Monday Morning Bullpen: … Sort Of

Welcome to 2022. Hope the holidays were good.

Council is dark for the third straight week, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at what’s coming up.

Although there is no council meeting, the Hearing Officer and the Human Relations Commission meet this week.

Back to next week’s council meeting.

You can expect to see the SB 9 Interim Emergency Ordinance come back pretty quickly.

Although it got a first and second reading in December and a lot of support from locals, it was initially just for 45 days.

In total, nearly 250 cities opposed SB 9. Local residents have expressed in correspondence to the City Council and Pasadena Now concerns over SB 9 on single-family neighborhoods. Some housing advocates praise the law.

Under the city’s charter, City Council may approve an interim urgency ordinance for an initial 45 days and then extend it twice up to two years to leave enough time to adopt a permanent ordinance.

Expect it to pass again.

At some point, the City Council will bring back the leaf blower ordinance that passed the Municipal Services Committee in December.

Pasadena’s Municipal Services Committee voted unanimously in December to approve a recommendation for an ordinance amending the city’s municipal code to prohibit the use of gasoline-powered leaf blowing machines within Pasadena. The recommendation will now be sent to the City Council for a full discussion and vote.

The amended regulation would still allow electric lawn blowers and would explore programs to provide for residential homeowners and tenants, residents who are professional gardeners, and/or non-resident gardeners who operate in Pasadena to purchase electric devices with a rebate.
The amended ordinance would also prohibit the use of all lawn blowers on national holidays.

Housing issues could also soon dominate the agenda as calls to allow churches to build housing on their property by right have been ongoing for more than a year.

The biggest expected announcement this week will come out of the City Manager’s office.

City Manager Cynthia Kurtz is likely to announce the interim police chief.

Don’t be shocked if Kurtz rotates the position.

Kurtz appointed employees to rotate into the assistant city manager spot and the human resources director spot.

So, don’t be surprised if we see two of the city’s top police officers serve as interim police chief.

Not putting any money down, just looking at the recent developments and making a guess.

Either way, still hoping Deputy Chief Cheryl Moody gets the spot. We will know soon enough.

Either way, respect to Kurtz for filling these positions quickly and allowing local talent to fill important roles and expand their skill set.

However, there is something to be said here. Every department head should be training their replacement.

The city lost a lot of key people recently. Here they are listed by year’s of service from the WPRA newsletter.

Police Chief John Perez, 36 years
Principal Planner Leon White, 34 years
City Manager Steve Mermell, 33 years
Assistant City Manager Julie Gutierrez, 32 years
Assistant City Clerk Latasha Reese, 32 years
.Economic Development Manager Eric Duyshart, 31 years
Police Commander Jason Clawson, 30 years
Water and Power General Manager Gurcharan S. Bawa, 29 years
Deputy Chief Information Officer Bryan Sands, 26 years
Assistant General Manager Water and Power Eric Klinkner, 24 years
City Controller Robert (Bob) Ridley, 14 years
Human Resources Director Jennifer Curtis, 6 years
Water and Power Assistant General Manager (AGM) of Water Delivery Mitchell Dion, 3 year