Election Tomorrow

The polls open at 7am tomorrow, and a select few voters (less than 20% of the eligible registered voters, if the past is any guide) will have the opportunity to vote for two seats on the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education as well as for the Citrus College Board of Trustees District 2 seat.

If you need to know where your polling place is, check the LA County Registrar-Recorder's website and enter your street address and zip code.

There are two candidates for the Citrus College District 2 position:  incumbent Sue Keith and Tracy Rickman.

The three CUSD candidates are, in alphabetical order, Joe Farrell, Hilary LaConte, and Sam Mowbray.   Farrell is the outsider, having been one of the leaders of the No on CL school bond campaign last year.  LaConte is the incumbent, having been board president when the district tried unsuccessfully to pass the $95 million CL bond.  Mowbray is a former CUSD board member and is seeking to return for a fourth term on the school board.

The Daily Bulletin endorsed Farrell and LaConte.  The Claremont Courier, on the other hand, endorsed Mowbray and LaConte.  Judging from candidate lawn signs, campaign supporter lists, and letters to the Courier, the Mowbray-LaConte combo is the Claremont 400's ticket of choice for this election. The Courier and the 400 seem to have given LaConte a pass on the failed bond, which got less than 40% of the vote a year ago.

The Courier and the 400 have also opted to look the other way with regards to LeConte's possible circumvention of the state's Brown Act sunshine law when she was board president in October, 2010 - something that drew criticism from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Public Integrity recently.   This last bit we thought particularly odd for the Courier, which in the past has been something of an advocate for open government.

Through its endorsments the Courier has usually been the most accurate barometer of voter sentiment in Claremont, so we'll see if 2010 CL bond vote or the Brown Act inquiry have much of an effect on the voting. We suspect that it neither issue will matter much at all, but the turnout should tell all.   If CUSD voters are really bothered by enough to overcome their usual apathy, then LeConte might be in some trouble.  

Last Saturday's Courier carried letters from two LeConte-Mowbray supporters, Nancy Tresser-Osgood and Dave Nemer.  Both lamented the low turnouts in past elections (Nemer also had a haiku on the same subject in a prior edition of the Courier).  Tresser-Osgood and Nemer are either terribly naive or just plain ignorant, or both, when it comes to local elections.   The 400's candidates traditionally do best in low-turnout elections.   When election turnout goes over 30%, the vote usually goes against the insider (small "I") candidates.

That's why our City Council elections are in March and the CUSD elections are in November of off-years.   If those elections were changed to general election dates, the turnout would swamp the Claremonster candidates.  In past council elections Llewellyn Miller, Peter Yao, Jackie McHenry, and Corey Calaycay all ran as outsider candidates in what were relatively high-turnout municipal elections.

Similarly, because it was a bond measure, the CL vote had to be held during a general election and was soundly defeated.   Conversely, the City's $12.5 million Measure S Johnson's Pasture bond won because its support base was much wider than just the Claremont 400.  Measure S got over 72% of the vote in November, 2006.

We'll have to wait until after the polls close at 8pm tomorrow night to know the answers.  Check back here to see the final results.

Shakedown

[Stracci] had a fleet of freight hauling trucks that made him a fortune primarily because his trucks could travel with a heavy overload and not be stopped and fined by highway weight inspectors. These trucks helped ruin the highways and then his roadbuilding firm, with lucrative state contracts, repaired the damage wrought. It was the kind of operation that would warm any man’s heart, business of itself creating more business.

- Mario Puzo, The Godfather

LOOPY LOGIC

Watching the Claremont Unified School District in action, one can't help but marvel at the kooky logic employed by the CUSD Board of Education. For instance, when the school board needed help with its last superintendent search, they turned to Pivot Learning Partners, the consulting firm that identified Terry Nichols, the district's last superintendent.

You'll also recall that Nichols cut out on us 18 months into his $196,650-a-year contract and left CUSD in bind, in answer to which the school board turned to....Pivot Learning Partners!  Board member Jeff Stark explained the deep thinking behind this move, saying that this is the way we've always done things.  Like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football, we keep going back for more.

To make matters worse, for its interim superintendent the CUSD board hired PLP consultant Gloria Johnston (photo, left), paying her the same amount the district paid Nichols.  We wonder how hard it was for Johnston to tell the board that the results of PLP's exhaustive search was, for the time being, herself.

