Merry Christmas-- Now STFU

Kathryn Dunn, the Managing Editor of the Claremont Courier, seldom makes news and tries to stay out of the limelight. We last heard about her when there was a photo circulating of her making Monica-eyes at Bill Clinton. We don't expect that Dunn has been the places Monica has been, nor done the things Monica has done.

She did, however, take pen in hand to scribe a Christmas missive in Wednesday's paper entitled, The Politics of Charity in Claremont. She was so proud of it that she--or the Publisher-- put it on the Courier homepage for December 24th. Because it has engendered so much talk in town, and since she and the paper obviously want it to get wide circulation, we do our meager part and reproduce it below, exactly as printed in the Courier, along with a discreet Photoshop commentary on the page image. We trust everyone will agree that this is fair use and won't get their panties in a wad about it.

click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

We will let Ms. Dunn's words speak for themselves...but let's just say that this piece could be a bit more tightly-written and coherent. We do note, however, that she conflates the group Claremonters Against Outrageous Water Rates with another group Claremont Taxpayers for Common Sense. That is actually a pretty fair example of her factual bases and cogency of argument. She pretends to see nuance, but mis-apprehends what's in plain sight.

There is at least one letter in the Saturday December 24 number of the paper touching on her piece. However, the email servers in Claremont have been melting down the past few days with tentative replies, draft replies, replies, comments, outrage and the like. We've received a boatload, but one will give you the flavor:
"Not that you had any doubts about it anyway, but today the Courier spells out in unusually plain language the utter contempt that their editorial staff holds for anyone in town who dares to question the liberal orthodoxy of Claremont's self-anointed ruling elite. According to the Managing Editor of the Courier, when a handful of narcissists set up a faux refugee camp on the steps of city hall, they are making a positive contribution to our community, as is our city council when it patiently resolves to address the issue of political encampments sometime in the distant future; but if a substantial number of law-abiding citizens respectfully ask that the anti-camping ordinance be enforced, or question the wisdom of our bankrupt state giving free tuition to illegal aliens, or exercise their right to publicly comment on water rates, or decline to rubber-stamp a blank-check $100 million school bond, they are divisive obstructionists who are negatively affecting Claremont's reputation. Got that? Good. Now STFU* and do what you are told. Dissent is no longer patriotic within the city limits. And bring your checkbook."

* * * * *

*STFU? Look it up on the Internet. And Merry Christmas. And buy the Courier

CUSD, LaConte: Guilty as Charged

The other candidates in the school board election, Hilary LaConte and Sam Mowbray, do not play political games. They say what they mean, and mean what they say, based on actual facts. We may disagree with some of their positions, but we know they are responsible community leaders who don't resort to tricky campaign strategies driven by political expediency.

- Dave Nemer, letter to Claremont Courier, 9/19/11

J'ACCUSE!

CUSD Board Member
Steven Llanusa

Last Saturday's Claremont Courier had an article by Landus Rigsby, who covers the public schools beat.   The headline, "Board sidetracked by Brown Act violation allegation," implied that CUSD Board Member Steven Llanusa's complaints about open governance violations by the board have distracted the other board members and CUSD Interim Superintendent Gloria Johnston from the more important work of running the school district.

Rigsby's article focused on a complaint Llanusa had made to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office about an alleged Brown Act violation by the CUSD Board and Johnston at their May 19, 2011, meeting.  The Brown Act is a California sunshine law that's supposed to guarantee transparency in government.

In the article, Johnston indicated that the entire complaint was a waste of the district's time and money.  She also claimed that the DA's response "indicated that there was no reason to pursue further action..."  Rigsby quoted Johnston:

"I feel it's very important for me to clear my reputation in terms of being in charge of or violating the Brown Act in closed session," Ms Johnston said.  "I have in front of me both letters that you have submitted to the district attorney's office, Mr. Llanusa, and neither of them indicate that a substantial violation took place."

Additionally, the article quoted Board President Beth Bingham:

[Bingham] agreed with Ms. Johnston's suggestion that the district attorney's response eliminated the need to pursue further action.

Board Vice President Jeff Stark went even further, stopping just short of calling Llanusa a liar:

CUSD Board VP
Jeff Stark

...Jeff Stark described Mr. Llanusa's recollection of the May 19, 2011 meeting as "incorrect."

"You keep saying there was a Brown Act violation, but clearly the letter from the district attorney does not agree with that," Mr. Stark said.  "So again, Steven, maybe it's an misinterpretation of what the district attorney is saying.  Maybe it's a misinterpretation of what happened in closed session.  But my mmory of that session is dramatically different."

So if Rigsby's article is to be believed, Llanusa's Brown Act complaints are baseless, and his accusations about the CUSD board's disregard for open government laws are not much more than a meaningless distraction caused by a whiney incompetent, which is how the four other board members like to portray Llanusa.

The Rigsby article also helps buttress claims by CUSD board supporters like Dave Nemer that the board, other than Llanusa, have achieved a sort of organizational perfection unmarred by things like Brown Act violations.   This is no small matter since one of the issues that's arisen in the current CUSD board election is the board's lack of transparency, at least as it's perceived in some parts of the community.

Long and short, if Rigsby reporting is at all accurate, Llanusa's full of more crap than a Christmas goose as far as his allegations go.


DA TO CUSD: STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT

Now, we've disagreed with Llanusa on many things and certainly haven't supported him in the past.  But in this case, we've found evidence that not only does Llanusa appear to be right about CUSD's contempt for open government law, but that the district attorney's office has in fact warned the CUSD board about their behavior.

A year ago, at the board's October 7, 2010, meeting, the board went into closed session to discuss what was listed on their agenda as a "Superintendent's Evaluation--Update" as well as a labor negotiation conference.  A complaint was filed with the Public Integrity Division of the district attorney's office alleging that the closed session was a ruse under which the board went beyond the claimed labor negotiation discussion and the evaluation of then-Superintendent Terry Nichols.  The complaint alleged that in closed session the board also discussed budgetary matters and district goals - things that by law are supposed to be considered in open, not closed, session.

CUSD Board Agenda for 10/7/10

(Click to Enlarge)

CUSD Board Member
Hilary LaConte

We should also note that the alleged Brown Act violation occurred under the watch of then-Board President Hilary LaConte, who is currently running for reelection to the board.  LaConte, like Jeff Stark, has publicly scoffed at the idea that the CUSD board is lacking in transparency and is completely open and above board.

