Act II

There are no second acts in American lives.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tanned, rested, and ready...
However, Claremont, being a sovereign nation, offers up as many chances at redemption as its nobles need. Case in point, the comeback of one Karen Rosenthal (photo, left), a former Claremont mayor. After a long hiatus, Rosenthal was back on the Claremont political scene this year as a member of Joe Lyons' campaign committee.

In addition to hosting Lyons' campaign night party, Rosenthal was in charge of hospitality for Lyons' campaign. Those of you who were around when Rosenthal was mayor can appreciate the cognitive dissonance induced by the sight of Rosenthal's involvement in Lyons' election. While mayor, Rosenthal was best known for her eye rolling behind the dais when she disagreed with some speaker during public comment at council meetings. Rosenthal's official nastiness exceed even that of her fellow Weird Sisters Ellen Taylor and Sandy Baldonado.

Rosenthal's letter prompted this response by one of our readers:

Date: Sat, March 12, 2011 7:38:08 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject:the one thing at lyons4citycouncil that made me laugh out loud was listed under the "campaign committee" heading


Hospitality
Karen Rosenthal

If you are at all familiar with Rosenthal's history, you know that her defense of smear tactics is consistent with her remarkable ability to rationalize just about anything. In 2003, it was Rosenthal's heavy-handed mismanagement of the Irvin Landrum shooting that prompted voters to reject Rosenthal's reelection bid. Ever resilient, Rosenthal has from time-to-time tested the waters to see if people had forgotten how badly she behaved while on council.

Lyons' success has apparently emboldened Rosenthal's post-election renaissance. After the March 8 election, she had a letter in the Claremont Courier justifying the smear campaign on councilmember Opanyi Nasiali by a group that included members of Lyons' campaign.

Rosenthal was back in the council chambers Tuesday night, berating council member Corey Calaycay and trying to imply that he's a misogynist. Claremont's mean girls are using this as an opportunity to knock Calaycay down a peg or two and to soften up the ground for their next campaign. The Courier's Tony Krickl describes how Calaycay's comments about the diversity on the council are being twisted into an attack on women:

At the ceremony, he applauded the ethnic diversity of the new council. He also pointed out its geographic diversity since the 5 council members all live in different parts of town.

But he didn’t mention that there are no women on the council; a fact not lost several women sitting in the audience. It’s the first time since 1962 that Claremont doesn’t have a female councilmember.

After Calaycay’s remarks, a few women in the audience remarked about the lack of female council members and didn’t like that Calaycay pointed that out. Even though he actually didn’t.

As Krickl points out, these latest attacks by Rosenthal and her fellow former mayor Judy Wright (photo, right), prompted Calaycay to apologize for remarks he didn't make. One of our readers commented on the fact that Krickl rightly noted that the lack of women on the present council is quite possibly a result of the lack of women candidates (a total of two women versus nine men in the last two elections). Our reader also remarked that the missteps of mayors Wright and Rosenthal may have contributed to the council's present gender disparity:

Date: Wed, March 23, 2011 12:41:09 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: Corey Calaycay

So I just read on the CourierCityBeat blog that apparently Karen Rosenthal and Judy Wright took exception to Corey’s remarks about diversity. Perhaps, as the CityBeat pointed out, if more women ran there would be a greater chance of having a woman on the Council. Or perhaps it is a case that the voters are smarter than Karen and Judy think……the matriarchs of Claremont didn’t do all that wonderful a job and perhaps women candidates lose because of that association in the voters’ minds. Perhaps they are thinking……well, how much worse could it get…..might as well give the guys a chance. After all, both Karen and Judy had their shot. Judy during the Orange County debacle, if I remember correctly, and Karen during the Landrum affair where her greatest achievements were opening her mouth and pouring gasoline on the fire.

[FYI, Claremont, with Wright on the council, invested and nearly lost $5.4 million dollars when the city used reserve money to buy into the failed Orange County Investment Poll in the early 1990's. After five years of litigation, the City got its principal back but lost out on that many years of interest on the money.]

The powers of rationalization possessed by Claremonsters like Judy Wright and Karen Rosenthal never cease to amaze us. For instance, we recall that one of the other items that caused voters to reject Rosenthal involved her husband's medical practice. Dr. Michael Rosenthal ran a birthing center in Upland and was twice disciplined by the Medical Board of California, once in 1997 and again in 2001. The first action resulted in a five-year medical probation. The second resulted in the revocation of Dr. Rosenthal's license.

LA Times reporter Tipton Blish covered the story:

The board accused him [Michael Rosenthal] of mishandling three abortions in 1999, when he was running his own Upland-based Family Birthing Center serving women with low-risk pregnancies.

He admitted to the board that he misled patients, lied to another physician, failed to reveal an abnormal pap smear result, failed to perform an ultrasound on a patient who had already delivered four babies by caesarean section, and started an abortion procedure on a patient in her second trimester.

