A behind-the-scenes look at the news of Claremont, CA. We focus on city hall, city staff, and the so-called "Claremont 400" or "Preserve Claremonters" or "Claremonsters", those goofy, too-serious, power types that run most of the town's service organizations, charities, and city commissions. Claremont is indeed a unique place, and we'll try to bring a flavor of that absurd "uniqueness" to the outside world, as well as spotlighting some of the finer things about our city and region.
As we indicated on Friday, the Claremont Unified School District's school bond campaign committee is looking to hire some able-bodied college students for its to work with its paid campaign consultant and its paid campaign manager in their "grassroots" Yes on CL effort.
We received a few emails from readers who were more than a little irritated by Yes on CL committee member Mike Seder's attempt at reaching out to his alma mater, Claremont McKenna College and CMC's Rose Institute, and we published a "Help Wanted" email from Rose fellow Douglas Johnson.
Johnson's email included this job description for the Yes on CL campaign manager position :
Campaign manager/field organizer – Claremont, CA, school bond measure.
Some political campaign experience or experience working with campaign volunteers preferred.
Irregular hours: >40 hrs/week through early November. Some evenings and weekends included.
Must have your own car. Laptop ideal but not necessary.
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
• Coordinating communication between members of the campaign team, including campaign consultant, superintendent & district officials, steering committee, volunteers, fundraising team and other community leaders and activists.
[CUSD's superintendent and district officials are barred from working directly on the campaign. Yet, according to the campaign's own job description, the district seems to be directly in charge of the campaign. Someone needs to file a complaint with the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. -ed]
• Under direction of the campaign consultant, implementation of a field campaign operation staffed by volunteers. Field operations may include volunteer recruitment, scheduling and training, voter registration, phone banks and precinct walks, vote-by-mail drives, lawn sign distribution, staging free media events and getting out the vote (GOTV) activities.
• Working with members of the fundraising team to mail invitations, request contributions, collect checks, write thank-you notes and hold events (if necessary).
• Coordinating with treasurer to ensure accurate and timely filing of campaign reports and other necessary forms.
• General day-to-day coordination and management of the campaign office, phone banks and other ongoing activities.
• Closing down campaign following election day, including the coordination of final fundraising reports, ensuring that campaign committee members and others are thanked appropriately and making arrangements to settle all outstanding campaign financial commitments.
The CMC connection for Mike Seder goes beyond his alumnus status. Seder's wife Diana is director of CMC's Career Services Center. As her CMC bio states, she "knows CMC and CMC students from start to finish."
Diana Seder Director Oversees all Career Services programs and events dseder@cmc.edu
Diana’s long-standing relationship with higher education administration started in 1987 when she graduated with her MBA from Claremont Graduate School and was hired by the same program to be their Associate Director. In 1991, she became the Acting Director of the Claremont Graduate School Office of Career Services, and then came to work at the CMC Career Services Center in 1997. Interestingly, at different times she has held both the Associate Director (Recruiting) and the Associate Director (Internship) positions as year-long assignments, so she is very familiar with the operations of the CSC. Diana assumes her role as Interim Director after an 8-year tenure with the Office of Admissions at CMC. “I know CMC and CMC students from start to finish” she says.
The Pomona City Council has approved selling $9.3 million in recovery zone facilities bonds to build a proposed business center at Fairplex along White Ave.. The bonds, according to an article in the Daily Bulletin, come courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Among other things, the center will contain a self-storage facility.
The Bulletin article, by reporter Monica Rodriguez, indicated that Pomona council members Paula Lantz and Cristina Carrizosa both had concerns that the project wouldn't generate very many jobs, which is what the federal money is supposed to do. Lantz also had reservations about the lack of much tax revenue from the proposed project.
Rodriguez also quoted Fair Association CFO Mike Seder (photo, right):
Fairplex representatives said the self-storage facility is one-half of the proposed project.
Fairplex has about 1,500 horse stalls, a large number of which are not used, said Mike Seder, vice president of finance and chief financial officer of the Los Angeles County Fair Association.
Creating a self-storage facility would allow Fairplex to take some of the excess stalls and turn them into an income-producing facility, Seder said.
