Get Well Soon

The Foothill Cities Blog first reported last Friday that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker would be taking a medical leave soon for unknown reasons.

The Daily Bulletin confirmed that today:

City Manager Jeff Parker will be absent from City Hall for a few weeks over the holiday season while he recovers from a medical operation, Mayor Peter Yao said.

Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos will assume Parker's duties during the recovery period, Yao said.

"He's going to be facing an operation either late in November or the first part of December, and probably will be laid up for a couple of weeks," Yao said.

We wish Parker a speedy and uneventful recovery and hope he'll be back at work after the holidays with no ill-effects from his operation. If you want to pass on your own get-well wishes, give City Hall a call at (909) 399-5460 or email them at the citizen feedback line.

While we've certainly had our differences with Parker (Paystubgate, for instance), we also believe that both he and his assistant, Tony Ramos, are capable of doing good work and certainly represent an upgrade in competence over the previous administration.

We observed that in the numerous problem issues facing the city (affordable housing, the new police station, Padua Sports Park, the water company purchase), staff is not necessarily the root of the problem. Rather, it's our opinion that the current city administration has been handcuffed by the stubborn interference of the usual Claremont 400 suspects (Ellen Taylor, Helaine Goldwater, Diann Ring, Judy Wright, the League of Women Voters, Valerie Martinez, Paul Held, to name a few).

Left to their own devices, we suspect that Parker and Ramos would come up with better solutions to all of these issues. But the 400 knows what it knows and not much else, facts be damned. So, the range of possible solutions is significantly limited, and we are all the worse for it.