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 Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council has its regular meeting tonight. The council meets at 5:15pm at City Hall for a special closed session, and then will have its regular session at 6:30pm.

The council's regular session takes place in the council chambers at 225 W. Second Street in the Claremont Village. You can watch the meeting streamed live on the City's website.


SPECIAL SESSION

There are two items on the special session agenda. Both have to do with litigated matters.

The first is the lawsuit brought by the neighborhood group Protect Our Neighborhoods. This has to do with the change in the city's leafblower ordinance, which was approved by the City Council last fall without the proper initial study being done as is required under the California Environmental Quality Act. A settlement has been worked out, and the only thing remaining to be done is for the parties to negotiate the amount the City will pay for the plaintiffs' fees and costs.

This one's a flub that falls directly at the feet of City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, who failed to advise the City Council of the need for the CEQA initial study when the council approved the ordinance change. Tell us again, why are we paying Carvalho's monthly retainer fee?

The second special session item has to do with litigation over pollution from rainwater runoff.


REGULAR SESSION

It looks like another full schedule for the city council tonight, says the regular session agenda:

• There's a ceremonial matter starting things off. Claremont Human Services Commissioner Jeff Camacho will honor the recipients of the Youth Award and the Dick Guthrie Award. (Claremont may be the only town we know of that names awards after its consultants. Don't what you have to do to win a Guthrie.)
  
  
• The council will consider exempting non-profits from the $300 annual business and home occupation fee. The council will also discuss refunding fees the City has collected from non-profits since July, 2008.
  
  The fact that the City has been charging non-profits came to light on April 28 when Claremont Finance Manager Adam Pirrie gave a presentation his efforts to increase the City's revenue by applying fees to businesses and organizations that had been overlooked in the past. Pirrie's efforts have increased the amount collected in business fees by $40,000, from $725,000 to $765,000. Looks like we'll be giving some of that back now.
  
  A number of non-profits in town squawked at the fees. In response, the City Council expressed a desire for a non-profit exemption.
  
  
• The council will consider raising its 2009-10 appropriations limit by about $738,000 t0 $29,314,127. The City is required by state law to come up with this limit.
  
  
• The council will receive its annual Landscaping and Lighting District engineer's report and will be asked to keep the LLD at $147.12 per parcel since the Consumer Price Index remained essentially flat from March, 2008, to March, 2009.
  
  
• The council will also debate the elimination of the Claremont Trolley. Chaffey College is interested in taking over the trolley's lease, so that would provide the City with an easy out. However, expect members of the Claremont Community Foundation, including former Claremont mayor Judy Wright, to fight for keeping the trolley. They want it for their own use once or twice a year for fundraisers and don't really mind the fact that they are taking money away from other city transit programs like Dial-A-Ride for their favorite toy.
  
  The CCF's main talking point will be the one you've seen in letters to the Claremont Courier: The trolley just has a routing problem. Change the route, and more people will ride it. We've written in the past why this is a foolish notion.
  
  Expect Sam Pedroza and Linda Elderkin to follow the CCF's lead and vote to keep the trolley but use a different route.
  
  
• City Manager Jeff Parker has a report to the council on the intersection at Indian Hill Blvd. and 10th St. The report also discusses the city-wide crosswalk policy (yes, there is one). Parker tries to point the finger at the Protect Our Neighborhood group for delaying the removal of the 10th St. lighted crosswalk in January because the said any change would require an initial study under CEQA.
  
  This, of course, does not explain the 3-1/2 year delay by the City in changing the crosswalk after the Traffic and Transportation Commission reviewed the matter in October, 2005.
  
  Parker's report also said that with left and right turns at that intersection, the crosswalk is not the only contributing factor in accidents.
  
  
• The council will move forward with site selection for a new police station. Three sites are under consideration: The current site on Bonita Ave., the Corey Nursery site at 1650 N. Monte Vista, and the former affordable housing site at the southeast corner of Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave.
  
  Actual construction on the new station will have to wait until funding becomes available.
  

