Been There, Done That

AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE

As we've noted in the past, the Claremont 400's tried and true tactic to pushing some item on their private agenda through to completion (see the Claremont Unified School District's Measure CL) is to create a false sense of urgency, i.e., "if we don't do things this one way, chaos will ensue."

As we saw last November, there was no stoop too low for CUSD's board and their surrogates to take in order to try to get their $95 million bond passed.   The Yes on CL campaign outspent its opponents by more than $154,000 to $5,000, using money mostly raised from contractors who would have benefited from the bond.  And it still lost by a margin of 60.4% to 39.6%.

A rational person would conclude that, given such a decisive loss, there was something wrong with CUSD's claims about the necessity of the bond and that the No on CL campaign's arguments (no real accountability, conflicts of interest, the lack of any specific projects for the money, and the district's mismanagement of the previous bond, to name a few) resonated with voters.

One would have thought that the district's board would have sat down with the No on CL campaign and tried to get them on board to incorporate some of their ideas into managing CUSD's fiscal problems.  But this being Claremont, land of magical thinking, the lesson learned for CUSD was that they just need to wait and continue to let the district's infrastructure degrade so they could come back to voters in a year or two and say, "See, we told you it was bad."

It's a self-created crisis, of course, but CUSD's gang of four - Board President Jeff Stark, Vice-President Beth Bingham, Clerk Mary Caenepeel, and member Hilary LeConte - are committed to the idea that they know best.   So, get ready for the Return of CL.


FOLLOW THE MONEY

The only difference next time will be that, having changed the school board's norms to allow members to speak out on issues, CUSD will take a more active role in shaping the election message.  Exhibit A in our prediction for the bond-to-be-named-later is the fact that the Yes on CL campaign, whose treasurer is former school board member and Claremont 400 stalwart J. Michael Fay, continued to raise money after the election.

Below, courtesy of a reader, we've posted the Yes on CL campaign's 2010 Year-end Form 460 filing, showing post-election contributions and expenditures.   Notice that the campaign reported cash contributions of $182,155.69 and expenditures of $154,768.39, leaving a balance of  $27,387.30.

More significantly, the campaign received two post-election contributions, one small donation of $100 on 11/16/10 from Nancy Osgood, and one $10,000 whopper on11/12/10 from the architectural firm Flewelling & Moody, which advertises itself as "architects for schools."  

In the interests of truth in advertising, Flewelling & Moody should be marketing itself as "architects for school bonds."  The post-election CL campaign donation was F&M's second, bringing the firm's total or 2010 to $20,000.

Here's actual Form 460 (click on the icon to the right of the "S" on bottom of the frame to enlarge):





TO THE BRINK

This business of artificial crisis creation is by no means limited to Claremont.  Brinksmanship allows the extremists in a negotiation in to eliminate the middle ground and get their way. Writer James Suroweicki has a column in the August 1 edition of the New Yorker in which he argues that the current federal debt-ceiling crisis represents nothing more than a cover for politicians unwilling to make the tough decisions that real, constructive fiscal change will require (i.e., higher taxes, cuts in spending and services, or some combination of the two):

...politicians like the debt ceiling: it allows them to rail against borrowing more money (which voters hate) without having to vote to cut any specific programs or raise taxes (which voters also hate).

You might think that there are benefits to putting negotiators under the gun. But, as the Dutch psychologist Carsten de Dreu has shown, time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call “integrative”—taking everyone’s interests and values into account.

In fact, by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism. As the economist Thomas Schelling showed many years ago, “It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself” when it comes to brinksmanship. It doesn’t, in short, help to be President Obama. That may be why all the deals that have been taken seriously this season rely much more heavily on spending cuts than on tax increases: the deals represent Republican priorities, because the Republicans seem to be more willing than the Democrats to let the country default. It’s not pure craziness that’s rewarded—when some congressional Tea Partiers said that they wouldn’t vote to raise the ceiling under any circumstances, they became irrelevant to the conversation, since no compromise would make them happy. But recklessness does equal power: that’s why Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, and John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, have implied that they’re willing to go over the cliff (in part by suggesting that their fellow party members will force them to) but also that they can be persuaded to do the right thing.

That same group psychology is why, in the face their overwhelming Measure CL loss, the CUSD board has refused to be truly inclusive (to use their own term) and has behaved as if members of the public representing alternate viewpoints don't exist.   The CUSD board rules imperially, ignoring its own conventions at times (more on this later), and solemnly issues dicta that have no bases in reality while our district's fiscal problems worsen.

It has been ever thus in our fair city, and so it shall remain.  So sayeth our school board.

