THE TOP 10 STORIES OF THE YEAR
Alleged hit-and-run driver faces trial
1Nearly six months after Ara Grigoryan was arrested on suspicion of causing the hit-and-run death of 24-year-old Elizabeth Sandoval, Pasadena Superior Court Judge Teri Schwartz on Dec. 19 ruled that Grigoryan would stand trial for second-degree murder.
Grigoryan is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday.
Schwartz’s ruling was the latest development in a case that caused community uproar over not only the incident, but Glendale’s high number of pedestrian-related traffic accidents.
Sandoval’s death captured widespread interest after Glendale Police made an unprecedented public push to track the driver down.
Sandoval died at the scene after a Mercedes-Benz S430 sedan struck and killed her at about 9:40 p.m. July 10 as she jaywalked with her friend Diana Sanchez across South Glendale Avenue just south of East Windsor Road.
While the Mercedes was found abandoned in Van Nuys a few days later, Grigoryan — who police say was the driver of the car that night — wasn’t tracked down until the following week.
He was arrested in Mexico City while reportedly trying to board a flight to Spain. Authorities said Grigoryan was trying to return to his native Armenia.
His arrest capped off days of media coverage as Sandoval’s family and friends made public pleas for those with information to come forward. The Glendale City Council and county Board of Supervisors approved a combined $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
After Grigoryan was arrested, attorneys delayed the preliminary hearing for months as investigators completed their reports detailing the crime scene.
During the two-day hearing, defense attorney Fred Minassian argued Grigoryan had tried to avoid the collision, but when he swerved to miss Sanchez, he hit Sandoval.
But in making her ruling, Schwartz said evidence alleging Grigoryan had been traveling 60 mph in a 30-mph zone indicated a reckless disregard for human life — regardless of his poor driving record — and that her strong suspicion that second-degree murder had been committed warranted a jury trial.
Grigoryan’s record included at least five traffic violations, a stint in traffic school and two minor accidents, all of which reportedly elicited a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles warning him of his dangerous driving habits. Minassian contested the letter and the severity of his traffic violations.
After Grigoryan is arraigned, the judge will likely set a date to begin the pretrial process.
Tree ordinance ends in a fine mess
2Ann and Mike Collard’s decision to invest a few thousand dollars in trimming back overgrown trees from their house in August soon became fodder for regional critics and media coverage after the city turned that investment into a $347,000 debt.
The fine levied against the Collards came in the form of a Sept. 21 notice of violation to the city’s Indigenous Tree Ordinance for cutting 13 protected trees without a permit.
Another resident, John Oppenheim, received a fine for similar violations that totaled $170,000, while several others have been hit with fines for tens of thousands of dollars.
But it was the Collards’ story — and their public relations battle against the city through print, radio and television news coverage — that made it a searing issue for the City Council.
Even after announcing that a hold on all tree-trimming fines had been put in place until the City Council could review possible changes to the tree ordinance, pressure to scrap the Collards’ fine altogether continued to mount.
At a Nov. 27 council meeting, City Atty. Scott Howard announced that his office would not pursue the fines against the couple, but by then, criticism of perceived inaction had clearly frustrated those on the dais.
The City Council had already scheduled a report on possible changes to the ordinance to prevent similar fines in the future for Dec. 18, but Councilman Frank Quintero insisted a report into how the Collard fine even happened be brought back sooner.
Howard presented the report to the council Dec. 11, along with several suggestions on how the ordinance might be modified to include more safeguards. At that meeting, the City Council dialed in on how staff members came to mail out the large fine, and conceded that the process was flawed and needed change.
A week later, the council voted to put off making any changes to the ordinance until city officials hold a series of town-hall-style meetings to solicit public input for what those changes should be. Staff members will likely return with a set of suggested times and places for those meetings in January.
City Council election stirs dais
3When John Drayman replaced Rafi Manoukian on the City Council in April, he did so with a huge vote of confidence — snagging 30 of the city’s 50 precincts. In fact, the top winners for the Glendale Unified School District and Glendale Community College races also shared in the taste of a landslide victory.
