Election Tomorrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday Morning Mailbag

We received a comment in response to our Saturday post in which we quoted a 2000 California First Amendment Coalition press release regarding the City of Claremont's Black Hole Award. The release included some choice quotes from Karen Rosenthal, Claremont's mayor at the time.

As one reason for the award, the CFAC piece cited Claremont's proposal to station a "mental health professional" at City Council meetings to evaluate the potential dangers presented by speakers during public comment. The professional would have provided the City grounds to have offending speakers removed from the council chambers.

In case you've forgotten, the author of the staff report for that proposal was former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, who is chair-elect to the Claremont Chamber of Commerce board and who ran unsuccessfully for council in 2009.

Our reader wrote:

Date: Sat, March 26, 2011 5:28:47 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: crazy

"...its short-lived proposal to have mental health professionals standing by to assess the threat level posed by citizen speakers at public meetings..."

My guess is they dropped the proposal to have mental health professionals at city council meetings because the mental health professionals would have been able to witness the behavior of the city council members. "Yes, I was noticing the unstable person at the front of the room who keeps sighing loudly and rolling her eyes when other people speak. Have your officer keep a close eye on that one -- she covers about thirty pages in the DSM-IV."

(Pause)

"Also, about the man on the side of the dais who keeps turning beet red and screaming threats at people..."

At the end of the note, the reader alluded to Bridget Healy's former boss in Claremont and in Indio. Here we see him in all his red-faced glory as he does self-inflicted damage to his reputation:

Full Circle

History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as desperation.


HISTORY

In 2003, a group calling itself Residents United for Claremont paid for an election eve, citywide mailer that tried to scare voters into supporting incumbents Sandy Baldonado, Karen Rosenthal, and Al Leiga. The RUC letter warned voters that they would face the loss of vital city services if challengers Jackie McHenry and Peter Yao were elected. McHenry and Yao won, and, contrary to what RUC had predicted, the sun still came up in the morning.

Click on Images to Enlarge

TRAGEDY

In 2005 came Preserve Claremont, about whom we've written much. PC raised nearly as much money as some of the candidates' campaigns. They used the money tattacking Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay with innuendo, rumor, and, in at least one case, a blatant lie. The PC experience so tarred the people behind it, that many, including a few leftover from the Residents United Campaign, rejected the group or at least started to display independent thinking.


DESPERATION

The hardcore PCers, though, just went underground and work mostly behind the scenes now. Some of the true believers like J. Michael Fay and Bill Baker, respective treasurers for city council campaigns of Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman, still take active roles when called upon for the their services and PC experience.

Haulman was the original chosen one of the PCers, but some of the antics surrounding her campaign - cheating in a debate or stealing another campaign's fliers - damaged her candidacy to the extent the Claremonsters had to have an insurance policy in Lyons. So, you see people like PC spokesman Butch Henderson donating money to both Lyons and Haulman. And they've hitched the Haulman-Lyons wagon to incumbent Sam Pedroza to get people to vote for the three of them as a slate, the hope being that Pedroza's coattails pull the other two along into office.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had a full-page ad (purchased at the going rate of a little less than $900), taken out by a group calling itself "Concerned Claremont citizens." (Their civic-minded concern apparently isn't large enough to warrant a capital letter for themselves.)

The CCC ad took what had been a sarcastic letter to the editor from council candidate Opanyi Nasiali and turned it around by interpreting it literally. Nasiali's letter (posted below) appeared in the Daily Bulletin and in the Courier last September.


The ad proclaimed "WE ARE SHOCKED!" and falsely intimated that Nasiali was serious about eliminating the police and public schools. It asked the reader, "Is this someone we want on the Claremont City Council."


What's really shocking is the implied contempt the ad has for voters. They expect readers won't read Nasiali's full text and will just scan the bullet points, helped out by the large arrow pointing the eye neatly past the context-placing introduction.

The ad was signed by eight people, including Ann Joslin, a Claremonster in sheep's clothing along with her life partner in crime Planning Commissioner and aspiring council candidate Bob Tener. Joslin's still sore at Nasiali for opposing the Parks and Pasture assessment district and for his successful backing of the Measure S bond for Johnson's Pasture, both in 2006.

Not coincidentally, also in yesterday's Courier, Joslin and Tener have a letter extolling the virtues of Joseph Lyons. The Joslin-Tener letter, together with another from Architectural Commissioner Susan Schenk singing the praises of Robin Haulman, are designed to work in concert with the "Claremont Concerned citizens" ad. The latter is supposed to drive people away from Nasiali, who has been running ahead of Lyons and Haulman, and the letters are there to attract voters who buy into CCC's attack ad.

Another CCC signer was Bob Gerecke, who has been working for the Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons alliance. Gerecke is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club, whose repertoire of dirty tricks in this campaign has included appropriating private property for campaign signs. Gerecke's wife Katie, is the past president of another Claremont 400 institution, the League of Women Voters.

Yet another is Sally Alexander, who one reader notes is the 97-year-old mother of Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporter Sandy Hester, making Alexander the oldest frontwoman in Claremont election history.

As we say, none of this is new. The Claremonster playbook only has two or three pages, all of them outlining some aspect of their bullying ways. Expect to see more of the same, possibly including one or two hit pieces paid for by municipal employee unions awaiting new contracts.

As this election winds down, we see all these strands coming together so that the all too familiar design becomes visible. In five days, on March 8, we'll see how it turns out. In Claremont, we've always gotten the government we deserve.

Church & State, Revisited

From the More Things Change file:

The Insider has learned that the circle of people officially associated with the Yes on Measure CL campaign has widened from the original three - Bill Fox, Mike Seder, and Lee Jackman - to include insurance agent and Claremont 400 heavyweight Randy Prout, former Claremont United Church of Christ pastor and current city Human Services commissioner Butch Henderson (photo, left), and former Human Services Chair Suzanne Hall, wife of the ubiquitous Ken Corhan.

