Mean Girls

SUGAR AND SPICE

We've noticed that the brand of bullying practiced most often by the Claremont 400 has a decidedly feminine component. The coterie that runs things in this town has long been dominated by women. Former mayors Judy Wright, Diann Ring, Ellen Taylor, Sandra Baldonado, and ex-commissioners Barbara Musselman and Helaine Goldwater have called the shots for far too long. And we can add former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy (photo, right) to this list.

Just because the style is a dominated by a womanly kind of aggressiveness, though, that doesn't mean it's limited to people of the female persuasion. If you'll recall, men like Claremont Human Services commissioner Butch Henderson, former mayor Paul Held, former planning commissioner Bill Baker we especially nasty in their leadership of the Preserve Claremont campaign in the 2005 City Council race. (Not coincidentally, they are all also very much involved with current city council candidate Robin Haulman's campaign.) And the person who tapped into all that aggression to use it for his own purposes was a man, former City Manager Glenn Southard.

We've always thought the psychodynamic undercurrents in Claremont were worthy of academic research, and it turns out there's actually people who study the kind of female aggression at play here. We found an old NPR Talk of the Nation segment from February 27, 2002, the topic of which was just the sort of bullying practiced by the Claremont 400. (You need the free RealPlayer if you want to hear the discussion.) The segment's description said:

Girls are not all sugar and spice according to some researchers. The latest study on girls says they may be AS likely to use aggression as boys. Rather than fists, girls express it through manipulation, exclusion and gossip-mongering. It's become quite a problem in some middle and high schools, but what's the solution?

CAN YOU RELATE?

People who study such things, psychologists and anthropologists and the like, say that among children and teens, male aggression tends to be more straightforward and less complex than the sort seen in girls. Female aggression is generally indirect and has a strong social component, with the most aggressive girls leveraging their social intelligence to get their friends to ostracize girls they don't like, usually through gossip and whispering campaigns. Female aggression relies on the mastery and manipulation of social relationships to isolate and ostracize, hence the term "relational aggression."

The pressure of wanting to fit in, coupled with the relief at not be the one targeted, causes weaker girls in a group to join in or to at least remain silent, and the group comes to be dominated by the girls who the most socially adept but who have the lowest empathy, the ones who are capable of the most cruelty.

One of the panelists on that NPR show was seventh grader Nicky Marewski from Poukeepsie, NY, who described what she observed at her school:

The girls who are sort of in charge of all this, they figure out who they don't like and who they just don't think are acceptable, and they tell their friends.

That seems to be the general Claremonster modus operandi, which makes us wonder if we're just witnessing a collective case of arrested development. From what the relational aggression experts say, there seems to be some anecdotal evidence of this behavior continuing on through life. It can express itself in the workplace in the form of office politics or, in the case of the Claremont 400, in just plain old politics in general.

It's really empathy, or rather its absence, that seems to be the key factor, and that's certainly something that's been lacking among the Claremont 400, though they seem to be blind to their own shortcomings. Time and again, we've seen them unable to step outside of their own groupthink, unable to place themselves in their opponents' shoes, with the result that they have no openness to ideas that don't comport with their own preconceptions.

Let's go back to the 2002 Talk of the Nation show for a moment. Kaj Bjorkqvist, a Finnish professor of developmental psychology, remarked:

If you combine it [social intelligence] with low empathy, then it turns into indirect aggression. Girls who are high in both social intelligence and empathy tend to use more constructive strategies for solving conflict.

And that's exactly why we're caught in this odd community dance of anger. The people in power leverage their high social intelligence and dominate city elections so that they control the City Council and all the city commissions. Similarly, they control organizations like the Claremont Chamber of Commerce and various local charities. That's why you see someone like Preserve Claremont donor and former Claremont Board of Education member Michael Fay again and again, as treasurer of current council candidate Joseph Lyon's campaign or treasurer of the failed $95 million Measure CL school bond.

Or you see Preserve Claremont spokesperson Butch Henderson listed as an honorary co-chair of council candidate Robin Haulman's campaign and PC donor Bill Baker listed as Haulman's treasurer.


BIRDS ON A WIRE

If you want to observe relational aggression in action, go to a city council meeting. You're likely to see Helaine Goldwater seated in the back row knitting away like Madame Defarge as she watches the little melodramas she creates get played out.

At one recent council meeting, Sandy Baldonado, Barbara Musselman, and Robin Haulman were in the audience, all in a row like crows on a telephone line. Baldonado and Musselman, along with Bridget Healy, are backing Haulman as step one in their plan to get Healy elected to the council in 2013.

Recall that Healy lost badly in the 2009 city election, but rather than accept defeat, she and her friends began an image rehab program by getting Healy a position on the the Claremont Chamber of Commerce board, having her prominently involved with the Claremont Area League of Women Voters and by having her make appearances at City Council meetings to speak, along with Musselman, about the poor performance of current City Manager Jeff Parker, whom they accuse of gutting and outsourcing city services.

In their long range plan to shove Bridget down our throats, they've adopted more than a few positions they fought against when Baldonado was on the council and Healy working in City Hall as Glenn Southard's right hand woman. To listen to them now, they've replaced the secrecy they coveted with concerns for governmental transparency and have claimed to be champions of the people where once they had nothing but contempt for the public.

We can never forget, though, that Healy once authored a city staff report outlining a proposal to have a social worker or psychologist stationed at City Council meetings ready to rule on whether people trying to speak during public comment represented imminent threats to the council, commissioners and staff. The idea was to have a process for removing speakers from the council chambers. Then there was Baldonado, who with her trademark classiness, once told members of the public who were observing a council retreat to "get a life."

