Waiting for Diann

In the sidebar to the left, we've added the Diann Fact Watch. We're currently on Day 9 since we first suggested that former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring back up her claims that this blog is "done with malicious intent and some of it is downright lies."

We're still waiting. Wait with us, won't you?

Goings On

Tomorrow, Friday, June 1st, is the first Friday of the month, which means it's Art Walk time. The first Friday of each month, participating Claremont Village shops stay open longer, and you can find arts and crafts displays, along with live music, dotting the downtown area.

Also, the newly opened Claremont Museum of Art will be open for the Art Walk, so you can visit the Packing House and check out Village West.

Mindy Meader, former communiciations director for the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, has a nifty website that features an events calendar and updates of the Village expansion. Check it out at http://www.thevillageclaremont.com/.

______________________

Want to talk to your Claremont City Councilmembers? Now's your chance. Come to the Claremont Farmers' Market on Sunday, June 3rd. The council will have a booth set up with councilmembers ready to meet-and-greet.

The market runs from 8am to 1pm. For information, call (909) 399-5460.

Claremont Sunday Farmers' Market
2nd Street between Indian Hill Boulevard and Yale Ave.
Claremont, CA

Reader Mail

A reader wrote in response to Tuesday's post:

Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 08:21:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: *******
Subject: vision of tomorrow?
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com

Personally, I would LOVE it if a few of the boutiques in the Village closed down, and were replaced by shops that sold something other than little black dresses, fancy jewelry, and expensive boutiques. As my partner loves to say, He can buy a $170 pair of shorts in the Village but not a single nail.

Let the Expansion take the hoity-toity -- bring back Powell's and other commerce that belongs in a real village, not an Entertainment District.

Ever grumpy,

*********

Well, we can't really argue with that. Our choice of words was poor. Perhaps we should have said, "mom-and-pop" stores, rather than boutiques. In the past we've mourned the passing of Powell's Hardware, and we like that the village has a place like Everett Shoe Repair on Yale.

Thanks, dear reader, for the input.

Malice Towards None

Back in March, we posted a commentary by root2 titled "Kremlin Watching" that likened the constant need to decipher the actions of the Claremont city government to the old Cold War study of Kremlinology.

We thought of that as we parsed former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring's comments from last week regarding our humble blog:

"It's someone without a job or a life," she said. "Someone with too much time on their hands. It's done with malicious intent and some of it is downright lies. Some day someone's going to get so mad they call (a lawyer)."

The key to Ms. Ring's thinking, we think, is the word "malicious." You see, to defame a public figure, according to the standard set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964, the public figure would have to show "actual malice" on the part of the person making the statement in question. Ms. Ring's no dummy. She's spent a great deal of time in the public eye, and she's chosen her words with care. She's trying to create an impression of malice to try to quell criticism.

Of course, Ms. Ring is not yet a U.S. Supreme Court justice, though she may sometimes act as if she were one. Also, as we noted previously, Ms. Ring threw the word "lies" around without any support or justification. We ask her now, as we did last week, to produce support for her claims. As of today, she has not responded.

But, that is really the modus operandi for Ms. Ring and the Claremont 400. Speak as if you are the authority, and because your name is Ring or Wright any contrary facts can be discarded. By the time the reality catches up and the crisis hits, it's too late and people have likely forgotten the root causes (the 2003 Padua Fire and the resulting $17.5 million settlement by Claremont's insurer, for instance).

In Claremont, who you are means more than what you are saying. That's why the City Council election ads alway feature long lists of supporter names. They say: I, Diann Ring, am voting for this person, and so should you.

So it isn't really that odd that there is so little communication between Ms. Ring, former Mayor Judy Wright, the Claremont 400, the Claremont City Council, city commissioners, city staff, the Claremont Board of Education, the local League of Women Voters (LWV), any number of other city organizations and the citizens who've been on the other side of a number of issues now and in the past.

As of today, there has been more talk between the Iranian and U.S. governments than there has been between most of the organizations above and the majority of opposition groups in town. What little talk is usually one way and from on high: We talk, you listen.

For groups that define themselves with words like dialogue, diversity, tolerence, consensus and inclusiveness, they display a stubborn unwillingness to listen and to adopt a wider range of ideas. Real leaders build bridges, reach out to other groups and seek to construct communities of all different sorts of people. This group, the Claremonsters, for want of a better term, has constantly and consistently done the opposite to the unending detriment of our town.

Vision of Tomorrow?

Our correspondent Joslyn Jane wrote last week of some of the similarities and differences between Monrovia and Claremont. The Foothill Cities blog picked up on that and questioned Jane's take on things in Monrovia.

Monrovia's downtown renovations are a little farther along than Claremont's, and we couldn't help noticing Saturday's post on Living in Monrovia. Author Amanda Wray observed that a number of small boutique businesses had closed shop (or moved, as one of the comments to the post noted). Wray remarked in her post:

I know that with improvements come eventual price hikes, because the neighborhood is nicer and more desirable, but I hope, and pray, that we won't become like Old Town Pasadena, and lose too many more of our mom-and-pop stores.

We hope that Village West doesn't lead to the same sort of unintended consequences in the original Claremont Village. One ought to tread lightly in these sorts of redevelopment; progress isn't always forward.

Summer Actitivites

Summer's almost here, and Claremont has a number of classes and activites for families to try. The city website has a link to a list of summer classes being offered by the city's Human Services Department. You can also register online.

For information call (909) 399-5490.

_______________________

The city's Youth and Family Support Center is also having its summer camp June 18th to August 24th. The center provides a number of services to Claremont residents, including: mentoring, tutoring; dental, medical and mental health resources and referrals; and crisis intervention.

For information call (909) 445-7840.

Feature Creep

No, we're not spotlighting local politicians. We saw this term the other day in a New Yorker article by James Suroweicki, whom we've written about before. Feature creep is the tendency of products to become more complex because consumers seem to want more and more features.

So you get the digital camera with the novel-length instuction manual, only to discover it's too complex to understand its use. If you keep the camera, you might only use a fraction of those amazing features, or the camera ends up sitting on the shelf or it gets returned. Suroweicki cited one study by Elke den Ouden, for example, that showed that when U.S. consumers returned a device because they couldn't figure out how to use it, they spent only 20 minutes trying to work it.