We shouldn't be surprised to see Prout or Henderson or Hall/Corhan, popping up in the Measure CL campaign. All were associated with the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign that tried to derail the candidacy of Claremont city council member Corey Calaycay. We should also remember that the PC campaign was as much about censoring council member Jackie McHenry and keeping then-City Manager Glenn Southard in charge as it was concerned with barring Calaycay from the council.

That the current school bond campaign and its supporters don't mind twisting the truth shouldn't come as a surprise either. During the 2005 city council election and after, Henderson, who seemed to use his position in our town's main church to unduly influence people to support the Claremonsters' agenda, was a spokesperson for the Preserve Claremont campaign and was quoted in the Claremont Courier on 2/19/05. In that article, Henderson admitted not only that his campaign employed manipulative tactics, but that such games are a natural part of any political campaign, even one involving the Claremont UCC's head pastor:

Mr. Henderson responded to a complaint he had heard that the [Preserve Claremont] ads were "manipulative".

"Of course they are," he said. "That's what politics is all about. Claremonters like things to be real nice. They say, 'Let's do powerbrokering behind the scenes and be real nice.' But politics is about leaders. Mr. Calaycay s running for office and we're trying to get factual information out about him."

Click on Images to Enlarge

It mattered not a whit that the "factual information" Henderson alluded to consisted of nothing more than rumor, innuendo, and outright lies, much of which was supplied by city staff. But, rather than being shocked that a former man of the cloth would engage in such self-acknowledged manipulations, we should expect it.

We can't help but recall the last Claremont Unified School District Measure Y bond campaign in 2000. During that lead up to that campaign, school district officials held a public meeting at which residents who lived near Claremont High School showed up to protest the planned use of Measure Y money to put a football stadium in at the high school.

When it became clear during the meeting that the football facility plans were going to imperil Measure Y's passage, the district officials took a break, held a quick sideline huddle with Superintendent Keeler calling signals, and then reconvened to assure the audience that no Measure Y dollars would be used for the high school stadium. At that meeting, one Butch Henderson, who happened to live very near the high school, stood up and said he was happy with the district officials' plan to accommodate his neighbors.

With no opposition from the Towne Ranch neighborhood, Measure Y passed by a little more than 100 votes citywide. Within a matter of a few years, the district, flush with Measure Y dollars, installed the permanent football field, lights, and bleachers at the high school. In fact construction workers are installing a second course of permanent seating right now.

So, yes, the neighborhood was lied to. But in Claremont anything associated with the school district approaches a certain religious fervor, complete with a kind of priesthood to deliver CUSD's holy word. The truth is whatever that priesthood says it is. As Pastor Henderson could tell them, all's fair in politics and war.

Not a Stadium

Highway Robbery

Yes, as through this world I've wandered

I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Pretty Boy Floyd
- Woody Guthrie

DEAL GONE BAD

Well, if you happened to catch last Tuesday's Claremont City Council meeting, you would have seen the council vote 4-1 to approve terminating the operating covenant that Claremont Toyota and the City agreed to back in September 2005. Mayor Corey Calaycay was the lone "No" vote.

As we discussed in our last post, the property in question is a 1.25-acre parcel that once contained a Chili's Restaurant and a small parking lot. It's located on the west side of Indian Hill Blvd. next to the offramp from the eastbound 10 Freeway. Claremont Toyota owner Roger Hogan had originally wanted that property to expand his existing operation.

Back in 2005, Hogan, who exerts a great deal of influence in town thanks to the fact that his dealership provides the City with about half of its annual sales tax revenue, talked the council into giving him $100,000 to help him acquire the property. The City also agreed to put in $200,000 in street and signage improvements and used its eminent domain powers to threaten the previous owner. The "threat" was a paper one only. It allowed the seller a tax advantage, so the City had to engage in a oddly legal, wink-and-nod IRS tax dodge for the seller's benefit.

The payoff for the city was supposed to millions of dollars in tax revenue over the minimum seven years Hogan agreed to use the Chili's property to expand his Toyota dealership. So, some time soon after the city council agreed to the deal on a 3-1 vote (then-councilmember Jackie McHenry voted against it; Calaycay abstained), Hogan took possession of the property, had the restaurant structure torn down and paved over, and started parking cars on the lot.

Unfortunately, the car market, and the economy as a whole, crashed, which caused Hogan to reconsider his need for the Chili's lot. With three years remaining on his agreement, Hogan wanted out of the deal, so last week city staff urged the council to allow Hogan to back out of the 2005 agreement and payback only half of the $100,000 of the City's investment.

You can see the actual discussion here (scroll down to agenda item 13 and click on that link).


NOPE, NO CONFLICT HERE

Of course, the council agreed to the deal Tuesday, but not without some squirming on the part of an uncharacteristically sober councilmember Sam Pedroza (carousing, at left). Pedroza received $1,000 in campaign contributions from the Hogan family.

How much did the Hogans love Sam in 2007? Well, the maximum allowable contribution for a Claremont City Council campaign is $250 per person. Hogan got around that by having his wife, as well as his adult son and daughter, contribute $250 each to the Pedroza campaign. Roger Hogan, Jr., by the way, for his campaign donation listed his occupation fleet manager of Claremont Toyota.

One other interesting thing about the Hogan donations is that none of them - father, mother, daughter, son - live in Claremont. Roger Sr. and his wife live in Newport Beach. For all the talk about how much Roger Sr. gives back to the community, it certainly seems like he takes an awful lot out, and we have to wonder if there isn't sometimes an implicit threat to take his dealership out of Claremont if Roger doesn't get what Roger wants.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had an article by Tony Krickl (sorry, no link) that quoted Pedroza's rationale for not recusing himself from the vote for his auto dealer patron:

"It just astounds me as we're talking about the challenges to our businesses at this time and people are talking about charging this number one income producer $100,000," Councilmember Sam Pedroza said. "I just think it's the wrong direction."

