PD Contract Conflict Continues

The Daily Bulletin yesterday had an article by Wes Woods II about legal actions taken by the Claremont Police Officer Associations in response to the City's decision to unilaterally impose a one-year police contract that calls for Claremont public safety employees to pay 6-percent of their 9-percent CalPERS retirement contribution.

Up until the new contract was imposed, the City had paid the CPOA employees retirement contribution.  The City has argued that that payment is not fiscally sustainable.

The CPOA, through its attorney Dieter Dammeier, have taken a pretty hard negotiating stance.  The Bulletin article indicated that Dammeier has gone on a fishing expedition, making a court request for City documents:

An unfair labor practice charge was filed in late October with the state Public Employment Relations Board. The city has 30 days to respond to the filing.

Attorneys for the association also filed a writ of mandate in Pomona Superior Court requesting salary information for Claremont's city manager, assistant city manager, City Council members, retired members of the council and executives of city departments.

Both actions were filed "because we were treated differently than the rest of the city," said Dieter Dammeier, attorney for the Claremont Police Officers Association, referring to the Oct. 25 council decision.

We had a couple reactions to Dammeier's requests. First, if he's too lazy to check the City's online archives, why can't he ask the City Clerk for the documents like everyone else? To be fair, this seems to have started as a simple document request, but Dammeier's document demand sounds so broad that he would always be able to claim the City hadn't been forthcoming in its response.  That would then open the door to Dammeier's media play, first by filing for a writ of mandate in Superior Court, which would then generate the headlines Dammeier seeks.

Second, Dammeier's claim that the City is treating the CPOA differently from other city employees strikes us as awfully hypocritical. Dammeier's recent tactics have been to have the CPOA argue that they deserve to be treated differently because police duties are different than other employees.

The CPOA's complaint has been that they haven't been treated differently at all and that public safety employees deserve different types of contracts than every single other city employee. Seems like Dammeier's trying to have it both ways when it suits him best.

This is exactly why it's so hard to take sides in the current police contract negotiations. The City's played the same games in the past, arguing both sides of an argument depending on the situation. City? Dammeier? It's a match made in heaven.

Keeping Up Appearances

The Claremont Police Department must be right about budget cutbacks leading to increased crime in town.  The Daily Bulletin reports that a Claremont woman and her son were arrested for trafficking in cough syrup:

A Claremont woman and her son are among four defendants who have been charged with money laundering related to a pharmaceutical distribution ring.

Lucita Uy, 70, and her son Lemuel Libunao, 42, both of Claremont were allegedly part of a narcotics ring that sent the powerful cough syrup Promethazine from Southern California to Texas where it was often sold at a high markup, according to information from the United States Attorney's Office.

Why the huge markup? According to the federal indictment, promethazine is used as a narcotic that gives users "a similar 'high' as one would get from heroin," and the indictment lists some significant side effects from abusing the drug:

Promethazine is commonly known on the street as "syrup," purple syrup," "purple liquid," and/or "lean," the latter due to the abuser's difficulty in standing up straight. Promethazine is a central nervous depressant and when combined with alcohol can result in death or serious bodily injury.

The indictment accuses Uy and Libunao of setting up pharmacies in Long Beach, Santa Ana, and Buena Park. They are alleged to have then had those businesses purchase the one-point bottles of the cough syrup at wholesale prices of between $6.95 and $8.95. The same bottle has an LA street value of $150 to $200, the indictment said. In Houston, TX, the street value for that pint of syrup runs from $300 to $600.

The indictment alleges that starting in July, 2008, Uy spent over $1,100,000 to buy more than 97,000 pints of promethazine. The drug was then moved from California to Texas in at least 24 shipments. The indictment further states that Uy, Libunao, a person named Christopher Crawford, and other unnamed people took the proceeds from the Houston sales and deposited over $6.9 million in cash and another $2.7 million in money orders in various California bank accounts, including banks in Arcadia and Monrovia. The deposits were split up into increments of $10,000 or less to avoid triggering automatic reporting by the banks to federal authorities.

Here's the actual indictment (click on the small "S" in the lower left corner to enlarge):
Lucita Uy 2011 Indictment

The indictment also indicated that Uy and Libunao put their alleged drug profits into such assets as jewelry and real estate, including the August 17, 2007 purchase of a home in Claremont.

We wondered what sort of people the accused are, so we snooped around and found another federal indictment in 1998 for Lucita Uy in Texas.  That arrest was for accusations of an insurance fraud scheme involving a Houston medical business called Solid Medical Clinic and the law office of attorney named James Earl Conley.  The court records seem to indicate that Uy made a plea agreement and received probation, which ended in 2002.

Here's that indictment:
Lucita Uy 1998 TX Indict

Lemuel Libunao

Uy's son Lemuel Libunao didn't appear to have much in the way of a criminal history, at least in federal court.  In fact, he appears to be a sportsman and an artist.  Libunao's My Space page describes his love of golf with an apt analogy:

...my driver was hopeless. The more I tried to hit that prefect draw, the more prolific my slice became. The day was getting colder and colder. Light was becoming more fleeting. We had to rush to finish, and today was daylight saving time. I scored three over my goal. So what does this little story have to do with life? Everything is not what is always supposed to be.

 Click to Enlarge

 

Libunao is also a photographer and is listed on modelmayem.com.   His bio there says he was once a freelance photographer but, like many an aspiring artist, had to put aside his art in order to pursue a career:

I was a Freelance photographer for many years..I did a lot of glamour back then in the early 90's. I paid my dues in the Photography biz.

Then i got a degree and followed a career that was a lot more stable for me. It worked out great. I left my passion for a while to persue other career avenues.

Now that things are more settled, I am getting back in the photography game once more. This Time it is a passion not work.

The career, whatever it was, allowed Libunao to live a life of luxury in a home on New Hampshire Ave. in the far northeast corner of Claremont, just south of Mt. Baldy Rd. and within easy walking distance of Padua Park.

