By Brian CHERNICK

How Glendale votes for its community college and Glendale Unified School board members is about to change for the 2017 election.

Coming on the heels of the national election, Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian and a panel of five other local officials, lawyers and school board members were joined at a public town hall at the Glendale Police Community Room Tuesday night to discuss upcoming changes to voting procedures and how the city plans to get out the vote in April.

Districts will play a pivotal role on the April 4 ballot where a total of six seats, which includes three trustees with GCC and three GUSD governing board members, will be voted on in a by-district election. It will be the first time in the city’s history to conduct elections in this manner.

Jan. 5 marks the beginning of the nomination period when candidates can begin gathering signatures and campaigning. Each candidate must reside within the district in which they are planning to run. Come election day, candidates can only be elected by residents of the same district.

These changes were voted by the Glendale Community College District (GCCD) board on June 16, 2015. Previously GCCD and Glendale Unified School District (GUSD) board members were voted in by all members of the city, or at-large, and were not required to be residents of the district that they would ultimately represent.

In addition, the election will also include three open seats for Glendale City Council, one for city clerk and another for city treasurer. The ways in which these positions are elected will not be changed.

The other focus for the panel meeting was to discuss efforts by the city to bolster voter turnout. According to Kassakhian, average voter turnout in 2015 was 20.2%, an over 2% decline from the previous year, which saw a 22.3% turnout.

Kassakhian presented a chart that broke voter turnout down to neighborhoods. Riverside Rancho and Tropico were two neighborhoods with the lowest turnout – below 15% – with Brockmont having the highest turnout of well over 25%.

The city plans to continue its usual blanketing of Glendale with banners and flyers to inform residents of the election and will run commercials on local networks.

Currently Glendale elections cost approximately $370,000 to conduct and the city anticipates that amount to nearly double in the coming years due to state laws on elections.

Those looking for more information on the upcoming election and all other voting matters are encouraged to visit the website at www.glendalevotes.org.

  Brian CHERNICK