Act II

There are no second acts in American lives.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tanned, rested, and ready...
However, Claremont, being a sovereign nation, offers up as many chances at redemption as its nobles need. Case in point, the comeback of one Karen Rosenthal (photo, left), a former Claremont mayor. After a long hiatus, Rosenthal was back on the Claremont political scene this year as a member of Joe Lyons' campaign committee.

In addition to hosting Lyons' campaign night party, Rosenthal was in charge of hospitality for Lyons' campaign. Those of you who were around when Rosenthal was mayor can appreciate the cognitive dissonance induced by the sight of Rosenthal's involvement in Lyons' election. While mayor, Rosenthal was best known for her eye rolling behind the dais when she disagreed with some speaker during public comment at council meetings. Rosenthal's official nastiness exceed even that of her fellow Weird Sisters Ellen Taylor and Sandy Baldonado.

Rosenthal's letter prompted this response by one of our readers:

Date: Sat, March 12, 2011 7:38:08 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject:the one thing at lyons4citycouncil that made me laugh out loud was listed under the "campaign committee" heading


Hospitality
Karen Rosenthal

If you are at all familiar with Rosenthal's history, you know that her defense of smear tactics is consistent with her remarkable ability to rationalize just about anything. In 2003, it was Rosenthal's heavy-handed mismanagement of the Irvin Landrum shooting that prompted voters to reject Rosenthal's reelection bid. Ever resilient, Rosenthal has from time-to-time tested the waters to see if people had forgotten how badly she behaved while on council.

Lyons' success has apparently emboldened Rosenthal's post-election renaissance. After the March 8 election, she had a letter in the Claremont Courier justifying the smear campaign on councilmember Opanyi Nasiali by a group that included members of Lyons' campaign.

Rosenthal was back in the council chambers Tuesday night, berating council member Corey Calaycay and trying to imply that he's a misogynist. Claremont's mean girls are using this as an opportunity to knock Calaycay down a peg or two and to soften up the ground for their next campaign. The Courier's Tony Krickl describes how Calaycay's comments about the diversity on the council are being twisted into an attack on women:

At the ceremony, he applauded the ethnic diversity of the new council. He also pointed out its geographic diversity since the 5 council members all live in different parts of town.

But he didn’t mention that there are no women on the council; a fact not lost several women sitting in the audience. It’s the first time since 1962 that Claremont doesn’t have a female councilmember.

After Calaycay’s remarks, a few women in the audience remarked about the lack of female council members and didn’t like that Calaycay pointed that out. Even though he actually didn’t.

As Krickl points out, these latest attacks by Rosenthal and her fellow former mayor Judy Wright (photo, right), prompted Calaycay to apologize for remarks he didn't make. One of our readers commented on the fact that Krickl rightly noted that the lack of women on the present council is quite possibly a result of the lack of women candidates (a total of two women versus nine men in the last two elections). Our reader also remarked that the missteps of mayors Wright and Rosenthal may have contributed to the council's present gender disparity:

Date: Wed, March 23, 2011 12:41:09 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: Corey Calaycay

So I just read on the CourierCityBeat blog that apparently Karen Rosenthal and Judy Wright took exception to Corey’s remarks about diversity. Perhaps, as the CityBeat pointed out, if more women ran there would be a greater chance of having a woman on the Council. Or perhaps it is a case that the voters are smarter than Karen and Judy think……the matriarchs of Claremont didn’t do all that wonderful a job and perhaps women candidates lose because of that association in the voters’ minds. Perhaps they are thinking……well, how much worse could it get…..might as well give the guys a chance. After all, both Karen and Judy had their shot. Judy during the Orange County debacle, if I remember correctly, and Karen during the Landrum affair where her greatest achievements were opening her mouth and pouring gasoline on the fire.

[FYI, Claremont, with Wright on the council, invested and nearly lost $5.4 million dollars when the city used reserve money to buy into the failed Orange County Investment Poll in the early 1990's. After five years of litigation, the City got its principal back but lost out on that many years of interest on the money.]

The powers of rationalization possessed by Claremonsters like Judy Wright and Karen Rosenthal never cease to amaze us. For instance, we recall that one of the other items that caused voters to reject Rosenthal involved her husband's medical practice. Dr. Michael Rosenthal ran a birthing center in Upland and was twice disciplined by the Medical Board of California, once in 1997 and again in 2001. The first action resulted in a five-year medical probation. The second resulted in the revocation of Dr. Rosenthal's license.

LA Times reporter Tipton Blish covered the story:

The board accused him [Michael Rosenthal] of mishandling three abortions in 1999, when he was running his own Upland-based Family Birthing Center serving women with low-risk pregnancies.

He admitted to the board that he misled patients, lied to another physician, failed to reveal an abnormal pap smear result, failed to perform an ultrasound on a patient who had already delivered four babies by caesarean section, and started an abortion procedure on a patient in her second trimester.

At the time, Rosenthal was on probation for two other incidents, one in 1986 and one in 1992. In the latter case, medical board prosecutors said he gambled that a pregnancy would be without incident and didn't tell his patient that he had lost his privileges in San Antonio.

His privileges were revoked after his insurance company stopped his malpractice coverage in 1992.

Never mind that the medical board complaints state that Dr. Rosenthal was self-prescribing himself Prozac while he was operating his birthing center, that he failed to notify his patients that had no malpractice insurance or no hospital privileges, or that when serious complications arose in a couple procedures, he dumped the patients at San Antonio Community Hospital's emergency room.

No, for the Rosenthals, the biggest concern wasn't the medical board's findings or Dr. Rosenthal's treatment of the patients listed in the complaints, but rather, personal responsibility be damned, that their reputations remain untarnished, which is ever foremost in the minds of our Claremonsters. The Tipton Blish article conclude with a pair of quotes from the Rosenthals:

"The single biggest thing is embarrassing Karen," he said. "I have resolved this in my own mind a long time ago.... For myself, I just don't care."

Karen Rosenthal defended her husband, saying that none of the charges were ever proved in court.

"He is a great doctor. He delivered over 5,000 babies and is very well loved in the community," she said.

