Scared Straight

With Halloween fast approaching we might have expected to get a good scare from our beloved Claremonsters. The sky-is-falling strategy has traditionally been one the Claremont 400's favorite tactics to get people to vote for someone or something.

They used fear-based strategy when current council member Corey Calaycay was running in 2005 ("our city staff will all quit if he's elected") and again in 2006 with the failed Parks and Pastures assessment district ("developers will buy Johnson's Pasture if we don't act now"). Somehow the Claremonsters always manage to disregard reality in their attempts to get voters worked up for or against anything. With the park assessment district, for instance, they ignored the fact that the open space they were trying to save had been stuck in probate court for nearly 10 years without changing hands and that the City was the only likely buyer. The urgency they tried to create was false.

This campaign season they're at it again, telling Claremont Unified School District residents that we need to pass the $95 million Measure CL bond because our schools are falling apart. They tell us that our school buildings will collapse on top of our kids if we don't pass this bond. This past Wednesday, the Claremont Courier carried just such a letter in which Uncommon Good executive director Nancy Mintie compared the state of Claremont High's theatre to a slum. Mintie writes with the famous Claremonster voice of authority, saying she was an attorney who fought slumlords, so she should know.

In her letter, Mintie went on to say that the sorry state of CUSD's facilities is proof that Claremonters should support the proposed school bond. But if we read Mintie's letter correctly, what she's really saying is that CUSD is a slumlord! Just like the slumlords Mintie opposed in the past, our school board and the district's admnistrators took the $48.9 million from the last school bond in 2000 and squandered it. They didn't pump all of that money back into fixing up their properties, and they neglected the young people who occupied those building. We clip the first three paragraphs of her letter, right. Buy the Courier to read the rest. Click to enlarge.

Following Mintie's argument to its logical conclusion, one should be compelled to deny CUSD access to any further bond money because they can't be trusted with it. But, this being Claremont, Mintie drew the opposite conclusion, despite her rather persuasive evidence to the contrary. Instead, Mintie said she supports this bond in order to fix our decrepit school facilities - precisely what CUSD and its supporters said the last bond was going to accomplish.

If Mintie were being truthful with us and herself, she'd say that CUSD needs to borrow more money because it mismanaged the last bond and didn't keep its promises from 10 years ago. But, as we've seen, the Claremonster capacity for deceptions of all sorts is limitless.

We have every right to be fearful - of Mintie's screwball logic, of our school district's waste, of the money being pumped into the Yes on CL campaign by bond and building contractors, of the willingness of our school board and its friends to hide the truth and rewrite the past. Run as fast as you can away from these people!

It Tolls for Thee - UPDATED

A TAXING SITUATION

The LA Times coverage of municipal salaries in the city of Bell has focused a lot of attention on what had previously been an area examined mainly by gadflies. Local newspapers haven't seemed to care much about such arcana and that lack of scrutiny has allowed city governments, including Claremont's, to dismiss citizen's concerns about such things as city employee and city council compensation.

The excesses in Bell, however, have turned up the heat on city councils everywhere, including our little burg. At Tuesday's meeting of the Claremont City Council, mayor Linda Elderkin felt compelled to point out that Claremont's council members only receive a $400-per-month stipend. Elderkin neglected to mention, however, what she and other council members receive for attending meetings of the Claremont Redevelopment Agency or various regional boards the council members serve on, which is where Bell's council members made the bulk of their nearly $100,000 per year. Still, in Claremont, the total compensation is a fraction of what was seen in Bell, and readers can rest assured that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker doesn't earn anywhere near the $787,000 former Bell City Manager Robert (not to be confused with Ratso "I'm walkin' heeyuh") Rizzo received.

In any case, local cities are now taking steps to distance themselves from Bell, hence Mayor Elderkin's characteristically blissful lack of self-reflection when she declaimed Tuesday night, "We are not in the realm of the Bell councils." As usual, the obtuse Elderkin missed the point entirely. It's not that Claremont's level of veniality can begin to approach that of Bell's. What ever corruption we have here isn't at all of the same sort as Bell. We're not paying exorbitant salaries and benefits for corrupt officials. Rather, here we pay a premium, a stupidity tax, for want of a better term. It's why we four years ago Claremont's ruling class, the Claremont 400, tried to institute a $45 million assessment district to pay for a $12 million parcel of open space.

Our city's mistakes may not be criminal in nature, but they can be costly. Casual observers of our town see what a wonderful place it appears to be, but they don't understand that the same sense of wonder could have been achieved for a fraction of the costs - costs that include untenable employee pension obligations and unneeded or extravagant city services.


ADVICE OF COUNSEL

We also noticed that Bell's city attorney, Robert Lee, didn't escape criticism. The LA Times reported in today's edition that the city of Downey, which also employs Lee, is ending its contract with him and his firm, Best, Best & Krieger, simply because they don't want to risk being associated with the Bell scandal.

As the Times article noted, city attorneys have a tough balancing act. They have to represent the interests of the citizens of the municipalities they work for but only so far as those interests are represented by officials elected by those same citizens - that is, the city council members. So, what happens when a council acts illegally, unethically, or irresponsibly? Should a city attorney speak up publicly, should they resign, or should they be supportive of the council?

The idea that a city attorney doesn't represent citizens directly but rather represents the council majority is one that informs our own city attorney Sonia Carvalho's legal philosophy. Coincidentally, Carvalho also works for Best, Best & Krieger and has also once worked for a city, Colton in her case, that had council members who were subjects of a federal corruption probe about 10 years ago.

Carvalho's legal advice isn't always reserved for the controlling majority of the city council. It sometimes extends to free legal opinions for the Claremont 400, as it did in 2007 when Mayor Elderkin was first running for council. At that time, one of the big issues was the possibility that Vulcan Materials Co. might begin gravel mining operations on land in northeast Claremont. Elderkin had a potential conflict of interest in any city business with Vulcan because her husband Rick is a Pomona College mathematics professor. Pomona College had a small ownership interest in the land Vulcan was interested in.

When that potential conflict became an issue in the 2007 campaign, Elderkin sought and received an opinion from Carvalho that Elderkin faced no conflict of interest. Carvalho, who didn't provide legal consultations to any other 2007 council candidates, did give Elderkin a freebie. Carvalho's legal opinion should at least have been reported as an in-kind campaign contribution, but Elderkin couldn't even be troubled to do that much.

(By the way, state attorney general's office, tell us again why you didn't look into that?)

We believed then, as we do now, that Claremont and every other city in California would be best served finding city attorneys whose philosophies of governance incorporate a greater concern for the actual town citizens, not just the controlling majority of the five elected city officials and the people who in turn control those council members.


BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

One other Bell-related item on the LA Times' LA Now blog was a report that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for cities to post the salaries of top officials online.

On this issue, the Insider was way ahead of the curve. Almost three years ago, we obtained and shared the city of Claremont's payroll information from the city's online document archive. The information was posted in the form of pay stub information.

Our advice to Governor Schwarzenegger on this one: tread lightly. For our having posted that very public information, City Attorney Carvalho contacted Google, which hosts our blog, and threatened to take them to court if they did not remove the pay stub information immediately. Carvalho falsely accused the Insider of having stolen the information. Then, after the theft accusations were shown to be false, she claimed the pay stubs could not be posted because they were protected by copyright laws (also a false legal theory).

The Daily Bulletin ended up posting an image of one of the pay stubs themselves, after redacting all the personal information. The Bulletin, unlike the Insider, did not receive any nasty-grams from Carvalho, who did have a heapin' portion of crow to chew on in the aftermath of Paystubgate.

The Claremont pay stub information, incidentally, showed that our city employees were compensated quite well, especially after one includes things like bonuses and benefits - information that the city has never been willing to release and information that is supposed to be public, according to California law.


UPDATED, 2:15PM:

A reader contacted us and noted that yesterday's weekly report from City Manager Jeff Parker had the news that Claremont had started posting the salaries of top city officials, including Parker and the city council, on the City's website. Here's what Parker's report said:

CLAREMONT ADMINISTRATIVE AND COUNCIL SALARY INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

As the media reports on the City of Bell's salaries for council and administrative staff, residents across the country are discussing the compensation of their own City officials. In accordance with the City of Claremont's open communication philosophy, the City of Claremont makes this information readily available to the public.

Each member of the City Council receives $400 per month compensation and an additional $30 per Redevelopment Agency meeting. The City Council does not receive retirement benefits and during the 2010-12 budget process, medical benefits were eliminated from council's budget. City commissioners are appointed by the City Council and receive no compensation.

As detailed in the budget, the City Manager's annual salary is $211,000 and the Assistant City Manager's annual salary is $165,000. The Police Chief's annual salary is $174,000. These salaries are based on surveys of comparable cities with similar services and populations to Claremont's 37,000 residents. Cities surveyed include Upland, Brea, La Verne, Glendora, Arcadia, Azusa, Covina, Rialto, Montclair, Monrovia, and Chino.

A complete list of salary ranges for each City position is available upon request through the City Clerk's office. For additional information, please call the City Manager's Office at 909-399-5441

Parker fails to inform the public that transparency only goes so far. We still don't get any information on bonuses and benefits, which together constitute a good chunk of total employee compensation.

According to another LA Times article on Bell, the idea of posting the salary information was supposed to be discussed in Sacramento yesterday at a meeting of city managers hosted the League of California Cities. The public disclosure is one action the League thinks will mute the public's ire over the Bell situation. It also shows that the League is more concerned with the plight of city employees than with the concerns of actual citizens.

The Times described the purpose of the meeting as "damage control," which implies the League wants to put its spin on the story rather than considering whether Bell is an extreme example of a wider malaise. The League is an interest group like any other, and its interests lie in preserving as much of the status quo as possible, to the greater detriment of the people who have to actually pay municipal bills.

Local News

COUNCIL COMINGS AND GOINGS

Well, as we predicted, at their meeting Tuesday night, the Claremont City Council appointed Councilmember Linda Elderkin mayor and named Councilmember Sam Pedroza mayor pro tem. Outgoing mayor Corey Calaycay was honored by a representative of State Senator Bob Huff's office, and Calaycay is off to make a run for the state assembly.

Calaycay hopes to fill the 59th Assembly District seat vacated by Anthony Adams, who, after avoiding being recalled for supporting last year's state budget agreement, decided not to run again.

The Claremont 400 is hoping Calaycay wins the Republican primary in June. Given the gerrymandered nature of our district, winning that race pretty much guarantees a win in the November general election. If Calaycay should win, that would free up the council to appoint a replacement or hold a special election to fill Calaycay's seat. We suspect that they would opt for naming a replacement, and the 400's candidate of choice, former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy is waiting in the wings.

Healy couldn't win in last year's council election, so getting a free pass through a council appointment might just be her one chance at finding a seat at the council dais.


THE SCOOP ON JOHNSON'S PASTURE

A reader wrote in to request a public service announcement about Johnson's Pasture. The reader requests that the City install a doggie bag dispenser at the pasture's trailhead. Apparently, dog owners have not been picking up after their pooches, which makes for a mine field experience for walkers and runners.

Come on people, show some class. Pick up after your pets.

Buy High, Sell Low

The mortgage meltdown has left a lot of homeowners across the country feeling pretty blue, especially those who bought at the height of the real estate mania in 2007. Those unlucky buyers have seen the values of their homes melt away so that they now owe more than the amount of the loans they took out to buy their houses.

With real estate we should never forget, as Groucho Marx's real estate scammer Mr. Hammer says in The Coconuts, "Oh, how you can get stuck-o!"

The real estate bubble reminds us that when Claremont voters approved the Measure S bond to purchase Johnson's Pasture in November, 2006, they were getting into the real estate market just before the bubble burst. The City agreed on an $11.5 million purchase price in June, 2007, still at the market's peak. Zillow.com's price graph shows what's happened with the price for Claremont real estate between late 1999 and May, 2009:

Click to Enlarge

The red arrow on the graph is where the City of Claremont appraised the Johnson's Pasture land. You can expect the Pasture's value to have done pretty much the same thing as any other property in the area following the City's purchase. That would bring our $11.5 million investment down to around $8.5 million and falling, assuming the open space market approximates the area's real estate in general. Of course, it wasn't purchased as a financial investment, but the point is that the land could have been had for much less with a little patience, and even back in 2006 there were plenty of signs that the real estate market was headed for a fall.

We're don't want to pick on the City for the mistake they made in miswording the deed for the land - a $1 million boo-boo. We've commented on that error elsewhere. But we do want to remind people that during the many years the Pasture purchase was being debated, one scare that was constantly thrown out was the threat that real estate developers were licking their chops at the prospect of gaining control of the land.

Of course, as cooler heads tried to argue, if the developers really wanted the land that bad, the land wouldn't have sat in probate for a decade. The developer threat seemed to be floated mainly by the sellers, which should have given Claremonters a clue that it was probably a bluff. But, the Claremont 400, never ones to believe in deferred gratification, and always devoted to overpaying for anything, played right into the hands of the sellers by insisting that the land had to be purchased NOW NOW NOW!

So it was.

