Beth Brooks for Glendale City Council

"It's not about my ideas or your ideas. It's about the BEST idea. It's about the best "solution" winning on its merits, that does the greatest good for the greatest number, because our focus should be on people, not politics."

Illustration

Meet Beth Brooks

Illustration

Beth was born in New York City and has lived in Glendale for more than 30 years. She was educated at Vassar College and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature. After moving to LA, Beth became a marketing research professional for more than two decades and a stay-at-home mom. When a rental issue caused her to seek help from the city of Glendale in 2024, she became more involved in local politics, and then a frequent speaker at city council meetings, where she can be heard most Tuesday nights.
Beth advocates for intelligent, common sense policies and programs that cross ideological lines and benefit the Glendale community as a whole, and believes that urgent problems deserve immediate solutions. She is a currently retired, a renter and the proud mother of an adult daughter.
Her goals as a Glendale City Councilmember are simple: do the greatest good for the greatest number and be a true public servant that protects and enhances the quality of life for every Glendale resident.

It's not a Housing Shortage, It's an Affordability Crisis

We don't have a housing crisis in Glendale, as the media and developers would have you think; we have an affordability crisis. That's why expanding Glendale’s rental housing stock has not resolved anything, because the core issue is not supply. Increased construction has failed to address affordability because almost 90% of all the new apartment units built by private developers in the past few decades are renting at market rates. Not only that, but the CIty of Glendale has built only 1,500 low-income affordable housing units in over 50 years.
As Beth's core message and approach to problems faced by this city, not just regarding rental housing, is that urgent concerns require immediate solutions, the current reliance on waiting years for new buildings to be completed, while new supply offers only a handful of affordable units, is neither practical nor compassionate. The most effective approach is to make the homes people already live in more affordable, which means providing direct rental assistance for those struggling the most with affordability -- low-income renters, especially seniors, the disabled, and veterans. This can be accomplished by redirecting funds from city councilmembers' politically-driven "pet projects" and low-need, low-priority programs. The idea of direct rental assistance for low-income renters has been an important cause for Beth for a long time, and the blatant disregard of the current city council to implement such a program served to motivate her to run in this election.

StoppingReckless Driving

Unsafe streets and reckless driving are among the most pressing concerns raised by Glendale residents, yet the City’s response has fallen short of the urgency the community expects. Real progress demands more than intermittent traffic crackdowns—it requires a sustained, citywide commitment built on the proven “Three E’s” of traffic safety: Enforcement, Education, and Engineering.
Beth supports a comprehensive, multi-faceted street-safety initiative for: greater police presence, including speed traps, higher fines, impounding vehicles, public education campaigns to change the messaging that speeding is "cool," in the same way that smoking campaigns created a negative "stigma" around cigarettes, and bringing back hands-on driver's education in high schools.
Beth also wants a pedestrian public safety campaign using the lessons she herself learned navigating the crazy streets of New York City. She is holding onto one other "solution," but it's completely out-of-the-box, so stay tuned.
Beth does not support removing car lanes to deal with unsafe streets, as that not only doesn't solve the problem, (reckless drivers don’t just "disappear;" they get diverted onto side streets), but the increased congestion threatens public safety, as emergencies turn into fatalities in a matter of seconds. A plan that makes traffic worse isn’t a plan — it’s a problem.

LoweringUtility Costs

GWP (Glendale Water and Power) customers have watched their utility bills nearly double in just three years—even as the City expands rebates that primarily benefit higher-income electric vehicle owners.
Meaningful customer relief will come from the following reforms: ending costly, politically driven programs that are not state-mandated; expanding local power generation and selling surplus energy into the market; increasing enrollment in the CARE program to ensure qualified residents receive the discounts they deserve, and addressing rebates.
It's also time to reform GWP’s pricing structure. Many residents are unaware that Glendale residential households pay higher per-kilowatt-hour rates than large commercial customers like Disney. The burden of rising costs should not fall more heavily on families than on corporations.

Slice 1Created with Sketch (http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch)

ProtectingOur Neighborhoods!

We must say "NO" to overdevelopment to protect what makes Glendale Glendale.
Our city is facing increasing pressure from overdevelopment and state-driven housing mandates that risk reshaping entire neighborhoods, especially those with single-family homes, without the full support of the people who already live here. For Beth, the core issue is simple: all city planning should prioritize current residents and the communities they have built. Neighborhood change should not be imposed in ways that undermine established character, stability, and zoning — especially single-family residential areas.
And current residents should not be labelled as "frozen in time," "old-fashioned," or resisting "inevitable change" because they are unwilling to have their quality of life, neighborhoods or even businesses threatened or destroyed. Change, in and of itself, is a neutral concept. The type of change is what counts, and resisting NEGATIVE change is a good thing.

Treating the Public as Partners in Governance

The Glendale City Council often operates in ways that feel opaque, with most major decisions taking shape before the public even knows they're under consideration. Residents are not given meaningful opportunities to provide input at an early stage, and the city’s outreach efforts have not produced genuine engagement. What’s needed is a complete overhaul, where the public are treated as true partners from the outset.

Beth has two original solutions that she repeatedly offered the Council to increase public engagement and participation, which are the direct result of her decades in marketing research doing analysis and writing: 1) The city must actively motivate participation rather than passively solicit it, in the same way that marketing and advertising campaigns encourage consumers to act (buy a product). This requires using the same messaging techniques as those industries; 2) Public comments must be treated as data (collected, coded, and analyzed) rather than testimony so as to inform and shape councilmember decisions. Every bit of public comment matters.

Spending Responsibly & Removing Political Bias from Decision-making

Glendale is facing a debt crisis caused by years of no oversight and reckless spending. The City Council should not impose new taxes or revenue schemes that will hurt residents and small businesses while simultaneously failing to manage existing taxpayer dollars responsibly.
We must spend smarter, require independent review of major expenditures, conduct transparent audits, enforce competitive bidding that prioritizes the lowest qualified bids, and require voter approval for all bond measures, not just some, as we've been doing.
Spending decisions must also use objective criteria rather than the subjective, arbitrary, and politically-motivated bias we see on the council now. All decisions should at very least include a "system" for "scoring" spending proposals to determine legitimate public need, public benefit, and fiscal impact. Every potential dollar spent by the Council should be judged and scrutinized. The public deserves nothing less.

Do You Know What the CURRENT City Council Has Planned?

  • Adding 250,000 more people in 20 years

    _______________________________________________________

  • Adding 96,000 more housing unitsin 20 years

    _______________________________________________________

  • Allowing 9-story developments in single-family zones because of state housing laws & NEW BRT bus lanes 

    _______________________________________________________

  • Even higher GWP bills (more water spending coming)

    _______________________________________________________

  • Eliminating Montrose, north Glendale, & downtown parking lots for housing 

    _______________________________________________________

  • Increasing taxes and fees, risking bankruptcy due to unfunded pension obligations and reckless spending

    _______________________________________________________

Campaign Events - Dates to be Announced

Please come out to meet Beth Brooks at her Campaign Kickoff -- TBD

Made with