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Joyce Clark Unfiltered

For "the rest of the story"

Dec 18

11

Clark does it again

Posted by Joyce Clark on December 11, 2018
Posted in City issue and actions • City of Glendale • Glendale elected officials • Glendale election 2020 • Glendale finances • Glendale zoning issues • Heroes Park • West Branch Library • Yucca district • Yucca district election 2020  | Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Disclaimer: The comments in this blog are my personal opinion and may or may not reflect an adopted position of the city of Glendale and its city council.

News headline announcing my candidacy several years ago

It’s Saturday afternoon and this morning I participated in the Third Annual Glendale Hometown Parade. I rode in a beautiful vintage blue Cadillac convertible. What a treat. This afternoon I should be baking Christmas cookies or doing my ‘homework’ in preparation for Council’s Strategic Policy Workshop this Monday or Tuesday’s Council Workshop meeting and subsequent evening voting meeting. I will do all of those things tomorrow. Instead, after nearly 2 years of serving as Glendale’s Yucca District Councilmember, I spent the afternoon reflecting about the past two years of my service and what my future should be.

When I began this current term I announced it would be my last. I assumed, incorrectly, that after 4 years of service I would experience diminishing capacity, physically and mentally. That has not happened. Every year I get my executive physical and each time I pass with flying colors. There has been no erosion of either my physical or mental capacities to do the job that you elected me to do.

I am announcing today that I will run for another term.

I have won some issues and lost some. I am most gratified that I have secured recognition for and a commitment to complete Heroes Park. I secured funding for the West Branch Library at Heroes Park and it is currently under construction and scheduled to open late March or mid-April of next year (2019). It is my intent to hold my next district-wide meeting at the newly opened library.

I do not intend to stop there. I plan to secure funding for the design of the lake feature in Heroes Park in our upcoming FY19-20 budget and to secure funding for its construction in the following FY 20-21 budget. After that there are still the ball fields, recreation center and library expansion to complete. Those are my goals.

I am proud to have gotten support of the entire council to start LED street light conversion immediately. That action saves the city about $700,000 in annual operating and maintenance costs for our street lights and results in an annual electrical rebate of nearly half a million dollars.

I am also proud of council’s approval of my initiative to start a Council Subcommittee on Business. The committee recently reviewed staff’s suggested amendments to the plumbing, electrical and fire codes resulting in the committee’s recommendations to delete or modify certain provisions all of which received acceptance from the entire city council. There is still more work to be done but the committee is making progress toward the goal of making Glendale more business friendly.

Council approved my request to use modified ‘Zero Based Budgeting’ to review selected departments during Council’s annual building of the city’s budget. This year it will be applied to the IT (technology) department and the Finance Department. It is a method of budget review that can result in greater fiscal efficiency.

My greatest disappointment has been a majority of council’s approval of the amended Stonehaven residential project located from Bethany to Camelback and 83rd to 91st  Avenues. The approval by a majority of council for small lot sizes of 3,000 and 3,500 to be located north of Camelback is clearly detrimental to all those who live adjacent to or near this planned development.

Perhaps the only good to come out of this project will be at the start of the project’s development — Bethany Home Road between 83rd and 91st Avenues will be constructed. That may help to alleviate some of the tremendous traffic we experience on Camelback Road. In the next 2 years Camelback between 91st Avenue and the Loop 101 will be redesigned and reconstructed to mitigate (as much as possible) the traffic in that area.

There is still much to do to advance the interests of our district and the city. Two areas of concern are the performance of the city’s code department and continued pressure to develop vacant, infill parcels in the district.

I am pleased that I will be serving on the newly created Code Compliance Committee and look forward helping to improve the code department’s poor and inconsistent performance seen in so many parts of Glendale.

 Land development is oft times a harder nut to crack. If a property owner sells a piece of land and the developer builds to the current property’s zoning it is impossible to stop that private commerce. However, I have been successful in gaining many developers’ agreement (which does not have to be granted) to build mixed sized projects that include not just standard lot sizes but larger lot sizes within their projects.

There is much to be done to keep Glendale and the Yucca District moving forward in a positive direction. I am thankful that I have had an opportunity to shape policy thus far and look forward to continuing to make both the best they can be.

I will establish a political action committee (PAC) in January of 2019 and begin fund raising for the campaign ahead. I ask for your support by donating to my campaign or volunteering to help me as I walk neighborhoods. As I move forward I will establish a secure method of online donation.  I am always available for small neighborhood or HOA meetings. Just call and I will be there.

I would appreciate seeing your comments regarding my announcement. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you and to represent you. It has been and continues to be my honor and privilege. I will continue to do the very best job that I can.

© Joyce Clark, 2018         

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such material. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

 

Apr 15

11

Broken windows

Posted by Joyce Clark on April 11, 2015
Posted in City Council Actions • City issue and actions • City of Glendale • Glendale elected officials • Glendale finances • Glendale zoning issues  | Tagged With: , , , , , | 6 Comments

It has been 17 years and 100 days since the city’s pledge to build the West Branch Library.

shopping cart 2Broken windows remain a problem in so many Glendale neighborhoods, especially in south Glendale. There are many “Broken Window Neighborhoods” (BWN) in Glendale but they are especially prevalent in the Ocotillo, Cactus and Yucca council districts.

