By Brian CHERNICK

A petition was delivered to City Council during Tuesday night’s meeting that calls for establishing a rent stabilization ordinance, or rent control, in Glendale.

The petition – which appears to have garnered over 11,000 signatures – was initiated by members of the Glendale Tenants Union that established itself earlier this year.

A number of supporters of implementing rent control expressed their support during oral communications, calling upon councilmembers to support their cause and, should the measure reach their desk, that they vote in favor.

Numerous stories have been shared by members of the community, as well as by councilmembers, about the cost of rent increasing by large amounts, in some cases doubling, forcing longtime residents to move out of the city.

Now that the signatures have been submitted, they will go through a verification process by the city’s registrar. If it meets the threshold of about 10,000 signatures and the petition is free of any legal deficiencies, the initiative will return to council.

At that point, the council will have the option to either adopt the measure or place it on the next ballot for the people to vote on.

The council also voted to begin using staff to provide live translation services – translations in “real time” –for attendees during meetings, allowing them to more easily participate in important city issues and follow along as members deliberate and vote on measures.

Currently the city provides a number of translation services for the community, including its website, documents and flyer translations, live conversational translations and video translations produced by the local GTV6 station.

Staff provided council a number of choices on how to proceed and, in a 4-1 vote, opted to utilize paid bilingual staff to administer translations.

The alternate choice would have been to hire Reliable Translation Inc., a professional translation service that already assists the city in translating documents and provides live translations outside of the council meetings, either on request by a city council attendee or in an ongoing contract with the city. Councilmember Zareh Sinanyan was the only individual who voted against the motion, arguing that the alternatives to hiring a professional service would not provide much change.

“I’m not in favor of (using paid bilingual staff) … because that’s basically a version of the status quo,” Sinanyan said. “The reason this is in front of us is because apparently the status quo wasn’t okay. Either we do it right or we just don’t do it.”

Ara Najarian was in favor of hiring a professional translation services, but was discouraged by the proposed hourly rate. Staff estimated Reliable Translation services to cost about $90 to $144 for the first hour-and-a-half per meeting if they were hired on an ongoing basis.

“I understand that professional interpreting services at the level of court certification are at this hourly rate,” Najarian said. “I’m wondering if we can do a (request for proposals) maybe.”

The city’s current agreement with Reliable Translations to provide translation services for written materials expires in 2018, at which point a new request for proposals can be submitted.

According to Assistant City Manager Yasmin Beers, the city would not be in violation of its contract with Reliable Translations if it was to bring in another firm before their service agreement expires.

  Brian CHERNICK