Debate Tonight

This evening the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area (mostly just Claremont, not so much Area) will hold a forum for candidates running for the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education and Citrus College Board of Governors.

The LWV will hold the forum in the Padua Room of the Alexander Hughes Community Center at 1700 N. Danbury Rd. The forum starts at 7pm.

If you can't make the LWV forum, you can download and watch video of Active Claremont's September 22 CUSD candidate forum.  You'll find the file here.  To start the download, just click on the time or file size columns. It'll take a while, even with a fast Internet connection.

April in Claremont

Lot of things happining in town this weekend...

CANCER SOCIETY FUNDRAISER

The 2011 Claremont/La Verne Relay for Life takes place tomorrow beginning at 9am at on the track at Claremont High. You can read more about it on the event's website.

Event Schedule
Opening Ceremony: 9:00Am Sat
Survivors Lap: 9:00Am Sat
Luminaria Ceremony: 9:00Pm Sat
Fight Back / Closing Ceremony:8:30Am Sun

One day. One night. One community. One Fight. Relay For Life is a life-changing event that brings together more than 3.5 million people- to celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer; remember loved ones lost to the disease; and fight back against a disease that takes too much. Won't you join us?

About Relay For Life
Teams of people camp out at a local high school, park, or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times during the event. Relays are 24 hours in length; representing the reality that cancer never sleeps. By participating, you honor cancer survivors, pay tribute to the lives we've lost to the disease, and raise money to help fight cancer in your community.

Relay began in 1985 when Dr. Gordy Klatt, a colorectal surgeon in Tacoma, Washington, ran and walked around a track for 24 hours to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Since then, Relay has grown from a single man’s passion to fight cancer into the world’s largest movement to end the disease. For more information, visit our Relay For Life information page.

FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK

Vince Turner at Claremont Community College reminds about the First Friday Art Walk tonight in the Claremont Village:

Date: Thu, March 31, 2011 11:52:10 AM
Subject: First Friday Art Walk
To: Claremont Buzz

We'll be participating in the Claremont First Friday Art Walk!

We'll start at 5:30 Friday at:

101 North Indian Hill Blvd. Suite C2-203
Above Casa Moreno on the 1st Street Side

And plan to attend the Claremont 5 Second Film Festival on Thursday April 28th!

--
Vince Turner
(909) 477-1747

SATURDAY AT SCRIPPS

Tomorrow afternoon at the Garrison Theater on the campus of Scripps College the Claremont Chorale performs Bach's St. John Passion:

J. S. Bach: Passion According to St. John
For one of Bach's greatest masterpieces, the Chorale will be joined by professional soloists and orchestra. Sung in English. View concert flyer (PDF) to see soloists.

When:
Saturday, April 2, 2011 - 3:00 p.m.

Where:
Garrisson Auditorium - Scripps College
231 East 10th Street
Claremont, CA 91711

This performance is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.


TICKETS

	General	Senior/Student
At the door	$15	$12
Advance purchase	$13 (save $2)	$10 (save $2)
Season tickets	$36 (save $9)	$28 (save $8)

For advance and season tickets, send a check payable to The Claremont Chorale to P.O. Box 489, Claremont, CA 91711.

(Click to Enlarge)

MEET THE COUNCIL

Sunday, April 3, being the first Sunday of the month, means it's once again time for the Claremont City Council to trot out its booth at the Claremont Farmers' Market and greet the community.

The councilmembers will be working the both in one hour shifts beginning at 8am. You might not see newly-elected Joe Lyons (photo, right), though. Now that he's actually on the council, Joe is reverting to his pre-election interest in city matters, which was a big fat zero. At least, Joe doesn't seem to be too much interested in the community interest sorts of things the council does (the Friends of the Library Spelling Bee, for example). Callow Joe is apparently plotting his next move. Perhaps another run at Republican Bob Huff's State Senate seat. Anyway, the little things, like being a team player don't seem to be of much interest to our Mr. Lyons.

Talk With Council at the Farmer's Market

8:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Claremont Village
2nd Street between Indian Hill Boulevard and Yale Ave.
Claremont
(909) 399-5460

Talk with council members when they "set up shop" at the Claremont Farmers' Market, on the 1st Sunday of each month.

