Debate Tonight

This evening the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area (mostly just Claremont, not so much Area) will hold a forum for candidates running for the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education and Citrus College Board of Governors.

The LWV will hold the forum in the Padua Room of the Alexander Hughes Community Center at 1700 N. Danbury Rd. The forum starts at 7pm.

If you can't make the LWV forum, you can download and watch video of Active Claremont's September 22 CUSD candidate forum.  You'll find the file here.  To start the download, just click on the time or file size columns. It'll take a while, even with a fast Internet connection.

City Election News

COURIER ENDORSES PEDROZA, NASIALI, AND ?

Besides the story of Flyergate, last Saturday's Claremont Courier also carried to Courier's endorsements for the March 8 municipal election.

Like the Daily Bulletin, the Courier endorsed incumbent Sam Pedroza, who looked a little gaunt in his Courier photo, his weight loss apparently the by-product of a bicycling regime of one sort or another. As much as we hate to admit it, we really can't fault either paper for choosing Pedroza as one of its endorsees. We don't usually agree with him, but he gets the nod incumbents usually get absent any scandals or missteps in office.

The Courier also echoed the Bulletin in its endorsement of Opanyi Nasiali, who is running for the third time. The Courier cited Nasiali's volunteer work and his participation as a City commissioner and economic sustainability committee member. The Courier also pointed out that Nasiali worked both on the successful Johnson's Pasture Measure S bond campaign in 2006 and on the campaign against the $95 million Measure CL school bond.

While the first two picks were easy calls, the choice for the third and final seat was a tough one. Claremont 400 candidate Robin Haulman might have been the Courier's pick, but her campaign continually shot itself in the foot, with the final disgrace coming at the February 17 League of Women Voters candidate forum when Haulman's husband Alexander Sweida swiped a bunch of candidate Jay Pocock's fliers and threw them in the trash. So between her actions and her hubby's, Haulman's chances of that coveted Courier endorsement were nil.

Presuming the Courier didn't take Citizen Michael John Keenan, Joseph Armendarez, or Rex Jaime seriously, that left the Bulletin's third choice, Jay Pocock, and former Democratic State Senate candidate Joseph Lyons. The Courier went for Lyons, who because of his lack of past civic involvement has been something of a cipher. Lyons really is the a great Claremont 400 candidate, relying on them for their votes, especially from local retirement communities like Pilgrim Place, and apparently without any of his own opinions or experience in city issues to muck things up for the 400.

We'll see how the Courier and Bulletin endorsements hold up. The last three or four council elections the Courier has been the more accurate of the two newspapers, but a lot can happen between now and March 8. We await the Claremonsters' usual election eve surprise, either through a letter or ad in the Courier the Saturday before the election, or through a last minute mailer landing in the last few days of the campaign. The 400 usually tries to stir up some imagined scandal very late in the game - too late to be rebutted by their target.

As Flyergate, Pasturegate, Signgate, and Shillgate (say, they really are giving new meaning to the term "gated community") have shown in this election, the one thing we can count on is that the Claremonsters will do just about anything to win, and, much like Wile E. Coyote's schemes, their tricks often blow up in their faces.

* * * * *

Speaking of Flyergate, Courier reporter Tony Krickl has the Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" on his Courier City Beat blog. LWV president Ellen Taylor doesn't come off much better than Haulman's husband does in Krickl's post:

Further defending his actions, Sweida said he was just following the League of Women Voter's policy on negative campaign material. He asked Ellen Taylor, president of Claremont's chapter of the League, if he could remove the fliers. Taylor told him to go ahead, even though she didn't inspect the material beforehand to see if it actually contained "negative" information.

This incident is troubling from many perspectives. With his actions, Sweida has certainly embarrassed his wife and may have cost her the election. Dirty tactics like this just don't sit well with voters.

Taylor defended her decision by saying the League is anti-biased in local elections. However by approving this behavior, she showed a clear bias against Pocock. And that reflects poorly on the entire organization.

And what do other League officials think about what happened?

"It would be better to actually look at the material before making a decision on what to do with it," said Jack Mills, Vice President of the League.

Krickl also quotes Mills as saying that he is unaware of any LWV policy against negative campaigning.

Here We Go Again

Reporter Tony Krickl has an article in yesterday's Claremont Courier that tells of a post-debate incident at last Thursday's League of Women Voters forum. Krickl's article said that Alexander Sweida, the husband of City Council candidate Robin Haulman, took about 50 fliers belonging to candidate Jay Pocock and threw them in the trash.

Not surprisingly, former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor, a/k/a The Cookie Monster, a/k/a Queen Ellen, was centrally involved. Taylor (photo, right) is the Claremont LWV chapter president.