Trolley Mail

Earlier this week we received a note from a reader with an observation about the Downtown Claremont Trolley. The reader saw the trolley on a run outside of it's usual environs:

DATE: Monday, March 23, 2009 10:46 PM
SUBJECT: Claremont Trolley
TO: Claremont Buzz

Speaking of the Claremont Trolley.

On Sunday March 22, I noticed that the Trolley Folly went on a whimsy run, up Padua Ave. past the under-construction sports park, on up to the 4-way-on-demand stop light signal, at 1:07PM, then up Mt. Baldy Road, past Fergus Falls, presumably to the gravel turn-around at the San Antonio Dam, as it shortly returned down Mt. Baldy Road. It turned into Flat River and back out, and on down to Padua Ave., then north on Padua Ave. up past the Theater, then down Via Padova past the sharp double curves, and on down to Mt. Baldy Road, and then to the Mills 4-way stop signs, at 1:21PM, and then down Mills. I was not close enough, from my view point, to see if any passengers were inside.

We checked and discovered that what the reader witnessed was a Claremont Community Foundation event that we wrote about a couple months ago. This was the City loaning this public resource out to a private organization for a charity fundraiser, one of many CCF Party Parade events.

The CCF website said this about the Trolley Folly before the March 21st event slipped into the past (click on image adjacent to text):

With former Claremont Mayor and Author Judy Wright.

Ride the new Claremont Trolley as we travel from the Metrolink Parking Lot to Oak Park Cemetery and Russian Village, and then on to Padua Hills Theater, the Wilderness Park, and Webb School.

The tour of our vertical city will include residential neighborhoods in context including architecture by Gordon Kaufmann, Helen Wren, Paul Williams, Cliff May, Alan Taylor, Konstanty Stys, and Robert Orr. Architectural examples from Myron Hunt, Gordon Kaufmann, and Edward Durrell Stone, among others, as well as landscape architecture by Edward Huntsman Trout, Thomas Church, and Ralph Cornell, will be components of The Claremont Colleges. In the Village we will see and talk about what makes a downtown a downtown - the architecture, the people, the restaurants, the shops, the services, etc. The tour will take approximately two hours.
9:30 a.m. - Noon
or
12:30 - 3 p.m.

With light refreshments from Noon until 1 p.m.

$35 per person
Capacity: 20 guests per tour

Hosts:
Judy Wright
Kristin and Steve Hagstrom
Vicke Selk

Sponsored by the City of Claremont

The CCF's website said that both sessions, morning and afternoon, were sold out, so the Trolley was likely as full as you're ever going to see it. At 20 guests per session it was running at about 2,000 percent of its usually usage. Maybe we could convince the CCF to take over the lease.

New Blog in Claremont

A Day in the Life of...


Just rippling through the blogosphere since yesterday evening, a new offering by Claremont's own Rosemary Henderson. Today's post features the Claremont Community Foundation's Party Parade. We're all for enthusiasm, but we had an English teacher once who told us that you only get two exclamation marks to use in your whole life. We always thought that pretty sound counsel. In her CCF Party Parade post, Rosemary uses six!!!!!!

Welcome to the ranks of the pajamahedin, Rosemary.

We've added A Day in the Life of... to our "Community Links" in the sidebar!

City Money Matters

In case you were wondering about Tuesday night's Claremont City Council meeting, there were a few items of interest:


COUNCIL BENEFITS TRIMMED

The Council voted unanimously to do away with the option for Councilmembers to take the unused portion of their health benefits and put it into a deferred compensation account. At last report, Councilmember Peter Yao and Mayor Ellen Taylor were the only two of the five Councilmembers receiving the health benefits, and Taylor was the only one putting the money into the deferred compensation plan.


COUNCIL SAYS "NO" TO NEW BONDS

The Council voted 4-1 against financing another million dollars through general obligation bonds to repay the city's General Fund reserve for money the City used to help buy Johnson's Pasture. That $1 million was needed after the state pulled promised grant money because of what the state felt was faulty language in the deed for the property.