As we've seen time and again, the CUSD board of education prefers to overpay for work that could easily be done in-house.  For a fraction of the money they paid PLP and Johnston, the board could have had their assistant superintendent fill in for Nichols while they conducted their search.  They could have simply asked PLP or some other firm for a list of names and then interviewed the candidates themselves rather than counting on PLP to winnow the list down to a couple choices.   But, as Jeff Stark likes to say, that's not how we do things in Claremont.

Incidentally, these education consultant gigs must be pretty lucrative.  We've discovered that Interim Superintendent Johnston doesn't limit her consultative work to PLP.   A Fairfield-based company called Total School Solutions lists Johnston as a member of their team. According to the TSS website, Johnston is a TSS Senior Consultant. Here's her bio:

Click to Enlarge

We don't know much about TSS or what exactly Johnston has done there, but we did find a mention of TSS in a 3/2/08 Modesto Bee article about a brouhaha in the Waterford School District:

Modbee.com continuing coverage: School budget crisis

Report rips Waterford spending
Schools chief defends his 'triage, expedient' actions
By ROGER W. HOSKINS
BEE STAFF WRITER

WATERFORD -- While the Waterford Unified School District stares at an upcoming 10 percent budget cut, the board of trustees heard a legal report critical of relaxed financial practices.

The report at a recent meeting covered three main areas of unauthorized or unexpected payments:

Stipends totaling $25,000 paid to two principals over two years, Jose Aldoca and Don Davis

Administrative pay raises of 5.2 percent, including a raise for Superintendent Howard Cohen, that were paid five months before the board approved them

A contract with a Bay Area consulting firm, Total School Solutions, was ratified as a $33,000 agreement to polish the district's master plan but turned out to be an open-ended contract that cost the district $124,000 before it was canceled with the work unfinished.

Maybe, contrary to Jeff Stark's philosophy, this is the way things are done everywhere.  Another pillar of Claremont exceptionalism bites the dust.


BLATTNER BLATHER

If you hadn't noticed, the district (and now Johnston) doesn't limit its use of consultants to headhunting duties.  When the matter of inter-district transfers (IDT's) started becoming a hot-button issue in the current school board election, the school district, needing to help prop up incumbent Hilary LaConte ahead of the November vote, commissioned Bob Blattner and his firm Blattner & Associates to write a report on the impact of IDTs on CUSD. 

The so-called Blattner Report is posted on the CUSD website.  It's presented as a sort of cost-benefit analysis and concludes not only that the overall impact of IDT's is positive, but that discontinuing the acceptance of IDT's into the district would be detrimental to CUSD's budget because whatever savings might be achieved by eliminating unneeded teaching positions would be eaten up by the loss of state money the district receives for each student.

Here's the report:
Blattner Report 9-15-11


It's too bad Blattner didn't bother to provide any of the actual data he used in his report.  For all we know, he could be making this stuff up out of whole cloth.   He is, after all, a former Sacramento Bee education writer who is known as much for being a Sacramento lobbyist as he is for his other work with school districts.  Let's face it, the school district had to commission a political document to prove its premise - that we need IDT's. To that end, they didn't need a detailed, rigorous study. They had to get someone whom the district could count on to shape the narrative.

You'll note that CUSD doesn't bother to produce the back-up data either.  For all their talk about being transparent and involving the community in their decision-making, they're still stuck in their top-heavy hierarchy issuing edicts from on high.  If we know one thing about Claremont, it's that you can get a report to say just about anything you want as long as you don't provide the data to back up your claims.  Just say it strongly enough with plenty of authority, and pretty soon the education beat writers will be citing it as if it were fact rather than interpretive art.

This no doubt explains why CUSD slow rolls requests for what should be public information.  Rather than just posting all the raw figures on their website so that the community could assess them and have a rational debate, CUSD had to get Bob Blattner to explain it all to us.  And if you ask for the data, they don't just delay, they change the subject by having their surrogates call you a racist - "You don't want those kids here."

Compare the district's website to the city of Claremont's, where one can watch videos of old City Council meetings or peruse the agenda materials and staff reports at one's leisure.  For all the complaints we have had about City Hall, access to public information is no longer one of them, and that didn't improve until the City Council turned over and the upper management changed.  Before that, the stonewalling public information requests received was every bit as heavy-handed as what one experiences with CUSD today.