Krickl reported that after the LWV forum ended, Betty Crocker, who works for candidate Opanyi Nasiali's campaign, was talking to Sweida when she saw him accidentally drop "about 50 [Pocock] fliers" onto the floor. Sweida scooped up the fliers and by his own admission threw them away. Krickl quoted Crocker as saying "He looked like he got caught caught with his hand in the cookie jar," which turned out to be a apt metaphor, considering Taylor's involvement in Thursday's incident.

Krickl spoke with Sweida, who claimed he took offense to the fliers because "he felt they contained lies about his wife." The article said the part Sweida took exception to was a line that said "Haulman and [Joseph] Lyons support tax increases (DO YOU?)."

For your reference, here's a Pocock flyer insert from yesterday's Courier. It contains the exact quote cited by Krickl:

Click on Image to Enlarge

In the Courier article, Sweida defended himself by saying he checked with Taylor first and asked "if he could dispose of the material because he felt it contained negative claims about his wife." Notice that he did not used the word "lie." Taylor gave the okay, and Sweida said, "I was just complying with the League's policy on negative campaign material...."

Incredibly, Taylor, who was quoted in the Krickl article, said she didn't review Pocock's fliers before giving Sweida permission to throw them away, she just took his work and allowed him to do it.

Well, we just don't know where to start. Setting aside the First Amendment, which Taylor and the LWV apparently support only on a situational basis, from our perspective this incident simply underscores what we've said all along: The LWV is very closely aligned with certain candidates in every election, picking and choosing who wins and who loses, their hypocrisy is embodied in their actions, and anyone considered an outsider in Claremont local politics faces an unlevel playing field.

Taylor tried to claim that the local LWV is an unbiased organization, and she cited the fact that they had San Dimas resident Ruth Currie moderate the candidate forum. Taylor didn't say that this is a new development for the LWV and that during the last City election in 2009, former LWV president Barbara Musselman moderated the LWV's forum. Musselman, along with people like Katie Gerecke, another former LWV president, supports Haulman and Lyons in this election.

If nothing else, this latest incident should put to rest any idea of impartiality or credibility on the LWV's part, at least when it comes to Claremont's local issues. In this campaign, as in every Claremont city election, the LWV is very much in the corner of their chosen ones. For instance, at the beginning of the debate Thursday, Haulman was introduced as the only woman running this time. Odd how the LWV used gender as a factor to single out one of their favored candidates and overlooked race with respect to the only African-American running, Opanyi Nasiali, or Rex Jaime, the only Filipino-American in the contest. Consistency, as is usual with the LWV, is not in evidence.

Now what about Alexander Sweida's claim that the Pocock flyer contained a lie about his wife's position on taxes? We checked the video for the mid-January Active Claremont candidate forum and discovered that the very first question posed by moderator and former council member Jackie McHenry was:

Do you believe that a tax increase is necessary to address revenue shortfalls [in Claremont]? If so, what taxes do you believe should be raised?

The first two candidates to answer were Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman. Both cited the Mayor's Committee on Economic Sustainability, and both Lyons and Haulman supported a hike in the City's utility tax. So you tell us, where's the lie in Pocock's line about Haulman and Lyons?

Here's video of Lyons and Haulman answering the tax question last month (notice how Haulman refers to her cheat sheet for her response):




Those of you out there in the real world, those outside the Claremont city limits, can see here just how crazy our local politics are. A truth refracted through the narrow lens of the Claremont 400 and the Claremont League of Women Voters becomes a lie, the perpetrator lays blame on his victim. Just as in the case of Haulman's false claims about her involvement in saving Johnson's Pasture, the truth matters not one bit.

Let's not let the Claremonsters confuse the issue. The central point in this instance is not whether a given candidate does or does not support tax increases; the heart of this matter lies in the sorry ethical behavior of those who control the reins of power and in the corresponding actions of those who would be kings and queens of this ridiculously small and silly fiefdom.

March MWD Water Plant Closure

The City's website reports that the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies about half the water to Claremont, will close its F. E. Weymouth Treatment Plant in La Verne for seismic retrofitting for 10 days in March. The MWD is asking residents to voluntarily reduce outdoor water usage during the closure.

Here's what the City's website had to say about the closure:

Residents Asked To Reduce Outdoor Water Usage March 18-27

The Metropolitan Water District has announced it will be closing its Weymouth Water Plant for repair in March. The Weymouth Water Plant is a major water treatment plant in La Verne that supplies water to 1.7 million Metropolitan Water District Customers. Claremont residents receive imported water from the plant through Three Valleys Water. Beginning March 4 the plant will reduce production of water and will stop completely from March 18 through March 27. Claremont residents are asked to reduce their outdoor water usage during the closure period. Residents should are encouraged to limit watering, hand washing vehicles, filling swimming pools, and hosing down driveways. The plant will be at full capacity by April 17, 2011.

Back when the City was still considering a municipal control of the water company, the League of Women Voters for the Claremont Area issued a report on water issues.

