Claremont Capsule

The City of Claremont is preparing to unearth a 1983 time capsule on Wednesday, October 3rd at 5pm at City Hall. The capsule was buried near the City Hall flag pole.

A new capsule designed by Claremont Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Taylor's son Matthew Taylor (can you spell N-E-P-O-T-I-S-M?) will be sealed up and placed in the City Hall foyer as a bench. Apparently, this year's capsule is too nice to be buried, and we will not get into the respect exhibited by hundreds of people over the years sitting on the time capsule.

City Hall officials are taking ideas for things to put in the new capsule. Taking a cue from our city bird, the ostrich, here are the Insider's suggestions:

• The memory of the Irvin Landrum shooting.
  


• The memory of the Claremont 400's behavior in the City Council elections of 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007.
  


• The memory of the Claremont 400's support of former City Manager Glenn Southard and his staff.
  


• The real story of Paystubgate.
  


• The memory of the $17.5 million settlement for the Palmer Canyon fire.
  


• The memory of the Claremont Unified School District's misspent $48.5 million from the 2001 Measure Y bond.
  


• The memory of the extra $1 million the city was forced to come up with to pay for the Johnson's Pasture open space after city staff and the city council failed to catch the language in the deed that caused the state of California to pull it's $1 million grant offer.
  


• The ballots from the failed 2007 Parks and Pastures assessment district vote.
  
  
• Claremont historian Judy Wright's selective "history."

Have your own ideas about what should go in the new Matthew Taylor time capsule? Contact Claremont Centennial Celebration Committee member Sylvia Hernandez at (909) 399-5498 or email her at shernandez@ci.claremont.ca.us.

Johnson's Pasture Deal Finalized

Good news to those who worked on getting the public funding for the purchase of Johnson's Pasture. The Claremont City Council last night announced that the owners of Johnson's Pasture had at long last agreed to the lower price of $11.5 million. As we reported three days ago, the owners had been stuck on the old price of $12 million, which was based on a faulty appraisal.

The purchase allows the city to add 180 acres to the 1,589-acre Claremont Wilderness Park. As the city's press release states, the lower price now makes the city eligible for a $1 million dollar grant from the State of California. The city also received a $500,000 grant from Los Angeles County and $250,000 from the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy. The grant money lowers the cost to Claremonters to $10.2 million, including the costs of issuing the bonds.

The Claremont Colleges, which as nonprofit entities were not subject to being taxed under the Johnson's Pasture bond measure, voluntarily pledged to pay what they would have had they been subject to taxing for the bond. This extra money will be used to further lower the costs to the public by paying down the bonds earlier.

Congratulations to all who worked on this. Recall that the Johnson's Pasture preservation has a long history, with the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy working years to try secure funding for the purchase. It also required turning around a 56% to 44% loss in the July, 2006, Parks and Pasture Assessment District election to a 72% to 28% win on the November, 2006, Measure S bond.

The turnabout happened because people who had been opposed to the assessment district came together with people who had supported the assessment, and both groups worked jointly for passage of Measure S. It just shows that the walls the Claremont 400 have erected to keep us apart are artificial constructs. It's simply up to us to see them for what they are and to tear those walls down.

The community really pulled together for Measure S in ways rarely seen in Claremont. Unfortunately, what should have been a model for cooperation was discarded by the Claremont 400, who were more concerned with remaining in power than in building community. As soon as the March, 2007, City Council election rolled around, the 400 were back to their old whispering campaign game. More of that selective memory erasing history.

Still, that model is there if anyone ever chooses to use it.

Hypocrites-R-Them

For some reason, the hypocrisy and absurdity of Claremont 400 politics has us musing about the duality of human nature.

Anybody remember back during the March 2007 election when the Claremont Democratic Club endorsed Sam Pedroza and Linda Elderkin for City Council? There was a bit of complaining, some by local Democrats who didn't support either of the endorsees. Those people argued that it was a non-partisan election and that the Democratic Club had no business endorsing anybody.

You may recall Bob Gerecke, the club's president, writing a letter to the Claremont Courier defending the club's endorsements. Gerecke's confused and emotional screed seemed to argue that if local Democrats didn't stand behind their candidates, first the city, then the state, then the nation would be overrun by Republicans. Democratic voters, Gerecke believed, have a duty to their party to vote for Democrats--in particular the two he wanted you to support.

Of course, Gerecke conveniently ignored independent Jackie McHenry, who was the only councilmember to take positions on a number of city issues that mirrored what one would expect the national Democratic Party to favor: the armed forces banners (against); sustainable building--well before Mayor Peter Yao took the issue up (for), the city's proposed homeless ordinance--since pulled because of a court ruling that a similar statute was unconstitutional (against). Even Councilmembers Ellen Taylor and Sandy Baldonado, both registered Democrats, had worse records than McHenry on those issues.

At the time of the election, we believed that Gerecke's hysterical portrayal of Claremont as a potential springboard to higher state and national offices by Republicans was just a power play by Gerecke and his Claremont 400 friends. They just wanted to get endorsements for their candidates. They didn't care about the truth of those endorsement arguments.

For instance, Democrat Pedroza also got an endorsement and support from a person named Mike Kunce, whose organization Claremonters Against Strip Mining was fighting the proposed Vulcan Mining Co. gravel mine. Yet, we noted that Kunce also was a $1,000 donor to an anti-immigrant movement called the California Border Patrol Initiative in 2005. Hardly a Democratic position, and a strangely ironic source of support for Pedroza, who is a Latino.

