August Blues

DOG DAYS

It's August - that time of year just before schools start back up, and when the city power brokers take a collective vacation. The City Council and City Commission take a month-long break, and the town relaxes.

But, the Claremont 400 never takes a break. For them, late-July and August have traditionally been harvest time, the time when they can let city or school district staff take action on all those controversial agenda items that have been festering through the year. Last year, for instance, the votes for the Parks and Pasture Assessment District were counted on July 25th, and the council had a special meeting on August 1st to certify the vote before slinking out of town to lick its wounds after the assessment failed by a 12-percent margin.

What surprises does the 400 have in store for us this year? We'll just have to wait and see....

_______________________


FORGETTING THE PAST, AGAIN

In other news, Will Bigham writes in the Daily Bulletin today of Claremont Progress, a group funded by a Riverside attorney who sent out a citywide mailer in the last election that the article says "urged support for incumbent Jackie McHenry and candidate Opanyi Nasiali, and opposed Pedroza, Linda Elderkin and Mayor Peter Yao."

The article quotes Councilmember Sam Pedroza:

"That's the thing with the anonymous campaigning: You don't know who it is, and it allows for people to lob bombs and not have to account for it," said Councilman Sam Pedroza....

As opposed to Pedroza, who, thanks to his Claremont 400 support, doesn't have to be accountable for anything either. We did some checking and found that in the 2003 Claremont municipal election, a group calling itself Residents United for Claremont also sent out a city-wide mailer on the eve of the election.

The group was organized by Claremont Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez, who is a professional political consultant by trade. The Residents United mailer urged Claremonters to reject candidates Jackie McHenry and Peter Yao and to vote for the three incumbents: Al Leiga, Karen Rosenthal, and Sandy Baldonado.

The Residents United mailer was not anonymous. It used the opposite strategy - to use the names of influential Claremont 400 members to try to convince voters to go their way. Among the signers were: Former mayors Nick Presecan, Diann Ring, Bill McCready and Judy Cody; city commissioners Bill Baker, Nancy Brower, Suzanne Hall, John Seery, Muriel O'Brien, Bob Ryan and SAM PEDROZA.

Also on the list were Randy Prout and Nick Quackenbos, both of whom would two years later participate in the Preserve Claremont campaign, for which Valerie Martinez was a co-spokesperson.

The mailing address for Residents United was Randy Prout's insurance agency on Baseline Rd.



Don't see any accountability there, do you? What Pedroza and his Claremont 400 supporters want is accountability for everyone but themselves.

_______________________

Current Councilmember Linda Elderkin was also quoted in the Bigham article:

"I just feel the society benefits so much from open dialogue," said Elderkin, who was elected to a City Council seat in March. "These anonymous approaches are very regrettable."

"We have the most fabulous disagreements on every subject here," she added. "It is one of the great strengths of Claremont that we have so much open dialogue."

Here, Elderkin is just so typically Claremont 400 in her remarks. The problem is that what she calls "open dialogue" has been anything but that. The 400 has controlled all the levers of power and has effectively stifled dialogue.

They talk, you listen. Elderkin conveniently ignores that behavior. Our main complaint with the 400, with Elderkin and Pedroza, is that they themselves refuse accountability. And they have all the power in town!

Until Bigham and other observers wake up to the reality of this power relationship, the 400 will continue to play the victim while all the time playing out their petty politics without consequences.

Church and State

Tonight at 5:30pm at the Alexander Hughes Center, the Claremont City Council will hold a special meeting on the adoption of it's Youth Master Plan Update. The Steering Committee for the update was chaired by Homer "Butch" Henderson (pictured at left), the retired senior pastor from the Claremont United Church of Christ. For those of you who are out-of-towners, the UCC is the church in Claremont.


LOOKING BACK ON BUTCH AND THE PRESERVE CLAREMONTERS

Back on July 20th, we wrote about Henderson's role as a spokesperson for the Preserve Claremont campaign during Claremont's 2005 City Council election.

We decided to take a trip in the Wayback Machine and looked up the 2/19/05 edition of the Claremont Courier. In that issue, reporter Melissa S. Mansfield had a long story about the Preserve Claremont effort and the uproar it was causing. The issue isn't available online, but you can try the Courier, as well as the Claremont or Pomona Public Libraries.

The Preserve Claremont campaign had two goals: 1) To publicly censor City Councilmember Jackie McHenry, who had been elected as reform candidate, and who had been critical of then-City Manager Glenn Southard; 2) prevent candidate Corey Calaycay from being elected.