Debatable Tactics

Claremont 400 Marionette

Elections bring out the worst in the Claremont 400, who would do just about anything to keep control of this silly little town. Some of the campaign theatrics seem to have been lifted directly from infomercials or patent medicine salesmen. For instance, at the 2009 election kick-off party for former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, one of her supporters, Ken Corhan of Measure CL fame, got up and asked a question, acting as if he were just some random member of the public rather than one of the people who signed Healy's nomination papers.

Witness the traditional candidate forums, of which there are many. The most important of these, or at least the ones with the largest attendance, are the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Active Claremont and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

The first two of those organizations have already held their events. The LWV candidate forum is Thursday, February 17, in the Padua Room of the City's Alexander Hughes Community Center.

In the past, the LWV forum has seemed to favor the Claremont 400 candidates, often by picking questions that highlighted their candidates' issues and by avoiding those that might bring their friends harsher scrutiny. In contrast, the Active Claremont forum has been something like the People's Choice Awards, with the audience presenting questions to the candidates.

The AC website has video of their January 19 forum posted online. You can download the video file and, if you're into self-flagellation, you can watch the entire one hour and fifty-four minutes. One interesting change the AC board made this year was to allow the audience members to ask the questions themselves, rather than writing them down on index cards as has been the past practice.

This change worked out well for one audience member, Mel Boynton (photo, right). Boynton took the mic and asked the following:

I'd like each of the candidates to address what you know about the Youth and Family Committee and its 11 goals for working with the school district, the City and non-profits and what you'd bring to the table to make that, uh, increase the quality of life for our youth and family [sic].

How many candidates would be able to enumerate even one of the those eleven Youth and Family Master plan goals, which appeared in the amended YFMP in 2007? Of all the many issues facing Claremont how could a candidate have known to prepare for a question like the one posed by Boynton?

It turned out that only one of them could give the sort of answer Boynton was fishing for. That person was Robin Haulman, who ticked off nine of the 11 Youth and Family Committee goals, virtually word for word, from page 15 of the YFMP's action plan. Haulman didn't even bother to memorize the 11 goals. She just turned to a page in the notebook she referred to throughout the debate and, with the aid of her reading glasses, simply read straight from the YFMP action plan.

Even with the aid of crib notes, Haulman got only nine of the 11 goals and didn't even bother to answer the second part of Boynton's question. So, while we can count on Haulman to know some of the goals, if elected she won't do anything to improve the quality of life for our youth and families. The takeaway was that Haulman does fine when she can recite text, but she can't put an answer into context, which qualifies her as the perfect Claremont 400 marionette.

Here's a video clip of Boynton's question, followed by Haulman's response (watch Haulman looking for the right page to read from as Boynton asks his question):




And, just for your reference, here's the section of the YFMP that Haulman lifted her answer from. If you print it out and read along as you watch the video, you can see just how closely her answer matches the list:

Click Image to Enlarge

How do we know Boynton is hooked up with the 400? Well, for one thing, Boynton was listed as a Bridget Healy supporter in 2009. And he's supporting Sam Pedroza, Robin Haulman and Joseph Lyons this time around.

Coincidentally (or not) Boynton is on the board of the Pomona Valley chapter of the United Nations Association of the US, which had as its last speaker Joseph Lyon's campaign treasurer, J. Michael Fay. Fay, you'll recall, was also the treasurer for the Yes on CL school bond campaign last November. Another board member (and current president) is Katie Gerecke, who has served as a Claremont League of Women Voter's president and whose husband Bob is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club.

Also, as he said in his introduction to his question, Boynton is a member of the City's Youth and Family Committee, which includes Butch Henderson as a member. Henderson, along his wife Rosemary, is an honorary co-chair of Robin Haulman's election committee.

Boynton's question itself wouldn't be an issue if it weren't coupled by that quite specific response by Haulman. How could Haulman have known to include that one specific page out of the thousands of pages of city staff reports, memos and correspondences without some advanced notice?

We couldn't help but notice, too, that Boynton's LinkedIn page used to list "political strategies" as one of his specialties (he deleted that particular specialty after we posted this):


Boynton's CV also lists some of the organizations he belongs to. These include the Claremont United Church of Christ, where Butch Henderson was the senior pastor, and the Claremont Democratic Club, which has become the Claremonsters' tool for election outreach in what is supposed to be a non-partisan election.