We would normally be inclined to leave matters at that.  After all, what occurs in closed session stays in closed session.  Even if a violation occurred, who could ever prove it?

Well, now comes a public response from the LADA's Public Integrity Division to the complaint, presumably from Steve Llanusa (the complaintant is unnamed), regarding that 10/7/10 closed session meeting.  The DA's response, dated 9/29/11 and received by the school district on 10/7/11, belies the claims of openness by the board and its supporters and supports Llanusa's accusations completely.

Here is the DA's response (click on the small "S" at the lower left-hand corner of the image to see a larger view):
LADA ltr 9-29-11


Some key points from the letter:

If, as alleged, the discussions included budgetary considerations and prospective goals of the District, then such discussions in closed session violated the law....

[Evidence Supporting the Allegations - .ed]
We obtained written documents that reportedly reflect matters that were considered in closed session. Copies of the documents are attached. They include what appears to be a presentation slide entitled "CUC Strategic Planning", dated October 6, 2010, and a typed memo with a caption of "Needed Support from the Board". These matters exceed the permissible boundaries of a closed session performance evaluation and do not have anything to do with labor negotiations.  The memo makes suggestions about communications between the Superintendent, the Board, and other groups. It addresses board goals, and public support for possible bond funding....

Unagendized, closed session discussion of such matters violates the Brown Act....

Even if the matters were only presented and not discussed, such consideration is still illegal.....

Similarly, closed session discussions regarding budget issues, proposed expenditures of stimulus money, the possibility of bond revenues, identification of programs or positions to cut, under the guise of Labor Negotiations or Performance Evaluations are simply impermissible.

[CUSD: Don't Use Closed Session to Duck the Public]

We recognize that the issues faced by legislative bodies like your board are difficult, especially in times of financial uncertainty. Such matters often generate controversy and disagreement that is minimized when the discussions are conducted outside the public's view. However, the Brown Act does not permit closed session consideration of matters simply because they are controversial or difficult; rather, permissible closed session topics are narrowly defined and limited to very specific matters for which the public's interest is best served by closed session consideration, such as the range of acceptable terms for a real estate transaction or labor negotiation that is in the works, or the candid communication between the legislative body and its attorney, or the forthright and frank evaluation of an employee who serves at the pleasure of the legislative body itself.

[Warning to Board:  Watch Yourselves in the Future]

In the absence of any objective evidence such as a recording of the closed session discussions, the scope of discussions that occurred in closed session cannot be conclusively proven. However, the impermissible expansion of closed session discussions to include matters that are not expressly authorized for closed session consideration is troubling. We therefore express to you our deep concern about such conduct, to the extent that it has occurred. We urge you to review the circumstances that are described herein, and demonstrate your commitment to compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the Brown Act, by limiting any closed session consideration to those matters properly agendized, and expressly permitted by law. By so doing, you encourage public confidence in the integrity of your agency, and the decision making process, which is vital.

The DA's letter certainly gives Board Member Llanusa new credibility when it comes to Brown Act complaints against the CUSD board. It also detracts enormously from the credibility of the four non-Llanusan CUSD board members and their supporters with respect to their claims of perfection when it comes to transparency, openness, and integrity. The DA's response of 9/29/11 belies the board members' quotes in Saturday's Courier and is especially troubling considering that the school district received the DA's letter weeks before Landus Rigsby's article.

One would expect the school board, having been caught and reprimanded so recently, would display at least a little contrition. Instead, they go on the attack and act as if they, not Llanusa, were the victims. If the school board were as honorable as they claim, they would admit their errors and work publicly to correct them. But they seem incapable of admitting any wrong, even when confronted with the evidence of their misdeeds. Hilary LaConte, the presiding board member at the time of the 10/7/10 incident takes no responsibility and simply seeks to glide through her reelection campaign as if nothing happened.

And perhaps she's right. If no one says anything and the truth is buried, then nothing really did happened, even if it did. As we've said before, Jeff Stark had it right all along: That's the way things have always been done in Claremont.

Yet Another Reader Writes

We're heard talk on the street that two of the three Claremont 400 slate candidates, Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman (Sam Pedroza is the third), have been struggling of late.

Lyons, who at the Active Claremont candidate forum admitted that he hadn't attended any city council meetings until he decided to run for council, seems lost at times when it comes to understanding the details of the issues (pensions, cuts in services, and economic development, to name a few) that the City is wrestling with. Other than environmental sustainability, which he seems genuinely interested in, Lyons has been limited to mouthing positions laid out for him by his 400 handlers (i.e., Lyons' campaign treasurer J. Michael Fay).

Haulman, as we've noted, can't even be counted on to memorize talking points and has to recite them from a script.

Given these relatively weak candidates, the 400 have resorted to their traditional dirty campaign tactics. Word comes to us from one of the eight campaigns that the 400 have spread a lie about one of the candidates being a child molester. And the 400's false information has found its way into the Claremont Courier's letters to editor:

From the Claremont Courier, 2/16/11 -

No on Opanyi, Pocock

Dear Editor:

The purchase of Johnson’s Pasture was one of the best and smartest things ever accomplished by the city of Claremont. I am very glad to learn Opanyi [Nasiali] did not get his way on that issue. A good reason to vote against Opanyi for council. As I read the literature put out by Opanyi and [Jay] Pocock, it is clear they are against everything I value about our city. I will be voting against both of them.

Dawn Sharp
Claremont

We certainly hope the Dawn Sharp who penned this letter is not the same Dawn Sharp who taught history at Chaffey College, though her rewriting of Claremont history would be in keeping with the revisionist practices of Claremont 400. Note to the ironically named Sharp: Nasiali did get his way.

The information Sharp related about the Johnson's Pasture purchase is completely false. As we've remarked, Nasiali not was not only crucial to Claremont's securing Johnson's Pasture at a quarter of the cost of the assessment district the Claremont 400 had tried to force on us, but he helped build a community-wide consensus that resulted in the open space bond passing with 72% of the vote. Only in Claremont could an individual's positive contribution to the community be turned on its head.

Dawn Sharp's letter to the Courier prompted this response from one of our readers:

DATE: Wed, February 16, 2011 10:28:07 AM
SUBJECT: letter to the editor
TO: Claremont Buzz

Check out the letter to the editor in the Courier today (Wed. the 16th)from Dawn Sharp about Opanyi. I do not know if the lady was referring to the previous letter to the editor about how Opanyi was right about so many things and when referring to his being right about Johnson’s Pasture she interpreted it as his being AGAINST Johnson’s Pasture purchase. How stupid. Opanyi was instrumental in getting the bond passed and helped get the College President’s on board. Can we now expect a letter to the editor from the members of that committee like Lissa Petersen, Jill Benton or Suzanne Thompson correcting this misperception by Mrs. Sharp? It would be nice if they did, but I am not holding my breath. Let the games begin.