Councilmember Linda Elderkin (pictured, left) was the person who pushed this agenda item, citing her worries about the city's future financial situation and the need to have that extra million in reserve. Councilmember Yao, however, pointed out that the financing fees for the bonds Elderkin was proposing amounted to $75,000. As Yao rightly asked, would you pay 7.5% in financing fees on a home loan? Additionally, the city would have been facing much higher interest rate payments on those bonds than they did when they bought the Pasture in 2007 because of the deterioration in the municipal bond market.Even Councilmember

Sam Pedroza seemed to understand that the ride on the bonded debt gravy train is over for now, especially if the city plans on asking voters in the future for $25 million or more in bonds for a police station. Pedroza said, "I get accused of saying, 'I never met a tax I didn't like.' It [Elderkin's bond proposal] looks enticing. The cookie jar's right there." And yet, in the end Pedroza voted against going for the $1 million bond.

After the vote, Councilmember Elderkin warned, "Wait until we've gotten to where there's no money left in the General Fund. Remember your vote." Perhaps Elderkin and the others, instead of looking to find more money, might try living within their means for a change. If they and past councils had done so in the first place, they wouldn't be in such dire fiscal straits now.


TROLLEY ON TRACK FOR FOUNDATION GIG

The other issue of the day was the request by the Claremont Community Foundation - the Claremont 400's charity arm - to use the Claremont Trolley for a fundraiser. The CCF wants to use the Trolley to bus people around to different historical sites in town. They plan on doing two of these tours with about 20 people per tour.

CCF Executive Director Nickie Cleaves (pictured, right) was on hand at the Council meeting Tuesday to lobby for the proposal. Cleaves said there was extra urgency because the CCF booklet advertising the event in question was at the printer's, and the event was listed in the copy.

This was a real tactical error by Cleaves and the 400, by the way. It illustrates perfectly how official Claremont decisions are supposed to work: an event gets dreamed up by former Mayor Judy Wright and is supposed to be approved without any real discussion by the Council. It's just assumed that the item will automatically pass. So much for the public process. It shows how the 400 will intentionally create a false sense of urgency to get their way: "The brochure is at the printer's. It's too late to make a change. We must pass this. If you don't vote for this important charity event, you are a heartless monster."

Two problems arose. The first, mentioned by Councilmember Yao, was the lack of any procedure for giving city resources over to private organizations. For all her talk about caring about "the process," Councilmember Elderkin, who supported lending out the trolley, conveniently ignored the fact that there was NO process at all in place here. It was completely arbitrary, which is how even things with set processes can go in Claremont anyway.

The second objection was the fact that because the trolley is garaged in a city facility funded with Federal Transit Authority grant money, the city risked getting that penalized for lending out the trolley for a private function. Apparently, federal policies restrict how municipal resources linked to federal transit funds can be used. Councilmember Corey Calaycay, who is Claremont's representative to the Foothill Transit Authority, raised this concern, citing the example of a project in Sierra Madre where similar concerns arose.

Oddly, the councilmembers (Taylor, Elderkin, and Pedroza) in favor of lending out the trolley were unconcerned with the possibility of getting penalized by the federal government. Because of the false urgency the CCF's Nickie Cleaves stirred up, the Councilmembers who favored the event did not even want to wait a week or two for an opinion from an attorney familiar with the laws governing federal transit funds (City Attorney Sonia Carvalho wisely acknowledged she didn't know enough about the subject).

In his tongue-tied way, Councilmember Pedroza (pictured, left) expressed his unconditional love for the proposal: "I feel it's a shame that we dwarf [sic] this because of a technicality." To which Mayor Taylor added with a scowl, "Say petty technicality."

Incidentally, where was the League of Women Voters on this issue? They send observers to every Council meeting, yet they will be inevitably silent on this issue. If it didn't involve the CCF, whose own governing board includes at least one League member, the LWV would have been up in arms about the lack of process and the potential risk of federal violations.

In any case, the item was approved on a 3-2 vote with Yao and Calaycay dissenting. It was unclear whether or not the vote was contingent upon the City getting a legal opinion on the issue of the federal transit funds.