So, to recap, here's what we learned from the Active Claremont forum:

• Mel Boynton? Smooth operator.
• Robin Haulman? Not so much.

Wednesday Mailbag

A reader wrote us with a response to Sunday's post about former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy's long range plan to grab a spot on our City Council:

DATE: Tue, February 1, 2011 10:09:26 AM
SUBJECT: [ No Subject ]
TO: Claremont Buzz

That's the saddest, smallest, most desperate little thing I've ever seen in print. There are living beings who devote conscious thought to a long-term plan to get Bridget Healy elected to the Claremont City Council? Is there nothing better to do with that time and energy?

I mean, seriously. I hear Match.com is pretty useful.

That note was followed by this post script:

DATE: Tue, February 1, 2011 8:16:56 PM
SUBJECT:Re:
TO: Claremont Buzz

And why on earth does Bridget Healy *want* to be on the city council so badly? She has a six-figure pension [$166,000+ per year - ed.] -- she can't take that and ride her broom into the sunset?

Why indeed? We're in complete agreement with our dear reader. Isn't it enough for Healy to have her prosperity guaranteed at taxpayer expense while the great majority of the rest of the workforce labors on without the safety net of a generous pension indexed for inflation?

We're of the mind that Healy can't help herself. She's so driven to seek power over others that she absolutely has to be on our City Council, even if it's to the long-term detriment of our town. She can't help herself. She's the scorpion in the old frog and scorpion parable. (Here's one version that tale that weaves game theory into its interpretation.)

That leaves the voters who would forget Healy's many transgressions in the position of the frog. The naive among us - and Healy's betting there are enough to get her friend Robin Haulman elected this year followed by Healy in 2013 - invariably forget the scorpion's sting.

The game theory piece we found ends with this judgment:

The human dilemma is that all progress ultimately fails or at least slides back, that anything once proven must be proven again a myriad of times, that there is nothing so well established that a fundamentalist (of any religion or stripe) cannot be found to deny it, and suffer the consequences, and then deny that he suffered the consequences.

And Healy, along with the core of her supporters, the holdovers from Preserve Claremont's 2005 smear campaign, are nothing if not fundamentally devoted to their sad religion.

Red Alert?

A reader contacted us to say that they wished we would devote less space to the Measure CL school bond and more to other issues such as the disappearance last week of a developmentally disabled teen named Deontay Antone Barlow.

Deontay, who disappeared from his home on Thursday, October 21, was found five days later at a Kaiser Permanante facility in Downey. Claremont Courier reporter Tony Krickl wrote about the happy ending to this story on his Courier City Beat blog.

Our reader wondered why the Claremont Police Department didn't employ their CodeRED system to alert the community immediately after Deontay's family discovered he was missing. CPD's used the system before for community-wide emergencies like fires, so why not in this instance?

The CPD website does list missing persons as one of the emergencies CodeRED is for:

CodeRED WILL BE USED FOR EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

CodeRED is intended to supplement our local law enforcement and public safety first responders with making timely emergency notifications. Examples of its use include:

• Evacuation Notice
• Fires or Floods
• Missing Persons
• Hazardous Material Spills
• Water Contamination
• Identifying Evacuation Centers
• Emergency and Critical incidents where rapid notification is essential.
  

Now, the CPD did use their Neighborhood E-Watch newsletter to email residents that Deontay had been found. Our reader wonders, why pay spend all that money for CodeRED if we don't use it for something like this?

Community Service

The debate over the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million Measure CL bond has raged in the pages of the Claremont Courier's reader letters section these past few weeks. Citizens on both sides of the school bond issue have used letters to the Courier as a sort of community forum.

The Courier itself seems to have slanted its coverage more towards the Yes on CL side, presenting an interview with members of the Yes on CL committee, taking readers on a CUSD-sponsored dog-and-pony show tour of Claremont High School, tossing in an article praising the district's test scores, as well as what amounted to an interview with Yes on CL's campaign consultant Jared Boigon of TBWB Strategies, who has been stage managing the yes campaign from San Francisco (at the cost of many tens of thousands of dollars, we might add).

