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

Special Council Meetings Tonight

The Claremont City Council will hold not one but two special meetings this evening in the council chambers at 225 W. Second St. We didn't see tonight's sessions listed on the council's streaming video site, so you'll probably not be able to watch the proceedings on your computer.

[UPDATED 4:25PM: The link to streaming video for tonight's 6:30 workshop is now up; it will be available anytime to view and review]

The first matter is a closed session meeting at 5:00pm to discuss ongoing employee contract negotiations. The other item for consideration during the closed session is an unspecified matter involving "anticipated litigation." You can read the closed session agenda here.

At 6:30pm, the council will hold a special workshop to review the report from the Mayor's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability. Here's the workshop agenda, and, in case you missed it, here's the committee's report:

City Council Meeting Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm in the council chambers at 225 W. Second St. You can review the meeting agenda here.

You can also watch tonight's council meeting here.

Among the consent calendar items is the resignation of Community Services Commissioner Antonia Castro, who is moving out of the area. Also, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce is asking the council to approve June 30 as the date for the State of the City luncheon. The council participates by making a slide presentation to the chamber, so staff will need to get their PowerPoint juices flowing.

City Manager Jeff Parker has the City's mid-year budget report ready to go, and the good news is that revenues seem to be matching projections. So the budget will remain in the black for Fiscal Year 2010-11. For FY 2009-10, the City showed a budget surplus in excess of the expected $611,616, so the belt-tightening and staff reductions have paid off. Parker's report also says there's a great deal of uncertainty from on the state level because no one knows how Governor Jerry Brown's proposed elimination of redevelopment agencies will play out.

According to the report,a portion of the lost redevelopment funds would be offset by higher property tax revenues for the General Fund:

The impacts to the City of such an action by the State would be significant, with $728,696 in salary and benefit and administrative costs that would have to be funded through another revenue source or eliminated altogether. Similarly, the City's economic development activities, at a cost of $451,987, would also require an alternate funding source or face elimination. It should be noted that the elimination of the Redevelopment Agency would result in increased General Fund property tax revenue currently estimated at between $100,000 and $200,000 annually.

Here's the Parker's report:




City Manager Parker is also presenting the council with a 74-page report for the council on the final findings of the Mayor's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability:




Unlike the 2010-11 mid-year budget report, the committee's findings were rather grim. According to the report, even under the rosiest of revenue assumptions, Claremont's budget will be back in the red by FY 2011-12 and faces a $1.17 million budget deficit by FY 2015-16. Under the most pessimistic revenue projections, the report indicates the City's deficit will be as high as $3.98 million by FY 2015-16 (see the chart below):

Click on Image to Enlarge

The report calls the severe fiscal forecasts "the new normal" and counsels us to accept this reality. It also acknowledges the fact that any tax or fee increases need to balanced by spending cuts:

The Committee became convinced that to recommend only increased taxes and other burdens on the populace without recommending concomitant structural (reoccurring) reductions in City expenditures would be neither politically nor economically viable.

To cut to the chase, here are the committee's findings and recommendations:


So expect continued cutbacks in employee benefits, as well an increase in the city's Utility Users Tax (UUT). The committee is recommending a temporary, five-year increase. But, if you know Claremont's history (cue town historian Judy Wright), you know that any promises of having a sunset provision for the increase will turn into a permanent UUT hike.

Council Meets Tonight

One side effect of Claremont's budget problems is that they've used a good chunk of the Great Recession spending their way into a hole that, absent any additional federal stimulus money, will take a few years to recover from. That means no more big budget busting municipal projects (i.e., a new police station or a water company takeover). Fiscal responsibility, like it or not, has been imposed on Claremont.

Another effect (benefit?) of Claremont's financial woes is that City Council meetings are likely to be shorter because fewer big projects mean less time taken up by staff reports and comments, public comment, legal advice from City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, and the councilmembers' questions and opinions.

We'll see if tonight's City Council regular meeting runs under two hours. The council convenes at 5:15pm for a special closed session meeting that covers ongoing negotiations with the Claremont Police Management Association and the Claremont Police Officers Association.

The regular session begins at 6:30pm in the council chambers at 225 2nd St. in downtown Claremont. You can read the agenda here. If you're a glutton for punishment, or if the Lakers are getting walloped, you can subject yourself to a live feed of the meeting here.

On the council's plate tonight are:

• A hike in recreational user fees (to be expected given the tight budget). You'll pay a couple bucks more this year for a ticket to the City's 4th of July fireworks show, and things like swim programs will cost more. See the staff report for the new fee schedule.
  
  
• The annual engineer's report for the Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD). The report recommends an increase of 1.86%, mirroring the year-over-year rise in the consumer price index for Southern California as of March, 2010.
  
  For most single-family residences, this translates to an increase of $2.72, from $147.12 to $149.84. Properties with larger lots pay more. The increase is based on the consumer price index for Southern California.
  
  Those of you who've been around for a while know the history of the LLD. It's what really one of the first things got people thinking about how City Hall manages our finances.
  
