Tonight's Council Meeting

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm in the City Council chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village.

It's a busy agenda tonight as the council and Mayor Ellen Taylor scramble to get all their business done this month before the City Council and city commissions take their traditional August break. Hey, shouldn't we start thinking about reversing this? Let's have them meet in August and take the rest of the year off. You know, above all, do no harm.

Interested parties can also watch the proceedings here tonight beginning at 6:30pm.

In any case, the council tonight at 5:15pm starts with another in a never-ending series of closed sessions in which, the special meeting agenda says, they'll discuss "anticipated litigation" with an unidentified party as well as the possible water company takeover. The council will give a brief report of their closed session after they return for the public portion tonight.

The regular agenda includes the following items of interest:

• The second reading of the new marijuana dispensary ordinance that was approved at the last council meeting.
  
  
• An appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to approve a 162,000 square-foot academic and administrative building on the Claremont McKenna College campus. The appeal has been lodged by Peter Farquhar, Ray Fowler, Lydia Henry, and Ginger Elliot on behalf of Claremont Heritage.
  
  The appeal seems to center around the appellants concern about parking and the way the parking allowances for the new building were figured. City staff, naturally, argues that the appeal should be denied. We'll see who has more clout here, CMC or Claremont Heritage's Ginger Elliot.
  
  
• The renewal of the city's agreement with the Chamber of Commerce, a wholly-owned Claremont 400 subsidiary currently led by photographer Sonia Stump. The proposed new agreement will pay the Chamber $59,935 for the 2008-09 fiscal year and $61,756 for FY 2009-10.
  
  This is a sort of automatic renewal, and we've not seen much public discussion of whether or not the city's merchants are getting a good bang for your tax buck. Has anyone asked if the Chamber has done a good job of increasing foot traffic to the Village or the Village Expansion, not to mention the other areas of town?
  
  
• The proposed $50,000 grant to the Friends of the Claremont Library to fund a special collection of Claremont authors. A reader just commented on this one:
  
  
  I was up early this morning and read the post about the Friends of the Claremont Library asking the city for $50,000 to catalogue books by Claremont authors and several things came to mind. Don't we pay taxes to the county library already to have every book catalogued that is given to or purchased by the county system? Doesn't the county already have many of the books by Claremont authors in it's collection already and have already catalogued these books? Doesn't this city already have plenty of retired librarians that could volunteer to catalogue these books? And lastly, if the city is in such dire need of money with the anticipated shortfalls this year and next, why not put the money into reserves? I also wondered if these books are going to circulate to other libraries in the system or if they are going to circulate at all? If they are not, this is not the best use of taxpayer funds to enable the creation of what will essentially be a private collection, something that is better suited to a private library, not a public library whose beginnings were meant to provide the masses with free circulating books to educate and uplift themselves. I hope the council will reconsider this issue and not respond with a knee-jerk reaction to this request.
  
  Yep.
  
  
• Tree mitigation for homes on Shenandoah Dr. The staff report provides three alternatives (Plans A, B, and C) ranging in price from $251,000 to $511,000. The discussion provides an good window into the true costs of being a Tree City - costs which tend to be ignored until the sidewalk is cracked and lifted up all throughout a neighborhood.
  
  
• A parking permit plan for residents of Via Santa Catarina at the Johnson's Pasture trailhead in Claremont's Claraboya neighborhood.
  
  Another example of what happens when easily foreseeable consequences are ignored. Claremont bought Johnson's Pasture, but failed to deal with the fact that a small residential cul-de-sac with no extra parking sits at the beginning of the trail. As a result, the neighborhood feels overrun with hikers' vehicles taking up all the limited parking along with a perceived increase in crime-risk and general nuisances.
  
  The other way in to the pasture is from the Claremont Wilderness Park entrance over on Mills Ave. A long trek indeed.