City Council Meets Tonight - More Trolley Folly

The Claremont City Council meets again today for another of their secret, closed session meetings, beginning at 4:30pm at City Hall.

According to the closed session agenda, there are two topics on the Council's plate:

• A report on labor negotiations from City Manager Jeff Parker, Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos, and City Personnel Manager Shawna Urban.
  
  
  
• A report on ongoing litigation: L.A. County Civil Court case #BS 117971, Protect Our Neighborhoods v. City of Claremont.
  

The Council will convene in its regular session at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. The regular session agenda's fairly light, but we did note a few items of interest:

• The Council will consider doing away with the deferred compensation option for Councilmembers. Councilmembers are currently eligible for city health benefits. If they do not use those benefits, they can take that money ($914 per month) and put it into a deferred compensation account that's pretty much the same as a 401(k). It amounts to $10,968 a year, or nearly $44,000 for a four-year council term.
  
  The city will keep the health benefits option for Councilmembers who choose to take it. Peter Yao is the only person receiving the city-paid healthcare. The only person among the five councilmembers taking the deferred comp is Mayor Ellen Taylor, who certainly does not need the money.
  
  
  
• Johnson's Pasture is back in the news. You might recall that extra $1 million the City had to pay out of its General Fund reserve because some incorrect wording in the deed resulted in the state pulling a million-dollar grant. Now, the Council is going to consider floating additional bonds to reimburse itself the reserve money they had to spend.
  
  The Council has the discretion to issue more bonds if they choose, but we question the wisdom of doing so at this time. The money's already been paid out. Financing that $1 million just adds the expense of interest that will have to be paid out on the bonds, so we'd really just be penalizing future generations for the staff's mistake.
  
  Also, according to the staff report for this item, the interest the city would have to pay would be 1.06% higher than for the bonds they originally issued. This is because the market for California municipal bonds has declined greatly in the past year.
  
  All in all, not a good idea. It's a bit like refinancing your home's equity. It's just going to end up costing you more in financing charges in the end. The fact that staff made no recommendation in their report indicates no one on that end thinks this sort of unnecessary refinancing makes for good policy.
  
  Whose idea was it, anyway?
  
  
  
• The Council will also be asked to donate the use of the Claremont Trolley for a March 22nd fundraiser for the Claremont Community Foundation.
  
  One hardly knows where to start here. The trolley, which you can see making its slow, lonely circuit through the Claremont Village Thursdays through Saturdays, was a waste of $1.2 million that nearly anyone with a brain said would be a failure. (That is, everyone except former mayor Judy Wright and friends, who deemed this project essential to the welfare of our downtown businesses.)
  
  The person making the request for this private use of the publicly-funded trolley is none other than Judy Wright herself, through the Claremont Community Foundation. So, the Council will of course acquiesce to Judy's wishes and will give the trolley over to her for a day. Under Judy's proposal, the Trolley will be used in two two-hour Claremont Heritage-led tours of historic sites throughout the city.
  
  In a way it makes sense, repackaging the trolley from a transportation conveyance to a sightseeing one. The money raised would go a charity, and it would probably be a lot of fun. However, there's one problem: the trolley is funded by public transportation grants. The city was verging on fraud in the first place by using those funds for what they called an economic development project (the trolley was supposed to help create more foot traffic for downtown businesses).
  
  Now they're going even further and removing any pretense of a transportation-related mission for the poor trolley. Simply put, the City and Judy are taking public funds from outside agencies and shifting them to a private use. No matter how well-intended the cause, this sort of transfer of public money is wrong ethically because it puts the city in the position of choosing between good causes: you get the use of the resource, you don't. Also, it may wrong before the law as well because certain transporation grants specify that the money must have strictly public uses. That's why you don't see LA County MTA buses being used for things like American Cancer Society fundraisers, even if the buses are surplus ones sitting in a maintenance yard.
  
  The staff report also notes that the city has no policy for lending out the trolley for such an event. Does this mean that any group - the Girl Scouts, say - could request the use of the trolley on one of its off days? The Insider is planning a group outing to Disneyland. Can we take the trolley for a spin?
  