Mr. Pedroza defended himself at the meeting after Mr. [Dean] McHenry pointed out that some city council members had received campaign contribution money from Mr. Hogan and questioned whether their votes would be swayed due to a conflict of interest.

The other councilmember who received a campaign contribution from Hogan was Mayor Pro Tem Linda Elderkin (pontificating, at right). Elderkin, whom we like to refer to "The Process Queen" for her supposed adherence to rules that enforce orderly, fair government, received $250 from the elder Hogan in her 2007 campaign.

Neither Pedroza nor Elderkin were on the council back in 2005 when the City agreed to operating covenant with Hogan for the Chili's property. But it never hurts to have some allies when a vote is needed, as it was on Tuesday night. Fortunately for the council, it has always reliable city attorney, Sonia Carvalho, standing by. Tuesday, Sonia leaped to the defense of Pedroza and Elderkin. Krickl's article quoted Carvalho:

"Campaign contributions for the purposes of conflicts are not sources of income," City Attorney Sonia Carvalho added. "So you can receive campaign contributions and not have a conflict of interest."

Carvalho also said in her comments that as long as the council can claim a "legitimate public purpose" for any expense, there is no gift of public funds involved.

Thanks for that, Sonia. So, Hogan gets a break, and the city gets back $50,000 of it's $100,000 investment, a 50% loss on the investment. Think of what services that $100,000 might have purchased, or how much interest the city might have earned over the past four years if it had merely invested the money in a long-term bond or CD.

Pedroza was careful to point out that there was no conflict on his part because he hadn't accepted any money from Hogan, et. al., in the last 12 months. It's also good to know that 12 months hence, in his presumptive 2011 campaign, Pedroza will again be cleared to accept even more Hogan money.

Who in 2007 knew the best return on investment might be a Claremont City Council campaign? (Start with $1,250, $50,000 returned = a 4000% gain over about three years.)

Check out these 2007 City Election campaign finance documents:

(Click on images to enlarge)

Pedroza 2007 Campaign Finance Statement

Elderkin 2007 Campaign Finance Statement

POSTSCRIPT

The funniest thought of all occurred to us as we were driving past the Claremont Auto Center last week. What if three years from now Roger Hogan decides to pull up stakes and concentrate on the Orange County car market? Who can guarantee he doesn't anyway? We couldn't help but noticing how his Claremont Toyota ads now say "Claremont/Capistrano." Capistrano is sure a lot closer to Newport Beach than Claremont.


The sight of the Claremont Auto Center last week wasn't exactly a confidence inspiring image. There certainly seemed to be a lot of empty spaces. The Chili's lot appeared empty except for six vehicles:



So, we wonder, how long did Hogan's operation really use the property? The answer is less than three of the agreed upon seven years. As always, Google Earth tells all (the Chili's lot is outlined in red):

4/1/05 - Before the deal

3/15/06 - Restaurant gone

6-17-07 - Cars. Now you see 'em....

6/27/08 - ....Now you don't

6/19/09 - More cars gone

Where Are They Now?

Former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard was back in the news recently. Southard, who is now the city of Indio's City Manager, seem to have gotten into hot water over his and his staff's use of city-issued credit cards.

Two reporters for the Desert Sun, Erica Felci and Xochtil Pena, have covered the issue in a series of articles this month. According to the a January 4 Sun article, Indio's city staff spent around $805,000 on its credit cards in a two-year period beginning January, 2008. The Desert Sun article said:

A Desert Sun review of nearly 1,000 pages of credit card statements, however, shows that through October, the city's 62 cardholders spent at least $43,000 more than they had during the same period last year.

The newspaper's investigation also found:

• Tens of thousands of dollars in credit card bills were racked up monthly with charges to local restaurants, NFL and major league baseball teams — even a a women's clothing store. City administrators have repeatedly refused to explain the purpose of these charges.
  
  
• About one in five employees has a card. Records show the cards were issued to employees at all levels, including a front desk receptionist and the five members of the city's executive team.
  
  
• Statements are not seen regularly by City Council members. After reviewing The Desert Sun's findings, the mayor [Gene Gilbert] said he feels “blindsided” and believes some spending liberties were “abused.”
  

With Indio facing a current $5 million budget deficit, the Indio City Council took a lot of heat for the credit card expenses, which included the cost of a trip to Quebec for Southard's wife Gale, who accompanied Southard on an official trip. Southard claimed the matter was a mix-up. He had no defense, however, for the cost of a $15 airline baggage charge for Gale for a trip to Sacramento.

Mayor Gilbert's shock came as something of a surprise. Another Desert Sun article noted that in 2006, an accounting audit recommending a review of Indio's credit card policy:

In January 2006, city officials released an audit that showed 18 areas where accounting standards needed to be tightened. That included a notation that receipts were not always included with card statements, making it difficult for the city to determine if a charge was valid.

The following year, the auditor did not include any reportable conditions.

Still, the City Council in 2006 formed a subcommittee to review the issues raised in the audit — including Indio's credit card policy.

Councilwoman Melanie Fesmire was one of two council members on the subcommittee. Former councilman Mike Wilson, a frequent critic of the city's spending habits, was the other.

“2006. Wow. I can't remember doing it,” Fesmire told The Desert Sun last week. “I don't remember being on the committee. I don't remember the audit frankly. If we met, I assume we came out with a report. I don't recall any of it frankly.”

Wilson told The Desert Sun the subcommittee never met.

The Desert Sun also showed the credit card statements to former Indio City Manager Tom Ramirez:

Ramirez recently met with The Desert Sun to review the city's credit card statements, noting the documents contained “big red flags.”

