GLENDALE : Council Selects Reyes as Mayor

Rick Reyes is Glendale’s newest mayor.

Reyes, 57, was unanimously selected at the City Council’s annual reorganization meeting Monday night. He will serve in the ceremonial position for a year, during which he will act as the city’s spokesman and represent the city at intergovernmental meetings and other functions.

Reyes said he was “honored and exhilarated” at the appointment, and promised to maintain the council’s current agenda.

“When people have a problem and they want to talk to someone, they go straight to the top. They want to talk to the mayor,” he said. “That’s a great responsibility.”

Reyes also said he wants to bring some of his good-natured, laid-back style to city government.

“I want to see more smiles, more laughs among the staff at City Hall,” he said.

Reyes, entering the third year of a four-year council term, was hired by the city of Glendale in the early 1960s and worked in several jobs before entering the police academy.

Most of his 27 years in the Glendale Police Department were spent in the school resource officer program, which he helped develop. The last few years of his career were spent working out of the city manager’s office as a community resource officer.

Reyes retired from the Police Department in 1993, shortly before he was elected to the council.

Under a longstanding tradition, the positions of mayor and chairman of the city’s Redevelopment Agency and Housing Authority are assigned to a council member each year on a rotating basis.

On Tuesday, the council selected Councilman Sheldon Baker as chairman of the Glendale Redevelopment Agency. Baker vowed to increase the agency’s interaction with the public and with other government and quasi-government bodies that influence its policy-making.