We're not waiting around for a correction forthcoming from Petersen, Benton or Thompson, either. They're all either captive or party to the "mean girls" psychology that's held us hostage for the last 30-plus years. Thus does peer pressure make cowards of us all.

Red Alert?

A reader contacted us to say that they wished we would devote less space to the Measure CL school bond and more to other issues such as the disappearance last week of a developmentally disabled teen named Deontay Antone Barlow.

Deontay, who disappeared from his home on Thursday, October 21, was found five days later at a Kaiser Permanante facility in Downey. Claremont Courier reporter Tony Krickl wrote about the happy ending to this story on his Courier City Beat blog.

Our reader wondered why the Claremont Police Department didn't employ their CodeRED system to alert the community immediately after Deontay's family discovered he was missing. CPD's used the system before for community-wide emergencies like fires, so why not in this instance?

The CPD website does list missing persons as one of the emergencies CodeRED is for:

CodeRED WILL BE USED FOR EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

CodeRED is intended to supplement our local law enforcement and public safety first responders with making timely emergency notifications. Examples of its use include:

• Evacuation Notice
• Fires or Floods
• Missing Persons
• Hazardous Material Spills
• Water Contamination
• Identifying Evacuation Centers
• Emergency and Critical incidents where rapid notification is essential.
  

Now, the CPD did use their Neighborhood E-Watch newsletter to email residents that Deontay had been found. Our reader wonders, why pay spend all that money for CodeRED if we don't use it for something like this?

Unfortunate E-Mail Addy

We wish the Sycamore sixth-grader good luck in his or her search for a dog walking gig. Kind of a poor choice for an e-mail address though.

from today's Courier classifieds; click to enlarge

Affordable Housing Update

The City's website has an informational blurb about the Jamboree Housing Corp. affordable housing project on the old Claremont Courier site at 111 S. College Ave. Most of the information is a rehash of the article in the last Claremont City Letter, but there are a couple links for anyone interested in applying for one of the residential units.


Jamboree will break ground in November. Courier Place will be open to low- to moderate-income families, and there will be 38 units for seniors. Preference for the family units will be given to families that have a person employed in Claremont.

Affordable Housing Project Update (Sep 7, 2010)

City Council has partnered with Jamboree Housing Corporation, a non-profit housing development company, to develop an affordable housing project at 111 S. College Avenue on the site of the former Courier building.

With the funding in place, the City is scheduled to break ground this fall. Construction is scheduled to start in November and is anticipated to take a little over a year. Pending weather delays, the project would be ready for occupancy in early 2012.

Jamboree Housing Corp. has named the project Courier Place. the complex will have 75 units divided into three residential buildings.There will be 38 one-bedroom senior (age 62+) units in one courtyard style building, 36 family units with 2 to 3 bedrooms in two 18-unit buildings, and one two-bedroom manager unit. In addition to the residential buildings, there will be a community building, swimming pool, a playground and landscaped areas.

Applicants must meet low to moderate income guidelines set by the state with rents ranging from $481 to $1,218. In addition to income criteria, family units will have a residency preference provided to households where at least one member of the household is employed within the city of Claremont.

The City is maintaining a mailing list of interested applicants which will be turned over to Jamboree in the next six months. The qualification process will be administered by Jamboree Corporation. To be placed on the mailing list, please contact the City of Claremont at (909) 399-5441 or fill out the interest form and send to City Hall.

• Click here for the interest form

Courier Place Site Plan
(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Self-Congratulations are in Order

Courier Place

It seems as if no matter how blue we are feeling, what with the City, State, and Country going to Hades in a handcar, the Claremont City Letter can always be counted on to lend a bit of upbeat cheer.

If you want to feel good about your City and yourself, nothing beats the City Letter.

Today's issue arrived in our mailbox and, well, it must be a slow news quarter because the whole front page is devoted to Construction On The Affordable Housing Project Set To Begin. That is exciting news.

[more below the jump]


But even the fact that they are going to start is pretty mundane compared with the news that Jamboree Housing Corp., has named the project Courier Place--because it will occupy the site of the soon-to-be-former building that housed the Claremont Courier.

We had actually been pulling for Goldwater Gardens or--and we really like this one--The High Towers, after Helaine Goldwater or former planner Sharon Hightower who appointed themselves leaders of what we came to know fondly as "The Coalition" for affordable housing.

It's a matter of some regret that Parque Insider wasn't chosen. But we choose not to whine.

It's a nice touch to include a picture of the Courier building complete with plywood covering the formerly attractive casement windows. That's more or less the Claremont way: bulldoze it over and commemorate it with a sign.

Still, we can't help but think this is just a lagniappe to "buy off" the Courier. We remember when Martin Weinberger edited the paper from his cluttered desk in the southeast corner of the newsroom, he was pretty incensed at getting first a big rent increase when his former landlord died, and then getting thrown out when the new owners and City got involved. All of this while he was beginning to face serious health problems. Maybe this olive branch will buy some decent and even fawning coverage from the absentee publisher and managing editor.

We suggest you try to read the article in the image. Click to enlarge it. It's a pretty good example of city-speak at its finest, including "partner" as a verb, all the passive sentences your heart could desire, and a FOG Index that is more or less off the charts.

We think you'll feel better for it.

More Tangled Webs

We got to wondering about that fellow Jared Boigon, who figures so much into the Claremont Unified School District's bond plans. The more we thought about it, the more it seemed that decisions that ought to have been made in public by the CUSD Board of Education have instead been made by the district's Measure CL bond campaign committee and by Boigon.

The bond committee by law is supposed to be distinct and separate from the school district, but as we've pointed out, the three people heading the committee, Bill Fox, Lee Jackman, and Mike Seder, are the same three people CUSD appointed to work with Boigon when the district was deciding whether to pursue a parcel tax or a bond.

Those same four are now working on the Yes on CL campaign, and Boigon is operating as a campaign consultant. We first saw Boigon in June, when he and his company, TBWB Strategies, were under a $25,000 contract to CUSD to conduct polling research to test voter support for both a parcel tax and a bond. Incidentally, the word is that TBWB had a $10,000 cost overrun, so the district really ended up paying them $35,000 - not exactly a good start for a district accused of misspending on its last $48.9 million Measure Y bond.