Still, there not many other places to find both sides of CL the argument presented, the Courier did manage this past Wednesday to throw the No on CL group a bone by featuring an interview with their spokespeople, Donna Lowe, Opanyi Nasiali, and Jay Pocock. In a normal election year, our various local service organizations and institutions would be holding election forums where matters such as the November school bond could be debated.

For example, The Kiwanis Club, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Pilgrim Place, the Claremont Manor, Our Lady of Assumption Church, and Active Claremont all traditionally hold city council candidate forums, as they will next spring in advance of the March, 2011, municipal election.

The local League of Women Voters chapter holds the forum with the greatest cachet. It's usually one of the best attended of the candidate debates, and a good showing there can certainly help a prospective council member's chances of winning a seat.

Which is why this blurb from Daily Bulletin reporter Wes Woods' Claremont Now blog strikes us as odd:

Pros and cons on the nine California propositions for the Nov. 2 general election will be discussed at 2 p.m. Sunday Oct. 10 at the Claremont Public Library, 208 Harvard Ave.

The league and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Pomona Valley Alumnae Chapter will host a 59th Assembly District candidates forum. The forum will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday Oct.11 in the Padua Room at the Alexander [Hughes] Community Center at 1700 Danbury Road.

We would have expected the LWV, an organization that prides itself on its non-partisan efforts at educating voters on local, state, and national issues, to have been one of the first to offer both sides of the Measure CL debate to give their reasons why voters should be for or against the bond. This is clearly an issue that's generated a great deal of community interest and one that will affect CUSD property owners' pocketbooks for years to come. Yet, Measure CL is conspicuously absent from the League's fall election events.

Similarly, the Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations, including Sustainable Claremont, have endorsed the bond without giving opponents a chance to present their views. Whatever side one favors in the Measure CL election, all this lack of activity by our so-called communitarian organizations gives a good insight into how things work in our little, close-minded community.

As always, it's not what you know but who you know. It's a good ol' girls and boys network of the same circle of people running each and every group mentioned above, along with the Claremont Education Foundation, the Claremont Community Foundation, the Red Cross, and a host of other local charities.

The result is that opponents of any issues have an extremely hard time making their cases to the voters. Forums, by their very nature, require each side to have equal time. So even if the LWV tries to tailor the debate questions to the strengths of the people it favors, they still have to give opponents a chance to respond.

The absence of any school bond forums makes us wonder if the League and their fellow Claremont 400 organizations recognize Measure CL's weaknesses and are trying to help it by not holding any public debates. This goes along with the perception that bond's proponents are trying to avoid substantive discussions of the measure.

All of the Yes on CL mailings, for instance, speak in generalities, and the proponents, as well as the school board, have failed to offer up any specific details of how the money will be spent. For instance, the most recent mailings, which went out this past Monday and Tuesday, don't make any mention the $95 million price tag. And you'll never hear them talk about the $250 million total price after financing the bond for 40 years - an extra long payment schedule CUSD had to use to keep the payments per household at $45 per $100,000 of assessed value.

Further, CUSD has actually ignored public records requests and has withheld public information on the bond's financial details because they know that their own numbers will torpedo their arguments (another thing you won't hear about in the Daily Bulletin or the Claremont Courier).

The one organization that is holding a forum is Active Claremont. The AC school bond forum will be 7pm Thursday, October 21, in the Santa Fe room of the Alexander Hughes Center. Both sides will answer questions submitted by those in attendance.

By the way, Active Claremont, unlike the League or the Chamber of Commerce, is truly neutral, which probably explains why they're willing to host the debate. They don't endorse one side or another, they just let them talk. So let's stop giving false praise to those other groups for their community building efforts. The real communitarians in Claremont demonstrate their respect for all people and opinions in town through their actions, not their words.

Burying the Lede: Disgraced Former Bell City Attorney Has Always Seen Peter Yao as a Man of Integrity

What a Recommendation!

Peas in a Pod

Several readers have taken us to task, and rightly, for burying the lede or missing the most interesting part of the Peter Yao story:

Peter Yao's recommendation letter to the Applicant Selection Panel for the State of California Citizens Redistricting Commission was written by none other than Edward Lee, the disgraced/resigned/fired former City Attorney of Bell. Yao thus far has made the cut of the 120 names to be winnowed to 60 names by October 1, 2010.