So, the signs were there early. Pedroza isn't the tow-the-party-line Democrat Gerecke would have you believe. Was Gerecke lying or just stupidly naive?

And Pedroza does have a history of talking out of both sides of his mouth, as he did during the past year. In August, 2006, Pedroza argued against the affordable housing project at Baseline Rd. and Towne Ave. Then, after a good talking to by the Helaine Goldwater arm of the Claremont 400, he switched positions, arguing in October, 2006, in favor of the project.

We bring all this up because of a Republican fundraiser invitation that has been circulating around town. The occasion was an April 26th Claremont event for California Assemblyman Anthony Adams, who is a Republican. There were a number of local Republicans listed as sponsors for the event, but one name caught our eyes: "Councilman Sam Pedroza!"

So here you have Pedroza, the beneficiary of the Claremont Democratic Club's endorsement, using his new official title to help raise money for our area's Republican assemblyman's campaign war chest. Bob Gerecke's silly claim that our local politics are partisan and that Republicans could benefit from the March Claremont election turns out to be not-so-silly after all. Only, he got it completely backwards--it's Gerecke's Democrat endorsee who's out to help Gerecke's Republican opponents.

Silly man! As Sam Pedroza could explain to you, life is so much easier when you don't have to be accountable for your positions.

What can you say? It's Claremont, folks.

Reason vs. Emotion

"The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of."
--BLAISE PASCAL


The Claremont Courier isn't quite dead, as this editorial from Wednesday's edition shows:

(Published in the Claremont Courier, 3/14/2007)

My Side of the Line

By Rebecca JamesCourie
Managing
Editor

[NOTE: We have removed the body of the text because, as a reader has pointed out, the material is copyrighted, and we would need the Courier's and JamesCourie's permission to post it in its entirety. Unfortunately, the Courier does not post its editorial material, so readers will have to find a hard copy of the 3/14/07 Courier to read the piece.

The editorial did cite three campaign issues that winning candidates Linda Elderkin, Sam Pedroza and Peter Yao focused on: affordable housing, the Vulcan gravel mining proposal and the Padua Sports Park project. JamesCourie pointed out that in all three of these issues, the winning candidates made promises to emotionally-driven voters--promises that the editor thought might be hard to keep.]
_______________________

The Claremont 400, with its blood up, will be calling a pecking party for Ms. JamesCourie after this piece.

Election Reflections

Looking back on the 2007 Claremont Municipal election, we can't help but wonder if party politics isn't hurting our local governance. It may be that what is good for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party on the state or federal levels does not translate to sound policy on the local level.

Party politics, particularly on the national level, have become so polarized that voters are too often left with only two positions, and a range of other choices in between are automatically eliminated. This may be one reason why the number of Californians declining to state a party affiliation has been on the rise. According to an NPR story in January, 2007, the percentage of declined to state voters in California is now about 20% and growing.

Both parties risk becoming caricatures, the Democrats stuck in the 1960's and the Republicans stuck in the 1980's. While the Claremont electorate has traditionally been weighted slightly in favor of the Democrats, there are plenty of fiscally conservative social liberals who've objected to such things as the city's Landscaping and Lighting District. And, there a moderate Claremont Republicans who were bothered by the city's handling of the Landrum shooting.

One risk the incoming council has is to assume it has a mandate to spend freely without considering methods of payment. Last year's assessment district vote showed that there are still strong feelings about that sort of spending, and those feelings cut across party lines. The city has also turned its back on things like the vehicle stop study by the Police Department, and socially liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans alike may have concerns about that, especially if another racially-charged incident comes along.

_______________________


As we've noted in the past week, the newly-elected councilmembers and re-elected Peter Yao owe their election to the village vote, which accounted for the difference between third-place Linda Elderkin and fourth-place Jackie McHenry. The danger is that the council will fall back into its old patterns of conflating the good of the village for the good of greater Claremont.

Sam Pedroza ran as a candidate for South Claremont. Yet, what has he really done for them? What ideas does he bring to the council that will invigorate South Claremont and direct more city revenue towards the south, other than to line the pockets of his benefactor Roger Hogan at Claremont Toyota? We have yet to hear.

If areas like South Claremont, Northeast Claremont, and Piedmont Mesa become disaffected again, and if there is another polarizing event like the Landrum shooting, the city will be forced to confront its shortcomings, and some other Jackie McHenry will step forward as a vehicle of change.

The mistake the Claremont 400 makes is to deny their part in this dance of anger.

________________________


We will say that there was one little-noticed comment by Pedroza at the Pitzer College candidate forum the week before the election. Pedroza, in answering a question concerning the police commission, seemed to answer sincerely and from the heart. It was a question that had not come up before in the campaign, so his Claremont 400 handlers had not had a chance to tell him what to say. Pedroza, who growing up must have seen some instances of police abuse, seemed to understand the concern some Claremonters have for the need for civilian oversight of the police. His keepers will rein him in, of course, but the lesson was that Pedroza on his own can speak intelligently. It's when he has the 400 telling him what to say that he puts his foot in his mouth.

(The 400, lead by people like former Police Commission Chair Helaine Goldwater, have watered down the Police Commission to where it's a non-entity. Hence, current Police Commission Chair Kevin Arnold's tantrum at the council meeting immediately preceding the election. Arnold has nothing better or more important to do with his time.)

_______________________

The Student Life, Pomona College's newspaper, had good article on the election. Keep it up, TSL!

