Convention Investigation
The head of the Pasadena Economic Development Corporation has chosen to retire during an alarming investigation into the city’s new convention center. Hope Pasadena taxpayers are sitting down….
Convention Investigation
Breaking news.
Pasadena’s new mayor says the city has fired the company in charge of the new convention center project.
Wait till you see what was going on there.
We have the exclusive.
“What the hell was going on there?” Wayne Dolcefino asked.
“That’s a great question,” Mayor Thomas Schoenbein said.
The Pasadena City Council had approved $50 million in debt to expand the convention center.
The new mayor was shocked when he learned what the Economic Development Corporation had let happen with the OK from the previous mayor, Jeff Wagner.
“It had ballooned to a $135 million project. You kind of slap the taxpayers in the face,” Mayor Schoenbein said.
“If not for us coming in to ask questions, and then what do you do? Where do you come up with the other $85 million? How do we go back to the taxpayers in Pasadena and say we need another $85 million to complete this arena-style convention center?” Mayor Schoenbein said.
Step Two:
Fire Waytech. The company that had been put in charge of the convention center project. They had simply farmed all the work out and were collecting a percentage of the cost.
That smells…
Fourteen million had been spent so far. One of the subcontracts brought on after the initial vote was a company run by Mayor Wagner’s next-door neighbor.
“How did our city run with what was going on at the time and not being exposed? It was like nobody was at the helm. You know, our taxpayer dollars were being wasted,” Mayor Schoenbein said.
Before he was elected, Mayor Schoenbein promised us a new era of transparency
“One of the things I want to provide to our citizens is true transparency,” Mayor Schoenbein said.
The mayor is delivering on his promise.
For two years, the city had fought our request to investigate Acadian Ambulance records in Pasadena, the 911 provider in the city.
We had exposed evidence of falsified response time records in other cities. But Pasadena fought us every step of the way.
What was the city hiding?
“Here is the information right here, and I don’t know why it took us so many years to be turned over,” Mayor Schoenbein said.
Stay tuned.
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