Shortly after the Bell salary and governance scandal was publicized by the Los Angeles Times, Edward Lee was removed as Bell City Attorney, fired as Downey City Attorney, and resigned from Best, Best and Krieger. The city of Covina removed Lee but kept BBK. Best, Best and Krieger, which continues as Claremont City Attorney, has been subpoenaed by Attorney General Brown in the Bell scandal.

See the letter from Lee below:

15322

Imagine having the guy who signed off on the obscene salaries of the Bell City Manager, Assistant City Manager, Police Chief, and four of the five councilmembers, say this about you [emphasis added]:

I firmly believe that Peter possesses the skills to balance the competing interests of the State. His experience in his professional and political arenas make him uniquely qualified to weigh and understand the issues which redistricting the State will present. My knowledge of his integrity and honesty also speak to his valuable qualifications to present the views of all segments of our diverse State.

While the corruption at Bell may or may not directly affect Claremont, certainly a good bit of the stink has rubbed off on Peter Sunway Yao.

You can't pick your relatives, but you can pick your friends.

Tonight's Council Meeting

The time has rolled around again for another City Council meeting tonight at 6:30pm in the City Council chambers at 225 W. 2nd St.

As always, you can watch the action here.

CLOSED SESSION

The council will meet in closed session at 5:15pm, prior to the regular meeting, to hear a report from City Manager Jeff Parker, acting in his role of Executive Director of the Claremont Redevelopment Agency.

According to the agenda, Parker will fill the council in on negotiations with Mark Bedol, the owner of Bedol's What's Next, the boutique gift store next to 21 Choices in the Village Expansion parking structure.

Bedol must be trying to renegotiate the terms of his lease agreement, which is not an uncommon thing for a business person to do in these times of declining commercial property lease rates.


REGULAR SESSION

You can find the regular agenda here.

The regular session begins with a ceremonial matter. The council will acknowledge Active Claremont's 15th anniversary. This strikes us another sign that Claremont has changed for the better. Time was when the council wouldn't even acknowledge AC's existence, saying it was nothing but a group of malcontents and troublemakers. Having past president Corey Calaycay as the current Mayor of Claremont no doubt helps AC's prospects, and seems to be further proof of positive change in town.

Of course, there are still those who will take this as another sign of the Apocalypse, but they're party poopers anyway.

Some of the items of note on the rest of the regular agenda:

• The council will accept the resignation of Architectural Commissioner Marianne Kunce.
  
  
• The council is being asked to enter into a Historical Property Agreement with John Dominguez, the owner of the property at 615 E. 1st St. The agreement, under the Mills Act, will give Dominguez certain tax credits in exchange for his promise to maintain the home's historical characteristics and, if necessary, restore or rehabilitate the property.
  
  
• City staff is recommending that the council approve a resolution allowing city employees to purchase of additional years of CalPERS retirement credit. The staff report, written by City Finance Manager Adam Pirrie (who will be a CalPERS retiree someday), says there is no cost to the city for this since the employees are the ones who would be purchasing the extra retirement credits. The employees would use pre-tax dollars to fund the extra years of retirement they purchase.
  
  Of course, you know how CalPERS works. They take an average of the employees' highest earning years and figure an annual pension payment based on those. With Claremont, for non-police employees, the payment is 2.5% for every year worked, with the employee eligible at 55 to receive the pension.
  
  Money paid into the account gets invested by CalPERS to fund the pension benefits. The problem is that when the investments are down, as they are now, those accounts may be underfunded. At that point, the agencies holding the accounts are on the hook for the difference.
  
  So, if employees are adding years on to their pensions, the overall pension obligation increases, meaning there will have to be more money in the City's account to pay for those extra years. If the value of the account dips because of an investment loss, the city will have to pay more into the account to make up for that loss.
  
  So, presumably there is a potential financial impact to the City, no matter what Pirrie's report says.
  
  
• The council will consider convening a hearing for Western Christian Schools under the federal Tax Equity and Financial Responsibility Act (TEFRA). Western Christian Schools seeks $12 million in tax-exempt financing under TEFRA. The hearing is required for the organization to be eligible for the tax exemption, and the City bears no financial responsibility in the matter.
  