Monday CUSD Recap

The Claremont Unified School District continues to fascinate inquiring minds.

We noticed that the Daily Bulletin article on the CUSD school board meeting last Thursday cited a person named Bill Fox, who spoke in favor of the board's proposed $95 million bond:

"It's an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis in the construction industry," resident Bill Fox said. "Construction costs are way down. It's a much different environment than 10 years ago. Ten years ago, when Measure Y (a $12.5 million school facilities bond) passed, we had very different challenges in bidding on what was out there. What we're seeing is prices are coming down."

(As we have pointed out, the Bulletin was incorrect. Measure Y was $48.9 million, not $12.5 million.)

We had wondered if Bill Fox was any relation to Michael K. Fox and Fox Transportation, who together donated $10,000 to the last CUSD bond campaign in 2000. We still don't know if there is any connection, but we do know that Bill Fox is a Claremont resident and is the president of The William Fox Group, which, among other things, operates a housing development company called William Fox Homes. Fox is also Claremont High baseball team sponsor.

If memory serves, Fox has served on a Claremont school district advisory committee. We believe it was Fox who first suggested that the district might be well-served leasing out it's old district office land on Base Line Rd. to an RV storage business. Fox would presumably know about the profit that CUSD could earn through such an arrangement because his company operates Route 66 Self Storage at 450 Foothill Blvd. Route 66 Self Storage advertises RV storage as one of its services.

In any case, Fox is very deeply involved in school issues and in the community. Here's a photo from the 2009 Claremont Educational Foundation newsletter showing Fox and his wife Cindy posing with former Claremont mayor Dianne Ring, Ring's husband Robert, and Ken Corhan (whom we last saw working on Bridget Healy's failed 2009 city council campaign):


Fox is also involved with the LA County Fair Association, according to a press release from 4/11/09:

Contact:
Sharon Autry (909) 865-4262
Wendy Talarico (909) 865-4263

For Immediate Release

LOS ANGELES COUNTY FAIR ASSOCIATION NAMES NEWEST MEMBER

William R. Fox has been named to the Los Angeles County Fair Association. Fox is president of William Fox Group and William Fox Homes Inc. located In Ontario.

He founded the companies in 2003 to engage in commercial and residential construction and development. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor of science degree in business administration. He currently serves as a member of the Claremont committee for the L.A. County Fair, on the Claremont School District Site Council and Claremont School Asset Advisory Committee. He resides in Claremont with his wife, Cindy, and children Heather and Brian.

The appointment complements a roster of nearly 50 notable and dynamic community and civic leaders that serve on the association of the not-for-profit organization. The LACFA operates and manages Fairplex, home of the L.A. County Fair and more than 500 diverse year-round events.

If you read Saturday's Claremont Courier, you may have also seen reporter Landus Rigsby's coverage of the Thursday CUSD meeting (no link available). Rigsby didn't mention Bill Fox, but he did quote another bond supporter named Mike Seder:

"To me, it all comes down to timing," said Claremont resident Mike Seder. "We have an emergency right now. We have a school [district] that depends on a state budget that is unreliable at best and if we are going to take control, we need to do it now. This is an investment we need to make in our schools and in our children. What we do now will leave a legacy for future generations of students."

Seder (pictured, left), like Bill Fox, CUSD school board member Jeff Stark, and Stark's mother Jil, has a connection to the LA County Fair Association. Seder is LACFA's Vice-President of Finance and CFO. Jil Stark is (was?) and LACFA board member, and Jeff Stark, along with fellow CUSD board member Beth Bingham, Arteco Partners owner Ed Tessier, and Claremont Club owner Sue Hyland, is an LACFA member as well:

Click on Images to Enlarge

This all just goes to show how well-networked are the movers and shakers in our neck of the woods. But, then, it's like everywhere.

We just hope (but don't really expect) that they'd be open to contrarian views. As we've noted in the past, many of our community's problems have been a result of a groupthink mentality in which a collection of individually intelligent people makes collectively stupid decisions by excluding important information that just doesn't fit the group's preconceptions.

Fear Itself (or $95 Million Fraud Alert)

We're going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education votes this Thursday to approve a resolution to place a school bond measure on the ballot of the November election. They will do this on Thursday because that is the last regularly scheduled board meeting before the August 6 deadline for a bond to be placed on the November ballot.

As of this writing (3:10pm) the district has posted no agenda on its website for Thursday's meeting. They have not made any official announcement of their intentions because, as is the practice of the Claremont 400, they want as little public discussion about this matter. Discussion might lead to proposals of alternatives, not the least of which is a parcel tax.