* * * * *

It's not too hard to see where all this is headed. This isn't about gender disparity on the Claremont City Council. This is all about Plan B for getting former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy (image, left) on the council. Healy, who lost badly in 2009, desperately wants her own second act. Plan A, spearheaded by failed candidate Robin Haulman, didn't work out, so now the Claremonsters are trying to claim that we need more women on the council. They plan on arguing this for the next two years and then offering up exactly one woman, their woman, to run in 2013.

What they don't get is that as long as they keep offering up the wrong women, their candidates are going to fail. Not because voters don't like women, but because the rest of Claremont isn't quite as stupid or forgetful as the Claremont 400 would like them to be.

City Election News

COURIER ENDORSES PEDROZA, NASIALI, AND ?

Besides the story of Flyergate, last Saturday's Claremont Courier also carried to Courier's endorsements for the March 8 municipal election.

Like the Daily Bulletin, the Courier endorsed incumbent Sam Pedroza, who looked a little gaunt in his Courier photo, his weight loss apparently the by-product of a bicycling regime of one sort or another. As much as we hate to admit it, we really can't fault either paper for choosing Pedroza as one of its endorsees. We don't usually agree with him, but he gets the nod incumbents usually get absent any scandals or missteps in office.

The Courier also echoed the Bulletin in its endorsement of Opanyi Nasiali, who is running for the third time. The Courier cited Nasiali's volunteer work and his participation as a City commissioner and economic sustainability committee member. The Courier also pointed out that Nasiali worked both on the successful Johnson's Pasture Measure S bond campaign in 2006 and on the campaign against the $95 million Measure CL school bond.

While the first two picks were easy calls, the choice for the third and final seat was a tough one. Claremont 400 candidate Robin Haulman might have been the Courier's pick, but her campaign continually shot itself in the foot, with the final disgrace coming at the February 17 League of Women Voters candidate forum when Haulman's husband Alexander Sweida swiped a bunch of candidate Jay Pocock's fliers and threw them in the trash. So between her actions and her hubby's, Haulman's chances of that coveted Courier endorsement were nil.

Presuming the Courier didn't take Citizen Michael John Keenan, Joseph Armendarez, or Rex Jaime seriously, that left the Bulletin's third choice, Jay Pocock, and former Democratic State Senate candidate Joseph Lyons. The Courier went for Lyons, who because of his lack of past civic involvement has been something of a cipher. Lyons really is the a great Claremont 400 candidate, relying on them for their votes, especially from local retirement communities like Pilgrim Place, and apparently without any of his own opinions or experience in city issues to muck things up for the 400.

We'll see how the Courier and Bulletin endorsements hold up. The last three or four council elections the Courier has been the more accurate of the two newspapers, but a lot can happen between now and March 8. We await the Claremonsters' usual election eve surprise, either through a letter or ad in the Courier the Saturday before the election, or through a last minute mailer landing in the last few days of the campaign. The 400 usually tries to stir up some imagined scandal very late in the game - too late to be rebutted by their target.

As Flyergate, Pasturegate, Signgate, and Shillgate (say, they really are giving new meaning to the term "gated community") have shown in this election, the one thing we can count on is that the Claremonsters will do just about anything to win, and, much like Wile E. Coyote's schemes, their tricks often blow up in their faces.

* * * * *

Speaking of Flyergate, Courier reporter Tony Krickl has the Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" on his Courier City Beat blog. LWV president Ellen Taylor doesn't come off much better than Haulman's husband does in Krickl's post:

Further defending his actions, Sweida said he was just following the League of Women Voter's policy on negative campaign material. He asked Ellen Taylor, president of Claremont's chapter of the League, if he could remove the fliers. Taylor told him to go ahead, even though she didn't inspect the material beforehand to see if it actually contained "negative" information.

This incident is troubling from many perspectives. With his actions, Sweida has certainly embarrassed his wife and may have cost her the election. Dirty tactics like this just don't sit well with voters.

Taylor defended her decision by saying the League is anti-biased in local elections. However by approving this behavior, she showed a clear bias against Pocock. And that reflects poorly on the entire organization.

And what do other League officials think about what happened?

"It would be better to actually look at the material before making a decision on what to do with it," said Jack Mills, Vice President of the League.

Krickl also quotes Mills as saying that he is unaware of any LWV policy against negative campaigning.

Here We Go Again

Reporter Tony Krickl has an article in yesterday's Claremont Courier that tells of a post-debate incident at last Thursday's League of Women Voters forum. Krickl's article said that Alexander Sweida, the husband of City Council candidate Robin Haulman, took about 50 fliers belonging to candidate Jay Pocock and threw them in the trash.

Not surprisingly, former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor, a/k/a The Cookie Monster, a/k/a Queen Ellen, was centrally involved. Taylor (photo, right) is the Claremont LWV chapter president.

Krickl reported that after the LWV forum ended, Betty Crocker, who works for candidate Opanyi Nasiali's campaign, was talking to Sweida when she saw him accidentally drop "about 50 [Pocock] fliers" onto the floor. Sweida scooped up the fliers and by his own admission threw them away. Krickl quoted Crocker as saying "He looked like he got caught caught with his hand in the cookie jar," which turned out to be a apt metaphor, considering Taylor's involvement in Thursday's incident.

Krickl spoke with Sweida, who claimed he took offense to the fliers because "he felt they contained lies about his wife." The article said the part Sweida took exception to was a line that said "Haulman and [Joseph] Lyons support tax increases (DO YOU?)."

For your reference, here's a Pocock flyer insert from yesterday's Courier. It contains the exact quote cited by Krickl:

Click on Image to Enlarge

In the Courier article, Sweida defended himself by saying he checked with Taylor first and asked "if he could dispose of the material because he felt it contained negative claims about his wife." Notice that he did not used the word "lie." Taylor gave the okay, and Sweida said, "I was just complying with the League's policy on negative campaign material...."

Incredibly, Taylor, who was quoted in the Krickl article, said she didn't review Pocock's fliers before giving Sweida permission to throw them away, she just took his work and allowed him to do it.