The report carried a useful graphic that showed how water gets to your tap in Claremont:

Click to Enlarge

Debatable Tactics

Claremont 400 Marionette

Elections bring out the worst in the Claremont 400, who would do just about anything to keep control of this silly little town. Some of the campaign theatrics seem to have been lifted directly from infomercials or patent medicine salesmen. For instance, at the 2009 election kick-off party for former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, one of her supporters, Ken Corhan of Measure CL fame, got up and asked a question, acting as if he were just some random member of the public rather than one of the people who signed Healy's nomination papers.

Witness the traditional candidate forums, of which there are many. The most important of these, or at least the ones with the largest attendance, are the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Active Claremont and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

The first two of those organizations have already held their events. The LWV candidate forum is Thursday, February 17, in the Padua Room of the City's Alexander Hughes Community Center.

In the past, the LWV forum has seemed to favor the Claremont 400 candidates, often by picking questions that highlighted their candidates' issues and by avoiding those that might bring their friends harsher scrutiny. In contrast, the Active Claremont forum has been something like the People's Choice Awards, with the audience presenting questions to the candidates.

The AC website has video of their January 19 forum posted online. You can download the video file and, if you're into self-flagellation, you can watch the entire one hour and fifty-four minutes. One interesting change the AC board made this year was to allow the audience members to ask the questions themselves, rather than writing them down on index cards as has been the past practice.

This change worked out well for one audience member, Mel Boynton (photo, right). Boynton took the mic and asked the following:

I'd like each of the candidates to address what you know about the Youth and Family Committee and its 11 goals for working with the school district, the City and non-profits and what you'd bring to the table to make that, uh, increase the quality of life for our youth and family [sic].

How many candidates would be able to enumerate even one of the those eleven Youth and Family Master plan goals, which appeared in the amended YFMP in 2007? Of all the many issues facing Claremont how could a candidate have known to prepare for a question like the one posed by Boynton?

It turned out that only one of them could give the sort of answer Boynton was fishing for. That person was Robin Haulman, who ticked off nine of the 11 Youth and Family Committee goals, virtually word for word, from page 15 of the YFMP's action plan. Haulman didn't even bother to memorize the 11 goals. She just turned to a page in the notebook she referred to throughout the debate and, with the aid of her reading glasses, simply read straight from the YFMP action plan.

Even with the aid of crib notes, Haulman got only nine of the 11 goals and didn't even bother to answer the second part of Boynton's question. So, while we can count on Haulman to know some of the goals, if elected she won't do anything to improve the quality of life for our youth and families. The takeaway was that Haulman does fine when she can recite text, but she can't put an answer into context, which qualifies her as the perfect Claremont 400 marionette.

Here's a video clip of Boynton's question, followed by Haulman's response (watch Haulman looking for the right page to read from as Boynton asks his question):




And, just for your reference, here's the section of the YFMP that Haulman lifted her answer from. If you print it out and read along as you watch the video, you can see just how closely her answer matches the list:

Click Image to Enlarge

How do we know Boynton is hooked up with the 400? Well, for one thing, Boynton was listed as a Bridget Healy supporter in 2009. And he's supporting Sam Pedroza, Robin Haulman and Joseph Lyons this time around.

Coincidentally (or not) Boynton is on the board of the Pomona Valley chapter of the United Nations Association of the US, which had as its last speaker Joseph Lyon's campaign treasurer, J. Michael Fay. Fay, you'll recall, was also the treasurer for the Yes on CL school bond campaign last November. Another board member (and current president) is Katie Gerecke, who has served as a Claremont League of Women Voter's president and whose husband Bob is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club.

Also, as he said in his introduction to his question, Boynton is a member of the City's Youth and Family Committee, which includes Butch Henderson as a member. Henderson, along his wife Rosemary, is an honorary co-chair of Robin Haulman's election committee.

Boynton's question itself wouldn't be an issue if it weren't coupled by that quite specific response by Haulman. How could Haulman have known to include that one specific page out of the thousands of pages of city staff reports, memos and correspondences without some advanced notice?

We couldn't help but notice, too, that Boynton's LinkedIn page used to list "political strategies" as one of his specialties (he deleted that particular specialty after we posted this):


Boynton's CV also lists some of the organizations he belongs to. These include the Claremont United Church of Christ, where Butch Henderson was the senior pastor, and the Claremont Democratic Club, which has become the Claremonsters' tool for election outreach in what is supposed to be a non-partisan election.

So, to recap, here's what we learned from the Active Claremont forum:

• Mel Boynton? Smooth operator.
• Robin Haulman? Not so much.

Mean Girls

SUGAR AND SPICE

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

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

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

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

CAN YOU RELATE?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


BIRDS ON A WIRE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Money Trail

As you may have heard, Saturday's edition of the Claremont Courier raised a lot of questions about the financing behind CUSD's Measure CL campaign.