At the time, Rosenthal was on probation for two other incidents, one in 1986 and one in 1992. In the latter case, medical board prosecutors said he gambled that a pregnancy would be without incident and didn't tell his patient that he had lost his privileges in San Antonio.

His privileges were revoked after his insurance company stopped his malpractice coverage in 1992.

Never mind that the medical board complaints state that Dr. Rosenthal was self-prescribing himself Prozac while he was operating his birthing center, that he failed to notify his patients that had no malpractice insurance or no hospital privileges, or that when serious complications arose in a couple procedures, he dumped the patients at San Antonio Community Hospital's emergency room.

No, for the Rosenthals, the biggest concern wasn't the medical board's findings or Dr. Rosenthal's treatment of the patients listed in the complaints, but rather, personal responsibility be damned, that their reputations remain untarnished, which is ever foremost in the minds of our Claremonsters. The Tipton Blish article conclude with a pair of quotes from the Rosenthals:

"The single biggest thing is embarrassing Karen," he said. "I have resolved this in my own mind a long time ago.... For myself, I just don't care."

Karen Rosenthal defended her husband, saying that none of the charges were ever proved in court.

"He is a great doctor. He delivered over 5,000 babies and is very well loved in the community," she said.

* * * * *

It's not too hard to see where all this is headed. This isn't about gender disparity on the Claremont City Council. This is all about Plan B for getting former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy (image, left) on the council. Healy, who lost badly in 2009, desperately wants her own second act. Plan A, spearheaded by failed candidate Robin Haulman, didn't work out, so now the Claremonsters are trying to claim that we need more women on the council. They plan on arguing this for the next two years and then offering up exactly one woman, their woman, to run in 2013.

What they don't get is that as long as they keep offering up the wrong women, their candidates are going to fail. Not because voters don't like women, but because the rest of Claremont isn't quite as stupid or forgetful as the Claremont 400 would like them to be.

Full Circle

History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as desperation.


HISTORY

In 2003, a group calling itself Residents United for Claremont paid for an election eve, citywide mailer that tried to scare voters into supporting incumbents Sandy Baldonado, Karen Rosenthal, and Al Leiga. The RUC letter warned voters that they would face the loss of vital city services if challengers Jackie McHenry and Peter Yao were elected. McHenry and Yao won, and, contrary to what RUC had predicted, the sun still came up in the morning.

Click on Images to Enlarge

TRAGEDY

In 2005 came Preserve Claremont, about whom we've written much. PC raised nearly as much money as some of the candidates' campaigns. They used the money tattacking Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay with innuendo, rumor, and, in at least one case, a blatant lie. The PC experience so tarred the people behind it, that many, including a few leftover from the Residents United Campaign, rejected the group or at least started to display independent thinking.


DESPERATION

The hardcore PCers, though, just went underground and work mostly behind the scenes now. Some of the true believers like J. Michael Fay and Bill Baker, respective treasurers for city council campaigns of Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman, still take active roles when called upon for the their services and PC experience.

Haulman was the original chosen one of the PCers, but some of the antics surrounding her campaign - cheating in a debate or stealing another campaign's fliers - damaged her candidacy to the extent the Claremonsters had to have an insurance policy in Lyons. So, you see people like PC spokesman Butch Henderson donating money to both Lyons and Haulman. And they've hitched the Haulman-Lyons wagon to incumbent Sam Pedroza to get people to vote for the three of them as a slate, the hope being that Pedroza's coattails pull the other two along into office.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had a full-page ad (purchased at the going rate of a little less than $900), taken out by a group calling itself "Concerned Claremont citizens." (Their civic-minded concern apparently isn't large enough to warrant a capital letter for themselves.)

The CCC ad took what had been a sarcastic letter to the editor from council candidate Opanyi Nasiali and turned it around by interpreting it literally. Nasiali's letter (posted below) appeared in the Daily Bulletin and in the Courier last September.


The ad proclaimed "WE ARE SHOCKED!" and falsely intimated that Nasiali was serious about eliminating the police and public schools. It asked the reader, "Is this someone we want on the Claremont City Council."


What's really shocking is the implied contempt the ad has for voters. They expect readers won't read Nasiali's full text and will just scan the bullet points, helped out by the large arrow pointing the eye neatly past the context-placing introduction.

The ad was signed by eight people, including Ann Joslin, a Claremonster in sheep's clothing along with her life partner in crime Planning Commissioner and aspiring council candidate Bob Tener. Joslin's still sore at Nasiali for opposing the Parks and Pasture assessment district and for his successful backing of the Measure S bond for Johnson's Pasture, both in 2006.

Not coincidentally, also in yesterday's Courier, Joslin and Tener have a letter extolling the virtues of Joseph Lyons. The Joslin-Tener letter, together with another from Architectural Commissioner Susan Schenk singing the praises of Robin Haulman, are designed to work in concert with the "Claremont Concerned citizens" ad. The latter is supposed to drive people away from Nasiali, who has been running ahead of Lyons and Haulman, and the letters are there to attract voters who buy into CCC's attack ad.

