Letter to the Editor:
Wise public policy Burbanker-commentator Mary O’hare at the 10 March 2026 Burbank City Council Meeting–GOTO: The BURBANK CHANNEL, minute 1:15 to 1:21–may have shaken our city’s electorate by her video of a METRO Board and Glendale City Council member’s totalistic statement to the effect that Burbank’s segment of the BRT is inevitable, unstoppable and that the publics of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena must adapt to BRT’s pre-2028 existence.
To her assessment I would like to add that Burbank’s City Council members sporadically espouse the faddish planning concept of making our Burbank into a “Smart City”, thus proving their lack of up-to-date wisdom or even conceptual currency!
METRO’s railway (like that of BART in the San Francisco Bay Area) is a financial and metropolitan failure in every respect imaginable. So, by sneakily enacting into law SB-79, METRO gets bailed out of its financial ruination using BRT as its “shoe-horn” to financial solvency.
Property, property, all is property in real estate development addicted Southern California.
The only ‘Smart City’ that will ever come to exist in Southern California will be the SB-79 produced, METRO-managed megalopolis.
BRT will quickly “defamiliarize” the City of Burbank geographically as currently assumed by its voting citizenry. Once that is accomplished, then herds of development-obsessed outsiders will, as the Southern California region’s economy permits and certain key political structures allow, transform our City of Burbank into some place conformal mega-“Smart City” macro-shape conducive to further the value of their investments. Burbankers: THINK ERASURE of the City of Burbank.
Richard B. Cathcart
Burbank