Here are some photos from Libunao's My Space page showing him enjoying the fruits of his labors:

All of which just goes to show that Claremonters lead very interesting lives, and we may just never be what we appear to be.

Their Fair Share - UPDATED*

 

Last Tuesday, the Claremont City Council voted 3-2 to impose a new, one-year contract on the Claremont Police Officers Association and the Claremont Police Management Association.  The vote came after the City was unable to reach any agreements with the two police organizations in recent contract negotiations.
 
The CPOA, which represents Claremont's rank-and-file public safety workers, was extremely vocal in the days leading up to last week's vote.  As we previously noted, the CPOA's attorney, Dieter Dammeier, deployed his political action committeee, COPFIRE, to issue a threat to Claremont City Councilman Corey Calaycay, warning him that they would target him in future elections if he didn't vote the CPOA's way.

You can review the video of the council meeting here.  The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II also had a write up of the meeting.

The City had been asking for the police to start paying their own retirement contributions with a three-year, phased-in system.  The City also offered a 1.5% cost of living adjustment.  The police associations didn't want to accept the City's terms unless they got a 3% COLA, twice what the City was offering.  The council then proposed imposing the new contract with its requirement that the police start paying two-thirds of their 9% salary contribution to their CalPERS retirement accounts.  (Currently, the City is picking up the entire 9%.)

Of the many arguments made by the CPOA at last Tuesday's council meeting, the one that really caught our interest went like this:  If you don't pay us what we want, your community's safety will suffer.  Underlying this sentiment is the idea that Claremont would lose good police officers to surrounding communities that are willing to pay their police higher salaries and better benefits.  The CPOA's justification for police deserving better compensation than other municipal employees is that police have a more dangerous job.  They put their lives on the line every night.

To this line of thinking, we say our police are already paid higher salaries commensurate with their greater responsibilities.   While we appreciate their good work, we also think they are already adequately compensated.  Further, the danger they place themselves in is relative.  The CPD and their negotiator Dieter Dammeier make it sound as if they're patrolling the streets of Kabul every night.   Let's face it, in terms of threat levels, Claremont is pretty light duty.   The Claremont Courier's Saturday Police Blotter is invariably filled with stories about domestic disputes and drunk-and-disorderly arrests, not gang shootouts.

Let's be honest, folks, Watts we ain't.

The CPOA claims its members would leave for other Dammeier cities, like La Verne or Azusa, because the compensation is better there.  We thought about this and then realized that in his remarks to the City Council, Dieter Dammeier let slip a factor we hadn't thought about before.  Dammeier told the council that he represents all of the police associations within 20 miles of Claremont.  He then said that the contract the council was considering would make it difficult for Claremont to compete for qualified police officer applicants.   This struck us as an admission by Dammeier that he controls what amounts to a labor cartel.  He gets to set prices in the form of salaries and benefits, and there really is no competition as long as Dammeier and his clients get their way.

What Dammeier really fears is a city such as a Claremont going against the grain and breaking Dammeier's hold on the local public safety labor market. That monopoly, though, really could use some busting.   In his remarks to the Claremont City Council last week, Dammeier mentioned Pomona's police, another department Dammeier represents.  The Bulletin covered Pomona's budget problems in an article yesterday, noting that the single biggest annual expense was personnel costs, of which the Pomona PD accounted for the lion's share:

When it comes to expenditures by category the largest was personnel which took up 48 percent of the general fund, followed by the city's fire contract which took up another 28 percent.

If the expenses are broken up by department the highest cost is the Police Department which had about $38 million in expenses and fire costs totaled about $24 million.

It's the sort of financial problems Pomona is contending with that Claremont seeks to avoid.  You'd like to think that CPD officers would want to help with that effort, but getting people to give up something to which they think they're entitled, like having the City pay the employees' share of their retirement contributions, is never easy.  

The Bulletin, by the way, also had an editorial last week that said that the sort of strong-arm tactics Dammeier has used in Claremont are wrong and that Claremont is correct in seeking to get the police employees to fund their own retirements.  The Bulletin pointed out that by all rights, these payments are something our public safety workers should have been making in the first place:

It's called the "employee contribution" for a reason - it's the part each employee is supposed to contribute toward his or her own pension. But back in headier economic days, most government bodies in California started paying not only the employer's contribution but the employee's as well. In some cases it was a matter of courting union political support, in some it came in lieu of a raise or a bigger raise.

Trouble is, the economy has tanked and tax revenues along with it. Cities are finding their pension contributions unsustainable, diverting money that might have gone to employee salaries and services for residents. Hence, prudent city councils are looking for employees to kick in the employee's contribution once again. It doesn't reduce pensions in any way, it just means employees contribute to their own eventual retirement while they're working in good jobs and can afford it.

* * * * *

That 3-2 council vote on the police contract was a peculiar one.  The two fiscal conservatives, Corey Calaycay and Opanyi Nasiali, voted against imposing the contract on the public safety employees, which on the face of it would seem to be a vote in support of Dammeier and the CPOA. 

The other three council members, Mayor Sam Pedroza, Mayor Pro Tem Larry Schroeder, and Joe Lyons, are all left-leaning and are generally supporters of public employee unions but all voted in favor of the imposition of the contract. 

We suppose this could be seen as a validation of Dammeier's intimidation tactic, but Calaycay and Nasiali both said they couldn't support the contract because it included that 1.5% COLA, something they were against. 

*UPDATED, 11/1/11, 7:20PM:  As the Claremont Courier's Beth Hartnett reports in today's paper, Calaycay's and Nasiali's main objection to the one-year police contract was that they felt the 9% CalPERS contribution should have been instituted all at once, rather than phased in.   

Additionally, Hartnett notes that the one of the things the CPD officers object to is having the 6% contribution instituted immediately as opposed to having the 9% phased in over three years, as was done with the City's other employee associations. (At 8%, the City's non-public safety employees' CalPERS contribution is slightly less than the police.)