CONSULTANT-GO-ROUND

So, to recap: Consultants salivate at the thought of dipping into the CUSD money stream.  Remember Jared Boigon, the consultant the district hired at a cost of $25,000 to conduct the polling the school board used to buttress its arguments for the $95 million Measure CL bond?  Boigon leveraged that contract into a campaign consultant job working for the front men the district roped into running the Yes on CL campaign last year.  For campaign funding, at Boigon's suggestion, the Yes on CL folks then hit up the very consultants and contractors who stood to benefit from the bond and would have undoubtedly sought to recoup their campaign donations by working those costs into their future billing.

Of course, the district assured us that there was no conflict of interest involved in the $150,000-plus the Yes on CL campaign raised from those consultants and contractors.  No problem at all.  If the school board says it, it must be true.

So we weren't terribly surprised when we learned that Gloria Johnston's Total School Solutions employers are partners with Bob Blattner's company. In fact, TSS issued a press release trumpeting the synergy that was about to be loosed on the world when the two consulting firms teamed up:

Click to Enlarge

They promise to deliver their prospective school district clients to efficiency levels undreamt of outside the Jersey road construction business.  We have no problem with that.  It's just that it would have been nice if Gloria Johnston and the school board would have told us before contracting with Bob Blattner for his expert opinion on IDT's. 

As we said, no surprise.  It's Claremont, after all.  It's how we do here.

School Bond News

Wes Woods II reports today on Thursday's Claremont Unified School District Board of Education meeting where the board voted 4-1 to approve putting a bond of up to $95 million on the November 2 ballot.

Woods quoted a mother of CUSD students as being against the current bond after having supported the last one in 2000:

Parent Kathy Yeager said she was an "enthusiastic supporter" of the 2000 measure Y bond measure, but later "realized we had been duped."

Projects were scaled back or not undertaken, said Yeager, who is a Parent Faculty Association member at Chaparral Elementary School and El Roble Intermediate School.

Yeager also criticized the lack of specifics on the bond, for which no project have been listed, and she said CUSD mismanaged the Measure Y money.

Someone named Bill Fox as speaking in favor of the bond at the board meeting. We recall that a Michael K. Fox and his Rancho Cucamonga company Fox Transportation donated a total $10,000 to the Measure Y campaign. We do not know if they bear any relation to Bill Fox.

Woods also gave some unintentional support for bond proponents. Woods wrote that Measure Y was "a $12.5 million school facilities bond." At $48.9 million, Measure Y actually was four times the amount Bulletin readers will think it was.

CUSD assistant superintendent of business services Lisa Shoemaker was quoted as saying she had no idea how much the campaign would cost. A check of campaign finance records for Measure Y showed that proponents spent $81,386.77 on the Yes on Y campaign. That was by far the most money ever spent on a Claremont election.

As we have noted before, the majority of that money came from businesses that were potential contractors with CUSD.

Son of Measure Y

To no one's surprise, the Claremont Unified School District Board this evening approved the bond resolution for a $95,000,000 bond to be voted on in November.

The vote was 4 in favor with Steven Llanusa opposing.

Those in attendance felt as if they had stumbled into a private party uninvited.

The "Most Witless Comment by a Board Member" Award goes to Trustee Jeff Stark, who opined that, really, questions about bond projects on priorities were out of order because the Board had to vote on the bond resolution first.

The "Most Opaque Answer in a Supporting Role" Award goes to Business Services Assistant Superintendent Lisa Shoemaker, who twice answered a question on how the bond would relieve the General Fund. In neither iteration did she give any specifics, leaving the questioners wondering "how much, exactly". She did, however, give her second answer at a slightly elevated volume, pitch, and level of impatience.

Below is a schematic of the educator's mind:

H/T to our correspondent.

Game Plan

If you are interested in learning about the playbook Claremont Unified School District will follow in their proposed school bond campaign, you don't have to look far. On December 4 last year, at the 2009 Annual Education Conference and Trade Show in San Diego County, you could have attended a workshop on how to craft successful bond measures. This was part of conference organized by the California School Board Association.

The workshop, titled "Dynamics of a Successful Bond Campaign," laid out the strategies school districts like CUSD need to employ to ensure passage of school bond measures. We've attached the PowerPoint (what else?) presentation below. There were four speakers, one school district superintendent and three private sector representatives.

The private sector speakers all represented businesses that assist agencies with bonds, either with the actual campaigns or with issuing the bonds after voters approve them. One of the speakers was Jared Boigon, a partner at TBWB Strategies, the company CUSD hired a while back to conduct a poll to determine the level of support a bond or parcel tax would have with Claremont voters. TBWB also worked for CUSD on the Measure Y campaign in 2000. Boigon was the person who reported on the poll to the CUSD Board of Education in June.