Boigon appeared again after we and others noticed that the bond resolution lacked a specific project list. When the district voted on that resolution, board member Jeff Stark (photo, left) falsely stated that they could not come up with a list until after the board voted on the bond language. The district approved the bond resolution with no discussion of the projects Measure CL's $95 million would pay for.

As we discovered, rather than trying to figure out what projects needed funding and what the total cost would be, CUSD simply figured that the maximum they could seek was $95 million and went for that. After they were publicly called on that point, they scrambled for a couple weeks and then had Boigon come up with what the Yes on CL campaign calls a project list:

Bond 2010 Site Detail 08-26 FINAL


The document, however, fails to give a school-by-school cost breakdown, and Yes on CL committee member Bill Fox lamely explained in the Claremont Courier that any more details would have to wait until after the bond election. This is the typical CUSD response: We have a secret plan to spend the money, just trust us.

This hearkens back to Jeff Stark's earlier prevarications, and came up again a letter to the Courier by former Claremont Faculty Association president Dave Nemer. Apparently, the district and its surrogate Nemer feel you, Mr. and Ms. Voter, just aren't smart enough to hear the details right now. Let them think for you.

And who created the district's project list? None other than Jared Boigon of TBWB Strategies.

So we have an unelected consultant, working with a campaign committee handpicked by the school district, designing an after-the-fact spending list to justify the district's blank check to itself. This all fails the smell test on so many levels - the lack of public discussion, the district's involvement in the bond campaign, the district's and the campaign's misrepresentations justifying their decisions, and so on.

What's emerged is a mostly notional, consultant-created spending scheme designed to justify obtaining as much money for CUSD as is allowed by law. The money, in turn, will flow out to the same vendors and contractors who will be the campaign's largest donors.

This wastefulness, as well the blatant and false emotional appeals to voters by the Yes campaign - save our kids, save our schools, save our teachers - will inevitably lead to a $95 million debt whose final costs will more than double once the interest and principal are paid off. As with Claremont's 2000 Measure Y, the money will be spent long before Jared Boigon's project list can be completed.

Boigon won't care. He'll collect his paycheck and move on, and the damage he's inflicted will be so far off in the future that, even if someone called him on it, he'll have already banked the tens of thousands he'll have billed the district and the bond campaign for.

Don't believe us? Consider the Contra Costa Times' followup stories to the Mt. Diablo Unified School District's $348 million Measure C bond, which voters approved in June. Like our district, MDUSD hired Jared Boigon to oversee a poll looking at financing options. With interest, the bond will end up costing $1.8 billion.

After the election, the public learned that there was at least one other option that would have shaved $1 billion off that amount, but MDUSD refused to release Boigon's poll, which was evidently the basis of the decision to pursue Measure C. Like the Claremont school district, MDUSD played hide-the-ball, according to a 7/26/10 article by Contra Costa Times reporter Teresa Harrington:

District General Counsel Greg Rolen has repeatedly denied access to the voter poll results, saying they are exempt from state laws requiring release of public documents because they were paid for with private campaign committee funds.

Even though some board members received the results, Rolen said the results are not maintained by the district, "and the interest in withholding these documents clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosing them."

One MDUSD trustee told the Contra Costa Times that if he had known of the second, cheaper financing option, he would have considered it, but he wasn't given a chance to review Boigon's poll:

Trustee Dick Allen, who did not receive the poll results, said he was not aware that the board had two options. In hindsight, he said the board should have discussed the two tax rate choices and allowed the public to weigh in.

"I think we should have made the decision with all the transparency that we can provide," he said Friday. "I think in the long run, it's always better to be honest."

In May, the Times asked the consultant who helped the district with the bond campaign whether the poll specifically asked voters to choose between two tax rates. He didn't give a direct answer.

"I don't think it's a fair question," said Jared Boigon, of TBWB Strategies. "I think you have treated this to unfair scrutiny, more than any other bond in Contra Costa County."

The similarities between Mt. Diablo and CUSD continued with the lack of a bond project list, as Teresa Harrington reported in a separate article:

The district's list of improvements to be completed with the bond was not finalized until April, too late to be included in the voter information pamphlet. Voters approved the bond based on a general list of districtwide improvements that was not school specific.

The district posted its final list of projects online, but did not include detailed descriptions or costs for work to be done. This caused some confusion in schools regarding what the money would ultimately pay for.

Further, as with Claremont Unified's Measure Y, contractors donated generously to MDUSD bond campaign and expected to be rewarded for those donations:

Chevron Corp. donated $10,000 to a $348 million bond measure four days after it was approved by voters in the Mt. Diablo Unified School District last month.

The San Ramon oil giant donated the money to the Measure C campaign as a San Francisco subsidiary, Chevron Energy Solutions, continued to press the district to award it a $68 million, no-bid solar contract that would be paid by the bonds. District leaders told the company this week they planned to seek competitive bids on the project.

The MDUSD bond campaign raised well over $200,000, and the list included several five-figure donors in addition to Chevron, all of whom could have potentially profited from the bond's passage as the CC Times' Harrington reported on June 7:

$25,000: Seward L. Schreder Construction, Redding
$25,000: Northern CA Carpenters, Regional Council Issues PAC
$25,000: IBEW 302: Community Issues PAC
$25,000: Stone and Youngberg, San Francisco, bond underwriters
$15,000: George K. Baum and Co., Denver, bond underwriters
$15,000: Sheet Metal Workers International, Local Union No. 04
$15,000: Brandis Tallman LLC, San Francisco, bond underwriters
$10,000: Diablo Education Association Political Account

Harrington goes on to note that the MDUSD bond campaign's expenditures were equally large, with the bill from Jared Boigon's TBWB Strategies coming to $85,176.

If one examines these school funding elections closely, one sees the same pattern repeated again and again. Schools in need of short-term cash manipulate public perception with Chicken Little claims of impending doom. Using money from the very people will profit from the bonds, school districts like Mt. Diablo and Claremont hire highly paid professional consultants like Boigon to run the campaigns. The goal is not to raise and spend money efficiently and only where it is needed. Rather, it is to get voters to approve as much borrowing as possible, no matter what the long-term costs are to the community, and to funnel that money back to the parties who funded the campaign.

