We Stand Corrected

Our post last Friday generated this response from Claremont Police Chief Paul Cooper (photo, right):

Date: Mon, March 21, 2011 7:11:16 AM
Subject: [ No Subject ]
From: Paul Cooper
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com

Hi Claremont Buzz,

A friend sent me the link to your most recent story on March 18, 2011. I thought I would share with you that the proposed communications tower project was presented at City Council, Police Commission and Community Services Commission meetings. We have discussed the project with Cable Airport management and they have no issues with the project. We have also submitted the project to the FAA and received a “No Hazard” certification. Following the council presentation, the tower project was also in the Courier and the Daily Bulletin The most recent agenda report is to simply update the new council on the project and its status. There’s been no attempt to “slip this one in.” If you have any questions about the project, I am always available.

Sincerely,


Paul


Paul Cooper
Chief of Police
Claremont Police Department
909-399-5401
pcooper@ci.claremont.ca.us

We noticed that Chief Cooper's concerns about clarifying the record must have extended to the City's public relations arm. Over the weekend there was a change in the City's online materials for the tower. When we originally looked on the City's website last Friday, this is what we saw:


This is what you see now:


So the City's information on the tower is much more helpful now than it was last week. However, we'd still like to see a link to the so-called "Initial Study". Among other things, apparently, this contains the deadline for public comment. Presumably it also contains a discussion of the height and how the initially-proposed 200-ft tower in Upland transformed into a 174-ft tower in Claremont.

We checked the City's records, and we were able to find the references Chief Cooper mentioned. Cooper made presentations regarding the tower to the City Council, the Police Commission, and the Community Services Commission. Searching the City's document archives when we were composing our original post didn't turn up the documents the Chief was able to point us to, so we took another look.

We were glad the Chief wrote us because, when we looked for the meetings he referred to, we were struck by how much all of it seemed to serve seemed to underscore our original concern about the City "slipping one in." For instance, the tower was originally slated to be located in the northeast corner of the City Yard on Monte Vista Ave. That placement, however, put the 174-foot tower in Upland and under the aegis of Upland's planning process, which didn't give the Chief and City Hall to opportunities to maneuver that having the tower on the Claremont side of the property did.

(It also reminded us that when Claremont originally built the building, at the end of the Glenn Southard regime, they built out past the city and county limits without getting the permission of Upland, which cause a minor row at the the time.)

Click to Enlarge

Chief Cooper mentioned the change in the tower's placement in his 2/10/11 report to the Community Services Commission:

The location of the tower was originally proposed in the far northeast corner of the city yards which is actually in the City of Upland. As staff worked with Upland staff, it became apparent that this project could not move through Upland's process in the timeline needed to meet the needs of the project and the grant. The tower was moved approximately 20' from its originally proposed site so that it is now located within Claremont while still being constructed in the far northeast corner of the facility. This will allow the management of the project to be handled within Claremont's process and staff has the ability to manage the timeline better.

The communications tower is on the agenda for tonight's City Council meeting, by the way. The Chief's report for the council lays out a timeline for the the tower's installation. Note the implied inevitability:

March 22 Report to council for FYI on project.
Agenda Published March 17. Report due March 14.

March 25 - April 19 Publish CEQA (21 days).

April 4 Bid Specs Completed.

April 19 Planning Commission Meeting. C U P approval. CEQA hearing and approval.
Agenda Published April 14. Report due April 11. Notice April 7. Appeal until May 2.
April 27 Architectural Commission Design Review.
Building design needed.
Agenda Published April 21. Report due April 18. Notice April 14.

April 4 Bid Specs Completed.

May 10 City Council approval to go to bid
Agenda Published May 5. Report due May 2.

May 24 Approval for bid if CEQA Appealed.
Agenda Published May 19. Report due May 16.

June 27 Open Bids.

July 12 Award Bid.
Agenda Published July 7. Report due July 5.

July/Auqust/Sept Build Project.

The Chief doesn't foresee any problems arising in the public process that might change his timeline, and there's real no need for him to worry. His certainty is guaranteed by the fact that he can shepherd the project through Claremont's rubber stamping commissions. We assume the commissioners, especially the Architectural Commissioners, are in line on this matter and no one will raise the objection, well, that the tower is buck-ugly as proposed, looking like a cross between a rocket gantry and a 1920s Signal Hill oil well tower, except taller than either.