And that, ladies and germs, should be a lesson to us all. Stick that Zillow graph on your refrigerator as reminder to not take counsel of your fears. The Claremont 400 has over the years shown a signal talent for stirring up fears in order to manipulate people into a false sense of urgency: The world will end if so-and-so is elected; City Hall will come tumbling down if Glenn Southard ever leaves; we must have this or that now.

Next time, be patient and call their bluff by carefully verifying the claims being bandied about on any topic from open space to affordable housing. Or, as UCLA basketball coach John Wooden often said, be quick, but don't hurry.

City Council Meets Tonight - More Trolley Folly

The Claremont City Council meets again today for another of their secret, closed session meetings, beginning at 4:30pm at City Hall.

According to the closed session agenda, there are two topics on the Council's plate:

• A report on labor negotiations from City Manager Jeff Parker, Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos, and City Personnel Manager Shawna Urban.
  
  
  
• A report on ongoing litigation: L.A. County Civil Court case #BS 117971, Protect Our Neighborhoods v. City of Claremont.
  

The Council will convene in its regular session at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. The regular session agenda's fairly light, but we did note a few items of interest:

• The Council will consider doing away with the deferred compensation option for Councilmembers. Councilmembers are currently eligible for city health benefits. If they do not use those benefits, they can take that money ($914 per month) and put it into a deferred compensation account that's pretty much the same as a 401(k). It amounts to $10,968 a year, or nearly $44,000 for a four-year council term.
  
  The city will keep the health benefits option for Councilmembers who choose to take it. Peter Yao is the only person receiving the city-paid healthcare. The only person among the five councilmembers taking the deferred comp is Mayor Ellen Taylor, who certainly does not need the money.
  
  
  
• Johnson's Pasture is back in the news. You might recall that extra $1 million the City had to pay out of its General Fund reserve because some incorrect wording in the deed resulted in the state pulling a million-dollar grant. Now, the Council is going to consider floating additional bonds to reimburse itself the reserve money they had to spend.
  
  The Council has the discretion to issue more bonds if they choose, but we question the wisdom of doing so at this time. The money's already been paid out. Financing that $1 million just adds the expense of interest that will have to be paid out on the bonds, so we'd really just be penalizing future generations for the staff's mistake.
  
  Also, according to the staff report for this item, the interest the city would have to pay would be 1.06% higher than for the bonds they originally issued. This is because the market for California municipal bonds has declined greatly in the past year.
  
  All in all, not a good idea. It's a bit like refinancing your home's equity. It's just going to end up costing you more in financing charges in the end. The fact that staff made no recommendation in their report indicates no one on that end thinks this sort of unnecessary refinancing makes for good policy.
  
  Whose idea was it, anyway?
  
  
  
• The Council will also be asked to donate the use of the Claremont Trolley for a March 22nd fundraiser for the Claremont Community Foundation.
  
  One hardly knows where to start here. The trolley, which you can see making its slow, lonely circuit through the Claremont Village Thursdays through Saturdays, was a waste of $1.2 million that nearly anyone with a brain said would be a failure. (That is, everyone except former mayor Judy Wright and friends, who deemed this project essential to the welfare of our downtown businesses.)
  
  The person making the request for this private use of the publicly-funded trolley is none other than Judy Wright herself, through the Claremont Community Foundation. So, the Council will of course acquiesce to Judy's wishes and will give the trolley over to her for a day. Under Judy's proposal, the Trolley will be used in two two-hour Claremont Heritage-led tours of historic sites throughout the city.
  
  In a way it makes sense, repackaging the trolley from a transportation conveyance to a sightseeing one. The money raised would go a charity, and it would probably be a lot of fun. However, there's one problem: the trolley is funded by public transportation grants. The city was verging on fraud in the first place by using those funds for what they called an economic development project (the trolley was supposed to help create more foot traffic for downtown businesses).
  
  Now they're going even further and removing any pretense of a transportation-related mission for the poor trolley. Simply put, the City and Judy are taking public funds from outside agencies and shifting them to a private use. No matter how well-intended the cause, this sort of transfer of public money is wrong ethically because it puts the city in the position of choosing between good causes: you get the use of the resource, you don't. Also, it may wrong before the law as well because certain transporation grants specify that the money must have strictly public uses. That's why you don't see LA County MTA buses being used for things like American Cancer Society fundraisers, even if the buses are surplus ones sitting in a maintenance yard.
  
  The staff report also notes that the city has no policy for lending out the trolley for such an event. Does this mean that any group - the Girl Scouts, say - could request the use of the trolley on one of its off days? The Insider is planning a group outing to Disneyland. Can we take the trolley for a spin?
  
  The staff seems to see the lack of a policy as a clear problem. They pretty much say in their recommendation that the Council should approve this use before they set a policy in place for trolley use by outside groups.
  
  You can easily see why California is in a $41 billion hole. Imagine Claremont's and Judy's follies repeated across the state on every type of grant. Money intended for one use ends up funneled into other, unrelated things. It amounts to the worst sort of fraud. The City really ought to just pull the plug on the trolley and either give the transportation grant money back or use it for what it was intended: fixing potholes and repaving streets.
  
  

BELOW: Claremont Community Foundation
Executive Director Nickie Cleaves asks the
Claremont City Council if her friend Judy can have the keys to the trolley.

(Click to Enlarge)

Good Walking Weather

Last week, before the snow really started to melt from the warmer weather, we took a hike up to Johnson's Pasture. Surprisingly, there weren't many people out, even though it was a sunny, weekend day. Snow still topped Ontario and Cucamonga Peaks, and you could see San Gorgornio way off in the hazy eastern blue distance. If you were in the right spot, you could see an even fainter San Jacinto out a little farther east and south.

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

The trek isn't nearly so hard as some make it out to be, even if you start from the Wilderness Park entrance and hike up Burbank or Cobal Canyon. And, while it's true that most of the trees and other plant life aren't natives, it's still a nice walk, and you can even pack some bread and cheese for a picnic. The hills are just starting to green up and ought to look great come spring if we get a decent rainfall these next couple months.



We didn't see much in the way of wildlife. Sometimes you might see deer grazing on the grass in the eucalyptus stand, but we were probably out too late in the day for that. About the wildest life we saw were mountain bikers. Most of them were pretty considerate, but, out of about 20, there were two or three who seemed to be riding way too fast on the downslopes to be sharing the trail with people afoot.

And there was plenty of evidence of bikers going off trail, cutting their own paths straight down hillsides:


It doesn't look too bad at first, but after a full rainy season, those single-track trails start to get pretty eroded. It's a shame the few bikers who choose not to stick to the marked trails don't see just how much damage they can cause.

Those eroded trails can turn into some pretty ugly scars and never grow back right. The city doesn't really have the manpower to patrol or restore the single tracks, so the cuts just assume on a permanent presence, and more and more appear as bikers look for other hills to try. It's a kind of damage that few notice and fewer still want to take ownership of.

But complaints about a few inconsiderate bikers aside, the hiking was still nice: close, not too difficult, and full of great vistas. You could even see downtown Los Angeles way off to west of the Pasture, jutting up along the horizon like a clunky bar graph, just a little too far off and faint for my meager old camera to capture properly. You'll just have to take my word for it and use your imagination.

Catching Up with Our Mail

Our profoundest apologies for our lack of posts last month. Sometimes the Insider staff gets wrapped up with the mundane errands of the analog world leaving us little time to attend to the Claremont datastream on a daily basis.

Or worse, we don't have time to proofread as carefully as we should. One reader writes that people in glass blogs shouldn't throw rocks at the local paper:

DATE: Monday, November 10, 2008 6:52 PM
SUBJECT: You, too...
TO: Claremont Buzz

Hi Buzz -

Has the slumping economy led to cutbacks in Insider staffing? You can't berate the Courier's editor about word usage and punctuation without also berating the Insider's editor on word usage and punctuation:

Today (Nov. 10):
"Because Veterans Day is tomorrow, the Claremont City Council has moved IT'S regularly scheduled meeting to tonight at 6:30pm in the council chambers at City Hall, located at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village."

I think that's the second misuse I've seen of "it's" in the last dozen posts or so.

X
Chair, WTKYOYT (Wanting To Keep You On Your Toes)

It's not all bad here at the Insider, though. The same reader wrote in several weeks earlier to comment on the Insider's workmanship and the general decline in postings. They did find something worth laughing about, which we hope compensates a little for our shortcomings:

DATE: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 9:04 PM
SUBJECT: Good one
TO: Claremont Buzz

Hi Buzz -

Your Kon-Tiki post was side-splittingly hilarious and in the same rare air as your Johnson's Pasture/Mt. Everest post a few months ago.

I was just about to write you all bemoaning the lack of recent posts. I was going to make comparisons between the blog and the twice-weekly Courier (misspellings and all), but you came out with your intrepid Baseline explorers. So I won't. Thanks for the laugh.

X

We'll try to do better. Keep checking back in, and keep us on our toes.

Thursday Mailbag

More mail, this time park-related talk:


LIGHTING UP

We got this email in response to our post on the light posts that went in at the two city of Claremont parking lots on Mills Ave. north of Mt. Baldy Rd. (the area is largely unlit at night):

DATE: Monday, September 30, 2008 9:58 PM
SUBJECT: City of lights
TO: Claremont Buzz


Hi Buzz -

Looks like at least some of the cement anchors near the Wilderness Park parking lot are for surveillance cameras. One oversees the east end of the Thompson Creek bike trail and parking lot across the street, while another is at the very top of Mills Ave. at the smaller parking lot for the Wilderness Park. Don't know if there's one at the top of Indian Hill, too, at the Thompson Creek Trail parking lot there. And who knows if there is a constant live feed to the Police Dept., or if they just go to a recording device to go refer to after a vehicle break-in. I'll let you pontificate on that. I hope they are a crime deterrent.

We're taking a wait-and-see view on this one. We'll just have to hear what people who live around the parking lots have to say, especially those homes on Mt. Baldy whose backyards face the Thompson Creek Trail parking lot. Do the cameras look into their upstairs windows? Also, if the City plans on similar cameras and lights along Via Santa Caterina at the trailhead to Johnson's Pasture, how will those residents feel about being watched 24-7?


VANISHING KIDS

Then there was this in response to Claremont's plowing ahead with Padua Ave. Park despite a evidence supporting the idea of a graying city population:

DATE: Monday, September 29, 2008 11:09 AM
SUBJECT: [ No Subject ]
TO: Claremont Buzz


Dear Buzz:

With a declining youth population, why Padua Park? I moved to Claremont in 1964 when my ex went to work for G.D. Our children were born in 67 and 69 (a baby boom year - one of the largest, if not the largest, graduating classes of CHS). We moved into this home in northwest Claremont in 69. It was teeming with children and aerospace engineers. La Puerta was open and it was anticipated that our north of Baseline children would go to that school. We would have 200-250 trick or treaters annually. Today. if we have 20, we think that is a bunch. We hardly have any children in this neighborhood anymore and no engineers. We now have a grandchild that we take to Higginbotham Park on a regular basis. I am desperately seeking a playmate for her. However, when I speak to other adults in the park, they are not from our neighborhood, but from South Claremont, Pomona, etc. They tell me the reason they bring their children to Higginbotham is that they want a safer environment. That is pathetic!

I was a stay at home mom in those days and did my bit with PFA, AYSO and Little League. I was president of Little League in 82. That year we had 476 boys AND girls participating. It was the largest league we had ever had. And, you need to keep in mind that the Pony/Colt League for 13-plus year olds was separate. I was on that Board as well and I vaguely recall we had about 200 playing. Little League has very strict boundary rules for participation. What is the participation level today? Somehow we managed practices at all of the parks, some of the elementary school play grounds and St. Ambrose's field. We even managed the season Field 2 at College Park was flooded. We were in competition with men's softball and hardball and all of the other soccer teams in town as well as Pony/Colt.

Are we renting our fields out to groups outside the City? I know the school district allows students outside our district to attend CHS. I presume it is to increase their state and federal monies as well as bolster the school population so they can tell us they need more bond monies. What is the school population versus prior years?

Is this another boondoggle as all of the tennis courts (lighted and non) of the 70's? I remember that fight well. The City had to have them in nearly every park and CHS increased their courts. Today as I traverse Indian Hill and the surrounding area, you got it, I don't see one court in use. Nor does Parks and Rec sponsor any leagues anymore.

But, of course, who am I to question the powers that be. I am a cynic and was opposed to Village West, the roundabout, the trolley and any number of things that Glenn and the housewives have dreamed up. We had pretty decent government in Claremont until about 1983 when G.D. pulled out.

Great job you are doing. I so enjoy reading your blog. Oh yes, you are right to remain anonymous. Retribution in Claremont is still alive and well.

One factor is the growing competition among sports groups, youth and adult, for field space. There are two soccer clubs, the Claremont Stars and the Foothill Storm, that draw from all over the area. Also, there adult soccer and softball leagues that compete with the kids for field time. And, there are relatively new groups like the the youth All-American football league that weren't around before. Add to that the fact that AYSO has added a spring league, and you get a lot of overstressed fields.

The argument that we need more fields for "our" kids, is pretty trite. Do we really need two soccer clubs? Probably not. Those two soccer clubs could use any city's fields. Groups like AYSO and Little League ought get the top priority if we're really talking about "our kids" since they are truly community-based organizations. And the adult recreation leagues certainly do not have anything to do with kids.

So, the city and its Youth Sports Committee aren't being completely honest when they bring up the kids argument. But trying to have a reasonable discussion about the subject is like questioning motherhood, apple pie, and the American Way of Life. That's why you end up with unused tennis courts. Any sports-related decision in town cannot be questioned in the planning process. False assumptions get made and become policy.

Comment of the Day: Cut Up that Credit Card

As we wrote yesterday, the state's threat to use $2.5 billion in Prop. 1A transportation funds to help balance California's $15.5 billion or so budget deficit is causing a lot of hand-wringing on the local level.

Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor had a letter published in Saturday's Claremont Courier urging voters to write to Governor Schwarzenegger and to state legislators to tell to keep their mitts off OUR money.

The problem is that Claremont, like many other cities across the state, have so thoroughly mismanaged their finances that when a rainy day comes, they can't deal with the state shutting off the money spigot temporarily.

Now, this is not to excuse the state-level dysfunction, to which both major political parties have contributed, but if it had watched how it spent our money, Claremont would be much better positioned to deal with the current economic environment.

In her comments, also published in today's Daily Bulletin, Queen Ellen makes the "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" ploy. Claremont will suffer needlessly if the state takes that money, Ellen says. Taylor claims that Claremont "lives within its means" but will face a $500,000 deficit if the Prop. 1A money is taken away.

Yesterday, in commenting on Taylor's false claims about our living within our means, we found $135,000 in money that we feel was just thrown away to the Friends of Taylor. A reader wrote in with this response:

If Ellen Taylor is so incensed at the State of California for potentially raiding the City of Claremont’s coffers, let her take the proverbial mote out of her own eye and look at how Claremont City government is borrowing and spending Claremont taxpayer money here.

Didn’t the city (or redevelopment agency- same people, different legal entity) just borrow a million dollars from its own sewer fund to help with Harry Wu’s purchase of the land beneath the Doubletree Hotel? When are they going to pay that back and will it be with interest?

I watch the council meetings when they play on the local cable station and I always hear about the conferences that they attend. There seem to be so many of them that these council members go to and how much does that cost? How many staff members also go to these conferences and how much does that cost every year? How about the benefits that the Courier reported at least two council members (Taylor and Yao) are taking, that has a price also.

That is not even mentioning the extra $ 1 million to purchase Johnson’s pasture, $800,000 for the trolley around the block, $60,000 for the centennial that did not have enough sponsors.

No, I think the Claremont City Council needs to get its own house in order before it starts asking citizens to harass the state for money, our taxpayer money remember, just so it can misspend more of it.

Should the state take away the those transportation bond funds, which voters approved in 2004 with the understanding that they would be used for traffic and transportation projects? No. But should Claremont and other cities in California figure their budgets based on worst case scenarios that include the possibility that those funds might not be available for a time? Of course!

Instead of spending prudently, we count on state and federal grants to fund projects like the Claremont Trolley. Then, rather then saving our local revenue in a rainy day fund to be used in emergencies like the present one, we take the money saved through the use of grants and stupidly give it away. So, when the state unexpectedly stops the money flow, we're stuck with commitments to projects that have to now be covered by our own revenue.

Where have we spent our money? Well, besides the $135,000 we've already cited, the reader mentioned the nearly $11,000 we give Queen Ellen for her deferred compensation, a 401(k)-like retirement account and the similar amount we pay for Councilmember Peter Yao's health benefits. (Hey, another $20,000-plus a year to save!)

And, as the reader also noted, that extra $1 million we had to pay to purchase Johnson's Pasture because of a misphrased deed sure would have come in handy right now.

Of course, the spending hasn't slowed down. Queen Ellen is pushing forward with spending $1.5 million on Phase 1 a highly questionable Padua Sports Park this fall. When completed, the Sports Park will cost taxpayers an estimated $10-12 million.

We hear a lot of talk right now about moral hazard and the need to not bail out homeowners and credit card holders because people need the threat of financial failure in order to properly understand risk. Bailing people and institutions out, the argument goes, may encourage them to take foolish, stupid risks.

Cities are no different. Until Claremont and the people in power in town (the League of Women Voters, Claremont Heritage, the Chamber of Commerce, to name a few) understand that the risks behind their policy decisions and how those risks fit into the bigger financial picture, they will keep on with their foolish spending ways.

The bill is coming due, and, rather than blaming the state (which has its own blame to bear), it's high time they faced that uncomfortable situation that their cumulative decisions have created.

The Road Not Taken

Parking has been much on the Claremont City Council's mind recently. As we wrote Wednesday, the council had to deal with an appeal a Planning Commission decision on Claremont McKenna College's planned 162,000 square-foot Kravis Center building.

It turned out that the law requiring developers to submit a parking management plan for the project contained a major flaw when it was approved earlier this year and failed to include a provision for review of the document. Consequently, no appeal of the decision could be allowed. Apparently, no one realized this until Tuesday night's council meeting, so the matter went onto the agenda, and a number of people showed up to speak on the subject.

The appellants were disappointed, however, after City Attorney Sonia Carvalho ended the discussion by informing the council of the loophole in the ordinance.

The council later had a different sort of parking discussion regarding the parking situation for Johnson's Pasture. The council ended up approving a plan implement an overnight permit program for residents of Via Santa Catarina, the cul-de-sac at the pasture trailhead. Residents had complained about an increase in crime, parking problems and general nuisances since the city took possession of the pasture open space and more people began visiting there.

The city and open space proponents, unlike CMC, did not have to provide a parking management plan when it bought Johnson's Pasture, and was largely blindsided when these problems arose, even though Via Santa Catarina residents had raise questions about parking long before the purchase became final.

The city, in a rush to buy the pasture, simply swept the parking and crime concerns under the carpet, and even if a parking management plan were required, the city would have been the proponent, the judge, and the jury in the proceedings, so the result would have been the same.

So, as often happens in Claremont, only when the deal was done did the city begin to acknowledge the problems imposed on the residents near Johnson's Pasture. In this instance, though, the city, residents, and open space proponents were able to craft a compromise that, while not completely satisfactory to all parties, at least attempted to address the issue in a fair way.

The Daily Bulletin reported on the decision:

The plan, approved Tuesday, calls for a permit parking program to be established allowing night parking for residents only on Via Santa Catarina, the northernmost road in Claraboya, where the entrance to the open-space area is located.

A red-curbed area on the north end of the road will be removed, allowing public parking. Parking will be prohibited on the south side of the road, where there are houses.

The plan was praised by conservationists who wanted to ensure public access to the open-space area, and by residents concerned with the impact of the park on their neighborhood.

"Nothing is perfect, but it's a good Band-Aid," said David Jacks, a resident of Via Santa Catarina who has frequently complained about the behavior of visitors to Johnson's Pasture.

Visitors to the park have increased significantly since the open-space area was purchased by the city from private owners last year.

One would like to believe there's a lesson here. As with the 2006 bond measure that provided the money to purchase the property, in the parking compromise all the interested parties sat down and tried to work something out together.

The fact that the 2006 bond passed with 72 percent of the vote ought to show Claremonters that working together we can accomplish much more than when those in power try to ignore or marginalize dissenting voices.

The affordable housing mess, for instance, could have been avoided if, rather than condemning people opposed to the Base Line Rd. site as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and racists, the Claremont League of Women Voters, who had pushed the failed project, had been open to ideas other than their own and had tried to treat their opponents fairly and respectfully.

This lesson crops up again and again in Claremont, but those hold power never seem capable of accepting it. There is a model for cooperation and compromise that has worked on the few occasions we've used it. When we don't, we invariably go through long, drawn out legal and political fights that almost always end up right where we would have if we had worked together.

The decision is entirely in the hands of the people who run things. They hold all the power, and they can choose: work together quickly and efficiently, or start a long, nasty fight to get the same results.

The first way is the way to building a true community. The second, the road more often taken, is the way to division and contentiousness.

Choose.

A Piece of His Mind

Reading the lengthy agenda item for tonight's City Council meeting on the subject of Claraboya/Johnson's Pasture parking, we were struck by this paragraph from the June 30, 2008, Traffic and Transportation Committee meeting (at page 34 of 36 of the aforesaid agenda report).

We wonder: Did he have much to spare?

The commissioner, Chaim Rinde, is the husband of local realtor Malka Rinde. Both were Ellen Taylor supporters in the 2005 election.

Tonight's Council Meeting

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm in the City Council chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village.

It's a busy agenda tonight as the council and Mayor Ellen Taylor scramble to get all their business done this month before the City Council and city commissions take their traditional August break. Hey, shouldn't we start thinking about reversing this? Let's have them meet in August and take the rest of the year off. You know, above all, do no harm.

Interested parties can also watch the proceedings here tonight beginning at 6:30pm.

In any case, the council tonight at 5:15pm starts with another in a never-ending series of closed sessions in which, the special meeting agenda says, they'll discuss "anticipated litigation" with an unidentified party as well as the possible water company takeover. The council will give a brief report of their closed session after they return for the public portion tonight.

The regular agenda includes the following items of interest:

• The second reading of the new marijuana dispensary ordinance that was approved at the last council meeting.
  
  
• An appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to approve a 162,000 square-foot academic and administrative building on the Claremont McKenna College campus. The appeal has been lodged by Peter Farquhar, Ray Fowler, Lydia Henry, and Ginger Elliot on behalf of Claremont Heritage.
  
  The appeal seems to center around the appellants concern about parking and the way the parking allowances for the new building were figured. City staff, naturally, argues that the appeal should be denied. We'll see who has more clout here, CMC or Claremont Heritage's Ginger Elliot.
  
  
• The renewal of the city's agreement with the Chamber of Commerce, a wholly-owned Claremont 400 subsidiary currently led by photographer Sonia Stump. The proposed new agreement will pay the Chamber $59,935 for the 2008-09 fiscal year and $61,756 for FY 2009-10.
  
  This is a sort of automatic renewal, and we've not seen much public discussion of whether or not the city's merchants are getting a good bang for your tax buck. Has anyone asked if the Chamber has done a good job of increasing foot traffic to the Village or the Village Expansion, not to mention the other areas of town?
  
  
• The proposed $50,000 grant to the Friends of the Claremont Library to fund a special collection of Claremont authors. A reader just commented on this one:
  
  
  I was up early this morning and read the post about the Friends of the Claremont Library asking the city for $50,000 to catalogue books by Claremont authors and several things came to mind. Don't we pay taxes to the county library already to have every book catalogued that is given to or purchased by the county system? Doesn't the county already have many of the books by Claremont authors in it's collection already and have already catalogued these books? Doesn't this city already have plenty of retired librarians that could volunteer to catalogue these books? And lastly, if the city is in such dire need of money with the anticipated shortfalls this year and next, why not put the money into reserves? I also wondered if these books are going to circulate to other libraries in the system or if they are going to circulate at all? If they are not, this is not the best use of taxpayer funds to enable the creation of what will essentially be a private collection, something that is better suited to a private library, not a public library whose beginnings were meant to provide the masses with free circulating books to educate and uplift themselves. I hope the council will reconsider this issue and not respond with a knee-jerk reaction to this request.
  
  Yep.
  
  
• Tree mitigation for homes on Shenandoah Dr. The staff report provides three alternatives (Plans A, B, and C) ranging in price from $251,000 to $511,000. The discussion provides an good window into the true costs of being a Tree City - costs which tend to be ignored until the sidewalk is cracked and lifted up all throughout a neighborhood.
  
  
• A parking permit plan for residents of Via Santa Catarina at the Johnson's Pasture trailhead in Claremont's Claraboya neighborhood.
  
  Another example of what happens when easily foreseeable consequences are ignored. Claremont bought Johnson's Pasture, but failed to deal with the fact that a small residential cul-de-sac with no extra parking sits at the beginning of the trail. As a result, the neighborhood feels overrun with hikers' vehicles taking up all the limited parking along with a perceived increase in crime-risk and general nuisances.
  
  The other way in to the pasture is from the Claremont Wilderness Park entrance over on Mills Ave. A long trek indeed.
  

Claremont: Land of Unintended Consequences

Claremont has always prided itself on being a visionary city, a community unafraid of finding a new way of getting something done, a pioneering city.

So it's fitting that the town finds itself having to cut a new path to Johnson's Pasture in the north part of town. The current trailhead, situated as it is in a small cul-de-sac on Via Santa Catarina in the Claremont's Claraboya neighborhood, has always been problem. Because there's no parking lot, cars fill up the small street, making for trouble with the neighbors there.

Now that the city has purchased the pasture and has added the land to its Wilderness Park, the homes next to the trailhead have felt a heavy impact from increased traffic and crime.

It's just another unintended consequence in a city full of unanticipated problems that were easily foreseeable had the blinders not been on. Remember the Claremont 400's first scheme to buy Johnson's Pasture - one that failed miserably in 2006? Or that extra $1 million we had to pay to purchase the land after the state grant the 400 had promised us fell through because of the way the deed language was miswritten?

The problem will come before the city's Traffic and Transportation Commission this Thursday, and the city is considering a number of actions, including establishing a new trailhead and parking area at the north end of Mountain Ave. Will Bigham wrote about the problem in the Daily Bulletin:

The Traffic and Transportation Commission is scheduled to consider the proposal at its 7 p.m. meeting Thursday at City Hall.

At a commission meeting in February, one resident of Via Santa Catarina spoke at length about the new problems in his once-quiet neighborhood.

David Jacks said that four of the residents' cars had been broken into, couples had been seen having sex in public, beer bottles were left in yards and statues were stolen out of front yards. The litany of complaints continued for six minutes.

"It's creepy," Jacks said. "It's gotten to the point where something that was once really nice has gotten really out of hand."

Because the solution proposed by the city would not cut off public access, conservationists who were the driving force behind the purchase of Johnson's Pasture say they approve of the idea.

"If they wait and put in a trailhead and have adequate parking, then that's fine," said Suzanne Thompson, head of the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy.

"There's a huge other constituency in Claremont that uses Johnson's Pasture," Thompson added. "The solution needs to work for them as well."

Councilman Peter Yao also said he was supportive of the idea.

He said that if the area at the northern end of Mountain Avenue is not large enough to accommodate visitors' needs - there is space for about 15 cars - a parking lot may be considered.

Leave it to Councilmember Yao to float the parking lot idea. Yao seems to have no problem fitting inappropriate uses into residential neighborhoods. The Padua Theater renovation proposal by Arteco Partners, for instance, anticipates 50,000 visitors a year into an area surrounded by the Wilderness Park and single-family homes. Yao is all for those 50,000 and more if we can jam it in there.

What is it exactly that Yao doesn't like about Claremont residents?

Besides the new parking arrangement and trailhead, the Traffic and Transportation Commission will consider approving a preferential permit policy requiring people parking on Via Santa Catarina to display a special resident placard. You can read the city's staff report on the issue here.

Something will be needed if the current trailhead is closed. As we wrote in February, the ascent to Johnson's Pasture will become much more difficult without the access from Via Santa Catarina.

And we have no idea if there's any truth to the rumor that the city's Off Track Trolley Citizen's Committee has come up its own solution to the problem: a funicular. That might, however, explain the prison work crews and loads of railroad ties and steel rails being trucked up Mountain Ave.


Photo Right:
City Engineer Craig Bradshaw oversees the installation of railway to Johnson's Pasture. Train will cut travel time and speed mail delivery, city staff report says.

Thursday, May 22, 2008, 7:00PM
Traffic and Transportation Commission Meeting
225 West Second Street - City Council Chamber
Claremont
(909) 399-5460

TSL-Taylor Lovefest

At the suggestion of Charles over at the Claremont Conservative, a Claremont McKenna College student blog, we picked up a copy of the April 25th edition of Pomona College's weekly journal of creative writing, The Student Life (TSL).

You may recall that that TSL ran an error-filled article about CMC history professor Jonathan Petropoulos on April 4th that resulted in that week's issue of the paper being pulled from newsstands. TSL's Petropoulos article included a headline that seemed to imply that the professor had been criminally charged with a crime related to a Camille Pissarro painting (Petropoulos has not been charged with any crime), and it also included a very large, mislabeled image of the wrong painting.

Now, we don't want to single out a student paper for an honest error. Lord knows we have our share of mistakes, but we do try to acknowledge those and correct them as soon as possible. TSL's Petropoulos story seemed worse than an simple mistake. Anytime an entire issue of a paper has to be erased from history, something's wrong. Of course, one could argue that the removal may have been an apt metaphor for the whole Petropoulos affair.

Besides the problems with the headline and the image, the article itself seemed like a pastische of passages from other articles, including the work of Claremont Independent editor Elise Viebeck. As we wrote at the time, TSL's reporting for the Petropoulos piece was a lazy sort of journalism.

Click to Enlarge

So, we weren't really expecting much when we got the last week's TSL, which carried an article on page 2 by writer Kavisha Singh about a visit by Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor on April 16th to Pomona College's Women's Union.

We couldn't help but notice some pretty obvious errors in the piece, some of which could probably be attributed to Queen Ellen's usual dissembling. However, is it too much to ask for a little fact-checking? To begin with, the article states that Taylor contrasted Claremont's strong tradition of women involved in city governance with neighboring La Verne, which the article said "has never had a female council member."

Well, here's an image of the La Verne City Council's website (note the councilmember farthest to the right, Donna Nasmyth):



So, was Ellen wrong, or is she trying to insinuate that La Verne's Nasmyth is a transvestite? Some clarification, please, TSL. To make its point, the article might have said that Nasmyth is La Verne's first female councilmember, but it did not.

The article also painted a false picture of Taylor as being unfairly criticized (much like Hillary Clinton, Taylor seemed to hint), for being a strong woman. Taylor was quoted as saying, "In this field, a strong man is seen as charismatic, but a strong woman is considered aggressive."

What the article failed to acknowledge is that fact that Taylor hasn't been unfairly criticized because of her gender. Instead, she's been rightly characterized as an arrogant, egotistic, bullying person. Her behavior would be wrong in anybody, and Taylor's hiding behind gender is the worst sort of cowardice. TSL's reporter obviously did not do enough homework. After all, how does Taylor's attacking fellow females fit into her portrait of herself as a victim?

There's nothing wrong with a strong woman. There's plenty wrong with an obnoxious autocrat who abuses her position of power.

The article contained plenty of other Taylor misinformation. According to the TLS piece, for instance, Taylor mentioned the acquistion of Johnson's Pasture as a success. TSL failed to mention, though, how the actions of Taylor and fellow councilmembers Peter Yao, Linda Elderkin, and Sam Pedroza almost resulted in the city's failure to be able to purchase the land.

Recall that those four councilmembers were part of the group that pushed the 2006 Parks and Pastures assessment district as a funding mechanism for Johnson's Pasture. The assessment was opposed by a majority of property owners in Claremont because only about half of the money $48 million it would have generated would have gone to paying for the pasture. The rest of the money was at best very loosely programmed and was seen as a backdoor way of creating a new revenue stream for the city. The assessment failed 56% to 44% because of the greed and overreaching of Taylor, et al.

In contrast, the bond measure that was eventually passed for Johnson's Pasture will end up costing about half of what the assessment would have and will be paid off at least five years sooner than the assessment district would have and was initially opposed by Taylor.

The TSL article also claimed that Taylor said the city "is also considering building a medical marijuana dispensary." Imagine that, Claremont going into the ganja biz. Talk about a new revenue stream!

A word to TSL, whenever you plan on doing another article about local issues, check your facts, especially when dealing with our Mayor. Is that really too much to ask?

