Parole Office Options Sought

terating the complaint that Pasadena is overloaded with governmental and social institutions, the city Board of Directors has renewed its request to the state Department of Corrections to look elsewhere for a site for a regional parole office.

Directors this week stopped short of declaring their opposition to a parole office anywhere in the city, acknowledging that such a step might be futile. Director Jess Hughston said Pasadena has no legal means of keeping the state from opening a parole office here, and Director Rick Cole said if Pasadena sought to exclude parole offices, neighboring cities would take the same course. “My concern,” Cole said, “is that we don’t have a great deal of leverage.”

The state Department of Corrections has declared its intention to open a parole office in the Pasadena area and has declared a preference for a site at 468 N. Rosemead Blvd. Opposed to that location, city officials in March secured a promise through the governor’s office that the state would look at buildings elsewhere in Pasadena and neighboring areas, but Director Kathryn Nack said the focus seems to have remained entirely on Pasadena.

Nack said that Pasadena has been “the only city in this part of the county” willing to make a place for institutions and that the impact “on the city of Pasadena has been tremendous.” She said adding a parole office to the long list of facilities already in Pasadena “is too much to take.”

The board instructed Mayor William E. Thomson Jr. to contact state officials to remind them of their commitment to consider sites outside Pasadena.

The proposed Pasadena office would serve parolees who are assigned to agents working from an Alhambra office. Parole officials said that caseload consists of 826 parolees, including 428 who live in Pasadena.