The key here is that a bond cannot be used to pay teacher salaries, which is the most pressing budgetary need the district faces. A bond could only be used for things like improving CUSD facilities. A parcel tax, on the other hand, could:

1. Be worded in such a way as to specify that it would only be used for teacher salaries.
   
   
2. Contain a sunset clause that would allow the tax to lapse in, say, three years, enough to get the district through it's projected deficit.
   
   
3. Not have to be financed.
   
   Let's not forget that what happened when the district last went to voters for money with Measure Y in 2000. With the help of approximately $80,000 from CUSD contractors, $48.9 million Measure Y bond passed. The contractors were the primary beneficiaries of the voters largess, and, with the help of cost overruns, CUSD burned through the Measure Y money without completing the projects it used to sell voters on the bond in the first place.
   

This entire bond discussion was decided in the school board's collective minds long ago. The board and the people behind them (take your bow, Claremonsters) made that decision for the voters. The rest of the act, these dog-and-pony shows conducted by CUSD boardmembers Hilary LaConte, Beth Bingham, Jeff Stark, and Mary Caenepeel, have had one goal: to gin up fear in the hearts of parents, teacher organizations, and the rest of the voting public so that they will support the board's predetermination.

It has, in short, been a manipulation, an intellectual fraud, a con, complete with polling data designed to facilitate the bond's passage. The only boardmember not complicit in this game has been Steve Llanusa, whom we haven't always agreed with in the past, but who was at least independent enough to voice his dissent in a Claremont Courier opinion piece several months back.

It's really the school board's blatant manipulation that galls us more than anything. The fear they've cultivated creates a false logic: our schools will fail if we don't get more money; the only way of getting that money is bond; therefore, we must pass a bond to save our schools. It's that second premise that is a lie. The board knows there is another, better choice.

We've seen this fearfulness stirred up before. When the city was trying to purchase Johnson's Pasture in 2006, the same Claremonsters who were responsible for pushing Measure Y and who are behind the current bond effort told the public that we needed to urgently buy the land because developers were lining up to buy the property.

In fact, there was no real threat of such a purchase. Had the City waited until now, it could have obtained the pasture for half the price it paid in 2006, but the Claremont 400 decided what was needed was a "parks and pasture" assessment district at many times the eventual price of the land. The real intent was to create a slush fund which the City could borrow against to pay for anything it wanted.

The 400 lied to Claremont property owners the assessment when they said was the only way Johnson's Pasture could be saved. Even though the proposed assessment district needed only 50% approval to pass, property owners refused to support it because they saw it for what it really was.

The pasture was still saved - by the Measure S bond measure. That bond needed 67% voter approval and ended with 72% of the vote - a number the Claremont 400 had claimed was not possible. The Measure S bond succeeded because it was a quarter of the cost of the assessment district and because the only thing it could be used for was the purchase of Johnson's Pasture.

We see that same dynamic present here. The district uses fear to intentionally muddy the waters. They claim that in this instance a school bond, which needs only 55% approval, would be easier to pass than a parcel tax, which would need 67%. As happened with Johnson's Pasture, the school board (and the local papers, by the way) fails to note that a parcel tax would attract more votes because it would involve no financing, could be directed to the most urgent need, and could be directed to last only a few years, rather than the 30 a bond would require.

The school board's induced fear will be accompanied by kind of mob mentality. If you're not for this bond, you hate our schools and our children, they will say. This second manipulation is as intentional as the first, and the district, with the help of its consultants, will use a contractor-financed campaign to to prevent the better argument from gaining a fair hearing at all.

We saw this same strategy in 2000 with Measure Y, again in 2006 with the Parks and Pasture Assessment District, and we'll see it in the coming months with a costly school bond that will again enrich the district's contractors and election consultants without the same job-saving impact a carefully directed parcel tax would.

Below: CUSD Consultant Collecting from Claremont Taxpayer

UPDATED, 4:45PM

As we said they would, the CUSD board is proposing a $95 million bond. And as we correctly predicted, there are no specified projects that money would be used for. The board's resolution (agenda item XI.B.1) only says the money will be used for school renovations, repairs, and upgrades. They didn't dare give a list of school sites and the projects for each facility because then they could be held accountable for where the money really ended up.

Also, approximately $30 million will go right away towards paying off the money still owed on the Measure Y bond. Think of it as a cash-back refi. Ever since the 2008 financial meltdown, those vehicles have been out of vogue everywhere else in the financial world. However, in the CUSD world, they're still very much the rage.