Incumbent school board member Mary Boger took 36 precincts, and college board incumbent Tony Tartaglia took 34.
All three of the candidates often shared their first-place showings in the same precincts throughout the city, indicating a broad spectrum of support. All three of the winners attributed their success to their campaigns’ broad community outreach.
But the election was as notable for who won — and by how much — as it was for who didn’t. Manoukian’s loss received the most attention, especially after strong early support and leading in campaign contributions.
While he dominated the absentee ballot vote, residents reversed his progress at the polls.
Some in the community attributed Manoukian’s loss not only to Drayman’s resonance with homeowners, but to perceived missteps late in his term — such as failing to show up for a highly anticipated study session on view protection, an absence that contributed to its cancellation.
Glendale Unified school board member Greg Krikorian also failed to turn early promise into a successful campaign. He came in close behind Manoukian overall and took just one precinct.
Krikorian remained on the school board after the election and currently serves as its president.
Councilman’s behavior an issue
4References to horse manure, Febreze and banana boats aside, Councilman Bob Yousefian’s outburst over a flawed staff report during a Sept. 25 City Council meeting led to an unprecedented pair of resignations.During the council meeting, he went on a tirade, followed at the close of the meeting with an expletive-laden skirmish with the city manager.
His colleagues cited the episode — and his history of headstrong behavior — in handing down a no-confidence vote Nov. 6 for his seat on the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority commission. A week later, Yousefian resigned his seat on the commission — where he served as president — and his position as chairman of the Redevelopment Agency.
The unprecedented action may have capped weeks of fallout from the Sept. 25 spectacle, but others on the council said Yousefian’s volatile public persona belies his confrontational approach to getting work done behind the scenes.
The tension prompted Councilman John Drayman to move his office out of City Hall days before Yousefian’s tirade, calling the environment “combative” and unconducive to moving city business.
In the end, his colleagues said they hoped the fallout would impress upon Yousefian the importance of maintaining decorum and teamwork. Yousefian, on the other hand, saw the resignations as an opportunity to cut all political obligations to the full council and focus on representing the public.
With Yousefian’s vacancies filled, the City Council has largely put the issue behind them, although several members have said they are anxious to see how he will conduct himself with his new self-declared freedom.
Design review process overhauled
5After years of fielding complaints from homeowners that the city’s two Design Review Boards had lost sense of neighborhood compatibility, the City Council voted in November to transfer most of their oversight of single-family homes to city planners.
The decision — which was six months in the making — effectively gives city staffers more leeway to work with applicants to help them meet a soon-to-be-determined set of design criteria and guidelines. Once the project has been vetted with city staffers, it would go before a Design Review Board, which would approve or deny it based on how well it meets the guidelines. Under the new system, board members would no longer be able to influence the design of a project.
The draft ordinance incorporating the changes must still work its way through the Planning Commission and come back to the council for final approval, which is expected to occur early next year.
Along with changes to the design review flow chart, the City Council also voted in November to reconstitute the two Design Review Boards to help facilitate the new system. Even though it had decided in September to set up a new one councilman-one nomination system for all city commissioners, the council voted to reappoint the Design Review Boards as soon as possible.
In doing so, some of the board members may lose their seats, while others may choose to decline the position if meeting times are moved from the afternoon to the evening.
That vote has yet to be scheduled.
Grand View cemetery in crisis
6More than two years since Grand View Memorial Park came under fire from state investigators for alleged improper operations, the Glendale cemetery remains embroiled in lawsuits, and its doors remain locked to families and loved ones of the deceased buried there. But 2007 was nevertheless a year of twists and turns for Glendale’s oldest cemetery.
The ongoing saga started in October 2005 when an inspector from the California Department of Consumer Affairs Cemetery and Funeral Bureau uncovered at the cemetery a closet filled with cremated remains of about 4,000 people who were never buried or properly disposed of.