Well, we just don't know where to start. Setting aside the First Amendment, which Taylor and the LWV apparently support only on a situational basis, from our perspective this incident simply underscores what we've said all along: The LWV is very closely aligned with certain candidates in every election, picking and choosing who wins and who loses, their hypocrisy is embodied in their actions, and anyone considered an outsider in Claremont local politics faces an unlevel playing field.

Taylor tried to claim that the local LWV is an unbiased organization, and she cited the fact that they had San Dimas resident Ruth Currie moderate the candidate forum. Taylor didn't say that this is a new development for the LWV and that during the last City election in 2009, former LWV president Barbara Musselman moderated the LWV's forum. Musselman, along with people like Katie Gerecke, another former LWV president, supports Haulman and Lyons in this election.

If nothing else, this latest incident should put to rest any idea of impartiality or credibility on the LWV's part, at least when it comes to Claremont's local issues. In this campaign, as in every Claremont city election, the LWV is very much in the corner of their chosen ones. For instance, at the beginning of the debate Thursday, Haulman was introduced as the only woman running this time. Odd how the LWV used gender as a factor to single out one of their favored candidates and overlooked race with respect to the only African-American running, Opanyi Nasiali, or Rex Jaime, the only Filipino-American in the contest. Consistency, as is usual with the LWV, is not in evidence.

Now what about Alexander Sweida's claim that the Pocock flyer contained a lie about his wife's position on taxes? We checked the video for the mid-January Active Claremont candidate forum and discovered that the very first question posed by moderator and former council member Jackie McHenry was:

Do you believe that a tax increase is necessary to address revenue shortfalls [in Claremont]? If so, what taxes do you believe should be raised?

The first two candidates to answer were Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman. Both cited the Mayor's Committee on Economic Sustainability, and both Lyons and Haulman supported a hike in the City's utility tax. So you tell us, where's the lie in Pocock's line about Haulman and Lyons?

Here's video of Lyons and Haulman answering the tax question last month (notice how Haulman refers to her cheat sheet for her response):




Those of you out there in the real world, those outside the Claremont city limits, can see here just how crazy our local politics are. A truth refracted through the narrow lens of the Claremont 400 and the Claremont League of Women Voters becomes a lie, the perpetrator lays blame on his victim. Just as in the case of Haulman's false claims about her involvement in saving Johnson's Pasture, the truth matters not one bit.

Let's not let the Claremonsters confuse the issue. The central point in this instance is not whether a given candidate does or does not support tax increases; the heart of this matter lies in the sorry ethical behavior of those who control the reins of power and in the corresponding actions of those who would be kings and queens of this ridiculously small and silly fiefdom.

Another Blog in Town

A while back, Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen mentioned a relatively new Claremont blog. Unlike other blogs about our fair city, Allen wrote, Conscious Claremont avoids being hectoring in its tone, which is a good thing. The last thing Claremont (and the blogosphere) needs is another whiny blogger.

Here's the anonymous blogger self-description:

About Me

I moved to Claremont in the 3rd grade & went to elementary, junior,& high school here. I went away for college, into the ‘big city’, Los Angeles. I was, like most Claremont kids, eager to leave. But, after 4 yrs. there, I felt city life wasn't for me. I've resided here the past 6 yrs. I have not been active in civic life before & only started to follow city hall in depth since last Aug. I have a b.a. in business economics & accounting. Thank you for reading, & I appreciate your feedback.

The posts cover a variety of Claremont issues, usually with a cost-benefit analysis weaved in. The sampling we read included posts about redevelopment (with a comment on ex-city manager Glenn Southard), changes in Claremont's financial policies, our zany, conflicted city council, and the real cost of the new Padua Park. The new blog also covers other items of interest, such as local architecture and local art events.

The park post had a comment that seemed fairly representative of Conscious Claremont's analyses:

An observer can't help feeling strange at the vast & expensive construction occurring while we experience serious fiscal problems.

While in recent years we've terminated employees & funding, we were able to spend almost 4 million from the general fund to finance this site, including this year's costs of $1.7 million. Even with an $850,000 conservancy grant, projections of city spending are upwards of $4.7 million.

This brings up another point. Why haven't the local papers made the obvious connection between the huge cost of the park to the loss of employees and city programs?

Observations like the one above show why blogs like Conscious Claremont exist in the first place. They fill an informational niche that most newspapers, including the Daily Bulletin or the Claremont Courier can't or won't address because the stories are too complex to fit into 15 or 20 column-inches.

So it takes a Conscious Claremont to put things into their proper context. To take the example of Padua Park, that one project accounts for virtually all of the City's budget deficit over that past two fiscal years. Our town mothers and fathers have bemoaned the loss of staff and services, yet they are the very ones who insisted that the park be completed now, costs be damned. The project could easily have been deferred until the economy and the city finances improved, but people like former mayor Ellen Taylor, current mayor Linda Elderkin, and our mayor pro tem Sam Pedroza, remained inflexible in their refusal to see how their project would end up gutting the city's balance sheet.

Ironically, some of the staff members whose jobs were eliminated because of Claremont's financial problems were the ones most responsible for the park's construction. Those employees were victims of the karma wheel coming full circle, like soon-to-be executed prisoners ordered to dig their own graves.

There are any number of ways a real news story could have been constructed out of the Padua Park project, but the traditional local news sources took the cheap, easy way out and failed to connect the dots. They simply wrote pieces about the park's grand opening without one single mention of the project's destructive fiscal effects.

Readers do notice the lack of context in such stories, contrary to whatever marketing reports editors are studying. As newspaper readership continues its downward death-spiral, we can't help wonder if papers themselves aren't doing more than a little of their own grave digging by not taking the time and energy to report the real news.

Farewell, CMA

TOUGH TIMES

We were sorry to see the Claremont Museum of Art close its doors at the end of December. We liked the idea of a museum to showcase local artists and hoped it would make a go of it.

The museum had the misfortune of opening just before the economy tanked, and that certainly contributed to its demise. It also may have suffered from too small an audience. We'd always wondered how they'd be able to support itself when its core audience came from a town of only 35,000 people. CMA didn't seem to have much wide appeal outside Claremont. For example, a December, 2008, fundraising dinner in Pasadena ended up costing more than it brought in.