As with the last school bond, the district promises a citizen oversight committee to make sure the money is properly spent. Rest assured, contractors and consultants, that committee will stocked with reliable Claremont 400 supporters to ensure there will be no questions asked. Every con needs its schill, after all.

CUSD has many needs. But this is a $95 million giveaway with no guarantees that the actual needs of students and teachers will be met. As we said, it is a con job, pure and simple.

Underage Drinking

Son of Claremont School Board Member
Involved in Incident

The problem of underage drinking is more or less hidden unless you are a college president or one of the unfortunates in a car plowed into by a pack of inebriated college revelers out for a good time. The reaction of some college presidents is to sign on to the Amethyst Initiative, now more or less stalled since summer at 134 signatories. The reaction of the hapless families of the prenominated unfortunates is to send a few bucks to MADD.

The policy issues of drinking on the Claremont campuses, and the accompanying behavior modeling (a favorite term of art among the Amethyst Initiative Presidents) occasionally makes its way to our local precincts. We recall several years back when a planning commission decision allowing demon rum to be served at the Sagehen Cafe on the Pomona College campus was appealed to city council. If memory serves, those old tee-totalers Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado voted to deny the permit. Al Leiga and Karen Rosenthal voted to uphold Planning, and Lew Miller was kept on the bench by a conflict of interest. It was interesting to hear the staid college administrators lobby council for their liquor license. (on a tie vote of an appeal, the Planning Commission decision stood, and liquor is served at the Sagehen Cafe)

More recently, we read that every month or so another undergraduate is hauled by ambulance down to Pomona Valley Hospital for a drinking-related problem as described last February about Claremont McKenna.

Teddy Bingham
So it was of interest that a perfect storm of underage drinking and its consequences converged around Teddy Bingham, class of 2011 at Pomona College (Go Hens!) and son of Claremont School Board member Beth Bingham, a 23-year-old former Marine (Semper Fi!) attending CMC, and The Bottle.

This incident was first detailed here, here, and here, but there are so many political and personal agendas swirling around in those posts and the comments thereto that it's hard to extract the facts, let alone the truth.

A narrative without much serious challenge has it this way: In the wee early hours of Saturday, September 27th, Teddy Bingham (b. October 1989, and therefore not quite 19 on the date in question) was drunk on the CMC campus. He was seen in the company friends filling a shopping cart with rocks near Ducey Gymnasium (near the corner of 6th and Mills). As the others scattered, Eric Yingling, CMC class of 2012, the 23-year-old former Marine, approached and asked Bingham what he was doing. Bingham lunged at Yingling, who cold-cocked Bingham with one punch, opening up a cut that bled like the proverbial stuck pig.

Claremont police were called to Benson Hall at 1:30 a.m. and filled out a contact report: "PVHMC has a victim of a 242 that occured tonight at the above location. Victim was 242'd by unknown suspect, negative on prosecution." It is unclear whether the phrase "negative on prosecution" was at Bingham's request, on the officer's own initiative, or because Bingham was at the hospital and thus there was no percipient witness.

According to Beth Bingham as reported here, Teddy was stitched up at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center.

By 3:41 in the afternoon on the 27th, and presumably having "lawyered-up", Bingham appeared at the office of Campus Safety wanting to file a police report on the incident. Which would probably be a prerequisite to any possibly-contemplated legal action.

Bingham brought an action against Yingling at a CMC Judiciary Board (J-Board) proceeding which was heard on Friday, November 14th. While these Star Chamber Proceedings are held in secret, the upshot appears to be that Yingling was found guilty of the assault and sentenced to CMC probation, which means, "If anything like this ever happens again..." Since no one thought to charge Bingham with anything--stealing rocks, drunken lunging, operating a shopping cart while intoxicated--or since his boozy behavior is more or less the norm on a Friday Night in Claremont, Bingham is in the clear.

Pomona College President David Oxtoby's "behavior modelling" hasn't filtered down to his sophomore class 18-year-olds yet, but just wait for the Amethyst Initiative. We presume he will not be modeling the behavior of drunkenly filling a shopping cart with rocks in the middle of the night and lunging at a former Marine. Or understated graceful and refined underage projectile vomiting in The Wash.

Beth Bingham

When asked her role in Teddy's activities following the incident and trip to the hospital--the filing of the police report--Claremont Unified School District Board member Beth Bingham demurred. When asked about Teddy's underage drinking, she was quoted as saying it's a "reality that high school and college students drink." C'est la vie. Nothing to do about it. Boys will be boys.

So much for instruction in the home; maybe Beth will be more proactive with your kids.

A tip of the Insider Sherlock Holmes cap to the Claremont Conservative for the lead and legwork.