By Ted AYALA

Dale Dawson, executive director for the Montrose Shopping Park Assn., presented the MSPA budget for calendar year 2012 to the City Council on Tuesday night. The budget, totaling $369,000, is open to examination by the Council, but they cannot amend or vote against its implementation.

The MSPA has suffered a difficult year, levying allegations against former councilman and MSPA president John Drayman of embezzlement, and getting a strong push from member businesses of the MSPA to shake up the make-up of its current leadership.

Despite this, Dawson informed the MSPA that the organization will be moving in a positive direction for the next year.

Referring to increases in income from the Thieves and Harvet markets, Dawson said that the MSPA was “capitalizing as quickly as we can on the increase in income.”

“We took our second annual film festival and took it way up in scope,” he said explaining some of the measures the MSPA has done to increase the area’s presence. “It’ll be even bigger next year. We really boosted our Halloween Spooktacular, which has been a historically iconic event for us, by inviting the Montrose-Verdugo City Chamber of Commerce to once again co-sponsor it with us. That became a huge event.”

Dawson also told of the MSPA’s need to add a new position to its administration.

“We added a promotional coordinator to our staff because our events program went way up as a result of the increased income,” he said. “The first [new event] that we added was the one on Nov. 21 which we termed ‘White Friday,’ which was our answer to Black Friday. For White Friday we pumped ice and snow into Honolulu Avenue … and we had a town tree lighting ceremony. That was a really wonderful event.”

Dawson also mentioned the production of a TV commercial promoting Montrose aired on local cable TV.

“We’ve got a pretty full events calendar, but we’re adding more to it,” he said.

Also noted was the end of the terms of Alyce Russell and Maureen Palacios as president and treasurer for the organization respectively. Replacing them in 2012 will be Cory Grijalva of Joselito’s and Andre Ordobeghian of Copy Network.

  Ted Ayala