Pinocchio Haulman

Robin Haulman Claims "Vigorous" Support
for 2006 Measure S.
However, Did Not Vote
in Measure S Election;
Did Not Join Supporter List.
Statement Questioned

We received a mailer earlier this week from the Friends of the Bernard Biological Field Station. "Friends of what?", we hear you ask. It is true that the Friends have been a bit moribund in recent years. The last updates on their website seem to be from a couple of years ago--well, 2007 to be exact. We guess being a biological friend is a busy demanding time-consuming task.

It seems that what awakened the friendly Friends from stasis is the upcoming city election. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry organization in town sends a questionnaire to candidates, publicizes the candidate responses, and in some cases endorses a candidate or two. Except the Sierra Club. It reflexively endorses Sam Pedroza with no interviews, statements, muss or fuss.

You may see grave and serious candidate statements in the Claremont Heritage Newsletter. Four years ago the crisis du jour was Mining; how often have you heard about that recently? It was just enough of a hook to get Pedrozancrantz and Lindanstern elected--indifferent children of the earth, they. The leader of the mining group, we hear, after inflicting Sam and Linda on the town, sold his $3 million mansion and decamped to Laguna. We should all be so lucky.

But back to the Friends of the Bern. Bio. Fld. Sta. What caught our eye was the candidate statement by Robin Haulman. Now, we could spend a whole post just deconstructing this statement. But read it yourself. Click on the image to enlarge it.

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Really. When we read this to Mrs. Insider, she wondered aloud if it had been ghostwritten by Robert Burns, with the Golden Currant in full yellow bloom, the Sage luminescent, and the snowy white flowers aplenty.

Still, our pleasant pastoral reverie was snapped by a gloomy thought called up by the statement highlighted in the graphic above. We wondered, was there a White Lie in there? Did Robin Haulman really campaign vigorously for the bond measure to purchase Johnson's Pasture? We didn't think so. Couldn't remember her one way or the other. Given her, shall we say, "exotic" looks, how could we have possibly forgotten her?

So, we asked around. Nobody on the steering committee could remember her, and her name does not appear in any of the ads for Measure S. We even dug back into the Insider Archive to check. We reproduce below the ad that appeared in the Courier the week before the Measure S election in 2006. Click on it to enlarge.

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Three council candidates appear on the ad: Opanyi Nasiali, who got slammed by an uninformed dowager in a recent Courier who said he was against Johnson's Pasture; 180 degrees incorrect--Sam Pedroza, who made sure he was on the steering committee but didn't actually do much as we hear it, and Michael Keenan. Notable by their absence are current candidates Robin Haulman and Joe (my middle name is "Sustainability") Lyons. What's that all about? How can you say you campaigned "vigorously" for the measure and your name's not even on the list?

Now Claremont has a history of council candidates making statements that are fibs, tall tales, whoppers, misstatements, prevarications, lies, damned lies, etc., etc., usw., --and excuse us for being all judgmental, but those shadings of the truth seem to come from the Claremont 400 side. The most recent notable example being God's Gift to Claremont Bridget Healy who was caught two years ago lying about her involvement or non-involvement in the acquisition of the Wilderness Park. In that case, the unplanned and unforeseen existence of a deposition was her undoing.

Why do these people, such as Robin Haulman and Bridget Healy, have the urge to take credit for something they have nothing whatsoever to do with? Maybe Haulman, as Healy before her, thought no one would notice. But as we've said before, character is something you have when no one is looking. And statements like this show an astounding lack of character.

If you want to know the truth, Robin Haulman didn't even vote in the November 7, 2006 election where Johnson's Pasture Measure S was decided. We had to go to our political sources in County government to figure that out, and it's a little hard to show in a compact graphic, but it is a fact. You could look it up. Moreover, her voting record in City elections is only recent and is very spotty in school board elections over the past decade. She appears to have first registered to vote in Claremont in February 2003.

Her participation in statewide elections is equally checkered. She voted in the 2004 gubernatorial recall, and the primary and general in 2004, but took a pass on the two primaries in 2008 and the special ballot measure election in May 2009--as well as having passed on the November 2006 general election. She voted absentee in the June 2006 primary election, just before the property owner ballot for the ill-starred "Parks and Pasture" assessment district. Which made us wonder, did she cast a property owner ballot in that election? Claremont election wonks will remember that four years ago vanity candidate Mike Maglio claimed to have voted for the assessment district until confronted with a copy of his ballot indicating a NO vote. [note: Nothing illegal here. Assessment District property owner ballots are not elections under State law; they are not secret; the filled-out and signed ballots are subject to public disclosure.]

Asking around elsewhere, we found out that she did not participate in the property owners ballot for the "Parks and Pasture" Assessment District. There was no ballot cast, YES or NO, for her home at the time in Claraboya. Now, you'd think that someone who purports to "firmly believe that we have narrow windows of opportunity to own our hillsides and open spaces" might also have AT LEAST VOTED in this campaign, and maybe even attached her name to the Parks and Pasture supporter list. Nope. Since she voted absentee just before the 45-day balloting period that ended July 25, 2006, maybe she was out of town, in Europe or some exotic locale, missing in action, for the assessment district.

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We are thinking Robin Haulman's Jiminy Cricket must be having a coronary--or whatever it is that crickets have. Here you have an ostensibly credible city council candidate conveniently misstating her involvement in an issue and measure that took most of 2006 in Claremont, where the method of financing divided the town and took months and two tries to get right. Maybe she ought to get out her granny glasses--or as her campaign literature would state it, her "glamma" glasses) and read a little more carefully from her briefing book or iPad. Or maybe she, like Mr. Dooley's Supreme Court, "follows th' election returns", and wants to be on the right side of the 70 percent plurality of Claremont voters who approved Measure S.