The PC organizers raised thousands of dollars and ran a series of full-page ads in the Claremont Courier. A number of them, headed by Claremont Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez, also formed a second PAC called "Claremont Business PAC" and sent out two last-minute city-wide mailers to try to boost the support for Councilmember Llewellyn Miller, who was running for re-election.

The 2/19/05 Courier article quoted Butch Henderson in a telling couple paragraphs:

Mr. Henderson responded to a complaint he had heard that the [Preserve Claremont] ads were "manipulative."

"Of course they are," he said. "That's what politics is all about. Claremonters like things to be nice. They say, 'Let's do powerbrokering behind the scenes and be real nice.' But politics is about leaders. Mr. Calaycay is running for office, and we're trying to get out factual information about him."

The "factual information" Henderson spoke of included an ad containing false statements that alleged that Calaycay had left the employment of a California state legislator's office under a cloud. That legislator sent not only endorsed Calaycay but sent a letter refuting Henderson's "factual information." The legislator's letter ran as a full-page ad in the Courier.

Perhaps what is most disturbing is that here we have Butch Henderson, senior pastor at the main church in town, the Claremont United Church of Christ, basically acknowledging that his group was manipulating public opinion. It confirmed what we and others have complained about for years regarding the Claremont 400.


NO CONSEQUENCES

The Courier article also reported that "The PAC was formed under the name and address of Francine Baker, the art director in the Human Services Department, who is listed as the group's treasurer. So, in addition to the UCC's senior pastor, Preserve Claremont also had city employees working to influence the election of the people who would be their bosses.

What is striking about the article is how no one would take responsibility for the group's organization:

Ms. Baker declined to comment on how she became treasurer, saying, "I don't remember, it was a ways back." [The group got their first donations less than one month before the article came out.]

She referred all questions about the committee to Ms. Martinez, [former Councilmember Bill] McCready and Mr. Henderson. When asked who founded the group, none of the 3 indicated a specific ringleader or group of leaders.

And then there was this representative of one of the 2005 council candidates:

Ed Leavell, a 26-year resident of the city, said [former Claremont Mayor Paul] Held invited him to come as a representative for one of the council candidates. "He was vocal at the meeting but wasn't running it. It seemed like [former Claremont Councilmember Bill] McCready was running it."

As we've noted in the past, several of the candidates from the 2005 campaign benefited from the false claims made by the Preserve Claremont group. For instance, current City Councilmember Ellen Taylor won election and refused to speak out against the false campaign claims the Preserve Claremonters were making. Further, several of Taylor's supporters, including her treasurer Cindy Sullivan's family, were also Preserve Claremont financial supporters.

The Preserve Claremonters needed a lot of public image rehabilitation, especially their spokespersons. They and their Claremont 400 friends know that the public's memory is short, so given enough time and good works like the Youth Master Plan Update, people will forget how truly awful they were in the no-so-distant past.

It's up to you to remember. Thank them for their contributions to the community, but also hold them accountable for their other misdeeds as well.

Corrections: Judy Loses It

The Courier today has an odd letter to the editor from former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright, who just may be losing it.

The letter is in reaction to an exchange that began back in early June over Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District assessment, a controversial municipal revenue source.

Wright's letter in the Courier today is the second one she has submitted recently. On June 12th, she, former Mayor Diann Ring and former Councilmember Bill McCready submitted a letter to the City Council and to the Courier at a time when the Council was voting on how much they should increase the LLD.

That earlier letter by the three former Councilmembers had a number of factual errors, which we pointed out. You can read the text of the Wright-Ring-McCready letter here.

To recap, in our view, the Wright-Ring-McCready letter contained the following inaccuracies and misstatements:

• The letter failed on its second sentence: "As three members of the city council (the other two are deceased) who passed the Benefit Assessment District in 1990...."
  
  In fact, only one of the other two Councilmembers who voted on the LLD in 1990, Nick Presecan, is dead. The other, Dick Newton, is alive and well and still resides in Claremont. Wright, the historian, surely knows this.
  
  The letter attacked Courier Editor JamesCourie for not researching the background on the LLD. In fact, Wright, Ring and McCready need to take a good long look in the mirror. People in glass houses, you know.
  
