COUNCIL TO GET TOUGH WITH CITY WORKERS; SETTLEMENTS IN CASES INVOLVING INEFFICIENCY FUEL CRACKDOWN PLAN.

Byline: Patrick McGreevy Daily News Staff Writer

Twice city officials allegedly ordered the Public Works Department to trim a tree branch blocking a stop sign but nobody did anything - until Maria Raygoza was seriously injured in a traffic accident.

The result of inaction: a $225,000 settlement approved last week by the City Council, bringing the total for the year to more than $7 million - some of it avoidable as in the Raygoza case.

For years the toll of an inefficient government has mounted and the council has grown increasingly exasperated.

Now members of the council are actually talking about cracking down, demanding that employees be held accountable. They even are threatening to seek disciplinary action against the departments that drop the ball or the employees responsible for the problem.

``I think it's outrageous,'' said Councilman Richard Alatorre, who ordered several key department heads to come before his powerful Budget and Finance Committee next Tuesday and explain exactly how some of these problems occur.

``The concern is nobody talks to anyone else,'' Alatorre said. ``The end result is we're having to pay out these judgments and settlements. Some of these things can be prevented if people would take responsibility.''

Councilwoman Rita Walters, co-chairwoman of the committee, and Councilman Mike Feuer, the other committee member, support calling in managers to demand action.

``It must be brought to their attention,'' she said. ``As the settlements have come through with the price tags on them, it is clear that very often it would have been simpler to fix the problem before it resulted in a lawsuit.''

Called to appear

Alatorre has sent notices to the heads of the Public Works, Transportation, Police and Fire departments to either attend the committee meeting or send a representative so the city can find a way to properly respond when warned in advance of hazards that could lead to accidents, according to Hilary Norton, his chief of staff.

The councilman wants department managers to come up with ways to better communicate and quickly respond when put on notice of a potential hazard, she said.

Alatorre is also interested in what disciplinary action is being taken when city officials don't act on hazards that later lead to costly lawsuits, Norton said.

Among the reforms being considered by some council members is to require that payments in lawsuits alleging negligence on the part of city agencies be taken out of the budget of the agency responsible.

The Raygoza case is just the latest of several in which the City Council was required to pay out large sums of money for incidents that could have been prevented.

`Miserable response'

Federico Sayre, an attorney for Raygoza, said Los Angeles officials had three warnings of the hazard that led to his client's serious injuries.

``For a city as large and supposedly as sophisticated as Los Angeles, this was a miserable and nonexistent response to a known hazard,'' Sayre said.

Raygoza, 38, suffered a collapsed lung and ruptured bladder April 18 when the car she was traveling in was hit by a truck at the intersection of 13th Street and Grand Avenue in San Pedro.

The driver of the truck told investigators he did not see the obstructed stop sign.

Raygoza left the hospital with a residual limp and will require hip replacement surgery, according to city medical experts.

Sayre charged that evidence indicates that six months before the 1995 accident, a city Transportation Department official making routine inspections noticed that a tree branch was partially blocking the stop sign at the intersection.

The official wrote a work order to have the city Street Tree Division of the Department of Public Works trim the tree, Sayre said.

``Nothing happened,'' Sayre said.

A private citizen filed a complaint that the stop sign was obstructed in March of 1995, resulting in the Transportation Department sending out another inspector, Sayre added.

On April 11, 1995, a sign inspector for the Transportation Department confirmed that the stop sign was obstructed by branches from a tree and issued a tree-trimming request to the Street Tree Division, according to a report by Deputy City Attorney Lenore Lashley to the City Council.

A week later, on April 18, Raygoza was in the accident.

Lost the paperwork

Street Tree Division officials did not return calls this week for comment, but Norton said the officials had told investigators that they did not trim the tree because they had lost the paperwork submitted to the Transportation Department.

Alatorre said the Raygoza case is not the only one that could have been avoided.

At the same council meeting Nov. 5, the council voted to pay $250,000 to Vicki Shelton, who sued the city after being injured tripping over a broken sidewalk. A few months before a city crew had done repair work across the street but failed to inspect the sidewalk where the Shelton accident occurred.

Alatorre said his concerns about the city failing to act on hazards has reached the point where he felt it was necessary to call in the managers and demand action.

``These are the types of things that make it really difficult to vote for settlements, when these things can be averted,'' Alatorre said.