City officials and representatives for the city have an obligation to the residents and community to respond to the community in a timely manner.   Many times they are busy and there may be a delay.

Emails is usually a good alternative, but many officials in Pasadena in higher positions like the general manager of PWP and the City Manager for Pasadena have repeatedly been ignored request for phone call.  Leaving messages with their staff or with what appears to their direct number but no greeting or announcement of whom the mailbox belongs to.

Leaving voice mail messages in a mailbox and then following up with an email and not getting a response, is just plain rude, disrespectful and unacceptable.

Is it unreasonable that as a community member and resident should expect a phone call?   Some would say yes, some would say no.   Regardless a response of some sort is essential and that is becoming less common.

How are those who work for the city and are responsible for getting things done able to think that not returning a constituents phone call is ok?    Are they that busy that they don’t have time to return a phone call?  Are they that busy that they cannot facilitate a staff member to coordinate a response that is an actionable response to the inquiry being made?

The bottom line is city government officials and employees should be returning phone calls and emails in a timely manner.

City government is different than say a company like Apple with 164,000 employees compared to Pasadena with 2,000 employees.  The city manager and general managers for Pasadena need to be responsible and return calls.

I challenge city officials to return calls, and I also encourage the community to call their elected and city staff when there is a need and request a call back.  Usually emails are better for much communication, but sometimes a phone call goes a long way to emphasize the importance of an issue.

For instance the state of EV charging in Pasadena is in shambles, with most DC Fast charging not operational many units on and do not work.

It has been years and the situation gets worse not better.  Millions have spent and the situation doesn’t appear to improve.   The situation with the PWP City of Pasadena EV DC Fast Charging is just one example of the chronic issues with the city.

Just today I spoke with two individuals attempting to charge at the Victory Park DC Fast Chargers, unable to charge, they both left frustrated and angry at the state of charging in Pasadena.

I encouraged them to reach out to their council member and express the dire situation with charging.

My councilperson already knows how bad the situation is.

Well, it depends….but if you are taking an existing intersection and retrofitting the ramps to current ADA standards and then adding a basic international style crosswalk with no lights, not sensors…. the cost could range from $650k to well over $1million.
That’s what we are seeing done on a street a block away….
I was thinking maybe this will cost $100k or so. No electrical, no wiring, no cameras, etc..
The wining bid was the lowest bid and with contingencies it comes in at $700k.

If you are interested in the design and the bid documents and city staff documents.
You can view them here.

The end of an era. When El Cholo moved from Fair Oaks to the Paseo it was a big move…. now El Cholo Pasadena is closing. Is this a sign of the timee, the cost of doing business, over regulation, wages, or a combination of all of the above.

From Instagram

To Our valued guests for the past 25 years, we have enjoyed the relationships we created with you all, but with a heavy heart, we have made the very tough decision to close our doors.

We are excited to be going back to the family business and will be heading up the Catering division for the El Cholo family of restaurants.

Our last day of business will be Sunday August 3rd

We thank you for your patronage over the past 25 years.

Corpse Flower at The Huntington 2025

The Corpse Flower “Green Boy” is getting ready to release its pungent scent and is on view now for a limited time in The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. Watch the livestream, check the growth progress chart, and plan your visit.

Join us as we watch and wait for the unpredictable Titum Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) plant to bloom.

As of Sunday morning July 27, 2025.

Victory Park:
DC Fast Chargers are Victory Park are ALL still offline. There is nothing posted on the chargers and you can attempt top use them and receive either an error or nothing happens.

Robinson Park:
It appears that 4 of the 5 DC Fast Chargers are back online.

Marengo Plaza although the app is WRONG with what chargers there are and what’s available. There are NOT 17 of 20 Chademo chargers.
There are PWP NACS Tesla DC Fast chargers, but those that are available are NOT listed on the app.
Chargers are being counted twice. And several of the ones offline are not accounted for properly.

If Marengo is the showcase charging location it is a MESS. The city continues to state that charging is cheaper at Marengo and that you can get validated, but this is not what most people feel. It is clear the city has not talked to the people. Those that use DC Fast charging.

Why is Glenarm still such a mess? Why didn’t Pasadena take two of the new Marengo chargers and place them at Mrengo.
Why is the city installing chargers capable of charging with both ports and not configuring parking to support the two ports?
And the big question is where did the city come up with 2 hours on DC Fast charging?

Shopper’s Lane:, no Chademo chargers and 6 of 8 CCS chargers are operational. Here again we have chargers capable of charging with two ports and only one appears to be enabled.

I encourage all those who live or work in Pasadena and have been frustrated by the ongoing failure of the charging to let those in charge know. Because they feel that everything is great. And with the millions that have been spent, that’s the narrative that they want you to believe. Meanwhile the people in charge are either on vacation or not responding to questions about what is happening.

Varoojan Avedian vavedian@cityofpasadena.net
Assistant General Manager
Pasadena Water & Power – Power Delivery Division
1055 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 350, Pasadena, CA 91106
(626) 744-7851

David M. Reyes davidreyes@cityofpasadena.net
General Manager, Department of Water and Power
150 S. Los Robles Ave. #200, Pasadena, CA 91101
626-744-7598

Susana Castro scastro@cityofPasadena.net
Senior Executive Assistant
626-744-7029

I encourage all EV owners who have been frustrated by the state of EV charging in Pasadena to engage with the people in charge. To call and leave messages and report their experiences. It’s the only way we will see change.