Election Analysis

As we noted yesterday, turnout at the Sycamore precinct (the Village including Pilgrim Place) was high--48% compared to 29% for the rest of the city. Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza won big there, 635 and 605 votes, respectively, compared to 490 for Peter Yao, 208 for Jackie McHenry, and 201 for Opani Nasiali.

The Joslyn Center polling place also went strong for Elderkin, Pedroza and Yao, and together with Sycamore provided the 605 vote cushion for Elderkin over McHenry for third place.

The Village Strategy--playing to their base, running the whispering campaign against McHenry for four years (she's negative, abrasive, disruptive, failing to credit her for any accomplishments) and then tying Nasiali to McHenry--worked. Turnout wasn't high enough at other precincts for the other candidates to offset the Village vote.

Also, we can infer that the vote-for-only-two thinking (Elderkin and Pedroza) was strong in Village. The under vote--the number of total possible votes (3 per ballot) minus the number of votes actually cast, was 232 on 817 ballots. As noted, Elderkin got 635 at Sycamore, Pedroza got 605, and Yao was way behind at 490. And then the numbers really dropped off for the others.

Turnout at the two college precincts was lower than the city average--13.5% for Oakmont (Pomona College voted here) and 18.5% for Granite Creek Church(the northern colleges and also Mike Maglio's home base). So, the College Strategy--for candidates counting on college students to vote--was pretty much a flop.

This is actually how elections have traditionally gone in Claremont, so we interpret this as reversion to pre-2001 trends with the Village essentially electing the council.

A New Day

A new day dawns for Claremont. Evil McHenry banished to the hinterlands, upstart Nasiali put in his place, councilmember-elect Pedroza vows to move forward on key projects. And councilmember-elect Elderkin will insist on a say too. Mayor-to-Be Taylor waits in the wings.

A new in day indeed, moving forward into a future full of consensus and vision....wait! Doesn't this day seem oddly familiar?


Groundhog Day (1993) © Columbia Pictures

A cautionary tale. Absent any soul-searching among our high-and-mighty, history in Claremont will always repeat itself.

Unofficial Results

Well, the unofficial 2007 Election results are in (the top three win council seats):

1. Sam Pedroza: 3,389 votes, 21.3% of the total
2. Peter Yao: 3,259 votes, 20.5%
3. Linda Elderkin: 3,165 votes, 19.9%
4. Jackie McHenry: 2,560 votes, 16.1%
5. Opanyi Nasiali: 2,451 votes, 15.4%
6. Mike Maglio: 759 votes, 4.8%
7. Michael Keenan: 338 votes, 2.1%
   

A total of 6,129 ballots were cast out of 20,932 total Claremont registered voters, for a turnout of 29%. As we said earlier, low turnout translates into wins for the Claremont 400 candidates. It would have taken a turnout of 34% or better for McHenry and Nasiali to win.

In the end, voters weren't as motivated to come out as they were in 2003 and 2005. Perhaps some of that might be attributed to the lack of the Southard factor. The old fellow certainly was a lighting rod and could always be counted on to create some crisis or another. Things like the mining issue didn't turn people out in droves. In precinct 37, home to Clarmonters Against Strip Mining (CASM), turnout wasn't any better (29.1%) than it was in the city as a whole, and CASM endorsee Maglio got fewer than 800 votes (4.8%).

Precinct 8, the village including the retirement homes, had the highest turnout (48.2%), and Elderkin and Pedroza won that precinct handily. This precinct is usually the 400's stronghold, and it proved to be in this election. Pedroza really worked the endorsements from the Democratic and Sierra Clubs, and these no doubt helped him.

What can we expect in the future? The new council will probably push the affordable housing project on Baseline Rd. The Environmental Impact Report still needs to be done, and there are likely to be some problems regarding the air quality portion of the EIR. But the council will most likely vote to override the EIR should it be unfavorable to to the project. The League of Women Voters and the Helaine Goldwater/Diann Ring group wants this put in at all costs.

The gravel mining issue is still alive, and Elderkin and Pedroza will find their hands tied considerably now that they are one the council. For one thing, as councilmembers they won't be able to just say "NO" to mining. There may still be an application from Vulcan Materials Co. to mine the land under the city's 2006 mining ordinance. And, there's the small matter of the proposed sale of the land by the owner, Pomona Valley Protective Association, to a developer. Elderkin, despite her claims to the contrary, may still have a conflict of interest, and that will be played out in the not-so-distant future.

Johnson's Pasture still needs to be bought. The city has the voters' approval for financing the land purchase through bonds, but will it be for $12 million or $11.5 million? During the election, Elderkin made comments that seemed to indicate she would push for paying the $12 million and getting the deal done, but that may imperil the chance of the city getting future state grants for other open space purchases. So, Elderkin's hands may be tied there too.

The new council will also go forward with spending $900,000 for the Padua Park site. Pedroza ran as a youth sports candidate, and will no doubt attribute his election to the "youth sports vote", even though that a pretty sketchy demographic (as we indicated, the turnout actually reverted to the lower levels of 2001). The city is still lacking the $10 million-plus need to construct Padua Park, but they will likely borrow the money since state funds have not been forthcoming.

A new police station? Perhaps. But that is a $25 million project and the city may have to go to voters for financing on that. Oh, and Paul Cooper will be the next police chief--Goldwater, et. al., will see to that.