As strange as it sounds, the Baldonado-Musselman plan seems to be working. Haulman (photo, left) stands a good chance of getting elected, and people have cut her a lot a slack. At candidate forums she's been unprepared and has read canned responses from a notebook she continually flips through (she's working on fixing this and a few of her other obvious shortcomings), but to hear the after action reports, one would think she's a regular policy wonk when it comes to city issues. People, too, have forgiven Healy and are willing to overlook the ethical conflicts of interests she would have on the council on important issues such as employee pensions.

We'll see how much Claremont has really changed since Healy last worked here. Our guess is that the mean girls still have the run of the town.

Self-Congratulations are in Order

Courier Place

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

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

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

[more below the jump]


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

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

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

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

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

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

We think you'll feel better for it.

Friday Mailbag

The proposted 7-Eleven at Foothill Blvd. and Mills Ave. received a final "No" vote from Claremont's Planning Commission Tuesday night. The commission voted 5-2 for the denial of the 7-Eleven's conditional use permit. Wes Woods II has an article about the meeting in the Daily Bulletin.

According to Woods' article, the 7-Eleven applicant has until March 23 to appeal the CUP denial to the Claremont City Council.

On that subject, a reader wrote us our recent comparison of the 7-Eleven CUP and the Padua Theatre:

SUBJECT: 7-Eleven Padua Hills Theatre
DATE: Wed, March 3, 2010 7:33:52 PM
TO: Claremont Buzz

I was really sorry to have missed the 7-Eleven community meeting. I live on Via Padova and I'm so glad The Insider caught the 7-Eleven and Padua Hills Theatre incident. The Insider as usual hit the nail on the head in the inconsistencies that Claremont shows. Least we forget in our fair city it is who you know and what you can do for them that counts.

As for the 12,000-21,000 in sales revenue I highly doubt that will be gobbled up in law enforcement costs, unless we are talking about a donut shop.

I do find issuing an alcohol license where the proprietor [Padua Theater operator Chantrelles Catering] is requesting alcohol be allowed to be served from 9:00 am-2:00 am, 7 days a week, extreme in a totally residential neighborhood in the most northern la de da part of Claremont. I know of no other precedence set nor of any other city that this has been or would be allowed. But, then again I know of no other city quite like that of Claremont. They do take the cake and they should eat it too.

* * * * *

And then there was this note about some not-so-subtle manipulation by Mercedes Santoro's Human Services Department:

SUBJECT: Using Black Kids
DATE: Mon, February 22, 2010 1:55:13 PM
TO: Claremont Buzz
Dear Buzz,

At the Claremont City Community Budget Workshop on February 16, 2010, three black youths testified in support of the Youth Activity Center (YAC). What made me notice that testimony was the fact that no youths of other racial groups were present to offer their testimony for the YAC program. I also noticed that a staff member from the Human Services Department sat at the same table with the black youths. Coincidence? Maybe! Nevertheless, this seating arrangement made me wonder if the staff person was orchestrating the black youths' testimony. It appeared to me that the staff was - questionably - manipulating public opinion by "using" the black youths.

Why am I concerned? I believe that the YAC program serves youths of various races in the city. Were the black youths the only ones who were concerned about the fate of the program? Or are the black youths the only ones who need the program as their "concern" and presence seemed to imply? I would like to believe that this was all coincidence, but it appeared awfully suspicious that only black youths were the ones sufficiently concerned about the YAC that they came to testify, sitting at the same table with the staff from the Human Services Department which oversees the program.

We don't know, but we've certainly seen this sort of manipulation in the past. We remember nine years ago during the all hoopla over the Padua Park planning process some folks showing up at more than one meeting with a gaggle of children dressed up their soccer or baseball or softball uniforms.

We've also seen plenty of manipulation of Claremont's vaunted public process by people like former Police Commission chair and League of Women Voters doyenne Helaine Goldwater who stand in the foyer of the council chambers deciding who in the assembled group speaks, what part of the overall message they are to deliver, and in what order they are supposed to go.

In the bygone days of the Southard administration, staff contributed to the show as well, offering up reports to buttress the message du jour, and the councils and commissions of those times would echo what the speakers said, often using the same catchphrases heard in public comment (remember words like those old LWV favorites, "vision" and "consensus"?). This still happens, though there is more independence on the council and commissions than we ever saw in the past.

What our Claremonsters never realized, and what some of this city's staff still don't get, is that in the long run, those manipulations end up undermining their credibility and insults their audience. The public is generally more sophisticated than it gets credit for, and people have enough common sense to know when a message fails to ring true.

In any case, it all strikes us as simply more of the faux-liberalism that Official Claremont has showcased for the past 30 years or so. For better or worse, this is still Inland Empire; West L.A. we are not.

They're Baaaack!

The Claremont 400 don't rest long, nor do they take their losses very seriously. You have to grant them this much: they are persistent.

At last night's City Council, we noticed several of the traditional power brokers present or represented by their surrogates. For instance, Helaine Goldwater, the former Police Commission Chair and keeper of The List (the 400's index of all potential candidates for city committees, commissions, and candidates for City Council), was present and spoke about Oakmont School.

Speaking of Helaine, her unsuccessful candidate for the March City Council race, Bridget Healy (pictured, left), got a mention in Saturday's Claremont Courier. The Courier ran a letter from a few members of Claremont Heritage board (Ginger Elliot, former Claremont Human Services Commissioner Suzanne Hall, and Don Pattison), thanking the all the people who made the July 12 Padua Hills Theatre open house a success, among them:

In particular, former Mexican Players were there along with many others who had enjoyed meals and plays at the Padua Theatre during its heyday from 1930 to 1974. Thanks to Bridget Healy and the Friends of the Padua Hills Theatre, a newly formed group of neighbors and friends, who planned the open house.

