GLENDALE : Candidates Attack Recent City Decisions

The candidates in Glendale’s upcoming City Council election sparred Wednesday over recent city actions aimed at revitalizing the downtown area, but refrained from attacking each other during their 18th and final public forum of the campaign.

The forum, sponsored by the Glendale Community Coordinating Council and held at the Glendale Central Library, was also attended by the candidates in the board of education and the Glendale Community College board of trustees races Tuesday. Two seats on each panel will be up for grabs.

The City Council race has been marked in recent weeks by a series of attacks by challengers David Wallis and David Weaver against three-term incumbent Larry Zarian.

But on Wednesday, the challengers attacked a recently approved increase in parking meter rates and the extension of meter hours in the downtown area--a plan intended to raise money for two new parking structures with price tags of about $10 million each, and to increase parking turnover.

“Neither the merchants nor the residents back what the council did in terms of raising rates,” said Weaver, a homeowners association activist who ran unsuccessfully in 1993. Weaver questioned whether new parking structures are needed, since there are already several office buildings in the area that do not use their parking facilities at night.

But Mayor Eileen Givens, who voted for the rate increase, said a recent consultant’s report showed that the downtown area will need more parking structures to accommodate retail and other growth.

“In the long term we’re going to need those structures, we’re going to need more convenient parking,” she said.

Challenger John K. Beach, a retired data processing manager and City Hall gadfly who has proclaimed himself “the candidate for all the people,” said that the city is too quick to subsidize parking and other programs for the business community.

He said the Alex Theater, which will require an estimated city subsidy of up to $500,000 annually for the next few years, should instead be subsidized by the Glendale Partners, a group of prominent business people.

“The taxpayers are subsidizing the Alex and who’s making a profit? The Glendale Partners are, because their businesses are located all around it,” Beach said.