Another CCC signer was Bob Gerecke, who has been working for the Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons alliance. Gerecke is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club, whose repertoire of dirty tricks in this campaign has included appropriating private property for campaign signs. Gerecke's wife Katie, is the past president of another Claremont 400 institution, the League of Women Voters.

Yet another is Sally Alexander, who one reader notes is the 97-year-old mother of Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporter Sandy Hester, making Alexander the oldest frontwoman in Claremont election history.

As we say, none of this is new. The Claremonster playbook only has two or three pages, all of them outlining some aspect of their bullying ways. Expect to see more of the same, possibly including one or two hit pieces paid for by municipal employee unions awaiting new contracts.

As this election winds down, we see all these strands coming together so that the all too familiar design becomes visible. In five days, on March 8, we'll see how it turns out. In Claremont, we've always gotten the government we deserve.

Crime Scenes

BURGLARY SPREE

From reading the local papers one would think we in Claremont are in the midst of a crime wave. The February 12 edition of the Claremont Courier carried an article about a Claremont Police Department neighborhood meeting organized by resident Jim Keith. The Courier didn't identify Keith fully - he and his wife Sue are firmly ensconced in the ranks of the Claremont 400, a/k/a the Pod People, and Sue holds the 400's seat on the Citrus College Board of Trustees.

The article, by Courier reporter Tony Krickl, said that Keith organized the meeting in response to a burglary at the Keiths' home in March 2010. It turned out that three other homes on the same street had been burglarized that same day. The article went on to say that, "According to police, nearly 30 burglaries have been reported in southwest Claremont since August."

And the upsurge in crime hasn't been confined to South Claremont. The same Courier edition had a police blotter item reporting that 17 vehicles were burglarized in North Claremont in the evening and morning hours of February 6-7.

So what gives? How is it that at a time when crime is supposed to be down nationwide, Claremont has become perp central?


A HISTORY LESSON

We're beginning to think that at least a portion of this crime wave may be due to the confluence of the March city council election and the City's upcoming negotiations with the Claremont Police Officers Association (CPOA). It certainly wouldn't be the first time Claremont employees inserted themselves into an election.

Back in 2005, Preserve Claremont supporters carried on a two-pronged attack to try to prevent current council person Corey Calaycay from being election. The first goal was to go after council person Jackie McHenry, who had been elected two years earlier as a reform candidate. The second was to tie Calaycay to McHenry with the use of full-page ads in the Courier, public comment at council meetings, and letters to the editors of the local newspapers.

Then-City Manager Glenn Southard (photo, right) and some of his senior staff, including Southard's Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, worked behind the scenes to feed information to the PCers, which they then used to publicly pressure McHenry, as well as Calaycay's campaign. In January, 2005, in the middle of the municipal election season, four of the City's employee unions submitted a joint, written complaint against McHenry, whom Southard had accused of harassing employees, thereby creating a hostile work environment. The employee complaint was, of course, run as an ad in the Courier.

It's important to note that all the details in the complaint were based on hearsay, and none were ever substantiated. Southard tried to have McHenry censured, but he backed off when it became clear that there was a chance of a real, independent investigation into the charges. Not coincidentally, two of the four employee unions that signed onto the joint complaint against McHenry happened to be in contract negotiations with Southard and the City.


TIMELY CRIME

So, given the community's fairly recent experience with city employees and election games, when we see some of the same PCers, including the now-retired Bridget Healy, stoking fears of a crime wave driven by staff reductions caused by budget constraints, we have to at least take a second look.

Healy's friend and supporter Barbara Musselman has been among those who've complained about current City Manager Jeff Parker's cuts, which she and former council member Sandy Baldonado claim were one of the driving reasons behind CPD Chief Paul Cooper's applying to Glendora for their top cop job.

A number of the same people and their present candidate of choice, Robin Haulman, have claimed that we've rolled back police staffing to 1984 levels. They neglect to tell us that crime has also rolled back, at least according to last year's CPD stats, and Part I crimes (violent crimes and property crimes) dropped 23% between 2008 and 2009. We'll have to wait until March to see what the 2010 crime numbers look like.

Healy, et. al., also don't like to tell us that, while police staffing has dropped to 1984 levels, the costs of safety employees' have soared, in part due to overly generous pension benefits (3% at 50) for which Healy and Baldonado are responsible.

All of this leaves City Manager Parker in an awkward negotiating position with regards to the CPOA's contract. Because of the state of the economy, as well as Sacramento threat to go after redevelopment agencies, the City has to watch every penny, and Parker will need to take a hard line with the police union. But, at the same time, he has people like Healy and Musselman undercutting him by trying to frighten residents with talk about the allegedly weakened state of Claremont's PD.

If the public pressure gets great enough and if Healy and Musselman get a majority on the council that they can control, then Parker will have to roll over for the police union.