  
• The letter writers were selective in the numbers they cite to support their claims of vast community support for both the 1990 LLD and the later Utility Users Tax (UUT). For example, they claimed that 32 0f 35 speakers asked for a utility tax at a town meeting at Bridges Auditorium in December, 1992, on the campus of Pomona College.
  
  In fact, the minutes for that 12/12/92 meeting showed only 16 people getting up to speak at public comment. Of those, only three gave clear support for the UUT.
  
  And in their arguments in favor of the LLD, the letter writers ignored the 3/6/1990 mail count report submitted to the City Council. As of that date, the city had received 60 letters supporting the LLD, 475 opposing, and 14 withdrawing opposition.
  
  Additionally, a citizens group headed by a man named Les Boring, collected 7,000 signatures opposing the LLD. No mention of that in the letter.
  
  Wright, Ring, and Claremont 400 die-hards like former Police Commission Chair Helaine Goldwater (who spoke at last Tuesday's Council meeting in favor of increasing the LLD assessment) constantly ramble on about responding to citizens. They cite the number of public meetings held on one issue or another, they manipulate the events to try to steer the discussion towards what they want, then, if the debate doesn't go their way, they ignore the record of those meetings.
  
  
• The letter writers didn't just ignore public speakers, they ignored the recommendations of city committees and commissions. Wright, Ring and McCready ignored the fact that the city's Citizen Finance Advisory Committee (CFAC) on 11/28/89 strongly recommended sunseting the LLD, which was imposed because of a budget crisis in the early 1990's.
  
  
• The letter rewrote the actual history of events. The writers claimed that there was never any discussion of sunseting the LLD and assert that "We repeatedly and specifically said that we believed that this assessment would be permanent."
  
  Yet, an examination of Claremont City Council minutes from 1989 and 1990 when the LLD debate was going on, showed no such statements. As our analysis on 6/17 showed, the record of those meetings showed statements by both CFAC Chair Dennis Smith and repeatedly by Judy Wright in favor of sunsetting the LLD.
  
  The letter writers claimed no such statements ever occurred. One suspects they would say anything to justify an action, relying on the short memories and apathy of a disaffected, disillusioned electorate to allow their false promises to go unfulfilled.

_______________________

Now, in her current letter (she apparently lost her two co-signers from the first missive), Wright digs herself a deeper hole.

Wright begins with the worst sort of propagandist's trick: by purposely misrepresenting her opponents' arguments. Wright claims that "Only once, not repeatedly, (see 11/28, p. 446) did I suggest a sunset [for the LLD] and it was never a motion nor picked up by my colleagues."

In fact, the claim was not about Wright "repeatedly"making a motion for a sunset clause. The actual claim was that Wright repeatedly mentioned sunsetting of the LLD beginning in 1989 and as late as 1993.

The second part of the sentence claiming that Wright's one suggestion for an LLD sunset was never a motion and was never picked up by her colleagues, is untrue, pure and simple, and Wright has apparently been selective in the supporting documentation she sent to the Courier with today's letter. The editor's note to the letter indicates that Wright submitted 126 pages of documentation but omitted the one set of city council minutes from 1/23/90 which noted on page 15:

"Mrs. Wright requested the resolution be amended to include,'It is the city council's intention not to continue this assessment district beyond June 30, 1995, without first holding a protest hearing.'"

As Courier noted today, the motion was passed by Ms. Wright and her colleagues, including Diann Ring.

_______________________

The last two paragraphs in the Wright letter today make us wonder if Judy has really crossed over into non compos mentis territory. One involved a remark that:

No the LLD did not kill Dick Newton, it probably aggravated Alex Hughes’ heart condition and killed him.

As we noted above, in the Wright-Ring-McCready letter from June 12th, the writers claimed that of the five councilmembers who voted to institute the LLD, only three (the letter signers) were still alive. In fact, a fourth, Dick Newton, is very much alive and kicking. So, the Courier noted this, and we made a joke of it, saying they "killed Dick Newton." Judy obviously missed the joke and at the same time admitted Alexander Hughes, who was on the council when the LLD was being studied and debated, was done in by the her precious LLD.

_______________________

The last paragraph of Wright's letter today was particularly odd because it had nothing to do with the Courier. It appeared to addressed to us here at the Insider. Wright says:

By the way, I was not present at The El Barrio Park dedication. I was present at the Rosa Torrez Park dedication. That was a wonderful day! Where were you?