  
• An update on the restoration Sycamore Canyon Park, which was damaged in the 2003 Grand Prix Fire. The park has been closed since that time. The City has secured $180,000 in grant funding, and will proceed with restoring the trail and picnic areas. The City will also remove non-native eucalyptus trees and plant sycamores and oaks. Work is expected to commence this coming fall and finish sometime next winter.
  
  
• A report on the traffic signal at Indian Hill Blvd. and 10th St. You'll recall there were several pedestrian accidents there before the City, bowing to pressure from the neighborhood, installed the signal last month.
  
  
• An update on the City's abandoned property ordinance. The staff report by Community Development Director Tony Witt for this item says there are currently 150 Claremont properties in some stage of foreclosure. The City has levied over $120,000 in fines under the ordinance, and around $22,000 has gone uncollected.

City Council Meeting

6:30 PM
225 W. 2nd St. - City Council Chamber
Claremont

Claremont Officials Spinning Tangled Webs

PRACTICING TO DECEIVE

Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker and Human Services Director Mercy Santoro did their bureaucratic best to rewrite history in their recent interviews with the Daily Bulletin. Parker and Santoro were quoted in yesterday's Bulletin in an article about the possibility of cuts in city staff and services being connected to the costs of the newly opened Padua Park.

Both Parker and Santoro put their spin on the story. Santoro was quoted in the article, saying that all the funding decisions for the park occurred before the City faced any real budget problems:

"We were not having drastic budget reductions until January 2009," Santoro said. "We were not faced with takeaways until well after. We were well into our project when we were faced with having to look at reducing our workforce."

Parker claimed in the Bulletin article that once the City Council awarded its contract for building Padua Park, the City's hands were tied because the cost of breaking the contract would have been $500,000:

"Theoretically, we could have said, `Gee, the economic downturn will not let us build the park.' And could we have gone back? ... I'm sure they would have said, `Sure. Do you want to pay me a half a million to walk away?' It doesn't make a lot of sense" to change the contract, Parker said.

Santoro also said the City had been planning the park for 19 years and seemed to claim, like Parker, that they could not postpone building the park. Santoro and Parker must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they were interviewed for the story, because none of their claims is supported by the record.


UNEXPLORED OPTIONS

We considered the points the Claremont officials made and then examined the record. Take Parker's claim of having to pay the contractor $500,000 to buy out the contract. We noted that Parker mentioned breaking the contract and ending the project while conveniently omitting other options. Parker himself had mentioned the idea of reworking the contract back in December, 2009, when the $850,000 grant for the park from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy was placed on hold in December, 2009, because the state had stopped selling the bonds needed to fund RMC grants.

The city council could have put the matter on hold until the RMC came through with the money the City was counting on for the park's construction. Parker indicated that the cost would have been less than $100,000. If the City could work out a deal like that in order to wait for the RMC's funds, as Parker seemed to think, they certainly could have worked out something with the contractor to place the matter on temporary hold until the City's deteriorating financial picture improved.


TIMELINE

As to Santoro's claims that the money for the park construction was allocated before the City realized the extent of their financial problems, a look at a timeline of Padua Park funding decisions along with events in the banking and housing crisis shows that there was plenty of time for the City to hold the project in abeyance and use the money for other things - like paying for employees' jobs.

We looked at two of the City's Padua Park funding decision points - the 10/9/07 decision to appropriate $1.6 million from the General Fund for the park's construction and the 9/23/08 decision to award a park construction contract and dip into the City's General Fund reserve to pay for the job. When you set those two dates, almost exactly one year apart, against the backdrop of the housing and banking crises, you can see that there were plenty of red flags warning the City to proceed with caution in its spending.

The housing market, on which the state and the City depend for property tax revenue, peaked in 2005, three years before the Padua Park contract was awarded. In early 2008, housing's decline was well on its way to a far off bottom. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that Parker was correct about being locked into the park construction contract, there was plenty of time before the City Council's 9/23/08 vote to give Mega Way, Inc. the contract to build the project. Here's a graph showing the Case-Shiller housing market index from mid-2006 to mid-2009 (we've overlaid the two Padua Park decision points):

(Click to Enlarge)

Background chart courtesy of Juan Toledo
and paper-money.blogspot.com/

The City had 350 days between the first arrow and the second to put an emergency hold on the project. At the City's 6/12/08 budget workshop, the staff's presentation said the City had a hiring freeze on and was reducing staff through attrition by not replacing employees who decided to leave. Staff also noted a decrease in sales tax revenues and the need to raise sanitation service fees - all signs that the revenues wouldn't cover expenditures.

The City was also having to deal with foreclosures in the spring of 2008. Empty, untended houses prompted the city to adopt an ordinance requiring owners of foreclosed properties (banks mostly) to properly maintain the houses they took over, and unemployment in California reached a 12-year high of 7.3% by July, 2008. Those were additional indicators that should have told us to expect even more mortgage defaults as well as declining sales tax revenue due to more people losing jobs.