“There is no way in hell they can justify buying Minnesota Viking tickets,” Ramirez said, pointing to a $1,156 charge in October 2008 on the card issued to assistant to the city manager Mark Wasserman. “Nobody at the top is setting the standard for performance. You're talking about taxpayer money.”

Naturally, Southard defended the credit card policy (or in this case non-policy) as the normal way of doing business.

So, once again, Southard creates a problem for a city council, and that council has to take the public heat. Southard's solution, as always, is to runaway. As part of their cost-cutting efforts, Southard and his staff have recommended offering golden handshakes to employees to get them off the payroll. Part of the deal includes giving employees who are over 50 and who have over 5 years of service (read: Glenn Southard) the option of buying up to two additional years of CalPERS retirement credit.

Southard, who has wrangled similar retirement options in his prior places of employment, has never missed chance to feather his nest. The Sun reported that Southard, who has worked for various cities for 36 years, actually has 40 retirement years.

Let's say that Southard can average 2.5% of his salary for each of those years (he gets 2.5% from Claremont and 2.7% from Indio but has also worked for San Clemente and West Covina*). And let's also assume that Southard buys the extra 2 years he is proposing for himself and the rest of his eligible employees. That would give Southard a yearly pension of 2.5% times 42 years, or 105% of his $300,000 annual salary (actually an average of his highest years of salary), along with yearly cost of living increases.

Southard has indicated that if the Indio City Council adopts the golden handshake to balance their budget, he may sacrifice himself by taking it. Southard, as always, is two steps ahead of the rubes he works for. He is turning a self-created crisis into a golden opportunity for himself.

All of this takes us back to Glenn's year in Claremont. Recall that he attacked then-councilmember Jackie McHenry because she questioned Southard's refusal to submit receipts for his reimbursed expenses. Then, he had a majority of the council on his side, so he could afford to take the offensive. This time, though, the Indio City Council is having to take a harder line because of the bad press they've gotten, and Southard is having to step more carefully.

Indio has already recalled most of its city-issued credit cards (though not Glenn's, we suspect), and there will likely be other reforms in the offing. We suggest one more. Go ahead with the golden handshake for all except senior management. It's worth it to eat the cost of firing him rather than rewarding Southard for his constant refusal to implement commonsense financial checks-and-balances.

It's worth it here to take a trip in the Insider Wayback to Claremont in January, 2005, when Southard staged a fight with former Councilmember McHenry in order distract the public from the questions McHenry was raising about Southard's receipts. Time just may be proving McHenry right.

For your viewing pleasure:





*CORRECTION: Southard actually worked for San Juan Capistrano, not San Clemente.

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.

But Will It Play in Peoria?

Claremont High alum Elliot Graham has been nominated for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Wes Woods II over at the Daily Bulletin had an article about Graham's nomination and gave the film editor's background:

Graham, 32, attended Sycamore Elementary School, El Roble Intermediate School and graduated from Claremont High School in 1994. He had "a stopover at Webb" before he attended New York University and graduated in 1999.

He has lived in Los Angeles, Seattle and London since leaving Claremont....

Graham said Claremont is a special place for him.

"I think growing up in old town Claremont, on-and-off college campuses, is a unique and special experience. With its Ivy League-ish, New England setting and tree-covered campuses, it affects the area around it. You meet all sorts of people and cultures who are interested in learning and knowledge."

The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl also wrote about Graham's nomination on his COURIER City Beat blog:

He has also been nominated for an Eddie Award by the American Cinema Editors.

Graham will be in Claremont this weekend for a friend's engagement party. We'll be sure to catch up with him for a full story to appear in the Wednesday, January 28 edition of the COURIER.

We finally got around to seeing "Milk" a few weeks ago and liked it. As a genre, bio pics tend towards weakness, perhaps because the audience knows the outcome, but "Milk" has much to recommend it. For one thing, Sean Penn's lead performance is remarkable in the way he captures the title character's essence, showing Harvey Milk's transformation and growth from a slightly awkward, closeted gay New York attorney to a leader of a political movement. Penn, who was nominated for a Best Actor award for his work, also manages to convey both the need to be loved and the charisma that so many successful politicians seem to possess.

Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, the film has some important lessons to offer to anyone seeking change through politics. Persistence is one of these. Harvey Milk ran for office and was defeated three times before he was finally elected to office as a San Francisco City Supervisor.

More importantly, while being a change agent may get you elected, it won't necessarily make you a good elected official. You have to actually stand for something and offer positive alternatives; and, once in office, you have to govern, which means compromising at times and dealing with your former opponents fairly - something guaranteed to rile up your base supporters. The lesson is that, while it's great fun to lob Molotov cocktails over the Establishment walls, at some point the outsider becomes the legislator and has to lead from within the constraints of a new Establishment.

As if to underscore this, one of the film's key scenes is an exchange between Milk and Art Agnos (played by Jeff Koons). The two are both candidates in the Democratic primary for a State Assembly seat and have just finished a debate. As Agnos walks over to his car, he offers a tip to Milk: “In this town, you gotta give them a reason for optimism, or you’re cooked.”

So true, but it's not just Frisco, Art. It's Anytown, Anywhere. Claremont is no different. A few years ago, enough people wanted change to vote against incumbency. Councilmembers Al Leiga and Karen Rosenthal lost their re-election bids, and Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado likely would have been defeated if they had not stepped down rather than run again.

Llewellyn Miller, Jackie McHenry, Peter Yao, and current councilmember Corey Calaycay all ran as outsiders looking to change the council's direction. Of the first three, only Yao was re-elected, and we'll have to wait until March 3rd to see if people will re-elect Calaycay.

