Najarian and Drayman were slow to accept her answer.
“Obviously I can understand her trepidation . . . but Laura, I’d like to tell you I think you can do a great job,” Najarian said, citing her term as chairwoman of the oft-contentious Design Review Board No. 2 and election results in which she took second place. “Clearly, people spoke out for change.”
But Quintero and his colleague, Councilman Dave Weaver, twice declined to budge on their self-nominations, and with Friedman refusing to cast the needed third vote to confirm her own nomination, the vote tipped to Quintero.
At his confirmation for the City Council, he said his election sent a clear message that his “judgment and ideas were worthy of four more years.”
“We have a lot to do in the next four years,” he said. “It’s a great city, but it’s a tough economy.”
Quintero’s challengers on the April 7 election circuit criticized him repeatedly for taking what they said was an overly optimistic position on the city’s fiscal position at a time of tough budget cuts and falling revenues, but he never wavered during his campaign, assuring potential voters that the “sun will rise again.”
But the landscape over which the sun will shine for the next few months will be one littered with arduous budget study sessions as City Hall struggles to close yet another projected deficit of roughly $7.5 million before July 1.
In his farewell speech, Drayman attested to the tough challenges ahead, but also asserted that Glendale, as it did during his reign through tumultuous budget cuts, would emerge stronger than its neighbors.
“Glendale has not met the limits of its greatness,” he said, adding later that, “Nothing is inevitable, and Glendale has always taken its own path.”
