Commentary: Tallying the costs of participating in Glendale’s ‘democracy’
Americans are experts at recognizing the right to profit, but Glendale can be the first city to recognize the right to one’s community. We need public housing, public land trusts, stable rents, higher taxation on large-portfolio apartment owners and tax incentives for small-scale, community-conscious landlords. Sadly, we can’t have any of this until we have a functional democracy, which we absolutely lack.
Our democracy is fatally flawed because it begins and ends with money. If money equals speech, let’s follow that the other direction and assign a dollar value to speech, just so we can get an idea of how much it costs to participate in municipal government. Glendale renters have been begging our City Council to meaningfully act on the housing crisis for years, but their primary response has been to give millions of dollars and incentives to luxury developers in exchange for a handful of “affordable” units — which then receive thousands of applications, reducing fair, equitable and affordable housing to a matter of luck. We cannot depend on luck and we apparently can’t depend on the City Council, so our only other option is the voter-led initiative.
The Glendale Tenants Union needs 10,529 valid signatures to qualify our rent control ordinance for the ballot. Our target is 15,000 signatures, and with an average return rate of eight per hour, this amounts to 1,875 canvassing hours. If we paid our volunteer team a living wage of $15, the cost just to qualify is $28,125.
Our ordinance, meanwhile, was written by a pro bono legal team whose services would have cost us at least $5,000. A local church graciously donates the use of a meeting room, which otherwise would’ve cost $100 a meeting twice a month. Printing fees have rolled in around $2,000 so far. The months-long planning effort took hundreds of volunteer man-hours. Oh, and this being the second campaign for rent control in our city, let’s include the 1,400 volunteer hours to collect 11,200 signatures the first time and add another $21,000.
So our total bill comes to $61,525 worth of volunteer and paid effort just to ask the voters what they think. But that number fits pretty neatly between the $55,000 and $105,000 that sitting city council members spent on their election campaigns. Only huge wealth wins.
How is this right? How is this fair? How can we be proud of a system that costs this much of either time or money to participate? And how can we be surprised when the occupants of our elected government positions maintain such a hard dedication to the “prestige city” pretense that is draining our community of its character, identity and value?
Participating in government should require effort. But prohibitive costs breed cynicism, which can be beaten only if we empower those who feel disenfranchised. Therefore we need campaign finance reform, a public campaign finance system, voluntary spending limits for candidates and mandatory contributions to the public fund for anyone that chooses not to agree to these limits. We need ranked choice voting to give voters more options.
Glendale deserves a city government that listens and reacts to the needs of its citizens instead of dragging its heels or promoting universally unpopular half-measures. And we need council members who don’t openly brag about owning “too many sports cars” during council meetings. Glendale deserves renter representation.
MIKE VAN GORDER is a former Glendale City Council candidate and activist involved in forming the Glendale Tenants Union.