Courier reporter Tony Krickl got a Nancy Mintie-style response from Yes on CL treasurer J. Michael Fay as he answered Krickl's questions about the source of the majority of the Yes money. Fay's response seemed to underscore rather than refute bond critics' concerns about the enormous amounts of money pumped into the Yes campaign by out-of-town school contractors:

“These aren’t just outside interests,” said J. Michael Fay, campaign treasurer for Yes on Measure CL. “Most of the companies have already conducted business in the district with Measure Y. So now they’ve volunteered to support the [Measure CL] campaign.”

Fay went on to say that any future school district contracts would have to go out to bid, so there's no quid pro quo involved. Fay, however, overlooks the fact that these bond servicing companies and contractors have a big picture to consider. This could just be thank-you money for past contracts, and dollars given here in Claremont can translate to contracts with other districts.

We got to thinking about this and looked back at the sources of some of the big money for Measure Y, CUSD's last bond measure in the June 2000 election. One of Measure Y's campaign donors was the architectural design firm Flewelling & Moody. On 5/11/00, F & M donated $2,500 to the Yes on Measure Y campaign. On 5/30/00, the week before the election, F & M made a second donation of $2,500.

Did they receive any consideration in return? We can't say for sure, but F & M's website does list Claremont Unified as one of their clients from 2005:

Click on Images to Enlarge

Flewelling & Moody has kicked in $5,000 so far for the current Yes on CL campaign. Judging from the way it went after the last Claremont school bond, if Measure CL passes, there's no telling what sort of contract they might land five years hence after everyone's forgotten about this election.

When one roots around, one starts to find all sorts of things. For instance, F & M, as well as the San Rafael financial advising firm Northcross Hill & Ach (another $5,000 Yes on CL donor) and Rancho Cucamonga-based WLC Architects (a whopping $25,000 to the Yes on CL campaign), are all sponsors of the Claremont Chamber of Commerce. So we shouldn't be surprised that the Chamber's governmental affairs committee voted to endorse CL after meeting with the Yes on CL campaign team and without seeking to hear at all from the No side.

The best CL information on the contract side of things comes from the agenda for the July 22, 2010, CUSD school board meeting. That was the same meeting where the school board approved the resolution to go forward with a bond election. Item 4 on that agenda was the approval of an agreement with Minnesota-based investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. (see page 3 of the full agenda at the end of this post).

Piper Jaffray has so far donated $25,000 to the Yes on CL effort. Getting back to that July 22 meeting, the Claremont school board agreed to employ them as bond underwriters should CL pass. In return, Piper Jaffray would receive the following:

Total compensation for all of the pre-election and post-election services shall not exceed 1.10% of the total principal amount of each individual General Obligation Bond issue.

Hmmmm, let's see....1.10% of $95 million (the maximum amount CUSD could seek under CL)? That's $1,045,000. Not at all a bad return on $25,000 in what amounts to, uh, marketing costs. All CUSD has done is put the big money carrot up front instead of at the end of the campaign.

Bond counsel Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth also stands to make a decent bit off CUSD property owners from a successful Yes on CL campaign - up to 1% of the total bonds issued.

This is precisely where Yes on CL campaign consultants like Jared Boigon and TBWB Strategies could easily act as facilitators, getting contractors to underwrite bond campaigns in some places and then offering introductions between those same contractors and other districts that have successfully passed their bond measures with the aid of these ever-helpful consultants.

It's a great business model, earning Boigon and TBWB $35,000 from the school district for pre-campaign polling services, along with another $10,000 as of September 30 from the Yes on CL campaign. And the money wheel keeps spinning as long as voters are naive enough to believe the misinformation issued forth from the mouths of people like Michael Fay, who manages to remain credible in our community no matter how many times he and his friends play this game.

We can't help but stand in awe at the hypocrisy of those among the Claremont 400 who are pushing this incredibly flawed school bond. One sees this when the League of Women Voters complains about the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opening up the floodgates to corporate election contributions as the local LWV chapter stays silent when companies with financial stakes in a successful bond campaign donate all but $2,000 of the $66,027 (and counting) raised by the Yes on CL campaign.

So, let's get this straight. Investment banks contributing to the campaigns of elected officials in charge of financial reform? Bad. Investment banks contributing to school bond campaigns they stand to earn $1 million from? Good.

Hypocritical? Certainly. But, heck, if you're a Claremont 400 critic, we suppose it's job security.

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Here's the business operations agenda for that July 22, 2010, CUSD school board meeting:

Community Service

The debate over the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million Measure CL bond has raged in the pages of the Claremont Courier's reader letters section these past few weeks. Citizens on both sides of the school bond issue have used letters to the Courier as a sort of community forum.

The Courier itself seems to have slanted its coverage more towards the Yes on CL side, presenting an interview with members of the Yes on CL committee, taking readers on a CUSD-sponsored dog-and-pony show tour of Claremont High School, tossing in an article praising the district's test scores, as well as what amounted to an interview with Yes on CL's campaign consultant Jared Boigon of TBWB Strategies, who has been stage managing the yes campaign from San Francisco (at the cost of many tens of thousands of dollars, we might add).

Still, there not many other places to find both sides of CL the argument presented, the Courier did manage this past Wednesday to throw the No on CL group a bone by featuring an interview with their spokespeople, Donna Lowe, Opanyi Nasiali, and Jay Pocock. In a normal election year, our various local service organizations and institutions would be holding election forums where matters such as the November school bond could be debated.

For example, The Kiwanis Club, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, Pilgrim Place, the Claremont Manor, Our Lady of Assumption Church, and Active Claremont all traditionally hold city council candidate forums, as they will next spring in advance of the March, 2011, municipal election.

The local League of Women Voters chapter holds the forum with the greatest cachet. It's usually one of the best attended of the candidate debates, and a good showing there can certainly help a prospective council member's chances of winning a seat.

Which is why this blurb from Daily Bulletin reporter Wes Woods' Claremont Now blog strikes us as odd:

Pros and cons on the nine California propositions for the Nov. 2 general election will be discussed at 2 p.m. Sunday Oct. 10 at the Claremont Public Library, 208 Harvard Ave.

The league and the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Pomona Valley Alumnae Chapter will host a 59th Assembly District candidates forum. The forum will run from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday Oct.11 in the Padua Room at the Alexander [Hughes] Community Center at 1700 Danbury Road.

We would have expected the LWV, an organization that prides itself on its non-partisan efforts at educating voters on local, state, and national issues, to have been one of the first to offer both sides of the Measure CL debate to give their reasons why voters should be for or against the bond. This is clearly an issue that's generated a great deal of community interest and one that will affect CUSD property owners' pocketbooks for years to come. Yet, Measure CL is conspicuously absent from the League's fall election events.

Similarly, the Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations, including Sustainable Claremont, have endorsed the bond without giving opponents a chance to present their views. Whatever side one favors in the Measure CL election, all this lack of activity by our so-called communitarian organizations gives a good insight into how things work in our little, close-minded community.

As always, it's not what you know but who you know. It's a good ol' girls and boys network of the same circle of people running each and every group mentioned above, along with the Claremont Education Foundation, the Claremont Community Foundation, the Red Cross, and a host of other local charities.

The result is that opponents of any issues have an extremely hard time making their cases to the voters. Forums, by their very nature, require each side to have equal time. So even if the LWV tries to tailor the debate questions to the strengths of the people it favors, they still have to give opponents a chance to respond.

The absence of any school bond forums makes us wonder if the League and their fellow Claremont 400 organizations recognize Measure CL's weaknesses and are trying to help it by not holding any public debates. This goes along with the perception that bond's proponents are trying to avoid substantive discussions of the measure.

All of the Yes on CL mailings, for instance, speak in generalities, and the proponents, as well as the school board, have failed to offer up any specific details of how the money will be spent. For instance, the most recent mailings, which went out this past Monday and Tuesday, don't make any mention the $95 million price tag. And you'll never hear them talk about the $250 million total price after financing the bond for 40 years - an extra long payment schedule CUSD had to use to keep the payments per household at $45 per $100,000 of assessed value.

Further, CUSD has actually ignored public records requests and has withheld public information on the bond's financial details because they know that their own numbers will torpedo their arguments (another thing you won't hear about in the Daily Bulletin or the Claremont Courier).

The one organization that is holding a forum is Active Claremont. The AC school bond forum will be 7pm Thursday, October 21, in the Santa Fe room of the Alexander Hughes Center. Both sides will answer questions submitted by those in attendance.

By the way, Active Claremont, unlike the League or the Chamber of Commerce, is truly neutral, which probably explains why they're willing to host the debate. They don't endorse one side or another, they just let them talk. So let's stop giving false praise to those other groups for their community building efforts. The real communitarians in Claremont demonstrate their respect for all people and opinions in town through their actions, not their words.

Pension Tension

To follow on Friday's post about Bell, CalPERS, and Glenn Southard, we came across a New York Times article by Ron Lieber titled "The Coming Class War Over Public Pensions." (The NYT has toned the title down to "Battle Looms Over Huge Costs of Public Pensions.")

Lieber writes that our labor force is evolving into a two-class system. On the one hand are public employees, who continue to receive generous, taxpayer-funded defined benefit pensions with built-in cost of living increases. On the other are private sector employees, most of whom do not have pensions but who may, if they work at the right place and happen to be savers, have 401(k) or IRA accounts in which they, not taxpayers, bear all of the risk.

According to Lieber, taxpayers will likely be asked to rescue underfunded public pension plans for cities and states when those begin to go underwater. As Claremont city council member Peter Yao said a couple weeks ago, our own employee' CalPERS pension account is underfunded to the tune of up to $50 million, something that the majority of the council (Elderkin, Pedroza, and Schroeder) and the Claremont 400, refuse to admit.