Here is a timeline of the Padua Park decisions with some major and minor events in the Great Recession (in red):

• Early 2005 - housing market peaks, then begins its long decline.
  
  
• 10/9/07 - Council authorizes $2.4 million for Padua Park, including $1.6 million from the General Fund. Vote is 4-1 with Councilmember Calaycay voting "No."
  
  
• 4/8/08 - Federal Reserve brokers the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase and underwrites the purchase with a $29 billion loan.
  
  
• 4/30/08 - NYSE suspends trading of PFF Bancorp stock, one of the banks in which the City held its short-term savings accounts.
  
  
• 7/11/08 - Talk of a federal bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported in NY Times.
  
  FDIC takeover of IndyMac Bank.
  
  
• 8/28/08 - PFF announces shareholder meeting to vote on merger deal with Illinois-based FBOC, Inc.
  
  
• 9/8/08 - Government places Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship.
  
  
• 9/13 - 9/14/09 - Fed and US Treasury Dept. allow Lehman Bros. to fail.
  
  
• 9/16/08 - Fed bails out AIG with a $85 billion loan.
  
  
• 9/17/08 - Dow Jones Industrial Avg., already down over 3,000 points from its peak, declines 449.36 points - 4.1%.
  
  
• 9/23/08 - Council votes to award $2.4 million Padua Park construction contract to Mega Ways, Inc., in Pomona. City awaits announcement from RMC on $850,000 grant. Again, 4-1 with Councilmember Calaycay the sole "No" vote.
  
  Council also votes 4-1 to go forward with Padua Park's phase 1A, appropriated an additional $450,000 from the City's General Fund and $527,859 from the General Fund reserve.
  

So, you can see there were plenty of serious red flags ignored by Parker, Santoro, and the Claremont City Council, plenty of opportunities to not spend the $3.4 million or so appropriated for Padua Park's construction on 10/9/07 and 9/23/08. That last meeting occurred a week after the federal government allowed Lehman Bros. to fail and right at the very height of investor anxiety. All of this occurred at the very moment an already down stock market was preparing to take its own dizzying plunge.

City officials knew what was happening with the financial markets and knew those markets were unraveling in September, 2008. Yet, the City proceeded with awarding a contract for a project that could have easily been put on hold. Worse still, the City dipped into it's rainy day General Fund reserve at a time when they would need it most. The decision to go forward with the park's construction that September represented a total of $3.4 million that could have been used to balance the city's budget, which in turn would have allowed the city to avoid the really big cuts in staff and service.

The City certainly has no control over the financial markets or housing and employment figures, but it does have a responsibility for conservative spending in times of crisis. It's just incredibly sad to see the City dig itself into a very avoidable fiscal hole, and it's even sadder to see city officials, elected and paid, refuse to take ownership of their poor decisions.

Around Town

AND THE WINNERS ARE...

Claremont's Architectural Commission announced the winners of the City's Excellence in Design Awards. Six of the seven winning designs were on or affiliated with the Claremont Colleges. The City's website listed the award winners:

Winners of 2009 Excellence in Design Award Announced (May 12, 2010)

The Claremont Architectural Commission has announced the winners of the 29th Annual "Excellence in Design Awards," a program designed to recognize recently completed projects that best reflect the City's standards of design excellence. Seven projects have earned awards in the categories of New Construction, Renovation, Addition, Sustainable Landscaping, and Restorative Landscaping.

The Architectural Commission will formally recognize the award winners at its meeting on Wednesday, June 9, 2010. The meeting will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Council Chamber, 225 W. Second Street. The public is invited to attend.

The Winners are:
- Claremont McKenna College - Biszantz Family Tennis Center
- 601 E. Foothill Boulevard Commercial Building Claremont University Consortium - - Honnold Library
- Scripps College - Sicilian Court
- McDermott Building
- CGU Residence
- Shafer Residence

• Read the press release (Adobe Acrobat, 27KB)

CITY YARD SALE TOMORROW

Packrats all over Claremont are gearing up for a buying spree tomorrow at the annual City Yard Sale. In a sign of the fiscal times, the City is no longer hosting the event. Instead, the Claremont High School Softball Boosters will be in charge of the annual community yard sale in Cahuilla Park. The yard sale begins at 8am.

Citywide Yard Sale
May 15, 2010

Please note the change in this event!

This event will now be offered by the Claremont High School Softball Boosters and will no longer be offered by the City of Claremont. The 2010 event will take place from 8 am to 11 am at Cahuilla Park 1775 N. Indian Hill Blvd. (corner of Indian Hill and Scripps Ave). For more information please contact the Claremont High School Boosters at (909) 450-1730.

WILDERNESS PARK CLOSED NEXT WEEK

City Manager Jeff Parker's weekly report informs us that the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park will be closed next Monday through Wednesday for what has become an annual training exercise.

