Monday CUSD Recap

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.

In any case, Fox is very deeply involved in school issues and in the community. Here's a photo from the 2009 Claremont Educational Foundation newsletter showing Fox and his wife Cindy posing with former Claremont mayor Dianne Ring, Ring's husband Robert, and Ken Corhan (whom we last saw working on Bridget Healy's failed 2009 city council campaign):


Fox is also involved with the LA County Fair Association, according to a press release from 4/11/09:

Contact:
Sharon Autry (909) 865-4262
Wendy Talarico (909) 865-4263

For Immediate Release

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:

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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.

CUSD, Claremont City Council Meet Tonight - 6PM (UPDATED)

The Claremont City Council and the Claremont Unified School District are teaming up (always a scary thought) for their yearly joint meeting tonight in CUSD's Richard S. Kirkendall Center Board Room at 170 W. San Jose Ave. The meeting begins at 6pm.

On the agenda tonight are:

• An update of the Youth Master Plan for 2008-09.
  
  
• An agreement between the City and school district for the City to hand over to CUSD the management of the two softball and one baseball fields at Cahuilla Park.
  
  
• A report on the proposed RV/boat storage facility at CUSD's property at 2080 N. Mountain Ave.
  
  The report lists a couple potential snags in the process. One is the City's requirement for a 24-hour security presence. CUSD wants the City to waive this requirement. This is a cost-saving measure for the district, though it tends send the message, "Thieves get your free flat screen TVs and stereos here," not to mention the attraction for criminals looking for scrap copper wire and piping to sell. Private security? Isn't that what the Claremont PD is for?
  
  
• A demonstration of Claremont.connect.com, a City-CUSD joint project to be run by the Committee on Youth and Family. The website will be a one-stop shop for residents looking for information about local programs and services.
  
  A company called Idealistics worked on the web design. The startup costs were $20,000, of which the City and CUSD each contributed $4,000. The committee raised the other $12,000 through sponsorships.
  
  The ongoing costs will be $12,500 a year, with $4,250 each coming from the City and the school district. Sponsorships will pay the remaining $4,000. Idealistics will maintain and update the site.
  
  Out of curiosity, we looked into Idealistics. They don't have an extensive C.V. posted on their website. They did work with United Way of Greater Los Angeles and with the City of Pomona on similar websites. But you'd think the City and school district could set something like this up on their own. Why pick Idealistics?
  
  The company's website reveals that among its advisors is one Dick Guthrie, Claremont's former director of Human Services and a consultant on the City's Youth Master Plan. We suppose it's another case of Claremont taking care of its own. No conflict of interest there.
  
  Let's hope they update Claremont.connect.com more frequently than their own blog, which has had one post this year at the end of March and 22 total posts in 2008. Also, we trust they'll proof the City's site a little better than their own. The Idealistics Community Resources page had a subheading called "Asses [sic] Community Needs."
  
  Why exactly do we need them?
  
  UPDATED, May 12, 11:35am - Looks like Idealistics finally got around to correcting that typo after 24 hrs. They're staying right on top of things!
  

Unretouched!
(Except for editorial sad face and arrow.)

CUSD Moves Forward on Base Line Rd. RV Lot

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The Claremont 400 really do not like people who live along Base Line Rd. At least, that's what you'd figure when you consider that it's only been a very short time since they failed to jam a faulty affordable housing project in at the northeast corner of Towne Ave. and Base Line Rd. Now comes Round II for Base Line Rd. residents and property owners.

The Claremont Unified School District (CUSD: A wholly-owned Claremont 400 subsidiary) last month approved going forward with turning the district's property at Mountain Ave. and Base Line into an RV and boat storage lot.

We came across this story last July when the CUSD board first approved a conceptual plan for the property. At that time, the district announced its intention to move the offices that are currently on the RV site to another property on San Jose Ave.

The matter came before the CUSD board again in February in the form of an actual plan. The Daily Bulletin's Will Bigham covered the CUSD RV yard proposal in a February 26th article.

People who have neighboring properties aren't too happy about the district's actions. Bigham quoted Saul Jaffe, who owns the property immediately to the east of the CUSD land and who wants to put in a 60-unit condo development there:

A group of nearby residents and property owners spoke out against the project at the board meeting, citing potential problems they said make the project incompatible with the surrounding area.

Saul Jaffe, owner of an adjacent property that has been approved for a 60 condominiums, said the district's plan would make it more difficult for him to sell units that overlook the storage facility.

Jaffe also said the district's plan conflicts with the zoning of the land, which calls for office/professional use.

"It's not the type of use you would expect right next to each other," Jaffe said. "It's not what you would consider good planning."

Jaffe said the district would likely need a conditional-use permit from the city's Planning Commission before moving forward.

According to the Bigham article, CUSD officials say that they will have to come up with $4 million to build the project. The district anticipates taking out loans for the financing and then using the money generated by the storage facility to pay back the loans.

District officials claim that the project will generate $615,000 a year. We wonder about their figures, though. After all, these are the same folks who managed to misspend over $48 million of Measure Y money from 2000. We wouldn't even be talking about the need for the RV park if they had acted more responsibly with our tax dollars.

And don't forget, the CUSD board is backed by a lot of the same people who stood by and allowed the city to invest over $5 million of the city's investment fund in the failed Orange County Investment Pool back in the early 1990's. They certainly seem attracted to the color red and to bankruptcy.

We know what you're thinking: A school district going into the RV storage business? That makes about as much sense as a city trying to become a housing developer.

But, hey, it could happen.

The project might pencil out, but it will likely have to be more intensively used than the district is letting on. Bigham reported that it will have at least 65 indoor storage spaces, with the potential for 55 more in a covered area and 98 outdoor spaces. The going rates for RV spaces at the Price Self-Storage facility in Solana Beach runs from $219 per month for an outdoor space to between $365-$449 a month for an indoor RV space.

Using the upper rate, CUSD's 65 indoor spaces would only net $350,220 a year (65 spaces times $449/month times 12 months). That would be far short CUSD's claimed $615,000 yearly net. They will certainly need to use as many of those extra covered and outdoor spaces as possible to reach their goal.

You have to wonder, too, what the effect of rising gasoline prices and the current economic downturn will have on the demand for RV's and boats, as well as places to store those things.

Another factor the CUSD board doesn't seem to have considered is the rising cost of bonded indebtedness. The mortgage crisis has spilled over into the municipal bond market, and it's getting more and more expensive for public agencies to get financing for projects, as the LA Times reported yesterday.

Still, with the Claremont 400, it's full speed ahead, as usual.