Sorry Robin, they did it without your help.

Haulman's New, More-Truthy Brochure

Fire in the Bernard Field Station

Just after lunch Sunday a fire erupted in the far southeast corner of the Field Station, adjacent to the corner of Foothill and Mills. By 1:30 p.m. the Fire Department appeared to have extinguished it. The Claremont Police Department closed Mills Avenue at Foothill for a time.

The fire appeared to burn only a small fraction of an acre, probably only a few hundred square yards.

Earlier Sunday morning there were a crew of people cutting down weeds on the east side of the Field Station. It is our strong suspicion--with no confirmation from the Fire Department--that this fire was not unrelated to that activity. There were several vehicles parked along the fence on dry grass and weeds--we hope it wasn't some of the BFF* of the Bernard Field Station-- and it is known that catalytic converters can get hot enough to ignite dry brush.

We are not even sure that's the most likely cause; here's another possibility. The crew were using one of those super-sized rotary lawnmowers you see advertised on late-night TV, the kind that eats entire woodlots. Maybe it was just a regular rotary lawnmower. It is entirely possible that the steel blade from that machine hit a rock and threw a spark into the just-pulverized grass which then become the moral equivalent of tinder. This is the kind of fire that can smolder unnoticed until bursting into rather uncontrollable flame.

It will be interesting to find out who was doing the brush clearance, and what safety measures, if any, they were observing. We can hear it now: "Nothing could possibly go wrong... go wrong... go wrong... go wrong..."

It wouldn't surprise us if Community Services Director Scott Carroll, or Bulldozer-in-Chief Larry Wheaton had some hand in this, but perhaps we are being unfair to suggest it.

Then again, this was just before Commencement at Harvey Mudd. Everyone knows Harvey Mudd has no love for the Bernard Field Station and in fact plans to pave some land adjacent to it for--you won't be surprised--a parking lot. Here's the speculation: Harvey Mudd President Maria Klawe runs over in her academic robes, sets fire to the Field Station, all while everyone is distracted with Commencement. This somehow makes the building of the parking lot easier. This scenario is a bit of a stretch, being arson and all, but some of the images are entertaining.

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*Best Friends Forever. Get with it.

Riot Here, Riot Now

A reader alerted us to a case of vandalism last week at a decommissioned Claremont Graduate University dorm. The reader sent along a slew of photos, which we've include in this post. Unfortunately, space limitations preclude us from displaying all of the photos, but you'll get the idea (as always, click on the photos to enlarge them).

The reader indicated there may be some connection between the CGU vandalism and a proposal by CGU to purchase part of the Bernard Field Station land currently owned by Harvey Mudd College (the Claremont Courier had an October 29th article about that).



The reader's email also explains the backstory and tells us that at least some of the perps were apprehended:

DATE: Friday, November 21, 2008 4:40 PM
SUBJECT: Scoop!
TO:Claremont Buzz

I have a scoop for you that might actually get people off of yelling about pilgrims for a while. On Wednesday night, a group of students from Pitzer vandalized an abandoned dorm at CGU.

It's actually pretty sad...the international students who used to live in the dorm were forced out and left a lot of their things behind. If you go through the dorms now, it looks like a scene out of Hurricane Katrina - almost fully stocked kitchens, clothing, books left behind, cards, decorations (mostly for Chinese New Year, things from their home countries)...you almost have to see it to believe it. The electricity is still on, the doors and windows have been broken...its a dangerous and sad situation.



CGU donated the appliances and air conditioners to third world countries and this kind gesture actually left the dorms vulnerable. Vandals accessed the apartments through the holes left from window air conditioners.

I asked a security guard why there doesn't seem to be any security on the building, or why it isn't at least fenced off and condemned until they can bulldoze it. He said there's some kind of argument between the city, CGU, and a professor at Scripps.

Some of the vandals were caught, which is how we know they were Pitzer students. It seems to be vaguely connected to their anger about the field station and CGU's involvement in paving it. They do have a right to be angry about this, but destruction and vandalism aren't effective ways to get the administration to hear your concerns.

Meanwhile, the dorm is becoming an increasing eye sore and safety hazard. I'll send you the pics.


A friend of mine noted the irony in the fact that these students who were fighting the imperialist system (according to their graffiti) were drinking expensive imported beers (which the left behind...doesn't seem very eco-friendly to me).

No, not so friendly, either. Our reader was bothered enough by all of this to send along even more:

Overkill, I know, but the slogans are kinda amazing. And by amazing, I mean sad and ridiculous.

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Bernard Field Station News

The Claremont Courier also had a Kelsy McDonald article yesterday about the Claremont University Consortium's (CUC) plan to develop part of the Bernard Field Station.

The article (also not online yet) said:

Opponents of the development claim that the land is important as one of the last intact native Californian ecosystems of coastal sage scub and vernal pools, an academic resource, and sacred land for the Native American Tongva tribe.

A lawsuit brought against CUC by the Friends of the Bernard Field Station in 2000 resulted in an agreement to preserve the central 40 acres of the 90-acre land for 50 years. Since then, the preserved area has been the only parcel officially dubbed the "Temporarily Restricted Robert J. Bernard Field Station," while CUC refers to the entire 90 acres still used as a field station and other lands north of Foothill s the "north campus property."

The article states that CUC wants to build several administrative buildings and a parking lot on the unpreserved north campus property. As you might expect, the Friends of the Bernard Field Station, and there may be a reprise of the protests and litigation that happened back in 2001.