If you're curious to see where the exercise will take place, you can see the grove L.A. County Fire has worn into the hills on the west side of Thompson Creek. Rather than changing the area they practice in, L.A. County Fire has used the exact same area each time for their exercise. Every year, the firefighters use a trail that they created by tromping around the hillsides, and all that activity, together with erosion, has resulted an unintended, permanent feature.

This was Jeff Parker's blurb on the subject:

WILDERNESS PARK FIRE TRAINING EXERCISE

On May 17, 18 and 19, the Los Angeles County Fire Department is conducting its annual wildfire training exercise in the City of Claremont Wilderness Park. This exercise will begin at 8:00 AM and conclude at 1:00 PM each day. During this time, the Claremont Wilderness Park will be closed. Mills Avenue north of Mt. Baldy Road will also be closed, except to residents.

MAY BUDGET WORKSHOP

Claremont will hold another budget workshop on Saturday, May 22 in the City Council chambers at 225 W. Second St. The workshop runs from 1pm to 4pm, and the public is welcome and encouraged to attend. This is your chance to take partial ownership of your community's financial decisions. Here's the info from the City:

May 22 Budget Workshop (Mar 25, 2010)

The City Council has scheduled a Budget Workshop on May 22 from 1pm to 4pm to address the budget shortfall in 2011-12 Fiscal Year. The City Council approved staff recommendations for staff and program reductions for fiscal year 2010-11 resulting in a reduction of $1,318,727 in expenditures. In fiscal year 2011-12, staff has projected a $750,000 shortfall which is dependent on several undecided factors. These factors include the outcome of the State Redevelopment lawsuit, negotiations with labor unions, and the California State budget. At the late May workshop, staff will give an update on these factors, and provide additional reduction recommendations if necessary.

In case you were thinking state and local finances were going to be in better shape this year, think again. The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert had this budget news today:

May 14, 2010

AM Alert: April shortfalls bring May...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will release his revised spending proposal for the 2010-2011 fiscal year today.

The outlook? Not so good. Here's what we know so far:

• Cash commitments from federal officials have amounted to about $3 billion -- far less than the $6.9 billion in federal aid Schwarzenegger counted on in his January proposal.
• Last month's drop in personal income tax revenues ruined any chance of a "May surprise" revise -- the state ended April about $1.3 billion short of revenue projections.
• The governor's office has warned of "absolutely terrible cuts," including to social services programs.
• Democrats say they want "everything on the table," including tax increases to close the gap. Republican leaders and Schwarzenegger say the topic of taxes is a non-starter.

The bottom line: Get ready for another long budget fight.

Bee colleague Kevin Yamamura reports today that one proposal expected to be included in today's revision would revive a plan to house some 15,000 nonviolent felons in county jails instead of state prisons. Read more on that here.

The big rollout of the governor's proposal, set for 1 p.m. at the Secretary of State building, will be broadcast live here.

Another Year Older and Deeper in Debt

Local governments around California let out a collective groan last week when Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly issued a ruling that supported the state's right to take $2 billion in redevelopment funds from redevelopment agencies across the state over the next two fiscal years.

The state, as you know, needs the money to help balance its $18 billion budget deficit. It seems to us that we were in just about the same place this time last year. The plan is for the state to take $1.7 billion for 2009-10 and $350 million for 2010-11. The money, legislators say, is supposed to go to local schools, which have their own problem with the state withholding money.

The first $1.7 billion payment was due yesterday. Monday's Daily Bulletin had an article about the state's latest money shift. The article described the impact of the redevelopment money grab on Inland Empire cities. Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker told the Bulletin that at least one Claremont Redevelopment Agency job will be eliminated because of the money transfer:

The Claremont redevelopment agency takes in about $3.8 million in property taxes, but has to pass along $1.3 million to other local agencies or into its low-income housing fund. Of the remaining $2.5 million, half goes to pay for debt incurred for past projects.

That leaves $1.25 million, with the state next week taking $1.19 million.

"It basically takes everything from that one year," Claremont City Manger Jeff Parker said.

That means Claremont will lay off its only full-time employee focused solely on economic development.

Claremont's City Hall has resigned itself to coughing up that $1.19 million Parker alluded to. The City's website has this news blurb:

Claremont Will Pay State Redevelopment Funds (May 6, 2010)

On Tuesday, May 4, 2010, the City was notified of the decision in the CRA lawsuit against the State of California. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly upheld AB X4 26, the state budget bill passed in July 2009 as part of the 2009-10 state budget that requires redevelopment agencies statewide to transfer $2.05 billion in local redevelopment funds over the next two years.Anticipating this decision, the City of Claremont put aside $1.2 million and is prepared to make the payment by the May 10 deadline.

Advocates of smaller government should be happy. Because of Sacramento's financial ineptitude, along with the refusal of state legislators to come up with reality-based methods for balancing the state's budget, every level of California government will have to enact even more austerity measures in the coming year. Those cuts will likely include such things as releasing older prisoners to reduce the state's prison costs and even taking a look at reforming public pensions.

