Councilmember Margaret McAustin, Mayor Terry Tornek and City Manager Steve Mermell prior to the begining of council meeting on Monday, Oct. 30, 2017 (Photo – Garrett Rowlan).
The cloudy night skies over Pasadena, on Halloween Eve, portended a change in the air, and with it a change of seasons.
By Garrett Rowlan
And yet, as events in the City Council meeting Monday night proved, change in the atmospheric level is more difficult than in the bureaucratic one, as two main issues in front of the Council did not avail themselves to an easy resolution.
The first issue is compliance with the September, 2015, bill known as the Voter Participation Act, which prohibits off-year special elections if those elections showed worse voter turnout then statewide elections in the past. Basically, the Council was presented, by City Clerk Mark Jomsky, with a menu of choices between a primary and general process, a simple plurality process, or a blending of the two.
The issue is “fraught with anomalies,” according to Mayor Terry Tornek. Among those, as the Council members voiced, are a staggered seating process, whereas some elected to office would be seated in the spring, while others in the runoff process wouldn’t take office until much later in the year. A simple plurality, councilmember Margaret McAustin opined, would correct this outcome, but these election results could be “ghastly,” as councilmember Steve Madison replied, in as much as someone could be elected with as little as fifteen or twenty percent of the vote.
The elephant in this particular room is the level of voter apathy, and the need to address the issue through legislation. “The current model is no longer tenable,” said Jomsky.
While Council is not under the gun to come up with a plan until next year, this airing of possibilities is a step in the right direction, though one public speaker recommended that nothing be done and let the State go ahead and sue, if they want. The time and effort might make the tort process too thorny to undertake.
World’s largest sandbox?
The second issue, while complex, put the Council members in a happier frame of mind, as the issue of what to do with 55 acres of dirt—possibly the world’s largest sandbox—that presently constitutes the 710 stub. The eyesore that is between St John’s and Pasadena Avenue is due to be improved, now that the 710-extension appears to be a dead duck. Currently, a “futuristic monstrosity,” according to Madison, it has possibilities of being changed into parkland, housing (affordable housing, perhaps), and business opportunities.
Of course, complexities remain, working with Alhambra and South Pasadena, working with the State of California, which still has not yet relinquished the property—a process, no doubt, of significant bureaucratic miasma. The road may be rocky, but it leads upward.
Looking at the colorful projections of proposed development for the area, one could not be other than optimistic for this process of healing this particular blight above California Boulevard.
The presentation seemed to lead to the adjournment in a happier frame of mind.
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