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June, 9 2026
The Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
City of Glendale
Glendale City Hall, 613 East Broadway
Glendale, California 91206
Re: Written Public Comment by Herbert Molano— Establishing an Employment Agreement and Performance Standards for the Office of Chief of Police Dear Mayor and Members of the Council:
I submit these written comments for the public record. They concern the structure of the employment relationship between the City and its Chief of Police, not the conduct or character of any individual who holds, or may hold, that office. I draw no adverse inference regarding the current Interim Chief, and nothing in this comment should be read as one. My concern is institutional and prospective: that the office be governed by a written agreement and by performance standards that insulate it from the political incentives that can distort how public‑safety data is presented to this Council and to the public.
The principle
A police chief operates at the intersection of professional law enforcement and municipal politics, and that position carries an inherent tension. A department has a structural incentive to grow, in headcount, budget, and overtime, and the data used to justify that growth is generated and characterized by the same department that would benefit from it. When the presentation of crime statistics and staffing figures is left to the requesting department, the Council is asked to appropriate public funds on the basis of analysis it has not independently validated. The remedy is not suspicion of any individual. The remedy is structure.
Why this matters now: the documented record
The need for such structure is not hypothetical. It is illustrated by the justification advanced in late 2024 for the multi‑year expansion of the sworn force commonly referred to as “Project 300.” Three of the central factual premises offered in support of that proposal cannot be reconciled with the City’s own records or with United States Census data:
— Population. The proposal asserted that the City’s population had grown. Per the U.S.
Census, Glendale’s population was approximately 194,973 in 2000 and 196,543 at the 2020 Census, a change of under one percent across twenty years. The population peaked near 200,741 in 2018 and has since fallen to an estimated 187,050 (2023). Under no reasonable measurement window does the record support a material population increase; the most recent multi‑year trend is a decline of roughly five percent from peak. — Sworn staffing. The proposal asserted that the sworn force had been reduced. The City’s own records show 231 sworn Glendale Police Department officers in FY2000 and 234 in FY2024, a net change within approximately one percent. Sworn staffing has been essentially flat for twenty‑five years; it has not been materially reduced.
PUBLIC COMMENT 2E
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— Crime. The proposal presented a post‑pandemic increase in reported crime as evidence of a rising structural trend. That increase tracked a national pattern and occurred against Glendale’s longer‑term decline. Presenting a transient, regionally common spike as a local structural trend is a recognized analytical error, the base‑rate fallacy, and is not a sound basis for a permanent, multi‑million‑dollar expansion of the force.
I note these discrepancies not to assign bad faith to anyone, but to document a concrete, on‑the‑record instance in which a major budgetary proposal rested on premises the City’s own data does not support. A standard requiring independent validation would have surfaced these problems before the proposal reached the Council.
The compensation is public; the standard does not exist The City’s CY2024 compensation records show that the highest total compensation within the Police Department was $652,918 fully loaded, comprising base salary, special pays, overtime, and the City’s employer contributions to pension and health benefits. Because much of this compensation is pensionable, it also drives a corresponding lifetime CalPERS safety‑pension obligation that compounds the unfunded liability documented in the City’s own records.
I want to be precise about where the problem lies. The Chief’s compensation is not hidden. It is established by the City’s adopted salary resolution, reported to CalPERS, and like every public employment contract in California, would be a public record subject to disclosure if one existed (Gov. Code § 7928.400). The difficulty is more fundamental: it does not exist. A Public Records Act request for the prior Chief’s employment agreement returned the City’s confirmation that there is no such agreement. The consequence is that an office compensated at this level operates with no written instrument establishing measurable performance expectations, deliverables, or accountability. The salary is transparent; the standard that salary is meant to secure is absent.
The office of Chief of Police is filled by executive appointment rather than through the competitive civil‑service process, and it is therefore not subject to the merit‑system protections that the Civil Service Commission administers for classified employees. For precisely that reason, a written employment agreement is the appropriate accountability instrument for this office: it is the only place such standards can reside.
Requests
I respectfully ask the Council to take the following actions in connection with any permanent appointment to the office of Chief of Police:
1. Adopt a written employment agreement for the office, and state its performance and compensation terms within the instrument itself. The City’s response to a Public Records Act request confirms that none currently exists. Because any such agreement is, by operation of law, a public record (Gov. Code § 7928.400), adopting one both satisfies the City’s transparency commitments and creates the accountability instrument the office now lacks. The measurable terms must appear in the agreement itself rather than by reference to evaluations held elsewhere: California courts have held that a contract’s mere reference to performance goals reviewed within a separate evaluation does not 3 | Page
make those goals public (Versaci v. Superior Court). If the standard is to be transparent, it must be in the document.
2. Tie any incentive or bonus compensation to outcomes attributable to the Chief’s own leadership, and not to national or regional trends. Crime levels rise and fall for reasons largely outside any single department’s control. Performance compensation should reward the measurable difference between Glendale’s outcomes and the trend in comparable jurisdictions over the same period and not the absolute level of an outcome that may be driven by factors the Chief did not cause. This standard protects the public from paying for results it did not receive, and it equally protects the Chief from being charged with trends he did not create.
3. Require that all staffing and budget requests, and all crime‑statistics presentations to the Council, be supported by independently validated analysis longitudinal and normalized for population and other relevant factors, sourced to official records, and reviewed by a qualified analytic function independent of the requesting department before they are presented to this body.
4. As a matter of policy, extend the practice of written employment agreements with publicly stated performance terms to the City’s executive and department‑head positions generally. Compensation set at the top of the organization establishes reference points that influence the classification and compensation structure beneath it.
Documenting the basis for executive compensation therefore serves accountability and the merit principle well beyond any single office.
Conclusion
These measures impose no judgment on the present Interim Chief, who has my respect and the benefit of every presumption. They are directed at the structure of the office so that whoever holds it is evaluated on evidence rather than narrative, compensated on results rather than circumstance, and protected, as the public is protected, from the politicization of public‑safety data. I ask that this comment be entered into the record of the proceedings.
Respectfully submitted,
Herbert Molano
Transparent Cities/Transparent Glendale
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program (2000; 2020 Census; 2023 estimate); City of Glendale ACFR and CPRA-produced records (sworn staffing FY2000–FY2024; CY2024 Police Department compensation); City of Glendale CPRA response confirming the absence of an employment agreement for the Chief of Police; California Government Code § 7928.400; Versaci v. Superior Court (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 805. Figures and records cited are public and available for verification.