The People of Cudahy Want Their City Back. I say...TAKE IT BACK.....

I got this note from Francisco J. Torres in regards to the current political conflict taking place in the City of Cudahy. My response is below. Listen, fighting corruption at the local level is a hard gig.  No simple answers...but the community needs to be engaged.

With respect to Randy Economy Program:

View about city website, ADA, and transparency

Thank you Mr. Vives (Los Angeles Times) for pointing out about the work ben done by the young mayor in the City from Cudahay (sic), California.
I am happy you point out the beautiful cosmetics done in Cudahy City website (http://www.cityofcudahy.com/).
I invite you to compare Cudahy City website with Downey website (http://www.downeyca.org)
First, please notice the last three letters in the website address are not the same in Cudahy website and Downy website.
The last three letters in the website address are called a domain. “Think about domain like phone directory or a cabinet where you put information.”
.COM was created to represent commercial usage.
.ORG was created to represent government organization, non-profit organizations, and charities.
Second, Cudahy website does not give financial information about Cudahy Finances and finances reports have not summited to the websitehttp://www.trasparentcalifornia.com
Other cities are broadcasting Council Meetings live and they get recorded and can be view at any time by any person who goes into the particular webstie.
The steps to follow in Cudahy are the following:
1. A person must summit a public record request to city manager and ask for a video recording from Cudahy City Council and provide an external hard drive.
2. A person must summit a public recoding to city manager and ask for audio recording from Cudahy City Council.
3. A person must summit a public record to city manager and ask for written documentation related to city council meetings such as agendas, memos, and minutes.
Cudahy website does not have a place to summit a public request to get information about finances and documentation related to the management of resources from the city done by Cudahy City Council, City Manager and staff.
Cudahy City Council should invest in technology to broadcast their Cudahy City Council meetings live and have recording of the meetings to be view online by any person who goes into the city website.
Why give a raise to Cudahy City Manager when the city does not have the services to provide information to the community without the control from Cudahy City Manager and the majority from Cudahy City Council.
Cudahy website is using implementation of technology from 1989 invented by Tim Berners-Lee.
The British Computer Scientist gave us a technology to communicate using text, pictures, audio and video.
Cudahy website only uses text, pictures with ability to download documents into smart devices or computers.
Cudahy City is paying a company to maintain the website and to do changes.
The website company did not provided the resources to change the city website from a .COM domain into .ORG domain or the majority of the City Council and City Manager did not care.
The website company should had provided services to broadcast live City Council Meetings and record them to be view by any person going into the city website without a need to ask for a public record request.
Why increase the salary for Cudahy Manager? The city needs resources to be transparent and provide a website with text, pictures and videos to meet compliance for people with disabilities and/or persons who cannot attend the meetings.
Cudahy webmaster needs to be sure Cudahy City website meet ADA Technology standards to provide information to people with disabilities.
Online article from Adriana Gardella, Forbes April 2, 2015
The Department of Justice, which is responsible for implementing the ADA, is increasingly reviewing websites to determine whether they comply with the law’s access requirements.
At the same time, a growing number of plaintiffs are filing lawsuits alleging that various business websites are inaccessible. Internet companies, including Peapod and Netflix have settled cases that alleged their websites were inaccessible to people with visual and hearing disabilities.
And, in June, the Department of Justice may finally issue long-delayed proposed regulations that address websites. But until clear regulations have passed, business owners will face uncertainty as to what the ADA requires.
In conclusion Cudahy City website is not using all the resources need to provide transparent information to Cudahy residents, residents have to follow red type process to get public information by filling out a paper form. Cudahy City does not broadcast Cudahy City Council meetings and people are not able to see the recorded Cudahy City Council meetings online. Cudahy City Council and City Manager with their webmaster do not care about having a website to meet ADA requirements to provide a service to the community and become transparent in their government affairs.
Sincerely,
1/21/2016
Francisco J. Torres an individual from Southeast Communities

Online resources:
What happened to Cudahy when a 29-year-old took over as mayor?
(By Ruben Vives; LA Times Contract Reporter November 18, 2015)
http://www.latimes.com/…/la-me-southeast-leaders-20151118-s…

http://www.forbes.com/…/does-your-website-violate-the-ame…/…
https://www.w3.org/WAI/

CITY OF CUDAHY

City of Cudahy, California

CITYOFCUDAHY.COM

Here is my take:

Randy Economy Francisco J. Torres 

I cannot thank you enough for these comments regarding the City of Cudahy. 

I understand your frustration with Cudahy and other municipalities here in "The Corridor of Corruption." 

I have been fighting the fight of exposing the misdeeds of our elected and appointed officials for decades. 

I sincerely hope that the community members, especially folks LIKE YOU continue to yell at the top of your lungs until the politicians hear all of US LOUD AND CLEAR. 

I am also a huge supporter of THE RECALL process. What ever I can do to help expose these actions of the 20-something city council here in Cudahy, just let me know. While I consider some of the elected officials in Cudahy "Friends" we need to separate ourselves from personal opinions and to deal only with facts. 

The fact is that Cudahy lacks mature leaders. We need people with wisdom and sage advice on our local city councils. Not a bunch of kids who like playing power politics and having access to a multi-million dollar check book. This year the People will CHANGE AMERICA, one city at a time and one politician at a time. Thanks for reaching out!