By Julie BUTCHER

“It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it?” Mayor Paula Devine began this week’s meeting of the Glendale City Council on Tuesday night, ending her year as the city’s mayor. “Dealing with COVID and all the issues our community has had to endure but, through collaboration and meaningful decision-making, we worked very hard to make the rebound from the pandemic a bit easier, a bit smoother.”

Devine thanked her colleagues for their trust, commended their resiliency and ability to “turn on a dime” in service of protecting the city’s residents. She then detailed some of the city’s accomplishments of the past year: vaccine clinics and all the work done throughout the city to coordinate COVID support; three affordable housing projects in progress to add more than 300 units; reckoning with Glendale’s racist past, passing the Sundown Town ordinance and promising an anti-racist future; establishing outdoor dining parklets in Montrose, soon in downtown as well; banning flavored vaping and products and Mylar balloons, which were causing power outages and potential fires.

“We’ve taken a strong stance against climate change,” Devine continued the list, “and acted to ban single-use plastics and approved the use of biogas from Scholl Canyon to forge a pathway to the closure of the landfill and to ensure the reliability and affordability of local power. As a signatory to the Cities Race to Zero pledge, we expect to reach 100% renewable energy by 2035, solar panels on 2,000 homes.

She outlined that the future of transit is “bright, with a rapid bus on the horizon connecting us with Burbank and North Hollywood and Pasadena, a trolley or a streetcar downtown.”

She detailed how the city is focused on increased safety for cyclists and pedestrians, on adding bike lanes and brightly colored crosswalks.

“We convened a blue-ribbon commission to study pension reform, formed a landlord/tenant committee, and a sustainability commission so your voices can be heard,” she said, describing Glendale as a “premier city, still experiencing its renaissance.”

“Thirty years in the making, we just opened the Stone Barn Nature Center. We broke ground on the Armenian American Museum and Cultural Center,” she said. “We’re envisioning the Verdugo Wash project to connect pedestrians and bicyclists from the far north to the south.”

Devine ended by saying, “The perfect way to end my term as mayor [was] yesterday’s unveiling of the Filipino American Friendship monument, recognizing not just the last 30 years of working together with the Filipino American Business Association of Glendale (FABAG) and honoring the life of Ruby De Vera, a force in the community, but to commemorate collaboration, inclusion, commitment, and friendship.”

Councilmember Ara Najarian thanked Devine for her leadership.

“You kept us together, despite experiencing personal tragedy, and surpassed all expectations,” he said. “You have set a new bar for mayors.”

Glendale rotates the job of mayor each year among the five elected council members, currently done at the beginning of April. Last year the council adopted a system of selecting the mayor including an “order of precedence” based on the length of time on the council. City Attorney Mike Garcia explained it in a memo: “Under the prescribed procedure above, Councilmember Kassakhian is next in line to be appointed mayor on April 5, 2022. He has served a longer period of uninterrupted service on Council without serving as mayor than Councilmembers Agajanian, Devine and Najarian, and has the same amount of service as Councilmember Brotman. Under GMC Section 2.04.020(B)(2), Councilmember Kassakhian has precedence over Councilmember Brotman because he received more votes than Councilmember Brotman when they were both elected to Council in March 2020. Also, Councilmember Brotman is not eligible to be selected mayor for the upcoming mayoral term since his current Council term expires within 180 days after the mayoral selection date.”

Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian was elected mayor by a unanimous vote of the council.

State Senator Anthony Portantino called in to the meeting from Sacramento.

“I wanted to be here to congratulate Paula on her year but also to congratulate [Ardy] for becoming mayor of the great city of Glendale. You know, Ardy is a homegrown, local person who loves your city more than just about anybody I know – and cherishes public service tremendously.”

Newly-named mayor Kassakhian took the gavel.

“President Theodore Roosevelt once said, ‘We must show, not merely in great crises but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of boldness and endurance and, above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic and preserved it.’ City hall will welcome everyone back with the enthusiasm and commitment to excellent service that has always been the hallmark of our city,” Kassakhian said, pledging to do everything possible to restore normalcy.

He added the focus of the council is to make the lives of all Glendale residents as “safe, as prosperous, and as happy as possible.” 

“Our job is to make this city the best it can be. And it’s a perpetual job. We never achieve perfection; we just keep moving forward,” said Kassakhian adding that he is committed to doing the work of mayor “to the best of my abilities.”

He also noted that the importance of the democratic process in decision-making.

“This is how we make things better. We talk about it. We debate it. Your point. My point. Back. Forth. Up. Down. Left. Right. Sideways. Yes, it takes a long time, longer than any of us like. And it can be so very annoying. But in that, you get a voice. And that voice matters very much.”

He ended his comments by thanking the City of Glendale for entrusting him with the responsibilities of being mayor.

“We have our work cut out for us, but we will rise to the challenge. In the words of the prince of Armenian poets Vahan Tekeyan, ‘We will rise and elevate others with us.’ And to show those most American qualities of practical intelligence, courage, boldness, and endurance, and – above all – the power of devotion to a lofty ideal that tomorrow will be better than yesterday.”

In additional business, the council authorized staff to engage the services of a design consultant to prepare design alternatives and cost estimates for a dog park. Council requested that $350,000 be appropriated from the Parks Mitigation Fee fund to the Dog Park Project to begin designing the park. Having considered three potential sites, city staff recommended moving forward to build a dog park on city parking lot #11 at 122 E. Colorado St., behind the National Guard Armory. Parking is available at the Marketplace and restrooms are available in Central Park, said Onnig Bulankian, director of Community Services & Parks.

“It doesn’t do everything we want, but this is necessary,” Mayor Kassakhian weighed in. “We have a lot of dog owners in some of the densest parts of the city, and they’re already taking them out for walks and will have this as an amenity. I know how important their animals are to dog owners.”

“I’d also like to plant this, that we get first dibs on the future of the Armory. Councilmember Najarian has been eyeing it as a great spot for an Olympic-sized swimming pool,” he added.

Glendale resident Mike Mohill called in to congratulate both Paula Devine and Ardy Kassakhian and advocated for an increase in the compensation paid to council members.