From Butts, Page 7
Butts has a Bachelor of Science from Cal State Long Beach and a Master’s from Cal Poly Pomona, both in Business Administration. He credits his business knowledge and experience when he explains how he helped transform the City of Inglewood. “I understand the circulation value of money,” he explained. “You’ve got to have jobs, stores, retail that hire people. Those people get paid. They spend their money, hopefully, in the community and the money circulates.” The Plan Money was one thing the City of Inglewood did not have when Mayor Butts took office on Feb. 1, 2011. “The Inglewood that I left in 1991 was home of the three-peat showtime Lakers, the Kings of hockey, the racetrack was doing 43,000 people an average of six days a week. We had Sizzler. We had Zody’s (department store). We had the big donut (Randy’s). We had the Airport Park Hotel. And when I came back, all that was left was Sizzler and the big donut,” Butts said. “And an $18-million structural deficit, which in real terms meant that we would not make payroll by June of 2011.” After a nearly 40-year career in law enforcement, Butts said running for political office also was not part of his plan, but colleagues from the Inglewood Police Department asked him to consider leading the city where his career began. The department was facing possible dissolution. “I felt like I owed the city,” Butts said. First, though, he had to be elected. He lost three elections,
another 170 acres, we could have a baseball team. That’s about it,” Butts laughs. All jokes aside, the Inglewood Mayor is not resting on his laurels. “If you’re content, then you can be level headed and realize there’s more to do,” he said. “We’ve long been known as the City of Champions. We want to be known now as the City of Knowledge. We’re investing in innovation and education. We want people to bring their children to learn in the City of Inglewood.” The city is investing $60 million in the main library with plans to put an innovation center on the third floor and connect it to Inglewood High School with a sky bridge. Renovations are also planned for the high school. Butts said he hopes to bring in Google as a partner and offer such opportunities as 3D modeling, videography, music production and more in the innovation center. “It’s proven here in the City of Inglewood that we have great people because
before winning the final runoff. Since the age of 19, Butts had earned jobs based on merit. Running for political office requires name recognition and coalitions, he learned. “It wasn’t until I ran for office that I realized how humbling an experience it would be. I could have quit in any one of those elections,” he said. “I walked for a year, every evening, three church services on Sunday, 9 to 6 on Saturday. I don’t give up, period. The only thing you learn from losing is how to lose. “But what you do gain from the experience of losing is you find out your level of self-determination. And I proved to myself and to everyone that I was not a quitter. That was the thing I got most out of losing. And then the prize that I got: The takeover of a city that was going to be bankrupt in a few months. It wasn’t much of a prize.” Step 1: The difficult decisions. The city cut 129 positions
Mayor Butts with the Medal of Valor awarded 50 years after he earned it as an Inglewood Police officer. photo by Steven Georges
we continue to do great things day in and day out.” The Man
Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. Built otherwise would be overlooked.” Butts knows all about being overlooked. He began his career in law enforcement in Inglewood as the fourth Black officer in the department. As a young officer, he was involved in the apprehension of four armed assailants and shot at four times, all circumstances that would merit a Medal of Valor. While white officers were bestowed the honor, he waited almost 50 years. Last year, Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta awarded Mayor Butts the Medal of Valor for a shooting that occurred in December of 1974 after a robbery at a Popeye’s at the intersection of Manchester Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard. “I was emotionally overcome,” said Butts, while holding the medal and nearly tearing up again. “Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I’ve always been proud I was able to allow people to not suffer the indignities that I suffered.” Butts served 19 years in the Inglewood Police Department, rising to the rank of Deputy Chief, 15 years as the Chief of Police This City for the City of Santa Monica, and five years as an assistant general manager for Los Angeles World Airports in charge of Public Safety and Counterterrorism, taking LAX to a #1 ranking nationwide by the TSA in 2009. He is a nine-year Board member and past Chairman of the LA Metro Board of Directors.
Mayor Butts, 71, is the first to admit his life path didn’t go as he envisioned. At age 7, Butts decided he either wanted to be a high-paid corporate lawyer or a Los Angeles Laker. To reach those goals, he said, “I did the best I could in everything I could, including school. So, I was well-prepared for the ebbs and flows of my life.” It was his mother who later told him he did what he was “supposed” to do. Butts credits his parents with a lot of lessons he learned while growing up near Inglewood, which was a white neighborhood redlined to prevent Black homeownership. James T. Butts Sr. was one of the first Black engineers at North American Aviation (later Rockwell International). A North Carolina sharecropper’s son, he joined the Air Force and was the only one of 11 to go to college. “I learned the value of education and determination from him,” Butts Jr. said. “This is what I tell kids when I go to schools all the time and speak. You never know what your life is going to end up being, but what you do have control of right now is how you conduct yourself every day. The effort you put into your education every day, so that when that door opens, you’re ready to go through it. More importantly, that lesson has allowed me to be in a position to open doors for people who
and put the rest of the staff on a 10% furlough. Also eliminated was a lifetime medical benefit that was unfunded and could never be manifested, Butts said. “And I’ll never forget it, that first Christmas, the unions from downtown picketed my home and they passed out flyers with me in a top hat that made me look like Scrooge. And I’ll never forget that time.” Step 2: Bring in the money. The first deal brokered by Mayor Butts was with an advertising company to build full-motion video boards on city property with a guaranteed minimum of $200,000 per year. “And now those boards bring in $8 to $10
Mayor Butts displays helmets from the two NFL teams that now reside in Inglewood. photo by Steven Georges
Continue Butts, Page 22
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