The lie at the heart of all of this is the premise on which these bond campaigns are built: Bond X is the only solution to our schools' problems. As the Contra Costa Times noted, there are much cheaper alternatives, but then those are never really explored.

These sorts of manipulations should be a public scandal, but they never rise to that level because, unlike with the City of Bell, the reporters who cover school districts tend to fall into a kind of journalistic Stockholm Syndrome and end up identifying with the subjects of their uncritical stories. For years, the Claremont Courier's Pat Yarborough epitomized this phenomena, and Courier reporter Landus Rigsby, who currently covers Claremont schools, seems set on continuing in this tradition.

It's no wonder, then, that all the parties supporting the Claremont school bond (Jared Boigon, the school district, the Claremont Faculty Association, the Yes campaign) are confident that voters are stupid enough to pass the bond. With local media unable or unwilling to question anything presented by the district and its surrogates, lies become facts, and the final costs get deferred long enough for the responsible parties to successfully evade any accountability.

CUSD Update

LAYOFFS IN THE WORKS

The Daily Bulletin reports that the Claremont Unified School District intends to send out 30 preliminary layoff notices. The notices will go out by March 15, according to the article, and the exact number of layoffs will be announced at the March 4 CUSD Board of Education meeting.

ENROLLMENT UP

Did anyone else catch the blurb in yesterday's Claremont Courier about the increase in CUSD enrollment over the past 10 years? The Courier reported that CUSD saw an increase from 6,625 to 7,044 since the 2000-01 school year. The article also said that interdistrict transfer students increased in the same period from 787 to 1,200.

What the article failed to note that was enrollment from within the CUSD boundaries has remained flat for the last decade despite an increase in the number of houses and condominiums in town. According to the numbers cited in the Courier, overall CUSD enrollment was up 419 students, of which 413 came from outside the district.

In other words, 17 percent of CUSD students live outside the district's area. This would seem to argue against new facilities, though we fully expect CUSD to spin the numbers into a need for a new school construction bond.

More Donut Talk

The Claremont Courier's story about the arrest of Moun Chau, the donut shop owner accused of violating the federal Endangered Species Act, brought some sharp words from Courier reader Hal Hargrave in a letter published in last Wednesday's Courier. (Sorry, the letter is stuck behind the Courier's new pay wall, so no link. You'll have to get a subscription if you want to read it online.)

Hargrave felt that the Courier coverage unfairly singled out Chau's business, Pixie Donuts, which, aside from accepting some ivory shipments three years ago, seems to be a fairly average mom-and-pop business. Hargrave wrote:

Pixie is poetry in motion every morning as June and her staff know the orders of most and work in harmony to move the masses through their small, simple donut shop. They are a Claremont family with their kids going through Claremont schools. They support us and I know I will continue to support them despite the twisted article written about something that took place in 2006. You should have stuck to reporting on “Storm Watch Twenty Ten!”

As I read your description of the all-powerful Department of Fish and game and their aid on Pixie in 2006, all I could picture was the TSA finding a shampoo bottle. Whew, I feel so protected by these almighty governmental agencies.

This all prompted Courier reporter Tony Krick, who wrote the article about Chau, to defend his naming the Pixie Donut Shop in the article. On his COURIER City Beat blog, Krickl argues for the newsworthiness of including the business' name in his news piece. He says:

I am not doubting that Pixies has good doughnuts or the owners are friendly to their customers. But the fact remains that federal agents found dozens of pieces of ivory in the business as well as tools to carve them into decorative products, likely to be sold on to collectors.

While we don't see anything wrong with naming the business in the article - it is, after all, the place that took delivery of the shipments. However, we also don't see the need to boycott the business. The federal indictment didn't name the business or Chau's family as additional defendants, so the implication is that the alleged crime was Chau's alone.

The feds have had over three years to put a case together, so if they had any reason to go after the business itself, they would have. So, in from our vantage, we don't see anything wrong with continuing to patronize Pixie. As we've said before, they do make the best donuts around - at least their weekday fare is very good - not too doughy or greasy, and just the right amount of stuff on top. And, Hargrave is right, the family does seem like good people, whatever personal shortcomings Moun Chau may have had.

Reader Bites Courier

We've poked fun at the Claremont Courier's occasional typos and misspellings before. Of course, we're as guilty as the next non-professional blogger when it comes to errors. We do try to get things cleaned up when we can, but we have no copy editors on staff to do this, and sometimes it's just too easy to press the "publish" button.

That said, here's an email we received last week from a reader who commented a couple errors in the Courier's May 13 edition:

DATE: Thursday, May 14, 2009 12:47 PM
SUBJECT: I know the errors in the Courier are too plentiful to catalogue
TO: Claremont Buzz

. . . but I laughed out loud at this one.

I parted with 75 cents for the May 13 edition because my daughter is featured in the cover photo (for which she declined to give her last name on the premise that the Courier photographer may not have been who he claimed to be). Here she is in the center of the photo, with a predictable error in the on-line version’s caption: http://www.claremont-courier.com/. [sorry, there's a different top-story now -ed.].

However, page 5 featured a brilliant phonetic error in the article about local businesses and specifically the Bagel of Claremont: “Maureen Aldridge, CEO of Claremont’s Chamber of Commerce, said that advertising is the greatest coo to any business.” Poor Maureen; I doubt she was referring to the murmuring trill of a pigeon.

Our apologies to the reader for not getting this posted sooner.

Ban Uncastrated Owners and Irresponsible Dogs from the Dog Park

If you see the Claremont Courier, you know what the reader below is talking about (and we try to provide some context in what follows):

Utter ridiculousness at the dog park
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 11:14 AM
From:
To:"Claremont Insider"

Hey Buzz,

Have you been following the tempest-in-a-dogpark unfolding on the letters page of the Courier? It's so ridiculous. Two men's dogs got into a fight, the owners got into a fight, and now the Courier is publishing all the mudslinging. Is this really newsworthy? Kinda feels like the Courier is feeding into the whole thing. I mean, get a load of this:

"But here's the truth, Davey Null got his law degree from La Verne, and he hasn't held a valid Bar card since 1989. Additionally, he signs his name as a resident of Claremont. The truth is that records show Davey lives in a 958 sq. ft. house in Pomona. It is what it is, and there is nothing wrong with that. No one likes a pompous, self-righteous "wanna be," Davey."

Although it is funny that someone is lying about where he lives and where he went to school, does anyone in Claremont really need to know the square footage of his house?

For this reason, I love the Courier letters page....