ON ADVICE OF COUNSEL?

Claremont Police Officers Association counsel and former CPD officer Dieter Dammeier

And where, exactly, does the CPOA fit into all of these machinations?

More than one reader has pointed us to the website of the CPOA's counsel, Upland attorney and former CPD officer Dieter Dammeier, whose office is in Upland. Dammeier (photo, above) has apparently carved out a niche as a public safety employee contract negotiator.

Dammeier's website makes it clear that to have the strongest negotiating positions, police unions need to pursue a political strategy, as well as a kind of public relations program to shape (skew?) public perception about their safety. It's the sort of fear-based strategy that the Claremont 400 and their political arm, Preserve Claremont, love to use.

The attorney's website has posted a blueprint for dealing with stalled contract negotiations that states:

The association should be like a quiet giant in the position of, "do as I ask and don't piss me off." Depending on the circumstances surrounding the negotiations impasse, there are various tools available to an association to put political pressure on the decision makers.

Public Message

Always keep this in mind. The public could care less about your pay, medical coverage and pension plan. All they want to know is "what is in it for them." Any public positions or statements by the association should always keep that focus. The message should always be public safety first. You do not want wage increases for yourselves, but simply to attract better qualified candidates and to keep more experienced officers from leaving.

And:

Storm City Council - While an association is at impasse, no city council or governing board meeting should take place where members of your association and the public aren't present publicly chastising them for their lack of concern for public safety.

Here the CPOA have the advantage of being able to have civilians like Sandy Baldonado or Barbara Musselman do the chastising. Dammeier's negotiation training materials go on to say:

Press Conferences - Every high profile crime that takes place should result in the association's uproar at the governing body for not having enough officers on the street, which could have avoided the incident.

The website counsels police unions to take more time to complete their activities (this would generate concerns or complaints about lowered response times and reinforce concerns about public safety):

Work Slowdown - This involves informing your members to comply closely with Department policy and obey all speed limits. It also involves having members do thorough investigations, such as canvassing the entire neighborhood when taking a 459 report and asking for a back-up unit on most calls. Of course, exercising officer discretion in not issuing citations and making arrests is also encouraged.

And Dammeier tells his clients to get involved in local elections:

Campaigning - If any members of the governing body are up for election, the association should begin actively campaigning against them, again for their lack of concern over public safety. If you are in a non-election year, make political flyers which you can explain will be mailed out the following year during the election season.

In the present election, the CPOA is using its influence to try to undermine any candidate who might support an attempt by City Manager Parker to negotiate a CPOA contract that would rein in police salaries and pensions.

The website also says police employees should remember to get their message out, even if they have to pay for newspaper space:

Newspaper Ads - Again, keep the message focused on "public safety."

All of which places the CPOA's activities in proper perspective. The February 12 Courier also carried a small CPOA ad endorsing three city council candidates: Robin Haulman, Joseph Lyons, and Sam Pedroza:

Click on Image to Enlarge

We can't help but think how nice it would be if we got to hire our own bosses. Who wouldn't go for a deal like that? We rail against businesses that try to influence elections by supporting candidates, so how is this any different? In dealing with contract issues, we want council people who are impartial, not ones beholden to or afraid of their employees.

The ad raises some big conflict of interest concerns for the three chosen ones. When it comes down to the CPOA's contract negotiations later this year, if elected, would Haulman, Lyons and Pedroza place the CPOA's wants above the City's fiscal well-being?

But, as we say, none of this is new to Claremont. The lines between employer and employee get blurred constantly, and the Claremont 400 ideal is a kind of vertical integration of council and staff, hence their desire to have Bridget Healy on the council or to have a native Claremonter like Paul Cooper running the police department. They fail to see the need to have checks and balances built into the system and want staff, council and commissions to be one, with the result that dissenting voices and ideas are disregarded, poor decisions get made and staff are vulnerable to pressure from the 400.

The 400 wants us to forget the past, but one must look in the rear view mirror once in while to avoid the kind of costly and divisive crises we've had before.

City Council Meeting Tonight

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

You can also watch tonight's council meeting here.

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

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

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

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

Here's the Parker's report:




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




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

Click on Image to Enlarge

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

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

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


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

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.

Because We're Claremonters...

A PARABLE

Some years ago, a friend of the Insider moved to New York to work in the publishing industry. This person settled into a small, six-square block village on Long Island and soon came to marvel at the local natives, who insisted on spending large amounts of money on things like maintaining a volunteer fire department, complete with a fully equipped fire engine. Fires in the area were rare, and the main purpose seemed to be to keep up with the neighboring villages, all of which had their own volunteer fire departments.

The locals also overpaid for their trash service, whose waste hauler wouldn't allow residents to move their garbage cans from their yards to the street for pick up. The trash contract specified that the trash workers moved all containers, even if they were in backyards. This seemed mainly designed to require extra workers on each waste disposal truck.

