City Council Meeting Tonight

We received this email yesterday from a reader questioning a closed session item on tonight's Claremont City Council closed session agenda:

If you check under the second closed session item on tomorrow's (June 10th) city council meeting agenda, you will see real price negotiations for property at 390 Arrow Highway. I believe that is the address of Peppertree Square. Is the city going to but the property? Is the city going to help someone else buy it? Is city hall going to be moved to South Claremont? Will the citizens be told what they are going to do and when? Only the Shadow knows....

We've got no idea what's going on with that one, but we'll keep an ear to the ground. If you watch the streaming video on the city's website, you can hear a report on the closed session at the beginning of the regular meeting at 6:30pm.

Among the items on the regular meeting agenda are:

• The acceptance of the annual Landscaping and Lighting Assessment District engineer's report, which recommends raising the LLD assessment 3.3%, from $142.42 to $147.12 per $100,000 of assessed property value.
  
  
• Allocating $25,000 from the city's General Fund to help underwrite a $7.6 million wetlands project proposed by the Claremont Area League of Women Voters (LWV) for a site near the city's Thompson Creek Trail at Mills Ave. and Mt. Baldy Rd. The LWV has applied for a grant from the San Gabriel River and Mountains Conservancy to fund the project, and the city wants to make a token show of community support.
  
  (In actuality, there may or may not be community-wide support for the project - no one knows because the LWV has never had a public discussion on the topic! Apparently, open public discussion is not in the League of Women Voters' mission statement.)
  
  One interesting point: The pool of funds the LWV is applying to is about $63 million and is supposed to be spread out among all of the cities in the San Gabriel River watershed. So, Claremont's LWV is staking a claim to well over 10% of the total amount. The extent of Claremont's hubris is truly remarkable. As always, it's not their money, so what do they care?
  
  
• Also, the city council will consider separate memoranda of understanding between the city and the Claremont Professional Employees Association, and the city and the San Bernardino Public Employees Association. The memoranda include such things as cost of living increases and increases in the health and fitness benefits paid to employees.
  

Claremont City Council Meeting
Closed Session: 5:15pm
Regular Session: 6:30pm
City Council Chambers
225 W. 2nd St.
Claremont, CA 91711