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My trip to Israel was interesting, informative, and fun! If you would like to see photos, I posted several each day on my personal Facebook page. Feel free to check them out.
My original flight home was cancelled and the one day delay meant I really had to hit the ground running yesterday! In our workshop meeting Council reached consensus on de-annexing to the City of Surprise a 6.3 acre parcel of land in our planning area on the northeast corner of Dysart Road and Northern Avenue. This parcel is contiguous to Surprise's city limits and separated from the rest of Glendale by the Northern Parkway. Council also received a presentation regarding our outreach plans to ensure every Glendale resident is counted in the 2020 census. Not only is an accurate count important to make sure we receive proper representation in Congress, our state legislature, and on the City Council, each Glendale resident represents approximately $3,000 in federal and state revenue sharing to the city.
The Council also agreed to move forward with proposals to better publicize our ordinance prohibiting the use of hand-held electronic devices while driving, and to encourage people to donate to local charities helping the needy rather than directly to panhandlers. The Council also received a staff presentation on local and regional plans to address homelessness, and reach consensus on encouraging our Community Development Advisory Commission to try to fully fund requests from agencies with the best track records rather than partially fund requests from a greater number of agencies. We also agreed to explore new ways to increase donations to our "From the Heart" fund, which assists many local charities helping those in need.
Lastly, the Council received an update on our new one-stop customer service portal we will be introducing next month. The intention of this project is to integrate all customer service requests from across the city into one system which will provide estimates of request resolution times, automatic updates to residents as progress is made or problems arise, better workflow management and request elevation to supervisors and/or upper management for attention as necessary. It is my hope that this system will allow us to better collect and analyze data so we can resolve requests and complaints more quickly, and get out in front of ongoing performance issues.
I hope you all enjoy a warm Thanksgiving tomorrow and find the time to take a moment to count all your blessings. I am thankful to have a
loving family, dear friends, a supportive community, enough to eat, a roof over my head, a sense of purpose in life...
I hope to see you Friday for the opening night of Glendale Glitters! 5:00 to 10:00 pm in beautiful historic downtown Glendale!
Bart Turner
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Free Admission