DN

* * * * *

What the 958 square foot reference really means is that somebody has access to Zillow and Zabasearch and can do their internet research. We know where you live.

We had been watching this and wondered if it ever was going to end.

It seems to have started not even three weeks ago with this letter wherein Mr. Null reports an altercation first between his dog, Blitzen, recovering from dog knee surgery, and a bulldog, then between the owner of the bulldog and himself:

David Null Letter

We were left wonder, were the cops called on this? There are many loose ends here, not the least of which is part about being "bitten badly on the left hand". Don't they check the offending dog for rabies when that happens?

And then this one from a Gina Ortiz throwing in against intact dogs at the dog park and also opining that residents of Ontario and Pomona are not lowlifes.

Gina Ortiz Letter

And then this one from the wife of the bulldog owner, alleging racism on David Null's part. She is not on script with the later story of her husband (see below) that Mr. Null sucker-punched the husband. Also, and we are not the ones to figure it out, this appears to be the beginning of the bulldog morphing into a pit bull. Aren't they different animals?

Laura Encinas Letter

Probably the gem of the whole sequence of letters thus far is this one from Bernard Karmatz (later referred to more familiarly as "Bernie" by Mr. Reyes.) Although we agree with some of what he says, who wouldn't? His letter goes on and on and on for 14 paragraphs touching almost every point of dispute, contention, or public policy related to The Incident.

Bernard Karmatz letter

Sensing that this discussion has run it's course, the Courier precedes these last two letters (below), which appeared on Saturday, March 26, with this editorial dictum: "The following letters are written by the two parties involved in the conflict at Pooch Park recently. The COURIER would like to alert readers that this will be the last series of letters printed on the incident. Letters relating to the conditions and care of Pooch Park are welcomed."

In the first, David Null tries rather lamely to tamp things down by stating, "I live in west Pomona on a street where I live in harmony with my mostly Latino and African-American neighbors, none of whom are low-lifes." Thanks for the clarification.

David Null Letter

And finally, the last word, and an effort that really can't be improved. In this letter Mr. Reyes brings on the whole gang and homeboy vibe, referring to "mooching turf" and his adversary "dropping" law school and Oxford like some elitist. It is in this letter that he claims that Mr. Null sucker-punched him, a seemingly relevant fact unmentioned earlier (above, Laura Encinas letter, by his wife when she recounts Null's violent acts). He doesn't like it that the aforementioned Bernard Karmatz "fire[d] a letter out of your bottom, and not your mouth" We suspect, here, that "bottom" is a euphemism, but aren't sure. We love his ending, where, after referring to David Null as "Davey" and Bernard Karmatz as "Bernie" in a way that we don't read as very respectful, he says, "I like to think of myself as a family man who is respectful to others..."

Leonardo Reyes Letter

Unlike the sensible Courier, we think that so long as these people are writing trash, they at least aren't tossing punches or shooting up neighborhoods. Bring it on in the Interwebs. Send us your comments, and if they are coherent, we will keep throwing gasoline on the fire here. (We should note that Courier reporter Tony Krickl addressed this issue on his Citybeat Blog last Friday. And he does have a comment section, as yet unused.)

Got a Bee In Your Bonnet?

The Claremont Sunrise Rotary Club's "Phun Club" was the winner of the Fourth Annual Friends of the Claremont Library Spelling Bee. They reclaimed the title that they last won in 2007 and lost to the House of Ruth team in 2008.

The Phun Club won the grueling third round by correctly spelling "rubefacient." They faced strong competition, however, from the likes of the Jane Austen Book Club (don't let their bluestocking name fool you! Real Janeites are tough competitors!), the Ruthless Spellbinders (from the House of Ruth), and the widows'-weeds-bedecked trio, the Tombstone Terminators (Friends of Oak Park Cemetery).

The Claremont Courier also had a team this year...which is interesting, as the Courier has had an ongoing run of mispelled words in its issues.

The El Roble cheer squad performed "YMCA" for the crowd and "The Flight of the Bumblebee" accompanied the spellers as they took their seats (which were decorated with bee-shaped containers of honey).

A great time was had by all, and the emcees entertained the crowd with many a pun and poked fun at several city staples, such as the infamous Claremont trolley (how do you spell "bus"?).


Think you have what it takes to spell in the bee next year? Here are some of the words from today's bee:

stridulated (which, when read to the competitors, really sounded like "strigulated")
palladium
plenilune
speleology (this one elicited a collective gasp from the audience when it came up!)
lackadaisical
cinematheque
teratology
habiliments
brunneous
ormolu
gammelost
ghurry (don't feel so bad about missing this one...read here about a speller in Hawaii that struggled with it in 2005)
seicento
sederunt
rapprochement
Pentateuchal

Courier-TSL Faceoff

Left to Right (literally, not politically):
Pepperdine School of Law Dean Kenneth Starr
and UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

We'd meant to write up something about the March 5th mock debate at Pomona College between Pepperdine Law School dean Kenneth Starr and Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the new UC Irvine School of Law. The debate's subject was the Presidental War Powers Act.

Starr came to the debate the same day he argued before the California State Supreme Court on behalf of Prop. 8 proponents who sought to have 18,000 gay and lesbian marriages voided under the new state law.

Tony Krickl covered the event for the Courier, wrote about the goings on in a March 11 article:

Mr. Starr, who serves as the Dean of Pepperdine University’s Law School, was invited to speak by the Pomona Student Union. Along with Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the new Law School at University of California Irvine, the 2 deans staged a mock debate on constitutional powers of the U.S. President in a hypothetical war situation. Mr. Starr was invited to speak before becoming involved in the Prop. 8 case.

When asked why he would choose to represent a minority like violent death row prisoners rather than “a minority that who just wants to marry the one they love,” Mr. Starr responded, “because you are representing a particular cause doesn’t mean you are necessarily approving of that particular cause.

“[In this case,] I was pleased to represent what I feel is a very important principle,” he added. “That is the sovereign power of the people. However you vote is to protect the sovereign right of the people, until we change that mechanism for amending the constitution.”

After the debate, students gathered in the nearby Smith Campus Center quad to stage mock same sex weddings as a form of protest to Mr. Starr’s visit.

Called “Wedding Under the Starrs,” the light-hearted event featured wedding cake and cider, music from an A cappella group and Mariachi band and several staged same-sex weddings.

