By Julie BUTCHER

Election Day 2017 is on Tuesday, April 4 for all of Glendale’s neighborhoods, and the city clerk is working hard to make sure everyone knows it. Ardy Kassakhian offered an extensive review of his office’s work in educating the public about the changes in this year’s election at a forum at the Sparr Heights Community Center on Tuesday.

“We think we have an advantage by running our own elections,” Kassakhian answered a question from the audience. “We may not be able to keep our elections separate from other elections, swallowed up by the county’s election apparatus, but we’re going to try for as long as we can.”

The Glendale City Clerk focused on everything done to increase voter turnout and knowledge of the upcoming election.

“We’ve even annoyed Montrose merchants with the ‘Glendale Votes!’ banner!” he said with a laugh. “We publish extensive information in six major languages; our Election Center is in the Glendale Police Station and today we confirmed that we’ll be able to keep the Center open the Saturday and Sunday just before the election for early voting.”

For comprehensive election information, check out Glendale Votes online at www.glendalevotes.org

For the first time, the Glendale Community College District (GCC) and the Glendale Unified School District (GUSD) will hold elections by district. This year there will be elections in GCC districts 2, 3, and 4 while the GUSD election this year will cover areas B, C, and D. The Community College District that includes Montrose is Area A and the GUSD district for the area is District 1. Neither district is up this time; both areas will vote in the next local election in April 2019.

The Glendale City Council, however, will continue to run its elections at-large, not by district. In that election, 10 candidates are running for three seats. The city clerk and city treasurer are running unopposed. There is an additional ballot measure, Measure L, regarding term-limits, for all Glendale voters to decide as well.

What’s Measure L?

Here’s what the ballot measure says: Shall the City Charter be amended to require term limits for councilmembers: councilmembers may not serve more than three terms; a partial term of two years or more will be deemed a full term; and the measure will not apply to councilmember terms that commenced prior to adoption of this measure?

Council candidate Mark MacCarley said that he viewed running for office as his “first next act of selfless service.” He ran for public office as soon as he left the military because he sees the City at “a critical crossroads.” He promised to “listen to every single voice” to determine what its residents want “our city to be.”

“Do we want to be a Westwood clone, drowning in a sea of R-1 zoning? Or do we want to preserve the genuine natural beauty and charm of a great community?” he asked.

Glendale Community College candidate Rondi Lane Werner is running in trustee area 4. She said there has never been a resident of the area around the college elected to the board governing the district and that she’s eager to begin to build those bridges.

For instance, Werner noted, “The student-to-parking spot ratio at the Garfield campus is 23:1 while it’s 5:1 at the Verdugo campus. That’s the kind of inequality I’d like to begin to address.”

Werner boasted local neighborhood advocacy experience as well as support from the Glendale professors’ union and showed her understanding of development issues while laying out her opposition to a four-level apartment complex proposed at 913-921 South Adams.

Community activist Brenda Gant reported that the issues she’s most concerned about are “traffic, over-development, maintaining the quality of life we have here in Montrose. I hope it stays quaint and keeps its hometown feel. I’m also concerned about the financial well-being of the City.”

Gant left the event with a lawn sign for candidate Susan Wolfson.

  Julie BUTCHER