We want one thing, but when we get it, we really want something else--something simpler and easier to use. Suroweicki writes that one problem is that other studies have shown that people aren't really very good at knowing what will make them happy.

Manufacturers should know what consumers will like, but they tend to design to what consumers think they want, which turns out to really be two different things. The relationship with cities and the services they provide to citizens is really no different. Groups like the Claremont 400 want the latest goo-gaws with all the bells and whistles, no matter what the reality will be 20 years hence. So, they push a $10 million-plus sports park when demographics show an increasingly shrinking youth population at the same time the 55-and-over group is on the rise.

Similarly, Claremont several years ago looked into the possibility of providing a municipal Wi-Fi service. Today, as the LA Times recently reported, cities like Lompoc are having to pour money into their Wi-Fi services because they're greatly under-utilized.

Simple appears to be better, whether it's a city service or an iPhone, as this commercial that appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien shows:

Comments

We got an email in response to a May 6th by Joslyn Jane congratulating Claremont High School teacher John Lawrence for being named Advanced Placement (AP) Teacher of the Year by the Siemens Foundation.

It occurred to us that this email might be more appropriately posted as a comment, but we currently have the comment feature disabled. We've done this for a number of reasons, partly out of the lack of editorial time to manage the comments for things like comment spam. Despite former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring's comments two days ago that we don't have anything better to do, all of us, like our readers, have many commitments and limited free time.

We did find a post on a site called DennisKennedy.com. The author is an attorney specializing in technology law. In answer to a reader's question, "Who do you think you are, God?" Kennedy makes some good points about his choice to not to allow comments. And, no, we have no deity ambitions here.

If you have thoughts on this, feel free to email us at claremontbuzz@yahoo.com.

In the meantime, here in it's entirety is the note received on Joslyn Jane's bit about teacher John Lawrence. We rather like Mr. Lawrence, but since one of our criticisms of Diann Ring and her Claremont 400 compadres is that they refuse to allow alternate views, we felt compelled to post the reader's email, even though we do not endorse those views.

We should also note that a similar letter about the same teacher ran in the Claremont Courier some time ago. Claremont Insider makes not representations as to the writer's accuracy, and the thoughts expressed are entirely the writer's:


From: NAME REDACTED
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: please post this to the blog as a postscript to Lawrence post
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 01:50:23 -0700

To Whom it may Concern,

Re: Claremont Insider blog Sunday, May 6.Mr. Lawrence of CHS awarded “Advance Placement State teacher of the Year”

UNBELIEVABLE

In the spring of 2005, students (at CHS), were put in (what this writer considers) an extremely inappropriate situation when their teacher, Mr. John Lawrence, requested they participate in an experiment as part of the Advance Placement Environmental Science class, which had nothing to do with AP Environmental Science. This “experiment” was using dimmed lights and mood music, and the students were instructed to ask, “Will you have sex with me?”, while exchanging chemical solutions of what they termed “bodily fluids” in their test tubes. Asking “sex questions” without parental permission is against the CA Education Code. There is nothing in the College Board’s AP Biology test that asked for this nonsense. At the least it should have been reported to the College Board since Advance Placement is copyrighted by the College Board.

And now I find out Mr. Lawrence has been given this award of “Advance Placement State teacher of the Year.” UNBELIEVABLE!

(the other class was Robert Hoyle's March 31 Freshman science biology lab)

Signed,

______________

Ringing Endorsements

The response to yesterday's Daily Bulletin article has been great. Foothill Cities, which has been the focus of much attention since the Pomona City Attorney threatened them with a defamation suit, had some good coverage.

And a Sierra Madre blogger at Sierra Madre: A View from the Canyon also chipped in with some words of support in an email.

San Gabriel Valley Tribune City Editor Edward Barrera at Inside SoCal: Editor's Corner also noted the Bulletin piece and had some brief commentary on this issue (see his post "You have got to be kidding?").

As we pointed out yesterday, former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring in the Bulletin article accused us of having "malicious intent" and said "some of it is downright lies." However, we've had no response from Ms. Ring to our request that she provide us with a list of the lies she alluded to.

Like responsible bloggers everywhere, we take pains to correct any wrong information we publish (see the "Corrections" link under our index), and we also try to document with links to newspaper articles, official City of Claremont documents, videos, radio news, and other sources wherever possible.

For too long, Ms. Ring and the Claremont 400 have enjoyed the luxury of not having to document their statements and have been free for years to spread untruths through gossip and whispering campaigns. We're simply changing that equation, and that seems to be what irks them the most. They have effectively controlled information and have meted it out in dribs and drabs without examining what are often the most important points--those things that contradict their worldview.

As we've commented in the past, we believe the problems and crises our fair city has faced in the past have emerged from the social structure the Ms. Ring, et. al., have erected--one that ignores and punishes dissent, one in which errors are compounded by the constant, stubborn refusal to look hard and honestly at their own shortcomings.

We've simply decided, "Enough, already!" We just found an alternate way to collect and disseminate that other equally important information. We're just sending out little e-messages in bottles to the wider world in the hopes that people with unbiased views can weigh all of the information and decide for themselves.

Perhaps Ms. Ring's reaction is the best indicator of the truth of our arguments. Rather than address the substance of critical commentary, Ms. Ring seeks to quash speech she disagrees with and to say that only a few viewpoints ought to be tolerated. She and her friends can't be content to just ignore dissenters, they must silence them.

They and the persons they have supported for City Council, city commissions, city staff, and numerous social and service organizations in town speak constantly of "inclusiveness," but when push comes to shove, their words betray them. They seek exclusivity. Our way or the highway, they say.

To which we respond, it's our town too. It's a town we think can be better than it has been and one that can live up to words that up to now have been too often empty. Democracy can't be dominated by one voice. To live it must include all voices, even if it becomes at times discordant.

We seek a community for everyone, not just a few. If that means facing down SLAPP suits from the Diann Rings in town, then so be it. We're up to the challenge and embrace it.

No single quote from the Claremont 400 captures Diann Ring's attitude as well as the one from another former mayor, Al Leiga, who in 2000 in response to widespread protests over the shooting of 18-year-old African-American motorist Irvin Landrum by Claremont police, said, "although it is (their right) to protest, I wonder sometimes how valuable that right is."

Time will tell, Mr. Leiga.