Housing Market Meltdown Hits Home

The relatively new Stone Canyon Preserve homes in Northeast Claremont made headlines last month. ABC News ran a story about the problems created by the mortgage crisis hitting upscale McMansion owners, and they focused on several homeowners in the Stone Canyon homes.

No demographic, it seems, is immune to the wave of foreclosures and short sales hitting the real estate market. The ABC story, appropriately filed under "Reality Check" on ABC's news site, paints a grim picture:

Losing an Investment

People once had to place their names on a waiting list to buy a luxury home, but now owners trying to sell compete with new homes offered at lower prices, bank-owned properties and so-called "short sales," in which a home sells for less than the value of the mortgage.

Compounding the problem, buyers have disappeared because the subprime and 100 percent loans that made so much growth possible are gone.

"The people who qualified for the kinds of loans that bought these houses no longer qualify," said Char Constantino, a broker with Century 21.

Not only do those people no longer qualify, but many who did take risky financing are losing their homes. Foreclosures in Los Angeles were up 381 percent in the last quarter of 2007 from the same period the previous year.

This marks the second time a housing market crash has hit the north Claremont Stone Canyon land hard. The first occasion was back in the early 1990's. At that time, the city of Claremont had worked out a complicated deal with Pomona College wherein the city would purchase the land that would become the Claremont Wilderness Park as well as the land that later became Stone Canyon.

The plan was for the City to then develop the land and be left with the Wilderness Park. Yes folks, Claremont, under then-City Manager Glenn Southard, was going into the home building business.

However, the development plans fell through because Southard, with that golden touch that only he had, managed to pick the worst of possible times (a recession and real estate crash) to become a housing speculator.

The city had paid some $1.2 million in option payments to Pomona College over two or three years, but stopped making those payments and negotiated an exit strategy. In exchange for the option payments made, and the commitment to fast-track the specific plan that allowed Pomona College to sell the developable property, wrapped up and tied with a bow, to Centex Homes, the City could have the 1220-acre Wilderness Park property, stripped of its development credits.

The Claremont 400 would have you forget that one reason the Stone Canyon Preserve homes are the boxy McMansions you see now is that the City and Southard were forced to make developer-driven concessions (more homes per acre, for instance) to satisfy their creditor, Pomona College, in order to maximize Pomona's value in the land and to ease the eventual sale of the property.

Really, Pomona College, together with Centex and the city of Claremont, are responsible for the paving over of Chicken Creek, an area that had a much higher ecological significance in terms of native plant and animal life than Johnson's Pasture. Many of the folks at the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy, which includes a good number of employees from the Claremont Colleges, ignore this part of the history of the land when they rail against developers.

The other forgotten part of this episode is that Southard had to scramble around to put together the money lost in his failed development scheme, and he borrowed that money from the city's sewer fund with the promise that it would be paid back. There's still some debate in some circles in town as to whether or not that promise was ever kept.

Like a lot of Claremont stories, things got muddled with time. The 400 always points to Centex's Stone Canyon Preserve, which destroyed the Chicken Creek riparian habitat, and says that was the price we had to pay to get the Wilderness Park. It's a pleasant fiction, but it's far from the whole story.

The 400's axiom still holds true: wait long enough, and a lie becomes a truth. Oh, and no need to dedicate a plaque to this one. No word on how this affects Claremont's 5th Best Place to Live status.

So here we are again. This time it's individual homeowners, rather than the city of Claremont, who've overextended themselves at the risk of their investment. People (and cities) never learn that there is a law of gravity to markets. We want to believe things go ever upward, but then reality hits.

Chalk it up to the price of forgetting history. We're feeling that downward pull again, to no one's, and to everyone's, surprise.

Expedition to Johnson's Pasture

An Alliterative Adventure

The planned parking prohibition on the upper streets of Claraboya (Klar-A-boya in the indigenous language) is reminiscent of the decades-ago closure by the Chinese of the direct route through Tibet to Mount Everest, forcing climbers to make a lengthy approach through Nepal.

Now, the City of Claremont, headed by Politburo Chief Peter Sunway Yao (Chairman Yao) will likely close off the routes for the most direct ascent to Johnson's Pasture. This has the nature-loving world scrambling. How will they get to Johnson's Pasture without aerobic effort? What will happen to the formerly-clandestine moonlight hikes? Where will the founding members of the Claremont Wildlands Conservancy conduct their private and mystic rituals?

Heretofore, intrepid mountaineers would approach Johnson's Pasture via the direct-aid route up the South Wall to the South Col. The primitive road system of Klar-A-boya would provide a steep but usually-reliable path where the teams could park their Land Rovers for the final pitch to the Col.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Now, however, mountaineers will have to establish Base Camp in the flatlands and make a long, dry approach march up the mighty Cobal, fording many rivers, before switching back and edging along the exposed and precipitous slopes hurtling to the depths of Suzanne's Couloir. After the "Long Traverse", Camp One is established on the divide between Suzanne's Couloir and Burbank Canyon.

From Camp One, a steep route grades inexorably upward ever upward to the knife-edge ridge and High Camp and a well-earned rest. Many is the climber reaching this point who has said, "I've had enough!" and turned back to comfort and safety.

But our Johnson's Pasture explorers are made of sterner stuff, and they proceed generally south along the ridge keeping the mighty East Buttress to the left, before coming out in the verdant mead of exotic grasses dotted with loden stands of non-native trees that is Johnson's Pasture.

A wonderful view is the traveler's reward. Don't forget to see Chi Cwm in the southeast corner of the pasture. While you are there, be sure to regard Worley's Waterway, tumbling downward ever downward from Johnson's Pasture to the east and south, and in season watering Thompson Creek Concrete Drainage Ditch amid a spray of debris and trash. The Geographer in our group may point out that the South Chute drains much of Johnson's Pasture along the west edge of Klar-A-boya and waters--well--it waters the same Thompson Creek Concrete Drainage Ditch but further downstream, near the corner of Webb School. These waters remain safely in concrete, adding nothing to the water table, until being deposited in the San Gabriel River above Whittier Narrows. A little of the water falling on the far west of Johnson's Pasture makes its way into Live Oak Canyon where it does its small part to enhance the water supply--of La Verne.

The fortunate wanderer may catch a glimpse at the first dagger of dawn, or as the sun softly sets, of the down- and fleece-clad she-priests of the Conservancy leading a small group to the highest hill of the Pasture. There, where the coarse grass lays down before the wind, we see a pillar of dust rise on the gray breeze and the soul of some departed solves silently into the firmament.

We quietly follow the narrow tread back to High Camp, reflecting on these many matters.

The trail down to Base Camp can normally be made by a healthy person in less than a day, and it is with a heavy heart but with keen anticipation of another trek that we leave this natural Paradise, having seen many Wonderful Things.