As you may know, TBWB is more than a humble polling firm. TBWB advertises itself as having a three-step formula for getting bond measures passed:

• Organize
  
  TBWB will organize and train your volunteers to mobilize supporters, communicate a clear, consistent message, conduct private fundraising and turn out supporters to the polls.
  
  
• Communicate
  
  TBWB will identify the key message that voters need to hear to support your measure. Using our in-house, award-winning design department, TBWB will craft unique, eye-catching direct mail suited to your particular community that carries the message you need to win.
  
  
• Win
  
  At TBWB, we have the experience needed to win campaigns and ensure your agency receives the funding it needs. Our hands-on approach means that we craft a campaign plan and develop materials suited for your particular community, instead of using a cookie-cutter approach.
  
  With TBWB, your campaign will have the support and guidance needed to secure funding for local schools, community colleges, hospitals, firefighters, police, transportation or other needed services.

Another speaker was David Casnocha, a partner with the law firm of Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth. Stradling Yocca is a firm that, among many other things, provides bond counsel service. Stradling's David Casnocha was employed by CUSD in 2000, and the Claremont Redevelopment Agency (the five city councilmembers and the city manager) has also used Stradling Yocca in past for bond counsel.

A third speaker was Mark Farrell, the managing director of Piper Jaffray & Co. , an investment banking firm that underwrites municipal bonds. Piper Jaffray's literature says that they can do more than underwriting. They can help with the election:

Capital planning & bond election services

Your school district's bond issue starts with capital planning. We'll help you determine the cost of your project, how much your school district can afford and what the impact to taxpayers will be. This requires in-depth knowledge of your state's property tax system, tax equalization laws and bond issuance statutes.

Next, we'll use our knowledge of local election laws to structure your bond issue in a way that voters are most likely to accept. We'll even help you review and design election surveys and campaign materials – because we know how critical it is for your bond issue to pass.

Take a look at the seminar outline below. As you can see, Page 3 of the presentation give us the election road map, one which CUSD seems to have faithfully followed in setting up their 2010 bond measure:

• Prepare a District “road show” for community and parent presentations
  (We've called them "dog-and-pony shows." Whatever term you use, in Claremont they've certainly put the fiscal fear of God into the locals. -ed)
  
  
• Be visible and interact with community, parents and staff with consistent talking points regarding the bond
  (This explains why you've heard the same ideas tossed out by bond proponents in school board town halls and in letters to the Courier.)
  
  
• Engage a consultant firm to develop a plan and follow their advice
  (May we suggest TBWB for your plan developing and advising pleasure?)
  
  
• Know your community
  (Know your friends, discredit your opponents.)
  
  
• Don’t take short cuts and don’t assume anything
  (Um.... but assuming is one CSUD's and the Claremont 400's favorite pastimes. They'll have to work on this bullet point.)
  
  
• Make sure your campaign is strong and visible before the absentee ballots are mailed
  (See road and/or dog-and-pony shows above. Also, see yesterday's district-wide mailer.)
  

And page 10 underscores the importance of getting a strong election message together and out into the ether way before the campaign:

Prepare “Message Frame” Before Campaign

• Link to state budget situation
  (The sky is falling, the sky is falling!)
  
  
• Focus on academics
  (But spend on fluff.)
  
  
• Second or third bonds: talk about success, not failure
  (Don't mention what happened with the last bond money.)
  
  
• Local Local Local
  (Somos loco, loco, loco.)
  
  
• Trust polling
  (Trust TBWB. And prepay, please. No, really.)
  

So you skeptics out there can see that we're not Grassy Knoll-variety conspiracy freaks when we say that much of what you've seen and heard about the district budget from CSUD for the last six months or so has been designed to bring us to this point. The vote tomorrow night represents just one more box to be checked off on a decision that was made a long time ago before the public ever got involved. The rest has been window dressing.

The alternative to a bond is a parcel tax, which we believe is a better way of bridging the district's three-year budget gap. We think a limited parcel tax with a sunset clause would be more attractive because would involve much less money than a bond - around $5-6 million versus $95 million - so it would be an easier sell in a bad economy. And according to what CUSD has reported, the TBWB poll the board commissioned shows about a 65% approval rating for a parcel tax, and a 58% approval rating for a bond. The parcel tax needs 67% to pass, and the bond needs 55%.