Today's Threat Assessment

The Daily Bulletin today had an article by Megan Blaney about local bloggers and the collision between the free speech rights of bloggers and the rights of those being written about.

Diann Ring was busy waving the Claremont 400 flag, and was quoted in the article issuing a thinly-veiled threat of prior restraint:

Former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring said she thinks the blog in her city is potentially heading toward litigation as well.

....

Ring is succinct in her distaste for the site.

"I think it's a bunch of junk," she said. "He accuses people by couching it in innuendo."

Ring said she is pretty sure she knows who the anonymous blogster is, but did not want to name anyone.

"It's someone without a job or a life," she said. "Someone with too much time on their hands. It's done with malicious intent and some of it is downright lies. Some day someone's going to get so mad they call (a lawyer)."

Not that Diann would ever engage in spreading gossip or innuendo ("Ring said she is pretty sure who the anonymous blogger is, but did not want to name anyone." Nod, nod. Wink, wink.) If Diann thinks that something we have posted is a lie, let her step up and point it out. She has not because she cannot.

Anyone who's followed Claremont elections knows well that one of the prime tactics by the Claremonsters is the spread of rumor and gossip. In the 2001 city election, a number of these same people spread the false rumor that then-candidate Llewellyn Miller, who is African-American, was against interracial marriage.

And there have been other instances, which we would be more than happy to provide documentation for should the need arise, just as we provide documentation in the form of links and video when we write about city issues (see last Saturday's post on the LLD as an example).

The problem here, as we see it, is one of ownership. The Claremont 400 and people like Ms. Ring refuse to take ownership of their words and actions. They accuse others of the very actions they are guilty of. So we will shine a light on them. No more skulking around in the shadows of whispering campaigns. No more bullying.

Welcome to the 21st century, Diann. And thank you for your readership.

Dept. of Corrections

In Saturday's post we incorrectly reported that the Claremont City Council tomorrow evening would be considering raising the Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment 5.63%.

The LLD is on tomorrow night's agenda, but the council will only be accepting the LLD engineer's report. The actual vote on the LLD increase won't be until June 12th.

Local Blogs

Living in Monrovia is a nicely done blog by graphic designer Amanda Wray. The blog features quality photos and has recently started a profile series of local merchants.

Monrovia, like Claremont, sits along the old Route 66, and will also have a Metro Gold Line station. Its population, a little over 39,000, is also similar to Claremont's 35,000. And Monrovia's downtown area is a lot like Claremont's Village, with several good restaurants--Caffe Opera and Cafe Mundial come to mine--and mom-and-pop shops.

Unlike Claremont or Sierra Madre or Glendora, Monrovia doesn't seem to harbor the sort of of contentious local politics that can make Claremont elections seem like bloodsport. Monrovia must have its innies and outies, but they seem to get along much better than folks here. I guess we could learn a lot by looking to towns Monrovia or La Verne which seem to cruise happily along.

LLD Increase = City Windfall

The Claremont City Council next Tuesday, 5/22/2006, will review and accept the city consultant's annual report on the Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD).

The LLD, which was enacted in 1990, is an property assessment that is used to pay for maintaining city landscaping and street lighting. It currently stands at a base rate of $137.16, which is how much most single-family dwelling homeowners pay. The LLD is weighted so that larger properties such as apartment complexes and commercial properties pay more (a multiple of the basic unit rate).

The LLD is an assessment district, just like the 2006 proposed Parks and Pasture Assessment District, which in itself was fairly controversial and which drew over a 50-percent response in the mail-in ballots. The Parks and Pasture AD lost 54% to 44% despite the backing of the Claremont 400 - backing that included current councilpersons Linda Elderkin, Sam Pedroza, Ellen Taylor, and Mayor Peter Yao.

Each year, the LLD is reassessed by an engineer who issues a report that includes a recommendation on how the LLD should be reassessed in the coming fiscal year. The LLD is invariably increased by the local consumer price index, a measure of inflation.

The yearly LLD engineer's report will give a range of possible increases. Past councils have almost always voted for the maximum increase recommended by the engineer. Two years ago, the engineer recommended a maximum LLD increase of 4.02%, but the council voted for a smaller increase of 2.25%. Last year, the council again voted for a maximum increase of 4.67%. The vote was 3-2 (Yao, Baldonado and Taylor voting yes; McHenry and Calaycay voting no).

Interestingly, current Councilmember Sam Pedroza, as a member of the Community Services Commission, argued for recommending an even larger increase last year - 6.48%. The council, tempered by Councilmembers McHenry and Calaycay, didn't go for that one. But they're back for a second bite at the apple. This year, the CPI stands at 3.84%, but city staff is recommending increasing the LLD 5.63% to $144.88 per unit, a $7.28 increase.

Why a greater than CPI increase? They want to go back and take away that smaller than maximum increase from two years ago. To sum up:

Read for yourself. Here is the city staff LLD report for next Tuesday's council meeting. It includes the consultant's report. (Click on the PDF icon to pull up the entire report.)

It's not all bad news. There is a tax break hidden in there - for the City of Claremont!

As the staff report notes, the city is currently paying $728,696.00 from its General Fund into the LLD kitty on top of what is collected in assessments from property owners. If the council approves the 5.63% LLD increase staff recommends, the city will get to decrease its General Fund contribution to the LLD by 3.5% to $702,670.00.

They have earned it after all, and that windfall will trickle down - to staff benefits or council perks, no doubt!

_______________________


If all of this sounds confusing as confusing as a game of Three-Card Monte, it probably is.

Claremont's assessment engineer, by the way, is a consultant who is paid approximately $25,000 to produce his report. The assessment engineer for the LLD is MuniFinancial Corp., the same consultant that created and ran the failed Parks and Pasture campaign. One of the objections to the assessment vote was that the consultant in charge creating the vote mechanism and counting the votes was the same company that would get the yearly contract to reassess the district.

MuniFinanical, is a subdivision of the Willdan Group. Like fellow consultant Bill Mathis, both are corporate supporters of the California City Management Foundation, the organization that former Claremont City Manger Glenn Southard helped found.

The wheels on the consultant bus go 'round and 'round.

Weekend Events

Speaking of art, the City of Claremont will be having a show of works by older artists tomorrow, beginning at 9am. at the Joslyn Senior Center in Larkin Park at the corner of Mountain and Harrison. Lunch is available for $3.50. Reservations and pre-payment required for lunch. For more information, call (909) 399-5488.

