Tuesday’s city council meeting featured a subtle clash between the complaints of an activist who believes taxes and fees supporting city salaries are too high for residents, and the demands of citizens who expect city staff to closely oversee neighborhood construction projects.
Viewers also witnessed an obvious clash between the activist, Herbert Molano, and new mayor Frank Quintero. Molano complained about high parking fines in south Glendale; Mayor Quintero laid the blame back on Molano for investing in an apartment building with inadequate parking.
The archived meeting video link is here and discussions related to these issues took place starting at about 1 hour into the meeting.
Returning to the subtle clash, which wasn’t adversarial, but struck this editor: Molano’s line of argument is that the salary burden for city government staff is too high. Homeowners’ demands for code and design enforcement raise the question: are we getting what we’ve paid for?
There are 33 people in the Glendale Planning Department (according to its September 2008 organizational chart). The director, assistant director, four principal planners, and six senior planners all earn more than $100,000, according to figures published in Sustainable Glendale (and their base salaries are far below many Glendale firefighters and police officers).
At the council meeting, Director of Planning Hassan Haghani vigorously defended his staff’s oversight of the project at 503 Kenneth Road, which was the subject of the Northwest Glendale Homeowners’ Association complaint. Board members still questioned how staff is enforcing significant conditions related to the project as they believe work progressing on site doesn’t meet Design Review Board conditions.