Sure, some work would have to be done to bump that 65% up, but it's been done here before. As we've already pointed out, the Johnson's Pasture bond in 2006 also needed 67%, which the Claremont 400 said was impossible to reach. It ended up with about 72%.

Tomorrow: A brief trip in time to 2000 and the last school bond campaign.

Get on the Bus! Fare: $95 million

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Yesterday, just ahead of the 72-hour legal requirement, the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education posted an agenda for their meeting 6:30pm this Thursday, July 22, at the Richard S. Kirkendall Education Center at 170 W. San Jose Ave.

As we predicted, the agenda includes a resolution to go forward with a $95 million bond to be financed over 30 years. The bond will (note the inevitability) go to the voters in November. This current CUSD bond effort is almost twice the amount of the $48.9 million Measure Y bond approved in 2000. As we've pointed out many times before, CUSD squandered that earlier bond money without completing all the projects the district promised.

CUSD is using the current fiscal crisis to do exactly what California has done for the past 30 years. The district is trying to finance its operational costs through long-term bonds. CUSD stills owes $30 million on the Measure Y funding, and we are only 10 years into that 30-year bond. The district's proposal says that part of this bond's $95 million will go to pay off that earlier bond. So what we are really being asked to do is approve a 40-year, $113.9 million bond - $95 million, less $30 million for the old bond, plus the original $48.9 million from 2000. All CUSD has done is to break down the vote into two elections 10 years apart.

This money will never get paid back in its entirety. You heard it here first. Our school district will be back in another 10 or 15 years asking for a bond to pay off the 2010 bond and upgrade facilities again. All this to let them move money around to items not expressly listed in their 2010 bond literature. Speaking of which....


OPENING GAMBITS

As with the previous bond election, CUSD Superintendent Terry Nichols and the CUSD Board of Education cannot legally campaign for the issue. But that has never stopped CUSD. The district sent out a district-wide, four-page, four-color bulk mailer that offered a "Spotlight on Claremont Students." The slick mailer, which almost certainly had to have been produced by CUSD bond consultant, was timed to hit mailboxes yesterday, the same day they knew news of the bond would break.

This mailer represents something CUSD they cannot legally do. School districts are not allowed to finance political campaigns, even if is for an education bond. So they send out a mailer with an implicit message saying we need money, we need this bond. The document is a de facto election piece offering up the rationale for voting "Yes" on the bond. The mailer was been planned well in advance and would have been designed by CUSD's consultant (in effect, a campaign consultant), to lay out the first talking points justifying the bond.

The mailer would have cost $4000 to $5,000 to create, print, and mail. That, of course, does not include the consultant's time. The mailer and the district's expenditure was approved without any public discussion well in advance of the district going public with the bond proposal.

Clearly all of this is - the district's town hall meetings, the polling CUSD commissioned, the mailer, the CUSD board's predetermined passage of their bond resolution Thursday night - are part of a design, a campaign. The CUSD mailing alone is a masterpiece of political manipulation, and we'll take a shot at parsing it.

Here's the mailer:

Click Images to Enlarge

BREAKING DOWN THE MESSAGE

The district's mailer starts with a photo a cute, enthusiastic girl raising her hand. She sports a broad smile because thanks to Claremont schools she can answer any question with confidence. The girl is literally spotlighted. She is in full color and sharp focus, while the other children in the background are out of focus and screened with gray to contrast our shining CUSD student. You're a kid hater if you vote down a bond to help this sweet child.

Underneath this girl's image is a small banner that says "Community Update from Claremont Schools." Ah! See, California Fair Political Practices Commission, it's a newsletter, not a campaign piece, full of information about the goings on in our district. Let's take a look at what's inside:

1. When we open the mailer, we see a highlighted paragraph explaining that CUSD "continues to be known for providing our local students with an exceptional education."
   
   Nothing better than repetition to establish our starting point: Our schools are outstanding and are an asset to our community (i.e., you, Mr. and Ms. Voter).
   
   
2. The first bullet point bears the heading "Academic Acheivement."
   
   More message repetition -good schools, good teachers, good kids, good community.
   
   
3. Next comes: "High-Quality Classroom Instruction Despite State Cuts."
   
   Our district and its teachers are hard at work desperately trying to hold the quality education line against the state's crushing budget crisis. The underlying message is that this great asset, CUSD, is threatened by a fiscal crisis not of its own doing - look, we're doing our best, but we're at the edge of a cliff here. Whatever will we do?
   
   (Cue up the Snidely Whiplash laugh and Nell about to be cast into the abyss.)
   