As to the FAA, we note that there wasn't much public comment on this matter. For example, we didn't see the City or Chief Cooper circulate the materials they presented to the FAA. Incidentally, though the owners of Cable probably didn't realize when Chief Cooper apprised them of the tower plans, in the long term building the tower might be good not only for police communications, but for the anyone who might want the for airport's land for some other use like commercial development or even future expansion for the Claremont Colleges. Somewhere far down the road, the tower's existence will make it easier to argue that development has so crowded around airport that safety will become a concern.

And this is how Official Claremont uses the process to batter the uninitiated. In Claremont, there's never one meeting you can point to and say, "You must be there." If you showed up for, say, the Police Commission meeting last November 4th, you could have heard Chief Cooper talking to the commissioners about the proposed tower. If you raised an objection, however, you would have been told that this was really just an informational agenda item to address your concerns and that you would have your chance to air your concerns at a future meeting.

So you then you would have gone to the Community Services meeting on February 10th. You again raised your concerns, but would have been told there was no need to worry and that your concerns would be addressed at the City Council on March 22nd, or at a future Architectural Commission meeting. By the end of it, when you've had more than your fill of meetings, you'll be told that you should have had your concerns addressed earlier on when you had the opportunity and that the project had already been vetted by the city's commissions and by the City Council.

The unstated fact of the matter is that none of the meetings really mattered. It was all just window dressing. The idea for a trolley gets floated at someplace like a dinner party at former Mayor's Judy Wright's home, and the next thing you know, the project is a fait accompli.

Only after you've experienced the vaunted Claremont public process will you come to appreciate the machinery at work in our town. Only then can you truly call yourself a Claremonter.

City Council Meeting Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm in the council chambers at 225 W. Second St. You can review the meeting agenda here.

You can also watch tonight's council meeting here.

Among the consent calendar items is the resignation of Community Services Commissioner Antonia Castro, who is moving out of the area. Also, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce is asking the council to approve June 30 as the date for the State of the City luncheon. The council participates by making a slide presentation to the chamber, so staff will need to get their PowerPoint juices flowing.

City Manager Jeff Parker has the City's mid-year budget report ready to go, and the good news is that revenues seem to be matching projections. So the budget will remain in the black for Fiscal Year 2010-11. For FY 2009-10, the City showed a budget surplus in excess of the expected $611,616, so the belt-tightening and staff reductions have paid off. Parker's report also says there's a great deal of uncertainty from on the state level because no one knows how Governor Jerry Brown's proposed elimination of redevelopment agencies will play out.

According to the report,a portion of the lost redevelopment funds would be offset by higher property tax revenues for the General Fund:

The impacts to the City of such an action by the State would be significant, with $728,696 in salary and benefit and administrative costs that would have to be funded through another revenue source or eliminated altogether. Similarly, the City's economic development activities, at a cost of $451,987, would also require an alternate funding source or face elimination. It should be noted that the elimination of the Redevelopment Agency would result in increased General Fund property tax revenue currently estimated at between $100,000 and $200,000 annually.

Here's the Parker's report:




City Manager Parker is also presenting the council with a 74-page report for the council on the final findings of the Mayor's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability:




Unlike the 2010-11 mid-year budget report, the committee's findings were rather grim. According to the report, even under the rosiest of revenue assumptions, Claremont's budget will be back in the red by FY 2011-12 and faces a $1.17 million budget deficit by FY 2015-16. Under the most pessimistic revenue projections, the report indicates the City's deficit will be as high as $3.98 million by FY 2015-16 (see the chart below):

Click on Image to Enlarge

The report calls the severe fiscal forecasts "the new normal" and counsels us to accept this reality. It also acknowledges the fact that any tax or fee increases need to balanced by spending cuts:

The Committee became convinced that to recommend only increased taxes and other burdens on the populace without recommending concomitant structural (reoccurring) reductions in City expenditures would be neither politically nor economically viable.

To cut to the chase, here are the committee's findings and recommendations:


So expect continued cutbacks in employee benefits, as well an increase in the city's Utility Users Tax (UUT). The committee is recommending a temporary, five-year increase. But, if you know Claremont's history (cue town historian Judy Wright), you know that any promises of having a sunset provision for the increase will turn into a permanent UUT hike.

Municipal Ordnance

As Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen pointed out last month, there was more than the usual amount of Claremont irony in the town's Architectural Commission Excellence in Design awards.