  The staff seems to see the lack of a policy as a clear problem. They pretty much say in their recommendation that the Council should approve this use before they set a policy in place for trolley use by outside groups.
  
  You can easily see why California is in a $41 billion hole. Imagine Claremont's and Judy's follies repeated across the state on every type of grant. Money intended for one use ends up funneled into other, unrelated things. It amounts to the worst sort of fraud. The City really ought to just pull the plug on the trolley and either give the transportation grant money back or use it for what it was intended: fixing potholes and repaving streets.
  
  

BELOW: Claremont Community Foundation
Executive Director Nickie Cleaves asks the
Claremont City Council if her friend Judy can have the keys to the trolley.

(Click to Enlarge)

Where Are They Now?

Those of you who were wondering what became of retired Claremont Police Chief Roy Brown will be glad to hear that he's doing just fine, having traded one college town for another on the opposite coast.

The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II reports in today's paper that Brown has been hired as an assistant police chief for New Haven, Connecticut. Brown, the article says, wasn't picked out of the blue. Former Pomona Police Chief James Lewis (not the Jim Lewis who used to be Claremont's Assistant to the City Manager), hired Brown.

The article also says that Lewis is trying to recruit Pomona Police Captain Ken Gillespie and gave some background on the eastern migration:

Lewis said he thought of Brown and Gillespie when he learned the open chief position needed a team to deal with community and policy issues, auditing and internal affairs.

The Inland Valley police migration to the East Coast comes after an August 2007 Police Executive Research Forum report described how to improve the New Haven Police Department.

A federal indictment in March 2007 of two New Haven narcotics police officers suspected of taking bribes from local bail bondsmen and stealing money at crime scenes led to that report.

The report reviewed organizational structure, narcotics enforcement and internal affairs investigations.

Pomona has about 172,000 people while New Haven has about 132,000, Lewis said. But Pomona has about 190 cops and New Haven roughly 500.

Pomona has more foot patrols while New Haven has officers assigned to a post.

Brown wasn't necessarily popular within the Claremont Police Department during his years here. You might recall that Brown came to Claremont from Eugene, Oregon, in the aftermath of the Irvin Landrum shooting in January, 1999.

In the midst of the subsequent blow-up caused by the former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard's handling of the situation, then-Claremont Police Chief Robert Moody retired (and later took a job with the law firm that defended the city in the civil suit brought by the Landrum family).

Brown wasn't Southard's first choice for the police chief position. We tend to forget that Southard first hired Thomas Scheidecker, a former LAPD officer, who at the time was working for the police in the city of Ripon, CA.

Southard quickly dumped Scheidecker after news of an LAPD scandal involving Schiedecker became public. A 2/6/00 LA Times article summed up the matter:

A key figure in the Los Angeles Police Department spying scandal of the 1980s has been named chief of the Claremont Police Department–a force that is beleaguered over a controversial shooting of a black motorist last year.

Thomas Scheidecker, 55, who was temporarily suspended for lying about and mishandling confidential intelligence documents while he worked for the LAPD, is scheduled to take the reins of the Claremont department on Valentine’s Day, after Chief Robert Moody’s retirement for personal reasons. For the last eight years, Scheidecker has been police chief of the small San Joaquin Valley town of Ripon, near Modesto.

As an LAPD lieutenant almost two decades ago, he served as custodian of records for the agency’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division, which was disbanded in 1983 after revelations that it was spying on law-abiding citizens, including civic leaders, judges, police commissioners, clergy and actors.

A police probe concluded that Scheidecker had kept classified information at his Westminster home and had made false and misleading statements to investigators as to what that data included.

Because some of the information in Scheidecker’s home came from military sources, he was also investigated by federal and state agencies. He was never charged with a crime but was suspended for 15 days.

Scheidecker is on vacation out of state and could not be reached for comment. Claremont officials said they were aware that he was somehow involved in the LAPD unit but had not known about his suspension or his specific role in the controversy.

