Friedman Sworn In, Quintero Elected Mayor

Here are a few photos I took at Monday's special organization meeting of the Glendale City Council. The city councilmembers, treasurer, city clerk and school board members elected during the recent election were sworn in and then the new council voted for this year's mayor. (In Glendale, the Mayor is a regular city councilperson who presides over ceremonies and runs the City Council meetings.)

Yousefian leaves the dais.

I was a bit surprised that everyone who was elected got to give a speech. Some of them were quite lengthy - it was like the Oscars, but without the orchestra waiting to play the winners off the stage. (I was also a bit surprised that the GCC board of trustees are sworn to protect the US from all enemies- foreign and domestic.) Despite his less than dramatic unopposed election bid, I thought Ardy Kassakhian gave quite a good patriotic speech. John Drayman's speech as outgoing mayor was also quite moving.

Najarian, Quintero and Friedman are sworn in by City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian.

Incoming councilmember Laura Friedman takes her seat on the dais.


The most dramatic moment of the evening was during the mayoral selection vote - Najarian nominated Laura for the mayoral position - against her wishes. Weaver and Quintero nominated themselves for consideration. After Laura made her displeasure at being nominated known, there was some back and forth with Ardy as to whether or not a nominee could withdraw their name from consideration - and they can't. So the first vote was:

Friedman: Weaver
Najarian: Friedman
Drayman: Friedman
Quintero: Quintero
Weaver: Weaver

Which made it a tie between Weaver and Friedman, triggering a revote. The councilmembers voted in alphabetical order, so Drayman voted first and changed his vote to Quintero. Friedman also voted for Quintero, and Frank voted for himself, so he's this year's mayor. Here he is moving into the mayoral seat as Drayman steps aside.


The video of the meeting is archived here. The final mayoral vote starts around 1:17:
http://glendale.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=1575