The City's response is that because of timing of the imposed contract, splitting the 6% into two 3% increments would have meant that the next 3% increase would have been in nine months when the next fiscal year begins in July, 2012.  Hartnett reports that the City's negotiator, Richard Kreisler, argued that they accelerated the public safety employees' CalPERS phase-in because of the uncertainty the City faces with the CPD employee associations.  

* * * * *

Incidentally, we received an email from another reader who got one of those robocalls from the Claremont Police Officers Association made prior to last Tuesday night's council vote.  Our reader questioned whether or not the CPOA used CPD call data to get phone numbers for their robocalls:

DATE: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:47 PM

TO: Claremont Buzz

SUBJECT: Claremont Police Officers Association robocalls

Hello all,

Like another of your readers, I also got a robocall from the Claremont Police Officers Association. It was a voicemail message left on my cell phone on Monday, two days ago, urging me to show up at Tuesday's city council meeting to support the police department against further budget cuts.

Here's the odd thing: few people have my cell phone number. And it has a 541 area code. So I'm wondering how did the Claremont Police Officers Association get my number?

Could it be because on 14 October 2011, I used my cell phone to call the police department (to report a coyote citing)? And if so, who at the police department is passing on incoming telephone numbers to the Claremont Police Officers Association. And -- if that is what happened -- was it legal?

Best,

x

Claremont CA

It Takes a Thief

DET. BAYLISS

These are the exactly questions I've been trying to answer.

DET. PEMBLETON

Well you can try, but you never will.

BAYLISS

Why?

PEMBLETON

Why?...You don't think like a criminal.  You don't have a criminal mind.

- Homicide: Life on the Streets,
Season 1, Episode 2 (1993)

HARDBALL
 
The best detectives have, in their heart of hearts, at least a touch of larceny.  It's something they have to possess in order to be able to inhabit the criminal mind.  The difference is that they also have an ethical code that's absent in the criminals they hunt.

So maybe that same mentality is what makes an effective negotiator of Dieter Dammeier, the attorney representing the Claremont Police Officers Association (CPOA) in their ongoing contract talks with the City of Claremont. 

Of course, we have no idea what sort of officer Dammeier was before he started his law practice, back when he was employed by the Cypress Police Department.  We can only judge his public behavior now, behavior that of late strikes us as close to thuggery.

Wes Woods II reports in today's Daily Bulletin that an organization called the Committee of Police and Fire Associations Inspiring Responsible Elections (COPFIRE) recently sent Claremont City Councilmember Corey Calaycay a letter accusing him of failing make public safety (i.e., police salaries) a top priority.

The letter, a copy of which the Insider has obtained, stated:

You have been brought to our attention as someone we should actively oppose in future elections as a result of your failure to prioritize public safety in your position as a Claremont City Councilman. Specifically, we have been informed that under your watch, the number of sworn police officers working the streets of Claremont has been cut by 15%. Traffic Enforcement has been cut, the School Resource position has been reduced, the Investigations Division has been reduced to a point where there is no more active gang, graffiti or narcotics enforcement.

Judging from the tenor of the letter, Calaycay has really PO'd someone at COPFIRE. And who, exactly, are they? Apparently, they're a political action committee and are made up of representatives from various local police unions. COPFIRE's letterhead has a list of its board members, the first of whom is one Dieter Dammeier, who is listed as the PAC's "Fund Administrator."

Click to Enlarge

It's not too hard to figure out what's going on here. The CPOA and the City of Claremont have been deadlocked in contracted negotiations. For years, the city has paid the police officers' share of their CalPERS retirement contributions, 9% of the public safety employees' annual salary. As part of its ongoing efforts at ensuring fiscal responsibility, the City is now asking CPOA members to start paying that 9% themselves, as they should have been doing in the first place.

The City originally offered to have that change phased in over the next three years (3%, 3% and 3%). The other employee unions have already agreed to contracts with phased-in CalPERS payments. In the case of non-public safety employees it's 8% over three years.

The CPOA, led by Dammeier, have stated they will only accept the phased-in CalPERS payments if the City gives the police officers a 3% cost-of-living increase in their salaries, which would pretty much offset their CalPERS contributions. The City is offering 1.5% for cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for each of the next three years, something the city's other employee associations have already agreed to.

Because the two sides have been unable to reach an agreement, the City Council has announced that it will impose a one-year contract with 6% CalPERS contribution for the police. That matter is on the council's agenda for their Tuesday night meeting. Dammeier clearly thinks he can strong-arm the council by trying to intimidate Calaycay, though Dammeier denied that in the Bulletin article today, saying that the letter and its timing were unrelated to the upcoming meeting.

COPFIRE, incidentally, has no Claremont PD members. The letter in question was signed by Arcadia Police Detective Mike Hale, who is a COPFIRE board member. Dammeier and COPFIRE clearly don't have a very good understanding of Claremont, or at least of the people who vote in our municipal elections. In this town it's very bad form for an outsider to tell us what to do, especially when it comes to COPFIRE's sort of bullying.

Interestingly, none of the other four councilmembers received a COPFIRE letter.  Only Calaycay did. In today's Bulletin article, Dieter Dammeier responded to Woods' question about COPFIRE singling out Councilmember Calaycay:

Dammeier said Calaycay was targeted because he has run in the past for the Assembly.

But, that doesn't really account for Councilmember Joe Lyons, who himself sought a seat in the state legislature when he ran for the California State Senate in 2008. If the justification for an outside PAC like COPFIRE going after a councilmember is the concern about what they might do at state level, then Lyons should have received a COPFIRE threat. Yet he did not.

Here's the actual letter in question (it's public record, so you can get your own copy at City Hall, if you're interested):

Click to Enlarge

TOUGH TALK

Boss Dammeier, with
  an offer you can't refuse

Dammeier's tactics should come as no surprise. In February, we predicted Dammeier and the CPOA would pull something like this.  And Dammeier's website lays out Dieter's philosophy:

The association should be like a quiet giant in the position of, "do as I ask and don't piss me off." Depending on the circumstances surrounding the negotiations impasse, there are various tools available to an association to put political pressure on the decision makers.

