Last Wednesday's Claremont Courier reported on the final recommendations of the city's Affordable Housing Task Force.
The task force's top potential site is the old Claremont Courier building at 111 S. College Ave. Recall that Citizens for the American Dream, the group that had opposed the Base Line Rd. site pushed by the Claremont League of Women Voters, had suggest the College Ave. location as an alternative after a mixed-use development plan fell through because of the housing market downturn.
It's a shame the Citizens for the American Dream didn't even get tip of the hat from the League of Women Voters, who've generally been sore losers on this topic. The College Ave. site was, after all, the American Dream folks' idea in the first place.
But that all gets back to what we were talking about Friday. We do have choices in almost all these sorts of issues. Unfortunately, Claremont's history - the real one, not the Judy Wright version - has been one of giving the public false choices, of eliminating good alternatives and refusing to modify or alter plans when they don't work.
In this instance, we've wasted years of time, money, and energy on a failed project when we could have requested a study such as the one just completed incorporating views from all sections of Claremont's public, including people who live in and near the proposed sites. Instead, we committed to an idea destined to fail and refused to bend.
It's only fitting that Ms. Wright, a former Claremont Mayor, was on the side opposing the Base Line Rd. project. For a change, she got to experience what the rest of us have seen for years. It's a shame she didn't have the courage to join publicly with the Citizens for the American Dream to use her influence to work together for a solution, but she did not want to be associated with people unfairly marked by some of Wright's friends as NIMBY's and racists.
Inflexibility, as much as anything, has been the secret flip-side to the Judy Wright version of Claremont's history. As if to prove the point, the Courier article also indicated that the folks behind the Base Line Rd. site have not given up:
Despite being ineligible for county and federal funding, the Baseline Road location was not dismissed by the group and remains among their top 6 recommendations. The county housing authority decided earlier this year not to fund projects that lie within 500 feet of freeways or major urban road due to health concerns.
“Some members wanted to leave it on the A-list because it was still owned by the city,” Mr. Mayclin said. “And there is a belief that maybe several years down the road, we might get some funding for that project.
“We all know about the EIR and the health problems,” he added. “So my feeling is that it is not a viable site and should not even be on the table.”
The other sites include 1.5 acres at the southeast corner of Towne Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, 6 acres across from Chaparral Elementary School on Mills Avenue, .8 acres at the northeast corner of Cambridge and Harrison avenues and 8 acres off of Monte Vista Avenue, north of Baseline Road.
Solutions to this and other problems facing Claremont abound. We only have to reach out and work together to achieve them. Again, we say, the choice is yours and ours.
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