Celebration of Older Artists
"Ageless Expression"
9am - 1 pm
660 North Mountain
Claremont, CA 91711

____________________________


If it's tchochkes or knick-knacks you're looking for, you might find them at the City Yard Sale tomorrow at Cahuilla Park. Sellers can reserve table space. Call (909) 399-5940 for information.

City Yard Sale
9am - 12 noon
Cahuilla Park
(corner of Indian Hill Blvd. and Scripps Ave.)
Claremont, CA 91711

____________________________


Claremont's Centennial Celebration continues with park dedications at three locations tomorrow. Come by and enjoy the free refreshments, see a park plaque dedication, and learn a little history about your local neighborhood park. For information, call (909) 399-5490.

• 1pm - Chaparral Neighborhood Park Event
  Chaparral Park
  2500 Mills Ave.
  Claremont, CA 91711
  
  
• 2pm - June Vail Neighborhood Park Event
  June Vail Park
  Grand Ave. & Bluefield Dr.
  Claremont, CA 91711
  
  
• 3pm - Jaeger Neighborhood Park Event
  Jaeger Park
  Monticello Rd. & Sweetbriar Dr.
  Claremont, CA 91711

Local Art

The Daily Bulletin had a Will Bigham article today about Claremont Heritage's efforts to have the Claremont Post Office placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is most noted for its mural, painted in 1937, by Claremont artist Milford Zornes. The mural rings the post office's lobby and depicts scenes from the Pomona Valley of the 1930's.

Claremont Post Office Mural Detail, Milford Zornes, 1937

Zornes, who is 99, was a student at Pomona College and studied under Millard Sheets. Zornes is a watercolorist of the California School and has gained wide renown for his work. The mural is a Works Projects Administration piece and is remarkable for its attention to detail. The north wall shows the mountains, including Mt. San Antonio (Mt. Baldy); on the east wall, above the clerks' counter, you can see Bridges Auditorium; and so on. Scattered throughout are shots of everyday life: a Mexican couple, a worker driving a tractor, a farmer leading a team of plough horses with heads like carved chess knights.

Great artists have the ability to capture the essence of a thing, and Zornes is no different. When I think of certain trees, I think of Zornes' mural with its long, bendy eucalyptuses and their papery barks or his silvery-green olive trees.

Zornes restored the mural in the 1990's, and its still in pretty good shape today. How often can you so clearly see the arc of a life? There is Zornes' signature on the mural with the year - 1937. There he is in today's Bulletin.

For a brief biography and a sample of Zornes' watercolors, see the CalArt.com website.

Claremont Post Office
140 North Harvard Ave. (at 2nd St.)
Claremont, CA

FC Fights Back

The Foothill Cities blog has moved to www.thefcblog.com. As you can see, they've contacted their own attorney and have posted their response to the Pomona City Attorney Arnold Alvarez-Glasman's recent "cease and desist" letter to FC.

Frank Giradot in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune also reported on the matter today. Giradot interviewed a number of people, including Pomona officials, and a couple anonymous bloggers.

One of the ironies is that on the one hand, according to the article, "Pomona officials questioned the lofty aspirations of Foothill Cities and challenged the need for anonymity." On the other, City Attorney Alvarez-Glasman refused to say which Pomona official asked him to send the threatening letter in the first place citing "attorney-client privilege." Alvarez-Glasman wants it both ways - attack anonymity when your city is criticized and use it as a shield when it's convenient.

We've seen the same sorts of nonsense in Claremont. Nothing raises the ire of the Claremont 400 more than anonymity. Their Parks and Pasture Assessment District, a tax on Claremont property owners, failed 56% to 44% last year in part because of a largely anonymous campaign to defeat it. Rather than focus on discussing the reasons their measure was rejected, the Claremonters flailed about demanding the identities of the opponents.

When that didn't work, they just tried to erase it. Assessment District? Never happened.

The odd thing is, whether it's Pomona or Claremont, the people complaining about anonymity invariably do so to change the subject from one they are uncomfortable discussing. Moreover, they are often willing to use the power of a governmental agency to quash that discussion, even if their own arguments verge on the unconstitutional.

Typical of the Claremonsters' thinking, we recently received an email from one such person who asked why, if we didn't like some of things in town, don't we just move? To which we ask, why should we? Isn't it our town too?

_______________________

"Although it is (their right) to protest, I wonder

sometimes how valuable that right is."

- former Claremont City Councilmember Al Leiga

2000, in the aftermath the Irvin Landrum shooting

Pomona News

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the news from Pomona isn't all bad. The Daily Bulletin reported yesterday on the Fox Theater renovations. Arteco, the company that did the Claremont Packing House adaptive reuse project, is working on the Fox as well.

It's good to see that the Fox is on the National Register of Historic Places and that they've organized a terrific preservation effort.

Of course, being placed on the Register isn't a guarantee of perfect preservation. The old Bullocks (now Macy's) on Lake Ave. in Pasadena is looking a little tattered. The wood veneer on some of the columns looks water damaged and is split and peeling. It'd be nice to see more effort put into restoring architect Welton Becket's Art Moderne gem.

Time was when Lake Ave. with Bullock's and I. Magnin were special destinations for people in the San Gabriel Valley. Look carefully, and you can see bits and pieces of the building's old grandeur--the 1950's era photo of the interior on display near the stairwell by the women's shoe department and the makeup counters, the old lifts that originally had elevator operators, the hair salon on the upper floor (still with the original furniture).

Becket had a hand in many of Southern California's landmark structures, including the Beverly Hilton, the Capitol Records building, the Cinerama Dome, the LAPD's Parker Center, the Ahmanson, the Dororthy Chandler Pavillion, the Mark Taper Forum and the Century City Complex.

Becket left his mark on Pomona, too. The Pomona Public Library, Pomona City Hall and the Pomona Public Safety Building all involved his work. You can see a slide show of all of these at you-are-here.com.

Look around a little and under all that dust you just might find something worth hanging on to.

News of Claremont from India

Editor's Note: The recent news that the Pasadena Now website has outsourced its Pasadena reportage to India prompted us to look into our own cost-cutting measures. Adapt or die, as they say--Claremont Buzz

--Compiled by Anand Gupta.