Anti-tax groups won't be pleased, though, with the revenue side of the budget equation. Along with more cuts in services, the state will have to find replacement income to help reduce its deficit. Californians will soon have a clear picture of the exact size of that deficit when Governor Schwarzenegger's May budget revision (the "budget revise") is released.

The state's deficit is almost certainly to increase when the May revise comes out. Last week, the LA Times reported that the state's tax revenues were down 30% year-over-year. That translates to $3 billion, so the hard times are likely to continue a while more.

Strike Up the Band

The verbified nouns were flying freely yesterday morning when the Claremont City Council held a special meeting to "dialogue" their budget problems.

Years of foolish spending on things like overly generous employee benefits have finally caught up with the City in the form of a projected $2.7 million in deficits over the next two fiscal years. As we wrote earlier, the city's staff has come up with a variety of layoffs, cuts in programs and services, and borrowing from Claremont's General Fund Reserve to balance the budget.

As the City's website reports, the City Council approved staff recommendations to cut over $1.3 million from the FY 2010-11. The council deferred dealing with the FY 2011-12 budget until the end of May, when they will hold another special budget meeting:

Council Directs Staff To Bring Back Recommendations For Further Reductions

The City Council directed staff to schedule another Budget Workshop in late May to address the budget shortfall in 2011-12 Fiscal Year. The City Council approved staff recommendations for staff and program reductions for fiscal year 2010-11 resulting in a reduction of $1,318,727 in expenditures. In fiscal year 2011-12, staff has projected a $750,000 shortfall which is dependent on several undecided factors. These factors include the outcome of the State Redevelopment lawsuit, negotiations with labor unions, and the California State budget. At the late May workshop, staff will give an update on these factors, and provide additional reduction recommendations if neccessary.

• View Budget Workshop Packet (Adobe Acrobat, 567KB)

It's not all bad news, though. The city is still planning on spending thousands on a gala grand opening for Claremont's new multi-million dollar Padua Ave. Sports Park on April 24. As the City's financial situation heaves its aft end skyward just before taking that grand dive to the bottom, think of the April event as the equivalent of the Titanic's band bravely playing "Nearer My God to Thee" for its earthly farewell.

Party on, Claremont!

Click on Image to Enlarge

Blood on the Floor

We don't have a lot of time for this post, as there is a rumor our job is about to be eliminated. However you may want to take note of the special City Council meeting tomorrow, Saturday morning, March 27, 8:00 a.m., at City Council chambers on Second Street.

Council will hear City Manager Jeff Parker discuss his approach to stanch the flow of money out of City Hall, to the tune of projected deficits of $1.6 million in 2010-2011 and $1.1 million in 2011-2012 if nothing is done.

He's proposing an array of job eliminations in his own administrative staff ($217K), Community Development ($619K), Police ($300K), Human Services ($248K), and Community Services, ($235K). When the dust settles he plans on addressing the remaining million-dollar two-year deficit by a combination of fancy footwork ($235K) and $750K from the general fund reserves.

See the staff report here.

The table outlining staff reductions is reproduced below.

click on image to enlarge

Be sure to attend Saturday's morose meeting.

Coming Attractions

A glance at the ol' community calendar (really old community, really old calendar) tells us of some upcoming events:

CITY STUFF

Claremont Human Services Director Mercedes Santoro (Mercy to her Claremont 400 friends) honors her bureaucratic fiefdom with Claremont Night at the California Reign Saturday night, the city's website says:

Claremont Night at the Ontario Reign Game March 6

The City of Claremont and the Ontario Reign Hockey Team are hosting Claremont Night at the Citizen's Bank Arena on Saturday, March 6, 2010. Join Claremont fans as the Ontario Reign take on the Las Vegas Wranglers starting at 7:00pm Proceeds from the ticket sales will be used to support park improvements for Claremont's youth sports organizations.

The City of Claremont's parks and fields are used by more than 3,700 youth each year in organized sports groups. By providing quality sports facilities, the City hopes to encourage the community's youth to engage in healthy behaviors. The benefits of youth sports are numerous and include a reduction in obesity, self esteem building, a sense of teamwork, and improved physical development.

Tickets to the Ontario Reign game can be purchased individually are at a discounted rate for groups. Tickets are available in the upper or lower levels of the arena and range from $12-$20 for adults and $10-$15 for children. To purchase tickets, please contact the Human Services Department at (909) 399-5490. This discounted ticket price offer is not available at the Arena Box Office or TicketMaster.

The Citizen's Bank Arena is located at 4000 E. Ontario Center Parkway, CA 91764.

ANGEL'S FLIGHT

Fans of the angel in Claremont's Mallows Park, located in at the northeast corner of Indian Hill Blvd. and Harrison Ave., will want to weigh in on whether or not the angel, Ambrosia, should be moved. Again, the city website speaks:

Mallows Park Angel Feedback

The City is considering moving Ambrosia, the angel located at Mallows Park on Indian Hill Blvd.It is one of the City's public art pieces, originally located on the south side of the park. The City is seeking input from the surrounding neighborhood on if they would like it to remain at the park or if they would like to see it moved to a different location. Please contact Francine Baker, Arts Coordinator at (909) 399-5391.