That empty commercial building at 601 E. Foothill Blvd., the one that was the proposed site for a 7-Eleven convenience store, was one of the seven award recipients. The award no doubt represents a consolation prize to the building owners, who haven't had one tenant since the building was completed (last year? 2008?). Sorta says, "No hard feelings. See, we're not so bad."

Claremont can be an awfully difficult place to do business, mostly because of the interference of our dear Claremonsters, most of whom have never successfully made or sold anything. They are for the most part dilettantes like our town historian, former mayor Judy Wright, or they're in the service sector like former mayor, former school board member, and former Chamber of Commerce chair Paul Held, who has a Claremont-centric family law practice. And that all goes a long way towards explaining Official Claremont's poor understanding of the concerns of people running reality-centric businesses.

All this got us to thinking that the Architectural Commission might want to think seriously about giving their award a snappier title. Here is our humble offering (given to the the commission free of charge - our civic duty, you know): The Claremont Neutron Bomb Award, after the Cold War tactical WMD of choice.

The neutron bomb's main selling point, you'll recall, was that it eliminated people but left most structures standing, similar to what the Claremont 400's tried to do to citizens and businesses alike over the years. So, the neutron bomb was immensely attractive to the realty crowd (another important Claremont interest group). After all, human assets can be replaced much more easily than infrastructure. Think redevelopment, except with people.

Given the current economic climate, there very well could be many more empty buildings around in the future, and that would drive down the town's image. But winning an award goes a long way toward softening bad publicity, a fact with which Claremont is well-acquainted.

We remember that in 2001, when City Hall was still suffering in the press (there were still such things back then) over the shooting death of African American teen Irvin Landrum after a traffic stop by Claremont PD, Claremont's then-Human Services Director Dick Guthrie applied for and received a Helen Putnam Award for Excellence from the League of California Cities for its response to crisis. Needless to say, the award came several years before the issue was resolved. The City's main response up to that point had been a mostly notional heads-in-the-sand one: "You can't see me if I can't see you."

Some things change, others are ever constant. Claremont's mayor at the time the award was announced? The aforementioned Paul Held, Esq., who, along with wife Kay, just last week was honored as the Grand Marshal of our annual 4th of July parade. Held, who as mayor seemed at war with certain Claremonters, could tell you that when things look bleakest, trot out an award.

Knock 'em dead, Claremont.

A Picture Is Worth AThousand Words

There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL

BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Animal Farm
George Orwell

We're continually amazed at the awesome sense of entitlement the Claremont 400 possesses, collectively and individually. It's as if the laws of our town apply to everyone other than our ruling elite, who see themselves as a sort of aristocracy.

Former mayors, councilpeople, and commissioners behave as scofflaws. One such former mayor we know built an eight-foot wall on her property when only six-foot walls were permitted in the Claremont Village. When a neighbor complained, the person said not to worry about it and implied she had friends in City Hall.

And, lest you think such things are isolated examples, don't forget the time former mayor Ellen Taylor drove the wrong way down an alley in the Village.

From time to time we receive emails from skeptical readers who find it hard to believe that these paragons of community virtue would behave so boorishly. Well, now comes photo documentation, courtesy of the Insider's local spies.

At the City Council's March 6 budget meeting, town historian and former mayor Judy Wright had a special parking spot reserved for her car--license 4 JDY JDY. We assume that this must be Judy's regular parking place when she visits her subjects at City Hall. Judy certainly has no fear of the Claremont PD's parking enforcement officers (though they may quite rightly fear her):

Seen outside City Hall,
March 6, 2010

When we first received the photo, we weren't sure that it was really Judy's ride, so we asked a friend of the Insider to drive by Judy's digs near Tenth and Berkeley. Sure enough, there was the same wagon--hers--parked at the curb:

* * * * *

We note that 4 JDY JDY appears to have a handicapped tag hanging from it's mirror, and we don't begrudge the differently abled their little regulatory conveniences. But the lot at City Hall was striped "NO PARKING."

Anyway, readers, don't bother yourselves to get worked up about little things like fairness or rule of law. Judy (pictured, left) will just have a good laugh at your expense.

The best thing you can do is remember these photos during the next city council or school board election. When you see the name "Judy Wright" next this or that candidate's name, vote for another person.


That is the only way we'll ever move away from the Claremont 400's arbitrary governance and towards a more rational, fair, and respectful relationship between city officials and the average citizens in town.

City Gets New Mayor Tonight

CITY ORGANIZATIONAL CHART
The Claremont City Council convenes tonight for their regularly scheduled meeting at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers at 225 Second St. in the Claremont Village. There's no closed session tonight. For a change, what you see is what you get. At least, as much as that is possible in our town.

