Chris Kilpatrick is named the new CV Town Council president.

By Mary O’KEEFE

There was a changing of the guard, so to speak, at the Crescenta Valley Town Council (CVTC) meeting last Thursday.

Chris Kilpatrick is now CVTC president; Harry Leon, who has served as president for the last seven years, is now serving as vice president.

Kilpatrick grew up in La Crescenta and is a 2003 graduate of Clark Magnet High School.

“I grew up here, own a business here. I think this is a special place and one reason why is because of the people [who] give their time [to the community],” Kilpatrick said.

Kilpatrick went to college and lived in Orange County for a while and then in West Hollywood, but the Crescenta Valley was never far from his mind, or heart.

Living in other places gave him a good perspective of how unique Crescenta Valley is and made him want to move back. Historically, the CV area has had active community involvement and Kilpatrick wanted to come back to help. His mother Sue was an activist in the community and attended many CVTC meetings. As a young man he had been taken to several of those meetings. One of the first times he was at a meeting, and the first time he spoke at a meeting, was in 2017.

During that time the pavement and rehabilitation project for the Foothill (210) Freeway was floundering. CVTC gathered together for a meeting elected officials, Caltrans and other agencies involved. Kilpatrick spoke at that meeting and noticed how influential the CVTC was – not only in the gathering of the officials but by the way they listened to everyone’s concerns.

As president, Kilpatrick wants to do more outreach to community members to give them a voice on what happens in their neighborhoods. And one of the first things is to explain where the unincorporated area of La Crescenta-Montrose is as compared to the Glendale-Montrose area.

“It is shocking the level of confusion that exists, even among some officials and public services, of where the unincorporated La Crescenta-Montrose is,” he said.

There are some issues that he knows CVTC will have to deal with and he is ready to bring them to the public to discuss. These include housing and SB9, which allows more freedom for property owners to add to their location ADUs and other additional living areas.

“Overall, housing is something we can’t shy away from,” he said. “We are in a housing crisis.”

SB9 is a state mandated law gives cities and neighborhoods very little choice in setting building ordinances. Kilpatrick said La Crescenta-Montrose was required to add 1,300 more housing units.

“The [LA County] Housing Dept. came back [suggesting] seven to eight story buildings,” he said of their ideas on how to add housing.

Kilpatrick said CVTC worked with the department and after rezoning parts of Foothill Boulevard came up with a solution with which the majority of councilmembers agreed.

“What we would like to do is look at these new housing bills before they [become law],” he said. “It’s hard to discuss something after it’s already happened.”

His priority, though, is working on traffic safety, especially around schools. He added the small neighborhood streets around schools were not designed to have the amount of traffic that is now prevalent.