Claremont's pension problems are just one small part of a national problem. How much money are we talking about? Lieber tells us:

At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t,” as in titanic and terrifying.

The figure comes from a study by the Pew Center on the States that came out in February. Pew estimated a $1 trillion gap as of fiscal 2008 between what states had promised workers in the way of retiree pension, health care and other benefits and the money they currently had to pay for it all. And some economists say that Pew is too conservative and the problem is two or three times as large.

So a question of extraordinary financial, political, legal and moral complexity emerges, something that every one of us will be taking into town meetings and voting booths for years to come: Given how wrong past pension projections were, who should pay to fill the 13-figure financing gap?

As Yao could tell Lieber, here in Claremont we won't be having those public meetings until the City is at the verge of bankruptcy. The same is true with nearly every other municipality in the state and nation. As a result, the people Lieber calls "have-nots," private sector workers, will also be the ones asked to bear the burden of maintaining the lifestyles of our current public sector retirees, who for the most part refuse to give any concessions on their benefits.

Our public sector pension costs are compounded by the practice of pension spiking, in which public workers in their final year of employment manipulate the rules to drive up the value of their pensions. CalPERS offers a couple different ways of determining pension payments. Under many, such as in the city of Bell, the amount is determined by the employee's final year of compensation. If employees game the system by working a lot of overtime or by cashing out unused vacation time, their pensions can end up significantly higher than their final base salary.

Those spiked pensions cause additional problems for already underfunded CalPERS plans because the employees end up earning much more than can be covered by the money they and their employers actually paid into the system.

To no one's surprise, former Bell city manager Robert Rizzo has become the poster boy for outrageous public pensions. The Daily Bulletin ran an article Saturday by reporter Sandra Emerson, who explained that as a result of how CalPERS formulates pension payments, the city of Rancho Cucamonga, where Rizzo worked for about eight years, will be on the hook for about $125,000 of Rizzo's estimated $650,000 a year pension, assuming Rizzo survives his tarring and feathering long enough to collect.

As we said Friday, when former Claremont city manager Glenn Southard retired from Indio, his base salary was $300,000 a year. However, Southard also could have earned as much a $30,000 performance bonus, and he cashed out $162,000 in unused vacation and sick time. If Southard's pension is based simply on his final year of earnings, and if any bonus and accured vacation/sick time count towards that amount, he could end up with a pension well in excess of his salary.

Whatever pension Southard gets, because of CalPERS' crazy rules, Claremont will be on the hook for a considerable portion of his pension. Because Southard worked here for 17 years, Claremont will have to pay for those 17 years, but the payout will be based on his final year in Indio. For Claremont's share of his retirement, Glenn will qualify for 2.5% of whatever that final Indio figure was times 17 (each year that he worked here).

The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility (CFFR) has a website that takes public information from CalPERS and CalSTRS (the California State Teachers' Retirement System) and posts the names and annual pension payments for anyone getting more than $100,000 a year.

Southard isn't on there yet because the figures haven't been updated since his retirement earlier this year, but another familiar Claremont personality did have her information posted. Our own Bridget Healy, Southard's right-hand woman in Claremont and Indio, retired in 2008 .

CFFR puts Healy's CalPERS pension at $166,701.84, of which Claremont will pay around $100,000 for Healy's roughly 18 years in Claremont, based on her $220,000 final year's salary in Indio. Healy, who seems to be maneuvering for another run at a Claremont city council seat, never has explained how she would manage her conflict of interest when it comes to pension matters here. However, we're going to guess that Healy's the pull-the-ladder-up-after-me type and probably won't have any qualms when it comes to cutting future employee benefits.

Here from CFFR are the Indio retirees in the six-figure club, soon to be joined by our friend Glenn:


And, in case you were wondering about our fair city, here is our $100,000+ CalPERS club:


We also present the Claremont Unified School District's CalSTRS pension high rollers:



There will be others joining these lists. Former Claremont Human Services Director Dick Guthrie, for instance, isn't on Claremont's CalPERS list, though his pension has to be well over $100,000. Former Claremont Community Services Director Mark Harmon and former Community Facilities Manager Mark Hodnick, too will join the exorbitant pensions club.

We're also struck by the presence of a number of prominent Claremonters on these lists. Council member Larry Schroeder is represented on the city of Lakewood's CalPERS pension rolls. Also, two influential members of the Claremont League of Women Voters own hefty public pensions: Bridget Healy and Anita Hughes, the wife of the late former Claremont mayor and CUSD assistant superintendent Alexander Hughes.

Yet another person, LWV president and Claremont Police Commissioner Barbara Musselman, is a former San Bernardino County Human Resources Director and receives a large San Bernardino County Employees' Retirement Association pension (SBCERA doesn't make its individual pension payouts readily available for the public).