"These are opportunities for us," he said, but added, "I hear your concerns about the type of project."
We're wondering if the self-storage idea was pushed by Bill Fox, one of the people behind the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million Measure CL bond. Fox owns Route 66 Self-Storage and, along with several other prominent Claremonters, is a member of the Los Angeles County Fair Association.
Fox, Seder, and Lee Jackman formed the CUSD Bond/Parcel Tax Survey Committee, which has morphed into the Measure CL bond election committee. As we've noted before, both committees have worked closely with CUSD's poll and campaign consultant, Jared Boigon.
You might recall that a couple years ago, CUSD had also agreed to convert its old district office location at Base Line Rd. and Mountain into an RV storage lot. The word on the street is that Fox, with his expertise in storage facilities, had pushed the RV idea.
(Incidentally, this all is beginning to remind us of the HBO series "The Wire," in which the same people - contractors, politicians, teachers, police, journalists, gangsters - all swirl around a dystopic Baltimore, crossing paths and pursuing their ambitions over the course of five years, while their city decays around them.)
Anyway, according to the Insider's school district moles, Fox convinced CUSD that they could make a lot of money with an RV storage facility. The RV storage idea apparently failed, because there is now a "For Lease" sign on the district's Base Line Rd. property. The sign advertises a rate of a $1 a square-foot.
This is just one more in an endless series of reasons to not trust CUSD with $95 million in bonds. Ask yourself, how much money would the school district have saved if they had left their offices at the old Base Line Rd. site instead of relocating to San Jose Ave.?
The Establishment finally came out with its much-ballyhooed List of Projects for Measure CL. This so-called "project list" is breathtaking in what it so obviously tries to hide from the voting public. In a few words, there is NOTHING there.
Attentive readers may recall that two weeks ago the Courier published Q and A article with the Bond Support and Promotion Committee, Bill Fox, Lee Jackman, and Mike Seder.
Even though Proposition 39, the law allowing this bond to go forward under the 55% threshold rules, requires that the July 22 ballot resolution by the school board be accompanied by a specific list of projects, well, there was nothing like a specific list. We commented on that issue in an earlier post.
Board member Jeff Stark opined at the July 22 School Board meeting that it was quite premature to expect a list; they needed to get a bond resolution first.
OK, but then the August 14 number of the Courier came out with the aforementioned article.
Courier:What are the specific projects and the estimated costs for each project?
Mr. Fox: "This project list is something that the district has been working on for a couple of years now. And this project list is something that our team--a committee within our team--is working on and narrowing down. So it's not ready to go out to the public yet because we've pared down a list that was $165 million to $95 million and we really are looking at what items on that list will reach the most children in the district."
There was a lame squawk about no project list in the August 18 Courier letters section.
In the meantime, the Mountain labored.
The August 25 number of the Courier contained a letter from Claremont teacher Dave Nemer castigating those with the impatience and impertinence to want some answers. He wrote in part:
Meanwhile, several recent letters to the editor have been critical of our school district because of the upcoming bond issue...The negativity expressed in the letters is unwarranted and based on little understanding of the facts involved.
The details of the bond plan have not been publicized yet, but naysayers have already denounced the plan anyway, preferring their preconceived judgments to informed reasoning...
Before we launch into impassioned debate about the new bond, it would behoove all combatants to wait until the details are announced.. Then we could proceed with a discussion based on actual information rather than ignorance and preconceived conclusions, for a change.
And still the Mountain labored but properly chastised, we waited patiently.
Finally, on August 28, teased by a 36-point all-caps headline on Page 1, above the fold, "NOW THE DETAILS", came what we all were waiting for.
Well, no.
The Courier didn't actually publicize the list, but we have it here. For ease of reading, we've broken it into two parts: the table proper followed by the notes. Click on the images to enlarge.
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The money paragraph in the Courier article--in fact the only paragraph with actual cost estimates, reads as follows: "The current plan for the $96 million bond is to apply the funds in 4 main categories: repair and modernization ($48,412,886), technology ($22,189,862), sustainability ($14,395,562) and debt elimination ($10,000,000). The numbers are approximate figures representing an ongoing plan of spending."