Pomona College's student newspaper The Student Life seems to have found Krickl's coverage of the event wanting. The TSL editorial board wrote an opinion piece for their March 13 edition that excoriated the Courier for what TSL thought was a "lack of journalistic ethics," as well as other lapses. The TSL editorial, titled, "Courier Article Shows Unprofessionalism [see page 8]," said this about the Courier article:

The content of the article barely mentions the actual debate, or Ken Starr’s opponent Erwin Cherminsky. Instead, the Courier implied that Starr was on campus solely to field questions about “gay rights and his role in the controversial case being heard before the Supreme Court of California.” We stand on a pedestal of perfect reporting here at TSL; in fact, we are well aware of our own missteps.

We do, however make a conscious effort to cover news items with depth, clarity, and balance. What was published in the Courier on Wednesday was a gross breach of journalistic ethics and reporting etiquette.

TSL felt that the Courier article missed the main point of Starr's visit, which was the mock War Powers Act debate, and that Krickl's coverage wasn't balanced because Starr's comments on the Prop. 8 litigation weren't balanced in Krickl's article by the opposing litigants' views.

Krickl, meanwhile, took exception to the TSL editorial and blogged about TSL on the Courier City Beat in a post titled "Big Talk, Little Content from The Student Life." In the blog post, Krickl defended his coverage:

First and foremost, what TSL editors may not realize is that at many professional newspapers, reporters are limited by page inches or number of words for stories they are assigned to cover. Given these limitations, reporters are forced to focus their articles on the meat of the news while cutting out as much fat as possible.

With the high profile nature of the Prop. 8 case and Starr's role as the lead attorney, clearly the presidential war powers debate was the fat. In showing up for the event, I never intended to cover the debate. I was there to report on any comments Starr might make on the landmark case and the planned protest outside.

And:

The COURIER article did not take any sides on this topic. It never criticized or praised Mr. Starr for his position on Proposition 8 or his role in the case. The article simply laid out Mr. Starr’s positions on the issue, his responses to questions on the topic and provided a description of the student protest.

I'm not so sure I could say the same about the TSL's coverage of the event. In their article (see page 1 and 3), the TSL reporter interviewed or used statements from 4 different people who were directly criticizing Starr, his appearance on campus or Prop. 8 itself.

But TSL's report fails to counter these statements with a single voice of opposition, making the student paper's political leanings on Prop. 8 clear for all to see. Is this the neutral or balanced coverage that TSL editors are demanding?

As Krickl notes, TSL is a student paper, so maybe you have to grant them a little more latitude than you would a commercial publication. Still, TSL has had some notable missteps in the recent past. For instance, TSL's coverage of the Jonathan Petropoulos matter last year, when they ran the wrong painting on the front page, along with some other errors, led to the April 4, 2008, edition being pulled from newsstands.

There have been some other newsworthy things happening at Pomona College, including the banning (and subsequent unbanning) of two Claremont McKenna College students, David Daleiden and Kyle Kinneberg, from Pomona's campus. The ban occurred without much respect for due process and drew a good deal of criticism for the "Ready, Fire, Aim" mentality that Pomona Dean of Student Miriam Feldblum displayed in her mishandling of the situation.

We haven't had much time to explore the banning/unbanning, but we may have post or two on the subject in the coming week. The Claremont Conservative, though, has been all over this issue from the beginning.

LWV Sponsors Journalism/Internet Discussion

Click to Enlarge

You probably saw the ad in last Saturday's Claremont Courier. The League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area is sponsoring a panel discussion called "Print Journalism and the Challenge of the Internet."

The event is scheduled for next Saturday, March 21st, from 11:30am to 2pm at the City's Hughes Center. It costs $10, and the price includes lunch. The discussion begins at 12:15pm.

According to the ad, the panel includes:

• Peter Weinberger, Editor and Publisher, Claremont Courier
• Steve Lambert, Editor and General Manager, San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
• Meg Worley, Assistant Professor of English, Pomona College
• Larry Pryor, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, USC
• John Seery, Professor of Politics, Pomona College
• Danny Paskin, Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism, CSU Long Beach
• Eric Richardson, Publisher and Founder of blogdowntown.com
• Anand Gupta, Ace Reporter, Claremont Insider
  

Just kidding about that last guy. We all know he's really in Bangalore. Besides, no one in Claremont reads Gupta's gossip rag, or at least no one will cop to it.

In all seriousness, though, it's a shame the League didn't see fit to invite any actual local bloggers, of which there are many doing fine jobs. The list of speakers seems a little talking heads-heavy, as if this newfangled Internet thing had just now arrived and needed proper LWV-sponsored study. Panelist Eric Richardson's blog seems to be just the type of serio-communi-non-profit the LWV would like: "blogdowntown is a project of verbdowntown, a non-profit whose mission is to build community online resources for Downtown Los Angeles."

We think the event could use some local balance from writers actually doing the work. David Allen from the Bulletin, for instance. What about Tony Krickl from the Courier's City Beat, or former Courier reporter and current "To the Point" producer Gary Scott? How about Charles Johnson from Claremont McKenna College or the folks at the Metro Pomona Blog? Or Jack Pitney, whose GOV 101 and GOV115 classes at CMC maintain blogs about politics and journalism?

Print Journalism and
the Challenge of the Internet
Sponsored by the Claremont LWV

Saturday, March 21 - 11:30am to 2pm
Alexander Hughes Community Center
1700 Danbury Rd.
Claremont, CA 91711

Cost: $10

* * * * *

Coincidentally, Gary Scott wrote about the venerable Columbia School of Journalism having to come to grips late in the game with the rise of the Internet.

Scott was referring to a New York Magazine article about the fact that when the New York Times decided to try out a hyperlocal blog called "The Local," the NYT approached the City College of New York rather than Columbia for interns.

Columbia's apparently fallen behind the times when it comes to new media, not that everyone on Columbia's faculty considers this an imperative. The magazine article said:

But the push for modernization has also raised the ire of some professors, particularly those closely tied to Columbia’s crown jewel, RW1 [Reporting and Writing, an intensive journalism training class, see here]. “Fuck new media,” the coordinator of the RW1 program, Ari Goldman, said to his RW1 students on their first day of class, according to one student. Goldman, a former Times reporter and sixteen-year veteran RW1 professor, described new-media training as “playing with toys,” according to another student, and characterized the digital movement as “an experimentation in gadgetry.”

Attention to Detail

click image to enlarge

Last Wednesday's edition of the Claremont Courier was interesting not just for the letter by Professor McHenry putting the community onto Bridget Healy's exaggerations, but also for containing what is in all likelihood the final campaign piece of the Larry Schroeder campaign. Schroeder has become, by process of elimination if not by predilection, the Democratic Party candidate in this nominally non-partisan campaign.