• E-mail Francine Baker, Arts Coordinator

COUNCIL BUDGET MEETING

The Claremont City Council is having a budget workshop this Saturday, March 6, from 12pm to 5pm in the council chambers at 225 Second Street.


ATHENAEUM SPEAKERS

If you want your thoughts provoked, check out the upcoming speakers at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College. The lectures begin at 6:45pm, except for the one tomorrow, which starts at noon.

The Athenaeum is located at 385 E. 8th St., and the lectures are free and open to the public. You can get more information by calling (909) 621-8244. You can also check their website. Here are the speakers for the next couple weeks:

Thursday, March 4	Larry Diamond, professor by courtesy of political science and sociology; senior fellow, Hoover Institution; Stanford University; author, The Spirit to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (2008) and Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to bring Democracy to Iraq (2006); "Asian Values and the Future of Democracy in Asia"
Friday, March 5	Peter Bossaerts, William D. Hacker professor of economics and management, California Institute of Technology; author, The Paradox of Asset Planning (2002) and Lecture Notes in Corporate Finance (2001); "What Decision Neuroscience Teaches Us about Financial Decision Making" (12:00 p.m.)
Monday, March 8	Ian Frazier, author, Gone to New York: Adventures in the City (2005) and On the Rez (2000) and Jamaica Kincaid, Josephine Olp Weeks Chair and Professor of Literature, CMC; author, Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas (2005) and The Autobiography of My Mother (1996); "Ian Frazier and Jamaica Kincaid in Dialogue"
Tuesday, March 9	Abdourahman Waberi, visiting professor of literature, CMC; author, The Land Without Shadows (2005) and In the United States of Africa (2009); "A Nomadic Soul"
Wednesday, March 10	Joanna Strober, senior managing director of private equity, Sterling Stamos; co-author, Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All, and Why It's Great for Your Marriage, Your Career, Your Kids,... and You (2009); "Getting to 50/50"

Around Claremont

The city of Claremont is holding a couple more public gatherings today and tomorrow, one much more festive than the other.

ONE MORE BUDGET WORKSHOP

The first, beginning tonight at 7pm, is the City Council/Commission Budget Workshop. If you're free, go on over to the Padua Room of the Alexander Hughes Community Center and check it out. It should be interesting to hear the our elected and appointed officials discussing how we should deal with a sour economy, a local sales tax base overly dependent on Claremont Toyota, possible declines in property tax revenue, an overly generous and potentially budget-breaking CalPERS city employee pension plan, and more. (On that last point, don't expect too much frank talk. The meeting is, after all, being coordinated by those same city employees.)

Also, don't forget to take the budget survey posted on the City website. If you haven't attended one of the workshops, it's your chance to have a say in the municipal budget process. We recommending first going through the budget presentation that's also posted to educate yourself on where the money comes from and how its allocated.

Council/Commissioner Budget Workshop

7:00 - 9:00 PM
1700 Danbury Rd.
Hughes Community Center, Padua Room
Claremont

NINETY-SOMETHINGS PARTY IT UP

On a much lighter note, if you're 90 or older, the City is having it's annual birthday party tomorrow afternoon in your honor. The festivities start at 2pm, again in the Alexander Hughes Center:

90 + Birthday Party

2:00 - 4:00 PM
Alexander Hughes Community Center
1700 Danbury Rd.
Claremont, 91711
(909) 399-5488

Calling all individuals 90 years and older! Join us for entertainment and cupcakes in your honor. Special guests of the birthday honorees are $2, space is limited; reservations and prepayment are required.

CATCH PIZZA-N-SUCH ON NBC

Tony Krickl tells us that, if you missed it, you can catch the NBC Today Show bit that visited Pizza-N-Such in the Claremont Village. The feature, which aired February 10, highlighted something called "menu engineering" - the way of using human behavior to design menus to boost sales. Krickl writes on his COURIER City Beat blog:

Film crews from the show visited the Village restaurant in January to look at their new menu design and interview "menu engineer" Gregg Rapp. Pizza 'N Such owners Mike and Sue Verbal and their daughter Laura took a crash course from Rapp to help beef up their menu.

Here's the video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Local Accountability

TIGHT MONEY

With the city of Claremont and the Claremont Unified School District both facing even more budget cutting, both agencies are reaching out to the community for help in solving their money problems. Although the City and the CUSD are pursuing similar strategies, their goals are very different.


DESPERATELY SEEKING OPINIONS

The City seems to have moved on a little from its Glenn Southard days and is actually trying to solicit real opinions that it will try to incorporate into its decisions. Claremont held the first of two community budget workshops last week, and the second is scheduled for tomorrow night, February 16, from 7-9pm in the Padua Room of the Alexander Hughes Community Center at 1700 Danbury Rd.

The City has also posted its Powerpoint budget presentation along with an online survey that will be used to determine budgetary priorities. The survey needs to be completed before Monday, February 22, if you want your responses to be included in the budget discussion.