The letter was notable for a couple omissions:

• The Mexican Players and all Latinos (as well as any non-Caucasian) were barred by the racial restrictions from owning land around the Padua Theatre. Thanks for the entertainment, guys, but remember: Play, don't stay.
  
  
• The letter also praised the shuttle service Claremont Heritage got to ferry open house guests from the overflow parking at Mills and Mt. Baldy Rd. What they didn't say, however, was that so many people (over 1,000, according the Heritage) showed at the theatre on July 12, that traffic backed down Padua Ave. to Mt. Baldy Rd. Cars couldn't turn around easily in the parking lot after it filled up, and the someone removed the barriades that were supposed to prevent people from parking along Via Padova in front of homes there. So traffic flowed out onto the neighborhood around the theatre.
  
  Naturally, no one took responsibilty for the mess, and all the parties - the City of Claremont, Claremont Heritage, and Chantrelles (one of the partners in the Padua Theatre) - pointed the finger of blame at each other.
  
  

History is once again erased in Claremont.

If past behavior is any indicator, the Claremont Heritage letter to the Courier would represent an opening salvo for a 2011 Healy campaign for council. The 400 usually gets their candidates to front for civic-minded organizations in order to add to their communitarian resumes (something that Healy notably lacked in the last election). If Healy is indeed thinking of running, you'll see a parallel effort by the 400 to attack the current council by getting hot-button issues on the council's agenda and through letters to the local papers.

The 400 strategy has always been to divide and conquer: talk up your candidate, talk down your opponents.

Our thinking on Healy hasn't changed much at all. She represents the worst of the Glenn Southard years, left the City to follow Southard to Indio when the going got tough for her boss, and returned in retirement after having looted Claremont, Indio, and Pomona to the tune of a $150,000-plus CalPERS pension thinking that she could get a free pass in her failed bid for a council seat.

The 400 are in Healy image rehab mode now, but they have 18 months to fix things and to spin whatever image they want. The question is, will people buy into it?

* * * * *

We saw an article in the Onion about a new Apple product, the invisible iPhone, that reminds us a lot about about the forgetfulness and gullibility of Claremont voters:

SAN FRANCISCO—In a move expected to revolutionize the mobile device industry, Apple launched its fastest and most powerful iPhone to date Tuesday, an innovative new model that can only be seen by the company's hippest and most dedicated customers.

"I am proud today to introduce to those who really, truly deserve it, our most incredible iPhone yet," announced Apple CEO Steve Jobs, extending his seemingly empty left palm toward the eagerly awaiting crowd. "Not only is this our lightest and slimmest model ever, but as any truly savvy Apple customer can clearly see, it's also the most handsome product we've ever designed."

The packed auditorium, which had been listening to Jobs in hushed reverence for several minutes, then erupted into applause, with hundreds of men and women suddenly jumping to their feet and shouting, "I can see it!" "Look, there it is!" and "God, it's so beautiful!"

Remember, voters: No clothes, no clothes.

We Wear the Mask

per⋅so⋅na /pərˈsoʊnə/ [per-soh-nuh]
–noun, plural -nae  /-ni/ -nas.

4. (in the psychology of C. G. Jung) the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual; the public personality (contrasted with anima ).

- DICTIONARY.COM

Meg over at M-M-M-My Pomona has some fascinating comments on the ideas of anonymity and pseudonymity, and she makes a distinction between the two. The difference may sometimes be a subtle one. Lord knows, much of the time the local blogosphere and those in local politics don't do nuance very well, or at least no better than those on the national scene, so the sort of parsing Meg does certainly brings some clarity to the matter.

As Meg points out, the truly anonymous voices are those that pop up with a comment or two, then disappear into the Internet's ether, as opposed to voices that develop personae and audiences over time. Readers and critics flesh out those personae with the clay of their own choosing, until the reading audience conjures up a living thing wholly out of its own imagining.

Meg goes on to say that its wrong to assume that anonymity is a shield against accountability:

The take-away point here, I think, is that when we participate in an online community, we stake the reputations of our personas. Opponents of so-called anonymous blogging huff and puff about accountability, but all bloggers risk the good opinion of others when they post, regardless of the name they do it under.

The only form of accountability that pseudonymous bloggers avoid is the kind that allows irate jerks to accost them at their homes or offices -- the kind that encourages retribution in an unrelated sphere. If I'm bloviating on the web, I'm happy to put my web-cred on the line, but don't be calling my boss and trying to get me fired for something I said online (unless, of course, I've dooced myself). What happens online should stay online.

Really, what we've seen here at the Insider is that it is possible to establish a sort of street cred by trying to give our views of what's happening out there in the real world and by supporting those opinions with linked source documentation in the form of images, reports, or video. There is a sort of scientific methodology to our mad ramblings here, if one takes the time to examine them carefully.

In taking on an issue facing the City of Claremont, we look at the evidence in the form of records, reports, past statements by elected officials and city staff, and then match those up to the what actually happened or make predictions about what will happen. For instance, the City insisted on spending $1.29 million on the Downtown Claremont Trolley, with staff and a specially appointed citizen committee, touting the economic benefits with people using the thing to get around downtown. We, and others, predicted that no one would ride the thing.

Now, when you go downtown and see the empty trolley circling the Claremont Village, who is going to have more credibility in the future, the city staff and citizen's committee led by former Mayor Judy Wright or the anonymous bloggers who long ago voiced the skepticism the majority of the community was thinking anyway?