Peter Yao wants to be mayor again, and he is beholden to the 400 for throwing their support behind him in the last few weeks of the campaign. He'll likely try to work out a deal with Ellen Taylor, Pedroza, and Elderkin to get one more year out of the mayorship. But he'll have to vie with Taylor for the position, and Pedroza and Elderkin are just as likely to thrown in with Taylor.

So, the 400 is back in command, this time minus Glenn Southard. How will they run things? We'll keep reporting, keep digging to bring you that information. The one thing that has changed from the Southard days is that it is possible to shine a light on issues, and that at least acts as a brake to the runaway train that is the Claremont 400.

We'll know in coming years if the 400 has learned anything. If we see crises like the Landrum shooting popping up again, then things will have regressed and we will see that turnout number tick back up. If things stay quiet, then turnout will tick downward.

Either way, we aim to keep the news coming.

Election Results

The City of Claremont and City Clerk Lynne Pahner maintain a really top-notch website. Unofficial election results will be posted here as they come in.

For those of you who are diehards, the City Council Chambers are open and the ballots are being counted there as they come in from the polls. We understand that about 4,000 absentee ballots were taken out, and at least 2,200 have been returned, so those are already at City Hall, meaning over 10 percent of the approximately 20,000 registered voters have already voted.

Election Day

Election day has arrived. The polls will tell all. If turnout is high (above 34 percent), that likely favors the non-Claremont 400 candidates. Low turnout favors the Claremont 400. It's a sad comment on the 400 that they need to discourage participation to win, but there you have it. Turnout in recent city elections has trended upward. It was around 29 percent in 2001 and has been above 33 percent in 2003 and 2005. We shall see what today brings.

As crazy as Claremont can be, at least it's not Glendora, as the Los Angeles Times and Foothill Cities blog have pointed out. The latest incident, as Kid Keenan points out to us, is the great Glendora Sign Scandal.

Now that the election is winding down, time for us to begin our Social Calendar:

Mark your calendars for a Claremont 400 special event--the 50's Fondue Fete, a fundraiser for the Claremont Community Foundation. The Fete is on Friday, March 16th, at 6pm at 2627 San Andres Way in Claremont. The Fete is part of the Foundation's Party Parade 2007.

It's hosted by Steve Llanusa and Glenn Miya. Llanusa is a Claremont 400 representative to the Claremont School Board. Miya is a pediatrician and is the host of Sam Pedroza's YouTube campaign video.

Both Llanusa and Miya are on Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza's supporter lists. So the Fete is a great opportunity to observe the 400 in their native habitat. Kind of like a nature documentary. Tickets are $75 per person with only 10 seats available. Reserve online at the Community Foundation's website. See you there!

Mailbag

A reader writes:

I am just curious who are these people in the Claremont 400. And what makes them think, only they know what is good for our city. If you have some time down the road, I would appreciate some comments about this. Thanks.

Dear Reader, we believe "Claremont 400" is a reference to the term "The Four Hundred," coined in 1892 by New York socialite Ward McAllister, who said that that was about the total number of people in New York who really mattered.

There aren't really 400 in Claremont. Who knows what the exact number is? There's no precise way of defining if one fits in this social club or not. One has to simply follow events and piece things together.

Origins: Former mayor Judy Wright has said in the past that one of the seminal events in the Claremont 400's history was the Claremont school board recall (around 1977--we will have to check to get more exact information). The recall was prompted by the community's negative reaction to a proposed school closure. It represented a sort of flexing of local political muscle, and the mailing and supporter lists from the recall formed the core of the 400's support in later city council and school board campaigns.

As this group came to control the city council, it also controlled the make-up of city commissions and stocked them with people loyal to the 400. Once Glenn Southard was hired as city manager in 1987, everything was in place for the political machine that would control all of the city's processes--a machine that was both judge and jury, stamping official decisions as fair and clean.

At the same time they controlled the official elected and appointed bodies, they also came to dominate groups like the League of Women Voters, the Claremont Community Foundation, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, the Claremont Rotary, and the Claremont Kiwanis, Claremont Heritage and the Claremont Friends of the Library, to name a few.

Now, all of these groups accomplish many good things, and there are many good people affiliated with them who are not part of the 400 and who are simply trying to donate their time and money to good causes.

However, if you look at past council candidates and their resumes, you will invariably find they will have served on city commissions and will have belonged to several of the groups mentioned above.

So, let's take a look at 2005 candidate Ellen Taylor. Taylor's campaign resume listed the following:

• League of Women Voters: past President
• Chamber of Commerce: past president
• Claremont Heritage, board member and past Vice President
• City of Claremont Traffic and Transportation Commission: Chair for four years
• Citizen's Committee for the General Plan
• City of Claremont's Committee on Aging: Chair: Legal and Protective Services Sub-Committee

And there you have the prototypical Claremont 400 candidate.

You can also tell by looking at supporter lists who the 400 candidates are. (See our post from 2/28/07: "Today's Courier" for a similar analysis of supporter lists.) Going back through old Couriers, it's possible to see the supporter chain go from Ellen Taylor in 2005 to Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza in this election.

The Claremont 400, like the original New York Four Hundred, is all about status and hierarchy. It is the Great Chain of Being that organizes a social class that began as a force for good and slowly devolved over time until it became responsible for the city's dysfunction on all levels.

The time for accountability approaches. If not now, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then the day after.

Election Eve

One day to go until the city election. We'll be back this evening with another trip to the mailbag.