Cemetery stakeholder Moshe Goldsman, who took over the cemetery in November 2005 from its majority stakeholder Marsha Lee Howard, who died in November 2006, closed the park in June 2006 due to lack of funds. The City Council, responding to an outraged community, voted in August 2006 to open the cemetery for limited visiting hours on Sundays.
But faced in June with keeping the park open or ending its efforts with the cemetery — which it is not legally obligated to keep open — the City Council voted to spend $187,600 to pay for maintenance and operation costs for another year. Extremely dry conditions at the cemetery, which resulted in dead trees and safety hazards, have kept the cemetery closed to the public since June.
Upon further review of the cemetery’s condition and building costs of maintenance, the council in August backed off its plans to maintain the park, moving instead to file suit against the cemetery owners, ordering them to abate a public nuisance.
That suit prompted Goldsman to come up with a maintenance plan that involves installation of an irrigation system and major tree removal or pruning work. The work started Dec. 21 and is expected to take four to six months. But what remains unclear is whether the city of Glendale will commit funds to staff the facility once safety hazards are mitigated.
Ongoing legal proceedings had halted all business at the cemetery since 2005, even for families that had purchased plots prior to the state’s investigation. That changed temporarily on Feb. 1 this year when a judge ordered that Geneva Hegemier’s remains be interred in a Grand View mausoleum. After another court-ordered interment in February, funeral workers trying to bury the body of John Lenn in April found signs of an existing casket already in the plot that had been sold to Lenn’s family and canceled the burial.
More than 140 people have joined a class-action suit filed in November 2005 against cemetery owners. Another 100 people filed a personal injury suit in July this year.
The owners and operators named in both suits include Howard, Goldsman, Jack Grossman, who ran the cemetery from 1990 to 1999, and members of the Hepburn family, which ran the cemetery from 1929 to 1990.
The case remains in the pretrial discovery phase, during which attorneys secure the appropriate documents and gather facts and information on the plots and financial history of the cemetery.
Howard was replaced in January as a defendant in the class-action lawsuit by her estate, which her brother, Thomas Trimble, administers.
Teachers’ contract with district settled
7The Glendale Teachers Assn. and the Glendale Unified School District reached an agreement this fall on a two-year extension to the teachers’ contract, after about a year of contentious negotiations.
The two parties laid out their positions in fall 2006. By March 2007, an impasse was called and a state mediator stepped in. In June, the mediator referred the situation to the California Public Employment Relations board for a fact-finding session. A tentative agreement was reached after a marathon 37-hour fact-finding session in July.
Under the new contract, teachers receive a pay increase of 5.1% retroactive to July 1, 2006, with an additional 2% increase effective July 1, 2007. The contract also makes changes to the step-and-column salary schedule, the pay framework for teachers depending on their years of experience and level of educational degrees. The contract is effective through June 30, 2009.
The teachers union initially sought salary increases of about 12.6%, while the school district was offering an increase of 5.1%. The school district’s initial position was based on allocating 85% of unrestricted school district revenues, but union officials wanted 85% of the total expenditures of the school district to be put toward teacher salaries. The Glendale Teachers Assn. ratified the agreement on Sept. 7, with about 86% of members approving the contract.
Rising Montrose rents spark concern
8When the beloved Once Upon A Time Bookstore packed its bags from its corner location in the Montrose Shopping Park, where a new landlord was looking to raise the rent, and moved down the street on Honolulu Avenue, the move sparked worry among merchants and shoppers that rising rents would squeeze out other mom-and-pop shops.
Since Once Upon A Time’s move in June, other shopping park stores have gone out of business or left the area because they couldn’t afford new rents proposed by their landlords.
Timeless Treasures, a 10-year-old business in the park whose spot was filled by Once Upon A Time, went out of business.
Dr. Brad Aguirre’s podiatry practice, a shopping park mainstay for 27 years, declined to pay a rent price that was almost doubled after his lease expired this fall and left the shopping park altogether.
