Drayman:

John Drayman, the man from Montrose who was elected a year ago to the Glendale City Council, was chosen Tuesday by his colleagues to serve as mayor of Glendale.

The vote was quick and unanimous, in marked contrast to a year ago, when a deadlocked council finally chose Ara Najarian as the city’s chief executive. Drayman was nominated by Dave Weaver, the dean of the council.

Drayman told the Valley Sun he was “very excited” about the opportunity, which occurred the day before his 50th birthday. “My father wanted one of his children to be involved in government,” he said. “I was the youngest of seven.”

He said he expected a busy, productive year, with some fun along the way. He said he thought his colleagues were ready to work together to get the city’s business done.

The Montrose businessman referred to the past stormy year for the council when he presented his colleagues with a “peace lily” in a little red wagon. A year ago the new council member declined to vote in the mayor selection process, saying, “It’s your little red wagon.”

Drayman called for “openness, tolerance and good will in the coming year.” He urged his colleagues to put aside their differences, quipping that the things which have been said about the council in the past year “can be found in any good psychology textbook.”

He commended outgoing mayor Ara Najarian for “carrying the ball” in the past year, which saw the council split on a number of stormy issues and vote no confidence in member Bob Yousefian.

The new mayor said he had been coming to council meetings since the age of 5, accompanying his father. The senior Drayman was one of the founders of Montrose Shopping Park, and his son came to the council from service as president of the MSP board.

Drayman’s own year on the council has been eventful. He engineered the purchase of the Rockhaven property as, among other things, a site for a new Montrose library, and called for the publication of a photo book to commemorate a day in the life of the city.

He also moved his office out of City Hall, complaining about working conditions there. He will presumably move back into the mayor’s spacious office. Drayman also provided the third vote for a controversial change in election procedures to take absentee ballot requests out of the hands of political groups.

The rest of the council leadership, the chairs of the Redevelopment Agency and the Housing Commission, will be selected next week. Drayman said he plans to put in some procedural changes to prevent the meetings from running six or seven hours as has happened in the past.

A major issue facing the new mayor almost immediately will be the city budget, which the Glendale council works over intensively in morning budget meetings. Drayman said he expected to have better luck getting his colleagues to those meetings than in the past. “It is an election year,” he said.