You can preview the council agenda materials on the city's website.

You can also watch the meeting live or later at your leisure here.

Some of tonight's topics are:

• The council's reorganization. This is the annual voting by council members for mayor and mayor pro tem. Those posts are currently filled by councilmembers Corey Calaycay and Linda Elderkin. By convention, the positions are supposed to rotate each year so that each councilmember gets a turn at mayor. (Except when the powers-that-be don't like you.)
  
  Expect our process queen Elderkin to be named mayor, which will make for excruciating long council meetings because Linda loves to go on and on about how much she knows about each and every subject. Infallibility being her strong point, she believes she's right only 100% of the time, so Linda will always have the last word.
  
  Our goofiest councilmember, Sam Pedroza, will be named Mayor Pro Tem. Together, Sam and Linda have been the Claremont 400's most reliable votes. Elderkin is part of the old (and we do mean old) Claremont League of Women Voters ruling class, and Pedroza is former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright's marionette.
  
  A matched set, these two (trust them as you would adders fang'd):
  
  
  Pedrozacrantz and Lindanstern
  
  
  
• After the reorg, the council will settle down to its regular business with Elderkin at the gavel. The first item they'll consider is the second reading of the City's ordinance on water efficient landscaping.
  
  
• The council will also receive and approve the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, which, as usual, paints a rosy picture of the money situations for the City's and the City's Redevelopment Agency. Odd, isn't it, how the report seems to minimize inconvenient things like pension obligations and the likely rise in the city's contribution to the city employee CalPERS pension account.
  
  
• The Claremont Police Department's annual report. Good news, for the most part, violent crime and property crimes were down last year, despite the declining states of the local and national economies.
  
  
• A temporary loan of $825,000 from the Claremont Redevelopment Agency to the Jamboree Housing Corporation for the development at the affordable housing site at 111 S. College Ave. This is in anticipation of the project receiving a $825,000 grant from the L.A. County HOME program. Assuming that money comes in, the CRA will get its $825,000 back, says Housing and Redevelopment Manager Brian Desatnik.
  
  
• A review of the City's investment policy.
  
  
  

Dept. of Self-Referential Headlines

Some Claremont Courier copy editor sure has a sense of humor:

From the Claremont Courier, 1/9/10

Solis and Friends Honored

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis (pictured, right) was back in the San Gabriel Valley last week to accept an award from the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership and the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments.

Solis, and three others each received Jack Phillips Awards for their "outstanding contributions to the betterment of the San Gabriel Valley." The ceremony took place in the City of Industry last Thursday evening.

One of the other award winners was none other than former Claremont city manager Glenn Southard. We don't know about any betterment Southard contributed to the SGV, but ol' fellow was never shy about the betterment of Glenn Southard, at least in terms of his public compensation.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune covered the awards ceremony and had this to say about Southard's award:

Former Claremont mayor Judy Wright gave an award to Southard, who currently serves as city manager in Indio.

A founding member of the COG, Southard worked hard in the organization's early years to make sure it got off on the right foot, Wright said.

One thing is for sure: no one worked professional networking as well as Southard (left). He and his staffs exploited these things to no end in tireless efforts to get appointed to boards of organizations like the Municipal Managment Association of Southern California or the California City Management Foundation, which Southard also helped found.

You notice, when you look at some of these groups, that there are an awful lot of municipal vendors - like engineering and law firms - that either have employees on the groups' boards or that donate money to the associations. Once on the boards of these groups, Southard and his staff would leverage those networks to do things like find a new job if they wore out their respective welcomes, as Southard did when he fled Claremont for Indio.

Southard's betterment program for the City of Indio hasn't fared well, incidentally. The desert city faces a deficit of $14 million. Southard and Indio also face a $10.5 million lawsuit by the developer of a regional transportation center, and a recent Desert Sun article indicated that Southard may be up to his old tricks, promising one thing but meaning something else with the project. Here's a hint to our friends in the Coachella Valley: Compare notes.

In any event, it won't be long before Southard wins another award for his betterment of Indio. In the meantime, he and Hilda Solis can savor their Jack Phillips Awards.

Padua Theatre Open for Business

Chantrelles Catering Image

The Padua Theatre reopened last weekend after being closed all winter and spring for earthquake retrofitting and other renovations. The remodeling work is being done by Arteco Partners, the same company that completed similar adaptive reuse projects with the Pomona Fox and Claremont Packing house.