When it was still a going concern, the museum did make a splash with a $10 million gift from an anonymous donor. The donor, however, attached some conditions to the gift, and the museum wasn't able to use the money for its $900,000 annual operational budget. In the end, the donor pulled the $10 million, and the museum's fundraising efforts fizzled.

Facing closure, the CMA came to the City for money last September. They asked city staff for $4,500, and staff dutifully complied by giving the museum the money without a public hearing. That money helped keep the museum open until the end of October, when the CMA again had to go hat in hand to the City for a second cash infusion of $5,721, again without public input.

During that period, the museum made some changes that included expanding its board to include former Claremont mayors Sandy Baldonado and Ellen Taylor (the kiss of fiscal death, if the CMA had really thought about it). We interpret the inclusion of these two as a sign that the 400 had taken up the museum's cause, which made sense because some of the biggest donors came from the 400. In any case, the museum also closed its store, cut back its hours, and laid off all except one employee.

Former Mayor Ellen Taylor
blowing hard
ONCE MORE TO THE WELL

None of the museum's changes made any difference, and by November, the museum had to come before the City Council for $18,879 from the City's Public Art Fund to keep it going until the end of December. The city staff report from the 400's ever-reliable Mercy Santoro gives the background.

At a meeting on November 11th, the City Council heard a pitch from the museum. Among the pitchmen was none other than former Mayor Taylor, who, with her typical Ellen eloquence, explained how the museum go in such dire straits: "...things came [up] and just kicked us in the goddamned butt. [at around 3:17:00 of the meeting video]"

As we might expect, Councilmember Pedroza and Mayor Pro Tem Elderkin were the most sympathetic to Taylor's message from the Claremont 400 that we really need this museum (and you better support it). In her comments, Taylor kept using the 400's buzzword "vision," implying that that anyone who voted against the City donating the money was blind to what was best for the City. In other words, you're either with us, or you're a bad person.

Taylor's words also carried the implicit threat that any councilmember heartless enough to vote against giving the money would be done as a local politician. It's the 400's polite way of strongarming people (or The People) to get money they think they need: Why exactly do you hate the museum? Other societies might call this extortion.

Councilmember Peter Yao was really the lone voice of reason, pointing out first that he was concerned about what might be construed as a gift of public money, which would have been an illegal action. Yao further pointed out that because the City had essentially provided the museum with 100% of its working budget, it had a duty to question how effectively its money would be used. After all, Yao asked, what good would it do to give the museum the city funds if it was just going to delay an inevitable failure?

Another question Yao posed was to asked what plan the museum had to raise the $200,000 they were aiming for to fund its 2010 budget. None of the museum representatives could answer that, other than to say that they had formed a working group to work on a plan to develop a plan for fundraising. In other words, they had no real plan.

The discussion included other absurdities. Among these was the idea, raised by Pedroza and Elderkin, that the museum store was a moneymaker. Despite comments from a museum representative that the store had been "hemorrhaging money," Elderkin, assured as ever of certain certainties, wanted the museum to reopen the store. Elderkin also expressed absolute certitude in the museum's fundraising team, which surely portends greater fiscal problems for the City if, as expected, Elderkin takes her turn as mayor in March.

Still, in the end, the council bowed to the pressure and voted unanimously to give CMA its $18,879 (we never did figure out what changed Councilmember Yao's mind). The museum had its money and went off merrily to find the $200,000 they were sure was waiting for them. Unfortunately a final fundraiser managed to raise only $26,000 in pledges, and on December 27th, the museum shut down.


SONG REMAINS THE SAME

You'd think the 400 would have learned at least a little financial sense from the Claremont Trolley experience. If you'll recall, the City found it cheaper to put the trolley into storage and eat the lease payments rather than continue to fund its three-year $889,000 budget.

Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary and lacking any specific data, the 400, through its mouthpieces, trotted some of the same arguments for the museum that it used in its failed attempt to keep the trolley going: it brings economic benefit to the city; it just needs a few more months to really get going; we just need to make a few changes to turn it around.

Well, they got their way, and the museum closed anyway. In the process, the city frittered away nearly $30,000 at a time when Claremont is having to lay off employees and cut their benefits, reduce services, and raise fees in order to address a $2 million dollar budget deficit for the current fiscal year. As Councimember Yao pointed out, one can be supporter of the museum on the personal level, but one should not turn that personal view into a public one at the cost of vital taxpayer dollars.

With the 400, though, rationality has limits, and Yao's arguments fell on deaf ears. The nearly $30,000 Claremont doled out to the museum may be chump change to city staff, but the city's deficit is really as much the result of the accumulation of decades of these stupid little financial decisions as it is a matter of the current recession.

Our suggestion to future councils is to just say "No" the next time the 400 comes calling, no matter how painful that may be. A little tough love might be good for them and for the city in the long run.

Mailbag

We received an email from a reader who noted more than a wee bit of hypocrisy from Claremont League of Women Voters Action VP Ellen Taylor. Taylor had an opinion piece on global warming in yesterday's Daily Bulletin.

You may have noticed the former Claremont mayor using her LWV position to try to rehabilitate her image with a series of white papers on various issues. Taylor has been sending these into the local papers with some regularity. (Glad to see Ellen's gotten over her irregularity, it might explain her smiles since leaving office.)

If you paid careful attention when Taylor ran for the Claremont City Council in 2005, in the months leading up to that election she did a similar thing with long letters to the Claremont Courier on various public interest issues. Whatever the merits of her arguments, she may just be running another kind of Ellen-centric campaign.

In any case, here's our reader's note:

DATE: Sunday, July 12, 2009 10:06 AM
SUBJECT: Ellen and LWV Positions on Science
TO: Claremont Buzz

Dear Buzz,

In the Sunday (07-12-09) Daily Bulletin Section B1 (front page), Ellen Taylor as Action VP for Claremont area LWV has a statement supporting the "cap-and-trade" Bill now being debated in U.S. Congress. She is invoking scientific evidence for global warming. She says "the scientific evidence is clear that climate change ... is here now." She further states: "It is our nation's responsibility to take immediate action to curb the environmental and public health damages ..." This is the same woman (on Claremont City Council) and the LWV who would not accept scientific evidence that children living within 500 feet of a freeway develop lung and other respiratory health problems. They insisted on locating affordable housing for low and lower income families at the Base Line and Towne site, despite the EIR identified health issues. Can you say hypocrisy and double talk?