Miller and McHenry lost their second elections, but for different reasons. Miller, who was the first African-American elected to Claremont's City Council, was elected in the wake of the Irvin Landrum shooting, but quickly seemed to be co-opted by the very forces he was elected to change. McHenry, on the other hand, never seemed to learn the Art Agnos lesson about offering optimism, and that cooked her goose. McHenry the Revolutionary didn't quite manage the transition to governance, though to be fair, she also had then-City Manager Glenn Southard and his staff working to undermine her legitimacy.

The trick, as in some many things in life, seems to be balance, and it does seem possible that our City Hall is coming a little closer to finding that sort of moderation. As we've written recently, this election feels different from any in the past eight years, and the current council, even with the often disagreeable Mayor Ellen Taylor running things, has managed to work together in a more open, cooperative way than anytime in recent memory.

There are still times when things become knockdown, drag-out fights, but whereas in the past the Council and its commissions would have railroaded their plans through the decision-making processes, opposition voices have found just a bit more representation with this council than with previous ones. We'll have to see what the voters, who have the final say, think about all this.

City Council Election Kicks Off

CAMPAIGN SEASON BEGINS

The 2009 Claremont City Council race begins this month with the smallest field in many years. Three candidates are vying for two council seats (in alphabetical order): Corey Calaycay, Bridget Healy, and Larry Schroeder.

It's a shame Citizen Michael John Keenan (pictured right, courtesy of CMJK) isn't running this time around. From time to time we get missives from him, and he brings a perspective to these races that's different from most of the other candidates. Sorry, Michael, if we haven't gotten around to posting all the news and info you pass on, but we do appreciate the tips.

We'll know more about the three candidates in this year's council race in a few more weeks. The nominator lists are out, with each candidate having filed their nomintation papers with the City last month. These are lists of the 30 people who nominated their respective candidates for the election, and they offer a preview of the wider support the candidates will end up receiving.

As the election draws nearer, you'll start seeing ads in the Claremont Courier with supporter lists, which typically number in the hundreds of names for viable candidates. Judging from the nominator lists that are out, there's may be some fence mending going on, at least with the Calaycay and Healy campaigns.


A LITTLE BACKGROUND

Incumbent Calaycay, you might recall, ran as a change agent in 2005 and was the target of a uniquely ugly smear campaign that year. That campaign was organized by a group of town fathers and mothers who called themselves "Preserve Claremont." The PC group, which was really an independent PAC, raised nearly enough money to fund a candidate of their own. They used all those thousands of dollars to run full-page ads (at $680 or so a pop) twice a week in the Claremont Courier during the height of the campaign.

Preserve also had a spin-off called "Claremont Business PAC" that got money from people like commercial realtor Nick Quackenbos and Claremont Toyota owner Roger Hogan, who donated $2,000 to the CB PAC (calendar year donations are limited to $250 per person to city council campaigns, but PACs have no such limits). The spin-off was a last minute thing, the brainchild of Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez, who used the CB PAC money to send out two city-wide mailers on the Friday before the 2005 election (you've seen the reasons for this tactic before).

Preserve Claremont, incidentally, had a paid city staff member, City Arts Coordinator Francine Baker, as its treasurer, and there seemed to be a number of ways in which some city staffers tried to influence the election. A couple employee unions, for instance, were involved in a parallel political attack on Councilmember Jackie McHenry, who had been critical of then-City Manager Glenn Southard, an attack that featured Valerie Martinez standing up at a city council meeting during the election and calling McHenry "a cancer on this community."

Southard provided the motivation for the twin attacks. He and some of his employees spread the fear that if Calaycay were elected, he and McHenry would team up and cause an exodus of city staff (even though they represented only 2 votes out of 5).

The real reason Southard spread this fear seemed to be his own fear - a fear of a council reining him in and questioning things like his own spending. Everyone forgets the thing that really set Southard off against McHenry was her asking him to provide receipts for his expenses. All of Southard's false claims of harassment that McHenry had created a "hostile work environment" stemmed from that. Keep in mind that Southard's outburst occurred right at the outset of the 2005 campaign and served as the jumping off point for Preserve Claremont in all its incarnations:

GLENN SOUTHARD GOES BERSERK



Southard quickly abandoned his attack on McHenry after seeing that the witchhunt was turning the Councilmember into a sympathetic figure with a lot of citizens, and he left it to his Preserve Claremont friends to press their offensive against Calaycay. Shortly after Calaycay won election in 2005 (along with Ellen Taylor), Southard announced he was leaving Claremont for Indio and was taking his longtime faithful assistant, Bridget Healy, with him.

Like any bully will, after enough people finally saw through the blustering and stood up to him, Southard took his ball and left.


HANDICAPPING THE RACE

Now that Calaycay's been on the council for nearly four years and Southard's been gone for three years and eight months, the ill-will the former city manager stirred up against Calaycay seems to have abated. In fact, some people who didn't endorse Calaycay the last time around, and even some who supported other candidates in 2005, are listed as Calaycay nominators this time around. There is even one name, that of Citrus College board member Sue Keith, that appears on both Calaycay's and Healy's nominator lists. So maybe the peace has finally been made in some backroom in town.

Community Services Commissioner Larry Schroeder's nominator list doesn't have a lot of names we've seen associated with past candidates, so it's difficult to assess at this point where his support comes from or what his stands on different issues are.

When the wider supporter lists come out, the campaign finances are released, and the candidates have had a chance to debate each other in forums, we'll be better able to gauge how the race is shaping up. Conventional wisdom would say that Calaycay and Healy are the favorites, with Schroeder the dark horse. But these are strange times, and the signs can be difficult to read.

Magic 8-Ball says, "Ask again later."


CANDIDATE FORUMS

Speaking of candidate forums, there are two scheduled that we know of:

• Active Claremont
  Thursday, January 15th, 7pm
  
  Active Claremont will host its candidate forum on the 15th in the Padua Room of the Alexander Hughes Community Center at 1700 Danbury Rd. in Claremont.
  
