Centennial underscores importance of voting

As Burbank begins its centennial festivities, we need to remember that what we’re really celebrating is 100 years of self government. And the “kick-off” event is the election for City Council and Burbank Unified School District Board of Education on Feb. 22.

As part of this election, the League of Women Voters Glendale/Burbank will be presenting a candidate forum at 7 p.m. Jan. 19 in the City Council chambers. Timed to occur just before the all mail-in ballots go into the mail, and rebroadcast on Burbank TV6 and streamed on the Burbank TV website, it gives all our citizens many opportunities to watch the forum and make an informed judgment on how they want to vote.

Ideally, everybody would come to the forum and submit a question to the candidates. But life gets in the way, and we can’t all come on Jan.19. So the league invites you to submit a question via our website, https://www.lwvglendaleburbank.org, and then watch the forum at your leisure.

We’ve come a long way in Burbank’s century. One-hundred years ago, you wouldn’t have had the option of watching the forum on TV, let alone the Internet. And since women couldn’t vote in California until later in 1911, a large part of our population couldn’t participate in the election and three of our candidates couldn’t run for office.

So start the party right. Send us a question, attend the forum, or watch it later. And resolve to vote on Feb. 22.

Chris Carson and Joan Hardie

Burbank, Glendale

Editor’s note: Carson and Hardie are co-presidents of the League of Women Voters Glendale/Burbank.

Eager to see more on disclosure story

While I’ve previously written letters critical of the paper, I certainly must commend your two recent columns about the lack of disclosure on the part of the Burbank City Hall (“Start the Presses: Serving the readers into the new year,” Jan. 1; “Start the Presses: It’s about guidelines, not gotcha,” Dec. 25).

With the much publicized scandal of mismanagement in the city of Bell, transparency and accountability by city governments is essential and administrators should have nothing to hide if they are doing their jobs correctly and following legally established guidelines.

Thanks for the good work, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this story plays out.

Phillip Hain

Glendale