Council weighs modest staff support and internship options to help members respond to constituents

Glendale City Council on Tuesday reviewed options for providing administrative and constituent support to council members and weighed creating an internship or paid aide program.

Management Services presented a benchmarking review of 12 California cities and described four recurring job responsibilities for council aides: administrative tasks (scheduling, reports), constituent and community relations, public education/media support and policy/research analysis. Staff recommended either an administrative intern (entry level, $17–$19/hour) or an assistant-to-council classification (experienced hourly, $26–$34/hour) and noted space, confidentiality and overtime rules as implementation considerations.

Why it matters: Several council members said they face heavy constituent workloads — including multilingual and time-sensitive requests — and that more staff support would help responsiveness. Others said existing shared resources (management services, city manager’s office) are sufficient and raised cost and confidentiality concerns about adding dedicated aides.

Council reaction and options: Comments split. Some members urged a one-to-one aide model (one aide per council member) to ensure timely outreach and support; others preferred not to expand the payroll now and suggested waiting until a charter or districting review is finished. Several members asked staff to explore an internship or job-shadowing program as an intermediate step to broaden civic engagement without creating a full salary commitment.

Staff tasks and next steps: Council gave preliminary direction to study options further; staff agreed to work with the City Attorney’s Office on confidentiality safeguards and to research internship and job-shadow rules and other cities’ practices, and to return with a firmer recommendation and cost estimates.