Sunroom Desk

This morning’s special Glendale, California city council budget meeting focused on projections of falling revenues and options for balancing the budget. Council should be commended for holding this informational meeting in order to focus on the challenges the city now faces with a projected revenue shortfall of $7.4 million.

Additional cuts to fire and police department budgets, the role of union contracts in the city’s current financial state, and the Scholl Canyon expansion plan, were all plainly discussed. Citizens including employees of large businesses in the city (Nestle), realtors, parents of school children, homeowners, and volunteers who work in police community resource programs attended to make their voices heard.

Of the public speakers, six spoke against any further cuts to police and fire department resources, and one of these, Greg Krikorian, asked that a previous cut (which eliminated police resource officers at Glendale middle schools) be reversed. Krikorian said that the first rule with school budget cuts was “stay away from the classroom,” and said that the corollary for the city would be “stay away from police and fire.” Only one speaker said too much money was already allocated to these departments.

Renegotiating contracts with the city’s unions was a different option staff presented for addressing the shortfall; others included approaches to managing Scholl Canyon’s expansion, replacing civil servant-run programs with private contracts, and cutting back on workweeks/employee furloughs.

Trash to Energy is one very interesting idea that surfaced during the discussion. Scholl Canyon will be filled at some point; other communities and other countries have developed gasification methods that convert waste into energy. Bob Yousefian said equipment like this exists currently, and the fuel it generates could be used to run Beeline buses! Here’s a public works project that sounds like a great forward investment for Glendale, especially if it could generate fees from surrounding communities and forestall the city of Los Angeles installing such equipment near the Glendale/Los Angeles border (near the 5 and 134 interchange).