By Julie BUTCHER

The Glendale City Council held two special sessions in the past week to meet an Aug. 5 deadline to place measures on the Nov. 3 ballot but was ultimately unable to secure the votes necessary for any measure, sales tax or otherwise, to appear.

The council appointed a Charter Review Committee in February 2024 to consider changes to the city’s charter, which have been discussed for years before the formal seating of the committee. The 12-member committee met and made numerous recommendations to the council, most recently proposals for minor updates and changes to civil service processes including exempting department heads from protections and changing their employment status to “at-will,” updates to some minor financial processes and potential term limits for the elected city treasurer and city clerk.

Previously, the city council considered and dismissed proposals to directly elect the city’s mayor and suggestions to move from at-large to district elections – some of the issues that led to the formation of the Charter Review Committee.

In California cities are either general law cities or charter cities, as is Glendale. The charter is the city’s constitution; its rules and regulations and changes to the charter require a vote of the people. Of California’s 478 cities, 108 of them are charter cities.

Last week, Mayor Ardy Kassakhian balked at the cost of adding charter changes to the November ballot given the estimated cost of more than $750,000 and suggested the addition of a quarter-cent sales tax go to the voters to support essential city services and public safety.

Glendale’s sales tax rate is currently 10.5%. The state cap is 10.75%, which makes the proposed quarter cent allowable. In June, Los Angeles County voters narrowly approved a .5% sales tax to provide funding for local health departments and services, bringing Glendale’s sales tax rate to 11% starting Oct. 1. Local officials worry that other entities could call for a vote on a tax measure that would divert local taxes out of the city.

At a quickly called special meeting last Thursday, Councilmember Vartan Gharpetian reluctantly voted in favor of the declaration of fiscal emergency.

“I don’t want to be the person who tries to block this whole thing in general, but I’m not going to go out there and advocate for it in public,” he said. “I will stay silent. If you want to put it on the ballot for people to decide, so be it. I will vote for a fiscal emergency, but I don’t see it passing and I don’t want to put my name on it.”

By Tuesday morning’s special meeting, Gharpetian had changed his mind. Citing the high cost of everything and the public’s overall distrust of government and reiterating his opinion that the sales tax measure would fail, his “no” vote squashed the effort in its entirety. 

In order to declare a fiscal emergency and put the proposed sales tax measure on the ballot a unanimous vote of the council is needed. 

Councilmember Dan Brotman warned against deferring action, noting that this or a similar measure would be back in two years and that some of the same people criticizing the council’s actions would ask why the city waited so long to act.

“We all know there are serious deficits,” Councilmember Brotman said recounting recent difficult budgetary discussions about keeping libraries open. “It’s easy to say we don’t want to put more costs on our residents. It’s harder to say, if we don’t, what are we going to cut?”

Brotman challenged Gharpetian to propose $10 million in cuts to the city’s general fund.

“When two-thirds of the general fund is police and fire and most of that is salaries, what you’re saying is cut police and fire. No two ways around it. The math is the math. You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” he said.

None of the other suggestions to amend or update the charter garnered the necessary votes to move forward at this time. 

The council meets next on Tuesday, Aug. 11.