Tony Krickl reported on last week's budget workshop in Saturday's Claremont Courier (sorry, no link available):

Residents were asked to provide their opinions on the most deserving programs and projects for the city's revenues. Some of the top priorities identified at the meeting include fiscal responsibility, public safety, high building standards and sustainability.

But city officials warn big expense projects on the scale of Padua Park are likely off the table in the near future. "We don't have a lot of extra money lying around to do big capital projects," City Manager Jeff Parker said.

The article also indicated that city officials were surprised by the severity of the recession, and had to deal with a General Fund (the portion of the budget that is funded by things like sales and property taxes) that in the past year was reduced from $22 million to $20 million. In addition, as you probably know, the city has had to cut back on services and reduce the number of employees by almost 15 percent.

City Manager Parker also said in the Courier article that the City could lose between $50,000 and $100,000 in sale tax revenue if Claremont Toyota's sales suffer from any backlash to Toyota's problems with accelerator and brake controls on many of its models.

The biggest surprise to us is that city officials didn't foresee any of these financial problems and went ahead with a number of costly projects. For example, the City spent about $2.6 million building the aforementioned scaled-down version of Padua Park, and borrowed $527,000 from its General Fund reserve in the process. That one project therefore accounted for virtually all of the city's budgetary problems. You would have thought the responsible thing would have been to wait until the economy and the city's finances improved before proceeding with such a large capital outlay. The City was really no different than a family that decides to go ahead with remodeling their kitchen right before their income is reduced by half because of a job loss. Yes, they couldn't foresee the problem, but still, they have to reduce spending when it happens.

Claremont is certainly in much better shape than some cities, but it's still accountable for having created its own problems at the cost of the very municipal jobs and services it holds so dear.


CUSD BOMBS OUT

As we predicted last week, rather than a self-examination of how it managed to misspend $48.9 million in Measure Y bond money, Claremont Unified is gearing up for a revenue enhancement campaign by laying a guilt trip on taxpayers. CUSD board president Hilary LaConte was quoted in Saturday's Courier on this point (again, no link):

"I think one of the questions that will come out of this is that what does the community really value in education our children?" Ms. LaConte said. "Many other districts are turning to their communities for help and we are doing the same. We really want to get a sense of where the community lies before we go forward."

In other words, if Claremonters don't want a bond (CUSD's funding vehicle of choice), they don't value their children's education.

To help CUSD determine the level of public support for either a bond or a parcel tax, the district hired TBWB Public Finance Strategies, LLC, to poll residents. The problem with that consultant, in our view, is that this is not like hiring the Gallup Poll. Polling is not their single area of expertise. Rather, TBWB advertises itself as being expert at getting financing measures passed. They are more of a campaign consultant than a pure polling company, and CUSD hired them in 2000 to help get Measure Y passed.

This all leads us to believe that the real purpose behind CUSD's bringing in TBWB is not to seek public opinion but to determine the best ways of marketing a future bond or tax to voters. The polling results will be used by the district to shape its future financing election campaign. The CUSD board (with the exception of boardmember Steve Llanusa) has almost certainly already decided what it wants and couldn't care less about what we the public believes is important.

Unlike the City's public opinion survey and community budget meetings, CUSD (which remains the Claremont 400's playground), already knows what it will do. The rest, community meetings, polls, Claremont Courier puff pieces, is simply window dressing.

Fiscal accountability has come up very little or not at all in the discussions. Worse, if we end up with a bond measure, none of that money will go towards hiring a single new teacher or underwriting existing salaries and benefits. A bond will only be used for new construction, remodeling, and upgrades of existing facilities - something that we did only 10 years ago with Measure Y. And, incidentally, we are still paying off Measure Y today (check your property tax bill for last year).

Really, when you think about it, CUSD's board is a kind of neutron bomb of public agencies, keeping all the buildings standing but eliminating people. They're really concerned with having the newest goo gaw rather than investing in hiring and keeping good teachers. We understand that California's school districts have been hit very hard - harder than most cities - by the state's never-ending budget deficits, but CUSD and almost all of its boardmembers, current and past, have thrown away millions over the years and will do so again if given the chance. They must be held accountable first, then we can talk about finances.

Community Meeting Tonight

Don't forget that the first of two city of Claremont community budget meetings happens tonight beginning at 7pm. Come on out and give your thoughts on how you want your money spent. If you've got some tips on cost-cutting for the City, feel free to pass them on tonight:

Community Budget Workshop

7:00 - 9:00 PM
440 S. College Avenue
Blaisdell Community Center
Claremont

For information call (909) 399-5460

News Roundup

A few bits of news from Claremont and elsewhere:

• If you've got any cans of old paint, used motor oil, used batteries and such taking up garage space, now's your chance to get rid of the stuff. The City of Claremont is holding a Hazardous Household Waste Roundup this Saturday, February 6, from 9am to 3pm at the Claremont Corporate Yard located at 1616 Monte Vista Ave.
  