  Call (909) 621-5412 for information.
  
  (Thanks to the Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II for that event news.)
  
  
  
• League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area
  Monday, January 26th, 7pm to 9pm
  
  This one's also at the Hughes Center. According to Wes Woods:
  

  Claremont League of Women Voters president Barbara Musselman will moderate but the public can write questions down they want the candidates to answer, said the league's voter services vice president Angela Bekzadian-Avila in a news release.
  
  Once the questions are gathered, Musselman will "choose a range of questions to ask the candidates," officials wrote in the release.
  
  Of course, I don't know if your question will be picked or if it will be answered but go and find out.
  
  Information: Angela Bekzadian-Avila at (909) 621-7809 or angelanb25@yahoo.com

That last bit about Musselman picking and choosing the questions points up one of the problems with the League of Women Voters' forum. Musselman, who was a big Glenn Southard and city staff defender back in 2005, is far from unbiased and will be the gatekeeper at the LWV forum. Additionally, the jungle drums are saying LWV member and former Claremont Police Commission member Helaine Goldwater (the woman who gave us Cookiemonster Ellen Taylor) is one of the behind-the-scenes people responsible for Healy's candidacy. So don't expect any questions that might make Healy look bad.

The odds for real questions to be asked are much higher at the Active Claremont event simply because they tend to just read the questions that are submitted, though they do combine multiple questions on the same topic into one.

Here's a useful experiment:

If you have the time, go to both events and submit the same question at each one. Then see if it gets asked. Something about city pensions might be a good. Claremont's own employee pension account with CalPERS is underfunded by several million dollars, thanks to some generous benefits that Healy, in her former capacity as Claremont's Assistant City Manager, helped push.

The public pension question is a big one, with several California cities facing bankruptcy because of the benefits they lavished on city workers when times were good. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, the city of Pacific Grove is close to bankrupt because of its employee pension plan.

The city of Vallejo is even worse off, having already declared bankruptcy. Vallejo is trying restructure some of its employee contracts, and, if successful, other California municipalities may use Vallejo bankruptcy as a template to get out of employee contracts and benefits they can no longer afford. It would interesting to hear how Healy, who as an employee benefited greatly from the city's generosity to its staff, would handle such benefits as a councilperson in the current fiscal crisis. Also, would Healy's status as a former assistant city manager raise any conflicts of interest if, as we assume, she is elected?

In the past, important issues would never be fully addressed, at least not at the League of Women Voters event, which generally attracts the largest crowds. The LWV has usually offered up softball questions to the candidates it privately supports and has avoided posing the tough questions in their candidate forums, much to the community's detriment.

Where Are They Now?

Those of you who were wondering what became of retired Claremont Police Chief Roy Brown will be glad to hear that he's doing just fine, having traded one college town for another on the opposite coast.

The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II reports in today's paper that Brown has been hired as an assistant police chief for New Haven, Connecticut. Brown, the article says, wasn't picked out of the blue. Former Pomona Police Chief James Lewis (not the Jim Lewis who used to be Claremont's Assistant to the City Manager), hired Brown.

The article also says that Lewis is trying to recruit Pomona Police Captain Ken Gillespie and gave some background on the eastern migration:

Lewis said he thought of Brown and Gillespie when he learned the open chief position needed a team to deal with community and policy issues, auditing and internal affairs.

The Inland Valley police migration to the East Coast comes after an August 2007 Police Executive Research Forum report described how to improve the New Haven Police Department.

A federal indictment in March 2007 of two New Haven narcotics police officers suspected of taking bribes from local bail bondsmen and stealing money at crime scenes led to that report.

The report reviewed organizational structure, narcotics enforcement and internal affairs investigations.

Pomona has about 172,000 people while New Haven has about 132,000, Lewis said. But Pomona has about 190 cops and New Haven roughly 500.

Pomona has more foot patrols while New Haven has officers assigned to a post.

Brown wasn't necessarily popular within the Claremont Police Department during his years here. You might recall that Brown came to Claremont from Eugene, Oregon, in the aftermath of the Irvin Landrum shooting in January, 1999.

In the midst of the subsequent blow-up caused by the former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard's handling of the situation, then-Claremont Police Chief Robert Moody retired (and later took a job with the law firm that defended the city in the civil suit brought by the Landrum family).

Brown wasn't Southard's first choice for the police chief position. We tend to forget that Southard first hired Thomas Scheidecker, a former LAPD officer, who at the time was working for the police in the city of Ripon, CA.

Southard quickly dumped Scheidecker after news of an LAPD scandal involving Schiedecker became public. A 2/6/00 LA Times article summed up the matter:

A key figure in the Los Angeles Police Department spying scandal of the 1980s has been named chief of the Claremont Police Department–a force that is beleaguered over a controversial shooting of a black motorist last year.

Thomas Scheidecker, 55, who was temporarily suspended for lying about and mishandling confidential intelligence documents while he worked for the LAPD, is scheduled to take the reins of the Claremont department on Valentine’s Day, after Chief Robert Moody’s retirement for personal reasons. For the last eight years, Scheidecker has been police chief of the small San Joaquin Valley town of Ripon, near Modesto.

As an LAPD lieutenant almost two decades ago, he served as custodian of records for the agency’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division, which was disbanded in 1983 after revelations that it was spying on law-abiding citizens, including civic leaders, judges, police commissioners, clergy and actors.

A police probe concluded that Scheidecker had kept classified information at his Westminster home and had made false and misleading statements to investigators as to what that data included.

Because some of the information in Scheidecker’s home came from military sources, he was also investigated by federal and state agencies. He was never charged with a crime but was suspended for 15 days.

Scheidecker is on vacation out of state and could not be reached for comment. Claremont officials said they were aware that he was somehow involved in the LAPD unit but had not known about his suspension or his specific role in the controversy.

