Initiative to Allot Council Districts Fails

A citizens group has failed to obtain enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would force Glendale City Council members to be elected by districts instead of at large, city officials said.

But backers of the measure vowed this week to pursue the campaign and said they may ask a judge to give them time to gather more signatures.

“If the city doesn’t grant us an extension, we’re definitely going to court on it,” Richard Seeley, a spokesman for the Coalition for Electoral Reform, said Tuesday.

Last Friday the Los Angeles County registrar of voters’ staff gave Glendale City Clerk Aileen Boyle the results of its verification of the 11,033 signatures submitted June 11 by the coalition.

Boyle said the petitions contained 8,446 valid signatures from residents registered to vote in Glendale, nearly 2,000 fewer than required. The group needed 10,427 signatures, or 15% of the city’s registered voters.

When they turned in their petitions, coalition members believed they only needed 10%--about 7,000 signatures--and the verification results showed they met that goal.

But after they submitted the petitions, city officials learned that an obscure state law requires the signatures of 15% of the voters for an initiative that would change a city’s charter. Coalition members said they erred because they received incorrect advice from city staff members and from their own attorneys.

Glendale City Atty. Scott H. Howard said the shortage of signatures was reason enough to disqualify the initiative. Had the group obtained 15%, Howard said he could have recommended it be disqualified for technical flaws that he refused to reveal.

“There were other grounds for rejecting it,” Howard said. “At this time, it’s unnecessary to discuss it.”

The initiative was aimed at changing the way the Glendale council members are elected by switching to the district system used by cities such as Los Angeles and Pasadena. Glendale voters would vote for a single council member serving their district. Voters currently cast ballots for all five council seats.

Backers of the initiative said it would bring greater representation to sections of Glendale they say are neglected, including the southern part of the city and the Montrose community. They pointed out that three of the current council members live in the affluent Chevy Chase Canyon area.

The current council members have strongly opposed the measure, saying it would curtail a resident’s ability to influence City Hall and would lead to back-room political deals in which council members would trade votes for projects in one another’s districts.

Howard said the coalition cannot now add to the valid signatures they’ve submitted. He said state law requires them to start over to qualify the measure for the ballot.

But coalition spokesman Seeley said the group is looking at other options. On Tuesday he and coalition Chairman Arthur Segien were reviewing the petitions for signatures they believe were incorrectly disallowed.

The initial inspection, however, turned up only a handful of errors, Seeley said. He said the next step will be to ask city officials for time to gather more names because the group turned in its petitions almost four weeks before the deadline provided under state law.

If city officials refuse, Seeley and Segien said they are both committed to seeking an extension in court, using a new legal adviser.

“We’ve already talked to an attorney, and he says we have a pretty good case,” Segien said.