Claremont LWV News

Wes Woods II posted a couple entries related to our local League of Women Voters chapter in the Daily Bulletin's Claremont Now blog.

The first post announced a forum on climate change and water issues next Saturday, June 20, from 8:30am to noon in the Padua Room of the city's Alexander Hughes Center. The Hughes Center is located at 1700 Danbury Rd.

The LWV will host the forum, and Woods writes that it is co-sponsored by Sustainable Claremont and funded by grants from the national LWV and Oxfam America. Woods' blog post has some information on the speakers:

Speakers include Dr. Bill Patzert, oceanographer and climatologist, the "prophet of California climate."

In a news release, Patzert was described as "Known for studying how Earth's oceans affect our weather and global climate and govern El Nino/La Nina weather phenomena. A 26 year Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, he has dramatically improved long-term global weather and climate forecasts for Southern California. He will discuss the impacts of longer term climate trends and global warming. Topic: "The Climate is A-Changin': California's Future Ain't What It Used TO Be.'"

The second speaker is Celeste Cantu, General Manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA).

Seating is limited, and reservations are required. You can reserve a spot by calling (909) 624-9457 or by emailing league@claremont.ca.lwvnet.org.

* * * * *

The other LWV news posted on Claremont Now was the presentation of the Claremont LWV's Ruth Ordway Award to former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor. The award, according to the LWV press release quoted by Woods, is given annually by the LWV to an "outstanding member of our community."

The LWV press release said:

"It is often difficult to recognize one particular leader among the many women and men, LWVers or not, who have given outstanding service to the Claremont Community. This year our recipient is an active LWV member with a history of diverse and effective leadership and her selection by the committee was unanimously enthusiastic.

"A native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Skidmore College, she worked as a social worker for many years before coming to Claremont over thirty years ago. Not one to be shy or hesitant, Ellen Taylor soon began to be involved in the community, and involved, indeed, she continued to be.

Indeed, shy (as well as selfless and humble) is not a word that we would associate with Taylor. Woods' blog entry quoted Taylor's email comments to Woods on the Ordway Award:

Taylor, in an e-mail, said: "I consider receiving this to be a great honor, one that I do not take lightly, since the people who have won the award in the past are some of my role models. I am humbled to be recognized by the League."

You might remember that Taylor's good friend, Sandy Baldonado, another former Claremont mayor received the LWV's Ruth Ordway Award two years ago. Like Taylor, Baldonado decided not to run for re-election after making some rather pointed comments about the Claremont electorate following the failure of the Parks and Pastures assessment district.

Anatomy of An Accident

10TH STREET ACCIDENT UPDATE

Click to Enlarge

The Claremont Courier reported yesterday on the details of last week's accident at Indian Hill Blvd. and 10th Street. The Courier confirmed that five-year-old Noah Witt is out of intensive care now but remained at Pomona Valley Hospital.

The Courier article, by Tony Krickl, also said that neighbors and parents of children at Sycamore Elementary are working to try to get the City to make the intersection safer. Krickl described the intersection's history:

The city is well aware of the dangers at Indian Hill Boulevard and 10th Street. In 1996, Fred Neal, a retired professor from Claremont Graduate University, was killed while crossing at the same intersection. Neighbors complain they hear weekly screeching of tires and witness near miss collisions. They say that lighting and blocked views from the rows of trees that line the street can make turning onto Indian Hill difficult.

The intersection sits at the northwest corner of Memorial Park, with students and park goers often using the crosswalk to traverse Indian Hill Boulevard. The current speed limit on that stretch of Indian Hill is 30 miles per hour, but neighbors say drivers are regularly seen speeding or talking on their cell phones while zipping by.

In July 2001, the city installed flashing pavement lights on the crosswalk that are activated by a push button on either side of the 10th Street. Questions about the light's effectiveness and overall safety at the crosswalk have come up at a couple different city forums over the years, most recently at the Traffic and Transportation Commission meeting in January 2009.

Regarding the crosswalk system's maintenance, one of our readers wrote in earlier this week and said that the button on the intersection's southwest corner wasn't working just a few nights before the accident. So much for the crosswalk's pedstrian-activated flashing lights. Coincidentally, this is the same corner the pedestrians who were hit on Thursday were crossing from.


A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

JANUARY, 2001

We decided to look back at the history of the 10th Street crosswalk. The matter of installing the current in-pavement flashing light system came before the Traffic and Transportation Commission on January, 25, 2001. As you might expect, the staff report, by City Engineer Craig Bradshaw, laid out some very rational arguments for why he was recommending installing the crosswalk system:

SUMMARY

The Traffic and Transportation Commission TTC recently approved a city-wide crosswalk policy. One of the unprotected crosswalks that met the criteria of the new policy to stay in place is the Indian Hill Boulevard crosswalk at 10th Street. Since the crosswalk is staying in place and is located on a busy street near large pedestrian traffic generators it is desirable to provide additional safety measures. The two pedestrian safety features being recommended for the Indian Hill Boulevard crossing are the in-pavement warning lights and self-flagging. These features have proven successful in improving pedestrian safety in locations where pedestrian lights are not warranted. Staff recommends that the Traffic and Transportation Commission direct staff to install the crosswalk warning system utilizing in-pavement flashing lights and self-flagging at the crosswalk located on Indian Hill Boulevard at 10th Street and return this item to the Commission in six months for further review.

As with any Claremont staff report, it included some marketing material from the system's manufacturer that touted the wonders the crosswalk system would work in improving pedestrian safety.

The minutes show commission voted 5-0 (two members were absent) in favor of the system. Some familiar names popped up. The commission's Vice-Chair at the time was Tim Worley, who pops up again and again on local issues. At that time he was a traffic expert. Now he is a water expert. Worley presided over that meeting on 1/25/01 because the commission chair was absent.

