South Bay : Retirement Deal for Inglewood Official

Have parachute, will jump. Happily.

The Inglewood City Council agreed 3-2 this week to cushion the fall of departing Assistant City Manager Norm Cravens with a deal that allows him to raise his retirement benefits by nearly $8,000 a year.

Cravens, 56, who earns $120,000 a year, will leave the city after 14 years sometime before March. Under the terms of the deal, which requires the city to eliminate his position for at least five years, Cravens will receive annual retirement benefits of about $36,000. Without the incentive, he would receive benefits of about $28,000 a year.

Cravens said the incentive package makes it easier for him to bid goodby to a job that has become increasingly unpleasant and stressful, mostly because of unrelenting criticism from council members Garland Hardeman and Judy Dunlap, who have long called for his ouster and opposed his retirement package.

“I just found that I could no longer be effective here in dealing with Councilman Hardeman and Councilwoman Dunlap,” Cravens said. “[Hardeman] has threatened to beat me up before. And Dunlap is not abusive in the same sense as Hardeman . . . but she’s not truthful and ignores the facts.”

Dunlap could not be reached for comment. Hardeman laughed off the allegations that he threatened Cravens with physical harm, saying Cravens was “rude, insolent, arrogant, abrasive and unprofessional with me on many occasions and I’ve exercised much restraint to avoid going to his level.”

Hardeman also took issue with Craven’s retirement deal, saying the assistant city manager should not be rewarded for leaving his job voluntarily.

“I think it’s very wrong for us to . . . enhance his retirement when other employees [who were laid off] have gotten two weeks severance and a kick out the door,” he said.