That's it? No cost estimates? No numbers showing the balance among schools? Nothing other than a bunch of check marks? Where are the metrics? How do we measure performance? What is the District actually planning to do?
From the Courier:
Estimates for individual items on the project list were unavailable. Mr. Fox said the estimates for each section were based on looking at the needs of the Claremont schools.
"A estimate [sic] of each item would be done after the bond has passed," he pointed out. "There would need to be architects and project managers that would have to be hired by the district to come out. [Does this guy really talk this way? Re-read the last sentence. We have quoted it correctly. "There would need to be architects...to come out" ???] That is a very costly step and the district would have to use part of the bond money to do that."
So this is the mouse the Mountain labored over: Wait until the bond passes and we will tell you then.
We actually think this spreadsheet had to have come from a version that at one time had numbers in the grid, and like a clumsy FBI-redacted document the author or committee scrubbed the page of any incriminating information. Really, does it make any sense to have a grid, with "totals" column, and subtotals placed just above each group, and precision to eight significant figures, if a prior version didn't have numbers where all we have now are check marks?
We guess the committee, the school district, and the consultants don't really believe all that much in transparency.
By the way, when searching for the author of the "project list", whether it was Bill Fox, or Lisa Shoemaker (the head of the CUSD business office), or Terry Nichols, the Superintendent, or ???, we found an interesting fact. In the Adobe PDF "Properties" the author is saved. And who authored this masterwork?
Look at what we found:
And who is Jared Boigon? CUSD's high priced communications consultant. The priorities are not even set by the committee, they are set by a consultant in San Francisco! Either that or he is the World's Most Expensive Committee Secretary! Mr. Boigon is a Partner at TBWB Strategies--Public Consensus; Winning Propositions. He's not an educator nor a finance guy nor even a construction expert. He's a political hack. Read here about his getting his mother elected to the Denver City Council.
* * * * * * *
The report can be found on the supporters' website, here.
The Insider has learned that the circle of people officially associated with the Yes on Measure CL campaign has widened from the original three - Bill Fox, Mike Seder, and Lee Jackman - to include insurance agent and Claremont 400 heavyweight Randy Prout, former Claremont United Church of Christ pastor and current city Human Services commissioner Butch Henderson (photo, left), and former Human Services Chair Suzanne Hall, wife of the ubiquitous Ken Corhan.
We shouldn't be surprised to see Prout or Henderson or Hall/Corhan, popping up in the Measure CL campaign. All were associated with the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign that tried to derail the candidacy of Claremont city council member Corey Calaycay. We should also remember that the PC campaign was as much about censoring council member Jackie McHenry and keeping then-City Manager Glenn Southard in charge as it was concerned with barring Calaycay from the council.
That the current school bond campaign and its supporters don't mind twisting the truth shouldn't come as a surprise either. During the 2005 city council election and after, Henderson, who seemed to use his position in our town's main church to unduly influence people to support the Claremonsters' agenda, was a spokesperson for the Preserve Claremont campaign and was quoted in the Claremont Courier on 2/19/05. In that article, Henderson admitted not only that his campaign employed manipulative tactics, but that such games are a natural part of any political campaign, even one involving the Claremont UCC's head pastor:
Mr. Henderson responded to a complaint he had heard that the [Preserve Claremont] ads were "manipulative".
"Of course they are," he said. "That's what politics is all about. Claremonters like things to be real nice. They say, 'Let's do powerbrokering behind the scenes and be real nice.' But politics is about leaders. Mr. Calaycay s running for office and we're trying to get factual information out about him."
Click on Images to Enlarge
It mattered not a whit that the "factual information" Henderson alluded to consisted of nothing more than rumor, innuendo, and outright lies, much of which was supplied by city staff. But, rather than being shocked that a former man of the cloth would engage in such self-acknowledged manipulations, we should expect it.
We can't help but recall the last Claremont Unified School District Measure Y bond campaign in 2000. During that lead up to that campaign, school district officials held a public meeting at which residents who lived near Claremont High School showed up to protest the planned use of Measure Y money to put a football stadium in at the high school.
When it became clear during the meeting that the football facility plans were going to imperil Measure Y's passage, the district officials took a break, held a quick sideline huddle with Superintendent Keeler calling signals, and then reconvened to assure the audience that no Measure Y dollars would be used for the high school stadium. At that meeting, one Butch Henderson, who happened to live very near the high school, stood up and said he was happy with the district officials' plan to accommodate his neighbors.
With no opposition from the Towne Ranch neighborhood, Measure Y passed by a little more than 100 votes citywide. Within a matter of a few years, the district, flush with Measure Y dollars, installed the permanent football field, lights, and bleachers at the high school. In fact construction workers are installing a second course of permanent seating right now.
So, yes, the neighborhood was lied to. But in Claremont anything associated with the school district approaches a certain religious fervor, complete with a kind of priesthood to deliver CUSD's holy word. The truth is whatever that priesthood says it is. As Pastor Henderson could tell them, all's fair in politics and war.
The Insider's investigative arm has been hard at work trying to confirm some information that came in over the transom last week regarding the $95 million Measure CL bond the Claremont Unified School District put on the November ballot. The information would seem to confirm our original hunch that the bond proponents will be following a very familiar game plan for the bond.
You may recall that one of the problems with school district's the bond measure is that they're asking for a boat-load of money without explaining how they intend to spend this. In its bond resolution's fine print, CUSD said that if you wanted to figure out what the projects in question are, you had to consult the district's Facilities Master Plan, an inches thick black binder kept at the school district's offices.
We're hearing that the Master Plan contains a copy of the following document in a pocket on the inside of the binder:
This document is a campaign consultant's template for a generic school bond campaign. It's a concern because CUSD isn't supposed to be be campaigning in favor of the bond. Yet, there the campaign template is, or was, sitting in a district binder. The district will no doubt have the document removed as quickly as possible, but as you can see above, we still managed to obtain a copy.
But is the district really planning on using this road map in the present campaign? It certainly seems thus so far. There are some noteworthy suggestions listed in campaign consultant's document - suggestions the Yes on Measure CL campaign seems to be following closely.
For instance, Item 4 on page 1 of the template suggests that campaign funding should include the district's vendors and that the amount of money those vendors donate can be tied to their volume of business. In other words, the district is saying, "If we've got you under contract, you should kick in a dollar amount commensurate with the amount of work (and money) you're getting from us.
Item 4Vendors who do business with the District also see value in helping the District become stronger in serving the children of the community. District staff members working on their own time can help in this area. See Exhibit 2. Note that contribution goals can be set per volume of annual business with [the] District [emphasis added - ed.]
As with CUSD's 2000 Measure Y bond, the district's surrogates will hit up those vendors for big donations. In 2000, the bond supporters raised over $80,000, the majority of which came from CUSD vendors. They'll do so again and will go over $100,000 if they stick to their usual methods.
On page 7 of the document, we see a sample ballot argument. Precisely the same talking points the Measure CL proponents have used are listed in this sample:
The bond will "provide funding for Classrooms and Facilities." Our district keeps saying that, even though they have admitted that the money will go towards restoring faculty health benefits and reimbursing the district for the time spent by its staff on bond projects.
None of the funds will be used for administrator salaries. The Measure CL bond resolution approved by the CUSD board makes exactly this statement. Yet, as noted, they have also publicly said the money will go to salaries and benefits.
Reasonable cost - $1.00 a day. Isn't this the $365 campaign that was pushed by the Claremont Educational Foundation? Say, if you happened to get on the bus with your $1 a day donation, and then the district succeeds with the bond, you could easily end up paying double that $365 once the bond assessments are made.
The district has created a bond oversight committee to ensure bond funds are spent wisely. Yes on CL committee leader Bill Fox keeps reminding people of that oversight requirement. But he keeps leaving out the part about the last bond oversight committee failing to keep accurate tabs on how the money was spent.
Beginning on Page 11, the document lays out a direct mail campaign with estimates of the voter turnout and the number of votes needed to win. The targets of the mailings are divided into six groups, each with its own specific content.
A couple points of interest here. The district's consultants recommend mailing to property owners a message that gives each homeowner an estimate of their individual taxes for the bond based on county assessed values. The property owner mailing, though, has a ceiling set on the assessed property values. In the consultant's example on page 14, they said they will exclude mailing to voters with assessed value of more than $150,000.