Another person who is listed in the minutes is then-Traffic Commissioner Ellen Taylor. Taylor, who seemed to be on the commission primarily as a resume builder for her city council candidacy in 2005, made the motion to go forward with the in-pavement lighting system. Apparently, she liked the marketing materials provided by Bradshaw.



JULY, 2001

The Traffic and Transportation Commission minutes for June 28, 2001 (page 9), state that City Engineer Bradshaw reported that the in-pavement lighting system installation at 10th Street would be complete by the first week of July. Bradshaw promised that staff would come back to the commission with a report on the crosswalk's effectiveness after six months.


2002

We checked the Traffic and Transportation Commission minutes from November, 2001, to December, 2002, but did not see where Bradshaw made his six-month report on the crosswalk to the commission.


2003-2004

At some point in this period, accident victim Noah Witt was born.


SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 2005

The 10th Street crosswalk did make it back to the Traffic and Transportation Commission almost four years after it was installed. On September 22, 2005, Craig Bradshaw presented a report on city staff's findings. Bradshaw's report said:

SUMMARY

As a means of improving pedestrian safety at the intersection of Indian Hill Boulevard and Tenth Street in-pavement crosswalk lights were installed in July 2001 along both edges of the southerly crosswalk to provide improved visibility of the crosswalk to approaching drivers. The lights are connected to a pedestrian actuated push button and flash when pedestrians push the button before crossing the street. Staff has received substantial feedback since the installation of the pedestrian lights with most of the feedback being negative in nature and combined with requests that the crosswalk lights be removed. In reviewing the pedestrian lights and whether they are serving the safety function for which they were originally installed staff believes that the pedestrian lights may be creating a false sense of security and a potential safety concern for pedestrians.

STAFF RECOMMENDATION

Based on feedback from the public and staff findings it is recommended that the Traffic and Transportation Commission determine if it is appropriate to remove the crosswalk lights at the intersection of Indian Hill Boulevard and Tenth Street.

According to the minutes for the 9/22/05 meeting, Tim Worley, like any Claremonster, was averse to reversing a decision. Rather than going with the staff recommendation to remove the crosswalk, he moved for two alternative choices to try to keep the lighted crosswalk in place with some adjustments. Worley also moved that commission ask staff to obtain more information and report back to the commission. The commission unanimously approved Worley's motion.



At the 10/27/05 meeting, staff came back to the commission with the supplementary information Worley had asked for:

3. Indian Hill Boulevard and Tenth Street Review of In-Pavement Crosswalk liqhts continued from September 22, 2005

Associate Engineer Loretta Mustafa gave an updated staff report She stated that the commission had recommended that the in pavement lights remain in place but wanted additional information to make the intersection safer and the crosswalk more visible. She reviewed the measures included in the report of some of the measures that have been or will be implemented. Staff has met recently with manufacturers that are looking at some new pedestrian signage LED signs that could be possibly wired into the pedestrian push button which will light up at the same time as the lights in the crosswalk. Staff has talked to Human Services Department about relocating the banner and will be pursuing handing out pamphlets at community events and educate the residents to make that crosswalk safer and more successful.

The commission received and filed the report, which also recommended seven measures for improving the crosswalk's visibility and effectiveness. The report said the matter would come back to the commission for review in one year.


2006-2009

We checked the agenda materials for City Engineer Bradshaw's one-year, follow-up review, but we couldn't find a record of that.

As we wrote last week, the matter did come back to the commission in January this year with a recommendation that the in-pavement system be removed. The commission directed staff to do an initial study under the California Environmental Quality Act, but there was no timeline on that. Those studies have various boxes to check off and include some sort of traffic analysis to justify the proposed change.

We wonder if the box for "five-year-old hit" gets checked.

To recap: January 2001 - crosswalk system approved; July, 2001 - crosswalk system installed; 2001-2005 - complaints pile up, staff recommendation to remove crosswalk system; January, 2009 - commission asked to approve crosswalk system removal, initial study requested; May 14, 2009, pedestrians struck.

Claremont: Competence in Action.

Affordable Housing Meeting Tonight

The City of Claremont will hold a neighborhood meeting tonight on the proposed affordable housing project at 111 S. College Ave. The meeting will take place 7pm tonight at Oakmont Elementary School.

The Daily Bulletin mentioned the meeting in today's paper:

Irvine-based Jamboree Housing Corp., a nonprofit affordable-housing developer, will develop the site at 111 S. College Ave.

The city Redevelopment Agency recently acquired the site after the Affordable Housing Task Force ranked the 2.5 acres as the top site in the city for affordable housing.

The site will have about 75 units, including 45 units for family housing and 30 units for senior-citizen housing. There will be 30 one-bedroom, 22 two-bedroom and 23 three-bedroom units.

The City Council unanimously approved the site at its May 12 meeting.

The article indicated some concern among existing residents about the project's housing unit density. It also said that the same people who supported the failed Base Line Rd. project, including former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor, are in favor of the College Ave. site.

Affordable Housing Neighborhood Meeting - 7pm
Oakmont Elementary School
120 Green St.
Claremont, CA 91711

You Say Goodbye, and I Say Hello

It's a Hit!

(Click to Enlarge)

Last night's Claremont City Council meeting was a quiet affair featuring introductions and farewells. If you caught the action streamed over the city's website, you saw that the results of the March 3rd municipal election were certified.

You also witnessed a farewell address by ex-Mayor Ellen Taylor, who sucked the life out of the council chambers with a long, year-by-year (some would say blow-by-blow) recitation of all the achievements the council inflicted on its citizens during Taylor's four-year term on the council. The amazingly myopic Taylor used the secret word, "VISION," several times.

Taylor concluded by warning that she would still be around and might very well offer some future interference in city business. Frankly, we preferred our more succinct farewell tribute to Taylor over her own, but we're biased.

After Taylor wrapped up her parting shots, she was presented with a parting gift, and then the two winning council candidates, incumbent Corey Calaycay and Community Services Commissioner Larry Schroeder, were sworn in.

Losing candidate Bridget Healy was apparently there as well, though she seems to have cut out after Taylor's farewell because she wasn't around later when Calaycay acknowledged her from the podium.

The council also reorganized, naming Calaycay mayor and Linda Elderkin mayor pro tem. Councilmember Sam Pedroza nominated both, and both were approved unanimously.