Greetings from Bangalore to all of our new readers. The Insider has contracted with Bangalore Poom Puhar News Source PLC to having us provide news of the luscious City of Claremont to its readership and to the World by means of the World Wide Web. We hope to demonstrate by our actions and writing that news of Claremont gathered and edited in India can be as timely and hard-hitting as news gathered by your own cadres.

Without further consternation, Here is today’s news of Claremont:

Mayor Scott Pope of Claremont issued a proclamation inviting and welcoming all probable visitors in October to see the Fall Foliage in the hills and river valleys outside of Claremont town from Newport all the way to the Ascutney State Park in Vermont.

The Claremont Resort and Spa has initiated special summer Rate Plans. The Resort and Spa has a distinguished history going back to the 19^th Century a.d. and has hosted the Saudi Royal Family in connexion with the Founding of the United Nations in 1945. Excellent views of the Bay Area are to be had.

City manager Glenn Southard very recently was criticised for releasing the police records of Mr. Obie Landrum, uncle of the unfortunate motorist shot and fatally murdered by the Claremont police department.

The Claremont Colleges entertained parents and guests over the weekend at their Commencement Exercises. Pictured is the outdoor setting of one of the events. Although dampened by an unseasonable May rain, the stately Palladian mansion built in 1708 provided a magnificent setting for the graduating students.

Some churlish College Students are heard to complain that Claremont is “dead” at night and on the weekend. This entry from Wikipedia should scotch that rumour: “Claremont Main Road is regarded by many as the clubbing capital of the Southern Suburbs. The road is dotted with clubs and bars and is a lively hotspot almost every night of the week. Bars on Claremont Main Road include Lizzards, Stones and Caps. Clubs on this road include Sobhar, Tin Roof, Town, Springboks and Tiger Tiger.”

The Claremont football club squad takes on the East Freemantle Sharks on Saturday, 19 May, 2007, at the East Freemantle Oval. Come out and cheer our squad and support youth sports in Claremont.

More on Claremont College is taken from Wikipedia:

Claremont College opened in 1990 as a senior secondary Government school for students in Years 11 and 12. It provides a full range of courses, preparing students for university, TAFE, traineeships and employment. Its 900 students study either on-campus or off-campus. The college is located at Claremont, Tasmania, in a picturesque setting overlooking the Derwent River, 15 km from Hobart. It particularly targets students living in Hobart's Northern Suburbs.

This is all for now from your faithful reporter, Anand Gupta. I shall look forward to serving you again in future with choice news of Claremont.

City Events

If you live in the Clareboya area, you have a chance to meet members of the Claremont City Council tonight at 7pm at the Alexander Hughes Community Center. The city is having a neighborhood forum as part of a continuing series of outreach meetings. Come by share your praise or concerns with the councilmembers.

Clareboya Neighborhood Forum
Alexander Hughes Community Center
1700 N. Danbury Rd.
Claremont, CA 91711
Information: 399-5497

The next neighborhood forum is scheduled for Northeast Claremont at the Padua Theater on Tuesday, June 19th at 7pm.

___________________________

The organization Active Claremont will hold it's monthly meeting 7pm this Thursday, May 17th, at the Claremont Public Library. According to the Daily Bulletin, there will be a presentation on West Nile virus by a speaker from the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District.

More News from India

As long as we're on the subject of outsourcing, Harry Shearer's Le Show on 5/6 had a bit about CNN's Lou Dobbs being outsourced to Bangalore. (You need the Real Player to hear it - get it here.)

Le Show can be heard Sunday mornings at 10:00 a.m. on 89.9FM KCRW. You might recognize Shearer as the voice of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Smithers and a multitude others on FOX's The Simpsons. He was also the original Eddie Haskell on the Leave It To Beaver pilot, and has been in numerous movies, including "This Is Spinal Tap."

Long-time Shearer fans will remember his work with the Credibility Gap in the early 70's. Back then, on New Year's Day, people of a certain, hip demographic would turn down the sound on the TV broadcasts of the Rose Parade and turn up the sound of the Credibility Gap's ad-libbed radio narration.

Offshore News

As Claremont Buzz noted yesterday, Pasadena Now's decision to outsource some of it's local reporting to India sure has the e-wires humming. This really gives new meaning to the term "foreign correspondent!"

Jill at Eye Level Pasadena has done a great job of compiling links to different sites who've commented on the issue.

Sunday Observations

There's been a lot of buzz about a local news site called Pasadena Now outsourcing its reporting to India. The website advertised on Craigslist in India for people willing to report remotely on Pasadena issues.

Pasadena Now publisher James MacPherson believes that his two new Indian journalists can cover his fair city from afar by watching city council meetings online and interviewing people by email and by phone.

The Associated Press ran a story on this two days ago, and Foothill Cities picked up on it. There's been a big local response. The LA Times and Pasadena Star-News have both run articles on the matter.

Opinions have been mixed. Many comments we've seen are what you might expect--this is bad; you need local knowledge to understand issues; you can't cover the news without face-to-face interaction. Others, like Jill at Eye Level Pasadena, after the initial shock, were more open to the idea.

Here at the Insider we tend to fall into skeptics' camp. As we've noted in the past, the biggest thing lacking in local news isn't information. It's context. And unless you know the lay of the land, the personalities involved, the history of a locality, the business makeup, the community organizations, the in- and out-groups--all of what makes a community--you cannot possibly begin to accurately describe it.

And then you're just a microphone for whomever to broadcast from. Claremont has suffered in the past from just this sort of non-critical journalism, and it took serious reporters like Gary Scott and, for a short time, Chris Bray at the Claremont Courier to bring some reality to the reporting. It's not surprising that the City of Pasadena would be open to the idea of reporting from half a world away. It's much easier to spin someone whose idea of a journalist is Doonesbury's Roland Hedley.

Pretty soon, we'll have no-context news with ever-changing spin and stories being re-written on the fly. Or maybe we already have that. Remember the 2000 Presidential election and the calling and then non-calling of Florida's vote?

And then there's this reporting about the troubles/festivities in Haiti from the Onion:


Breaking News: Something Happening In Haiti

Pomona v. Foothill Cities Blog

This brouhaha started back on 4/24/2004 when the Foothill Cities (FC) blog posted an entry that reported a rumor concerning Pomona City Manager Doug Dunlap. The rumor had been submitted by a reader via email.