If this happens enough times, people will come back to read more. Conversely, readers and voters will start to ignore the people making the false claims and wrong predictions. It's that simple. There's no magic involved. It's just a matter of dueling narratives competing in the marketplace of ideas. The public weighs whose version of events conforms more closely to the actual reality and goes with the more accurate one.

We should point out, too, that the people who ran Claremont, whom we and others have called the Claremont 400, themselves have personae. For too long, they've used their names as bludgeons: Claremont needs to do such and so because We say so. And then the city staff goes on to backfill the reasoning with reports that advocate the desired position, ignoring or downplaying any contrary evidence.

And, that's how bad decision-making happens.

Another aspect of this name business is the 400's frequent use of whispering campaigns to spread false rumors about people on the opposing sides of issues. Gadfly Mike Noonan, for instance, used to get painted as a nutcase - which, okay, if he was off his meds and having a bad day, you might be inclined to think - but Noonan was right a certain percent of the time. Yet, the 400 would tell people, "You don't have to listen to him because he's Mike." So, they'd end up ignoring the important, accurate information because they didn't have the maturity or patience to sift through what Noonan (or anyone else) was saying. They didn't act as careful, educated, impartial listeners.

The Preserve Claremont campaign in 2005, too, was a nothing more than a glorified, well-funded whispering campaign that got flushed out into the open. Former Claremont Mayor and current Chamber of Commerce board chair Paul Held helped lead that charge, making unsubstantiated claims that his fellow councilmember, Jackie McHenry, was rifling through city employees' mail at City Hall. The Preserve people also claimed, again falsely, that current Mayor Corey Calaycay had been fired from his job with State Senator Bob Margett's office.

The whole idea behind PC was that you were supposed to believe them because of their names. These were pillars of the community, not McHenry, not Calaycay. It didn't matter one bit if what the PC'ers was saying was a lie.

The burr in the 400's saddle over anonymity is that it has taken away their greatest weapon: their names. As time goes on, we suspect those silly names will mean less and less simply because there are more discerning information consumers comprising the community now than 10 years ago. The 400 has been wrong enough and often enough on a myriad of important issues that people now question whether or not they should really be voting for whomever people like former Police Commission chair Helaine Goldwater is supporting. Don't believe it? Ask Bridget Healy.

Moreover, information has become much more readily available online now than back when you had to go to City Hall to make a document request. Now, it's a fairly simple matter use that information to deconstruct the history of a City blunder (or predict one), and that ability has made the City accountable in ways never before possible. The identity of the person or personae examining the subtext of an issue has very little to do with their credibility. Accuracy and truthfulness have become the determining factors.

We would argue that until the Claremont 400 resolves to deal fairly, honestly, and openly with issues, to fundamentally change the way they've done business, they will continue to bleed what little remaining credibility they have. The "new" reality arrived quite some time ago, and our advice to the Claremonsters is that they'd best get over it and get used to a much more democratic community than they one they've run in the past. The alternative is that they will be left in the dust.

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.

A Better Claremont

Ira A. Jackson, dean of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, had an opinion piece in the Daily Bulletin yesterday.

In it, Jackson tried to answer how it was that Wall Street's leading figures found themselves in the unenviable position of having to explain, under oath, to the U.S. Congress why it was that the federal government should come to the aid of such financial institutions as Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York, and others.

To Jackson, the congressional testimony by financial leaders seeking government bailout money seemed to result from an ethical failure in the boardrooms of these now-troubled institutions. Most importantly, the failure stemmed from a refusal to even allow contrarian views to be voiced in these boardrooms. Jackson said:

For the record, let me also note that in a prior professional phase, I was a banker. I know that safeguards work not just because I understand that now as a dean but because I practiced it when I was in banking.

That why's the Drucker School is so important, perhaps now more than ever. It teaches practitioners about ethics in business, not as an afterthought but as the basis of all management.

Peter F. Drucker, the namesake of our management school, liked to tell this story about Alfred P. Sloan Jr., the genius at GM who made it what it once was, the biggest and most successful corporation in the world.

Sloan is reported to have said at a meeting of GM top executives: "I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here."

When everyone around the table silently agreed, Sloan then threw in this example of true leadership: "Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about."

For Drucker, the point was that "unless one has considered alternatives, one has a closed mind."

Decision-making for Drucker works best when it's based on the friction of differing views and the resultant dialogue between different points of view, and the choice between different judgments.

The problem today is that few leaders tolerate dissent in their ranks. In fact, those who dissent or differ are often given a pink slip.

Indeed, that refusal to allow dissent is the mark of any failed institution. It allows organizations from banks to car companies to federal, state, and local government agencies to ignore important pieces of information that might otherwise help avert disaster. It is why the state of California faces a $42 billion deficit and the City of Claremont had a $3.5 million budget shortfall.

As we've written in the past, Claremont's official decision-making has often and predictably failed because of a groupthink mentality that only allowed for input from a small circle of people, that so-called Claremont 400, who are constantly talking to each other. The Judy Wrights, Diann Rings, Helaine Goldwaters, Barbara Musselmans, Paul Helds, Valerie Martinezes of town who are current and former councilmembers, city commissioners, and Claremont Community Foundation or League of Women Voter members decide among themselves what course to take on a matter, and then they get it placed on a city meeting agenda for the official City stamp of approval.

Former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring loves to talk about how many 5-0 votes councils of her time had. There was no disagreement at all in the votes, and those votes were guaranteed long before any public meetings were ever held because Ring's councils were all of one mind. Yet, if Jackson's thesis is correct, all those 5-0 rubberstamp votes actually underscored a potential for mismanagement at each decision point.