It's very early to tell, but we really got the sense the council and the community have turned a corner. Something just felt different. For years we've heard talk of inclusiveness and diversity, but things on the council have remained fractious and exclusive with respect to the public. The campaigns of 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007 also featured varying degrees of ugliness. This time, though, as several people have said, including Calaycay in his comments after being appointed mayor, the election season was relatively quiet, and the candidates ran clean campaigns with the issues actually getting a public airing.

Larry Schroeder gave a brief, gracious speech last night, thanking his supporters and, most of all, his wife, who couldn't be there because she was teaching a class at the University of La Verne.

The other councilmembers, Elderkin, Pedroza, and Peter Yao, were similarly gracious in their remarks, and all five councilmembers spoke of looking forward to working together in what will certainly be challenging times.

We'll see how things develop. There will be disagreements over policies and various projects, but the juxtaposition of Taylor's farewell and the new council's installation provided a perfect contrast between the old Claremont and the new.

Photo Salute to the Departing Ellen

Barring some weird palace coup, today is Ellen Taylor's last day as Mayor and as councilmember. A remembrance:

The Grand Marshall and the Grand Ellen Blending In

Not Everyone Liked Ellen When she First Ran;
Her Next-door Neighbors F'rinstance


Ellen Took Remedial Driver's Training after her Wrong-Way Episode


Ellen's Commodious Contribution to the Public Art Scene


Not Everyone Liked Ellen when she Left Office

And the Winners Are... [UPDATED]

Unofficial Results for the
2009 Claremont Municipal Election

Top 2 Win:
(See UPDATE just below)
Corey Calaycay - 3,083 votes, 40.1%
Larry Schroeder - 2,767, 36%
Bridget Healy - 1,842, 23.9%

Total Ballots Cast - 4,717
Turnout - 22.4%

UPDATE: Provisional ballots and absentee ballots turned in at the polls now counted (midday Wednesday):

Corey Calaycay - 3,195 votes, 40.2%
Larry Schroeder - 2,853 votes, 35.9%
Bridget Healy - 1,900 votes, 23.9%

Total Ballots Cast - 4,876
Turnout - 23.1%

Click to Enlarge

Election Night Results,
superseded by the tallies linked here

Our congratulations to the two winners of last night's city election, Corey Calaycay and Larry Schroeder. We'll have more commentary later, but you can see there are a number of noteworthy items in the results from yesterday's city election.

Here are a few preliminary observations:

First, for the first time that anyone can remember, the candidate backed by the Claremont 400 lost. BIG. Nearly 1,000 votes separated Larry Schroeder from Bridget Healy, the candidate of choice for our dear Claremonsters. Healy lost (came in third) in every precinct except the central Village. This was astounding considering that Schroeder had nowhere near the funds to spend that Healy did and had to kick in $4,500 of his own money to help his campaign.

Second, turnout was extremely low, which in the past has helped the 400's candidates. This time turnout was at around 22.4%, much lower even than the 29-34% of the last four elections. But it didn't help Healy at all. In fact, the results seem to underscore just how weak a candidate Healy was. Even though she came in second in the Pilgrim Place area (Precinct 8), Healy couldn't generate enough excitement there to get the traditional 400 candidate advantage to carry her over Schroeder. Turnout in Precinct 8 was only 37.7%, which is well below the 50% or so the 400 has come to expect from the heart of the Claremont Village.

Third, the Preserve Claremont folks from four years ago are pretty much dead as a movement. Corey Calaycay was their prime target in the 2005 city election and almost didn't win that year. This time around, however, Calaycay got over 3,000 votes, which is a pretty high mark for such a low-turnout election. Also, a number of people we would have considered in the 400, Randy Prout, Butch Henderson, Paul Held, Valerie Martinez, Nick Quackenbos - former Preserve Claremonters all, actually supported Calaycay this time.

Those pro-Healy letters in the Claremont Courier last Saturday signed by former League of Women Voters president Sharon Hightower and by eight former Claremont mayors (including Held and current mayor Ellen Taylor) got no traction at all. Or, worse for the 400, they had a net negative effect because people saw them as trying to look to the past rather than to the future.

* * * * *

Why did Healy lose? We keep trying to figure that out. Maybe it was because she was too closely tied to former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard. The 400 have never really understood the depth of the antipathy in town towards Southard, and they severely underestimated how much Healy, who was Southard's former assistant, was seen as one of the people most responsible for maintaining order in Southard's administration.

Or, it might have been the carpetbagger issue. Healy ran off from Claremont four years ago after the Preserve Claremont people, most of whom supported Healy this time, failed to keep Calaycay from getting elected. You'd think the 400 could have found someone else from among their ranks who stayed, who didn't run away, someone who volunteered and worked in the community. But the Helaine Goldwaters of the 400 crowd were just so arrogantly sure of themselves that they would not listen to reason and pushed the Healy candidacy on their friends. That hubris factor certainly cannot be discounted in Healy's downfall.

It also might be that voters looked around and found things in town to be running better than they had under Southard and some of the past city councils. Sure there are disagreements on the council; but, apart from Ellen Taylor, things seem to be much more civil now. So a good number of people could have figured there was no need to change. People may actually prefer how City Hall works now compared to years past.

Healy's city pension may also have been a concern for voters. She is, after all, collecting around $100,000 a year from a CalPERS pension for her 18 years as a Claremont city employee (plus more from Pomona and Indio), and Claremont's $10 million pension account account deficit certainly represents a huge potential problem for the City. Healy's pension belies her claim that she gave of her time to our community out of some form of pure altruism (as opposed to a more mercenary tendency).

And then there's the deposition factor, which came late in the race. But Schroeder out polled Healy in the absentee ballots, and most of those would have been cast before last week's disclosure of some inconsistencies in Healy's campaign claims. So, he was beating Healy anyway.

Let's also not forget that Healy was just not a good candidate. She was a poor, unexciting speaker, appearing at forums to be more like a civil servant presenting a project report (which you'd expect given her former career) than a person seeking elective office. Lack of energy seemed to translate to indifference in many voters eyes, and those people probably figured, "If she doesn't care enough to run as hard as the other two, why should I vote for her?"