In other works, walk tall and carry a big baton.

One of the arguments CPOA's members have made is that their work is different from that of other city employees, so they should receive different, better compensation.

Mayor Pro Tem Larry Schroeder, who says he wants to treat all employees fairly, took issue with the CPOA's reasoning and was quoted Claremont Courier on 10/8/11, saying:

"Employees are all paid according to their amount of responsibility, and certainly policemen are compensated for working holidays and different shifts," Mr. Schroeder said. "Being a former city employee myself, I understand that people get paid different wages, and I think policemen are fairly compensated for that."

The police have been been doing their best to refute Schroeder and have followed Dammeier's lead with scare tactics, claiming that they are overworked and underpaid. They claim, among other things, that the ranks of the CPD's street cops have been reduced 15%, implying that crime is on the rise and we are in perilous state. However, the police fail to mention that, in the long term, crime has generally been on the decline in most areas, not just Claremont. They also don't want the public to consider the possibility that the number of police was bloated in the first place, at least for a community of 35,000.

The police have also brought up things like the reductions in graffiti enforcement and gang unit staff, but they don't acknowledge such that gang activity in Claremont is extremely low. Similarly, they claim the auto theft task force has suffered because of the city's cutbacks, which is a lot of hogwash. Claremont doesn't have a separate auto theft task force. The LA County Sheriff's Office is in charge of coordinating the Taskforce for Regional Autotheft Prevention (TRAP), a multi-jurisdictional entity funded by vehicle license fees, and TRAP hasn't gone away at all.

Virtually every claim the CPOA and Dammeier have made has only one goal, a political one designed to get citizens to put pressure on the Claremont City Council to cave into CPOA's demands. Our bet is that they've greatly misjudged Claremonters and that they've overreached.

We'll find out Tuesday night how well Dammeier has read the political terrain. The City Council's regular session begins at 6:30 pm in the council chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village.  You can also watch it here.

We Stand Corrected

Our post last Friday generated this response from Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper (photo, right):

Date: Mon, March 21, 2011 7:11:16 AM
Subject: [ No Subject ]
From: Paul Cooper
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com

Hi Claremont Buzz,

A friend sent me the link to your most recent story on March 18, 2011. I thought I would share with you that the proposed communications tower project was presented at City Council, Police Commission and Community Services Commission meetings. We have discussed the project with Cable Airport management and they have no issues with the project. We have also submitted the project to the FAA and received a “No Hazard” certification. Following the council presentation, the tower project was also in the Courier and the Daily Bulletin The most recent agenda report is to simply update the new council on the project and its status. There’s been no attempt to “slip this one in.” If you have any questions about the project, I am always available.

Sincerely,


Paul


Paul Cooper
Chief of Police
Claremont Police Department
909-399-5401
pcooper@ci.claremont.ca.us

We noticed that Chief Cooper's concerns about clarifying the record must have extended to the City's public relations arm. Over the weekend there was a change in the City's online materials for the tower. When we originally looked on the City's website last Friday, this is what we saw:


This is what you see now:


So the City's information on the tower is much more helpful now than it was last week. However, we'd still like to see a link to the so-called "Initial Study". Among other things, apparently, this contains the deadline for public comment. Presumably it also contains a discussion of the height and how the initially-proposed 200-ft tower in Upland transformed into a 174-ft tower in Claremont.

We checked the City's records, and we were able to find the references Chief Cooper mentioned. Cooper made presentations regarding the tower to the City Council, the Police Commission, and the Community Services Commission. Searching the City's document archives when we were composing our original post didn't turn up the documents the Chief was able to point us to, so we took another look.

We were glad the Chief wrote us because, when we looked for the meetings he referred to, we were struck by how much all of it seemed to serve seemed to underscore our original concern about the City "slipping one in." For instance, the tower was originally slated to be located in the northeast corner of the City Yard on Monte Vista Ave. That placement, however, put the 174-foot tower in Upland and under the aegis of Upland's planning process, which didn't give the Chief and City Hall to opportunities to maneuver that having the tower on the Claremont side of the property did.

(It also reminded us that when Claremont originally built the building, at the end of the Glenn Southard regime, they built out past the city and county limits without getting the permission of Upland, which cause a minor row at the the time.)

Click to Enlarge

Chief Cooper mentioned the change in the tower's placement in his 2/10/11 report to the Community Services Commission:

The location of the tower was originally proposed in the far northeast corner of the city yards which is actually in the City of Upland. As staff worked with Upland staff, it became apparent that this project could not move through Upland's process in the timeline needed to meet the needs of the project and the grant. The tower was moved approximately 20' from its originally proposed site so that it is now located within Claremont while still being constructed in the far northeast corner of the facility. This will allow the management of the project to be handled within Claremont's process and staff has the ability to manage the timeline better.

The communications tower is on the agenda for tonight's City Council meeting, by the way. The Chief's report for the council lays out a timeline for the the tower's installation. Note the implied inevitability:

March 22 Report to council for FYI on project.
Agenda Published March 17. Report due March 14.

March 25 - April 19 Publish CEQA (21 days).

April 4 Bid Specs Completed.

April 19 Planning Commission Meeting. C U P approval. CEQA hearing and approval.
Agenda Published April 14. Report due April 11. Notice April 7. Appeal until May 2.
April 27 Architectural Commission Design Review.
Building design needed.
Agenda Published April 21. Report due April 18. Notice April 14.

April 4 Bid Specs Completed.

May 10 City Council approval to go to bid
Agenda Published May 5. Report due May 2.

May 24 Approval for bid if CEQA Appealed.
Agenda Published May 19. Report due May 16.

June 27 Open Bids.

July 12 Award Bid.
Agenda Published July 7. Report due July 5.

July/Auqust/Sept Build Project.