Wright seems to be referring to a June 8th Insider post where we incorrectly placed her at the El Barrio Park dedication in May. We apologize to Ms. Wright and have corrected that point. We obviously confused that with the Rosa Torrez park dedication. We stand by the rest of the post.

More Mail

We got this in yesterday from a reader curious about the lies and inaccuracies former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring has accused us of presenting. In answer to the reader's question, no, Ring and the Claremont 400 have not provided us with a bill of particulars with documentation to show that anything we've presented here is untrue. At 43 days and counting, we're still waiting (see the Diann Fact Watch in the left-hand column).

Here's the reader's note:

I keep waiting to hear what these lies and inaccuracies are that the Claremont 400 says you keep spewing in your blog. Do they actually e-mail you and tell you what these L&Is are or do they just make a blanket accusation that everything you put on your blog are L&Is?

While I realize that they have many lawyers among their ranks , it is chilling, to say the least, that they are even hinting at legal action while not specifying what comments on your blog are inaccurate or outright lies. I am dismayed that the reader who wrote in with his/her comments about the CUSD felt they had to remove them (I missed that blog that day so have no idea what was said, darn it), but I do know that many people feel intimidated about making any comments on the CUSD especially if they have children in the district for fear of retaliation.

It is a sad state of affairs that anyone needs to fear legal action or retailiation at the hands of any individual or group of people in this town, or any other town, if they speak their minds, give their opinions, or ask questions. If people are lying, then let their lies be exposed, call them on it with proof that they are lying, just as your blog did with Judy Wright, Diann Ring and Bill McCready about their letter to the Courier. Let them come up with documents, tapes, articles or credible eyewitness accounts to refute the alleged lies they say are being written. As far as I can see, and I am still waiting, they have not.

As we celebrate the 4th of July tomorrow, as we see more and more young men and women dying for our 1st Amendment right to free speech and all the other rights we are guaranteed in our U.S. Constitution, let us remember that in the history of the world there have been many tyrants who have sought to stifle the truth. They have used intimidation, threats, physical and psychological pressure and , in more extreme cases , imprisonment and even death to stop the truth from being told. It takes brave men and women to fight these tyrants and stand up to their tactics. It takes even braver men and women to support those that are trying to tell the truth and accept the consequences for their support.

We are not all that brave, but at least in Claremont , on this 4th of July, we can tell the Claremont Buzz that as long as you are speaking the truth , we will support you and encourage your efforts to let the truth be told and not let the tyrants in this town silence you, and by extension, those of us that seek the truth.

Thanks, reader. And a Happy Fourth to all out there.

Wright, Ring & the LLD

One of the frustrations that comes with trying to participate in Claremont politics is the inevitable absurdity that infuses any issue. People want rational systems. If you've coached Little League, you know the best umpire is the consistent umpire. As long as you know that ump's strike zone, you can work with it, but when it's constantly and randomly shifting, there will always be uncertainty and chaos built into the game.

The letter former Claremont Mayors Judy Wright and Diann Ring, along with former Councilmember Bill McCready, submitted to the current City Council and to the Claremont Courier last week in support of the City's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment, was a perfect exercise in dissecting the inanity and irrationality that they and their Claremont 400 friends have imposed on our town.

The letter, which we ran on 6/15, purported to lay out the history of the LLD, which was enacted in 1990. The letter, addressing an editorial by Courier editor Rebecca JamesCourie that was critical of the LLD, began: "We write to correct erroneous information in your editorial of June 6." Unfortunately, as our explication of the letter has showed in the past few days, the letter was rife with errors, false statistics and outright lies.

To recap, here is an outline of the errors (lies?) we noted:

• The letter fails on its second sentence: "As three members of the city council (the other two are deceased) who passed the Benefit Assessment District in 1990...."
  
  In fact, only one of the other two Councilmembers who voted on the LLD in 1990, Nick Presecan, is dead. The other, Dick Newton, is alive and well and still resides in Claremont. Wright, the historian, surely knows this.
  
  The letter attacks Courier Editor JamesCourie for not researching the background on the LLD. In fact, Wright, Ring and McCready need to take a good long look in the mirror. People in glass houses, you know.
  
  
• The letter writers are selective in the numbers they cite to support their claims of vast community support for both the 1990 LLD and the later Utility Users Tax (UUT). For example, they claim that 32 0f 35 speakers asked for a utility tax at a town meeting at Bridges Auditorium in December, 1992, on the campus of Pomona College.
  
