Election Ballot Measures Up for Vote in April

The first thing you should do before you go to the polls on April 7 is to log onto glendalevotes.org to educate yourself about all the candidates who are running and the four measures that will be on the ballot.

There are two open Glendale City Council seats and seven candidates running. There are two open GUSD Board of Education seats and four people running. There are two open Glendale Community College Board of Trustee seats and three people running. Don’t forget: Those in the unincorporated parts of Montrose and La Crescenta will only be casting ballots for the GUSD school board, but your vote still matters! If you are in the City of Glendale you will be voting for the city council, GUSD school board, GCC board of trustees and the four ballot measures.

If you can’t take time to make it to the polls, you can use the vote by mail system. Log onto glendalevotes.org and scroll down, click on the Vote by Mail tab under 2015 election resources, print the application and mail to the address given. It’s that simple! You can also pick up a Vote by Mail application at the Montrose-Verdugo City Chamber of Commerce office. One caveat – your ballot must be received by the Glendale City Clerk’s office no later than March 31, seven days prior to the election.

I think many of us who live in the far north area of Glendale forget that we need to vote. Everyone who lives east of Lowell Avenue, west of Pennsylvania Avenue, north into the Angeles National Forest and south to the Verdugo Mountains is in the City of Glendale. It gets confusing in the Montrose area. The City of Glendale ends at the alley behind the Montrose Shopping Park area and extends behind the Indian Springs Shopping Center to USC Verdugo Hills Hospital and south into the San Rafael Hills. There is also a small portion of Glendale/La Crescenta on Montrose Avenue at Rosemont Avenue that travels west to Pennsylvania Avenue. There are four measures on the ballot that you will be voting on. Measure C will amend the city charter to modify how much council members get paid. Currently, the compensation is based on population size. The change would allow council members to implement salary increases by ordinance. Council members currently earn $17,160 a year, about half of their previous salary since the dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency and the drop in the city’s population to under 200,000 people.

Measure D asks voters to amend the city’s charter and abandon the city’s at-large election system, which has been in place since its founding, in favor of having district representation. Based on the city’s municipal code, preference is given to officers elected by the people, then to bona fide associations of citizens and, finally, to individual voters.

Measure E is a similar ballot item asking voters whether the charter should be amended to require the board of education to establish the method of electing the members and, if the board establishes trustee areas as the method for electing its members, does it require that the board arranges said trustee areas pursuant to the California Education Code.

Measure O is the only item that will require raising taxes by aiming to increase the transient occupancy tax – paid for by those staying in hotels – from 10% to 12%, a change that could generate about $800,000 annually for the General Fund for aiding essential public services, maintaining public areas and supporting quality of life activities. Log onto the glendalevotes.org website to find arguments for and against each measure.

  melinda clarke