Push for Glendale Council Term Limits Ends

A campaign to impose term limits on City Council members ended abruptly Tuesday, as supporters of a proposed ballot measure conceded that public interest in the issue has waned.

Mary Hamilton, a leader of a small group of Glendale business people seeking an amendment to the city charter limiting council members to two consecutive terms in office, said opposition to the controversial measure outweighs support, and she asked the council to drop the matter.

“A year ago there was great fanfare, but I think it’s clear that it’s not an important issue to many people anymore,” Hamilton said in an interview.

Members of the Glendale Coordinating Council, which opposed the term-limit drive and had asked the council to place their own initiative on the ballot banning term limits for all elective city offices, also agreed to drop their campaign.

Council members, who were scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to put the term-limit initiative on the April city election ballot, granted the request.

“I am very glad they have decided to drop it. I thought this was wrong from the very beginning,” Councilman Larry Zarian said.

Zarian, serving his fourth council term, would have been barred from seeking reelection in 1999 had term limits been enacted, though he has said he will not seek office again.

Hamilton and other proponents of the measure said the initial push for term limits had fizzled, that the committee was disorganized and had not met for several months.

Some members, however, had said recently they felt the issue could be revived in light of last week’s passage by Orange County voters of term limits for county supervisors and council members in seven cities.

Hamilton did not rule out reviving the issue in the future, but said the political climate in the city is inappropriate now.

The term-limit amendment would have prevented council members from serving more than two consecutive four-year terms, and require that they sit out two years before running for the office again.

When the measure was proposed last year, critics noted that all but three of the approximately dozen members of the term-limit committee remained anonymous for several months. Because many term-limit proponents had previously been involved in local politics, opponents accused them of trying to oust incumbents and then run for the open seats, an accusation the group denied.

Also controversial was the council’s decision to waive the initiative process and put the issue on the ballot without requiring proponents of the measure to collect the roughly 14,000 signatures usually needed to qualify.

The homeowners’ countermeasure, introduced in January, was a charter amendment simply stating “there shall be no limit to the consecutive number of terms served” by elected officials.

“We think term limits would be harmful, not helpful,” said Gene Mestel, president of the homeowners’ council. “We’re satisfied that it’s being dropped now, but we are concerned that somebody might come back and propose the same thing in the near future. We’ll be watching and we’ll fight it again if we have to.”