   
4. "Potential Bond Measure to Update Schools, Offset State Cuts."
   
   More fear. With CUSD offering up the solution: Thanks goodness! CUSD, the same people behind Measure Y, has a fiscal plan to save us. They'll even hire the same consultants! All you have to do is support our bond measure in November.
   
   (Cue up the Dudley Do-Right theme.)
   
   There's no mention of any specific work that will be done, just a list of things like:
   
   
   • The removal of hazardous materials like lead and asbestos.
     
     Hey, if CUSD is so competent, why our they exposing our dear front-page student to poisons?
     
     
   • Retrofitting our schools with energy efficient improvements.
     
     Got to appeal to the green voters - people concerned with the environment, not voters turning green from being spun by consultants.
     
     
   • Fixing leaky roofs, updating technology, improving student safety.
     
     See the first bullet above.
     
     
   • Replacing old wiring:
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     Good God! Our kids are going to get electrocuted if we don't pass this bond!
     
     Here the district's consultant has not-so-subtly inserted the obligatory photo of frayed wiring - the district and bond proponents did this sort of thing with Measure Y, BTW.
     
     In this instance, they've also juxtaposed the perilous wiring photo with a picture of a classroom with a teacher instructing kids who are sitting in front of flat-screen monitors - look out 21st Century, here comes CUSD!
     
     
5. "Fiscal Accountability."
   
   Rest assured, voter. We're looking out for your money. We'll appoint a citizen's oversight committee (handpicked by us) "to ensure funds are spent appropriately." We'll also conduct yearly audits - conducted by an auditing consultant (also of our own choosing).
   
   You can trust CUSD. After all, we had citizen oversight with Measure Y.
   

As always, the district's literature fails to show how that $95 million will save a single teacher's job. We'll have shiny new equipment, all the bells and whistles, but fewer teachers.

And, speaking of fiscal accountability, never forget that in the 2000 Measure Y campaign, proponents spent about $80,000, most of which was raised by district contractors - exactly the people and entities who would have benefited from the bond money. They undoubtedly looked at that $80,000 in campaign donations as an investment that offered substantial returns in the form of CUSD contracts.

We'll see more of the same this time, and, like the little girl on the cover of CUSD's mailer, the school board possesses absolute confidence in the bond measure's passage. Get enough fear into people, and they'll vote for anything.

Once the bond resolution is approved Thursday, the campaign effort will be seamlessly handed off to an election committee led by people the Claremont 400 have slated to be future school board members. The last time around, current board member Jeff Stark figured prominently in the campaign.

Remember, voters, always follow the pea.

Fear Itself (or $95 Million Fraud Alert)

We're going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education votes this Thursday to approve a resolution to place a school bond measure on the ballot of the November election. They will do this on Thursday because that is the last regularly scheduled board meeting before the August 6 deadline for a bond to be placed on the November ballot.

As of this writing (3:10pm) the district has posted no agenda on its website for Thursday's meeting. They have not made any official announcement of their intentions because, as is the practice of the Claremont 400, they want as little public discussion about this matter. Discussion might lead to proposals of alternatives, not the least of which is a parcel tax.

The key here is that a bond cannot be used to pay teacher salaries, which is the most pressing budgetary need the district faces. A bond could only be used for things like improving CUSD facilities. A parcel tax, on the other hand, could:

1. Be worded in such a way as to specify that it would only be used for teacher salaries.
   
   
2. Contain a sunset clause that would allow the tax to lapse in, say, three years, enough to get the district through it's projected deficit.
   
   
3. Not have to be financed.
   
   Let's not forget that what happened when the district last went to voters for money with Measure Y in 2000. With the help of approximately $80,000 from CUSD contractors, $48.9 million Measure Y bond passed. The contractors were the primary beneficiaries of the voters largess, and, with the help of cost overruns, CUSD burned through the Measure Y money without completing the projects it used to sell voters on the bond in the first place.
   

This entire bond discussion was decided in the school board's collective minds long ago. The board and the people behind them (take your bow, Claremonsters) made that decision for the voters. The rest of the act, these dog-and-pony shows conducted by CUSD boardmembers Hilary LaConte, Beth Bingham, Jeff Stark, and Mary Caenepeel, have had one goal: to gin up fear in the hearts of parents, teacher organizations, and the rest of the voting public so that they will support the board's predetermination.