Our friend tried asking some of his neighbors about these peculiar arrangements and received nothing but odd looks, as if he were crazy for questioning how much money the village was spending on toys. This is how we've always done things, they'd say. Our friend eventually came to the conclusion that his fellow LI villagers were completely irrational. One night at a restaurant, the friend struck up a conversation with a waitress, who was herself a West Coast transplant. He asked the waitress why people in the area seemed to have such a hard time with reasoning skills. She leaned over and whispered, "Because they're STUPID."


CLAREMONT CRAZIES

Claremonters seem similarly committed to their own brand of craziness, which includes overpaying for services too, for everything from their schools to their city services. Witness last November's $95 million Measure CL school bond campaign. Or the recent editorials and letters in the Claremont Courier by former Claremont Mayor Sandy Baldonado and police commissioner Barbara Musselman, who is also a former Claremont League of Women Voters president. Readers will recall that Musselman, in keeping with her LWV ties, has a long history of interfering in Claremont elections.

The two yentas, Baldonado and Musselman, are upset that the City has had to cut back on services because of budget deficits. Both, along with their friend and failed City Council candidate Bridget Healy, have labored mightily to put a scare into residents, first when city staff looked into outsource Claremont's trash service and more recently after someone in City Hall leaked the news that Police Chief Paul Cooper is a finalist for the chief of Glendora's police. The B-M party line is that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker is gutting city staff and services with the support of his city council.

Baldonado and Musselman have both claimed that Chief Cooper wants to leave because he doesn't feel that our City Council fully supports the police. What they conveniently overlook is that Chief Cooper, who will be eligible for a generous CalPERS retirement in a few years, needs to bump up his salary, since his pension will be based on final salary. Glendora, which is larger than Claremont, will always be able to pay more than our town.

Musselman, who is a former human resources director for San Bernardino County (and herself a public pensioner) certainly knows this, as does Baldonado, who through her council voting record is responsible for awarding lavish CalPERS plans to Claremont municipal retirees - the very city pension that Cooper seeks to maximize with his Glendora job application.

If Baldonado had been more fiscally responsible, she wouldn't have supported those super-sized pension plans, which included having the City paying for the employees' share of their pensions, and we would have more money now to dedicate towards staff and services. It's because of the foolish arrangements supported by Baldonado's votes that management-level employees are able to collect six-figure retirement incomes, an inflation-indexed $166,700 per year in Bridget Healy's case, a good chunk of which is paid for by the City of Claremont.

Click to Enlarge

From californiapensionreform.com

The simple fact of the matter is that the free-spending ways of Baldonado and her friends, not Parker, are responsible for City Hall's present belt-tightening. However, instead of owning up to their respective roles in all this, they want to take down Parker's administration and seek to take us back to the Glenn Southard era in City Hall. (The two, if they were capable of introspection, might consider where we'd be if Glenn were here now - after he retired from Indio, Southard left that city with a $9 million budget deficit.)

But, because they suffer the same malady that once afflicted certain Long Islanders, Baldonado and Musselman are bent on stirring things up in town, mostly because they think this will benefit the election prospects of their friend and current City Council candidate Robin Haulman, whom both Baldonado and Musselman have endorsed.

The Haulman campaign, or at least her endorsers, seek to scare voters by telling them city employees are leaving because they're being undermined by Parker and by the City Council. We've seen this scare game before with the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign, so it's no coincidence Human Services Commissioner and former PC spokesman Butch Henderson is an honorary chair of Haulman's campaign. Also, PC's treasurer, Francine Baker (a city employee, by the way) is listed as a Haulman endorser, and her husband Bill is Haulman's treasurer.

We should expect more than a little campaign skulduggery from Haulman's backers. After all, Pastor Butch has told us this is how Claremont does campaigns.


A NEW VOICE SPEAKS FOR ROBIN

This past Saturday, thanks to the Baldondo-Musselman-Haulman communications team, the Claremont Courier carried a letter by Musselman, and another by a third Haulman endorser, Gregory Shearer. Shearer's letter took up the B-M message. Oddly, though, Shearer also included a passage that left us scratching our heads:

In speaking with the rank and file officers of the Claremont PD, I am sure they will be glad to see Cooper get the Glendora gig as more than one Claremont officer has mentioned his abusive management style, which may just be frustration over working with the current city council.

Hmmm. Tell us again why we want to keep the abusive Chief Cooper? It's the city council's fault for driving Cooper to abuse his employees? We had all wrong. We thought a good boss protected his employees and took the heat himself.

One thing's for sure, Shearer fits right in with Baldonado, Musselman, Haulman, Healy, Henderson, the Bakers and all the rest of their friends when it to wasting public dollars. In 2000, Greg Shearer was the subject of a money-makeover column by LA Times business section columnist Kathy Kristof:

In short, unless Shearer learns to restrain himself, he'll never attain the comfortable retirement that he wants, said Margaret Mullen, a fee-only financial advisor in Los Angeles.