The Daily Bulletin's David Allen took a tour of the theatre last week and spoke with Jerry Tessier, one of Arteco's principals. Allen described the renovations in his column:

Tessier's Arteco Partners spent $4 million and five months doing seismic strengthening, adding fire sprinklers and alarms, replacing every inch of plumbing and wiring and bringing the buildings up to code, including handicap accessibility.

Vintage elements such as wall sconces and tables have been repaired and the original theater screen featuring a map of Mexico is in place - although Tessier couldn't find the right rope to pull to show it to me.

The theater interior is quaintly rustic, with poured-in-place concrete walls and an exposed-beam ceiling of hand-chiseled wood.

The interior can be configured for banquets or performances, and photo opportunities for weddings - fountains, benches, a gazebo - dot the complex.

Another addition is a broad terrace overlooking the Claremont Wilderness Park. It offers a breathtaking view of rolling hills and canyons.

Allen also wrote about the theatre's history with characteristic irreverence:

Padua used to be an artists' colony and the theater grew out of that tradition. For most of the theater's active life, a troupe called the Mexican Players, sponsored by Herman and Bess Garner, put on productions to introduce Southern Californians to Mexican dress, songs and culture.

Sounds a bit corny to our modern sensibilities, but in its heyday Padua was popular and surprisingly well known.

The Garners owned a good deal of the land around the theatre and sold off lots to people like Millard Sheets, Milford Zornes, Albert Stewart, Harrison Macintosh, and Betty Ford, area artists who all built homes and studios on the long hill where the theatre sits.

David Allen also informs us that Claremont Heritage has sold 250 tickets to a fundraiser tonight at the theatre, a fitting location for the local historical society whose offices are located in the Garner House in Claremont's Memorial Park.

Claremont Heritage and amateur historian Judy Wright have been the primary force behind the deal with Arteco, just as they were the main forces pushing the ill-conceived Claremont Trolley. Judy has written extensively about the theatre and the Garners, whom she has elevated to the highest pedestal within the Claremont founders pantheon.

Wright and company have made much of the painstaking care and attention to detail employed in the theatre's restoration, though as is Judy's wont, she's employed a good deal of revisionism. For instance, Herman Garner would almost certainly have disapproved of things like the 4,000 square foot terrace addition or the serving of alcohol. Garner was a strong supporter of the temperance movement - recall that Claremont itself was a dry town until the late 60's.

Claremont Heritage's nostalgia for the theatre's Mexican Players also ignores the fact that when Garner founded his artist community it had explicit written prohibitions against non-whites owning property. That's right, it was segregated (a little secret Judy would rather not discuss).

Sure, the Garners' temperance and the racial attitudes were products of their era (major league baseball was still segregated at that time), but one cannot pretend to be a historian without documenting all of the history, even the parts that make one uncomfortable.

That said, if you didn't shell out $89 for a ticket to tonight's Claremont Heritage Gala, David Allen says you have several upcoming opportunities to check out the refurbished theatre. The Claremont Chamber of Commerce will have their mixer July 8 and there will be an open house July 12 from 5pm to 8pm.

To Tweet or Not

The Claremont Now blog, penned by Wes Woods II, is on Twitter. So, you can get instant updates on important Claremont news, or at least updates of the stuff Woods chooses to tweet.

Everyone's jumping on the social networking bandwagon. Woods even found a site for Claremont City Councilperson Sam Pedroza:

This could be a fake but it seems believable he would post "getting ready to check out Buck Wildstar at the Wine Merchant" at 7:08 p.m. on March 20.

We checked out Sam's account for our readers and found that, as with any Internet endeavor, whether blog post or tweet, content will a problem, at least as long as Pedroza doesn't have his patron, former Claremont mayor and town yenta Judy Wright writing his copy.

It also seemed like Sam signed up with the wrong service:

Click to Enlarge

Trolley Mail

Earlier this week we received a note from a reader with an observation about the Downtown Claremont Trolley. The reader saw the trolley on a run outside of it's usual environs:

DATE: Monday, March 23, 2009 10:46 PM
SUBJECT: Claremont Trolley
TO: Claremont Buzz

Speaking of the Claremont Trolley.