Current rents being paid along the retail strip — which is home to more than 200 retailers and restaurants, the majority of them single-proprietorship mom-and-pop shops — range from about $1 to $2.25 per square foot, according to an Aug. 31 Glendale Redevelopment Agency report, which included data from the nearby Sparr Heights neighborhood.
But some property owners are now looking to rent units for as high as $3.45 per square foot.
Several merchants and residents have called for retention of the park’s small-town, mom-and-pop shop character.
City planners are compiling a detailed report to the City Council on proposals for the area, which include whether to designate the four-block section of Honolulu Avenue as the city’s official “Old Town” district.
Work set to start on new reservoir
9A $21-million project to replace the aging Chevy Chase Reservoir is scheduled to begin in January after months of neighborhood concern and legal wrangling between the city and the owner of the Chevy Chase Country Club.
In October, city officials secured a $2.15-million agreement with the club allowing access to a portion of the golf course sitting above the underground reservoir.
The agreement was announced on the same day the City Council was scheduled to consider invoking eminent domain to preserve a construction timeline that would help crews begin work before a Feb. 1 environmental deadline that, if unmet, would give migratory birds nesting rights to the site through October — delaying the project for eight months.
By the time the final contract for the construction reached the City Council on Nov. 27, residents, city officials and country club representatives were in general agreement that the compromise settlement, along with a $500,000 incentive to finish the 18-month-long project two months early, was sufficient to address concerns about its overall impact to the business and neighborhood.
The settlement money will be mostly used to reconfigure the golf course during construction to maintain nine holes, and then to restore the green when the project is completed.
Water officials pushed for the reservoir’s replacement after cracks were discovered four years ago throughout the concrete structure that subsequent engineering studies found had degraded its integrity.
New facilities at community college
10Glendale Community College opened new facilities on its main campus in 2007, and purchased properties that will help pave the way to future expansion at the college’s Garfield Campus.
The Bhupesh Parikh Health Sciences and Technology Building, a $17-million facility, opened on the main campus over the summer.
The college also opened its new $26.4-million parking structure on the main campus at the end of the summer.
The structure houses 1,185 parking spaces.
The Garfield Campus expansion project moved closer to realization when the college’s trustees approved the purchase of three residential properties next to that campus. College officials said those properties were needed in order to move ahead with the planned $20-million expansion project.
In June, the trustees approved the purchase of the property at 918 S. Adams St. for $1.15 million.
In July, trustees agreed to purchase the property at 1130 E. Garfield Ave. for $990,000.
And in November, the trustees voted to approve the purchase of the last property they needed for the Garfield expansion — a five-unit residential property at 920 S. Adams St. in Glendale.
The college will purchase the property for $850,000 and pay the owner, Garo Abassian, an additional $325,000 in relocation expenses.
The college plans to build a new 40,000-square-foot facility to house classrooms and common areas for students, and to add more than 100 parking spaces to the campus.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Homeless shelter finds new base
When state officials in October notified the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that Glendale’s National Guard Armory would be unavailable for the first time in more than 10 years as a winter homeless shelter, it set off two months of hurried meetings to find a replacement site.
County officials pushed the Glendale Homeless Coalition to broker an alternative with a network of churches and other service providers, but when it became apparent in mid-November that a suitable site in Glendale would not be found, attention turned to Burbank’s armory.
Despite some fear from the neighborhood surrounding the armory of the shelter’s impact to the community, the City Council unanimously approved the program on Dec. 4.
The site began accepting transients — who are bused in and out each day from outlying communities — Dec. 12.
Glendale’s armory is expected to reopen this spring in time to host the shelter next winter.
Neighbors, owners spar over home’s use
For more than a year, Mina and Dalida Keuroghlian have been locked in a battle with their neighbors over the use of their home as a business office in violation of residential zoning codes. Despite numerous setbacks, the couple’s legal fight continues.
After the Keuroghlians lost a bid to change the residential zoning designation of their home last year to allow for commercial operations, they applied for a use-variance permit in April through the city’s Planning Department.