By so narrowly defining who has a say in how decisions are made and by excluding and dismissing wider public input, Claremont's leaders consistently discouraged the kind of constructive dissent that Ira Jackson wrote about. As a result, the same leaders are responsible for some truly monumental missteps: investing over $5 million in the Orange County Investment Pool in the 1990's, right before it went belly-up; refusing to spend a few tens of thousands of dollars on brush clearance in the Claremont Wilderness Park, which led to a $17.5 million settlement with homeowners whose houses burned down in 2003; spending $1.2 million on the riderless Claremont Trolley at a time when the nation's economy was failing; buying Johnson's Pasture with a deed that was worded in such a way as to cause the City to forfeit a $1 million state grant; and much, much more.

Jackson's opinion piece yesterday called for all Americans, not just the board chairs of financial institutions, to take to heart the new president's call for each of us to take personal responsibility for the world around us and to not avoid making hard sacrifices (though some might argue that some of these Wall Street bailout beneficiaries have not sacrificed nearly enough).

Jackson wrote, "It's time to propose an ethical bailout of all our leaders whether in finance, business, government, the nonprofit sector or the media. It's time for a change of heart and a change in course."

And that's just what we should do here in Claremont. Let's redefine the governing culture of Claremont and make it one that is open to all voices, not just a select few. Let's make sure that every decision the City makes is based on reason and the consideration of all available facts, not just the ones the Claremont 400 want you to hear. Let's make it our goal to create something here we can all be a part of and one that we can all be proud of.

If we cannot accomplish that one small thing, how can we presume to remake our country or the wider world?

Burying the Past, Again

The Claremont Courier last week had a two-part series by Tony Krickl examining the 10th anniversary of the 1999 Irvin Landrum shooting, an incident that split the Claremont community, leading to deep soul-searching among some and outright denial in others. (Unfortunately, the Courier didn't post the articles on their website, which seemed a bit of an oversight considering the importance of the issue to the community.)

The incident became what some might call a transformational moment in Claremont's civic culture. In March, 2001, Llewellyn Miller, Claremont's first African American councilmember, was elected in the aftermath of the shooting; and, in 2003, Peter Yao became the City's first Asian councilmember.

The incident also caused a good many people to examine the city's management culture, one embodied by former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard and endorsed by the city fathers and mothers, the so-called Claremont 400. Many of these people refused for years after the shooting to acknowledge the possibility of any imperfection within City Hall and allowed Southard and his faithful assistant, current City Council candidate Bridget Healy, to run roughshod over state open government laws and to treat the non-Claremont 400 public with open contempt.

In our view, this Southardian management culture lay at the heart of the Landrum matter. What happened on Base Line Rd. on the night of January 11, 1999, will never be fully known. But what we do know is that the City Council and Southard committed misstep after misstep, mostly because of their collective arrogance as well as the sharp disconnect between their egos and the values of a majority of voters.

The sense of the majority of voters that the Council was horribly out-of-touch with reality was what did in incumbents Karen Rosenthal and Al Leiga, and what forced Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado to not seek re-election. It was also what swept Miller, Yao, Jackie McHenry, and Corey Calaycay into office. (The sword cuts both ways, though. Miller and McHenry both lost their re-election bids in a particularly ugly campaign in 2005, and it remains to be seen whether or not Calaycay will break the string of incumbents either stepping down or getting voted out.)

* * *

A reader wrote in after the first of Krick's two articles appeared on Saturday, January 31st. The reader was bothered by something we also noticed about the article:

DATE: Tuesday, February 3, 2009 12:35 PM
SUBJECT: Landrum article from Saturday's Claremont Courier
TO: Claremont Buzz

Hi,

I wondered if I was the only person who read the article in Saturday’s Claremont Courier by Tony Krickl about the Landrum shooting and who didn’t recognize the Karen Rosenthal quoted therein. My recollection of the events surrounding the Landrum shooting are that then-mayor Rosenthal, with her tin ear and foot in mouth, exacerbated a difficult situation no less than Glenn Southard. And I cannot remember, nor can I believe, that she took down the award plaques given to officers Hanna and Jacks. Certainly, she could not have spoken to Glenn Southard about the awards in the way described in the article. Part of the reason that she lost so badly (finishing in last or next-to-last place) in the next City Council election is that the Council would not rescind the awards, muzzle the embarrassing city manager, or consider doing so.

She was simply “inexperienced”—certainly not arrogant, insensitive, and certain of the city manager’s rightness. Revisionist history at its finest.

Yes, dear reader, Official Claremont's habit of forgetting and erasing the inconvenient parts of the past is nothing new, as we once said a couple years ago, Chicken Creek may be long gone from Claremont, but the River Lethe flows strong through the heart of town. Drink, Claremonsters, and forget.

* * *

The reader's note alluded to study circles. This, you might recall was Ellen Taylor's way of trying to take credit for "healing" the city by organizing the study circles without actually having to trouble citizens with of any sort of real self-examination. It was simply enough to have Queen Ellen declare victory over the guilt the Landrum matter created among Claremont's progressives for the self-congratulatory back-slapping to begin, followed quickly by the forgetting.

All that remains now is a sort of faux-history, complete with a false set of recollections, tenderly evoked in Krickl's two articles by the people most responsible for trying to preserve Southard's job (hence, Preserve Claremont):

• Former Mayor Karen Rosenthal, currently agonizing over Southard's awarding Employees-of-the-Year awards (with $1,000 bonuses) to the two officers involved in the shooting, claims to have ordered Southard to take the awards down from the walls just outside the Council Chambers - a detail Rosenthal brings to light 10 years after the fact, if it ever really happened at all.
  
  
• Taylor expressing sympathy for Landrum's family: "....[Southard] refused to release information about the shooting to the family. If that were my child, I would want some answers. The protests happened because the family felt they had to protest to be heard." So where were Ellen's sympathies 10 years ago? Why, if she were so concerned about the Landrum family, was Taylor not out at City Hall leading the protests or meeting with the Tracy Lee, Irvin Landrum's mother?
  