Dunlap responded with his own email saying that there was no truth to the rumor. And then yesterday, Pomona City Attorney Arnold M. Alvarez-Glasman weighed in.

The Daily Bulletin picked up the story today.

So did the LAObserved news blog, and San Gabriel Valley Tribune city editor Edward Barrera on his blog.

Pomona just may be making martyrs out of Publius and Centinel over at FC.

News from the Coachella Valley

News that crossed the wire on Monday had the Insider searching for more information. Apparently there was a "terrorist threat" to the Desert Sun, Indio's newspaper. The following is presented nearly verbatim:

Newspaper subscriber allegedly threatens

to bomb The Desert Sun

With apologies to: Mariecar Mendoza and Marie McCain, who, like Glenn Southard, had nothing to do with this.

The Dessert Sun
May 7, 2007

---

Police arrested a Desert Hot Springs man after he allegedly made threats to bomb The Desert Sun building on Monday, according to Palm Springs Police Department. The person arrested was not Glenn Southard, City Manager of Indio.

The customer, someone other than Glenn Southard, had initially called Sunday because he said he did not receive the coupons he wanted in his Sunday newspaper, said Greg Castro, Director of Circulation for The Desert Sun.

“The customer service representative said she would have the coupons sent out on Monday to the person’s home, not the home of Glenn Southard,” Castro said.

Though a newspaper employee delivered the package as told to a place other than Glenn Southard’s residence, Castro said the man, not Glenn Southard, called the newspaper’s customer service department again on Monday and said he still did not get the coupons he wanted.

“That’s when he (not Glenn Southard) said: ‘What do I have to do? Come down there and blow up the building?’ ” Castro added.

Officers searched the Desert Sun building, assisted by a bomb detection dog and did not find any devices, police said.

Castro said the building was not evacuated during the police search and no employees or bystanders were injured. Nor was Glenn Southard.

“We asked the police to conduct a search as a precaution,” Castro said.

Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs officers located the customer, identified as 65-year-old Nicholas Karas (no relation to Glenn Southard), at his home.

Karas admitted he had made the statement, but denied having malicious intent, police said. Glenn Southard, on the other hand, though often accused of having malicious intent, loves The Desert Sun. “It’s my very most favorite newspaper,” he is often heard saying.

Karas was arrested on suspicion of making a terrorist threat, police said. Glenn Southard is still at large.

He (Karas, not Glenn Southard) is being held in Palm Springs Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.

Disclaimer: The above is obvious satire using parodic elements. No need for anyone to get his knickers in a knot about it. The Desert Sun would never engage in anything so clearly lame, and the entire affair is beneath the notice of any official of the City of Indio.

Three-Card Monte?

Southardism, the political philosophy embodied by former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard, has a number of strategies. One is to surround oneself with weaker yes-men and to set up a pay-for-performance system that rewards loyalty above all. Another is to ally oneself with certain power brokers, the Claremont 400, for example. Ensuring their egos were well-fed allowed Southard to keep lining his pockets with an ever-larger array of benefits.

One overlooked aspect of Southardism was Glenn's use of highly-paid consultants to support whatever goal he wanted. These experts acted as hired guns who might be willing to bend facts to fit seemingly predetermined conclusions. As a reader pointed out a month or so ago, with the Padua Sports Park Environmental Impact Report the city hired a botanist named Thomas Leslie, who listed himself as "Thomas Leslie, Ph.D Biologist." The truth, according to the reader, was that Leslie's Ph.D was in theology and had been obtained online from the Universal Life Church for a nominal fee.

These hired gun experts would provide voluminous reports filled with graphs and tables to wow laypersons - the city commissioners charged with the early decision-making and the city councilmembers who had the final say.

One expert who figured prominently into Southard's career was Dr. Bill Mathis, a Napa-based psychologist who specializes in professional management facilitation. Dr. Mathis often pops up whenever a city needs to hire a new city manager. He works with cities to identify and winnow down a candidate list. As the Foothill Cities blog recently noted, the city of Sierra Madre has hired Dr. Mathis to help find fill their vacant city manager post.

Dr. Mathis turned up several times during Glenn Southard's tenure here in Claremont. One of the first was during the Irvin Landrum crisis when Southard faced possible dismissal for his handling of the matter. (After an 18-year-old African American motorist was shot and killed in 1999 by Claremont police, Southard inflamed the situation by awarding the two involved police officers Employees of the Year awards, complete with cash bonuses that ended up looking like bounties. Southard also tried to discredit the dead man's uncle, who was speaking out at protest gatherings, by releasing the uncle's decades old criminal record.)

As the Landrum crisis reached a boiling point with hundreds of people showing up at City Council meetings in protest, the council circled the wagons and brought in Dr. Mathis for a city manager performance review. Southard's job was saved, and the council ended up backing Southard. The council's refusal to deal with the Landrum issue ended up discrediting the incumbent councilmembers, and four of the next five who ran for re-election lost.

Thereafter, for the remainder of Southard's stay in Claremont, the city would hire Mathis annually at $9,000 or so a visit, to facilitate Southard's yearly performance review.

Regarding the city's biology expert, our reader wrote that "if the consultant-city executive relationship appears close, you have to wonder if the consultants aren't just shilling for their friends." Mathis, we note, is on the Board of Trustees for the California City Management Foundation (CCMF) and has held that position for years. Southard is a founding member of CCMF and was a long time CCMF president. (Other city consultants are also represented on the CCMF Board.)

And, when Southard chose to leave Claremont for Indio in 2005, when a change in the council looked inevitable, Mathis was the consultant working on Indio's city manager candidate search.

Friends helping friends?

Goings On

The Claremont City Council's next monthly neighborhood forum is scheduled for next Tuesday, May 15th, at 7pm at the Alexander Hughes Community Center. This month's meeting will be for the Claraboya area.

Alexander Hughes Community Center
1700 Danbury Rd.
Claremont, CA 91711
Information: Aileen Flores, (909) 399-5497

_______________________


If you're not happy with Claremont's city government, now's your chance to take action. The Daily Bulletin informs us that tomorrow, May 11th, from noon to 2pm at City Hall, you have the chance to throw a pie at one of five unnamed city officials. The whipped cream pies are $20 a shot.

