Yesterday, Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian presided over a packed house at the Hilton and delivered the annual State of the City address. His speech touched upon economic vibrancy, affordable housing, infrastructure improvement projects, recreational programs, departmental accolades, and citizen satisfaction. He also addressed upcoming challenges Glendale will be facing in the near future. This is the third time Mayor Najarian has delivered the State of the City.
Below are highlights from the speech.
Economic Vibrancy
Glendale’s Class A office occupancy continues to be on par with the region. As of September, Glendale has 19 available industrial spaces of 612 properties throughout the city. Commercial, retail, and industrial property vacancies are reaching historic lows for the sixth straight year.
Vacant available Class A office space is down -- 12.7% vs 15% in 2014.
Vacant available retail space is down 2.7%, reduced from 6%.
Vacant available industrial space is down 1.4%, reduced from the five year high of 3%.
Projects Currently Under Development
Armenian American Museum
Laemmle Theatres
Antaeus Theatre Company
Central Library
Holiday Inn Suites
Hampton Inn
Hyatt Place
New Affordable Housing Options
Glendale is home to two newly completed affordable housing developments - Habitat Chestnut and Veterans Village. These two unique projects represent an extremely efficient use of Housing Authority funds that provide ownership housing for low-income households and a 44-unit property with resources for military veterans and their families previously at risk or struggling with homelessness.
Veterans Village will be having its grand opening on April 5th @ 10:30 a.m.
Accolades for Glendale Water and Power (GWP)
This year, GWP ranked as one of the most reliable utilities in the nation. The report stated that GWP customers can expect less than one outage per year as opposed to the average 1.24 outages. It also ranked GWP in the top 10% with average system outage duration of 37.74 minutes; significantly below the average of 132 minutes.
Empowering Youth Through Recreational Sports
This year, we partnered with the Glendale Unified School District and launched ‘One Glendale’ - an after-school youth sports program dedicated to enriching the lives of Glendale youth through organized athletics promoting a healthy lifestyle. Participants are 4th and 5th graders from local elementary schools Cerritos, Mann, Marshall, and Edison. We hope to further expand this program into additional schools.
Results of 2016 Citizen Satisfaction Survey
The survey indicated that residents are quite satisfied with local services and very satisfied with their quality of life and the city. An overwhelming majority of survey respondents also have a positive view of living in the city. The survey demonstrated that 93% of community members are either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with city services. The top four rated city departments include: Fire at 93%, Police at 90%, Community Services and Parks at 87%, and Library, Arts and Culture at 85%. The vast majority of respondents ranked Glendale very highly as a community. As one statistician put it, he has never seen a City doing this well overall.
Challenges: Measure N
On June 7th, residents will be given the opportunity to determine the fate of our Utility Users Tax (UUT), a monthly tax levied on water, electricity, and gas that directly funds our Police, Fire, and 9-1-1 Emergency Response services. It was established in 1969, and represents 9.5% of our General Fund revenue.
Mayor Najarian concluded the address by screening the video below.
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