“The focus of the interviews were his performance as police chief,” said city spokesman Mike Maxfield. “That’s what he’s being hired for. That’s not to say we skimmed over the rest of his career. We were aware of his work in the [LAPD] unit.”

Needless to say, Claremont and Southard dropped Scheidecker, who had given notice in Ripon, like a hot potato, leading to another lawsuit, this time by Scheidecker, against the City of Claremont. Brown was then picked as Claremont's police chief.

At the time all this was occurring, the City Council and Southard took on the look of the Richard Nixon White House circa 1973. You could almost see the stone walls rising around City Hall, complete with arrow-slitted guard towers. It was the peak of the Claremont 400, which had complete control of the City Council.

And at the same time it was the council's lowest point, with them daily defending positions that were so obviously undefendable. The city council meetings were packed with citizens and students protesting the council's handling of the Landrum shooting, and a good segment of the population calling for Southard to be fired.

The fact that the council ignored those calls and allowed Southard to stay on five more years, seemed proof to a good portion of the public that the council and their supporters were terribly out of touch with the rest of the public. Two councilmembers who were most supportive of Southard, Karen Rosenthal and Al Leiga, lost their re-election bids in 2003, and were replaced by Peter Yao and Jackie McHenry, both of whom ran as reformers.

It's always been our contention that the problems of Claremont and its city government were embodied by Glenn Southard but that the real heart of the dysfunction lay with those Claremonsters who still control influential groups like the board of Pilgrim Place, the Claremont Community Foundation, Claremont Heritage, and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

It's odd that all of those groups do good works, and we have no problems with the things they do as charities; however, it's their actions as the props to a form of municipal government that is close-minded, wasteful, and prone to crisis after crisis that we take exception with. It really has been a case-study in the corrupting power of small-town politics.

From those groups, the Claremonsters' new council and commission candidates will emerge - more Ellen Taylors, more Al Leigas, more Karen Rosenthals - and they will continue to try to take Claremont back to the days of 2000 when they controlled all five city council seats and when all hell was breaking loose.

The conscious effort by folks like Claremont Heritage president and former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright to erase the past and replace it with a sanitized, Disneyesque version of history ensures that we will be inevitably back again to deal with some other miscue, scandal, or crisis.

While it's job security for Insiders everywhere, it's also sad to see the same foolishness played out again and again.

A Reader Writes

A reader wrote us in response to Sunday's post about the Claremont Community Foundation's current Party Parade fundraising series:

I loved your post on the party scene (the Claremont 400 need no excuse to party with each other, but you are right, it is their official way of expiating their sins for the whole year) and have often wanted to participate. I get the brochure in the mail, look eagerly at all the fun I could be having and salivate at all the wonderful food that is promised to appear at some of the locations---- and then I look at the hosts.

My heart sinks when I see that all of them are hosted by people I would not want to spend half an hour with, never mind an evening. So, as a result, I have never been to one of their (probably works out for them, too) fetes.

The other thing is that if you look carefully at some of the charities to which they give the money they have raised at these parties, lo and behold at least one of them are on the board of directors of the recipient charities or organizations. Kind of incestuous, no? But keeping it in the family is what it is all about for the 400, n'est pas?

It is tough because the money goes to good causes, whether it's the Claremont Educational Foundation, the Friends of the Library, House of Ruth, the local Red Cross chapter, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Reading for the Blind & Dyslexic, Shoes that Fit, Uncommon Good, or any of a host of other local charities.

But to get really involved with these things locally, you have to deal with these folks and their inevitable cattiness and snobbery. Getting involved in Claremont is a little like going to a small town where the mayor's cousin owns the general store, his sister owns the local motel, a brother owns the only gas station, they all sit on the school board and run the local Red Cross.

Perhaps that's just the nature of such things, but it seems especially pronounced in Claremont, where a small group of socialites try to run everything from the charities to the chamber of commerce to the schools to city government. It's not their involvement we mind; rather, it's the way they systematically exclude a lot good people who may have much to offer but who think differently, who think outside the 400's self-imposed box. It's the exclusivity that operates to the detriment the greater community.