His campaign piece was a single page four-color glossy sheet (reproduced above) inserted in the paper with the ads from furnace duct cleaners and insurance seminars. Apart from giving no reasons at all to vote for him, his flyer featured not quite 70 names in largish 14-point type.

What struck us was lack of attention to detail and accuracy in this piece. Line 3 absolutely jumps out at the long-time Claremont observer: Zephyr Tote-Mann (as Schroeder has it) contended for City Council in 2003. She was quite consistent in that election in spelling her last name, "Tate-Mann". We don't know any "May Stoddard" in Claremont, but a friend of ours is Mary Stoddard who lives at the same residence as Stuart, the preceding name on the list. And to our knowledge, there is only one "Joe Lyons" in town, but his name inflates the list (by one) by being listed twice. We have very helpfully highlighted these occurrences in the image above.

We realize that these observations are picking the fly-specks out of the pepper. They are small beer. Chump change. But we here at the Insider do it so you don't have to. Our broader question is this: Why can't candidate Schroeder get a one-page flyer more right than this? He's already gotten a pass from the newspapers on his idea related to the transportation money funding the Trolley: this was to sell the money to some community needing bona fide transportation money, receive maybe 75 cents on the dollar, and bank it in the general fund. Where was Schroeder a year ago when city staff and council were considering the Trolley? Where was his good idea when it might've done some good?

So many of Schroeder's ideas don't stand up to any probing. His views on the water company, for example, are based on ignorance of the facts of the water situation. You didn't have to go the water meeting a few weeks ago to figure that out.

Still, as our old daddy once told us, "Ignorance can be cured but stupid is forever." Maybe someday Schroeder will make a decent candidate and get wider community support than that he seems to be getting from the yellow-dog Democrats such as Bob Gerecke, Gar Byrum, Ivan Light, Sandy Hester, and failed congressional candidate Russ Warner.

Thy Many Gifts

A small tempest has blown up over the contradictions between Claremont city council candidate Bridget Healy's recent campaign insert in the Claremont Courier and her sworn testimony in a 2006 deposition. The flyer, posted here and on the Daily Bulletin website states,

"Claremont is a better place today because of the many gifts Bridget shared with us during her 18 years as Assistant City Manager of our City... Here is a partial list of accomplishments to which Bridget made significant contributions during her years of public service to Claremont's citizens: 1. Acquired more than 1,600 acres of hillside property that became the Wilderness Park as well as the Padua Hills Theater [sic] at no cost to the tax payers of Claremont;..." [emphases added]

Tony Krickl, in yesterday's Claremont Courier (the article is not online; you'll have to buy the newspaper and it is well worth the 75 cents), carries the story a little further after interviewing Healy.

"When asked her specific role in acquiring the Wilderness Park land, Ms. Healy said that 'very early on' she negotiated with the Independent Cities Financial Authority on financing the purchase through them. She also reviewed agenda reports on the topic [emphasis added]..."

Since the property was paid for at first, as we recall, with money from the City sewer fund, and the Independent Cities Financial Authority was never involved, her negotiation must've led nowhere.

So here we have the sum total of Bridget Healy's "substantial contribution" to the acquisition of the Wilderness Park: an unsuccessful negotiation (more likely a single phone call) and the heavy lifting of reviewing agenda reports as she describes on page 15 of her deposition:

Grotefeld: You also talked about one of the duties that you held as assistant city manager for Claremont, the preparation of agendas?

Healy: Uh-huh.

Grotefeld: When you say preparation of agendas, what do you mean by that?

Healy: I guess the best way to describe it was to say I was the quality control person.

Grotefeld: And by that, what do you mean?

Healy: Reading all the reports, making sure that they were grammatically correct, the answer was in the presentation, that they were understandable to the public.

We wonder if her "substantial contributions" to the other 20 "accomplishments" cited in the campaign piece are equally thin--or equally non-existent. Certainly some of the so-called "accomplishments" themselves seem a bit vague and non-specific, e.g., number 12 on the list, "Enhanced the City's partnership with the School District."

And this excellent article by Krickl raises other questions. If Ms. Healy is now claiming a specific role, however meager, in the acquisition of the Wilderness Park, isn't that pretty clearly at variance with her sworn testimony in her deposition? What is that called, class?--It starts with a "P" and ends with "jury".

Moreover, is she really seriously claiming that "substantial contributions" to the acquistion of the Wilderness Park were reading over agenda reports for grammatical errors and typos? Wow.

For this she is receiving a six-figure pension of which Claremont's contribution is nearly $100,000 per year: Proofreading agenda reports and holding Glenn Southard's hankie.

* * * *

See our earlier post for a full copy of Bridget Healy's 2006 sworn deposition.

The Quest

With the March 3rd city election fast approaching, the Claremont Courier posed several questions to each of the three candidates for Claremont City Council - Bridget Healy, Larry Schroeder, and Corey Calaycay:

• Why are you interested in serving on Claremont's City Council?
  
  
• What can the city council do to make sure the city's finances will be safe in these troubling economic times?
  
  
• Village West is struggling to find tenants as more businesses are closing up shop. What kind of economic development tools can the city implement to attract more customers and secure more businesses in the area?
  
  
• What makes you different and unique from the other candidates running and who are currently on the City Council?
  
  
• What are your favorite TV show, favorite book and favorite movie?
  
  

You can read the candidates' respective responses on the Courier's website, minus the Village West question, which was omitted on the website, along with the corresponding answers. Also, Courier reporter Tony Krickl had a bonus question about the candidates' views on building a new police station. That last question, and the candidates' answers, are posted on the Courier City Beat blog.

The big surprise on that police station question is candidate Healy's response. She is now pushing the former affordable housing site on Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave. Apparently, she's been hearing one of her opponents, Corey Calaycay, talk about that location and thought it was a good enough position to borrow. It may also mean that Healy's League of Women Voter supporters have finally given up on that location for affordable housing.

These sorts of candidate forum/interview questions are always a kick, especially ones like the "What's your favorite...? One senses that the questioner, whether it's the Courier's Krickl or Barbara Musselman at the League of Women Voters, serves as a kind of public gatekeeper of taste as well as policy.

These sorts of gatekeepers have been around a very long time, and those fill-in-the-blank questions can occasionally surprise, sometimes with deadly consequences for our brave, aspiring leaders: