CUSD, LaConte: Guilty as Charged

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

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

J'ACCUSE!

CUSD Board Member
Steven Llanusa

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

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

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

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

Additionally, the article quoted Board President Beth Bingham:

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

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

CUSD Board VP
Jeff Stark

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

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

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

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

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


DA TO CUSD: STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT

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

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

CUSD Board Agenda for 10/7/10

(Click to Enlarge)

CUSD Board Member
Hilary LaConte

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

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

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

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


Some key points from the letter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Warning to Board:  Watch Yourselves in the Future]

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

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

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

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

Been There, Done That

AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE

As we've noted in the past, the Claremont 400's tried and true tactic to pushing some item on their private agenda through to completion (see the Claremont Unified School District's Measure CL) is to create a false sense of urgency, i.e., "if we don't do things this one way, chaos will ensue."

As we saw last November, there was no stoop too low for CUSD's board and their surrogates to take in order to try to get their $95 million bond passed.   The Yes on CL campaign outspent its opponents by more than $154,000 to $5,000, using money mostly raised from contractors who would have benefited from the bond.  And it still lost by a margin of 60.4% to 39.6%.

A rational person would conclude that, given such a decisive loss, there was something wrong with CUSD's claims about the necessity of the bond and that the No on CL campaign's arguments (no real accountability, conflicts of interest, the lack of any specific projects for the money, and the district's mismanagement of the previous bond, to name a few) resonated with voters.

One would have thought that the district's board would have sat down with the No on CL campaign and tried to get them on board to incorporate some of their ideas into managing CUSD's fiscal problems.  But this being Claremont, land of magical thinking, the lesson learned for CUSD was that they just need to wait and continue to let the district's infrastructure degrade so they could come back to voters in a year or two and say, "See, we told you it was bad."

It's a self-created crisis, of course, but CUSD's gang of four - Board President Jeff Stark, Vice-President Beth Bingham, Clerk Mary Caenepeel, and member Hilary LeConte - are committed to the idea that they know best.   So, get ready for the Return of CL.


FOLLOW THE MONEY

The only difference next time will be that, having changed the school board's norms to allow members to speak out on issues, CUSD will take a more active role in shaping the election message.  Exhibit A in our prediction for the bond-to-be-named-later is the fact that the Yes on CL campaign, whose treasurer is former school board member and Claremont 400 stalwart J. Michael Fay, continued to raise money after the election.

Below, courtesy of a reader, we've posted the Yes on CL campaign's 2010 Year-end Form 460 filing, showing post-election contributions and expenditures.   Notice that the campaign reported cash contributions of $182,155.69 and expenditures of $154,768.39, leaving a balance of  $27,387.30.

More significantly, the campaign received two post-election contributions, one small donation of $100 on 11/16/10 from Nancy Osgood, and one $10,000 whopper on11/12/10 from the architectural firm Flewelling & Moody, which advertises itself as "architects for schools."  

In the interests of truth in advertising, Flewelling & Moody should be marketing itself as "architects for school bonds."  The post-election CL campaign donation was F&M's second, bringing the firm's total or 2010 to $20,000.

Here's actual Form 460 (click on the icon to the right of the "S" on bottom of the frame to enlarge):





TO THE BRINK

This business of artificial crisis creation is by no means limited to Claremont.  Brinksmanship allows the extremists in a negotiation in to eliminate the middle ground and get their way. Writer James Suroweicki has a column in the August 1 edition of the New Yorker in which he argues that the current federal debt-ceiling crisis represents nothing more than a cover for politicians unwilling to make the tough decisions that real, constructive fiscal change will require (i.e., higher taxes, cuts in spending and services, or some combination of the two):

...politicians like the debt ceiling: it allows them to rail against borrowing more money (which voters hate) without having to vote to cut any specific programs or raise taxes (which voters also hate).

You might think that there are benefits to putting negotiators under the gun. But, as the Dutch psychologist Carsten de Dreu has shown, time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call “integrative”—taking everyone’s interests and values into account.

In fact, by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism. As the economist Thomas Schelling showed many years ago, “It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself” when it comes to brinksmanship. It doesn’t, in short, help to be President Obama. That may be why all the deals that have been taken seriously this season rely much more heavily on spending cuts than on tax increases: the deals represent Republican priorities, because the Republicans seem to be more willing than the Democrats to let the country default. It’s not pure craziness that’s rewarded—when some congressional Tea Partiers said that they wouldn’t vote to raise the ceiling under any circumstances, they became irrelevant to the conversation, since no compromise would make them happy. But recklessness does equal power: that’s why Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, and John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, have implied that they’re willing to go over the cliff (in part by suggesting that their fellow party members will force them to) but also that they can be persuaded to do the right thing.

That same group psychology is why, in the face their overwhelming Measure CL loss, the CUSD board has refused to be truly inclusive (to use their own term) and has behaved as if members of the public representing alternate viewpoints don't exist.   The CUSD board rules imperially, ignoring its own conventions at times (more on this later), and solemnly issues dicta that have no bases in reality while our district's fiscal problems worsen.

It has been ever thus in our fair city, and so it shall remain.  So sayeth our school board.

Cui Bondo?* --Part 3

Ahead of the Power Curve

Like Nero Wolfe's sidekick Archie in the Rex Stout series, or the enigmatic Joe's bestboy Tom in William Saroyan's 1939 Pulitzer winner The Time of Your Life, our own Junior Insider went yesterday on an important errand on our behalf. We wondered how the Measure CL fund-raising was doing and wanted to compare it with the funding for Measure Y in 2000.

Fortunately, Insider Junior was able to find the information we needed in the dusty musty archives of a local government office. We found a plot of contributions to Measure Y, prepared by some highly-paid, highly-pensioned Government Employee, and were able to use the information in our previous post to add the Measure CL funding as an overlay.

We show the data below.

click to enlarge

The data show that, first, Measure CL is about a month ahead of the contribution-collection profile of Measure Y, thanks solely to the two $25,000 contributions by CUSD vendors or vendor-wannabees, WLC Architects of Rancho Cucamonga and Piper Jaffray, investment bank, of Minneapolis.

We are not privy to the SupportClaremontSchools budget, but we assume that eventually school board members such as Jeff Stark, honorary campaign chairs such as John Maguire, and ballot argument signers such as Randy Prout, will be shamed into contributingg money to the cause. Perhaps they have done so already.

Let's just say with under $2,000 in contributions from Claremont by the September 30 reporting date, the Yes on CL side has lots of room to get even more $$$ from the supporters in the Claremont community.

We note that without the $25K contributions from WLC Architects and Piper Jaffray, augmented by the four and five thousand dollar payments from Stradling Yocca, Northcross Hill, and Flewelling/Moody, the take to date would be a bit anemic.

Measure Y in the year 2000 was the most expensive campaign ever conducted in Claremont, by a wide margin, with some $80,000 raised by one side alone (the proponents). This campaign is on track to exceed that total--maybe even break into six figures. We are sure TBWB Strategies, who is preparing all the campaign materials and who gets the bulk of the payments hopes that is the case.

* * * * *

*Latin: Who benefits from the bond? Answer: TBWB.

Fruit Falling Far From the Tree

CUSD Board Member

Jeff Stark

That photo of Jeff Stark at the Labor Day campaign kickoff for Russ Warner, the Democratic candidate running against incumbent Republican David Dreier for California's 26th congressional district seat, reminded us of some Stark's own family history and how it's linked to Dreier.

Dreier, for those of you who don't know, got his undergraduate degree in political science from Claremont Men's College (now Claremont McKenna College) in 1975. Dreier later earned a masters degree in government from Claremont Graduate School (now CGU). He also worked as a director of corporate relations at CMC. In 1980, our district elected Dreier to Congress, where he has been ensconced ever since.

At CMC Dreier (photo, right) no doubt crossed paths with Jeff Stark's father, Jack Stark, who was CMC's president from 1970 to 1999. Dreier would have also met Jeff's mother, Jil Stark, who was the director of the Marion Miner Cook Athenaeum. It turns out that the Starks kept in contact with Dreier after he became a congressman.

We checked and saw that both of Jeff's parents donated to Dreier's campaign war chest. The Huffington Post's FundRace listed two donations for Jil, one in 2009 for $1,000 and one in 2007 for $1,150. Notice that the latter contribution Jil's trustee position with the now-defunct PFF Bank & Trust, a 116-year-old local institution that survived the Great Depression but couldn't survive our Great Recession.

You'll recall that Jil Stark made a small fortune off PFF stock options right before the stock price plummeted. She may have used some of that windfall to help out a friend:

Click on Images to Enlarge

Jack Stark, too, got into the act, throwing a $600 bone Dreier's way in 2009:



We noticed that the Starks' son Jeff is a registered Republican, so one would presume he's a Dreier supporter as well. That's why we were so surprised to see him caught at the Russ Warner event. We hear Jeff didn't stick around very long. Maybe word got out to Dreier's office. Or to Jeff's folks.

Next time, Jeff ought to send Ken Corhan in his place. Ken's much more slick when it comes to this kind of sneaking around.

A Family Affair

This sidebar article appeared next to a more substantive article in the Claremont Courier on Saturday, September 18:

From the Claremont Courier

We posted twice on the advertising for a paid staff member, here, and here with the job description.

We're glad to see the support committee has filled those billets, but it's a little unnerving that the Committee a) has to hire someone to be for the School Bond and b) has the money to do so.

The article makes plain that Aly Stark is the daughter of CUSD Board member Jeff Stark. We've already noted there is nothing new under the Sun in Jeff Stark exploiting family ties in support of a Claremont school bond. What is interesting is that he not only did it upward, to his father, Jack (retired/emeritus CMC President in Measure Y, but now is doing it down the family tree through his daughter.

(By the way, was that Jeff Stark a friend of ours saw at Democratic congressional candidate Russ Warner's kickoff party last week? The phantom in the picture certainly looks like CUSD Board president Hilary LaConte. We heard Mary Caenepeel may have been there, too, for a non-Brown Act social occasion.)


What is not so clear at first glance is the family connection of Lisa Germano. From what we can tell, Lisa Germano is a mid-90s graduate of Claremont High, sometime substitute teacher, and the current Dance Team adviser. Who is on the Dance Team? Among others, the daughter of Measure CL Triumvirate Member Bill Fox.

Here is a copy of a photo from Bill Fox's daughter's Facebook page, showing the dance team and adviser Lisa Germano at lower left (we know the image looks like a badly-doctored Photoshop job, but we didn't think it fair to associate recognizable images of the team members, or even Fox's daughter, with this whole deal. So we blurred everyone but Germano).


This is more or less in keeping with the whole ethos of Measure CL: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

click to enlarge

CUSD to CMC: Help wanted

The Claremont Unified School District's Measure CL campaign team seeks students to work with a paid campaign manager to work on the Yes on CL effort.

Campaign committee person and Claremont 400 aspirant Mike Seder, whom we've seen on several occasions, is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College and, in his search for able-bodied campaign workers, seems to have been in contact with at least one person at CMC's Rose Institute.

This came in over the wire from a couple sources:

DATE: Wed, September 8, 2010 10:53:27 PM
TO: Claremont Insider [claremontbuzz@yahoo.com]
SUBJECT: FW: Claremont campaign openings


From: Douglas Johnson [douglas.johnson@cmc.edu]
Organization: Rose Institute of State & Local Government at CMC
Reply-To: [douglas.johnson@cmc.edu]
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 13:54:57 -0700
To: XXX
Cc: Mike Seder [seder@fairplex.com]
Subject: Claremont campaign openings

A friend from the Fairplex is deeply involved in the current campaign in support of a parcel tax to support Claremont schools. The campaign has a firm doing strategic consulting, along with a board of prominent local supporters, but they are looking for student volunteers and a paid day to day campaign manager.

Do you know of students (or student organizations) who might be interested in spending some time helping with this campaign to help Claremont schools, or who want to get some experience in a campaign at the grassroots level? This is a great way to do this without having to travel far from campus. If you know of anyone interested, could you encourage them to contact Mike Seder (seder@fairplex.com)? Mike's both a great guy and CMC Class of 1982. If they have questions, I'm also happy to talk to them and share what limited info I have regarding the campaign.

Obviously, time is tight as campaign day's approaching rapidly. Thanks!

- Doug

Douglas Johnson
Fellow
Rose Institute of State and Local Government
Claremont McKenna College
o 909-621-8159
m 310-200-2058
douglas.johnson@cmc.edu
www.RoseReport.org

Johnson's email seems to support the notion that the campaign is driven by "a firm doing strategic consulting," no doubt TBWB Strategies and consultant Jared Boigon, who has advised the CUSD Board of Education from the very beginning.

It also struck us as very strange that a conservative organization like the Rose Institute would lend itself to campaigning for a highly dubious $95 million school bond (not a parcel tax, Doug). You'd think that with Claremont property owners still paying off $30 million of the last, misspent school bond, the Rose Institute would be ideologically inclined to question the wisdom of tacking on another $95 million in bonded indebtedness, especially when that new money amounts to little more than a blank check for a district that has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any fiscal commonsense.

But then, these are strange times.

* * * * *

Coming Soon: You may wonder what the job description looks like for the above position. Check back this weekend.

* * * * *

Our spies tell us that the Yes on CL campaign is casting quite a wide net in its outreach efforts. For instance, a couple weekends ago, a group of Claremont High School students who are against the bond were at the Claremont Sunday Farmers' Market handing out arguments against the bond. We hear that the kids had a volunteer sign-up list.

Who signed up to help on the "NO" campaign? None other than than the ever-subtle, pro-CL Ken Corhan (photo, left), who was summoned to the scene by CUSD board member Jeff Stark. Shilling for failed Claremont City Council candidates isn't enough for the ol' Kenster. This just goes to show that the Claremont 400 can be relied upon to run the same plays, over and over.

Leave it to Corhan to think he's so clever he'd be able to plant himself as a mole in a No on CL organizing party. Why can't he just be like the Insider and let the clandestine information come in over the transom unasked for? A word to the wise: When it comes to the Claremonsters, trust no one.

More Tangled Webs

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

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

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

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

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

Bond 2010 Site Detail 08-26 FINAL


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mountain Labored and Brought Forth a Mouse

Or, CUSD Still Playin' "Hide the Ball"

The Establishment finally came out with its much-ballyhooed List of Projects for Measure CL. This so-called "project list" is breathtaking in what it so obviously tries to hide from the voting public. In a few words, there is NOTHING there.

Attentive readers may recall that two weeks ago the Courier published Q and A article with the Bond Support and Promotion Committee, Bill Fox, Lee Jackman, and Mike Seder.

Even though Proposition 39, the law allowing this bond to go forward under the 55% threshold rules, requires that the July 22 ballot resolution by the school board be accompanied by a specific list of projects, well, there was nothing like a specific list. We commented on that issue in an earlier post.

Board member Jeff Stark opined at the July 22 School Board meeting that it was quite premature to expect a list; they needed to get a bond resolution first.

OK, but then the August 14 number of the Courier came out with the aforementioned article.

Courier: What are the specific projects and the estimated costs for each project?

Mr. Fox: "This project list is something that the district has been working on for a couple of years now. And this project list is something that our team--a committee within our team--is working on and narrowing down. So it's not ready to go out to the public yet because we've pared down a list that was $165 million to $95 million and we really are looking at what items on that list will reach the most children in the district."

There was a lame squawk about no project list in the August 18 Courier letters section.

In the meantime, the Mountain labored.

The August 25 number of the Courier contained a letter from Claremont teacher Dave Nemer castigating those with the impatience and impertinence to want some answers. He wrote in part:

Meanwhile, several recent letters to the editor have been critical of our school district because of the upcoming bond issue...The negativity expressed in the letters is unwarranted and based on little understanding of the facts involved.

The details of the bond plan have not been publicized yet, but naysayers have already denounced the plan anyway, preferring their preconceived judgments to informed reasoning...

Before we launch into impassioned debate about the new bond, it would behoove all combatants to wait until the details are announced.. Then we could proceed with a discussion based on actual information rather than ignorance and preconceived conclusions, for a change.

And still the Mountain labored but properly chastised, we waited patiently.

Finally, on August 28, teased by a 36-point all-caps headline on Page 1, above the fold, "NOW THE DETAILS", came what we all were waiting for.

Well, no.

The Courier didn't actually publicize the list, but we have it here. For ease of reading, we've broken it into two parts: the table proper followed by the notes. Click on the images to enlarge.

click images to enlarge

click images to enlarge

The money paragraph in the Courier article--in fact the only paragraph with actual cost estimates, reads as follows: "The current plan for the $96 million bond is to apply the funds in 4 main categories: repair and modernization ($48,412,886), technology ($22,189,862), sustainability ($14,395,562) and debt elimination ($10,000,000). The numbers are approximate figures representing an ongoing plan of spending."

That's it? No cost estimates? No numbers showing the balance among schools? Nothing other than a bunch of check marks? Where are the metrics? How do we measure performance? What is the District actually planning to do?

From the Courier:

Estimates for individual items on the project list were unavailable. Mr. Fox said the estimates for each section were based on looking at the needs of the Claremont schools.

"A estimate [sic] of each item would be done after the bond has passed," he pointed out. "There would need to be architects and project managers that would have to be hired by the district to come out. [Does this guy really talk this way? Re-read the last sentence. We have quoted it correctly. "There would need to be architects...to come out" ???] That is a very costly step and the district would have to use part of the bond money to do that."

So this is the mouse the Mountain labored over: Wait until the bond passes and we will tell you then.

We actually think this spreadsheet had to have come from a version that at one time had numbers in the grid, and like a clumsy FBI-redacted document the author or committee scrubbed the page of any incriminating information. Really, does it make any sense to have a grid, with "totals" column, and subtotals placed just above each group, and precision to eight significant figures, if a prior version didn't have numbers where all we have now are check marks?

We guess the committee, the school district, and the consultants don't really believe all that much in transparency.

By the way, when searching for the author of the "project list", whether it was Bill Fox, or Lisa Shoemaker (the head of the CUSD business office), or Terry Nichols, the Superintendent, or ???, we found an interesting fact. In the Adobe PDF "Properties" the author is saved. And who authored this masterwork?

Look at what we found:


And who is Jared Boigon? CUSD's high priced communications consultant. The priorities are not even set by the committee, they are set by a consultant in San Francisco! Either that or he is the World's Most Expensive Committee Secretary! Mr. Boigon is a Partner at TBWB Strategies--Public Consensus; Winning Propositions. He's not an educator nor a finance guy nor even a construction expert. He's a political hack. Read here about his getting his mother elected to the Denver City Council.

* * * * * * *

The report can be found on the supporters' website, here.

The version that was up as this post was written is displayed below:
Bond 2010 Site Detail 08-26 FINAL

The image of Fox, Jackman, and Seder is from the Claremont Courier.

Sunday Corrections

We had a couple emails come in that warranted posting.

The first was a note about our post from last Wednesday on the Claremont Unified School District's and school board member Jeff Stark's tendency to obfuscate:

DATE: Thu, August 12, 2010 10:44:03 AM
SUBJECT: and it's just that simple
TO: Claremont Buzz

"...at the July 22 school board meeting, Jeff Stark (apparently the voice of authority on the bond issue) claimed it would take a long time to get that information....

"The assessor's report for 2009 on page 28 of the PDF file lists the assessed valuation for the city of Claremont as $3.55 billion."

I love how well you do that, and I know why it pisses people off. Never stop.

By the way, after reading that email, we noticed an error in Wednesday's post. The page we referenced from the LA County Office of the Assessor's report was page 16, not page 28. We've corrected that mistake.

* * * * *

Then there was this from a reader who wanted to set us straight on the matter of now-retired Indio city manager Glenn Southard. Earlier, we speculated that Southard's annual pension might be significantly larger than his final year's $300,000 salary. We thought that Southard might be able to use some of his $162,000 in unused vacation and sick time towards the number used to determine his CalPERS pension.

The reader, who has a good deal of expertise in municipal retirement finances, says that we were in error when we indicated that Southard could have used any bonuses, vacation, or sick time to enlarge his retirement. The reader also states that Indio's own finance director would have been ethically bound to advise the Indio council of the improprieties of allowing Southard to count such extras towards his retirement payouts.

The reader goes on to say that the real budget buster for municipal pensions is public safety workers (police and firemen). The reader makes a number of good points there that are very much overlooked, by us and by others who follow public pensions.

Here's the reader's letter:

DATE: Wed, August 11, 2010 11:40:32 AM
SUBJECT: CalPERS fact check
TO: Claremont Buzz

A couple of things you did not get quite right. I'm no fan of Glenn Southard, but your article does have some factual errors. As to spiking, CalPERS is pretty good about not allowing it, unless the City Council is complicit in the spiking scheme (ala Bell). Overtime, bonuses, and sick leave and vacation payouts are NOT used to determine final compensation. The only way accrued sick, and vacation time could be used to spike the final years salary, is if the City Council approved, a salary increase, in lieu of paying out the accrued leave, That would have to be done at a public meeting, and if found by CalPERS would result in the benefit being reduced. CalPERS finding it, and doing something about it (as in Bell) is not likely. But a City's finance director, would know that this is a prohibited practice, and would be ethically bound to advise the Council against taking such an action.

Now, a great CalPERS/ public safety union scam has to do with police and firefighters. Uniform allowances, education pay, and special assignment pay (like being a detective, or a truck captain) are counted as part of final compensation, which is paid at about 98.6 % in retirement starting as early as age 50. Where else can you get paid after retiring for uniforms you don't wear, a speciality bonus for work you no longer do, and for getting an education which allowed you to advance through the ranks, to the level of pay at which you retire at. And if you are a firefighter you get paid to sleep, and as a police officer you get paid for your meal times. This is were the pension system is bleeding. Oh, and guess what. CalPERS has recently completed new actuarials on age. The average public safety worker will live to 82.5, while the average general employee lives to about 81.7. This finally answers the myth that police, and firefighters don't live very long after retiring--therefore they should get better pensions.

You really ought to look into this, instead of focusing on management, as public safety retirement benefits are what are creating the large unfunded liabilities.

I should know. I am a former finance director for a large California city.

We stand corrected, though we are still puzzled by a couple things. The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl reported last week that Southard's retirement payments, according to Indio's records, were $309,000 a year. Since this is above his final contract's salary, something must have been added in.

We looked at another blog's post that showed a 2007 amendment to Southard's Indio contract (posted here). Included with that contract amendment was a letter from CalPERS regarding Southard's retirement that states: "69.625 days unused sick leave have been credited to the member's account. If all of this information is correct, no action is needed." The letter was dated March 18, 2010. So at least some portion of that sick leave appears to have been used to bump up Southard's pension.

One other point. In Indio, Southard's finance director was Michael Busch, who had the same position under Southard in Claremont. We can't speak to his ethics, but Busch was always a Southard yes-man. We don't see him opposing anything that would benefit Southard.

Lies, Damn Lies, and CUSD Bonds

Now that the Claremont Unified School District's bond is set for the November 2 election, we think it's time to pause and consider how the district arrived at their figure of $95 million.

When CUSD last sought a bond, in 2000, it was for $48.9 million. In its bond resolution language for the 2000 bond, the district laid out, school by school, a laundry list of repairs, upgrades, and retrofits that the bond was going to pay for.

This time, however, there is no such list. This lack of specifics is what should worry property owners within the district's boundaries. When the matter came up before CUSD's board of education on July 22, board member Jeff Stark said that the district couldn't give any list until after they approved going forward with the bond. However, the district's own bond resolution from 2000 refutes Stark's claim about the specifics.

You can see the 2000 CUSD bond resolution here and the 2010 resolution here.

The dissembling from Stark is especially telling because Stark was the co-chair on the 2000 bond campaign. It's also not the first misinformation deployed by the district in their current pre-campaign campaign. Remember those two loose wire photos from 2000 and from this year, both from Condit Elementary School?

So where did the $95 million price tag for this year's bond come from? It takes a little digging to find an answer - but not much. Solving the mystery requires only a few mouse clicks.

It turns out, as several readers have pointed out, that the $95 million is just about the limit of the total bonded indebtedness that the district can legally incur, and the law determining the dollar amount is buried within the current bond resolution's language. Section 1 of the resolution said that the CUSD board is acting "pursuant to Education Code Sections 15100 et seq., 15264 et seq., and Government Code Section 53506."

Click on Image to Enlarge

Section 15106 of the Education Code states:

15106. A unified school district or community college district may issue bonds that, in aggregation with bonds issued pursuant to Section 15270, shall not exceed 2.5 percent of the taxable property of the school district or community college district, or the school facilities improvement district, if applicable, as shown by the last equalized assessment of the county or counties in which the district is located.

So CUSD's total bonded indebtedness is limited to 2.5% of the assessed value of all the property within the school district's boundaries. Now when this came up during at the July 22 school board meeting, Jeff Stark (apparently the voice of authority on the bond issue) claimed it would take a long time to get that information. He seemed to be saying the district had no idea what the assessed valuation was, and no one at the meeting ever mentioned the 2.5% limit.

Despite the district's and Stark's game of hide the ball, one can get a fairly close estimate of the district's indebtedness limit by looking at the total assessed valuation for property within Claremont, a number that's readily available from the Los Angeles County Office of the Assessor's website.

The assessor's report for 2009 on page 16 of the PDF file lists the assessed valuation for the city of Claremont as $3.55 billion. The school district includes a small number of properties in Pomona or in unincorporated county areas, so the assessed valuation for the city will be slightly less than the number CUSD will use for this bond.

2.5% of $3.5 billion is gives you a bond limit of $88.75 million. Then, if you allow for the non-Claremont properties within the district and the 2% adjustment per year Prop. 13 allows, you get pretty close to $95 million.

So the district didn't arrive at that $95 million by looking at how much money it would cost to complete a certain number of projects. Instead, they just figured the maximum they can legally ask for and used that limit for the bond. There is no list of projects because they have no specific ones in mind. They're just maxing out their line of credit with no explanation for where all of that money will go.

If someone were to ask a banker for a business loan and offer no plan for how they were going to use that money, they'd quickly be shown the door. But with this school bond, CUSD expects voters to sign off on just such a loan. Given the district's track record of misspending the last bond, voters would be foolish to buy into the district's intentional misrepresentations about the need for this one, especially when they've started off with some real whoppers before the campaign ever officially began.

Recycling (School Bond) Waste

In keeping with Claremont's fine record of encouraging a sustainable community, CUSD is recycling its election game plans. Remember those two Condit Elementary School wiring photos the Claremont Unified School District and its supporters used in its mailers for the 2000 and the 2010 school bonds? Those were supposed to illustrate the grave state of our schools and the urgent need for voters to support giving the district bond money.

Here are the photos from the two mailers. On the left is the 2000 photo with electrical wiring in an open junction box. On the right the photo from the most recent mailer (those are actually telephone wires):

Click on Images to Enlarge

CUSD's recycling program isn't limited to mailer photos. They've also reprising their strategy from 2000 by hiring the same consultant, TBWB Strategies, that they worked with the last time around. Incidentally, TBWB's contract was for $25,000 for the polling they conducted with a second company, True North. Our spies tell us that TBWB's bill ran $10,000 more than the original amount. The current TBWB bill is $35,000 for their services. CUSD certainly doesn't isn't off to a very good start as far with this bond, cost management-wise.

