Week in review

Change to Glendale’s much-maligned Indigenous Tree Ordinance was delayed Tuesday night after a cautious City Council, still reeling from weeks of widespread criticism over the amount of recent tree-trimming fines, directed staff to hold a series of public input meetings instead.

Citing the level of public involvement that town hall meetings elicited for hillside development and Montrose Shopping Park guidelines, Councilman John Drayman said he was unwilling to back any changes to the tree ordinance without first getting comprehensive input from the public on what those changes should be.

The more than $500,000 in tree-trimming fines that the ordinance has borne onto a handful of homeowners has itself produced hundreds of angry e-mails and phone calls to City Council members who, in turn, have moved quickly to re-evaluate its imprint on residents.

The criticism has been so persistent that on Tuesday Mayor Ara Najarian broached the idea of scrapping the ordinance altogether.

 Work needed to abate fire and safety hazards at Grand View Memorial Park is possible since a judge on Wednesday modified an evidence preservation order that had prohibited the property owner from doing the maintenance.

David Baum, the attorney representing cemetery operator Moshe Goldsman in a series of lawsuits filed against Grand View, said modification of the order was needed to allow the cemetery to rectify a string of city code violations related to hundreds of overgrown or dead trees on the property.

In court documents submitted Tuesday, Baum included a contractor’s estimate for tree removal and trimming, plus installation of an aboveground irrigation system and landscape clean-up work for $105,400.

Goldsman’s recent steps toward mitigating the code violations stem from a public nuisance abatement action filed in September by the city of Glendale, in which the city sought authorization to do the maintenance work without the property owner’s permission and at the property owner’s cost.

But both parties have agreed to an informal resolution stipulating that the city will drop its complaint if Goldsman completes the necessary work to mitigate the cemetery’s code violations, according to court documents.