In these times in Claremont, that number might be closer to $400,000. The consultant appears to be trying to conceal how much their bond will affect people with homes above a certain value because they might find the bond prohibitively expensive.
The district's consultant doesn't stop there. Page 14 also lists a mailing to be sent to non-property owners. The pitch to them? "Measure A [the example in the report] costs you nothing." So, despite the district's claim that renters end up paying for the bond, they tell those renters the opposite. The district tells them to not worry, they'll get a pass on any bond payment, so they should vote for it. It's a free ride, the consultant says.
We also learn that the mailings don't come cheap. The consultant's projected budget on page 10 lists $31,000 for direct mailing and, naturally, $30,000 for the campaign consultant. Those two budget items account for $61,000 out of a possible $80,000 in campaign contributions for the hypothetical bond election.
The consultant also recommends getting other local officials (council members, county supervisors) on board, as well as police associations, business men, contractors, vendors, unions, and realtors.
All of this gets us back to the fact of the district having a sample campaign strategy and spending plan stored in its Facilities Master Plan binder at the district office. By law, the district is supposed to refrain from directly participating in campaigns. Yet, let's not forget that the district paid $25,000 for the consulting company TBWB Strategies to conduct a poll that was turned over to the Yes on CL campaign, which consists of the same three people that earlier this year worked together on the district committee that came up with the recommendation to go forward with a bond.
Is it any wonder why we keep thinking the bond was always the goal and that district all along intended the TBWB poll to be used to poll-test bond arguments with voters? CUSD seems to skate awfully close to the line of electoral propriety with some of their actions.
According to the district highlights for its 6/3/10 meeting, the president of the teachers union is even listed by name in support of the district's bond idea:
Superintendent Nichols provided background on the Bond/Parcel Tax Survey Committee and asked Jared Boigon, TBWB, to provide an update on the Bond/Parcel Tax Survey. Mr. Boigon shared highlights from the survey report and committee members, Lee Jackman, Bill Fox, and Mike Seder provided additional background and outlined the committee’s recommendation. Joe Tonan, incoming CFA President shared the association’s support for the committee’s recommendation. Staff and Mr. Boigon responded to Board questions and the Board requested more specific information on a timeline and next steps and requested a defined project list that included staff and committee priorities. This item was for Board information and discussion and no action was taken.
Their actions underscore the reality that CUSD, its board, the bond campaign committee, and the leaders of the Claremont Faculty Association seem to unlimited quantities of contempt for voters, for the spirit of the election rules they should be obeying, and for truth in their campaign statements.
You don't have to be a super-sleuth to get to the heart of the bond matter: If the district is already acting in less than forthright ways before the bond has even been voted on, why should anyone trust them with the $95 million they're asking for?
We and others in the community have been bothered by the fact that Measure CL, the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million November bond measure, has no identified projects in need of all that money. Perhaps we missed something.
The District conducted a facilities evaluation reflected in the [Facilities Master Plan] presented to the Board of Education on January 21, 2009 and incorporated herein by reference...
So there is a project list, CUSD just didn't include it for the voters to review easily. We've confirmed through our back-channel sources that it takes more that a bit of effort to see that list. If you are interested in what that $95 million might be spent on, you have to go to the district office on San Jose Ave. and review a several inches thick binder that constitutes the district's Facilities Master Plan, otherwise known as CUSD's wish list.
It's not exactly the most user-friendly way of discovering the district's intentions for the bond. From what district tout Bill Fox said in the Claremont Courier last Saturday, we can expect the bond campaign committee - Fox, Mike Seder, and, direct from Claremont Heritage and the Claremont Educational Foundation, the ever-reliable Lee Jackman - to cull through that binder and pull out enough poll-friendly projects to add up to $95 million.
But there's no guarantee that whatever bond project list CUSD's campaign cooks up will ever be completed. Buried in the fine print at the end of the resolution is a sentence that says:
In the absence of State and/or Federal matching funds, which the District will aggressively pursue to reduce the District's share of the projects' costs, the District will not be able to complete some of the projects listed above.
