman is battling to move the meetings to the evening.

Hardeman, a Los Angeles police officer, was working the day shift when he first raised the issue late last year and had difficulty getting time off to go to City Hall. His shift has since changed and he can now attend the day meetings.

He has raised the meeting-time issue five times since 1989 and has yet to win the support of his colleagues. Last week, he sought unsuccessfully to get the council to approve a referendum to switch to evening council sessions.

Initially, Hardeman proposed night meetings every week. Later, as a compromise, he proposed two night meetings and two late-afternoon meetings that would allow workers to leave their jobs early to attend.

When the council did not bite on either suggestion, he proposed the ballot measure. He pulled it from the agenda last Tuesday when those who have consistently resisted his proposals--Mayor Edward Vincent and Councilman Tony Scardenzan and Jose Fernandez--indicated their disapproval.

Scardenzan and Fernandez are self-employed. Vincent, a county probation officer, rearranged his schedule years ago to accommodate the Tuesday afternoon meetings.

“There is no doubt in my mind that if the voters decided, there would be overwhelming support for night meetings,” Hardeman said.

Councilman Daniel Tabor, who leaves his job at the United Way early every Tuesday to make the council meetings, has been Hardeman’s sole council ally on the issue. But others in the community have signed on.

“The people that attend now are a few of the retired citizens,” said Terry Coleman, president of the United Democratic Club of Inglewood and a former Hardeman campaign worker. “We’re talking about (no more than) 20 people. There are more than 100,000 people in this city.”

Jim DeMaegt, an Inglewood attorney and activist, considers changing the meeting time only one step in an effort to open up city government. He also wants the council to begin televising the meetings and to accept criticism from the public more gracefully.

“Unless you are absolutely, totally in agreement with City Hall and you are totally praising them, the mayor and some of the councilmen criticize what you say,” DeMaegt said. “The atmosphere is intimidating.”

City officials vigorously defend the present system, saying night meetings would leave fewer staff members available to answer council members’ questions.

From the meeting room on the ninth floor of City Hall, the council’s action now rings out over a public address system to every worker in the building.

When a councilman stumps City Manager Paul Eckles with a question before a vote is taken, he summons one of his aides: “If Jan Vogel is listening. . . .,” he says, and a minute later, Vogel, the manager of employee development, strides into the council chambers and sits at Eckles’ side.

Inglewood city officials say this efficient system of getting information to the council is the chief benefit of holding council meetings during the day, when staffers can simultaneously work and monitor the action upstairs.

The meetings are not televised on the local cable station, city officials say, because the equipment needed to do this would cost the city too much.

The main piece of ammunition for those favoring daytime meetings is the attendance at the one evening meeting a month: It has been no more impressive than daytime attendance.

“It’s been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no difference” between daytime and nighttime meetings, Vincent said. “People attend council meetings when they are concerned about something on the agenda. Period.”

Vincent said he has observed fewer people at the evening meetings.

“People don’t like to come out at dark,” he said. “Once you get home, eat supper and watch a little television, it’s hard to get up.”

Others maintain that night meetings would lock out senior citizens who stay inside after dark.

“There’s too much violence in the streets,” said William Jenkins, an activist who attends both the day and the evening sessions. “Some of the older people are afraid to go out at night.”

Hardeman and his supporters respond that the evening sessions are not well-attended because they are not held regularly enough. They point out that five of the 12 evening meetings were canceled this year because of scheduling conflicts.

To get around the canceling of nighttime meetings, Scardenzan successfully proposed that they be moved next year from the third Tuesday of the month to the first Tuesday.

“Whenever we do have an issue that’s important, people come whether it’s 1:30 in the afternoon or 7 in the evening,” Scardenzan said. “If they have business that makes it important for them to come, they are coming. They take half a day off or whatever to represent themselves before the council. They are going to find a way to get there.”

Scardenzan, who owns a tool-and-die company in Gardena, said that it would be more convenient for him if council sessions were held in the evening, but that it would be less efficient for city staffers and senior citizens.

Fernandez, who runs his own insurance business, said the current system lets some citizens attend during the day three times a month and lets others address the council in the evening once a month.

Supporters of the time change point to other cities’ meeting times. But so do those who favor the afternoon meetings.

Countywide statistics gathered by Hardeman indicate that only seven of 83 cities in Los Angeles County hold daytime council meetings.

But Hardeman’s critics use the same statistics. They note that the other cities that meet during the day, such as Long Beach, Los Angeles and Pasadena, are large cities similar to Inglewood.

Smaller cities, Scardenzan said, can afford to meet in the evenings because they have fewer department heads and operate in a “family-style situation.”

While the stalemate continues, Hardeman and Tabor say they are considering whether they will try to gather the signatures needed to get the time-change issue on the ballot in 1991.

Coleman, of the United Democratic Club, says the issue will remain one of the club’s priorities.

Coleman used to be a regular at council meetings. Vincent used to bristle at his harsh criticism of city operations. That was when Coleman was on disability leave from his job as a police officer. Now that he has a day job again, Coleman said, he feels that the city has “completely shut me out.”

MEETING TIMES OF SOUTH BAY CITY GOVERNMENTS

Carson 6 p.m. 1st and 3rd Tuesday El Segundo 7 p.m. 1st and 3rd Tuesday Gardena 7:30 p.m. 2nd and 4th Tuesday Hawthorne 7 p.m. 2nd and 4th Monday Hermosa Beach 7:30 p.m. 2nd and 4th Tuesday Inglewood 1:30 p.m. 1st, 2nd and 4th Tuesday 7:30 p.m. Every 3rd Tuesday Lawndale 7 p.m. 1st and 3rd Thursday Lomita 7 p.m. 1st and 3rd Monday Manhattan Beach 7:30 p.m. 1st and 3rd Tuesday Palos Verdes Estates 7:30 p.m. 2nd and 4th Tuesday Rancho Palos Verdes 7:30 p.m. Every other Tuesday Redondo Beach 6:30 p.m. 1st and 3rd Tuesday Rolling Hills 7:30 p.m. 2nd and 4th Monday Rolling Hills Estates 7:30 p.m. 2nd and last Tuesday Torrance Alternates 5:30 and 7 p.m. Tuesday Los Angeles City Council 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors 9:30 a.m. Tuesday