The Chief doesn't foresee any problems arising in the public process that might change his timeline, and there's real no need for him to worry. His certainty is guaranteed by the fact that he can shepherd the project through Claremont's rubber stamping commissions. We assume the commissioners, especially the Architectural Commissioners, are in line on this matter and no one will raise the objection, well, that the tower is buck-ugly as proposed, looking like a cross between a rocket gantry and a 1920s Signal Hill oil well tower, except taller than either.

As to the FAA, we note that there wasn't much public comment on this matter. For example, we didn't see the City or Chief Cooper circulate the materials they presented to the FAA. Incidentally, though the owners of Cable probably didn't realize when Chief Cooper apprised them of the tower plans, in the long term building the tower might be good not only for police communications, but for the anyone who might want the for airport's land for some other use like commercial development or even future expansion for the Claremont Colleges. Somewhere far down the road, the tower's existence will make it easier to argue that development has so crowded around airport that safety will become a concern.

And this is how Official Claremont uses the process to batter the uninitiated. In Claremont, there's never one meeting you can point to and say, "You must be there." If you showed up for, say, the Police Commission meeting last November 4th, you could have heard Chief Cooper talking to the commissioners about the proposed tower. If you raised an objection, however, you would have been told that this was really just an informational agenda item to address your concerns and that you would have your chance to air your concerns at a future meeting.

So you then you would have gone to the Community Services meeting on February 10th. You again raised your concerns, but would have been told there was no need to worry and that your concerns would be addressed at the City Council on March 22nd, or at a future Architectural Commission meeting. By the end of it, when you've had more than your fill of meetings, you'll be told that you should have had your concerns addressed earlier on when you had the opportunity and that the project had already been vetted by the city's commissions and by the City Council.

The unstated fact of the matter is that none of the meetings really mattered. It was all just window dressing. The idea for a trolley gets floated at someplace like a dinner party at former Mayor's Judy Wright's home, and the next thing you know, the project is a fait accompli.

Only after you've experienced the vaunted Claremont public process will you come to appreciate the machinery at work in our town. Only then can you truly call yourself a Claremonter.

The March of Progress

Click to Enlarge

Claremont takes pride in its inclusiveness, particularly when it comes to involving the public in major municipal decisions. At least, that's the town's self-image. So imagine our surprise when we we took a look at the City's website this morning and saw a very brief blurb, really just two links to PDF files without any accompanying explanatory text, with the headline, Police Communications Tower 3-17-11.

[Since we wrote this post, the City has modified it with the sort of missing text we were talking about -ed.]

The two links connected to documents with plans and Photoshopped images for a proposed 174-foot tower which, with drum antennae studding the latticed tower, looking like a picked over croquembouche.

The police department wants to put the tower in against the north wall of the City Yard at 1616 Monte Vista Ave., directly across from the Claremont Club's entrance. Odd that we missed the publicly noticed meetings on the communications tower. It simply appeared without the usual fanfare city officials use to launch their projects. It's as if they wanted to slip this one in and see if anyone would notice.

The plans were listed on the City's initial studies page, so the project would have to at least be analyzed to see whether or not it would need an Environmental Impact Report. Given the tower's height and its proximity to Cable Airport's Runway 6, the FAA might have a say. If the tower interferes with the airport's traffic, we suggest the City put it on one of its other properties, like City Hall. After all, our town fathers and mothers wouldn't want to stand in the way of progress, and they would also want our police department to have the best communications possible.

It occurred to us that the tower plans would have to be reviewed by the Architectural Commission as well, and they might not like some of the future views:

TOP: View from the Claremont Club entrance
BOTTOM: View from Shenandoah Dr. facing southeast

More on That NSM Rally

We're still trying to figure how the National Socialist Movement came to pick Claremont as the place to hold a rally targeting illegal immigrants. A blurb popped up on the City's website announcing that the City was aware of the NSM plans for the March 19 rally and march in Claremont on Foothill Blvd. and a cross street to be named later.

(We're also waiting for Bob Gerecke and the Concerned Claremont Citizens, opportunists that they are, to tell us which one of the incoming City Council members and his supporters are responsible for the NSM's visit. We're sure Gerecke would love to find some way to pin it on the Kenyan guy - damn immigrant! A word of caution: craziness can come from the Left as well as the Right.)

The NSM event on the 19th is scheduled to run from noon to 1:00pm. A counter demonstration is also scheduled. The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II has a report with more details on the event and its organizers.

The NSM website has a press release announcing the event. It makes reference to the group's marches to "Reclaim the Southwest." There's also an obnoxious video:



(It occurred to us while listening to the audio of the clip above that the words, with little change, could have been uttered by a 19th-Century North American Indigenous Person Activist bemoaning the coming of the European invaders. This then reminded us that the swastika had been a symbol generally of good things in native-American cultures--as well as many cultures around the world--until it was appropriated by the German National Socialists and took on the associations of hate, totalitarianism, and death. Our lead image is a memento of those somewhat more innocent times.)

Looks like the NSM wants to piggyback its own agenda onto anti-illegal immigration sentiments being pushed by other more mainstream groups. Watching the NSM members parading around in their brown shirts would be amusing except that the German NSM, wasn't taken too seriously when they were getting started. So before you start laughing too hard, remember folks, there but for the grace of God go we.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks these sorts of groups, has a dossier on the NSM. Turns out they have a chapter in Riverside, so it's not like they have to travel too far. Anyway, here's what the SPLC has to say about the NSM:

NSM ideology mirrors that of the original American Nazi Party. The group openly idolizes Adolf Hitler, described in NSM propaganda as, “Our Fuhrer, the beloved Holy Father of our age … a visionary in every respect.” NSM says only heterosexual “pure-blood whites” should be allowed U.S. citizenship and that all nonwhites should be deported, regardless of legal status. As [NSM leader Jeff] Schoep put it: “The Constitution was written by white men alone. Therefore, it was intended for whites alone.”