  In fact, the minutes for that 12/12/92 meeting showed only 16 people getting up to speak at public comment. Of those, only three gave clear support for the UUT.
  
  And in their arguments in favor of the LLD, the letter writers ignore the 3/6/1990 mail count report submitted to the City Council. As of that date, the city had received 60 letters supporting the LLD, 475 opposing, and 14 withdrawing opposition.
  
  Additionally, a citizens group headed by a man named Les Boring, collected 7,000 signatures opposing the LLD. No mention of that in the letter.
  
  Wright, Ring, and Claremont 400 die-hards like former Police Commission Chair Helaine Goldwater (who spoke at last Tuesday's Council meeting in favor of increasing the LLD assessment) constantly ramble on about responding to citizens. They cite the number of public meetings held on one issue or another, they manipulate the events to try to steer the discussion towards what they want, then, if the debate doesn't go their way, they ignore the record of those meetings.
  
  
• The letter writers don't just ignore public speakers, they ignore the recommendations of city committees and commissions. Wright, Ring and McCready ignored the fact that the city's Citizen Finance Advisory Committee (CFAC) on 11/28/89 strongly recommended sunseting the LLD, which was imposed because of a budget crisis in the early 1990's.
  
  
• The letter rewrites the actual history of events. The writers claim that there was never any discussion of sunseting the LLD and assert that "We repeatedly and specifically said that we believed that this assessment would be permanent."
  
  Yet, an examination of Claremont City Council minutes from 1989 and 1990 when the LLD debate was going on, showed no such statements. As our analysis on 6/17 showed, the record of those meetings showed statements by both CFAC Chair Dennis Smith and repeatedly by Judy Wright in favor of sunseting the LLD.
  
  Now the letter writers claim no such statements ever occurred. One suspects they will say anything to justify an action, relying on the short memories and apathy of a disaffected, disillusioned electorate to allow their false promises to go unfulfilled.
  

The factual underpinnings cited in the letter are important, not only because they distort the truth beyond all recognition, but because the writers claim an authority that the actual record of events belies. This false claim to authority by Wright, Ring and McCready is all the more troublesome because Judy Wright is also our town historian, the creator of our great mythology.

If this one letter is at all representative of her greater body of work, she has no credibility whatsoever, and by extension, the Claremont 400 house rests on a crumbling foundation, rooted in falsehoods, misstatements, exaggerations and fabrications. Failure is built into the system's structure. This is the "vision" they constantly speak of sharing and maintaining.

The argument here is to hold people accountable for their statements. Go back and compare their words then and now. And don't believe us. Look for yourself. We've provided the links to minutes of city meetings in our posts from the past week. If we are wrong in our analysis, show us.

The larger argument here is that this is simply one more example of a problem that has occurred in Claremont time and again. Whether it's the LLD, the handling of the Landrum shooting, the city's investment of over $5 million in the bankrupt Orange County Investment Pool or the $17 million-plus paid out for the 2003 fire in Palmer Canyon and Padua Hills, the record is one of consistent ineptness fueled by hubris and an intolerance for opposing views.

The record, contrary to what the letter writers would like you the believe, is really an argument for rationality and change.

Fun with Numbers

Judy and Diann caught in a Big Fib

Judy Wright and Diann Ring were working late last Monday night trying to get their letter to the editor and city council in shape. Maybe Bill McCready was in the corner flipping tortillas, but he didn’t say much. Dick Newton was deceased that night.

When they got to the third to the last paragraph, they were stumped. They needed a statistic to really bring the point home. They had already used the idea that “the city council held 10-15 well attended neighborhood meetings.” It was way too much work to look up whether it was 10 meetings, or 15, or somewhere in between. Anyway, it was a lot.

They remembered that the City had held a Big Meeting at Bridges Auditorium in December of 1992, and a lot of people spoke. Maybe if they told the mean editor and dumb ol' members of city council that there had been a huge groundswell for the Utility Tax, it would show ‘em just how right Wright and Wring are, and how Wrong everyone else is.

But it would have to be a really big number.

Boy said Judy, I don’t know how many people were there, and I’m too tired looking up history for my book and stuff…I’ll bet there were thirty or forty people who spoke and I’ll bet that nine out of ten of them were on our side.

I know said Diann, let’s tell them that 32 out of 35 speakers requested a utilities user tax be instituted.

And that’s what they did.