That request was denied and eventually upheld on appeal, prompting the city attorney to file civil charges for violating zoning codes.
Their home on 702 E. Glenoaks Blvd. sits adjacent to a commercial business zone, but neighbors have resisted allowing a home office there for fear it will attract more traffic to their street and degrade the neighborhood.
On Dec. 20, a Glendale Superior Court judge set a final trial start date for Jan. 26 after Deputy City Atty. Carmen Merino argued too many continuances had been granted over the city’s objections.
In securing the continuance, the Keuroghlians’ attorney, Karine Basmadjian, argued that the couple had closed escrow on a storefront office and were in the process of renovating it, after which they would move their office.
Despite the legal wrangling, and findings that the Keuroghlians are operating in violation of zoning code, neighbors have continued to complain about ongoing business operations there.
For their part, the Keuoghlians have called neighborhood complaints overblown and racially motivated, an accusation their neighbors have strongly denied.
Apartment owners draw lawsuit
Beverly Hills-based real estate firm StarPoint Properties, LLC, first caught the attention of city officials when dozens of residents of the company’s Montrose apartment complex turned out at a City Council meeting in May requesting protection from the company’s alleged attempts to illegally force tenants to move.
Their complaints sparked a five-month investigation by the city that culminated in a 33-count criminal complaint filed in October accusing StarPoint Properties of retaliatory actions against tenants and failure to pay relocation fees.
StarPoint, which deals exclusively in repositioning residential real estate assets, purchased the property at 2121 Valderas Drive in March for $17 million and immediately began construction to upgrade the units.
The work, which residents said made their units uninhabitable — coupled with raised rents and an allegedly illegal attempt by StarPoint to evict 20 residents — motivated tenants to show up at City Council meetings to lambaste the property owner and ask for city assistance.
If found guilty of all the counts alleged by the city, StarPoint could face about $30,000 in fines. StarPoint Properties is set to be arraigned on Jan. 11.
A dozen residents have filed their own complaints that have yet to be heard in small-claims court.
Adams Square mini park opens
After nearly a decade of planning, approval, disapproval, wrangling and final construction, the Adams Square mini park opened to an enthusiastic crowd on Nov. 12.
Widely acclaimed for its incorporation of a historic Streamline Moderne-style gas station, the park’s grand opening came with a history of tense arguments between shop owners, neighboring residents and historical preservationists over the park’s original design.
In May — when the project was 70% complete — neighbors discovered that the park being built did not reflect was the community had approved of.
That set off a series of meetings with city planners, who had to redesign the park and get the new plans approved by the City Council at a cost of $350,000.
The funds were in addition to the $1 million used to purchase the two parcels that make up the park site, and the $880,000 set aside for development.
Despite the friction, city officials and community residents alike applauded the final product.
Historic districting gains momentum
After an intensive overhaul of the city’s rules for establishing historic districts was approved last year, three neighborhoods entered the process this year, paving the way for a half-dozen more who are considering the option.
A stretch of 30-homes on Royal Boulevard is the furthest along toward achieving the designation as an outside consultant conducts a historic resource survey for the area — a key hurdle in the process.
Planning staffers are currently accepting bids from consulting firms to conduct the same survey for the block-long Cottage Grove Avenue, which is lined mostly with single-story English cottages.
And a portion of Ard Eevin Highlands has submitted a petition for approval that would allow them to fall in line behind Cottage Grove Avenue.
While it will likely take at least a year for the three neighborhoods to complete the process, barring any setbacks, planning and historical preservation officials say they are gearing up for more to enter the fray as other homeowners take a page from the front-runners.
At least six other neighborhoods have expressed interest in pursuing the designation, according to the Glendale Historical Society.
Among them are Rossmoyne, Casa Verdugo and El Miradero.
Many architects and real estate agents, together with proponents of the measures, say the historical designation ensures old neighborhoods will not fall into disrepair, propping up home values as a result.