On Sunday March 22, I noticed that the Trolley Folly went on a whimsy run, up Padua Ave. past the under-construction sports park, on up to the 4-way-on-demand stop light signal, at 1:07PM, then up Mt. Baldy Road, past Fergus Falls, presumably to the gravel turn-around at the San Antonio Dam, as it shortly returned down Mt. Baldy Road. It turned into Flat River and back out, and on down to Padua Ave., then north on Padua Ave. up past the Theater, then down Via Padova past the sharp double curves, and on down to Mt. Baldy Road, and then to the Mills 4-way stop signs, at 1:21PM, and then down Mills. I was not close enough, from my view point, to see if any passengers were inside.

We checked and discovered that what the reader witnessed was a Claremont Community Foundation event that we wrote about a couple months ago. This was the City loaning this public resource out to a private organization for a charity fundraiser, one of many CCF Party Parade events.

The CCF website said this about the Trolley Folly before the March 21st event slipped into the past (click on image adjacent to text):

With former Claremont Mayor and Author Judy Wright.

Ride the new Claremont Trolley as we travel from the Metrolink Parking Lot to Oak Park Cemetery and Russian Village, and then on to Padua Hills Theater, the Wilderness Park, and Webb School.

The tour of our vertical city will include residential neighborhoods in context including architecture by Gordon Kaufmann, Helen Wren, Paul Williams, Cliff May, Alan Taylor, Konstanty Stys, and Robert Orr. Architectural examples from Myron Hunt, Gordon Kaufmann, and Edward Durrell Stone, among others, as well as landscape architecture by Edward Huntsman Trout, Thomas Church, and Ralph Cornell, will be components of The Claremont Colleges. In the Village we will see and talk about what makes a downtown a downtown - the architecture, the people, the restaurants, the shops, the services, etc. The tour will take approximately two hours.
9:30 a.m. - Noon
or
12:30 - 3 p.m.

With light refreshments from Noon until 1 p.m.

$35 per person
Capacity: 20 guests per tour

Hosts:
Judy Wright
Kristin and Steve Hagstrom
Vicke Selk

Sponsored by the City of Claremont

The CCF's website said that both sessions, morning and afternoon, were sold out, so the Trolley was likely as full as you're ever going to see it. At 20 guests per session it was running at about 2,000 percent of its usually usage. Maybe we could convince the CCF to take over the lease.

A Better Claremont

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Candidate Forum Ratings

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

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

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

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

A Concerned Claremont Citizen

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

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

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

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

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

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)

News of the News

A reader who caught our post about the Claremont Courier's quality assurance problems had some thoughts on yesterday's Courier's city council report:

SUBJECT: demand grows for poor cell phone service
DATE: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 12:55 PM
TO: Claremont Buzz

The Claremont Currier:

"With the additional funding of $527,859, Padua Park will now host two soccer fields, one of them with lights, walking trails and native landscaping."

- A soccer field with native landscaping -- that's really gonna interfere with the passing game....

"The strawberry patch section of the property is privately owner."

"The Police Commission will bring the requested information back before the council by December, Commission Carol Painter said."

- I didn't realize the Carol Painter problem was serious enough to require its own committee.

"As demand grows for better cell phone coverage that is notoriously poor in many parts of the city..."

"The presence of the horses...provides an extra bonus."

- At the equestrian center.

Wowsers.

Courier publisher Peter Weinberger, whose father Martin published and edited the paper for over 50 years, had a "My Side of the Line" column yesterday announcing the departure of Courier editor Rebecca JamesCourie. JamesCourie has been replaced by 30-year Claremont resident Kathryn Dunn, who had been working at the paper as a production editor.

Weinberger also wrote that he would be taking a more active hand in the paper's management:

So after working 30 years at 7 different newspapers, carrying a wide range of titles and responsibilities, I assume the role my father carried since before I was born. As many of my colleagues around the nation leave the newspaper industry crumbling around them, I feel fortunate to be managing this newspaper in such a great town. Let us not forget my parents are still keeping an eye on all stuff going on around Claremont. We are excited at what the future will bring.

But this story does not end yet. We have another announcement to make. The COURIER has promoted Kathryn Dunn to managing editor. She will run the daily operations of the newspaper by coordinating our news and editorial coverage. In my opinion, this is the most important job at the paper.

Ms. Dunn has the perfect background to handle her new role. She is a Claremont news junkie with a keen sense on what issues are important to us. She’s lived here for 30 years and is raising 2 young boys going through the Claremont school system. Ms. Dunn has worked at the COURIER for 17 years, working in almost every capacity during that time. She will continue to play a role in the design and story placement for future issues.