In the meantime, we've been reflecting on the nature of blogging, the nature of news and the nature of memory. Certainly, traditional media performs a crucial function in a modern democracy. After all, bloggers like ourselves are hardly trained media professionals. But we do think that traditional media has, without meaning to, allowed the information they relay to become out of balance with the reality of the actual facts.

As we have seen in Claremont's recent history, when one side controls so many of the levers of power, controls the access to traditional media, creates a self-mythology--a narrative, those with no access must seek out alternative means of getting their interpretation of events out.

Where local institutions like the Claremont Courier or the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin fail is that they assume that the truth lies exactly in the middle of the two narratives. They don't take into account that in Claremont, the Preserve Claremont/Claremont 400 group has had near total control of city commissions, the city council, the school board, and such institutions as the Claremont Community Foundation, the League of Women Voters, the Chamber of Commerce, and others.

That control, coupled with a former city manager, Glenn Southard, who used press releases and city meetings as a kind of propaganda, allowed no room for alternate ideas to take root and flourish. This total information control translated roughly to total memory control. One group controlled what information was released and broadcast; that same group wrote the town's history (see Judy Wright's Claremont, A Pictorial History).

We think there is a need for an alternative narrative, one that gives voice to all those other views that have been too long ignored. We believe there is a market for those alternate views and that the "consensus"--those 5-0 council votes--really means an exclusion of dissent that in the past moved the council farther and farther out of step with the larger community, and farther out of touch with reality.

We believe the past few city council elections and the change in city management has been an inevitable reaction to the negative side of that "consensus" and that a dissent is a good and positive thing (see "Negative Capability*").

Claremont 400 candidates Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza have both indicated this is a "pivotal" election. The problem is they want to pivot 360 degrees back to the Southard days, to undo all the positive changes that our community has accomplished in the last two elections. That 71% vote for Measure S, for example, never would have taken place if the Claremont 400 had that yearned-for "consensus" on council. Dissent made Measure S a possibility. We believe pivoting back five years would be a tragic mistake.

Today, tomorrow, and in the future all we ask is that our town remember and honor the past--all of sides of it. Whatever the outcome of the election, the need for the rest of the story--the non-Claremont 400 story--will continue, and we will bring that to you.

Pedroza - Perfect 10

As we noted in our previous post, Pedroza has flip-flopped on his stance on Claremont's affordable housing project near Baseline Rd. and Towne Ave.

On 8/1/2006, Pedroza argued against the city spending money on the project. Then, on 10/24/2006, he argued for it, presumably after being talked to by certain people who were pushing the project (Helaine Goldwater, et. al.).

Now we receive word from a reader that at last week's candidate forum at Pitzer College, Pedroza once again mentioned that the project seemed as if it wasn't going to work.

A splendid triple back flip--a perfect 10!

Pedroza - Yin and Yang (Flip-Flop)

Sam Pedroza has a great advantage in this election. No, we don't mean the organizations whose endorsements he's trying to use to fool the voting public. We mean the fact that Pedroza gets to take both sides of an issue.

On 8/1/2006, at a meeting at city hall, Pedroza got up and argued against the city's proposed affordable housing project on Baseline Rd. That project was being pushed by Helaine Goldwater, Linda Elderkin, Ellen Taylor, Sandy Baldonado, all the usual League of Women Voter suspects. Those fine ladies pulled along a good chunk of the Claremont 400. When Pedroza spoke against the project in August, he actually brought up some good points and showed some original thinking:




By 10/24/2006, less than three months later, Pedroza got up at another city council meeting and argued the exact opposite position. We need to put that project in, he was saying. What happened to Pedroza? He got the special Claremont 400 treatment and was told what he should believe. Here you see the real, syntactically-challenged Pedroza (not the one in his campaign video):



If you play both at the same time, you can approximate what the ultimate effect of the Claremont 400 is: a lot of self-defeating, random noise.

Johnson's Pasture--Going, Going, Gone?

Just when we all thought Johnson's Pasture was saved, city negotiations with the pasture owners hit a snag, as the Bulletin pointed out earlier this month.

The pasture has been held up in probate court in San Diego County for years, with no real buyers, other than the city of Claremont, whose voters last November approved the issuance of up to $12.5 million in bonds to buy the land.

The city had purchased an option to buy the land but allowed the option to lapse in December 2006 while they continued to negotiate a sale price on the 180 acres of hillside open space.

The original price the city had negotiated with the sellers was $12 million, but that price was based on a flawed appraisal. Claremont also has a $1 million state of California grant that they can use to buy the land, but the state audited the original appraisal and disagreed with it. The state required a second appraisal be done in order for the city to qualify for the state grant money, and the second appraisal came in at $11.5 million. So Claremont officials have been trying to get the sellers to come down $500,000 in order to get the state money.

Really, the city is looking at a $1.5 million turnaround if the sellers agree to the lower price--a half-million for the lower sale price, and the million dollars from the state. This reduces the debt the taxpayers have to take on. The city is also compelled to argue for the lower price because there are other open space parcels adjacent to Johnson's Pasture that the city might like to acquire in the future. The city would need additional state grants to do that, but Claremont might jeopardize qualifying for any future grants if they show a history of paying above market value for the land.

The families that are selling Johnson's Pasture are running their own campaign--to make more profit. They've been posturing and politicking, claiming in Bulletin that the state grant would prevent the city from using the threat of eminent domain to buy the land. The owners want that eminent domain threat because they can get additional tax breaks with that threat--even if the City really didn't intend to exercise eminent domain.

