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City-made video earns Burbank a Golden Mike award

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To help introduce an initiative to encourage programs to prepare Burbank’s workforce for “the real-world demands of an increasingly technical and rapidly changing workplace” then-Mayor David Gordon debuted a 13-minute video during his 2014 State of the City address highlighting training efforts in San Bernardino.

Recently, the video — produced by the city’s public information office and narrated by Gordon — earned a Golden Mike award for “Best in Business and Consumer Reporting” during the Radio & Television News Assn. of Southern California’s 66th annual awards ceremony in Universal City.

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Gordon and members of the city’s public information staff were on hand to accept the award. Last year, Burbank’s government TV channel, the Burbank Channel, won three Golden Mikes.

The former mayor and longtime councilman joked during a recent City Council meeting that “there was no red carpet rolled out for me,” but said it was “an exceptional honor” for the group effort.

“It’s not just to me, but it’s to the city’s public information office as well,” Gordon said. “I don’t have a secret life in broadcasting. I come here on Tuesday nights, and I also take care of people’s eyes for a living.”

After a brief presentation that included photos of Gordon holding the award — a statuette of a golden microphone — his colleague Jess Talamantes congratulated him and the city staff.

“That was one of the biggest smiles that I’ve ever seen you have,” Talamantes said.

The award-winning video proposed adapting the workforce development model used in San Bernardino, where government, education and industry cooperate through a nonprofit partnership to help students learn manufacturing skills that local employers are seeking.

Through the video and his State of the City address, Gordon suggested a similar program in Burbank could address the needs of local employers in the media industry, such as Warner Bros., Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, in order to create a highly skilled talent pool for companies to draw from locally, rather than seek workers elsewhere.

In an August 2014 memo to the City Council, City Manager Mark Scott cited the work of economist Richard Florida and argued that Southern California and Los Angeles County were not effectively competing for the “state-of-the-art, technical and professional jobs of the future.”

Scott’s memo and Gordon’s video both call for an economic development agenda aimed at putting Burbank on a more competitive footing for those types of jobs. The full video can be viewed online at bit.ly/GordonGoldenMike.

Last week, Gordon said he’s not sure if the workforce training program will be put in place during his tenure on the council, but he’s hopeful the city can implement it in the near future. He also acknowledged Scott’s role in the effort, which he said began not long after the city manager was hired about 30 months ago.

“The entire project ... began in an office meeting with Mark Scott when he was still newish,” Gordon said. “He was the one that saw that there was potential.”

Coincidentally, Scott departed his post in Burbank at the end of this week to take the top executive spot in San Bernardino, beginning next week.

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland

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