Claremont's unsustainable pension obligations are the number one long term threat to our city's financial security. Yet, no one in any position of power, with the exceptions of Council members Yao and Corey Calaycay, are willing to deal with that threat. Instead, groups like the local League of Women Voters, who remained preoccupied with rehabilitating former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor's image and helping Healy get elected to the council, are content to allow the City fly into a fiscal abyss.

One would expect people like Musselman or Healy to express a little more empathy and gratitude toward the people who fund their wealthy lifestyles. Instead, we constantly see them pushing this or that costly toy - a trolley, say - that only adds to the burden borne by the working stiffs who have to pay for for Musselman's and Healy's retirements as well as their own.

Lost in all this is the unfairness of forcing the public, the majority of whom do not have the luxury of unearned, spiked pension benefits with automatic cost-of-living increases, to rescue these underfunded public pension systems when they become insolvent. If our local and state elected officials and their supporters continue on their present course, that class war that Ron Lieber wrote of will move very quickly from metaphor to reality.

Sorry State

The Claremont Chamber of Commerce is hosting the second annual "State of City" luncheon 11:30am today at the Candlelight Pavilion on Foothill Blvd. The Gas Co., Golden State Water Co., Southern California Edison, and VVS, Inc., are co-sponsoring the event.

The Chamber's website had this information:

State of the City Luncheon
Thursday, July 15, 2010, at 11:30 AM
Candlelight Pavilion
455 W Foothill Blvd.

Claremont Cost per person is $35 RSVP's to Marlene at 909-624-1681 or Marlene(at)ClaremontChamber.org with "State of the City" in the subject line.

We'll probably get the sanitized spin on how well the city is weathering the recession because it's in the Chamber's self-interest to justify the $40,000 per year the City pays them to attract businesses and visitors to Claremont. There will probably be no mention of those 140 foreclosed residences on the market or the empty commercial space around town.

There's been an ongoing argument, in and out of City Hall, regarding the Chamber's real usefulness. Is that money really all well-spent, or would we be better off hiring a professional firm to market the town. Of course, the buy-in for a credible marketing campaign would be much, much more than $40,000 a year. The question is, would a larger expenditure result in a higher return for the City?

One thing is for sure, the Claremont 400, who are without shame, are well-represented in the Chamber. The Chamber's immediate past chair is former mayor and Preserve Claremont organizer Paul Held. The chair-elect is failed council candidate Bridget Healy. And former mayor Sandra Baldonado, current mayor Linda Elderkin, and official council photographer Sonja Stump are among the current board members.

(By the way, Healy, whom the 400 have also welcomed into the ranks of the Claremont League of Women voters, will almost certainly be back for another run at the council once her resume plumping campaign is complete. Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice....)

With the Chamber, you might just be getting what you pay for.

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.
  
  
  

Friday Mailbag

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mailbag

We received an email from a reader who noted more than a wee bit of hypocrisy from Claremont League of Women Voters Action VP Ellen Taylor. Taylor had an opinion piece on global warming in yesterday's Daily Bulletin.

You may have noticed the former Claremont mayor using her LWV position to try to rehabilitate her image with a series of white papers on various issues. Taylor has been sending these into the local papers with some regularity. (Glad to see Ellen's gotten over her irregularity, it might explain her smiles since leaving office.)

If you paid careful attention when Taylor ran for the Claremont City Council in 2005, in the months leading up to that election she did a similar thing with long letters to the Claremont Courier on various public interest issues. Whatever the merits of her arguments, she may just be running another kind of Ellen-centric campaign.

In any case, here's our reader's note:

DATE: Sunday, July 12, 2009 10:06 AM
SUBJECT: Ellen and LWV Positions on Science
TO: Claremont Buzz

Dear Buzz,

In the Sunday (07-12-09) Daily Bulletin Section B1 (front page), Ellen Taylor as Action VP for Claremont area LWV has a statement supporting the "cap-and-trade" Bill now being debated in U.S. Congress. She is invoking scientific evidence for global warming. She says "the scientific evidence is clear that climate change ... is here now." She further states: "It is our nation's responsibility to take immediate action to curb the environmental and public health damages ..." This is the same woman (on Claremont City Council) and the LWV who would not accept scientific evidence that children living within 500 feet of a freeway develop lung and other respiratory health problems. They insisted on locating affordable housing for low and lower income families at the Base Line and Towne site, despite the EIR identified health issues. Can you say hypocrisy and double talk?

Claremont LWV News

Wes Woods II posted a couple entries related to our local League of Women Voters chapter in the Daily Bulletin's Claremont Now blog.

The first post announced a forum on climate change and water issues next Saturday, June 20, from 8:30am to noon in the Padua Room of the city's Alexander Hughes Center. The Hughes Center is located at 1700 Danbury Rd.