Issues drown out view protection
A long-standing issue in Glendale may have fallen by the wayside, but it played a major role in spawning a whole other set of major overhauls and impending changes to the city’s design review process and zoning code changes.
What was once the recurring, contentious issue of protecting view corridors morphed into what will soon become one the most comprehensive overhauls of the city’s residential design review process — and with it possible changes to the zoning code to address privacy issues.
In January, planning officials will likely present to the Planning Commission a set of proposed changes to residential zoning code to protect the privacy of neighbors when new projects and second-story additions go through the review pipeline. The commission will also hear proposed guidelines governing neighborhood compatibility to ensure new homes and additions fit in with surrounding homes.
Also early next year, the City Council is expected to finalize an overhaul of the design review process for single-family homes. If the changes are approved, city planning staffers will have more leeway to work with project designers and architects in the beginning to ensure the proposals adhere to established compatibility guidelines.
To drive the message of change home, the council voted this month to reconstitute both review boards after changing their meeting times from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. each Thursday.
Caruso, General Growth go to court
Putting an end to a legal battle that lasted 3 1/2 years, a jury in November found that owners of the Glendale Galleria tried to block leading restaurant chain the Cheesecake Factory from signing a lease at the Americana at Brand, and awarded Americana developer Caruso Affiliated Holdings $74 million in damages.
Because the jury also determined that Galleria owner General Growth Properties acted with malice, oppression or fraud, a legal standard that triggers additional punitive damages, the group tacked on an additional $15 million in punitive damages.
After signing a July 2003 letter of intent to negotiate a lease at the Americana, the Cheesecake Factory didn’t ink a deal until February 2007.
The restaurant hesitated, Caruso attorneys argued, because General Growth — a Chicago-based real estate investment trust that owns and manages more than 200 malls nationwide and is the restaurant’s biggest landlord — threatened to block Cheesecake Factory deals at other General Growth malls.
General Growth attorneys have since promised to appeal the decision.
Armenian Genocide resolution mulled
A controversial U.S. House of Representatives resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide held supporters rapt as it worked its way through Congress this year, but as co-sponsors withdrew their support before it reached its final hurdle on the House floor, key backers of the resolution put the bill on the back burner.
But support in the house dwindled amid warnings from President George W. Bush’s administration that passage of the bill would threaten crucial U.S. military relations with Turkey. In the weeks following the vote, 14 co-sponsors withdrew their sponsorship.In an unprecedented show of support for a genocide resolution, 235 House members were at one time this year listed as co-sponsors. A total of 24 former co-sponsors have since withdrawn, including those who dropped out after the committee vote, leaving 211 co-sponsors.
The resolution was backed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yet majority support for the measure appeared tenuous.
Supporters, opting to wait until majority support is sure-footed, urged Pelosi to postpone a vote on the measure.
It remains to be seen when the bill will next be considered.
Pot bust seizes thousands of plants
Police confiscated more than 8,000 pot plants in August from groves hidden in the Verdugo Mountains. The first seizure above Crescenta Valley on Aug. 17 netted a crop with a $10-million street value.
Days later, a joint Glendale-Burbank air patrol unit spotted three groves within a quarter-mile of one another during routine patrol above La Tuna Canyon, which is located on the Glendale-Los Angeles border.
Rather than immediately raiding the three groves — which was irrigated with wells the growers apparently dug out themselves — authorities waited about a week to give vice-narcotics officers the opportunity to catch the growers.
Given the sophistication of the grove, police said the crop had likely made its way into drug transactions on the street. Initial reports from police said that the growers were tapping city cisterns to water the crop, but subsequent information from the Glendale Fire Department showed that was not the case.
Police recovered a 9 mm handgun on the scene, but no arrests were made.
Preservationists focus on golf course
The Verdugo Hills Golf Course catapulted itself into the public eye earlier this year as its property owner submitted plans to develop 229 homes on the site, prompting community activists to ratchet up pressure on neighboring municipalities to buy and preserve the course instead.