But restraint is something that the Claremont adult-video salesman, who has filed for personal bankruptcy three times, finds exceptionally difficult.

Serial bankruptcy filer advising us on municipal policy? Makes as much sense as anything else here in this kooky town. Shearer probably has some ideas for next summer's movies in the park series, too.

59th Assembly District News

MONEY RACE

Now that the primary elections are over, the November general election for the 59th Assembly District, which includes Claremont, is shaping up. Republican Tim Donnelly will square off against Democrat Darcel Woods.

The money race usually tells a lot, though this year the dynamics may be different. Donnelly won a very close primary race over Chris Lancaster in June. Donnelly's margin of victory was 631 votes and can be viewed as a sign of grassroots voter discontent this year with Donnelly, a self-described "tea party Republican," beating his party's insider candidate. Lancaster spent far more money than Donnelly ($167,000 to $23,500, respectively), but Donnelly still won.

According to the California Secretary of State's records, as of June 30 Donnelly's campaign had $626.78 in cash. The largest donor was Anna McBride in Palm Desert, who donated a total of $3,400.

Darcel Woods' campaign reported raising a total of $22,575 for the period from 1/1/10 to 6/30/10. Woods had $3,789.35 in cash remaining at of June 30. Woods' big contributors were unions:

• Service Employees International Union United Long-Term Care Workers Local 6434 State PAC - $7,800
  
  
• United Domestic Workers of America Action Fund - $3,900
  
  
• SEIU Local 721, CTW CLW State and Local - $3,900
  
  
• Service Employees International Union 121RN PAC - $1,500
  
  
• UAW Region 5 Western States PAC - $1,000
  
  
• California Teachers Association for Better Citizenship - $500
  
  
• United Transportation Union PAC - $500

The money Woods has raised is almost certainly an indication that Democratic Party supporters feel that Woods has a chance against Donnelly. This is certainly a change for an assembly district that has traditionally been a safe Republican seat. With redistricting on the horizon, it's likely that whatever replaces the 59th will be much more evenly divide between the two parties, so if Woods were to get in, she would presumably have an incumbent's advantage in subsequent elections.

A win by Woods might put a crimp in Claremont Mayor Pro Tem Sam Pedroza's long term plans. We suspect Pedroza may have been planning his own campaign in the 59th or its successor district. If Pedroza were ever to get elected from this area, he'd break a long losing streak by Claremont city council members in state legislative races. Sandy Baldonado, Al Leiga, and Corey Calaycay all failed in their bids to get represent our area in Sacramento.

The Daily Bulletin has an article today on the 59th Assembly race that mentions the idea that Woods may be able to appeal to moderate Republicans in the district. However, CMC's Jack Pitney thinks the election dynamics this year favor Republicans, and that may blunt any advantage Woods would traditionally have with moderates over Donnelly:

This is the kind of race where Democrats might have a very strong shot in another year," said Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political science professor who has said Democrats are battling Republican momentum this year. "But even so, it's not completely out of reach for them."

If Woods wins, she might represent the final vote Democrats in the Assembly need to solidify a two-thirds majority, an important benchmark in California politics. That thinking played a part in the union's decision, [SEIU-United Long Term Care Workers Local 6434 spokesman Wyatt] Closs said.

ADAMS ON SOCIAL NETWORKING

Speaking of the 59th district, current Assembly 59 representative Anthony Adams was quoted in the Daily Bulletin today. You'll recall that Adams chose not to seek reelection after angering Republicans for supporting last year's state budget agreement. Because he was one of a handful of Republicans in the state legislature who crossed the aisle to get the budget passed, Adams drew the ire of a good many Republican voters and would probably have faced a tough primary campaign.

The Bulletin article quoted Adams' comments on the possible regulation of campaign-related content on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. The Bulletin piece said that California's Fair Political Practices Commission asked one of its subcommittees to look into the issue. The commission will consider the suggestions from the subcommittee next week.

Here's what the Bulletin said about the recommendations (we've included the Adams' quote):

Campaigns would face the same disclosure rules they do now, such as identifying who is financially behind an ad, but, for the first time, they would apply to Internet communication.

The report draws a line between paid political activity and unpaid grass-roots efforts. Political commentary by people unconnected to a campaign would not be affected, nor would sending or forwarding e-mails, linking to websites or creating independent websites.

....

"In order to keep our system honest, we need watchdogs," Adams said. "What these disclosures end up achieving is putting watchdogs, self-appointed or otherwise, in a position to maintain some integrity in the political campaigning area."

Jack Pitney, by the way, was quoted in this article as well.

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.

Farewell, CMA

TOUGH TIMES

We were sorry to see the Claremont Museum of Art close its doors at the end of December. We liked the idea of a museum to showcase local artists and hoped it would make a go of it.