[Note: The minutes for the December 12, 1992 public hearing at Bridges Auditorium are here. 16 members of the public spoke. Only 3 of the 16 clearly supported the utility user tax. Most were making comments on tangential issues such as tax fairness, service cuts, alternative financing such as fees, etc. A couple seemed to be leaning pro-utility tax, a couple seemed to be leaning anti-utility tax without being clear about it. There is no meeting or combination of meetings in the late 92-early 93 period, when the Utility User Tax was being considered and adopted, that make the 32 out of 35 statistic citied by Wright and Ring. It is simply incorrect.

A very interesting--some might say compelling--statistic Wright and Ring omit is one associated with the contentious LLD process. Reporting the March 6, 1990 count of mail to council on the LLD. "The city clerk reported receipt of written correspondence received to date on this issue to be: 60 letters of support, 475 opposing, and 14 withdrawing opposition."

That sounds to us like 7 or 8 to 1 against the LLD. But for Wright and Ring, it is an inconvenient truth.]

Courier Fails to Print Wright-Ring-McCready Letter

We stopped by the newsstand this morning to pick up a copy of the Claremont Courier, expecting to see that Judy Wright's and Diann Ring's letter had been printed. We were a bit surprised to find that it wasn't in Saturday's issue. Our sources tell us that it had been hand-carried to the paper last week by the lead author, well in time for publication.

What's going on?

Several possibilities present themselves:

1. Maybe the editor decided that it wasn't newsworthy and wasn't worth what we now know is called "free ink". If so, we believe that judgment is in error. Still, the Courier has been a bit anodyne in recent months. Maybe it's the editor's predilection or maybe it's on instructions from the publisher to keep controversy out of the paper.
2. Maybe there was no space. Sometimes production issues preclude inclusion of a piece. This idea seems far-fetched to us, because the letter was available Tuesday, just as the Wednesday issue was put to bed and as work would begin on Saturday's issue.
3. Maybe the editor was doing the authors a favor by declining to publish an intemperate piece that so clearly puts the authors in a bad light. Hoist on their own petard, as it were.
   
4. Maybe some of the more egregious defects were recognized by authors and they spiked their own letter pending "more attention to researching and understanding the facts about the issues..."

Meanwhile, be sure to check back often to this space for continuing coverage of this story. All Judy and Diann, all the time.

(What about Bill? We are not forgetting Bill McCready in all of this. Sure, his name was on the letter. But we don't believe he had much to do with it. He has been a sycophant of Diann's at least since he was seen flipping tortillas in the corner of the dining room of the Padua Hills Theatre at one of her fund-raising events in the 90s.)

More on Dis(re)membering History

We have received several reader comments on the Wright-Ring-McCready letter to the editor of the Courier (copies to City Council) which we will post as time permits:

Nothing better captures the pretentious arrogance of Claremont's rulers than the letter on your blog, Dis(re)membering History. It is especially funny that it starts out with an obvious and verifiable factual error while hectoring the Editor of the Courier to do her homework.

By the way, I checked my copy of the newspaper and Rebecca JamesCourie's title is given as "Editor", not "Acting Editor" as Wright, Ring, and McCready state it. Didn't they do their research on this either?

Or is this just their little way of pressing an ad hominem attack, mean-spiritedly telling Ms. JamesCourie that she is not an authentic editor; they know that.

I suspect that all of the other so-called "facts" in the letter are also spin, half-truths, untruths, and self-justifications.

Judy Wright and Diann Ring Kill Dick Newton

Claremont, June 12, 2007. Former Claremont council member and mayor Richard Newton's death was announced today by former colleagues Judy Wright, Diann Ring, and Bill McCready. Since they are the only ones with knowledge of this unfortunate event, they are of course suspected.

In a letter to the managing editor of the Claremont Courier, berating her for not doing her research on local issues, Wright and Ring declared that Dick Newton was among the two deceased members of the "gang of five" council members who approved Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) on March 9, 1990. They said, "As three members of the city council (the other two are deceased) who passed the Benefit Assessment District in 1990, we specifically did not include a sunset clause..."

The letter was provided to City Council at its June 12, 2007 meeting.

The minutes of the March 9, 1990 Claremont council meeting, where the LLD was adopted, show that it was approved unanimously by Judy Wright, Diann Ring, Bill McCready, Dick Newton, and Nick Presecan. Mr. Presecan died in 2005 and has a monument in the Claremont Wilderness Park. That leaves Mr. Newton as the other deceased member, since Wright, Ring, and McCready signed the letter. Process of elimination.