  Western Christian Schools is applying for financing through the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority. The staff report says the bonds will be used "for purposes of financing and/or refinancing the costs of acquisition, construction, improvement, renovation, remodeling, furnishing and equipping of their facilities in Claremont and Upland."
  
  We don't know if the city of Upland also has to hold a TEFRA hearing for this issue.
  
  The staff report also indicates that in the past the council has held such hearings for Pilgrim Place and Claremont Manor, so the hearing appears to be a pro forma thing.
  
  
• The council, acting as the Claremont Redevelopment Agency, forgot to including some state-required language in its 2008-10 budget. The language relates to the necessity of planning and administrative expenses for low- to moderate-income housing improvements.
  
  The council is now being asked to amend the budget with the proper language.
  
  
• The council is being asked to pick a city flower. This item comes to the council courtesy of the Claremont Community Foundation, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in September. CCF, together with Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens, already has some flowers picked out.
  
  Not much public input on this one, naturally. But, then, that's to be expected from CCF, the organization that helped get the Claremont Trolley for its own use.
  
  
• The council will discuss placing liens on properties with unpaid sanitation utility and sewer service bills.
  
  The staff report for this item has a table that looks like a recession chronicle. The table shows that delinquent accounts have more than doubled in the past three years. The late payments no doubt track foreclosures pretty closely.
  
  
• The council will receive the annual engineer's report for the Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD). No increase this year because inflation has been flat.
  
  
• The council will hear the appeal of a Planning Commission denial of an outdoor use permit request by Michael Talaee, the owner of Tally for Men at 175 N. Indian Hill Blvd. Talaee is asking for a permit for an outdoor clothing rack.
  
  

City Manager Parker Speaks at AC Tonight

Tony Krickl has a blog post that reminds us Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker will speak tonight at the monthly Active Claremont meeting.

Parker will be discussing the City's budgetary challenges.

Active Claremont meets the third Thursday of each month at the Claremont Public Library.

Parker will begin speaking at 7pm.

Active Claremont - Tonight, 7pm
Speaker: Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker
Claremont Public Library
208 Harvard Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711

Sustainability Talk Tonight

Sustainability is all the rage right now among government policy wonks (apparently fiscal sustainability is just beginning to enter into the discussion). If you are interested in the subject, you can hear Michael Shea, chair of Claremont's Sustainability Task Force, speak at 7pm tonight at the Active Claremont meeting in the Claremont Public Library.

The library is located at 208 Harvard Ave., directly across from Claremont's City Hall.

Active Claremont has a new website, by the way. It gives a little information about the organization:

About Us

Active Claremont attempts to define issues which are of major interest to the citizens of our town. Some of the issues of concern involve local taxation, city revenues, city policies, regional issues that may impact Claremont, controversial projects, and proposals and policies of the city government.

To bring specific local issues and information before the public, the organization holds nine programs annually featuring speakers who have working, in-depth knowledge of issues affecting the daily lives of all our citizens. As part of our efforts to keep the voters informed, we also sponsor candidate forums for local elections including city council, school board, water board, and community college board of trustees.

Goings On

SWAMP TALK TONIGHT - 7PM

The Claremont Courier informs us that we can hear a presentation at 7pm tonight at the Claremont Public Library on the proposed $7.6 million marsh at the Thompson Creek Dam that is being championed by the Claremont League of Women Voters (LWV).

LWV representatives Marilee Scaff and C. Freeman Allen are will give a talk to Active Claremont this evening. Marilee's Marsh is full of unanticipated surprises (to the tune of upwards of $24.4 million - to be passed on to water customers here and elsewhere). So, come on out to the dog-and-pony show at the library tonight.

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

If you're going, try asking why Scaff and Allen didn't try harder to save the natural cienega at Chicken Creek where the 125 Stone Canyon Preserve homes now sit, or why they don't just try to recreate a marsh in one of the spots where they used to occur, either at the old Seyfarth Nursery along Mt. Baldy Rd., or in College Park near the old Courier Building.

Putting a cienega in one of those other spots would be far less costly than the massive project that Scaff and Allen propose for the simple reason that the underlying geologies support cienegas in those places. At the location proposed by Scaff and Allen, the cienega would have to be created artificially, giving lie to the words "nature" and "natural" being bandied about by the proponents.

