Glendale City Council August 17, 2021
The big Action Items were:
Police Department, re: Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Special Directives and Impacts Council decided to send a ‘we have some serious concerns, so we’re reaching out to you‘ letter to District Attorney, George Gascon’s office. Ardy Kassakhian made sure to include the suggestion that LADA staff work with Glendale staff.
For those interested in the ongoing address of traffic speeding and speed contests on Glendale city streets, Dan Brotman’s questions and comments about how these cases are handled by the Los Angeles District Attorney will be of special interest. I will provide a clip of his questions to Glendale Police Chief, Carl Povilaitis, with GPD’s responses in the next post.
City Attorney, re: Discussion of Council Districts and Directly Elected Mayor: Motion to note and file passed (Brotman, No; Kassakhian, Abstain; Agajanian, Najarian, Devine; Yes)
The public and members of Council offered some very good reasons why Glendale should be divided into districts and suggestions on how that would be implemented. Opposing positions were very convincing too. It was apparent that Ara Najarian had serious concerns about limiting his power and influence in Glendale. Though containing him to a single district would be a good thing for Glendale in the short term, I still oppose districts. For all of the arguments about diversity, localized representation, election affordability, etc., vs. fiefdoms, multiple councilmember representation, political favor-playing, etc., nobody cited the core problem:
Glendale voters typically don’t vote.
We complain about a lot of stuff (traffic, housing affordability, environmental issues, development), but our voter turnout is pathetic.
Paula Devine pointed out that some citizens want to vote for all available seats being filled by candidates who will make decisions for the entire city. If many of us were informed, active voters, that would count for a lot. Another way to look at that is, as ability to hold all councilmembers personally accountable for their performance as public servants.
Joint CC/Housing Authority Meetings August 17, 2021
Recent Comments