“The focus of the interviews were his performance as police chief,” said city spokesman Mike Maxfield. “That’s what he’s being hired for. That’s not to say we skimmed over the rest of his career. We were aware of his work in the [LAPD] unit.”

Needless to say, Claremont and Southard dropped Scheidecker, who had given notice in Ripon, like a hot potato, leading to another lawsuit, this time by Scheidecker, against the City of Claremont. Brown was then picked as Claremont's police chief.

At the time all this was occurring, the City Council and Southard took on the look of the Richard Nixon White House circa 1973. You could almost see the stone walls rising around City Hall, complete with arrow-slitted guard towers. It was the peak of the Claremont 400, which had complete control of the City Council.

And at the same time it was the council's lowest point, with them daily defending positions that were so obviously undefendable. The city council meetings were packed with citizens and students protesting the council's handling of the Landrum shooting, and a good segment of the population calling for Southard to be fired.

The fact that the council ignored those calls and allowed Southard to stay on five more years, seemed proof to a good portion of the public that the council and their supporters were terribly out of touch with the rest of the public. Two councilmembers who were most supportive of Southard, Karen Rosenthal and Al Leiga, lost their re-election bids in 2003, and were replaced by Peter Yao and Jackie McHenry, both of whom ran as reformers.

It's always been our contention that the problems of Claremont and its city government were embodied by Glenn Southard but that the real heart of the dysfunction lay with those Claremonsters who still control influential groups like the board of Pilgrim Place, the Claremont Community Foundation, Claremont Heritage, and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

It's odd that all of those groups do good works, and we have no problems with the things they do as charities; however, it's their actions as the props to a form of municipal government that is close-minded, wasteful, and prone to crisis after crisis that we take exception with. It really has been a case-study in the corrupting power of small-town politics.

From those groups, the Claremonsters' new council and commission candidates will emerge - more Ellen Taylors, more Al Leigas, more Karen Rosenthals - and they will continue to try to take Claremont back to the days of 2000 when they controlled all five city council seats and when all hell was breaking loose.

The conscious effort by folks like Claremont Heritage president and former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright to erase the past and replace it with a sanitized, Disneyesque version of history ensures that we will be inevitably back again to deal with some other miscue, scandal, or crisis.

While it's job security for Insiders everywhere, it's also sad to see the same foolishness played out again and again.

Local News Briefs

tThe Daily Bulletin had a couple pieces on local Claremont news:


BYOF: BRING YOUR OWN FINANCING

The Peppertree Square shopping center at Indian Hill Blvd. and Arrow Hwy. is getting a facelift, according to the Daily Bulletin:

The center, at the southeast corner of Indian Hill Boulevard and Arrow Highway, has been a source of consternation in recent years because its owner, who lives overseas, hasn't performed basic upkeep, city officials say.

"Fifteen years ago it was a pretty nice neighborhood center, and it's really just deteriorated," said Brian Desatnik, housing and redevelopment manager.

Four of its retail spaces sit vacant, including two of its largest - a space that used to house a small market, and another that used to be a music store.

Nick Quackenbos, a commercial real estate agent who is responsible for leasing in the center, said renovation plans could be presented for city approval by the end of the summer.

You may recall that Quackenbos is also the realtor trying to broker the sale of the land adjacent to the Claremont Auto Center on the south side of the 10 Freeway. A portion of the land is the former site of a Chili's Restaurant, and the City sunk several hundred thousand dollars into infrastructure improvement as part a deal to help Auto Center owner Roger Hogan acquire that land back in 2005.

That deal was sold to the City Council by then-City Manager Glenn Southard and his staff with the promise that Hogan would expand the Auto Center onto the Chili's property, which would lead to increased auto sales tax revenue that would give the city a great return on their investment.

Tony Krickl in the Claremont Courier reported on the possible sale of the land earlier this month. Krickl's article said:

The right decision?

In 2005, the city mediated the sale between the Chili’s property owner and Mr. Hogan, who had plans to expand his dealership there. A financial review of the agreement shows that the city may have gotten the short end of the stick, while Mr. Hogan appears to be the bigger beneficiary of the deal.

As part of the agreement between the 3 parties, the city’s Redevelopment Agency was required to invest $200,000 in street and signage improvements. It also purchased an operating agreement for $100,000 “that requires the new land area be used for the Toyota dealership for at least 7 years,” a September 2005 city staff report reads.

The report indicates that the return on the city’s investment could be between $600,000 and $700,000 annually for the first 5 years as a result of Toyota auto sales taxes, with millions more to follow in years after. But it remains unclear if the city made back its hoped return on its initial investment.

When Claremont Ford shut down in January, Claremont Toyota’s expansion plans shifted from the Chili’s property to the Claremont Ford property, which already had some infrastructure and equipment on site. The Chili’s land today remains unused by Claremont Toyota, except for the display of some used cars at the site.

In addition, doubts remain that any future use of the property will generate the level of sales tax revenue for the city that a successful auto dealership is capable of.

As with most of these sorts of things, the city staff report painted a wonderful picture of the revenue stream that would issue from the deal. The land was never developed for additional auto sales, and now Hogan is selling a large chunk of the land with the prospect of making several million dollars off the deal.

At the time the Chili's land purchase was debated, Councilmembers Corey Calaycay and Jackie McHenry expresed reservations about the deal and questioned whether it would pay for itself. Calaycay and McHenry were criticized for their dissent and were labeled as being negative. A number of Claremont luminaries, including former Mayor Judy Wright, stepped up to the council podium urging the city to make the deal. And Sam Pedroza, who was not on the council at the time, had a letter published in the Courier in support of Hogan and all he's done for Claremont. The letter was clearly written to add pressure on Calaycay and McHenry.

Well, time has proved the negativists right. And Wright, Pedroza, and the rest were just your typical Claremont 400 dupes, throwing your money away needlessly, foolishly.