The pasture owners seem to really be posturing here. Their spokesman Mike Vasilove sounded like a used car salesman in the Bulletin article:

• Vasilove said the owners would still prefer for the city to buy the land, but noted that they have other options.
  
  "There is no lack of interested buyers to develop this property," he said. "The owners have never really needed the city to step up and purchase this property."

Yes, if you don't buy now, this baby'll be gone by the afternoon. We had another couple in this morning ready to buy.

Vasilove is pretty transparent. If the sellers had other options, they wouldn't bother carrying out their negotiations publicly in the Bulletin and in an open letter to the Claremont Courier on 3/1/2007. If there were really other buyers, the owners would just say, Thank you Claremont, Goodbye, and sell to whatever developer they had lined up. Moreover, if they sold to a private party, there would be no eminent domain threat for them to use with the IRS.

In their Courier letter last Wednesday, the pasture owners sound like they're trying to squeeze the extra $500,000 from the city:

• City officials are premature and incorrect regarding their statement about the pasture being saved. It isn’t yet and we believe strongly the voters will again speak loud and clear on March 6th if the city fails to acquire “The Jewel of the Foothills” this time. That’s our opinion.
  
  —The Owners of Johnson’s Pasture

Why don't they just send Rocco out to break a few knuckles? It amounts to much the same thing. The owners are just trying to throw a scare into Johnson Pasture supporters hoping they will frighten the city into action. Nothing like sowing a little panic to get some action.

Funny how these things come up right before the election--mining, affordable housing, Padua Park, Johnson's Pasture, Police Commission Chair Kevin Arnold's recent tantrum (noooooo, that didn't have anything to do with electioneering). What was everyone doing the last two years?

Postscript: The city has its response to the pasture owners' mini-PR campaign: http://www.ci.claremont.ca.us/download.cfm?ID=1077.

Give the city's staff credit, they are working pretty hard on a lot of these issues. They're using a lot more imagination in coming up with solutions than the prior administration did, and they get precious little credit for it. They've taken the professionalism up a notch in town. They just need to realize that Ellen Taylor, Sandy Baldonado, Paul Held, Valerie Martinez, et. al., do not represent the entire city. If fact, they represent an increasingly smaller demographic.

Today's Courier

The Courier decided against endorsing candidates this election, although we hear that the editorial board may have been ready to endorse three people (none of them Pedroza or Elderkin). The family that owns the Courier intervened and decided they would simply not endorse, using Martin Weinberger's recovery from surgery as an excuse.

Today, the Courier ran responses from the seven council candidates to two different questions:

1. What has been the most difficult or challenging aspect of running your campaign?
   
2. What do you feel is one of the most pressing issues affecting Claremont and how would you solve this?
   

The Courier website didn't post the story, so we can't provide a link to it.

The answers were for the most part what you'd expect: safe, motherhood-and-apple pie responses. Peter Yao did have an interesting comment regarding CASM when he talked of "running a clean and positive campaign while enduring the below-the-belt hits from a misguided, well-financed group with its own lawn signs and massive mailers."

Sam Pedroza's response to the first question was curious: "There were some learned lessons from my campaign two years ago, where I came in at 168 votes shy of winning. Claremont experienced some of the worst electioneering in our history. Although I and my campaign had nothing to do with negative campaigning that took place, we did vow to run a very positive campaign focused on the positive and my qualifications."

One thing Pedroza ignored was the fact that he came in 168 votes short of Corey Calaycay primarily because Calaycay was the sole target of what Pedroza called "some of the worst electioneering in the history of Claremont" by Pedroza's friends at Preserve Claremont. Further, in that election in 2005, Pedroza, while running a "clean campaign," also refused to denounce the smear campaign Preserve Claremont ran. Why? Because Pedroza benefited from having others do his dirty work.

This time around, Pedroza is not being so coy. He has taken to bad-mouthing McHenry and Calaycay (who is not up for re-election) off the record. Pedroza has repeated several untrue rumors to voters in an effort to undermine his opponents. And then he has denied doing that when confronted with his statements. Further, Pedroza has taken direct support from Preserve Claremont. His supporter list includes the following people who were listed in Preserve Claremont's smear ads:

• Bo and Laura Bollinger--donated $500 to the Preserve Claremont campaign
• Suzanne Hall and Ken Corhan--$200 to Preserve Claremont
• J. Michael Fay--donated $100 to "Claremont Business PAC", now Honorary Co-Chair of Pedroza's campaign
• Paul and Kay Held--Paul Held was spokesperson for Preserve Claremont, donated $100 to "Claremont Business PAC"
• Frank Hungerford--$200 to Preserve Claremont
• Valerie Martinez--$250 to Preserve Claremont, $100 to "Claremont Business PAC"; spokesperson for Preserve, treasurer for Claremont Business PAC
• Lissa Petersen
• Randy and Rhonda Prout--$200 to Preserve Claremont
• Nick Quackenbos--$150 to "Claremont Business PAC
• Jil Stark--$200 to Preserve Claremont
• Roger Hogan--his business gave $2,000 to the "Claremont Business PAC" in 2005; his family gave $1,000 to Pedroza in 2007
• Patrick Sullivan--$250 to Preserve Claremont
  

(The dollar figures listed above come from the 2005 city election campaign filing documents on record with the Claremont City Clerk.)

So, all of the above were unabashed Claremonsters, and none ever disavowed their involvement or condemned it. And Pedroza now takes their support. This would seem to make his concerns about running clean campaigns seem to ring hollow. Pedroza benefited from their interference in the 2005 election, and he is dependent upon their support this time around. Nothing has changed, not Pedroza's dependence on the Preserve Claremonsters, nor his dishonesty about it. Pedroza's simply trying to play a game of "Good Cop/Bad Cop."