Whatever the reasons for last night's smackdown, we shouldn't expect the 400 to go gentle into that good night or that they will even take any lessons from their huge defeat. Self-reflection has never been their strong suit. Raging against the dying of the light is more their style. We can expect them to try to co-opt Larry Schroeder now that Healy's history. But they may have an uphill battle. From what we're hearing on the streets, some the 400 elders, wanting to avoid a campaign and seeking to hand Healy an uncontested seat, tried to tell Schroeder not to run last year, and he's not likely to forget that anytime soon.

To his credit, Schroeder was strong-willed enough to go ahead and run anyway, without much support from the 400 at all. All of which may indicate he's secure enough in himself to be his own man on the council. But rest assured you'll still see much sucking up to Schroeder on the part of the 400, who have no shame or sense of humility.

We also should not forget that Calaycay won big too. If things go according to form, he should be the next mayor, and there is no small measure of justice in Calaycay's replacing Ellen Taylor in the mayor's chair. The next council will be seated next week on Tuesday, March 10th, and we'll begin to see then how much things have really changed in town. Like you, we're expecting a kinder, gentler city government. Lord knows, we've all earned it.

* * * * *

A sad personal footnote: Our write-in campaign lasted precisely 12 hours. You're not going to have Claremont Buzz to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is our last press conference, etc., etc., and so on and so on.

Campaign 2009 Mail

As you might expect, we've received some email regarding the problems the Bridget Healy for City Council campaign has had with inconsistencies that have popped up in the candidate's campaign literature.

Some of Healy's claims have been directly contradicted by her sworn testimony in a lawsuit the city had to defend three years ago. A reader wrote in after having noticed yet another Healy campaign exaggeration:

DATE: Sunday, March 1, 2009 2:34:10 PM
SUBJECT: Healy's Gifts
TO: Claremont Buzz

Dear Buzz,

With keen interest, I have been following the newspaper and Insider Blog reports on city council candidate Healy's inconsistencies regarding her purported contributions and gifts to Claremont. While her inconsistencies have focused on the acquisition of the Wilderness Park, I should point out that her claims to have "established the Police Commission.." are also questionable. I recall that the establishment of the Police Commission was a recommendation, to the City Council, of an Ad Hoc Committee which was formed to look into necessary changes in the behavior of the Police Department following the Landrum shooting incident. She makes it sound as if she alone - as in her other claims on the "accomplishments" list - established the Police Commission.

* * * * *

Healy's apparently been taking some hits because of her misstatements. Naturally, the Claremont 400 has circled the wagons. Saturday's Claremont Courier had three letters from different 400 representatives in support of Healy.

The first Courier letter was from Tom and Donna Ambrogi. Tom Ambrogi lives at Pilgrim Place and his wife is a Pilgrim boardmember. Following the Irvin Landrum shooting, he was one of the people who led a largely ineffective, toothless campaign to try to address the City's handling of the matter. We call Ambrogi's efforts ineffective because he ignored the central problem: the City's management culture under then-City Manager Glenn Southard, and his right-hand woman, Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy. Ambrogi focused on the symptom rather than the structural disease.

So, it's no surprise that Ambrogi would demonstrate a similar blindness in his current support of Healy. Ambrogi apparently has no inkling that supporting Healy is a direct abnegation of everything he claimed to stand for when the Landrum shooting occurred. But with Ambrogi, like so many of the 400, friendships trump reality, and the high status he and his wife possess in Pilgrim Place gives them a potential platform to influence other residents of that retirement community.

The second letter was from former Claremont City Planner and former Claremont League of Women Voters president Sharon Hightower. Hightower says she has two things she considers when she evaluates candidates. First, does the person understand "Claremont's past achievements (and blunders)?" In this, as in most things Healy, Hightower gives no concrete examples. And, as we know from Healy's advertisements, the candidate's understanding of past achievements is highly suspect.

Hightower's second criteria is the vision thing. Does the candidate share Hightower's, the League's, and the 400's vision of what Claremont should be? (More on the word "vision" in a moment.)

The last letter is signed by eight former Claremont mayors, including Queen Ellen Taylor (right), who was so bad on the council that she was reportedly told by the powers-that-be not to run again. And some of the others on the list - Diann Ring, Karen Rosenthal, Paul Held, and Al Leiga - were no better than Taylor and in several instances were even worse.

Parsing the three letters is easy. There are two code words the 400 always uses: consensus and vision. "Consensus" is their belief that no dissent whatsoever should be tolerated. Not on the part of the council and certainly not on the public's part. In short, it is groupthink at its worst. The Ambrogis' letter mentions consensus, and Diann Ring is always prattling on incessantly about the need for 5-0 votes on the council.

"Vision" is the opinion formed by 400 at their various social events. They come up with some cockamamie notion about this or that, then hold sham public meetings to give the imprimatur of the public process to these opinions. Unknown to the public, the process is a done deal long before it ever reaches an official public meeting. All three Courier letters Saturday mentioned vision.

To those in the know, when you hear "vision" and "consensus" together in candidate endorsements, you're supposed to know that this is the 400's chosen person. When you parse all three of the Saturday Courier letters, you not only see the code words, but you see the eight mayors giving away their secret. They don't call it Bridget Healy's vision. They say, "our vision for Claremont...."

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we give you EXHIBIT 1 in this case:

1A

She has a fine record of 18 years service in city government, where she showed strong leadership in bringing consensus on many important issues....

We need [Healy's] passion and her vision and her proven leadership to implement our common vision for the future of Claremont.

Tom and Donna Ambrogi
Claremont

1B

....Does he/she have a vision for the future of Claremont? If so, is it one I share? Can he/she always keep that vision in mind while solving today’s problems?

Sharon W. Hightower
Claremont

1C

....She is committed to working with you, the citizens, to make our vision for Claremont this community's future.

Please join us in voting for Bridget for City Council.

Ellen Taylor
Suzan Smith
Sandy Baldonado
Algird Leiga
Paul Held
Diann Ring
Karen M. Rosenthal
Richard Newton
Past and Present Mayors of the City of Claremont