The Broken Window Theory (BTW) is a result of a 1982 article by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. The Broken Window Theory states that signs of disorder, like graffiti, dirty streets, overgrown weeds, abandoned shopping carts, illegal dumping in vacant lots, etc., leads to social disorder…not just petty crimes but eventually more serious crimes such as robbery, burglary and murder. The authors of BTW offered that one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares and ignoring little problems creates a sense of irreversible decline that leads people to abandon the community (neighborhood) or to stay away.

A case in point is a Broken Window Neighborhood in the Ocotillo district in the area of 70th Avenue and Sierra Vista Avenue. The people who care in that neighborhood are frustrated and angry beyond belief. Over 6 months ago they contacted their council representative, Jamie Aldama. His response was to send them thank you notes for their concern and a promise that he would take action.graffitti Since then the neighbors contend that he has been AWOL. Their contention to Aldama, in part, remains to this day, “Not only are things still not resolved, (some of them you claimed to already be working on prior to meeting with us), and some situations have become worse.  I have spoken with many City employees regarding the outreach you claimed to have been involved in to solve several of these issues.  No one has reported any interactions from you and/or representatives of your office.”

They feel it is almost a full time job for them to fight the City to take care of these issues. They recognize that city silence and its consequent inaction is acquiescence and they believe that is the root of the problems they have in their neighborhood.

This is an age old problem but perhaps it is time for this city council to take a fresh look at a cancer that can consume a neighborhood almost overnight.  Here are some initiatives that have been suggested over the years by neighborhood leaders fighting this persistent issue:

  • The action to save a neighborhood must involve all city departments, from the city attorney’s office to zoning. All departments must play a part in a concerted and targeted effort to revitalize a neighborhood.
  • For purposes of code compliance and action, legal or otherwise, a special zoning designation of “Broken Window Neighborhood” (BWN) must be created.
  • Within the BWN specific, targeted code enforcement and legal action will be allowed.
  • Any businesses within a BWN should be audited to make sure that they have a business license and are paying the required sales tax.
  • Multi-family within a BWN would be required to have its management take the city’s Crime Free program that targets apartment complexes.
  • Code compliance often falls back on rhetoric that they do not have the legal authority to enforce certain actions. It’s time they were tasked with creating innovative actions that would not only allow them to do so but would actively require such action.
  • City attorneys often do not take code infractions to court claiming that the case is not strong enough and therefore not winnable. It’s time that these attorneys worried less about their win-loss records in court and realized that making a bad actor go to court to defend irresponsible actions are in and of itself a deterrent to future bad actions.
  • Some specific codes will need review and reform. One that comes to mind is window coverage of a business. Have you ever seen a convenience store where nearly every inch of front window space is covered with ads? Not only is it a safety issue but it is one that contributes to visual blight. What about a business that puts 20 or 30 items out in front of its store? An example is a tire repair store with racks of tires in front of the business. More visual blight.
  • Codes relating to residences also need review but more importantly code compliance needs to be aggressively enforcing existent codes. If they achieve compliance without going to court, that is wonderful. But if the resident does not comply, the situation should not be allowed to fester for months and months.
  • While code compliance is working within the BWN, it requires the public works department to repair broken sidewalks, make sure all existent street lights are functioning properly, adding further lighting where necessary and applying resurfacing of streets where applicable. The fire department should be checking all fire hydrants in the BWN neighborhood and offering fire hazard education and smoke detectors. Even the police department has a role to play by intense patrolling of the BWN and enforcing even the most minor violation. Streets and transportation can check to see if there are streets that are more prone to speeding and following up with actions to decrease the activity. The water department can outreach neighbors whose yards are less than spectacular and work with them to install an irrigation system or to desert landscape. Sanitation can educate about the appropriate time to place trash receptacles on the street and can enforce existent law when some put out loose trash the day after it has been collected for the month. How about putting out a dumpster to encourage neighbors to clean up their properties and remove visual blight? What about using the Community Action Program to assist low income or seniors to get a house painted or a yard desert landscaped? When you start to think about it, there is so much that could be done that is not being done.
  • Other departments, such as media and communications need to join in the effort by preparing and distributing media that alert and educate a neighborhood to the action about to begin. The councilmember should hold a district meeting in the designated neighborhood to offer contact information and to educate. Even parks and recreation has a part to play by creating neighborhood activities for children that brings families together, introduces neighbor to neighbor and also becomes another catalyst for action and education. The point is, every city department has a role to play, working together to attack one BWN at a time.
  • All of the above should be applicable only within a specific, newly created zoning designation of Broken Window Neighborhood.

shopping cartThe first BWN should be small as a pilot project to see what works and what doesn’t work. Make no mistake, so many of these neighborhoods have been ignored for years. Attacking a long festering problem is like guerilla warfare. It’s tough, brutal and takes no prisoners but many of these neighborhoods need the city’s attention with new and innovative strategies. They need city departments that say “I can” rather than “I can’t because…”.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Glendale created a model program that is emulated by other cities? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Glendale generated positive publicity about itself rather than having the world focus exclusively on its financial stresses? You bet it would.

© Joyce Clark, 2015

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.