It has, in short, been a manipulation, an intellectual fraud, a con, complete with polling data designed to facilitate the bond's passage. The only boardmember not complicit in this game has been Steve Llanusa, whom we haven't always agreed with in the past, but who was at least independent enough to voice his dissent in a Claremont Courier opinion piece several months back.

It's really the school board's blatant manipulation that galls us more than anything. The fear they've cultivated creates a false logic: our schools will fail if we don't get more money; the only way of getting that money is bond; therefore, we must pass a bond to save our schools. It's that second premise that is a lie. The board knows there is another, better choice.

We've seen this fearfulness stirred up before. When the city was trying to purchase Johnson's Pasture in 2006, the same Claremonsters who were responsible for pushing Measure Y and who are behind the current bond effort told the public that we needed to urgently buy the land because developers were lining up to buy the property.

In fact, there was no real threat of such a purchase. Had the City waited until now, it could have obtained the pasture for half the price it paid in 2006, but the Claremont 400 decided what was needed was a "parks and pasture" assessment district at many times the eventual price of the land. The real intent was to create a slush fund which the City could borrow against to pay for anything it wanted.

The 400 lied to Claremont property owners the assessment when they said was the only way Johnson's Pasture could be saved. Even though the proposed assessment district needed only 50% approval to pass, property owners refused to support it because they saw it for what it really was.

The pasture was still saved - by the Measure S bond measure. That bond needed 67% voter approval and ended with 72% of the vote - a number the Claremont 400 had claimed was not possible. The Measure S bond succeeded because it was a quarter of the cost of the assessment district and because the only thing it could be used for was the purchase of Johnson's Pasture.

We see that same dynamic present here. The district uses fear to intentionally muddy the waters. They claim that in this instance a school bond, which needs only 55% approval, would be easier to pass than a parcel tax, which would need 67%. As happened with Johnson's Pasture, the school board (and the local papers, by the way) fails to note that a parcel tax would attract more votes because it would involve no financing, could be directed to the most urgent need, and could be directed to last only a few years, rather than the 30 a bond would require.

The school board's induced fear will be accompanied by kind of mob mentality. If you're not for this bond, you hate our schools and our children, they will say. This second manipulation is as intentional as the first, and the district, with the help of its consultants, will use a contractor-financed campaign to to prevent the better argument from gaining a fair hearing at all.

We saw this same strategy in 2000 with Measure Y, again in 2006 with the Parks and Pasture Assessment District, and we'll see it in the coming months with a costly school bond that will again enrich the district's contractors and election consultants without the same job-saving impact a carefully directed parcel tax would.

Below: CUSD Consultant Collecting from Claremont Taxpayer

UPDATED, 4:45PM

As we said they would, the CUSD board is proposing a $95 million bond. And as we correctly predicted, there are no specified projects that money would be used for. The board's resolution (agenda item XI.B.1) only says the money will be used for school renovations, repairs, and upgrades. They didn't dare give a list of school sites and the projects for each facility because then they could be held accountable for where the money really ended up.

Also, approximately $30 million will go right away towards paying off the money still owed on the Measure Y bond. Think of it as a cash-back refi. Ever since the 2008 financial meltdown, those vehicles have been out of vogue everywhere else in the financial world. However, in the CUSD world, they're still very much the rage.

As with the last school bond, the district promises a citizen oversight committee to make sure the money is properly spent. Rest assured, contractors and consultants, that committee will stocked with reliable Claremont 400 supporters to ensure there will be no questions asked. Every con needs its schill, after all.

CUSD has many needs. But this is a $95 million giveaway with no guarantees that the actual needs of students and teachers will be met. As we said, it is a con job, pure and simple.

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.

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.

Never Too Late to Learn

The City of Claremont, in partnership with the Claremont Colleges, offers a program that allows seniors to audit classes at the 5C's. If you're 60 years or older, you are eligible for the Claremont Avenues for Lifelong Learning program, says the city:

Claremont College Auditing Program for Seniors

The City of Claremont Senior Program is pleased to announce the continuation of its FREE Claremont Avenues for Lifelong Learning (CALL) Program. This program is designed to permit those 60 years of age and older to audit courses at the Claremont Colleges during their Fall 2009 semester. Claremont residents are given first preference for course selection, but the program is open to outside residents as well.

The CALL Program is part of the Claremont Senior Program's Senior Master Plan and it's emphasis on successful aging. Participants are invited to audit classes at Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, Pitzer and Scripps colleges. Each auditor is entitled to enroll in one course. Auditors are expected to attend classes regularly throughout the semester. For some of the courses little or no background is necessary, others require some prerequisite knowledge or skills to attend. The courses are designed primarily for full-time students enrolled at the Claremont Colleges.

