Airport authority seat gets filled

CITY HALL — Councilman Frank Quintero was chosen Tuesday to represent the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, filling the last remaining sought-after appointment as part of the City Council’s continued reorganization.

The appointment of John Drayman as the city’s new mayor April 8 initiated the annual reshuffle of city agency posts and appointments to regional planning commissions. The process took a major step toward completion last week when Councilmen Bob Yousefian and Ara Najarian took the head positions of the Housing Authority and Redevelopment Agency, respectively.

Quintero, who has never served on the commission, takes the seat that City Manager Jim Starbird has filled on an interim basis since November, when Yousefian resigned from the airport authority following a no-confidence vote handed down by his colleagues over behavior on the dais that they criticized as being too disruptive.

The 3-0 vote to confirm Quintero to the seat came after he, along with Councilman Dave Weaver, recused themselves from the appointment process, citing their long-held interest in serving on the airport authority.

A rule that was pushed through by Yousefian, Weaver and Quintero in November limiting the potential pool of candidates to those on the dais forced the council to choose between their two colleagues.

“I did not approve of that, but it is the way it is,” Drayman said.

Quintero returned to City Council Chambers after his unanimous appointment Tuesday, but Weaver — who was also passed over last week for chairman of the Redevelopment Agency after expressing interest in that post — did not.

After last week’s appointments, Weaver railed against a process that he said had become a political exercise over the “proper” and “nonpolitical” rotation for posts that had been in place in prior years.

He was appointed, instead, as vice chairman of the Redevelopment Agency.

“I’m absolutely not shocked on the vote considering the vote that took place a week ago,” Weaver said after Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “I know in my heart that I am the most qualified person on the council to serve on [the airport authority]. My colleagues thought different.”

Weaver stepped down from the airport authority in 2006 to become mayor, with Yousefian filling the seat.

Quintero, who joins former City Councilman Rafi Manoukian and Glendale Police Lt. Carl Povilaitis on the three-member voting bloc on the airport authority, said after the meeting that he was eager to address the overhead flight noise in northwest Glendale residential neighborhoods.

“I’m very interested in the airport and its effect on the surrounding neighborhoods,” he said.

Quintero joined in a majority vote Tuesday night to support the Part 161 airport authority study, which includes a proposed ban on flights from Bob Hope Airport from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Airport officials are seeking to shore up regional support for the curfew, which residents in nearby communities say will reduce ambient noise in the neighborhoods, as it undergoes its public review period before its submittal to the Federal Aviation Administration. If approved, the curfew for incoming and outgoing flights would be unprecedented, officials said.