By Julie BUTCHER

At the beginning of the last meeting of the Glendale City Council in 2024 on Tuesday night, a proclamation was adopted designating December as Family Celebration and Appreciation Month.

Local resident Allan Durham then urged the Council to fill vacancies on the city’s boards and commissions and to take the past attendance of potential candidates for those seats into consideration.

Shu-Jun Li, assistant director of Finance, presented this year’s annual financial report, the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. According to the auditors, the city’s budgeting processes received the highest rating, an “unmodified opinion” with “no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies.” The report shows the city’s assets at $3.176 billion with anticipated liabilities of $1.463 billion for a net as of June 30, 2024 of $1.855 billion, $2.4 million more in projected income than anticipated, with a reserve of 40% expected by fiscal year end. The Council’s reserve policy is to maintain a floor of 25% with a target of 35%.

The entire report is available as Item 8.a. https://glendaleca.primegov.com/Portal/Meeting?meetingTemplateId=38023.

While the next two budget years are balanced, years beyond those are more fiscally challenging. 

“Looking at these trends, how does the city avoid depleting revenue reserves in the out years and maintain maximum fiscal stability?” Asked Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian. 

Councilmember Ara Najarian echoed the somber look at the city’s future finances.

“I hope everyone in the community can take the time to look at this chart; it’s not extremely complicated but it clearly shows that our expenditures are outpacing our revenues at least as projected for the next five years,” he said. “I think as we go further out it becomes ever more severe. We have to – as a Council and as a city – very carefully scrutinize every project, program [and] proposal that is going to increase anything charged to our general fund because we’re basically heading towards that fiscal cliff.”

Mayor Elen Asatryan wants items that Council has expressed interest in funding, such as a park in south Glendale, new affordable housing, “anything we want to do that requires funding,” be reviewed in conjunction with potential revenue streams.

Councilmember Dan Brotman reviewed the budget schedule noting that study sessions would take place in March and April for the adoption of a new budget by the end of June. He noted that this year and the next are “probably comfortable” but that after that there would be the need to dip into reserves “because our expenditures will exceed our revenues.” 

“We keep pulling from this 115 trust [money set aside to pay for pension liabilities],” Brotman said noting there is a need for an “honest conversation” about new revenues or service cuts, adding that 63% of the city’s budget goes to public safety and that most of those costs are the costs of personnel.

The Council delayed action until next year on realigning and reclassifying 38 city positions.

Police Chief Manny Cid presented plans to add 52 police officers to the Glendale Police Dept. in three phases – “Project 300” – to maintain the city’s designation as one of the nation’s safest cities. Currently there are 248 officers and the department is fully staffed; 37 new officers have been hired in the past 18 months. Glendale currently fields 1.2 officers per 1000 residents, compared to the national average of similarly sized cities of 1.6, and with Burbank at 1.5 officers per 1000 residents, Pasadena at 1.7; Santa Monica at 2.5; and Los Angeles at 2.3. Chief Cid quoted more demographic statistics: 250,000 people visit the city each day and between 500,000 and 1,000,000 cars pass through daily. Adopting all three phases of Project 300 would bring the ratio up to 1.5 and cost $15.8 million over three years. 

Phase 1 of the plan was adopted unanimously.

The Council authorized Glendale Water and Power (GWP) to increase the subsidy for low-income electricity customers from $23.50 to $35 per month, effective Jan. 1, 2025. GWP reports that of approximately 89,000 customer households, 11,314 currently take advantage of the discounted program.