The NSM is probably best known for carefully staged protests, carried out in full-blown Nazi uniforms and swastika armbands, that have managed to win substantial news coverage for the group. The best example of the NSM’s provocative rallies came on Dec. 10, 2005, when the group made international news after a planned march through a black neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio, sparked rioting by residents and counter-protesters. The riots cost the city more than $336,000, though the NSM members escaped the violence and were not liable for any of the destruction. “The Negro beasts proved our point for us,” Schoep crowed after the rally....

The NSM has had its share of movement scandal. In July 2006, it was rocked by revelations that co-founder and chairman emeritus Cliff Herrington’s wife was the “High Priestess” of the Joy of Satan Ministry, and that her satanic church shared an address with the Tulsa, Okla., NSM chapter....

A growing number of the NSM’s protests have targeted immigrants recently. On June 19, 2010, NSM members J.T. Ready, Jeff Hall and about eight other individuals (some of whom were not NSM members) congregated in Arizona’s Vekol Valley. Hall described the goal of their operation as to “fight the [Mexican drug] cartels and reclaim the land.” Armed with pistols and high-powered rifles, the group led patrols through the desert and “secured” an abandoned building. They claimed to have apprehended three illegal immigrants attempting a border crossing, although this has not been independently confirmed.

We're wondering how much the CPD presence is going to cost, and can we send the bill to Jeff Schoep at the group's headquarters in Detroit?

City Council Meeting Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets this evening for their last session before the municipal election on March 8. The next time the council meets, it will be to have the three winning candidates sworn in on Tuesday, March 15.

The council will meet in the council chambers at 225 Second St. across from Saca's Mediterranean restaurant (you're welcome for the free product placement).

As always, you can watch the meeting here.

CLOSED SESSION

Tonight's council action starts with a closed session meeting beginning at 4pm. These closed session meetings typically start at around 5:15, so there may be some longer discussions involved in the three items on the closed session agenda.

The first agenda item involves undisclosed potential litigation. The second has to do with negotiations involving the Peppertree Square shopping center at the southeast corner of Indian Hill Blvd. and Arrow Hwy.

The last closed session item has to do with a lawsuit filed in Pomona Superior Court in June last year. We haven't had a chance to run down to the courthouse to review the suit, but the plaintiff is a dentist named Dan Sizemore. The case is a civil rights suit, and the defendants are the Claremont Police Department and several of its officers, the City of Claremont, and a Glendora marriage and family therapist named Ilissa Banhazi:

Case Number: KC058857
DR. DAN SIZEMORE, D.D.S. VS CITY OF CLAREMONT


Filing Date: 06/02/2010 Case Type: Civil Rights (General Jurisdiction) Status: Pending

Future Hearings

02/22/2011 at 08:30 am in department O at 400 Civic Center Plaza, Pomona, CA 91766 Conference-Case Management (M/STRIKE)

Parties

SIZEMORE D D.S. DR. DAN - Plaintiff
BARUCH JOEL W. ESQ. - Attorney for Plaintiff

CLAREMONT CITY OF - Defendant
CLAREMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF - Defendant
COSTA J. SERGEANT - Defendant
ABARCA C. OFFICER - Defendant
J. TING. OFFICER - Defendant
MEDRANO J. OFFICER - Defendant
GROSSBERG SCOTT J. - Attorney for Defendant

BANHAZI MFT. ILISSA - Defendant
CAUDILL O. BRANDT - Attorney for Defendant

REGULAR SESSION

Tonight's regular session convenes at 6:30pm. You can see the agenda here.

There's one ceremonial matter, recognition of Jerry Tessier of Arteco Partners, developer of the Claremont Packing House and the Padua Hills Theatre; Jonathan Tolkin of The Tolkin Group, developer of the Claremont Village Expansion; and Harry Wu, developer of the Old School House and Griswold's complex.

After public comment, the meeting moves on to the consent calendar, which includes a couple items of interest:

• The Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) for the City of Claremont and the Claremont Redevelopment Agency. This is something of particular interest this year thanks mostly to Governor Jerry Brown, who has proposed eliminating redevelopment agencies.
  
  
• A memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Claremont Management Association, unrepresented employees, and the Claremont Employees Association.
  
  The MOUs lock the city into agreements that the employees will start contributing their share of their CalPERS pension payments (a total of 8% per year). The employees will start contributing 2% each year until they reach 8%. CMA safety employees (police management) will end up contributing a total of 9%, which is supposed to be their contribution.
  
  Currently, the employees pay nothing with the City picking up the employees' share. This proposal came out in the Mayor's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability's recent report and has been a council campaign issue.
  
  Candidate Opanyi Nasiali, who was a dissenting vote on this matter while on the Mayor's committee, believes the employees' contributions shouldn't be graduated because the City can realize an immediate savings of $1.2 million per year if the employees simply switched to paying their entire contributions - something the city's waste management workers agreed to do in their contract last year.
  
  
• Authorizing NBS Corporation to prepare the City's annual Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) engineer's report. Always a point of contention, this. We'll undoubtedly have more on this once the report is released. We'll see if the LLD gets increased this year.
  
  
• Request for council approval of a land acquisition agreement for the 150-acre Cuevas Property, which will be added to the Claremont Wilderness Park. The purchase price, "not to exceed $4,850,000," was negotiated by the Trust for Public Land and will be paid through two grants of $2,425,000 each from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and from the state's Wildlife Conservation Board.
  

As to adminstrative items, the council will also receive and consider the City's Youth Sports Facilities Needs Assessment report, of which we'll try to have more at a later date.

There's also a police department staffing report that will disappoint some of the candidates and the police officers' union with it's assurances that the police department should be able to get along fine at its current staffing level. The police officers and some of their allies in the Claremont 400 have been working hard to put a scare into the public about understaffing as the City prepares to negotiate the CPD officers' contract.

Lastly, there's a recommendation from the Council's Ad Hoc Committee on Commission Appointments (council members Larry Schroeder and Corey Calaycay) to appoint residents Donna Lowe and Glen Hood II to the Community Services Commission.

