Inglewood Councilman Chastised for Overdue Utility Bills

In a confidential memo written by a city administrator, Inglewood Councilman Curren Price was chastised for repeatedly not paying his home water bill and for not paying an overdue $1,250 cellular telephone bill months after the city gave him funds to pay it.

The memo, written by Assistant City Manager Norman Cravens on March 10, also noted that Price’s printing business at one time owed $2,000 to the Inglewood Police Department in charges resulting from responses to false alarms. The city’s Finance Department had to take the councilman to Small Claims Court to get payment, the memo said.

Price, who is running for mayor in the April 1 election, confirmed that he had received the memo and has been tardy in paying several water bills. He settled them, he said, as soon as he received a red-tag notice.

Price said he had thought the cellular telephone bill had been paid. Last week, after receiving the memo, Price delivered a $1,249.85 check to the city for the phone bill.

“The real story is the timing and generation of this memo,” the councilman said Thursday. “I think it is an effort to smear my credibility and to obfuscate the issues my campaign is raising.”

The memo noted that in the 1995 fiscal year, the city reimbursed Price for his cellular phone charges for calls he made on city business.

However, the memo said, Price took the money but did not pay the bill. Consequently, the city had to pay for the bill a second time while it waited to collect from the councilman.

“Your personal financial difficulties have become intertwined with city financial matters and are causing a great deal of consternation among various staff members,” Cravens wrote. “From your earliest time on the City Council, you have repeatedly let your water bill become far overdue. . . . I have had to direct the Finance Department staff not to turn your water off and to make special arrangements allowing you to pay your bills eventually.”

Price said he thought the phone bill was paid because he stopped receiving overdue notices. Cravens was out of town Thursday and could not be reached for comment.