At least Quackenbos can make a buck off helping sell Hogan's land, a good portion of which the city helped him buy. Incidentally, Quackenbos is a former city commissioner and was a contributor to the "Claremont Business PAC" mailer that was part of the Preserve Claremont smear campaign in 2005.

Quackenbos is also pretty well connected to City Hall, having endorsed Mayor Ellen Taylor and Councilmember Sam Pedroza. Maybe he can land a gig as the city's leasing agent for any future city affordable housing since Taylor and Pedroza were the ones who selected the new Affordable Housing Task Force.


NEW AND IMPROVED SOLICITATION LAW

Tuesday night the Claremont City Council approved a new municipal ordinance governing door-to-door salespeople, who will now be required to obtain permit and ID from the city.

The ordinance is the city's second attempt at regulating the such visitors. According to another Daily Bulletin article by Will Bigham, a previous law was too restrictive and applied to religious and political solicitors as well as commercial ones. Bigham tells us that in 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were unconstitutional.

Bigham explained the new ordinance:

The law, characterized by city officials as one of the toughest of its kind in the nation, was in response to two rapes committed by door-to-door magazine salesmen in the last year and a half, officials said.

For commercial solicitors - those going door to door selling goods - each salesman must undergo a background check and be issued an ID card from the city.

All solicitors - both commercial and noncommercial - must obtain a permit from the city before going door to door.

The new law also establishes a "do not knock" registry that allows residents to sign up requesting that solicitors stop visiting their homes.

The latest solicitation ordinance also carves out an exception for people with religious and political purposes.

Southard Takes On A Councilmember - Again

We had several more responses to our recent posts about former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard. One reader wrote in to say:

Okay, this is gonna be gooooood to watch. Compare and contrast:

The Press Enterprise (Riverside, CA.)
April 18, 2006, Tuesday

...Indio's population increased 10 percent between 2004 and 2005 alone, to more than 66,000. It is now the largest and fastest-growing city in the Coachella Valley, according to estimates by the California Department of Finance...

Gilbert said the need to immediately deal with growth is one reason the council agreed to pay Southard $240,000 a year, one of the highest city-manager salaries in the state. The council will decide in the next few weeks whether to pay Southard a bonus of up to 10 percent, he said. Gilbert said Southard deserves the bonus if he continues performing well.

The Desert Sun
March 21, 2008

...Indio, with nearly 1,500 homes in foreclosure in the city's limits, is leading valley cities in taking a stand.

A new law goes into effect April 4 targeting abandoned homes with overgrown landscaping, stagnant pools and other eyesores that scream "empty" to squatters.

SO:

Glenn Southard deserved a growing salary because Indio was growing rapidly -- which means that he must deserve to see his salary shrink now. Right? Yeah, pull the other leg. Funny! Glenn Southard deserves a large salary because of the need to deal with rapid economic growth, and Glenn Southard deserves a large salary because of the need to deal with rapid economic decline. I'm gonna pop some popcorn and take a front-row seat for his next bonus review.

Well, dear reader, it's nice to know that Southard took some of that famed Claremont rationality with him when he fled to the desert in 2005.

And it looks like Southard also took his infamous temper with him as well. Another reader sent in link to a news story on the Palm Springs ABC TV affiliate KESQ Channel 3.

According to the KESQ story, Indio Councilmember Mike Wilson is feuding with Southard over a matter involving an Indio representative to the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control Board. Wilson accused Southard of illegally leaking information to the Desert Sun newspaper:

Indio City Councilmember Mike Wilson says that City Manager Glenn Southard illegally tipped off the Desert Sun newspaper last week to the city's intentions of removing Duran from the bug board.

Wilson and Southard then got into a face-to-face verbal spar.

Southard addressed Wilson and the rest of the council, saying, "I think I'll speak for myself, you know, thanks Eddie, but I intend to speak out as long as I see something wrong. If council sees something wrong with it they can deal with it. First off, this is the most absurd 'bait and switch' comment I've ever had. We have a meltdown at the Bug Board and all of a sudden the council has 'violated the Brown Act' and 'I've done something.' Produce the quotes, produce the facts on the violation of the Brown Act. But just making these silly allegations, produce something -otherwise. Let's stop it. You can't accuse people of something with nothing. Produce it."

Wilson responded, "I intend to. I intend to, Mr. City Manager. This is the fourth time you've done something like this. You like to play games."

Nothing new here. When Southard was still in Claremont in 2005, he feuded with then-Councilmember Jackie McHenry in a witchhunt of epic proportions (mostly made up of unsubstantiated claims by Southard and his staff). When a censure of McHenry was proposed, and an actual investigation was threatened, Southard backed off, electing to shut up rather than put up.

And, even farther back, after the 1999 Irvin Landrum shooting, Southard publicly released an old criminal record for Irvin Landrum's uncle Obee Landrum in order to discredit the uncle. Some critics of the Southard regime accused Southard of misusing access to criminal records to find the information. The Claremont 400, including present Mayor Ellen Taylor, refused to criticize Southard in public: Oh, that's just Glenn, they said, just as they're saying it now with Taylor.

The video of the recent Indio council meeting where the blowup happened catches Wilson and Southard yammering at each other. If you watch the new video, you'll notice that at no point does Southard actually deny Councilmember Wilson's accusations. An old Southard trick: When confronted with an allegation, don't address the substance of the claim. Instead, Attack! By the time your opponent is done backpedaling, the media will have forgotten what the original accusation was.

Sure seems like old times.... Indio ought to do what Claremont finally learned. They need to call his bluff. We predict Southard will be gone from Indio in a heartbeat once people there start seeing through his games.

Say, it's a shame we don't have anything in the Insider vaults showing what Southard was like when he was here. We'll have to hunt around and see if anything turns up.