_______________________


The Bulletin also mentions the Our Lady of the Assumption Church's 60th annual Fiesta, going on this Friday through Sunday. There's food, music and dance, carnival rides and games. OLA's Fiesta 2007 is located on the parish grounds at 435 Berkeley Ave. For information, call (909) 626-3596.

OLA Fiesta 2007

Friday, May 11th - 5pm to 11pm
Saturday, May 12th - 9am to 9pm
Sunday, May 13th - Noon to 9pm

Claremonsters Grow by One

The Claremonsters expand their net.

The Foothill Cities blog noted former Pasadena Councilmember Paul Little's stepping down from that city's council.

A reader alerted us to the fact that Little works for Claremont 400 wannabee and two-term Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez at VMA Communications, Inc., a political consulting firm in Claremont. Little also had a Wikipedia entry that was deleted just yesterday, partly because it was self-authored. We liked the last line: "He's also very awesome."

You might remember that Valerie Martinez, along with former Claremont Councilmember Paul Held, spearheaded the failed 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign that attacked current Councilmember Corey Calaycay and tried to prevent his election. That same group began by attacking sitting Councilmember Jackie McHenry and worked with then-City Manager Glenn Southard to try to get McHenry censured for, among other things, wanting Southard to submit receipts for his work expenses.

We trust Little's Wikipedia entry is meant as a joke. But, if it's not, he's in good company now.

Commencement Weekend

Another year has come to an end at the Claremont Colleges. Good luck to all the graduates!

Here is a list of commencement events:

Saturday, May 12th

• CGU's 80th Commencement Exercises
  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  Mudd Quadrangle at 10th St. and Dartmouth
  CGU
  (909) 607-3305
  
  Commencement speaker:
  Richard Atkinson,
  President of the University, emeritus, University of California



• Claremont McKenna College Commencement
  2:00 PM
  Pritzlaff Field
  Claremont McKenna College
  South of Ninth Street and Claremont Boulevard
  (909) 607-9099
  
  Commencement speaker:
  Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles

Sunday, May 13th

• The Interfaith Baccalaureate Service
  For graduates and families
  10:30 AM
  Garrison Theater
  Scripps College
  231 E. 10th Street
  (909) 621-8685
  
  Speaker: Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann,
  Senior Associate Dean for Religious Life, Stanford University



• Keck Graduate Institute Commencement
  11:00 AM
  East Lawn
  Keck Graduate Institute
  535 Watson Drive
  (909) 607-0389
  
  Keynote speaker:
  Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine



• Pitzer College Commencement
  1:00 - 3:30 PM
  Bryant Tower Clock Lawn
  Pitzer College
  (909) 621-8219
  
  Commencement speaker:
  Journalist Eric Schlosser



• Harvey Mudd College Commencement
  1:30 PM
  Mudd Quadrangle
  Harvey Mudd CollegeEast
  Tenth Street and Dartmouth Avenue
  (909) 607-7924
  
  Commencement speaker:
  Mae C. Jemison



• Pomona College Commencement
  2:30 PM
  Marston Quad
  Pomona College
  College Avenue, between 4th and 6th Streets
  (909) 621-8131
  
  Keynote speaker:
  U.S. Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida)



• Scripps College Commencement
  3:00 PM
  Elm Tree Lawn
  Scripps College
  345 E. 9th Street
  On campus lawn - two rows of elm trees just north of the Malott Commons
  (909) 621-8187
  
  Commencement speaker:
  Karen Tse, international human rights attorney

Good Neighbors

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

That sends a frozen groundswell under it

....
Before I'd built a wall, I'd ask to know

What it is I was walling in and walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.

Robert Frost, Mending Wall

The saga continues. Our story so far: the city with attitude and a serious inferiority complex to compensate for (Claremont) decides it's going to build its new police station at the corner of Towne Ave. and Bonita Ave. on the site of a 10-acre vacant lot owned by the Xerox Corp.

One big problem is the land isn't part of Claremont. It's in Pomona, a much larger city with its own inferiority complex. Another is Claremont forgot to tell the Pomona City Council it was planning on annexing the police station land. Not exactly the best way to start off a friendly negotiation, especially when Claremont and its ruling caste, the Claremont 400, has a reputation for snootiness, snobbery and arrogance.

From the 400's point of view, Pomona should be thankful for ceding that little plot of land to its much superior neighbor. After all, Pomona is to blame for all of Claremont's problems, beginning with crime. The Claremont Police Commission took up the matter last week, as Will Bigham in the Daily Bulletin was kind enough to detail yesterday.

Pomona Mayor Norma Torres didn't seem to happy to hear the news when it originally broke, and she pretty much told Claremont to take a hike. Claremont's elite, used to ignoring its own citizens, applied their same classy charm to this issue. Claremont Police Commissioner Gary Soto in Bigham's article wooed Pomona by calling Mayor Torres "someone who lacks political savvy and professionalism."

Obviously, in Soto's view, professionalism means doing what he says without question. Soto, a former Fontana middle school principal, must still think he's dealing with seventh-graders. We're not sure who needs to grow up here.

It really is hard not to laugh at the situation, something Bulletin columnist and longtime Claremonter David Allen had no trouble doing.

It was also nice of Police Chief Paul Cooper to let us know the cost of acquiring the land and building the station: $29 million. Toss in the $100 million-plus for buying the water company, the $10 million-plus to build the Padua Sports Park, the $11.5 to 12.5 million to buy Johnson's Pasture, and you have quite a pricey agenda for Claremont. Of course, just as it's not their land, it's not their money either. Chief Cooper said in the Bulletin that the city would probably take out bonds to pay for the station.

Maybe Cooper should just ask Pomona to pay for the thing since Claremont is being kind enough to police Pomona's crime problem. Sort of hearkens back to the 1970's, when Claremonsters still called our police "the border patrol"--something former Mayor Judy Wright omitted from her "Claremont: A Pictorial History."

As long as we're shelling out the money, why not build a wall around our town? Something there is that doesn't like a snob.

Congrats

Congratulations to Claremont High School teacher John Lawrence for being named Advanced Placement State Teacher of the Year by the Siemens Foundation. Mr. Lawrence teaches AP Environmental Science and worked at CHS for the past 12 years.

