Self-Congratulations are in Order

Courier Place

It seems as if no matter how blue we are feeling, what with the City, State, and Country going to Hades in a handcar, the Claremont City Letter can always be counted on to lend a bit of upbeat cheer.

If you want to feel good about your City and yourself, nothing beats the City Letter.

Today's issue arrived in our mailbox and, well, it must be a slow news quarter because the whole front page is devoted to Construction On The Affordable Housing Project Set To Begin. That is exciting news.

[more below the jump]


But even the fact that they are going to start is pretty mundane compared with the news that Jamboree Housing Corp., has named the project Courier Place--because it will occupy the site of the soon-to-be-former building that housed the Claremont Courier.

We had actually been pulling for Goldwater Gardens or--and we really like this one--The High Towers, after Helaine Goldwater or former planner Sharon Hightower who appointed themselves leaders of what we came to know fondly as "The Coalition" for affordable housing.

It's a matter of some regret that Parque Insider wasn't chosen. But we choose not to whine.

It's a nice touch to include a picture of the Courier building complete with plywood covering the formerly attractive casement windows. That's more or less the Claremont way: bulldoze it over and commemorate it with a sign.

Still, we can't help but think this is just a lagniappe to "buy off" the Courier. We remember when Martin Weinberger edited the paper from his cluttered desk in the southeast corner of the newsroom, he was pretty incensed at getting first a big rent increase when his former landlord died, and then getting thrown out when the new owners and City got involved. All of this while he was beginning to face serious health problems. Maybe this olive branch will buy some decent and even fawning coverage from the absentee publisher and managing editor.

We suggest you try to read the article in the image. Click to enlarge it. It's a pretty good example of city-speak at its finest, including "partner" as a verb, all the passive sentences your heart could desire, and a FOG Index that is more or less off the charts.

We think you'll feel better for it.

Campaign 2009 Mail

As you might expect, we've received some email regarding the problems the Bridget Healy for City Council campaign has had with inconsistencies that have popped up in the candidate's campaign literature.

Some of Healy's claims have been directly contradicted by her sworn testimony in a lawsuit the city had to defend three years ago. A reader wrote in after having noticed yet another Healy campaign exaggeration:

DATE: Sunday, March 1, 2009 2:34:10 PM
SUBJECT: Healy's Gifts
TO: Claremont Buzz

Dear Buzz,

With keen interest, I have been following the newspaper and Insider Blog reports on city council candidate Healy's inconsistencies regarding her purported contributions and gifts to Claremont. While her inconsistencies have focused on the acquisition of the Wilderness Park, I should point out that her claims to have "established the Police Commission.." are also questionable. I recall that the establishment of the Police Commission was a recommendation, to the City Council, of an Ad Hoc Committee which was formed to look into necessary changes in the behavior of the Police Department following the Landrum shooting incident. She makes it sound as if she alone - as in her other claims on the "accomplishments" list - established the Police Commission.

* * * * *

Healy's apparently been taking some hits because of her misstatements. Naturally, the Claremont 400 has circled the wagons. Saturday's Claremont Courier had three letters from different 400 representatives in support of Healy.

The first Courier letter was from Tom and Donna Ambrogi. Tom Ambrogi lives at Pilgrim Place and his wife is a Pilgrim boardmember. Following the Irvin Landrum shooting, he was one of the people who led a largely ineffective, toothless campaign to try to address the City's handling of the matter. We call Ambrogi's efforts ineffective because he ignored the central problem: the City's management culture under then-City Manager Glenn Southard, and his right-hand woman, Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy. Ambrogi focused on the symptom rather than the structural disease.

So, it's no surprise that Ambrogi would demonstrate a similar blindness in his current support of Healy. Ambrogi apparently has no inkling that supporting Healy is a direct abnegation of everything he claimed to stand for when the Landrum shooting occurred. But with Ambrogi, like so many of the 400, friendships trump reality, and the high status he and his wife possess in Pilgrim Place gives them a potential platform to influence other residents of that retirement community.

The second letter was from former Claremont City Planner and former Claremont League of Women Voters president Sharon Hightower. Hightower says she has two things she considers when she evaluates candidates. First, does the person understand "Claremont's past achievements (and blunders)?" In this, as in most things Healy, Hightower gives no concrete examples. And, as we know from Healy's advertisements, the candidate's understanding of past achievements is highly suspect.

Hightower's second criteria is the vision thing. Does the candidate share Hightower's, the League's, and the 400's vision of what Claremont should be? (More on the word "vision" in a moment.)

The last letter is signed by eight former Claremont mayors, including Queen Ellen Taylor (right), who was so bad on the council that she was reportedly told by the powers-that-be not to run again. And some of the others on the list - Diann Ring, Karen Rosenthal, Paul Held, and Al Leiga - were no better than Taylor and in several instances were even worse.