Mr. Newton's death comes as a shock to members of the community who have seen him around town and in various public venues in recent weeks. "He didn't look that sick," commented one member of the University Club.

It is unknown whether the Claremont PD is investigating this death, or if foul play is suspected. Actually, foul play is always a good bet when the Claremont 400 get their collective backs up. We can only be guided by their advice to the editor of the Courier closing the letter mentioned above: "We would hope that...you will give more attention to researching and understanding the facts about the issues..." Right.

Mr. Newton was not available for comment, and the Insider is not a "real" journalist anyway, so made no particular effort to contact him. If he had been reached, whether in Claremont or at his summer place in Wisconsin, we are sure he would be recalling Mark Twain's famous comment about death and exaggeration.

Dis(re)membering History

The Claremont 400 comes to the rescue of the city's tax base.

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, former Claremont mayors Diann Ring and Judy Wright and former Councilmember Bill McCready submitted a letter to the council and also appear to have sent the same letter to the Claremont Courier. The letter defended the 1990 implementation of the city's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment.

It also pointed out that the city's Utility Tax and the LLD were put to a public vote in 1997 (see our post from Monday for a deconstruction of the manipulation behind that vote).

The letter the former council people submitted is too long and too error-filled to allow much commentary here, so we'll just post it and let you decide. We'll offer our analysis in the coming days. It does show the self-importance the Claremonsters still like to indulge in--Here we are, you must listen to us. We will note that they might well follow their own advice and do a little better job of remembering and researching. More of the Claremont 400 history project going on here.

As we indicated, it was submitted as a public document to the City Clerk prior to Tuesday's council meeting:

Dear Editor,

We write to correct erroneous information in your editorial of June 6.

As three members of the city council (the other two are deceased) who passed the Benefit Assessment District in 1990, we specifically did not include a sunset clause. We repeatedly and specifically said that we believed that this assessment would be permanent. Because California assessment district law states requires [sic] an annual budget justification and protest hearing for the continuation of the district, a sunset clause was unneeded and unnecessary.

Many of you may recall that this action was taken 12 years after Proposition 13 passed, the result of which was that Claremont went from a comfortable property tax city to a low local revenue city. Streets were not being repaved. Trees were not adequately trimmed. The parks were not being maintained like they are today.

Even with the assessment district and a growing sales tax, we again were forced to look for more revenue sources or drastically cut services when the State grabbed more and more of the property tax in the early 1990’s. Every year when the State went into recession or could not balance its budget, state legislators told us point blank that were [sic] taking our money and essentially told us to raise taxes. Perhaps, few people are aware that the City of Claremont receives only 11 cents of every property tax dollar paid by residents.

Following the property tax grab by the state [sic, should be State], the city council held 10-15 well attended neighborhood meetings. The situation was presented to those gathered who wrestled with the issues at round tables of ten. All ideas were written down and considered. A final city meeting was held at Bridges Auditorium in December of 1992 and 32 of the 35 speakers requested a utilities user tax be instituted, and the council voted 5-0 to implement the tax in March of 1993.

A new state law required voters to affirm these assessments and taxes, which the Claremont voters did in March of 1997.

We would hope that, as acting editor of the well respected local institution, you will give more attention to researching and understanding the facts about the issues you are given free ink to write about.

Judy Wright (1984-97)
Diann Ring (1986-99)
Bill McCready (1984-92)

Centennial Squared

Did anyone else notice that this year the City of Claremont is celebrating it's second Centennial?

There was another celebration in 1987, when Judy Wright was still mayor. That first celebration was in honor of the founding of Claremont in 1887. The town didn't actually incorporate - didn't become legitimate city - until 1907. Of course, Judy must have known she wouldn't be mayor in 2007, so naturally the town had to have this other celebration twenty years ago so that Judy and the other councilmembers at the time, Diann Ring, Nick Presecan, Alexander Hughes, and Bill McCready, could have a shot at presiding over a centennial too. Just think of it as a Pre-Centennial.

The second edition of Wright's book, Claremont: A Pictorial History, devotes pages 481-482 to a section called "Claremont's Centennial." Wright says of herself: "What an honor for a community historian to also be mayor of her City during its centennial."

Nothing like a second bite at the centennial apple, and now Diann's and Judy's friends on the current council get to officiate over their own set of celebrations. Hey, these centennials are great fun - let's do it again in another twenty years!

Heck, it's not their money.