The school district doesn't tell you, however, that it will fail to really pursue State and/or Federal matching funds as it assures us it will. Even in failure, the district has a design. If the district opts out of state funds, it also doesn't have to worry about accountability in the form of state spending guidelines and audits. That's why no CUSD official will speak of any bond oversight that is independent of the district. Instead, CUSD and its board will handpick a "citizens committee" with a safe majority of its friends to ensure the bond money is spent as they see fit.
The district's secretive project binder and that fine print at the end of the ballot proposition language demonstrate just how far CUSD Superintendent Terry Nichols, the CUSD Board of Education, and the bond campaign committee are willing to go to conceal the truth of the bond from the voting public. They are betting that if they bury enough qualifying clauses in dense enough prose, they will be able to fool enough voters into supporting this bond.
The Fine Print (Click to Enlarge)
As you can see above, it's not exactly an open, clear, well-articulated plan. It's really more of a lawyerly, CYA paragraph designed to inoculate the school district from blame when the money dries up long before their yet-to-be-released project list is completed.
The first sentence in the fine print, for instance, says, "The listed projects will be completed as needed." In other words, if needed we will decide that items previously deemed priorities really aren't necessary, and we'll use the money on other unspecified things - whatever we want.
As we've pointed out several times in the past, in the case of CUSD's $48.9 million Measure Y bond one of the main projects listed, La Puerta Elementary School, wasn't ever built because it was deemed unnecessary. Instead, the district threw the money away on such urgent, non-educational items as Claremont High's track and football facilities.
With Measure CL, the district also seeks to circumvent its own bond language. On the one hand, the last paragraph states, in all caps for extra emphasis:
NO ADMINISTRATIVE SALARIES. PROCEEDS FROM THE SALES OF THE BONDS AUTHORIZED BY THIS PROPOSITION SHALL ONLY BE USED FOR THE ACQUISITION, CONSTRUCTION, RECONSTRUCTION, REHABILITATION, OR REPLACEMENT OF SCHOOL FACILITIES, INCLUDING THE FURNISHING AND EQUIPPING OF SCHOOL FACILITIES, AND NOT FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE, INCLUDING TEACHER AND SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR SALARIES AND OTHER OPERATING EXPENSES.
But just a couple sentences above that, the full ballot language claims:
Proceeds of the bond may be used to pay or reimburse the District for the cost of District staff when performing work on or necessary and incidental to bond projects.
So, how does one square those two contradictory statements? The district doesn't intend to. That last paragraph is merely something they are required to include but which they will never follow. If you need further evidence, check reporter Landus Rigsby's article on page four of the August 11 Claremont Courier. Rigsby wrote:
"Any [extra] money that comes in [from the state] or money from a bond needs to go to salaries," said CUSD Director of Human Resources Kevin Ward. "If the district receives an increase in base revenue higher than what is [currently] projected, then before the district can spend on other things, a certain percentage will go back to salary restoration for all the employee groups."
Ward was simply being honest, even if what he said ran counter to the bond's ballot language. The bond money will be used for salaries, no matter what the district says during the bond campaign. Now, it would be illegal for the district to simply take the money and dump it directly into teacher salaries. So CUSD will wash the money through its project list and pay for the salaries that way rather than asking employees to make some temporary sacrifices to help balance the district's budget.
No one thing irks us more than the disregard and contempt the district, its board of education, the teachers' union, and the bond campaign committee have for language, bending it as they please to suit whatever momentary meaning they require. They intend to use words not to further their educational mission but to manipulate the public into supporting something they've intentionally misrepresented as a needed facilities repair and construction bond.
It's a poor example for the very students they claim to care so much about, and no wonder why, even under the best of circumstances, Measure CL supporters and their highly paid campaign consultants will have a fight ahead of them. Without the truth on their side, it'll take a lot of doublespeak to get the 55% of the vote needed for the measure to pass.
Of that sort of talk, though, the district and its various representatives have no shortage. These are, after all, many of the same people who gave us Glenn Southard, the Parks and Pasture Assessment (lost 44% to 56%), Preserve Claremont, and failed city council candidate Bridget Healy, the retired Claremont assistant city manager who's currently raking in $166,700 a year from a CalPERS pension.