Parsing the three letters is easy. There are two code words the 400 always uses: consensus and vision. "Consensus" is their belief that no dissent whatsoever should be tolerated. Not on the part of the council and certainly not on the public's part. In short, it is groupthink at its worst. The Ambrogis' letter mentions consensus, and Diann Ring is always prattling on incessantly about the need for 5-0 votes on the council.

"Vision" is the opinion formed by 400 at their various social events. They come up with some cockamamie notion about this or that, then hold sham public meetings to give the imprimatur of the public process to these opinions. Unknown to the public, the process is a done deal long before it ever reaches an official public meeting. All three Courier letters Saturday mentioned vision.

To those in the know, when you hear "vision" and "consensus" together in candidate endorsements, you're supposed to know that this is the 400's chosen person. When you parse all three of the Saturday Courier letters, you not only see the code words, but you see the eight mayors giving away their secret. They don't call it Bridget Healy's vision. They say, "our vision for Claremont...."

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we give you EXHIBIT 1 in this case:

1A

She has a fine record of 18 years service in city government, where she showed strong leadership in bringing consensus on many important issues....

We need [Healy's] passion and her vision and her proven leadership to implement our common vision for the future of Claremont.

Tom and Donna Ambrogi
Claremont

1B

....Does he/she have a vision for the future of Claremont? If so, is it one I share? Can he/she always keep that vision in mind while solving today’s problems?

Sharon W. Hightower
Claremont

1C

....She is committed to working with you, the citizens, to make our vision for Claremont this community's future.

Please join us in voting for Bridget for City Council.

Ellen Taylor
Suzan Smith
Sandy Baldonado
Algird Leiga
Paul Held
Diann Ring
Karen M. Rosenthal
Richard Newton
Past and Present Mayors of the City of Claremont

Candidate Forum Ratings

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

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

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

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

A Concerned Claremont Citizen

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

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

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

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

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

Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers, located at 225 W. 2nd St. in the heart of the Claremont Village. For you dedicated policy wonks, the council meetings are streamed live, and you can watch tonight's meeting on the city's website.

The meeting agenda is posted here.

Here's a list of some of the more interesting items with links to the appropriate backup material (the city's document site seems a little balky today, so you may have to refresh the screen several times to get a document to come up):

• Ceremonial Matters: The city pays homage the Claremont Area League of Women Voters on their 70th anniversary. LWV president Barbara Musselman will undoubtedly be there to accept the honor, as will founding members Marilee Scaff, Ellen Taylor, Helaine Goldwater, Judy Wright, Diann Ring, and Sharon Hightower. Kidding. It only seems like they've been there seven decades. Congrats ladies (and gents)!
  
  The city will also honor Metrolink for their sponsorship of the City's Depot Jazz Series.
  
  
  
• Code amendment: The city will amend the appendix to its conflict of interest code. The appendix lists exactly what information on potential conflicts of interest different levels of employees and elected or appointed city officials have to disclose. State law requires this to be reviewed and updated periodically.
  
  
  
• Right-of-Way and Irrigation Maintenance Contract: City staff is recommending awarding a three-year contract worth $294,812.95 to CLS Landscape in Chino. The contract is for the maintenance of over 50 acres of city-owned right-of-ways and 42 acres of open space brush clearance. Careful there....
  
  
  
• CGU General Plan Amendment Hearing Cancellation: The Council was supposed to hold a hearing tonight on Claremont Graduate University's request for General Plan land use map amendments and zoning changes for several of CGU's parcels. However, because the Planning Commission hasn't acted on the matter yet, the Council cannot take any action.
  
  
  
• Claremont Commons Project Appeal: A neighborhood group called Protect Our Neighborhoods, represented by C. R. Fowler, seeks to appeal an Architectural Commission approval for the Claremont Commons project at the northwest corner of Monte Vista Ave. and Foothill Blvd. Staff is recommending the matter be sent back to the Architectural Commission for further review.
  
  
  
• A Report on the Upland Park View Specific Plan, Chapter 2: Upland is working on a large-scale, mixed-use development north of Base Line Rd. between the 210 Freeway and Benson:
  
  
  Click to Enlarge
  
  
  The project will include 100,000 square-feet of retail space on 10 acres, up to 400 residential units on 32 acres, and a 57-acre sports park. You can learn more about the project on Upland's website.
  
  2.4 acres of the project's western corner are in Claremont, so the City has to approve a specific plan for that small portion of the Upland development.
  
  
  
• Cell Tower Code Amendment: Staff recommends the Council approve a revised city ordinance regarding antennas and wireless communication towers. The city here is looking for new revenue - lots of money in them there cell towers.
  
  
  
• Human Services Commission Appointment: At the recommendation of the Council's Ad Hoc Commission Selection Committee (Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza), the Council is being asked to appoint Bob Miletich to the Human Services Commission.
  
