By Brian CHERNICK

Glendale City Councilmembers on Tuesday voted to take the first steps in greatly reducing the city’s carbon footprint by converting landfill methane into reusable energy to power homes in the city.

The council approved a Limited Notice to Proceed (LNTP) to secure the $14 million proposed project cost with Western Energy Systems.

The conversion of Glendale’s landfill will supply the city with 12 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 7,200 homes. The reduction of methane is estimated to be equal to how much carbon would be sequestered by 550,000 acres of forested land.

The LNTP stipulates that the amount of $222,428 will be allocated toward the project to retain a WES contractor to assist with necessary equipment, permitting, environmental reviews and conceptual design. Under this agreement the city is not obligated to continue with the Final Notice To Proceed (FNTP) after the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) environmental review is submitted and considered by the council.

The FNTP is not expected to occur until May 2018.

Glendale police officers are also on their way to getting a major upgrade to their body armor and gear after council voted unanimously to purchase 28 tactical armor vests and helmets from Aardvark Corporation.

According to Chief Robert Castro, armor technology has advanced tremendously since the department’s last purchase in 2012. The chief demonstrated the improvement in weight by lifting both the old and new vests for councilmembers, stating that the decrease in weight allows officers to be more mobile and agile in times of need.

The $156,000 price tag will not be coming out of any additional or new allocation of funds but rather from the department’s asset forfeiture fund.

Glendale’s 2017-18 fiscal year budget was also approved unanimously, but not before a heated exchange between Councilmember Vrej Agajanian and City Manager Scott Ochoa over the appropriation of $10 million toward overtime pay for city workers. According to the approved budget, overtime wages are expected to increase 20% year-over-year. Fire Chief Gregory Fish was invited up by Agajanian to discuss an issue he saw with the payment of overtime wages to firefighters who fill in for those on vacation.

“This is a computerized system; we know when someone is going to go on vacation,” Agajanian said. “Why are we asking someone to come in for someone on vacation and paying them time-and-a-half?”

Fish stated that Glendale Fire had to change its overtime pay in order to be competitive and maintain constant staffing for public safety.

The conversation appeared to create confusion after Ochoa interjected, stating that Agajanian had made “a false equivalency” between different needs in filling temporary staff vacancies and was not “appreciating the fact that there is some degree of nuance” with staffing and finances of the department.

“You can’t compete with the other departments,” Fish said. “We were training a group for other fire departments like LA County, LA City, Burbank, Pasadena … We had people leaving in droves; they would realize in other departments you would get time-and-a-half because that’s the standard.”

Councilmember Zareh Sinanyan agreed with the need to look into why a firefighter filling in for a planned vacation would be paid overtime and suggested looking into the difference in cost of hiring more full-time staff instead of temporary replacements at time-and-a-half.

“I appreciate what you are doing and I have nothing against you or this fire department,” Agajanian said. “I’m just trying to be a person who is prudent.”

  Brian CHERNICK