Good luck to Dunn, who will undoubtedly discover that the Claremont 400 can be a terror to deal with if they're displeased with the coverage they get on their issues. The pressure the Claremonsters bring can be pretty awful. The elder Weinberger was an expert at getting the real news out and at presenting balanced views of local issues without bowing to the peer pressure of people like current Mayor Ellen Taylor or former Mayor Judy Wright.

The town's doyennes are of the opinion that the Courier should be more of a community cheerleader, a kind of Chamber of Commerce newsletter, rather than a real newspaper. If the new editor and publisher can't maintain that balance, then expect more fluff, more of the party line, and a less representative portrait of the community.

You Must Remember This

According to an article by Daily Bulletin court reporter Will Bigham, a Claremont citizens group is suing Claremont McKenna College and the city of Claremont to try to stop CMC's planned Kravis Center:

CLAREMONT - A neighborhood group that opposes plans by Claremont McKenna College to construct a new campus center has filed a lawsuit against the college and the city and is seeking a court order halting the project.

The group, called Protect Our Neighborhoods, filed the complaint July 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The group contends that the city, in approving plans for the college's Kravis Center, failed to properly address the project's impact on air quality, noise and parking in surrounding neighborhoods.

"The residents are just trying to make sure the problems the project is going to create are adequately mitigated, so it doesn't create problems outside the university," said Ray Johnson, a Temecula attorney who represents the group.

Plans for the four-story Kravis Center include construction of classrooms, space for five of the college's 10 research institutes, and offices for faculty, admissions and financial-aid staff members.

In July, the City Council had rejected Protect Our Neighborhood's appeal of a Claremont Planning Commission's decision to allow the Kravis Center plan to go forward. The Council voted 4-1 to deny the appeal, a decision that led to the present lawsuit.

That lone "No" vote was Councilmember Sam Pedroza's. It was nice, for a change, to see him stand up for a neighborhood trying to fight for its identity. Pedroza is usually at his best when he votes his conscience, rather than taking his marching orders from some of his Claremont 400 supporters like former Mayor Judy Wright, who ran Pedroza's first, failed 2003 campaign for Council.

The neighborhood Pedroza supported with his "No" vote is the Arbol Verde area, which has historically been Claremont's Latino enclave and the residents have traditionally been treated by the City as second-class citizens. Mills Ave. used to run through there, and the neighborhood have their own church at one time. However, when the Claremont Colleges decided the City needed to close off Mills Ave., one of the results was that the neighborhood church had to be razed.

The story of what happened to Arbol Verde's church, doesn't make it into Judy Wright's "Claremont: A Pictorial History," or in Claremont Heritage's narrative of the town. For the real story, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Forked Tongues

Jack Crabbe: ...we come to a place knowed as the Indian Nations. It was a tract of land by the Washita River that had been give forever to the Indians by the Congress and the President of the United States. We was safe there. This was Indian land as long as grass growed and wind blowed and the sky is blue.
.....
I reckon right then I come close to turning pure Indian, and I probably would have spent the rest of my days with Sunshine and her sisters. But sometimes grass don't grow, wind don't blow and the sky ain't blue.

- Screenplay, Little Big Man (1970), Writers: Thomas Berger and Calder Willingham

Broken promises are a Claremont 400 thing, and people who've lived here any length of time could tell you about any number of misrepresentations made by this group, either through the city government they run or through their educational arm, the Claremont Unified School District.

So, the 400 will routinely speak with forked tongues to get whatever it is they want, then eventually go back on their word.

For instance:

Daily Bulletin writer Wes Woods II had an article that also appeared in the Contra Costa Times about the installation of some temporary bleachers at Claremont High School's football field. As Woods explains, the 25-foot high bleachers are a point of contention with people living next to the field, who've complained that people standing atop the bleachers can see into the residents' homes:

"It's not even a nice thing to look at," said Erik Ennerberg, 69, inside his residence Friday. He and some neighbors explained Friday how the temporary bleachers for Claremont High School's athletic field are an eyesore.

"The worst part is, it doesn't have to be here," Ennerberg said of the football bleachers.

Ennerberg and residents like Deedee and Landis MacIntosh are in agreement and showed up Thursday night at a Claremont Unified School District board meeting to voice their complaints.

On Friday, the bleachers near the residences were shrouded by a green cover, because residents had complained that people could stand on the bleachers and look into windows.

The green cover solution hasn't helped, neighbors said.

"If you look out of the window, you used to see sky," an exasperated Ennerberg said Friday.