  
• Taylor's eventual campaign manager (and Bridget Healy's de facto CM as well), in Krickl's second article last Wednesday claiming a healing victory through the creation of Claremont's Police Commission: "In 2000, the city set up a Police Commission to 'give the community a forum if concerns came up with the Police Department,' said Helaine Goldwater, former chair of the Police Commission.
  
  Goldwater conveniently forgets (that word again) to mention her role in neutering the commission so as to shackle its effectiveness, or Healy's role, beginning on 9/5/02 (the first meeting after Goldwater's commission term expired), as the staff member assigned to keep watch over the Police Commission to make sure they didn't stray too far off the reservation.

Click to Enlarge

In our view, Krickl's blog post on the subject gets closer to the truth of the matter than the two articles:

I interviewed Karen Rosenthal, who was not mayor when the incident happened but was throughout much of the aftermath. As the voice of the city, Rosenthal was certainly in a difficult position and struggled with being thrown into that role during the crisis.

Rosenthal cried while I interviewed her. Her emotions, which still exist today, personify how lasting an impact the incident had on the community, and all the raw emotions that it invoked.

The greatest criticism of Rosenthal throughout the aftermath was for being insensitive to Landrum and his family and making public statements about his character and personal life that many felt were irrelevant.

Does it matter that he fathered 2 children to 2 different women at the age of 18, as she brought up during our interview? Even going so far as to call him a “rapist, by the legal definition” because the women were underage.

....When Glenn Southard named the officers Employees of the Year award and released the criminal record of Obee Landrum [Irvin Landrum's uncle -ed.], he displayed his intent to take an extremely defensive stance over the issue. This did not sit well with those close to him and observers in the community.

With all the poor decisions that he made during the crisis, it calls to question his decision-making abilities on other, less important issues. The city of Claremont may very well be better off without him.

Claremont, as Krickl notes, is a better place now. But it is not because of Karen Rosenthal's retroactive compassion or Ellen Taylor's study circles. It's because there has been a bit of a shift in thinking in City Hall, a little more openness, a slight willingness to take the risk of making information easily available to the public. Televising and streaming Council meetings has helped, too, if for no other reason than the Council's fear of the camera has eliminated the eyerolling and sighing that confronted people questioning the Council on their decisions.

It's a quieter town, a less contentious town, than it was 10 years ago. The question should be, why did it take a shooting to set into motion the six-year-long chain of events that led to Southard's leaving? And, maybe, a second question: Why in the world would any sane person want that way of thinking back?

Candidate Forum Ratings

We received an email report on Monday night's League of Women Voters candidate forum from one of our field correspondents. The writer thought all the candidates were quality people and rated their performances. The correspondent also had some thoughts on the composition of the audience:

DATE: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:39 AM
SUBJECT: Hughes Center - Candidate Forum
FROM: Claremont Buzz

I attended the candidate forum at the Alexander Hughes Center last night and was happy to see many Claremont residents. With no favorite candidate(s), I was there with an open mind to see what they Corey [Calaycay], Bridget [Healy] and Larry [Schroeder] had to say. I was impressed by all of them, and feel we are lucky to have quality people running for the open seats. I felt that Corey came out on top, with Larry 2nd and Bridget 3rd. Nothing really was brought up about So. California Water and their need to continue to pursue hefty increases to the PUC [Public Utilities Commission].

I was also struck by the age of the attendees. Kudos to our senior residents for taking the time and making the effort to get out and hear – they were well represented. Looking around I was wondering if ID’s were checked at the door, since no one under 60 seemed to be in the room (other than the candidates). Seriously, I saw one college aged attendee, a couple of people in their 50’s and an overwhelming majority being in their 70’s and 80’s. Aren’t there Claremont residents that are still working that might be interested in who’s leading the city at this critical economic time?

A Concerned Claremont Citizen

We weren't there, but we imagine the scene was probably pretty much like many a past candidate forum from years gone by, except that the crowd is a little grayer, a little less perambulatory than it was the last time around in 2005.

Claremont is a graying population, after all, as our comments regarding The Claremont View a couple months ago suggested. As new people move in, they don't necessarily participate in the local politics as much as the people they replace. That is one unintended consequence of the Claremont 400's insularity. It tends to drive away people not invested in supporting the in-group. If the last U. S. presidential election taught us anything, it's the value of the politics of addition, something sorely lacking among the clique running our City Hall.

For the same reason, the League of Women Voters itself is a graying group. Their lack of real outreach is hurting them, and it also moves them farther and farther out-of-touch from the younger community at large, the community not represented (or at least underrepresented) by the Ellen Taylors, Helaine Goldwaters, Sharon Hightowers, Judy Wrights, and Barbara Musselmans of the town.

We'd like to see a younger demographic get involved in the issues our community faces, especially since they and their progeny will be paying for a lot of it, but most of our 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings have got things like starting careers to think or raising families to think about. They enjoy the good things in town, like the restaurants and shops, the college-town atmosphere, or the tree-lined streets; and they don't see the bad until they bump up against it when the City wants a freeway offramp dumping traffic onto their street or shoves an accident magnet of a roundabout into their favorite downtown intersection.

Also, there just may not be that many of them in the first place. But, perhaps the drop in housing prices will bring some affordability back to the local real estate market and encourage more young families to move into our town. Revitalization spurred by recession: just another unintended consequence, we suppose. This must be the so-called "creative destruction" we've heard about.

Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers, located at 225 W. 2nd St. in the heart of the Claremont Village. For you dedicated policy wonks, the council meetings are streamed live, and you can watch tonight's meeting on the city's website.

The meeting agenda is posted here.

Here's a list of some of the more interesting items with links to the appropriate backup material (the city's document site seems a little balky today, so you may have to refresh the screen several times to get a document to come up):

• Ceremonial Matters: The city pays homage the Claremont Area League of Women Voters on their 70th anniversary. LWV president Barbara Musselman will undoubtedly be there to accept the honor, as will founding members Marilee Scaff, Ellen Taylor, Helaine Goldwater, Judy Wright, Diann Ring, and Sharon Hightower. Kidding. It only seems like they've been there seven decades. Congrats ladies (and gents)!
  
  The city will also honor Metrolink for their sponsorship of the City's Depot Jazz Series.
  
  
  
• Code amendment: The city will amend the appendix to its conflict of interest code. The appendix lists exactly what information on potential conflicts of interest different levels of employees and elected or appointed city officials have to disclose. State law requires this to be reviewed and updated periodically.
  
  
  
• Right-of-Way and Irrigation Maintenance Contract: City staff is recommending awarding a three-year contract worth $294,812.95 to CLS Landscape in Chino. The contract is for the maintenance of over 50 acres of city-owned right-of-ways and 42 acres of open space brush clearance. Careful there....
  
  
  
• CGU General Plan Amendment Hearing Cancellation: The Council was supposed to hold a hearing tonight on Claremont Graduate University's request for General Plan land use map amendments and zoning changes for several of CGU's parcels. However, because the Planning Commission hasn't acted on the matter yet, the Council cannot take any action.
  
  
  
• Claremont Commons Project Appeal: A neighborhood group called Protect Our Neighborhoods, represented by C. R. Fowler, seeks to appeal an Architectural Commission approval for the Claremont Commons project at the northwest corner of Monte Vista Ave. and Foothill Blvd. Staff is recommending the matter be sent back to the Architectural Commission for further review.
  
  
  
• A Report on the Upland Park View Specific Plan, Chapter 2: Upland is working on a large-scale, mixed-use development north of Base Line Rd. between the 210 Freeway and Benson:
  
  
  Click to Enlarge
  
  
  The project will include 100,000 square-feet of retail space on 10 acres, up to 400 residential units on 32 acres, and a 57-acre sports park. You can learn more about the project on Upland's website.
  
  2.4 acres of the project's western corner are in Claremont, so the City has to approve a specific plan for that small portion of the Upland development.
  
  
  
• Cell Tower Code Amendment: Staff recommends the Council approve a revised city ordinance regarding antennas and wireless communication towers. The city here is looking for new revenue - lots of money in them there cell towers.
  
  
  
• Human Services Commission Appointment: At the recommendation of the Council's Ad Hoc Commission Selection Committee (Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza), the Council is being asked to appoint Bob Miletich to the Human Services Commission.
  
  Miletich is a former AYSO Region 3 board member and is employed by the Los Angeles County Department of Public and Social Services as a human resources administrator.
  
  Hmmm, sounds a little like LWV president Barbara Musselman, who formerly worked for San Bernardino County as a Human Resource Director. Go get 'em, wonks!
  

The Enforcer Returns to the Scene of the Crime

We received some inquires about our post from last Saturday. The image we posted with Indio Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy's retirement farewell note to that town's staff was indeed real. It was taken without alteration from page 1 of the Indio city staff newsletter for October, 2008.

As Healy's goodbye note indicated, she is returning to Claremont, and she apparently wants to run for the Claremont City Council next March, at least according to the October 22nd issue of the Claremont Courier (the article is not posted online).

When she formerly worked here, Healy, along with former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard, was responsible for any number of scandals and missteps - the roundabout at Indian Hill Blvd. and Bonita Ave. that had to be removed after complaints and accidents piled up; the failed investment of over $5 million in the Orange County Investment Pool in the early 1990's; the handling of the Irvin Landrum shooting and lawsuit; the behind-the-scenes support of Preserve Claremont affair; and much, much more.

Now, like an arsonist who just can't resist returning to the scene of the crime, Healy is slinking back into town to add to the damage she inflicted in her last go around. This time, with the urging and support of people like former Police Commissioner and town busybody Helaine Goldwater, she intends to stick it to us as an elected official.

Goldwater, not content to have given us Ellen Taylor, wants to give us an even worse choice for council in Healy, who was the enforcer on Glenn Southard's Claremont and Indio staffs. Like Taylor, Healy presents a smiling public face; unlike Taylor, Healy is smart enough to keep her nastiness from public view.

You can bet, too, that Healy isn't done with Southard, as Saturday's post indicated. Expect the invisible presence of His Southardness to be performing His usual sleight-of-hand. You might, for instance, expect plenty of cost overruns on projects - He always loved to pay much more than expected for big ticket items, but those are costs that can easily be passed down to the taxpayers. Say, where do those cost overruns go, anyway?

So, the Healy-Southard axis will be back among us. Here it is in Healy's own words from her Indio farewell:

You all know that Glenn and I have worked together for over 20 years….27 years if you consider community and professional projects we worked on prior to working together in the same City Hall. Either way, we have seen, spoken to or emailed each other for about the last 7,482 days in a row. Constant communications with Glenn will be another old habit hard to break.

Healy was certainly right about old habits, so there was more than a little irony in what the Indio city staff had to say to Healy about the criminal life:

Bridget Healy, you are all done stapling the blue form to the red form and for that, we must offer our sincerest CONGRATULATIONS! It is an awesome accomplishment and we’re grateful for having had the chance to work with you!! We’re confident you will not turn to a life of crime after this, but will come back here if retirement is boring.