The museum had the misfortune of opening just before the economy tanked, and that certainly contributed to its demise. It also may have suffered from too small an audience. We'd always wondered how they'd be able to support itself when its core audience came from a town of only 35,000 people. CMA didn't seem to have much wide appeal outside Claremont. For example, a December, 2008, fundraising dinner in Pasadena ended up costing more than it brought in.

When it was still a going concern, the museum did make a splash with a $10 million gift from an anonymous donor. The donor, however, attached some conditions to the gift, and the museum wasn't able to use the money for its $900,000 annual operational budget. In the end, the donor pulled the $10 million, and the museum's fundraising efforts fizzled.

Facing closure, the CMA came to the City for money last September. They asked city staff for $4,500, and staff dutifully complied by giving the museum the money without a public hearing. That money helped keep the museum open until the end of October, when the CMA again had to go hat in hand to the City for a second cash infusion of $5,721, again without public input.

During that period, the museum made some changes that included expanding its board to include former Claremont mayors Sandy Baldonado and Ellen Taylor (the kiss of fiscal death, if the CMA had really thought about it). We interpret the inclusion of these two as a sign that the 400 had taken up the museum's cause, which made sense because some of the biggest donors came from the 400. In any case, the museum also closed its store, cut back its hours, and laid off all except one employee.

Former Mayor Ellen Taylor
blowing hard
ONCE MORE TO THE WELL

None of the museum's changes made any difference, and by November, the museum had to come before the City Council for $18,879 from the City's Public Art Fund to keep it going until the end of December. The city staff report from the 400's ever-reliable Mercy Santoro gives the background.

At a meeting on November 11th, the City Council heard a pitch from the museum. Among the pitchmen was none other than former Mayor Taylor, who, with her typical Ellen eloquence, explained how the museum go in such dire straits: "...things came [up] and just kicked us in the goddamned butt. [at around 3:17:00 of the meeting video]"

As we might expect, Councilmember Pedroza and Mayor Pro Tem Elderkin were the most sympathetic to Taylor's message from the Claremont 400 that we really need this museum (and you better support it). In her comments, Taylor kept using the 400's buzzword "vision," implying that that anyone who voted against the City donating the money was blind to what was best for the City. In other words, you're either with us, or you're a bad person.

Taylor's words also carried the implicit threat that any councilmember heartless enough to vote against giving the money would be done as a local politician. It's the 400's polite way of strongarming people (or The People) to get money they think they need: Why exactly do you hate the museum? Other societies might call this extortion.

Councilmember Peter Yao was really the lone voice of reason, pointing out first that he was concerned about what might be construed as a gift of public money, which would have been an illegal action. Yao further pointed out that because the City had essentially provided the museum with 100% of its working budget, it had a duty to question how effectively its money would be used. After all, Yao asked, what good would it do to give the museum the city funds if it was just going to delay an inevitable failure?

Another question Yao posed was to asked what plan the museum had to raise the $200,000 they were aiming for to fund its 2010 budget. None of the museum representatives could answer that, other than to say that they had formed a working group to work on a plan to develop a plan for fundraising. In other words, they had no real plan.

The discussion included other absurdities. Among these was the idea, raised by Pedroza and Elderkin, that the museum store was a moneymaker. Despite comments from a museum representative that the store had been "hemorrhaging money," Elderkin, assured as ever of certain certainties, wanted the museum to reopen the store. Elderkin also expressed absolute certitude in the museum's fundraising team, which surely portends greater fiscal problems for the City if, as expected, Elderkin takes her turn as mayor in March.

Still, in the end, the council bowed to the pressure and voted unanimously to give CMA its $18,879 (we never did figure out what changed Councilmember Yao's mind). The museum had its money and went off merrily to find the $200,000 they were sure was waiting for them. Unfortunately a final fundraiser managed to raise only $26,000 in pledges, and on December 27th, the museum shut down.


SONG REMAINS THE SAME

You'd think the 400 would have learned at least a little financial sense from the Claremont Trolley experience. If you'll recall, the City found it cheaper to put the trolley into storage and eat the lease payments rather than continue to fund its three-year $889,000 budget.

Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary and lacking any specific data, the 400, through its mouthpieces, trotted some of the same arguments for the museum that it used in its failed attempt to keep the trolley going: it brings economic benefit to the city; it just needs a few more months to really get going; we just need to make a few changes to turn it around.

Well, they got their way, and the museum closed anyway. In the process, the city frittered away nearly $30,000 at a time when Claremont is having to lay off employees and cut their benefits, reduce services, and raise fees in order to address a $2 million dollar budget deficit for the current fiscal year. As Councimember Yao pointed out, one can be supporter of the museum on the personal level, but one should not turn that personal view into a public one at the cost of vital taxpayer dollars.

With the 400, though, rationality has limits, and Yao's arguments fell on deaf ears. The nearly $30,000 Claremont doled out to the museum may be chump change to city staff, but the city's deficit is really as much the result of the accumulation of decades of these stupid little financial decisions as it is a matter of the current recession.