Beyond the consultant, we can probably expect the school district to have already given the grassroots election work over to a core group that will form the actual pro-bond campaign. Following an old Claremont 400 strategy, those people will hold an initial strategy meeting where they will receive a playbook outlining their campaign. They will have also spearheaded prior Claremont campaign teams.

Just to refresh our memories, here's a real game plan prepared by former Claremont Mayor Diann Ring for the failed 2006 Parks and Pasture Assessment District campaign:

Click on Images to Enlarge

As the document on the left shows, Diann's plan covers the 16 weeks of the assessment district campaign, from February 27, 2006, to June 18th, 2006. If you look carefully, you'll see that Diann covered every angle, even penciling in a victory party. Unfortunately the assessment district idea didn't resonate with property owners. It lost 44% to 56%, so no party.

Close...but no cigar, Diann

If you want to get involved with the pro-bond campaign, you'll be assigned to work with one of their team's committees. Only a select few will be entitled to serve on the steering committee. Of course, the 400 have gotten smarter in recent years and mix in unfamiliar names with the old favorites. But, it's still the same old show, and the old names are still in the background directing the steering committee.

Another plum assignment is the communications committee. They'll be charged with, as Diann put it her 2000 documents, "writing and publishing to win hearts and minds" (see the document above on the right). In other places, other times, this committee might more properly be called the Propaganda Ministry.

Someone like Art Parker or Michael Fay will no doubt work with the campaign's treasurer or take on the treasurer's role themselves, as they've done in the past. And there will be a couple very old, respected names listed as the campaign's honorary co-chairs. Jeff Stark, a sitting CUSD school board member, co-chaired the 2000 Measure Y bond campaign, and he'll be involved in this one as well, if not up front, then in the background. The co-chairs will come from the League of Women Voters, the Claremont Educational Foundation, the Claremont United Church of Christ, or former school board members.

The honorary co-chairs and the new faces won't necessarily be Claremont 400 members. They simply be respected and familiar community members who've been roped into being the face of something that our hearts say should be good but which is in reality deeply flawed.

The "Yes" campaign has already organized and is only waiting for this Friday, August 6, to announce themselves. They have to wait because that is the last day CUSD can file its ballot measure with L.A. County for the November election. We expect that the pro-bond core group to have already been apprised of the bond's details - details that have been withheld from the general public. CUSD is holding its cards very close to its vest, and they don't want any specific information on the bond measure's language and total 30 or 40 year cost to leak out until they spring it on the voters in conjunction with the pro-bond campaign's efforts.

Image from cheezburger.com

CUSD's operational secrecy has already been on display. At the July 22 school board meeting, the meeting at which the board approved this bond resolution, someone mentioned the matter of the lack of specific projects. Jeff Stark addressed that. He told the audience that the board couldn't consider any specific projects for the bond's $95 million because they had not yet voted on the resolution. This is untrue, and Stark, as co-chair of the last bond campaign, had to have known it.

Below are the two resolutions. The first is CUSD's Measure Y bond resolution from 2000. It contains a school-by-school list of projects for the the bond (including fixing wiring at Condit Elementary). The second is the district's bond resolution for the 2010 bond. There are no specific projects this time.

Why the difference? Because the district has been beaten over the head with its mishandling of the $48.9 million from the Measure Y bond. That list of particulars from the 2000 resolution has come back to haunt the district. Hence, no specifics for the 2010 bond. CUSD and the Claremont 400 do not want to be held accountable when the bond money evaporates this time around.

And CUSD knows well from its recent voter poll that one of the anti-bond arguments that resonated most with respondents was the district's misspending of the last bond. Therefore, they will do everything they can to avoid bringing up Measure Y and accountability.

Compare the two resolutions for yourself and draw your own conclusions (if the docs are slow to load, click on the links):

CUSD res 12-2000 Meas Y_1

XI_B-1_7-22-10