A schedule of classes and application are available at the Joslyn Center, 660 Mountain Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Registration begins July 13 and closes August 6. Classes will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis, with priority given to Claremont residents. Most classes begin the week of September 1 and end December 18. For further information about the CALL Program, please call (909) 399-5488.

• View CALL Application (Adobe Acrobat, 21KB)
• View CALL Schedule of Classes (Adobe Acrobat, 39KB)

State's Finances Force Cal Poly Budget Cuts

You may have heard that Cal Poly Pomona was forced to cancel a good chunk of its summer school classes - those paid for by state funding - thanks to the state's continuing budget problems.

Cal Poly's website carried this announcement:

CAL POLY POMONA CANCELS STATE-SUPPORTED SUMMER COURSES

The onset of massive budget cuts to the California State University (CSU) has forced Cal Poly Pomona to cancel state funding for the 2009 summer quarter. All classes that had been scheduled for Summer 2009 are now cancelled with the exception of Study Abroad and Early Start programs. This cancellation includes classes that had been scheduled to begin on June 22 and July 29.

To support student graduation requirements, the university will offer a fee-based summer schedule through the College of the Extended University beginning on July 13. These fully transferable accredited courses meet Cal Poly Pomona degree requirements. Formal admission to Cal Poly Pomona is not a requirement. Stafford Loans, Pell Grants and Work Study may be available for regularly admitted students. Suggest the classes you would like offered by clicking on the green button on this page.

University business operations will remain open throughout the summer on a 4/10 schedule. For more information, please view the Frequently Asked Questions page.

Fee increasing are in the offing as well, and Cal grants are another item on the Sacramento chopping block, something that would affect students at private colleges like the 5C's as well as state schools.

For the foreseeable future, students, faculty, and administrators at college campuses all over California will have set aside their frustrations and deal with the fallout from the state's fiscal crisis. Over at Cal Poly it means the university will have to find a way to cut $20-35 million from its budget.

Cal Poly President Michael Ortiz spent a few hours yesterday at the school's student center talking to students and faculty about the problems they face. The Daily Bulletin's Canan Tasci reported on the meeting:

For two hours on Thursday, Ortiz and his staff responded to a multitude of comments, suggestions, personal and specific questions pertaining to graduation, fall schedule, housing and financial aid.

"It was very informative but I still feel there were some questions I'd like to be answered," said graduate Justin Baron. "We still don't know if student housing and parking fees will increase as a result of the budget cuts."

Ortiz said the university doesn't know a number of the students' answers because the state has not yet completed its budget for the next year.

Possible State Budget Accord Reached

The Sacramento Bee reports Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the states four legislative leaders (the Big Five) have reach a tentative budget agreement that will close the projected $42 billion budget gap through the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year.

The Bee says:

The plan includes $15.8 billion in spending cuts, $14.3 billion in taxes and $10.9 billion in borrowing, according to a budget outline obtained by The Bee.

Leaders are counting on federal stimulus money as the package approaches closure in Washington. If California receives at least $10 billion, more than half of that money -- $5.5 billion -- would eliminate the need for a short-term loan, while $1.8 billion would eliminate taxes and $1.2 billion would eliminate spending cuts.

The plan would raise sales taxes by 1 cent on the dollar, increase income taxes across the board and hike the vehicle license fee from the current 0.65 percent of the vehicle's value to 1.15 percent. The taxes would last a minimum of two years. If the federal stimulus money arrives, the income tax increase would be reduced.

The proposal would cut the state's dependent credit in half, raising taxes for parents and those who take care of elders.

According to the Bee, the state legislature will vote on the agreement Friday, though a few details have yet to be worked out. The Bee's article also states that the deal will rely on $10.9 billion in more borrowing, this time against future state lottery revenues. The borrowing will have to be approved by California voters.

There will also be a $8.9 billion cut in state education spending, though Sacramento will ask voters to change state law to allow the cuts in education to be restored at a later date. $5 billion of education cuts will come from K-12 spending (Claremont Unified better batten down the hatches). The state will also completely cut funding for local transit agencies - this means you, Foothill Transit.

In addition, Schwazenegger would get some of the changes in state environmental laws he has sought to spur construction. Another concession to Republicans is the institution of a state spending cap and the creation of a rainy-day fund.