Our suggestion to future councils is to just say "No" the next time the 400 comes calling, no matter how painful that may be. A little tough love might be good for them and for the city in the long run.

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.

Square Head, Round Hole

Whatever else you have to say about Claremont Trolley supporters, you cannot deny their persistence.

A reader wrote in to tell us about a Facebook event this afternoon from 12 noon to 2pm in the Claremont Village. The event is a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored rally to support the trolley, which went belly-up at the last City Council meeting.

As part of the event, you can follow it live on Twitter. Here's the tweeting party's description:

Join me, Joey Coombe, as I Twitter Live from the Claremont Trolley. This event approaches the issue of public funding for transportation related uses through new media and technology.

Follow at http://twitter.com/joeycoombe

[NOTE: This was actually a joke by Coombe. No real involvement form the Chamber of Commerce -ed.]

* * * * *

Yesterday's Courier had a letter from reader Rochelle Darrow, who wrote that she liked the trolley but thought the routing was sketchy:

The trolley was a good intention, but I for one was confounded with its route. If you were for instance visiting the theatre you would just drive there. Once in the village area everything is in walking distance. The trolley route served no purpose.

It would be wonderful if the trolley made a wider route, say north on Mills taking people to Vons. West on Baseline then south on Indian Hill stop at Trader Joes and proceed back down to the village.

The real problem wasn't just the route. Cost was the limiting factor. The trolley runs only three days a week. That really isn't a regular enough schedule to be considered a true transportion service. After all, who'd utilize a bus service that operated less than half of the time?

Why only three days? The trolley ran the schedule it did because the City couldn't afford to spend more than the $887,000 it did on the current level of service.

To run the trolley five days a week would have raised the cost to $1.27 million on its current route. And that's for one trolley that takes 15 minutes to circumnavigate it's little 1.5 mile circuit of the Claremont Village. If you were to add on stops at the Claremont Colleges and trips up to Foothill and Base Line Rd., you're talking about potentially quadrupling the time it takes one trolley to complete a circuit. With only one trolley that could mean up to an hour wait - only 12 circuits in the trolley's 12-hour day on its three days of operation.

To extend the route and keep the stops at the same 15-minute level of service, you'd have to add two or three trolleys, depending on how much you lengthened the route. And to really make the trolley a functional transportation service, you'd have to run it at least five days - and probably seven - a week. You're not only talking about multiplying the $887,000 cost by adding more trolleys and their drivers, you'd also be adding at least two more days of service, not to mention the expense of building the new stops and the added cost of fueling, insuring and maintaining the extra trolleys.

The City bought all it could afford with the money it had and couldn't come close to spending millions more to turn the trolley into a true transportation service. City staff has said as much, maintaining that the trolley was not a transportation service but an economic engine designed to bring more customers to the Village - a mission it failed miserably at.

* * * * *

David Allen was at the April 14 City Council meeting when the council voted 3-2 to pull the plug on the trolley. Allen neatly summed up the non-Trolley boosters' take:

And if you happen to gaze in the trolley's windows as it passes by, you rarely see anyone inside except the poor driver. It's like a - gaaaahh! - ghost trolley.

Condemned to endlessly circuit the Village, making a series of hard left turns, the drivers are on a voyage of the damned, the Claremont equivalent of the Flying Dutchman.

At last, city leaders voted this week to lift the curse, free the drivers and allow the trolley to head into the sunset.

Allen also quoted a clearly out-of-touch Sam Pedroza, who typically did not get it, sounding a lot like former Councilmember Sandy Baldonado.

You might recall when Baldonaldo, along with Pedroza and the rest of the Claremont 400, tried to foist a $48 million assessment district on Claremonters in 2006. After property owners resoundingly rejected the assessment, Baldonado said, "...it's not the city that I know and love."

Pedroza, as quoted by David Allen, displayed a similar tin ear, bringing up another failed Claremont transportation idea:

Councilman Sam Pedroza, however, said another trait of Claremonters is to rush to condemn new ideas. He brought up the traffic circle, which was torn out within weeks of its installation in 1999 due to jeering.

It's simply stunning that Pedroza can reinterpret history so freely. The traffic circle he spoke of, at Indian Hill and Bonita Ave., failed not because of any "jeering," as Pedroza calls it. It failed because it was a potentially good idea shoehorned into much too small of a space to handle the volume of traffic safely. The radius of the circle had to be fitted into the corners marked by the existing sidewalks, which left too tight a space for the number of cars passing through. All it did cause more delays than the existing traffic signal because of driver confusion.

These circles can work if they're in the right places and if they're sufficiently big enough to allow the traffic to flow smoothly - they're everywhere in Europe, and in a number of places here in Southern California - but the Claremont circle, much like the trolley, was jammed into the wrong place without any forethought and with very predictable results.

But, in Pedroza's mind, it's much easier to blame public rather than rationally assess the facts at hand.