Najarian announced the beginning of his term to colleagues and the audience at Glendale’s council meeting June 30, saying, “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Glendale and our region gets its fair share of transportation dollars to help us break the cycle of dependency on crude oil. We have great projects in the works – subways, light rail, transit lines, van pools, etc., and I will keep you posted.”

Also on June 30, as LA Now reported, a state Court of Appeals decision ratified the California Transit Association’s lawsuit over state siphoning of mass transit funds to balance the budget.

Najarian’s response to my email query on the decision: “The MTA applauds the court of Appeal’s ruling in the CTA case. It is important that the legislature realize that transportation money is just that…money for transportation! The State has already indicated that they will appeal the ruling, so a final decision by the Supreme Court may be months away, but it nevertheless sends a strong message to Sacramento that transportation funds can not be their slush fund to patch holes in the state budget. The MTA remains comitted to give LA County residents transportation options that do not involve the single passenger automobile.”

Friedman Also Comments on Energy Independence, Alternative Transportation

Concerning crude oil dependency and alternative transportation projects, council member Laura Friedman spoke along the same lines at the June 30 meeting. Friedman had just attended the Los Angeles Building Council’s annual sustainability summit. She noted that the local business community has begun to realize that our economic, ecological and energy crises present opportunities for innovation, job creation and efficiencies that will provide long-term benefits.

Friedman went on to deplore the billion dollars a day the U.S. sends to the middle east for crude oil: “That’s money that really should be staying in the U.S. While we are in this crisis, to be exporting our wealth for crude oil when there are alternatives available is really pretty incredible. As these new technologies come online, because we do have the brainpower in California we can kill two birds with one stone. We can not only create new businesses and new industry … but we can also now keep that wealth in California and in the US. There is a very clear nexus btween local policies that we have or don’t have in terms of alternative transportation, complete streets, [policies and programs] that will keep people from using cars, and national security and national wealth. That’s one of the reasons why its so important that we take as many actions as we can at the local level to be as aggressive as we can in terms of conservation … not only does it improve our local quality of life but it improves our national security in very direct and obvious ways.”

The big concern for the rest of us:Where will Washington be getting the money?

Some candidates and office holders visited the Glendale News Press open house yesterday, including city council incumbent Ara Najarian. Najarian, a current Metropolitan Transit Authority member, believes Glendale should work to obtain as much federal stimulus money coming to California as it can, including funds for transit projects. The state budget just passed cut $460 million from public transit. Streetsblog LA commented

…not one legislator from Los Angeles or any other metropolis was willing to stand up for transit operating funds. As we’ve already discussed, the new budget reduces the state operations subsidy for transit to $0 for the foreseeable future, which could force Metro to cut up to 160,000 hours of bus service.

Community college board candidate Ann Ransford was also at the open house. She confirmed that budget cutbacks were a top concern for the college as they are now for our schools and city. School board member Mary Boger, who was also there, indignantly pointed out that California legislators expect Glendale and other school districts to operate based on the funds given to them, without deficit spending or additional taxes. The Glendale Unified School District has managed its funding to date, and isn’t in dire straits as some school districts are.

School board incumbent Greg Krikorian forwarded this information from today’s California School Board Association Bulletin: Current year Proposition 98 appropriations will be cut by $5.9 billion, with about $2.3 billion coming from program reductions and partial cost-of-living adjustment. The 2009-2010 year budget will eliminate the estimated 5.02 percent statutory cost-of-living adjustment, further reduce Proposition 98 spending levels by $530 million, and eliminate the $114.2 million High Priority Schools Grant Program.