On Thursday, neighbors told the school board about an agreement in 2000 between the board of education and residents who live near the athletic field.

The agreement, of which Ennerberg has copies, describes how the board would compromise with the neighbors by not building a stadium complex in exchange for their support for a $2.5 million bond to refurbish the athletic field.

There was also a matter of stadium lights, which were once temporary but which are about to become permanent fixtures. Saturday's Claremont Courier had that story:

Spectators who attend Claremont High School home football games will have a better view of the field action this season. In fact, so will the players and coaches.

The installation of 4 new permanent light fixtures at the CHS Stadium brings more light to the field and replaces the rental units used in the past.

“The 4 fixtures are permanent and provide much better lighting,” said Jeff Shoemaker, assistant director of Claremont Unified School District’s Service Center. “Before, we would rent the lights. We used to have 3 fixtures that were all on the south side and there were none on the north. What would happen was that there would be light spillage and plus, we were using a diesel generator for the lights. So this cuts down on pollution.”

The district has worked with Musco Lighting and Mechanical Electrical Instrumentation (MEI) in order to bring the new lighting system to life. Musco Lighting provided the rental lights last year, but the district decided to incorporate a permanent set of lights this year.

Bait-and-switch, again; or game, set, and match to the Claremont 400, who were able to swindle the football field neighbors into not opposing the bond for the CHS athletic field. If history (real history, not the Judy Wright variety) shows us anything, it's that the Claremonsters will promise the moon to get what they want. Keeping their word of honor is another matter. Then again, you have to honor to pledge to in the first place for one's word to mean something.

By the way, Musco Lighting seems to be the Claremonsters' vendor of choice when it comes to outdoor sports lighting. Besides the school district, the city of Claremont looooves Musco to the point that city staff schills for Musco at every opportunity. You'd think they owned stock in the company the way they stand up for their friends at Musco.

In February, we noted that Musco would be providing the new field lighting for College Park. Also, Musco did the quick and dirty "study" during the run-up to the Padua Sports Park EIR. No surprise then that Musco, who will undoubtedly get the contract (they seem to be hard-wired into every contract; other vendors don't even bother to bid) for the Padua Sports Park lights, found that the 100-foot lighting standards for the Padua project would have no adverse impact on the area which has strict limitations on lighting. (There's another bait-and-switch on that count, as we noted last week.)

The 400's operational strategy in all these sorts of things is to avoid a drawn out conflict if possible, and then go ahead with whatever it was they wanted in the first place. They promise all sorts of things, even come up with detailed, official processes in which they promise to take certain steps to mitigate any potential issues. But after 5, 10, 15 years go by, they ignore all those promises and do exactly what the folks opposed to the given project had warned they would.

If you've had a problem with the city making these sorts of pledges and then failing to follow through on them, write us and send photos if you can. We'll post them as an ongoing "Claremont Bait-and-Switch" series.

Claremont Is: Nuttiness You Can Savor

David Allen has a column today talking about last week's grand opening for the year-old Claremont Village Expansion.

If the timing seems strange, you're not alone. Allen shares your confusion:

PEOPLE CALL it the mall, or the Village Expansion, or Village West.

And now a new name has surfaced for Claremont's expanded downtown: Village Square.

That name was promoted last Friday at the formal opening of the development, which is bordered by Indian Hill Boulevard, Oberlin Avenue and First and Second streets and has a small hotel, restaurants, shops and a movie theater.

If the timing seems puzzling, that's because the first businesses opened in summer 2007. And yet no ribbon-cutting ceremony had taken place. How did we stand the suspense?

And so we gathered in the civic square near the Laemmle theater and Le Pain Quotidien for speeches, a stilt walker and free food.

This is the fourth ceremony I've attended related to the Expansion, my favorite being the one where they unveiled the sidewalks. As I've said before, Claremont will celebrate the opening of an envelope.

This sort of silliness is exactly what Claremont loves to do. Don't forget that we had two centennial celebrations twenty years apart, one in 1987 and another in 2007, so that Judy Wright could preside over her own town 100th birthday back when she was still mayor.

All you have to do to see the absurdity of this self-important town government is go over to the northeast corner of First St. and Oberlin and take a look at the commemorative plaque from September, 2003, that marks the "Village Expansion Infrastructure".

Yes, only in Claremont would officials erect a bronze monument to sewers and underground utilities. The plaque lists the two main architects of this Claremontian nuttiness:

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