Better to donate time and money to the national organizations, if possible, or to volunteer on projects and avoid dealing with the folks at the top of the chain. They will take your money though, so you can always hold your nose and give. Eventually, the money helps someone in need.

Charity Fatigue

The Daily Bulletin's Susan Sproul has an article about the Claremont Community Foundation's (CCF)annual Party Parade, which is already underway.

The Party Parade is a sort of serial fundraising event, with various events hosted by different community members. The CCF began a dozen years ago and raises money that it doles out to various community organizations.

Mostly, the Party Parade is an excuse for the elites of Claremont to get together and do what they do best: socialize. Oh, and they do raise a little money, which they give back to charities run by mostly by themselves.

The Bulletin's Sproul puts a good spin on the festivities, though:

The Claremont Community Foundation is throwing a party - well, make that parties - and you're invited.

The foundation has hosted Party Parade for 12 years, and it has proved both effective and successful in raising needed donations and helping to establish friendships. Party Parade 2008 shouldn't be an exception.

Taking advantage of leap year, the fun actually got started Friday with a jewelry design get-together, but the busy schedule of events takes off in earnest tonight with a "retro-metro" dinner described as an "atomic era meal" served at a private hillside Claremont home. And the ball keeps rolling throughout the rest of this month with various parties scheduled. They are as diverse and interesting as the community supporting them.

Want proof? How about tours of several noted Inland Valley artists' homes, a dinner showcasing the talents of Spaggi's chef Henry Gonzales, a night of dancing with members of the National Championship Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Team or a sunrise stroll in Johnson's Pasture? There shouldn't be any excuse for not going to one of these delightful mini events.

The Claremont Community Foundation stands by its name, encouraging the community to get involved with raising money that ends up back in the community, according to Nickie Cleaves, executive director.

The CCF is one of those things that the Claremont 400 love to create - a non-profit that raises money for good causes, so that they can feed their egos. It's really confession for the non-Catholic, absolving the givers of guilt for all the bad things they've done over the years while at the same time getting together for an ego boosting good time.

You wonder, especially with a possible recession coming, if Claremonters will be cutting back on donations to our plethora of local charities: the CCF, Friends of the Library, House of Ruth, the RFB&D, Uncommon Good, to name a few.

The CCF's current board of directors describes itself thusly:

About Our Board

Our Board is broadly representative of our diverse community. Board members commit their time, talent and financial resources in service of their community. New Board members are nominated and elected by the current Board, serving 3-year terms, up to a maximum of 6 consecutive years. Board members are expected to attend monthly board meetings, along with a variety of committee meetings and community events.

Board of Directors, 2006-2007

Suzanne Hall, Chair - (Former Human Services Commission Chair)
Brenda Barham Hill, Vice Chair
Phil Hawkey, Vice Chair
Barry Ulrich, Secretary
Jack Miller, Treasurer
Opoku Acheampong
Marilyn Bidwell
Dawn Grimes
Tim Harrison
Bernadette Kendall
Al Leiga (Former Mayor, 3-Term Councilmember)
Sue Likens
Marshall Taylor (Husband of current Mayor Pro Tem Queen Ellen Taylor)

The CCF's Argus Commission is made up of former board members and includes many former councilmembers and city commissioners, including such Insider favorites as Glenn Southard, Randy Prout, Nick Quackenbos, Karen Rosenthal, Diann Ring, and Judy Wright.

Not all of the board and Argus Commissioners are what we'd consider hardcore Claremonsters, but you have to wonder how diverse the board can really be when they are self-selecting their successors. Sounds like more of that echo chamber effect that has dominated most aspects of our city government.

You can check out the upcoming events on the CCF's website. Sam and Julie Pedroza and Amy and Wade Mathieson host a "Rockin' Lobster" party March 22nd. Diann and Robert Ring host a "Quintessential France" dinner April 5th with Nick Quackenbos and others lending a hand. Those and many other events allow you to see many of the 400 in their native environments. Enjoy!