Festive Folk

And so you have come back to me

And say the old love's growin' yet.

You've tried through all these weary years,

You've tried too vainly to forget.
~A. P. Carter, The Lover's Return

The Claremont Folk Festival is going on all day at Sycamore School. It's back after a one year break with a variety of acts, from Celtic to bluegrass to African drums. Joel Harper and his Grammy Award-winning sibling Ben have brought the festival back.

Ben Harper and Tom Morello played last night at Bridges Auditorium, and the Daily Bulletin had a write up today. Ben and Joel are the grandsons of Dorothy and Charles Chase, who founded the Claremont Folk Music Center on Harvard Ave in 1958. Since 1970, the center's been located on Yale Ave. Ben's and Joel's mother Ellen manages the family-owned center and also coordinates the festival.

You can hear some good music, enjoy the fresh air, and learn a little about some of the instrument - maybe even learn to play. Here's a video of one of the acts, Sligo Rags, channeling Pink Floyd and Charlie Daniels at the Folk Music Center in October, 2006:




Sligo Rags appears on the festival's main stage at 3pm. Festival tickets are available at the door: General admission - $20.00; students - $10.00; family of four - $50.00.

2007 Claremont Music Festival
Sycamore School
228 W. 8th St.
Claremont, CA 91711

Claremont Folk Music Center
220 Yale Avenue
Claremont CA 91711
(909) 624-2928

Fundraising Flops

The Foothill Cities blog pointed out an LA Daily News article that noted Republican Congressman David Dreier's fundraising has dried up since Congress changed hands last fall.

Dreier, a graduate of Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University, is about the only local political figure in recent to make it out of Claremont and onto a larger stage. Others like former Councilmembers Sandy Baldonado and Al Leiga have bellyflopped when trying to run for higher office. Guess that Claremonster influence doesn't extend very far outside the city borders.

As the Daily News article points out, Dreier still has a $2 million war chest, so he may not necessarily go quietly into that good night, as so many Democrats (and some Republicans) would like.

_______________________

Also in the news, Arcadia political consultant Brandon Powers won a Pollie award for his work on a campaign to defeat Diamond Bar's Measure L library bond last November. The Pollies are given by the American Association of Political Consultants.

We're not sure which is scarier, someone fighting a library bond (sorry fiscal conservatives) or an association of political consultants.

Incidentally, Powers is also credited with having worked on Assemblyman Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) in his successful 2006 election campaign. Maybe Claremont City Councilman Sam Pedroza could step in and help some more with Adams' future campaigns.

Mining theTruth

Frank Schiavone has an opinion piece in today's Daily Bulletin in which he delves into the problems facing local open space proponents. Claremont's issues with Vulcan Materials Co. get a mention.

Schiavone notes the fact that the land Vulcan wants to mine in Northeast Claremont is a scarce type of habitat called Riversidean Alluvial Fan Sage Scrub (RAFSS). For more information on this, see the Claremonters Against Strip Mining (CASM) site.

Schiavone also points out the competing interests involved in land use issues: builders, state agencies, local agencies, citizen groups. He says, "A psychologist might diagnose the state with multiple personality disorders."

He's right, but Schiavone also ignores Claremont's two-facedness in the mining issue. Call it Pedroza Syndrome. One the one hand, the city has argued that some of the RAFSS bordering the proposed mining (the Padua Sports Park site) has no value and should be developed (contrary to a California Dept. of Fish & Game opinion). On the other hand, the same Planning Dept. is arguing that RAFSS is important, so Vulcan shouldn't touch the land.

Similarly, the city's planners have argued against the mining saying in the past that the area was zoned as open space and that it would adversely affect residents nearby. Yet, when the Stone Canyon Preserve's 125 houses went in a couple years ago, the city (under then-City Manager Glenn Southard) allowed developer Centex Homes to run an aggregate mining operation on-site north of Mt. Baldy Rd.

You think Vulcan and their attorneys haven't noticed either of these contradictions? Just another case of the Claremont two-step catching up with them. Let's hope Vulcan doesn't bury the city.

Faint Praise

One thing we've noticed, now and in the past, is the lack of irony among the Claremont 400. Face it folks, this is a town of literalists in almost all things. There is one notable exception, however. When they praise someone, most of the time they're being sarcastic!

We noticed this in the March City Council election when so many of the 400 were spending their time trying to pump up candidate Mike Maglio. Privately, they thought, "Poor sap. He's a loser, but he'll steal votes from McHenry and Nasiali." This a prototypical Diann Ring strategy (Ring, a former Claremont Mayor, gave a speech about getting "our city back" at a Sam Pedroza kickoff party in January, 2007).

So at every opportunity, they would assure Maglio that he was doing a great job and that he belonged with them. "You should apply for a commission if you don't win," they said.

And, of course, Maglio ended up with about 800 votes--a quarter of what he needed to get elected. But, most importantly for the Claremonsters, the margin of victory for third-place Linda Elderkin over Jackie McHenry was 600 votes. Bravo, Maglio! Bravo, Ring!

There has actually been research into the phenomenon of sarcastic praise, as The Onion reports this week:


Report: 70 Percent Of All Praise Sarcastic

(Hint for Claremonsters: The foregoing is known as "satire." In the rest of the country, it's considered humorous.)

Get Your Kicks

Foothill Cities points out a new Claremont blog by realtor Tisza Major-Posner. The blog, Route 66 Living, seems to deal mostly with real estate information, but also has posts on Claremont life.

You can also find a little local Route 66 information at Legends of America.

Gone A-Maying

Happy May Day! Hope you can get out there and really seize the day.

Claremont has a lot coming up this month. The city's ongoing park dedications - part of Claremont's Centennial Celebration - continue:

May 5
College Neighborhood Park Event 1p.m.
El Barrio Neighborhood Park Event 2 p.m.
Larkin Neighborhood Park Event 3 p.m.

May 12
Rosa Torres Park Dedication Ceremony at 11 a.m.

May 19
Chaparral Neighborhood Park Event at 1 p.m.
June Vail Neighborhood Park Event at 2 p.m.
Jaeger Neighborhood Park Event 3 at p.m.

And the City Wide Yard Sale is May 19th at Cahuilla Park at the corner of Indian Hill Blvd. and Scripps Ave.

Enjoy the spring. See you out and about Claremont in the Merry Month of May!