____________________________

Speaking of supporter lists, today's Courier featured an ad for Linda Elderkin that listed her campaign committee. Among those listed were:

• All of the Preserve Claremonsters listed above for Pedroza.
• Michael Fay, a non-Claremont resident who is also an Honorary Co-Chair for Pedroza.
• Bridget "The Hammer" Healy, former assistant city manager under Glenn Southard.

If you were appalled by the Preserve Claremont campaign of 2005, if you were opposed to the the witch-hunt they conducted against McHenry and the lies and rumors they spread and published against Calaycay, then you cannot possibly support Elderkin or Pedroza, who are so clearly the children of Preserve Claremont today.

Keenan Writes

We've had a standing rule against posting emails from candidates (and we've had a few), but we'll make an exception to note that Michael Keenan has a blog up and running.

Mike's a decent guy, and his blogging certainly exceeds ours by miles.

Sam II

Sam Pedroza's just posted a 5 minute interview on YouTube, as the Foothill Cities blog noted today. The piece is framed as an interview and begins with Pedroza being interviewed by a "host" named Glenn Miya.

A little quick checking showed that Miya is not a television host. He is an pediatrician with a practice in Claremont. More importantly, he is a Pedroza supporter and is the partner of Claremont Unified School Board Member Steven Llanusa, another Claremont 400 candidate. KCET's Life & Times did a piece featuring Miya and Llanusa back in 2003, and the station posts a transcript for that show.

It does show that Pedroza truly is a 400 candidate, and the 'Monsters are pulling out all the stops to showcase Pedroza, who actually comes off in the piece as if he can speak coherently. If we had to venture a guess, we'd say that we detect the invisible hand of copywriter Judy Wright, and also that it took many takes to get the Pedroza interviews wrapped.

The piece ends with an endorsement by another former council candidate, Russ Brown. Brown, you may remember, is a former Claremont police captain. The most interesting thing about that bit is that Brown no longer lives in Claremont. We're told he moved to the Hemet area some time ago. We wonder what Linda Elderkin, who seems to care so passionately about those things, would say to Brown's endorsement of Pedroza?

As we noted earlier, we're working on getting a posting up on YouTube showing the true Pedroza, minus his Claremont 400 handlers.

Mail Call

More reader mail from one of our favorite correspondents:

Hi Claremont Insiders--

Thanks for printing my note to you earlier, and for answering my question. It seems fair to me that you don't allow comments. It's your blog, after all, and you're paying for it. You get to do what you want with it.

You were willing to tolerate one message from me, so I'll try another and see what happens.I'm still trying to figure out your views about city staff and elections. I understand that like you, City Council incumbents Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay were angry that the city attorney responded to non-incumbent candidate Linda Elderkin's questions about conflict of interest rules. I'm told that Jackie and Corey demanded that city staff tell them everything that they had said to Linda.But I remember Jackie demanding and getting all kinds of attention from city staff before she was elected to the city council. I thought Jackie wanted city staff to cooperate with the public and with people running for city council. I thought she wanted to make sure that we know what city policy and the law are before we go running off and jumping to conclusions.

I'm also confused about what you think Linda Elderkin should have done about your conflict of interest charge. You attacked her for not having good legal information about city rules, and then you attacked her for seeking good legal information from the city about their rules. Heads you win, tails she loses.

Finally, I'm trying to figure out why you say Councilwoman McHenry is an "outsider," when her faction has been is in control of the City Council for four years. Sounds like the George Bush supporters who think he is a persecuted outsider fighting against some evil "liberal" establishment that supposedly runs America. I don't get it.

Thanks for listening. And thanks for the piece on the Press. Great place.

Cheers

Last things first: Glad you liked the bit on the Press, and cheers to you.

As to McHenry's outsider status, if you look back to when she was first elected in 2003, she was considered by the Claremont 400 to be a gadfly, a busybody, someone who had no business running for council. As the reader pointed out, that was four years ago, but the reader is incorrect in believing that McHenry controlled a faction that ran the council for that period.

Look at who comprised that 2003 council: McHenry, Yao, Llewellyn Miller, Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado. Miller, who was elected in 2001 as something of an outsider, had by then been co-opted by the 400, something that led to his defeat in 2005. Yao could at best be considered someone independent of both the 400 and McHenry, as the Daily Bulletin pointed out. However, Yao strikes us as more of 400 candidate than as a true independent. On many issues his inaction has served as a de facto 400 vote, and Helaine Goldwater appears on both Yao's and Pedroza's supporter list--I doubt Goldwater would do that if she did not think she could control Yao, which she has done in the past. And, Lynn Forester's near-hysterical note also seemed to point to Yao as a Claremont 400 candidate.

Held and Baldonado, of course, are Preserve Claremonters/400ers. So, for her first two years, McHenry was pretty much by herself facing a council controlled by Held and Baldonado with Miller adding his support. There was no Yao-McHenry alliance, and Yao certainly did not defend McHenry publicly. And the abuse the 400 heaped on McHenry was merciless. They never acknowledged the legitimacy of her election and, in doing so, they were disregarding the 3,300-plus votes McHenry received. No matter what you think about McHenry, this cannot be denied: she had enough support to get elected. Every attempt by the Claremonsters to quash McHenry was a slap in the face to the people who voted for her.