Putting the cienega in an alternate spot would also allow Scaff and Allen to be more forthright in their grant applications to the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMC) than they have been to date.

See our post from last month for a more detailed discussion of these issues.

Active Claremont Monthly Meeting
Thursday, July 17th, 7pm
Claremont Public Library Community Room
208 Harvard Ave.
Claremont

Marilee Scaff and C. Freeman Allen
"Thompson Creek Spreading Grounds: Acquire, Restore, Develop"

TRUTH IN GRANT APPLICATIONS

Speaking truth in grants, we were wondering if there's an agency that investigates grant application claims. Does the State Attorney General examine these? We'll have more on this subject in a few days, with a bit of news from the city of Indio, where 32 forged signatures ended up on a $34.5 million state grant application.

Claremont has had its own problems with questionable grant claims. For instance, a few years ago, the city applied for a $2 million state grant for the Padua Ave. Sports Park in which the city claimed that the park was needed partly because after the 2003 Padua Fire that burned through Palmer Canyon the Claremont Wilderness Park would be closed for years. That grant application said, "The City has closed the wilderness park indefinitely. The park will be closed for up to 3 years." This was completely untrue, as anyone who hiked in the wilderness park in 2004, 2005, and 2006 can testify to.

That Padua Park grant application was rejected, of course. But how many of these things get through? Is there anyone who really checks these? And what keeps someone in a potential position of influence like former Claremont Traffic and Transportation Commissioner Tim Worley, who is now the director of water policy for San Gabriel RMC, from lobbying behind the scenes for his friends in Claremont, even if they make some exaggerated or even untrue claims?

Is there a state grant ombudsman? Do you have his or her number?

Kruse Lawsuit - UPDATED

Citizen Michael John Keenan sent us an update on the lawsuit the city of Claremont filed against Darrell Kruse, the guy who opened the medical marijuana dispensary without a city business license:

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008, 19:56:39 - 0700 (PDT)
Subject: Darrel Kruse and City Settled in Court Today
To: claremontbuzzatyahoo.com

No info just yet. So the next council agenda may include a decision on a merry jane med clinic/cooperative.Palm Springs is leaning towards a cooperative setup.http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_marijuana17.3ff98ec.html

I think Claremont will land somewhere in between Palm Springs on regs and Corona's outright land use ban. I do believe these are the two other ordinance's Sonia claimed to be working on before Active Claremont.

Happy Trails, Michael Keenan

We haven't been able to confirm the settlement. The last bit of Keenan's email is in reference to last week's Active Claremont meeting, where Claremont City Attorney Sonia Carvalho spoke about the draft medical marijuana dispensary ordinance she has been working.

UPDATED, 7:35PM: Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker reported on the Kruse case in his City Manager's report earlier today. Parker said that the judge in the case sided with the city and issued a tentative ruling in the city's favor:

The Court found that Mr. Kruse's operation of CANNABIS [Kruse's dispensary] without a license created a nuisance and rejected Mr. Kruse's arguments that the Compassionate Use Act preempts the City's zoning laws. The Court also found that the moratorium is correct under Gov. Code 65858 and that the [dismissal] of Mr. Kruse's administrative appeal was proper. The court issued a permanent injunction against Mr. Kruse operating CANNABIS, pending the end of the moratorium, and unless and until the City actually grants Kruse a license at some future date. The City is also awarded its costs. The tentative decision becomes final in 10 days, unless a party "specifies controverted issues or makes proposals not covered in the tentative decision" or appeals.

Coincidentally (or not) Parker also reported that the city's draft marijuana dispensary ordinance is also ready and will be released for public review on April 30th. The ordinance will be posted on the city website and will also be available for review at City Hall or at the Claremont Public Library. Parker's weekly update said:

In crafting the ordinance, staff along with the City Attorney's office, reviewed ordinances from many other cities and incorporated provisions that suit Claremont's needs. The provisions are designed, and necessary, to protect the public health, safety and welfare of the residents, children, and businesses from harmful secondary effects that could result from a dispensary. The ordinance, as drafted, regulates many aspects of the potential businesses, and contains provisions regarding review process, security, operation methods, enforcement, and prohibitions.