As of July 23, all DC Fast Chargers are Victory Park and Robinson Park are OFFLINE.  Although you can attempt to use the ones that appear to be usable, they will not work. Returning either nothing or a variety of errors 302, etc..

Messages have been left with the City Manager Miguel Marquez at (626) 744-4333 and PWP GM David Reyes at (626) 744-7598.

With David Reyes, you have no idea who the number belongs to and his assistant’s greeting says she will be back in May…

With Miguel Marquez there is an extremely rude person who answered the phone(Darlene) and basically told me I would not get a call back. I made it clear I am requested a return call.  If Mr. Marquez chooses to not return my call. Then that’s his choice, but as a public employee working for the residents, it is not only shameful but disrespectful of community residents to not return a call.   I have requested call backs from both of these individuals in the past… and have yet to receive a return phone call.

Updated; As of 4pm on Wednesday July 23, all DCFC that had been offline are back online.  Apparently this “communication issue” affected all chargers at Robinson Park. Not only the DCFC.

It remains to be seen if the chargers are in fact working, and how many of the DCFC are actually working now. If it is 3 or 4.  According to the app it appears that 4 should be working, but when you go and try to use them, it’s usually a different story.

As the summer rolls along and there are more EV owners and people driving the need to charge quickly has not gone away and is actually more more critical than ever.  This is why we continue to bring up this issue with the state of charge in Pasadena in particular.

All the parties who can do anything about this are aware and choose to not make it a priority.   Apparently they don’t think it’s important enough or perhaps they don’t know how to fix it.   The lack of progress when it comes to the PWP EV DC fast charging is embarrassing and PWP should find a vendor or better yet vendors to provide and maintain the services.

The failures are multi faceted but it starts with the lack of urgency to repair and update the chargers and the respective equipment.

Today we are focusing on the installs at Victory Park, where for at least the past week NONE of the DCFC have worked.  Although a user can attempt to use, and scan the QR code and then is presented with a error that the charger is offline.  In addition to this failure the KIOSK is suffering from extreme burn on the screen making it almost impossible to read, this is now a few months into it running and how bad can it get… pretty much it will be dark.  In addition the credit card reader is displaying CASH ONLY… how in the worked is this ok?   And none of the credit card readers on the DC Fast chargers are working, and I don’t believe any have worked.   DC3 is completely taped.

Then we go over to Robinson Park and discover the same fiasco of the state of these chargers which has been this way for about a week now.    Where only 3 of 5 worked, now NONE work.

We are already ware of the situation at Glenarm Arroyo where 1 of 6 works sometimes.  And Del Mar where 1 of 2 works, but the cities believes there are three DCFC chargers. At least according to their so called dashboard, which is now several weeks old.   The dashboard should be titled every so often updates on PWP chargers.

The city is updating the status of EV chargers, but has some errors in their reported data.   As of July 17 they are reporting that Del Mar has 3 DC Fast Chargers, but this is not correct. There are two with 1 that works.

This is the status page

We are being told that Victory Park could be fixed next week, and no idea on Robinson Park, and other chargers including the Glenarm which has been out of service for many months.

State of PWP EV DC Fast Charging July 14, 2025
This is an email sent to the general manager David Reyes and the assistant general manager of PWP who is responsible for EV charging.  I encourage people to call and email the top management:

Varoojan Avedian  vavedian@cityofpasadena.net
Assistant General Manager
Pasadena Water & Power – Power Delivery Division
1055 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 350, Pasadena, CA 91106
(626) 744-7851

David M. Reyes  davidreyes@cityofpasadena.net
General Manager, Department of Water and Power
150 S. Los Robles Ave. #200, Pasadena, CA 91101
626-744-7598

Susana Castro scastro@cityofPasadena.net
Senior Executive Assistant
626-744-7029

I encourage all EV owners who have been frustrated by the state of EV charging in Pasadena to engage with the people in charge. To call and leave messages and report their experiences. It’s the only way we will see change.

I want to share the state of charging with PWP, in a nutshell it is worse than  a few months ago.
Here is why:
1. Robinson Park. 3 of 5 work sometimes.
2. Victory Park – none work
3. Glenarm Arroyo – 1 of 6 sometimes work. I know 4 are off and have been off for many months.
4. Shoppers Lane- 6 of 8 appear to work but there appears to be issues with 2 of the six that work.
5. IMarengo – while it is good to see new chargers here, people don’t pay to park to charge or want to deal with validation. Why the city doubles down on this is beyond me. While the new chargers have NACS the PowerFlex app does not indicate this.  Why not take some of these new chargers and install at Glenarm or Robinson Park?
6. Del Mar – the new dashboard shows 3 DCFC but only 2 are available to the public from what I can find. Please confirm.

The periodic status update dashboard should include connector types and charge kW rates.

At Shoppers Lane i have witnessed vehicles fully charged sitting there, people unplugging other peoples cars, and a prime example of why 2 hours is not the best practice or sustainable. With drivers frustrated and many vehicles waiting to charge upwards of eight waiting Sunday evening.
I strongly urge that sites be changed to 30min like Del Mar.
Also implementing idle fees and since we are fees where are we with raising the rates to be inline with Tesla and EVCS and others?

This is obviously not sustainable.
With all these issues, what is the plan?