In 2005, we've already noted, Preserve Claremont, with Paul Held, Valerie Martinez and Pastor Butch Henderson at the command, launched a two-pronged attack. In January 2005, they first organized with then-City Manager Glenn Southard, a campaign to try to censure McHenry. Held falsely accused McHenry of rifling through other councilmembers mail. And Southard accused McHenry of creating a "hostile work environment", which led to a special council meeting to decide whether the to commission a special investigation into the matter. The public showed up in support of McHenry, and the "investigation" or witch-hunt, depending on your perspective, died.

And, with Calaycay's election in 2005, the Bulletin's description is close to accurate, with McHenry and Calaycay on the one hand, Taylor and Baldonado on the other, and Yao somewhat in the middle, though as we've noted, Yao tends to side with Taylor and Baldonado on many things--pushing last year's failed assessment district for example.

--A note here, the notion of party politics at the council level, we've discovered, is fair nonsensical. We do not not believe our analysis of the things is anything like what the reader describes. For one thing, as we've just pointed out, McHenry hasn't been in control of anything for four years. We could also just as easily argue that Preserve Claremont's treatment of McHenry was no different than the Clinton impeachment. It is usually best to not try to apply partisan analogies to the Claremont situation, they just don't hold up on closer examination and often end up backwards in the looking glass world that is Claremont politics.

Lastly, we don't know anything about what McHenry or Calaycay have done regarding the Elderkin conflict of interest issue. It is probably best to ask them directly to get the truth--that's what we've suggested be done with Elderkin's issue--talk to Elderkin, ask her for a copy of whatever the city attorney gave her, and talk to the city attorney to verify Elderkin's account.

As we remarked a few days ago, the public and the council are entirely within their rights to know if the city attorney has treated Elderkin as a client. No, Elderkin should not have gone to the city attorney. What she should have done is what any of the other non-Claremont 400 candidates would have had to do: call their own attorney or, better yet, make call to the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). They are the agency charged with interpreting and enforcing election and conflict of interest laws in California. The FPPC has a toll-free number, (866) ASK-FPPC, that can easily answer questions like Elderkin's.

The use of city staff time by candidates for election whether sitting councilmembers or unelected candidates is fairly strictly regulated. We do not believe that the applicable laws allow for the city attorney to give advice in Elderkin's situation.

A person who claims to be dedicated to fair process, as Elderkin does, would know better. Certainly, most other candidates for office in California would know how and when to contact the FPPC. Why didn't Elderkin?

Reader Mail - The Unexamined Life

Our friend Lynn Forester recently wrote us to endorse three candidates for city council. Forester serves on the city's Community Services Commission. She's a nice person, but like a lot of the 400, she also cannot stand people who disagree with her. She puts a nice face on it, but her letter, which runs two pages and is far to long to quote at length here, contains many inaccuracies and out-of-context information.

Forester endorses Elderkin, Pedroza, and Yao, the three the Claremont 400 and Preserve Claremonters have pushed. Forester claimed to be at a meeting in December 2007 where two unnamed councilmembers (McHenry and Calaycay) condoned behavior which she considered "embarrassing at the least and unconscionable at the best."

We were not at that December meeting, so we contacted several people who were. Their take on the matter was that Forester dished out as much rude behavior as anyone there, interrupting speakers and assuming her position as a city commissioner gave her more authority, even though she was just another member of the public in attendance.

Forester's claims of condoning by the unnamed councilmembers are flat out lies, the other attendees say, unless silence mandated by the Brown Act constitutes "condoning." As one of the three councilmembers in attendance pointed out at the meeting (Taylor was also present), the Brown Act prevented them from speaking because having three councilmembers together would constitute a quorum, and it would be considered an official meeting of the council if they participated. So all three, Calaycay, McHenry and Taylor all remained silent. They had to by law. All three behaved the same way. Yet, to Forester, two of the three condoned the behavior she disapproved of.

Forester writes that she wants "Councilmembers who make decisions based on the good of the community and not on the interests of citizens with the money to bully the city for their own interests." Yet, she endorses Pedroza, who this election has taken $1,000 from the Roger Hogan family ($250 each from husband, wife, and two other family members). Roger Hogan owns Claremont Toyota, which generates over 50% of the city's sales tax revenue. In other words, when Roger Hogan sneezes, the city of Claremont catches cold.

You may remember in the 2005 election, after Preserve Claremont ran their smear campaign against then-candidate Calaycay, Roger Hogan spent $2,000 to fund two last-minute, city-wide mailers in support of a group called "Claremont Business PAC," which was organized by Valerie Martinez, another city commissioner and a spokesperson for Preserve Claremont. The mailers Hogan funded supported one person, incumbent Llewellyn Miller. Around the same time, Hogan was about to negotiate a 10-year loan from the city of Claremont to help with the purchase of property near his Toyota lot--a property that had been appraised for much less than the $3 million Hogan was paying for it. And Pedroza later co-wrote a letter to the Claremont Courier in praise of Hogan and his millions in sales tax dollars that feed the city coffers.

So, Forester really should be pointing the finger at her own candidate, Pedroza, when she writes about councilmembers basing decisions on the interests of "citizens with the money to bully people." We also saw that Roger Hogan is on the Linda Elderkin supporter list as well. Elderkin is also a Forester choice.

Forester also writes, "My intention is to not tell you how to vote...." Yet, she ends by enjoining people to vote with her.

Again with hypocrisy Lynn?

We'll be back with more mail later this evening.