Mailbag

We received this note in response to our post from a couple days ago regarding the Claremont Police Officers Association and their preparations for contract negotiations with the City (to be filed under "Prepping the Battlefield"):

DATE: Wed, February 16, 2011 1:26:41 PM
SUBJECT: "crime scenes"
TO: Claremont Buzz

Really smart post -- nice work connecting the dots, and a pleasure to see. I like Dieter Dammeier, and think highly of Claremont cops, and still thought you righteously nailed them to the wall on this one.

Yes, it's unfortunate that the CPD officers give residents the false choice of having to either support their contract demands or else fear for their collective safety. We don't doubt that our police work hard for their money, but let's face it, a Claremont officer doesn't face nearly the same daily challenges as, say, an officer working the LAPD's South Bureau. The CPOA needs to set aside its own selfish interests and start thinking about what sacrifices they can make rather than insisting that everyone else - their fellow non-safety employees, people who count on services provided by the City, and cash-strapped taxpayers - pay for the CPOA's every demand.

Driven by an Inland Empire unemployment rate of 13.9%, public sentiment is lurching away from support for the CPD officers refusal to pay their share of their CalPERS pension plans. Witness the Daily Bulletin's editorial on just this subject. The Bulletin noted that Claremont's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability came to the conclusion that the status quo for the City's budget is no longer viable.

That committee report, which was released last week, recommended a 1.5% hike in the City's Utility Users Tax, from the present 5.5% to 7%. The report also called for all city employees, including police officers, to start picking up their share of the costs of their pensions. The Bulletin agreed that the employees need to pay their fair pension shares, but they disagreed with the committee's proposal to increase the utility tax:

We admire the committee's thoroughness, looking at all sorts of possible tax and fee hikes before settling on the utility users tax as the most feasible and effective. But we do not favor raising the tax in this economic climate, nor did the three council candidates we have endorsed - Sam Pedroza, Opanyi Nasiali and Jay Pocock. We doubt that voters would approve the hike.

Nasiali, one of nine members of the economic sustainability committee, was the only one to oppose any utility tax hike. He was one of two who wanted employees to pay their own share of pension costs as quickly as possible, rather than phasing the change in over four years as the majority favored. (The employee share for public safety employees is 9percent of salary, for other employees 8percent.)

Requiring employees to pay their share ASAP - or perhaps, to reduce the discomfort somewhat by requiring them to pay 4percent in 2012-13 and the full amount from the next year on - is a reasonable course of action. (Glendora has imposed such a change on its employees; Claremont sanitation workers have already agreed to pay their own full amount.)

Government agencies started picking up employees' share of pension obligations as well as paying their own employer share when times were good - but times are no longer good and, besides, such largesse never was sustainable in the long term. Better for employees to pay that share than for mounting pension costs to require more and more layoffs and reductions in service over the years.

There are two items worth noting here. First, according to the Bulletin, incumbent Sam Pedroza is opposed to a utility tax hike. So it seems unfair and hypocritical to us that Pedroza supporters, some of whom are working behind the scenes to elect a slate consisting of Pedroza, Robin Haulman, and Joseph Lyons, are lambasting Nasiali and Pocock for being similarly opposed to raising the utility tax. Second, the same Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporters are spreading false rumors that Nasiali wants take away employee pensions. As the Bulletin piece stated, Nasiali is simply advocating that employees pick up the eight- or nine-percent that they are supposed to be paying in the first place. And, by the way, the city would continue to pick up its share of the employee pension payments.

So any talk of a wholesale elimination of the pensions is a lie, and we urge readers to get the name of any campaign volunteer who makes such statements, along with the name of the candidate they're working for. Better yet, ask for them to commit such statements to paper or to a recording, and forward those to us for a future post.

With election day only a few weeks away, the gloves are coming off those Claremont 400 fists, and it's up to the rest of us to hold them accountable for their silly games.

Crime Scenes

BURGLARY SPREE

From reading the local papers one would think we in Claremont are in the midst of a crime wave. The February 12 edition of the Claremont Courier carried an article about a Claremont Police Department neighborhood meeting organized by resident Jim Keith. The Courier didn't identify Keith fully - he and his wife Sue are firmly ensconced in the ranks of the Claremont 400, a/k/a the Pod People, and Sue holds the 400's seat on the Citrus College Board of Trustees.

The article, by Courier reporter Tony Krickl, said that Keith organized the meeting in response to a burglary at the Keiths' home in March 2010. It turned out that three other homes on the same street had been burglarized that same day. The article went on to say that, "According to police, nearly 30 burglaries have been reported in southwest Claremont since August."

And the upsurge in crime hasn't been confined to South Claremont. The same Courier edition had a police blotter item reporting that 17 vehicles were burglarized in North Claremont in the evening and morning hours of February 6-7.

So what gives? How is it that at a time when crime is supposed to be down nationwide, Claremont has become perp central?


A HISTORY LESSON

We're beginning to think that at least a portion of this crime wave may be due to the confluence of the March city council election and the City's upcoming negotiations with the Claremont Police Officers Association (CPOA). It certainly wouldn't be the first time Claremont employees inserted themselves into an election.

Back in 2005, Preserve Claremont supporters carried on a two-pronged attack to try to prevent current council person Corey Calaycay from being election. The first goal was to go after council person Jackie McHenry, who had been elected two years earlier as a reform candidate. The second was to tie Calaycay to McHenry with the use of full-page ads in the Courier, public comment at council meetings, and letters to the editors of the local newspapers.

Then-City Manager Glenn Southard (photo, right) and some of his senior staff, including Southard's Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, worked behind the scenes to feed information to the PCers, which they then used to publicly pressure McHenry, as well as Calaycay's campaign. In January, 2005, in the middle of the municipal election season, four of the City's employee unions submitted a joint, written complaint against McHenry, whom Southard had accused of harassing employees, thereby creating a hostile work environment. The employee complaint was, of course, run as an ad in the Courier.

