As you might expect, we've received some email regarding the problems the Bridget Healy for City Council campaign has had with inconsistencies that have popped up in the candidate's campaign literature.
Some of Healy's claims have been directly contradicted by her sworn testimony in a lawsuit the city had to defend three years ago. A reader wrote in after having noticed yet another Healy campaign exaggeration:
DATE: Sunday, March 1, 2009 2:34:10 PM
SUBJECT: Healy's Gifts
TO: Claremont Buzz
Dear Buzz,
With keen interest, I have been following the newspaper and Insider Blog reports on city council candidate Healy's inconsistencies regarding her purported contributions and gifts to Claremont. While her inconsistencies have focused on the acquisition of the Wilderness Park, I should point out that her claims to have "established the Police Commission.." are also questionable. I recall that the establishment of the Police Commission was a recommendation, to the City Council, of an Ad Hoc Committee which was formed to look into necessary changes in the behavior of the Police Department following the Landrum shooting incident. She makes it sound as if she alone - as in her other claims on the "accomplishments" list - established the Police Commission.
* * * * *
The first Courier letter was from Tom and Donna Ambrogi. Tom Ambrogi lives at Pilgrim Place and his wife is a Pilgrim boardmember. Following the Irvin Landrum shooting, he was one of the people who led a largely ineffective, toothless campaign to try to address the City's handling of the matter. We call Ambrogi's efforts ineffective because he ignored the central problem: the City's management culture under then-City Manager Glenn Southard, and his right-hand woman, Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy. Ambrogi focused on the symptom rather than the structural disease.So, it's no surprise that Ambrogi would demonstrate a similar blindness in his current support of Healy. Ambrogi apparently has no inkling that supporting Healy is a direct abnegation of everything he claimed to stand for when the Landrum shooting occurred. But with Ambrogi, like so many of the 400, friendships trump reality, and the high status he and his wife possess in Pilgrim Place gives them a potential platform to influence other residents of that retirement community.
The second letter was from former Claremont City Planner and former Claremont League of Women Voters president Sharon Hightower. Hightower says she has two things she considers when she evaluates candidates. First, does the person understand "Claremont's past achievements (and blunders)?" In this, as in most things Healy, Hightower gives no concrete examples. And, as we know from Healy's advertisements, the candidate's understanding of past achievements is highly suspect.
Hightower's second criteria is the vision thing. Does the candidate share Hightower's, the League's, and the 400's vision of what Claremont should be? (More on the word "vision" in a moment.)
The last letter is signed by eight former Claremont mayors, including Queen Ellen Taylor (right), who was so bad on the council that she was reportedly told by the powers-that-be not to run again. And some of the others on the list - Diann Ring, Karen Rosenthal, Paul Held, and Al Leiga - were no better than Taylor and in several instances were even worse.Parsing the three letters is easy. There are two code words the 400 always uses: consensus and vision. "Consensus" is their belief that no dissent whatsoever should be tolerated. Not on the part of the council and certainly not on the public's part. In short, it is groupthink at its worst. The Ambrogis' letter mentions consensus, and Diann Ring is always prattling on incessantly about the need for 5-0 votes on the council.
"Vision" is the opinion formed by 400 at their various social events. They come up with some cockamamie notion about this or that, then hold sham public meetings to give the imprimatur of the public process to these opinions. Unknown to the public, the process is a done deal long before it ever reaches an official public meeting. All three Courier letters Saturday mentioned vision.
To those in the know, when you hear "vision" and "consensus" together in candidate endorsements, you're supposed to know that this is the 400's chosen person. When you parse all three of the Saturday Courier letters, you not only see the code words, but you see the eight mayors giving away their secret. They don't call it Bridget Healy's vision. They say, "our vision for Claremont...."
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we give you EXHIBIT 1 in this case:
She has a fine record of 18 years service in city government, where she showed strong leadership in bringing consensus on many important issues....
We need [Healy's] passion and her vision and her proven leadership to implement our common vision for the future of Claremont.
Tom and Donna Ambrogi
Claremont
....Does he/she have a vision for the future of Claremont? If so, is it one I share? Can he/she always keep that vision in mind while solving today’s problems?
Sharon W. Hightower
Claremont
....She is committed to working with you, the citizens, to make our vision for Claremont this community's future.
Please join us in voting for Bridget for City Council.
Ellen Taylor
Suzan Smith
Sandy Baldonado
Algird Leiga
Paul Held
Diann Ring
Karen M. Rosenthal
Richard Newton
Past and Present Mayors of the City of Claremont
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