  
  
• We didn't see it on the City of Claremont's community events calendar, but this Sunday is the first Sunday of the month, which has in the past been the day the City Council sets up its booth at the Farmers Market in the Claremont Village from 8am to 1pm.
  
  We don't know if the council booth is another casualty of City Hall's budget cutting.
  
  
  
• Meg at M-M-M-My Pomona says the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Gingerbread Sociable is tomorrow from 1pm to 3pm in - where else? - the Laura Ingalls Wilder room of the Pomona Library at 625 S. Garey Ave. in downtown Pomona. There'll be storytelling, gingerbread, cider, and more. Kids of all ages, from one to 100 and older, are welcome.
  
  
  
• The Fresno Bee has an article about Claremont High School track star Kori Carter signing a letter of intent with Stanford University. Carter will be competing in the high school division of the Run For the Dream Indoor Track & Field Invitation at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
  
  While she's there, Kori can give Claremont's regards to former CUSD superintendent David Cash, who left us for Clovis Unified last year.
  
  
  
• The Sacramento Bee's Kevin Yamamura reports that California not only has the worst Standard & Poors credit rating of any of the 50 states, it is also worse than several countries:
  

  At A-, California still has the worst credit rating of all 50 states. Illinois comes closest to California with an A+ rating.
  
  Countries in the Times' chart with the same A- rating as California include Estonia, Libya and Poland. That's better than Thailand and Greece (BBB+) but not as strong as Botswana, the Czech Republic and Israel (A).

  
  Another sign that Claremont's and CUSD's budget woes won't be going away anytime soon.
  
  
  
• Following up our friend Glenn Southard and his sidekick Michael Busch, we read in the Desert Sun that Glenn's retirement includes almost $162,000 for unused vacation days and sick time he's banked in his time at the city of Indio.
  
  Here's what the Sun said about the details of the deal:
  

  Indio's Glenn Southard is the one of the highest-paid city managers in the state, which is part of the reason for his large final payment. He makes more than $300,000 a year.
  
  According to estimates provided by the city Tuesday, Southard has banked 582.35 hours of vacation, 1,118.55 hours of sick leave and 2.5 hours of administrative leave.
  
  Under the terms of his contract, Southard is entitled to all of the vacation time and half of the sick leave when he leaves City Hall.
  
  Administrative leave — a perk relatively common for city managers — cannot be cashed out, so he would have to use it before leaving, according to assistant to the city manager Mark Wasserman.
  
  That means Southard, who makes $148.74 an hour, would be entitled to 1,087.625 accrued hours of leave — worth $161,773.34.

  
  The Desert Sun tells us that Indio's golden handshake did get approved, by the way, and some people in there are not too happy about that, not that they are people who count for anything.
  
  Coincidentally, the Desert Sun also had an article about how to avoid being a scam victim.

Sales Slumps Roll Downhill

Claremont Toyota, whose sales have slumped severely because of the recession, faces even tougher times. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times had a front page story about Toyota's decision to halt the sales and manufacture of eight models because of problems with the gas pedals sticking.

The Times article reported:

Industry experts could not recall any time in recent history when a carmaker had stopped both production and sales of so many models at once. Tuesday's move follows two recent recalls aimed at preventing Toyota-made vehicles from surging out of control, which has been blamed in at least 19 deaths and scores of injuries over the last decade, more than for all other automakers combined.

Toyota could pay dearly for the problem, industry analysts said.

Aside from the immediate drop in sales, Toyota's position as the global sales leader, built on its vaunted reputation for trouble-free cars, is now being called into question.

"This could be an extended issue. It is very serious," said Aaron Bragman, an analyst at IHS Global Insight.

The eight models affected accounted for 57% of U.S. sales last year of all Toyota brands, including Lexus and Scion.

Toyota's woes will hurt Claremont Toyota, and that in turn will trickle down to the City of Claremont, which is heavily dependent on the Toyota dealership for sales tax revenue. At its peak, the local dealership accounted for something like 57% of the City's income from sales tax.

Claremont has been working hard to diversify its sales tax base, but Claremont Toyota remains the town's largest source of that revenue stream. Toyota's decision couldn't come at a worse time for Claremont. The state of California forecasts a $20.7 billion budget deficit through fiscal year 2010-11, thanks to the refusal of the state's leaders to deal with problem in a meaningful way last year. That means the state will be looking to raid more local money to fix its problems, and towns like Claremont will have another budgetary hole to climb out of.

All in all, 2010 is beginning to look a lot like 2009.

City Meetings on Tap

The Claremont City Council is hosting one of its semi-regular neighborhood meet-and-greets tonight at 7pm at the Blaisdell Community Center. Come on down and get your flesh pressed by a couple of your council representatives:

City Council Neighborhood Forum - Blaisdell Community Center

7:00 - 9:00 PM
440 S. College Ave.
Claremont
(909) 399-5460

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The City's finances move to the front burner with Claremont scheduling a series of public budget meetings beginning in February. You are cordially invited to vent:

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