Given the stagnant economy and the level of joblessness and foreclosures in our area, they'd be wiser to ask for far less and sacrifice more before asking property owners to pay off a $95 million debt. They'd also be well advised to stick to the truth in the future if they're going to ask people for that amount of money.
(In the coming days, we'll have more on that debt, how much larger it will be than the district has portrayed it, and how the bond proponents intend to finance the bonds over the next 55 years - far enough in the future for all of them to be safely dead long before the extent of their folly is revealed.)
The Claremont Unified School District continues to fascinate inquiring minds.
We noticed that the Daily Bulletin article on the CUSD school board meeting last Thursday cited a person named Bill Fox, who spoke in favor of the board's proposed $95 million bond:
"It's an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis in the construction industry," resident Bill Fox said. "Construction costs are way down. It's a much different environment than 10 years ago. Ten years ago, when Measure Y (a $12.5 million school facilities bond) passed, we had very different challenges in bidding on what was out there. What we're seeing is prices are coming down."
(As we have pointed out, the Bulletin was incorrect. Measure Y was $48.9 million, not $12.5 million.)
We had wondered if Bill Fox was any relation to Michael K. Fox and Fox Transportation, who together donated $10,000 to the last CUSD bond campaign in 2000. We still don't know if there is any connection, but we do know that Bill Fox is a Claremont resident and is the president of The William Fox Group, which, among other things, operates a housing development company called William Fox Homes. Fox is also Claremont High baseball team sponsor.
If memory serves, Fox has served on a Claremont school district advisory committee. We believe it was Fox who first suggested that the district might be well-served leasing out it's old district office land on Base Line Rd. to an RV storage business. Fox would presumably know about the profit that CUSD could earn through such an arrangement because his company operates Route 66 Self Storage at 450 Foothill Blvd. Route 66 Self Storage advertises RV storage as one of its services.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY FAIR ASSOCIATION NAMES NEWEST MEMBER
William R. Fox has been named to the Los Angeles County Fair Association. Fox is president of William Fox Group and William Fox Homes Inc. located In Ontario.
He founded the companies in 2003 to engage in commercial and residential construction and development. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor of science degree in business administration. He currently serves as a member of the Claremont committee for the L.A. County Fair, on the Claremont School District Site Council and Claremont School Asset Advisory Committee. He resides in Claremont with his wife, Cindy, and children Heather and Brian.
The appointment complements a roster of nearly 50 notable and dynamic community and civic leaders that serve on the association of the not-for-profit organization. The LACFA operates and manages Fairplex, home of the L.A. County Fair and more than 500 diverse year-round events.
If you read Saturday's Claremont Courier, you may have also seen reporter Landus Rigsby's coverage of the Thursday CUSD meeting (no link available). Rigsby didn't mention Bill Fox, but he did quote another bond supporter named Mike Seder:
"To me, it all comes down to timing," said Claremont resident Mike Seder. "We have an emergency right now. We have a school [district] that depends on a state budget that is unreliable at best and if we are going to take control, we need to do it now. This is an investment we need to make in our schools and in our children. What we do now will leave a legacy for future generations of students."
Seder (pictured, left), like Bill Fox, CUSD school board member Jeff Stark, and Stark's mother Jil, has a connection to the LA County Fair Association. Seder is LACFA's Vice-President of Finance and CFO. Jil Stark is (was?) and LACFA board member, and Jeff Stark, along with fellow CUSD board member Beth Bingham, Arteco Partners owner Ed Tessier, and Claremont Club owner Sue Hyland, is an LACFA member as well:
Click on Images to Enlarge
This all just goes to show how well-networked are the movers and shakers in our neck of the woods. But, then, it's like everywhere.
We just hope (but don't really expect) that they'd be open to contrarian views. As we've noted in the past, many of our community's problems have been a result of a groupthink mentality in which a collection of individually intelligent people makes collectively stupid decisions by excluding important information that just doesn't fit the group's preconceptions.
As we indicated on Friday, the Claremont Unified School District's school bond campaign committee is looking to hire some able-bodied college students for its to work with its paid campaign consultant and its paid campaign manager in their "grassroots" Yes on CL effort.Diana Seder
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