It's important to note that all the details in the complaint were based on hearsay, and none were ever substantiated. Southard tried to have McHenry censured, but he backed off when it became clear that there was a chance of a real, independent investigation into the charges. Not coincidentally, two of the four employee unions that signed onto the joint complaint against McHenry happened to be in contract negotiations with Southard and the City.


TIMELY CRIME

So, given the community's fairly recent experience with city employees and election games, when we see some of the same PCers, including the now-retired Bridget Healy, stoking fears of a crime wave driven by staff reductions caused by budget constraints, we have to at least take a second look.

Healy's friend and supporter Barbara Musselman has been among those who've complained about current City Manager Jeff Parker's cuts, which she and former council member Sandy Baldonado claim were one of the driving reasons behind CPD Chief Paul Cooper's applying to Glendora for their top cop job.

A number of the same people and their present candidate of choice, Robin Haulman, have claimed that we've rolled back police staffing to 1984 levels. They neglect to tell us that crime has also rolled back, at least according to last year's CPD stats, and Part I crimes (violent crimes and property crimes) dropped 23% between 2008 and 2009. We'll have to wait until March to see what the 2010 crime numbers look like.

Healy, et. al., also don't like to tell us that, while police staffing has dropped to 1984 levels, the costs of safety employees' have soared, in part due to overly generous pension benefits (3% at 50) for which Healy and Baldonado are responsible.

All of this leaves City Manager Parker in an awkward negotiating position with regards to the CPOA's contract. Because of the state of the economy, as well as Sacramento threat to go after redevelopment agencies, the City has to watch every penny, and Parker will need to take a hard line with the police union. But, at the same time, he has people like Healy and Musselman undercutting him by trying to frighten residents with talk about the allegedly weakened state of Claremont's PD.

If the public pressure gets great enough and if Healy and Musselman get a majority on the council that they can control, then Parker will have to roll over for the police union.


ON ADVICE OF COUNSEL?

Claremont Police Officers Association counsel and former CPD officer Dieter Dammeier

And where, exactly, does the CPOA fit into all of these machinations?

More than one reader has pointed us to the website of the CPOA's counsel, Upland attorney and former CPD officer Dieter Dammeier, whose office is in Upland. Dammeier (photo, above) has apparently carved out a niche as a public safety employee contract negotiator.

Dammeier's website makes it clear that to have the strongest negotiating positions, police unions need to pursue a political strategy, as well as a kind of public relations program to shape (skew?) public perception about their safety. It's the sort of fear-based strategy that the Claremont 400 and their political arm, Preserve Claremont, love to use.

The attorney's website has posted a blueprint for dealing with stalled contract negotiations that states:

The association should be like a quiet giant in the position of, "do as I ask and don't piss me off." Depending on the circumstances surrounding the negotiations impasse, there are various tools available to an association to put political pressure on the decision makers.

Public Message

Always keep this in mind. The public could care less about your pay, medical coverage and pension plan. All they want to know is "what is in it for them." Any public positions or statements by the association should always keep that focus. The message should always be public safety first. You do not want wage increases for yourselves, but simply to attract better qualified candidates and to keep more experienced officers from leaving.

And:

Storm City Council - While an association is at impasse, no city council or governing board meeting should take place where members of your association and the public aren't present publicly chastising them for their lack of concern for public safety.

Here the CPOA have the advantage of being able to have civilians like Sandy Baldonado or Barbara Musselman do the chastising. Dammeier's negotiation training materials go on to say:

Press Conferences - Every high profile crime that takes place should result in the association's uproar at the governing body for not having enough officers on the street, which could have avoided the incident.

The website counsels police unions to take more time to complete their activities (this would generate concerns or complaints about lowered response times and reinforce concerns about public safety):

Work Slowdown - This involves informing your members to comply closely with Department policy and obey all speed limits. It also involves having members do thorough investigations, such as canvassing the entire neighborhood when taking a 459 report and asking for a back-up unit on most calls. Of course, exercising officer discretion in not issuing citations and making arrests is also encouraged.

And Dammeier tells his clients to get involved in local elections:

Campaigning - If any members of the governing body are up for election, the association should begin actively campaigning against them, again for their lack of concern over public safety. If you are in a non-election year, make political flyers which you can explain will be mailed out the following year during the election season.

In the present election, the CPOA is using its influence to try to undermine any candidate who might support an attempt by City Manager Parker to negotiate a CPOA contract that would rein in police salaries and pensions.

The website also says police employees should remember to get their message out, even if they have to pay for newspaper space:

Newspaper Ads - Again, keep the message focused on "public safety."

All of which places the CPOA's activities in proper perspective. The February 12 Courier also carried a small CPOA ad endorsing three city council candidates: Robin Haulman, Joseph Lyons, and Sam Pedroza:

Click on Image to Enlarge

We can't help but think how nice it would be if we got to hire our own bosses. Who wouldn't go for a deal like that? We rail against businesses that try to influence elections by supporting candidates, so how is this any different? In dealing with contract issues, we want council people who are impartial, not ones beholden to or afraid of their employees.

The ad raises some big conflict of interest concerns for the three chosen ones. When it comes down to the CPOA's contract negotiations later this year, if elected, would Haulman, Lyons and Pedroza place the CPOA's wants above the City's fiscal well-being?

But, as we say, none of this is new to Claremont. The lines between employer and employee get blurred constantly, and the Claremont 400 ideal is a kind of vertical integration of council and staff, hence their desire to have Bridget Healy on the council or to have a native Claremonter like Paul Cooper running the police department. They fail to see the need to have checks and balances built into the system and want staff, council and commissions to be one, with the result that dissenting voices and ideas are disregarded, poor decisions get made and staff are vulnerable to pressure from the 400.

The 400 wants us to forget the past, but one must look in the rear view mirror once in while to avoid the kind of costly and divisive crises we've had before.