Issues remain for the candidates

Two issues that call out for further debate among Glendale City Council candidates, before the city’s April election, are: the “finalized” City Council ban on plastic bags, and the seemingly ongoing plan to try and regain state redevelopment money for Central Library renovations.

Two academics, Jonathan Klick and Joshua D. Wright from the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Law & Economics , recently crunched data on their city’s emergency room admissionsand found that San Francisco’s 2007 initiated ban corresponded with an increase in infections from the increased use of hard-to-clean correctly reusable bags. San Francisco health officer Thomas Aragon reviewed Klick and Wright’s paper and found “a biologically plausible hypothesis” albeit in need of more research. So why doesn’t Glendale — not to mention the city of Los Angeles, by the way — at least wait until such research has, in fact, been done?

Back in September, then well-known citizen commentator, now Glendale City Council candidate Herbert Molano, offered an analysis of the city’s case for spending some $10 million to overhaul the library and found it wanting. Proposals for an expensive new entrance, or entrances, were a central point of contention. I agreed with Molano’s “no” to the expensive components of such a project back then, and “yes” to building much-needed subterranean parking for 200 cars. I still do.

Harvey Pearson
Los Feliz