The LWV will host the forum, and Woods writes that it is co-sponsored by Sustainable Claremont and funded by grants from the national LWV and Oxfam America. Woods' blog post has some information on the speakers:

Speakers include Dr. Bill Patzert, oceanographer and climatologist, the "prophet of California climate."

In a news release, Patzert was described as "Known for studying how Earth's oceans affect our weather and global climate and govern El Nino/La Nina weather phenomena. A 26 year Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, he has dramatically improved long-term global weather and climate forecasts for Southern California. He will discuss the impacts of longer term climate trends and global warming. Topic: "The Climate is A-Changin': California's Future Ain't What It Used TO Be.'"

The second speaker is Celeste Cantu, General Manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA).

Seating is limited, and reservations are required. You can reserve a spot by calling (909) 624-9457 or by emailing league@claremont.ca.lwvnet.org.

* * * * *

The other LWV news posted on Claremont Now was the presentation of the Claremont LWV's Ruth Ordway Award to former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor. The award, according to the LWV press release quoted by Woods, is given annually by the LWV to an "outstanding member of our community."

The LWV press release said:

"It is often difficult to recognize one particular leader among the many women and men, LWVers or not, who have given outstanding service to the Claremont Community. This year our recipient is an active LWV member with a history of diverse and effective leadership and her selection by the committee was unanimously enthusiastic.

"A native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Skidmore College, she worked as a social worker for many years before coming to Claremont over thirty years ago. Not one to be shy or hesitant, Ellen Taylor soon began to be involved in the community, and involved, indeed, she continued to be.

Indeed, shy (as well as selfless and humble) is not a word that we would associate with Taylor. Woods' blog entry quoted Taylor's email comments to Woods on the Ordway Award:

Taylor, in an e-mail, said: "I consider receiving this to be a great honor, one that I do not take lightly, since the people who have won the award in the past are some of my role models. I am humbled to be recognized by the League."

You might remember that Taylor's good friend, Sandy Baldonado, another former Claremont mayor received the LWV's Ruth Ordway Award two years ago. Like Taylor, Baldonado decided not to run for re-election after making some rather pointed comments about the Claremont electorate following the failure of the Parks and Pastures assessment district.

Just Say NO

to Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, and 1F

We now turn to the statewide ballot propositions, put on the ballot by the Legislature and the Governor for a special May 19th election. Taken all in all, these six measures, 1A through 1F are indicative of the very low regard the governing elites hold for the electorate. They deserve to fail.

Really, nobody believes the arguments for these ridiculous propositions. For example, the well-funded "Budget Reform Now", a coalition of taxpayers (hah!), business, labor, educators, public safety, seniors, Jerry Perenchio*, and Governor Schwarzenegger's "Dream Team" (what??), is so desperate it is selling these measures as "drawing the line on out-of-control state spending". Or the first flyer mailed by this ballot committee claiming "families have to live within their means. Our state government should, too."

Honestly, the politicians who put these measures on this special election ballot are campaigning for the measures by attacking themselves--the politicians. This election is all about papering over the immediate and structural issues and kicking the budget ball down the street to 2011.

Anyone with the slightest sense realizes that Propostion 1A is a huge tax increase--opponents say the largest in the history of the State of California--disguised as a spending cap. The framers of the ballot statement, with the complicity of the Legislative Analyst, conveniently neglect to mention that key fact in the ballot summary.

Proposition 1B, a corrupt political deal with the powerful teachers unions to keep them from opposing 1A, makes short-term savings in the next two years with a potential for "state costs of billions of dollars annually thereafter."

Proposition 1C steals money from the lottery to dump down the General Fund rathole, "borrowing" from future lottery profits. We've always thought the lottery was a tax on people who couldn't do arithmetic, but the People, in Their wisdom, enacted it. Our own State Senator, Bob Huff, authored the ballot argument against 1C.

Proposition 1D is another quick fix cash infusion to the General Fund for the short term, attempting to circumvent previous voter-approved initiatives on Children and Families.

Proposition 1E raids the Mental Health Services Act (Proposition 64 in 2004) programs of a half billion dollars over the next two years with "corresponding reduction in funding available for Mental Health Services Act programs."

Proposition 1F is a silly "bone" thrown at the ignorant voters by the Legislature, claiming to force politicians to do their jobs with the threat of withheld salary increases. While we think politicians ought not to be paid at all, this petty proposition is included to give a patina of propriety to the whole sorry lot of them. Fuggedabboudit.


Even the League of Women Voters--and we're no fans of the League--agree with us on the key measure: NO on Proposition 1A. And 1C, 1D, and 1E.

The last day to register for the May 19th Special Election is today, May 4th. Your voter registration document must be postmarked not later than today. Claremont City Hall is the most convenient place to take care of this today, in person.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

*Perenchio is an über-wealthy Hollywood-type with a penchant for privacy.