Calabasas Developer MWH Development Corp. purchased the course for $7.6 million in 2004, and after toying with various development proposals at public hearings in 2006, did not submit an application to build its project until June this year.
That plan calls for 229 single-family homes on 24 acres of the 58-acre property and elimination of the more than 40-year-old golf course.
The Verdugo Hills Golf Course Committee, an activist group looking to preserve the course, had already been pressuring the County of Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the cities of Los Angeles and Glendale to pitch in for a shared purchase of the property.
The plan was given its first semblance of financial credibility when Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich committed $1.7 million in county funds to purchase the course.
MWH Development initiated its environmental impact review process in December, but has expressed willingness to consider selling the property instead of building the project.
The golf course committee is now lobbying other jurisdictions to commit funds.
City pursues Rockhaven buy
City officials decided on Dec. 4 to pursue purchasing the site of the historic 84-year old Rockhaven Sanitarium after the City Council agreed to commit $13 million to build a new Montrose library on the property.
Councilmen Frank Quintero and John Drayman pushed the plan after refusing an alternate $11-million plan to rehabilitate the current library and adjoining Fire Station 29 on Honolulu Avenue.
In December, the council gave a clear directive to pursue the 3.5-acre Rockhaven site — a portion of which would house the new library — after Drayman, who first floated the idea to purchase Rockhaven, criticized the $11-million rehabilitation as a 10-year delay of the inevitable.
Ararat Home put the property up for sale in January.
The Rockhaven plan, which is estimated to ultimately cost about $31.5 million, has received support from Montrose and La Crescenta residents who want the site, which was once the home of the historic Rockhaven Sanitarium, preserved as open space.
Leader embroiled in fraud allegations
A civic leader with a long history of community service in Glendale and Montrose was embroiled this year in allegations that she defrauded a local credit union for more than $20,000.
Stephanie Mines is accused of writing bad checks from a Citibank business account to her personal account at the Glendale Area Schools Federal Credit Union to inflate her balance.
Though Mines paid full restitution in July for the amount in question, prosecutors forged ahead with criminal proceedings and she is facing felony fraud charges. In November, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied a motion from Mines’ attorneys to dismiss the lawsuit and she is scheduled for an arraignment on the charges in January.
The allegations against Mines sparked some community backlash, with 10 members of Soroptimist International of the Verdugos, of which Mines was a past president, resigning due to concerns about her involvement in the organization’s ongoing financial matters.
Other Soroptimist officials have stood behind Mines and contend that she is not involved in the finances of the club.
La Crescenta library breaks ground
After about 10 years of plotting and fundraising by town and county officials, construction of a new $14.6-million library in La Crescenta got under way in late June. More than 70 people turned out for a sunset groundbreaking ceremony on June 29 to culminate a decade of planning and to initiate a construction process that is expected to take about two years.
Slated for 2801 Foothill Blvd., the new La Crescenta library is a long-awaited replacement for the area’s existing county library branch on La Crescenta Avenue.
When the Crescenta Valley Town Council donated $5,000 to help pay for a decorative medallion planned for the library floor, it marked the council’s single largest donation in the group’s history. The new library has a tentative opening date of September 2009.
Until then, the nearest county library available to La Crescenta residents is the branch in La Cañada Flintridge.
Property association member scrutinized
Homeowners association representatives, along with some on the City Council, took the Glendale Property Owners Assn. LLC to task in November after it was revealed that its managing partner, Vartan Gharpetian, was also the chairman of Design Review Board No. 1.
The association also drew ire from historic preservation advocates and others for what they said was a misleading campaign to “Save the Brand Library.” They, along with several council members, argued it was in fact a bait-and-switch ploy to increase its membership.
It’s ties to Design Review Board No. 1 were called into question when fellow board member John Cianfrini said the limited-liability company was formed to counter the influence of the city’s 19 homeowners associations — a revelation that drove many neighborhood activists to point to a conflict of interest.