Claremont should be so lucky!

Click on Image to Enlarge

City News

For our 1,000th post, news of the mundane -

WILDERNESS PARK OPEN AGAIN

The Claremont Hills Wilderness Park is open again after being closed for a few days due to high fire danger. We also hear that work on the emergency remediation is underway to repair the damage done during the city's summer brush clearance.


CITY HALLOWEEN EVENT THIS FRIDAY

Claremont's annual Halloween Celebration will take place Friday in the Village. The city's website has the details:

Co-sponsored by the City of Claremont, Claremont Chamber Village Marketing Group and local businesses, everyone is invited to Claremont's Annual Halloween Celebration in the Claremont Village on Friday, October 31. There will be trick-or-treating, free games, and a lot of entertainment.

Over 50 Village businesses, marked with balloons and a special poster, will be handing out free goodies to trick-or-treaters from 3-5 p.m. Maps listing all participating locations will be available at the Claremont Depot (200 W. First St) and City Hall (207 Harvard Ave).

The Claremont Depot will have free games and entertainment, including a puppet show and a live animal show, as well as a children's costume contest from 4-7 p.m. Additional entertainment will be located at the Packing House, Village Square, and a variety of other locations. The entertainment will include live music, clowns, and a magician. At 5 p.m., a Dog Costume Contest will take place at TruCare Pet Boutique (346 Yale Ave).

For more information about the City of Claremont's Halloween Celebration, call (909) 399-5490.

TONIGHT'S CITY COUNCIL MEETING

The Claremont City Council meets tonight beginning with a special closed session at 5:15pm to discuss price and terms for the ground lease agreement for the Padua Theatre.

The Council will reconvene in its regular session at 6:30pm. Among the items on the agenda are:

• The second readings and adoptions of:
  - The ordinance allowing dogs on the Thompson Creek trail.
  - The city leaf blower ordinance.
  - The solid waste collection fee hike.
  - The city public park smoking ordinance.
  
  
• A staff report on the city's investment funds showing that in the quarter ending September 30th, the city's investments in certificate of deposits and the state's Local Agency Investment Fund declined by $3,544,846, from $24,106,427 to $20,561,581.
  
  The report also stated that the Claremont Redevelopment Agency's investments declined by $1,106,396, down from $3,286,039 at the end of July.
  
  The staff report states that the declines were "primarily as a result of the outflow of funds to maintain operations."
  
  
• A business climate survey commissioned by the City and conducted by the Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College. The survey reported:
  

  The Rose Institute of State and Local Government conducted a survey of local businesses in the City of Claremont during July and August of 2008. Interviews were conducted by telephone with a random sample of businesses in Claremont. Additional personal survey interviews were conducted by Rose Institute staff with the some of the top twenty sales tax generating businesses in the city. Relevant graphs describing selected questions accompany each section.
  
  Results from the survey indicate that businesses owners are not likely to provide strong support for a campaign to increase the transient occupancy tax in Claremont Survey results also show that gross receipts for local businesses have been relatively stable despite the general downturn in the broader economy. Most Claremont businesses are relatively small with less than ten employees but usually have a significant non-Claremont customer base. There are substantial differences between the types of businesses that are located in the Village and outside of it. The Village has a heavy concentration of retail clothing, gift retail, and restaurant business while non-Village business is generally professional offices, accommodations or other major businesses such as car dealerships, and grocery stores. Despite differences in categorization, Village and non-Village businesses responded similarly to a number of questions regarding the local business climate.

  What was that about a hike in the transient occupancy tax? And, it's difficult to believe that there local businesses sales have remained relatively stable. All you have to do is see the number of businesses in the Packing House and the Village Expansion and elsewhere in the Claremont Village that have closed in the past year. Or consider the drop-off in auto sales at Claremont Toyota.
  
  The survey also said that 75% of the respondents believed that it was the business owner's responsibility to market their business - not the City or the Chamber of Commerce. A similar number also said that it was the job of business owners to pay for that marketing, all of which should make warm the hearts of the City Council and the Chamber, since it takes them off the hook for marketing the Village.
  
  
• A resolution supporting a 75,000-seat NFL football stadium in the City of Industry near the junction of the 60 and 57 Freeways, because traffic at that interchange isn't bad enough already.
  
  
• Consideration of a mitigated negative declaration and the lease agreement for the Padua Hills Theatre. Staff recommends taking public comment and continuing the matter until the Council's next meeting in November.
  
  
• Review and adoption of the Claremont's proposed Sustainable City Plan.
  
  
• Review of the city's Housing Element Land Inventory Sites. The infamous Base Line Rd. affordable housing site gets a special mention. According to the staff report by Claremont Director of Community Development Tony Witt:
  

  The Planning Commission reviewed the draft Housing Element on October 7, 2008. The commission recommended on a 4-3 vote that the Base Line site be removed from the land inventory. The majority felt that the site was not suited for affordable residential development because of the negative air quality impacts of being next to the freeway and the fact that the site is not within close proximity to parks schools, public transportation or grocery stores.

  Yet, despite the Planning Commission's recommendation, Witt's staff recommendation is to include the Base Line site on the list of potential affordable housing locations. We suspect this is being done at the behest of Mayor Ellen Taylor, Claremont League of Women Voters president Barbara Musselman, and former Police Commissioner Helaine Goldwater, all of whom cannot stop themselves from meddling unnecessarily in this affordable housing issue. They've got it in their little heads that there is only one way to accomplish meet the state affordable housing goals -their way, which means putting it on the Base Line Rd. site, come hell or high water.

Goldwater, who is responsible for giving Ellen Taylor, isn't through with her machinations (hint: municipal election time is nearing). More on that in a future report.