  Miletich is a former AYSO Region 3 board member and is employed by the Los Angeles County Department of Public and Social Services as a human resources administrator.
  
  Hmmm, sounds a little like LWV president Barbara Musselman, who formerly worked for San Bernardino County as a Human Resource Director. Go get 'em, wonks!
  

Towards a Sustainable Claremont

Claremont's draft Sustainable City Plan is posted on the city's website, for anyone interested in reading it.

The city's Sustainability Task Force came up with the plan, led by folks like former city Planning Commissioner and former Claremont League of Women Voters (LWV) president Sharon Hightower. Former Claremont Traffic and Transportation commissioner Tim Worley is also on the task force and, with Hightower, was a task force co-Vice Chair.

Worley works for the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMC) as their director of water policy. He also used to work for the Metropolitan Water District and for Three Valleys Municipal Water District. RMC, his current employer, is a quasi-public state agency in a position to toss a good deal of money over to Claremont and to Three Valleys as well.

Hightower was also chair of the city's Affordable Housing Task Force. Apparently, the Claremont 400's bench is getting a bit thin. Should they be the Claremont 40? The Claremont 4?

As with most of these sorts of things, there are a number of good ideas, along with some self-interest and a dash of hypocrisy built in. And blindness. A good deal of hubris-driven blindness as well. Can you find those things?

The city is taking public comment on the draft plan over the next few months. The city informs us:

The public is invited to review and comment on the draft plan at any of the following six City commission meetings:

July 23, Architectural Commission
July 24, Traffic and Transportation Commission
September 2, Planning Commission
September 3, Human Services Commission
September 4, Police Commission
September 11, Community Services Commission

All meetings will begin at 7 p.m. and are located in the City of Claremont Council Chamber, 225 Second Street. A copy of the document is available for review at the City Hall public counter at 207 Harvard Avenue, and may be downloaded by clicking on the link below. For additional information, contact the City's Senior Planner, Christopher Veirs at (909) 399-5486.

http://www.claremontonline.net/download.cfm?ID=25468

Wonky Ellen Taylor Picks Herself for Affordable Housing Task Force

No, she didn't literally pick herself. But she couldn't have done better if she had taken her genetic material and injected it into the cells of partially-formed automata. Shades of the Pod People.

At the meeting of April 22, 2008, the Claremont City Council ratified the recommendations of the ad hoc committee composed of Mayor Ellen Taylor and her trusty sidekick, Sam Pedroza. We don't blame Sam; as usual, he was without a clue.

We introduced this issue a couple days ago, here.

The people composing the task force are, Sharon Hightower, Jim Keith, Bruce Mayclin, Barbara Musselman, Kirk Pelser, John Tullius, and Andrew Winnick.

Claremont always makes a lot of its diversity. What about diversity in this group?

Age diversity? Nope. The median age is 62 years compared with the median age in Claremont of just under 36 years, according to the census. There is only one member of the committee born since 1950.

This committee is nothing if not geriatric. Does this look like the appointing authority? Mayor Ellen's age is within two or three years of the median age of the committee.

What about geographic diversity? Another failing grade, we're afraid. six of the seven members of the committee live north of Foothill. Only one lives in South Claremont, just south of Arrow. And that member is culturally and socially not really South Claremont, being the husband of a certified member of the 400 who was on the CUSD School Board and is currently on the Citrus College Board. (See the adjacent map for an idea of where the task force members make their homes. Click on image to enlarge) Northeast Claremont is, as usual, excluded.

Economic Diversity? Not so good there. The median home value of the members is some $600,000. (Much higher, by nearly $100,000 recently, but the economy is tanking. The Claremont Chamber gives the 2006 median home price as just under $506,000, whatever that means now.) The committee is diverse with respect to swimming pools: four of the members have them; three do not.

Political Diversity? Here, again, the committee does not reflect Claremont. The membership breaks 6 Democrats to 1 Republican, while Claremont as a whole splits roughly 6 to 5, Democrats over Republicans. A member of the public spoke up at Council meeting last night to note that four of the seven members of the committee were members of the Claremont Area League of Women Voters. Barbara Musselman serves as the LWV president. Thus, the League, which counts as its members far fewer than 1% of Claremont's residents--far fewer--has a voting and veto-proof majority on the task force.

We don't see too many "people of color" on the task force, though some did apply. The members are vastly white, old, well-off, and wonky. If not the fact of Claremont, then the stereotype of it. This committee is disconnected from the community and is as homogeneous a group as you could find. In fact, it looks like Ellen Taylor.

With the connections these people share (with each other), you don't have to worry about the views of Helaine Goldwater going unrepresented on the task force. Helaine Goldwater and Sharon Hightower were seldom seen apart at public meetings on affordable housing, and some even say they believed Helaine and Sharon thought with one mind.

The governing elite of Claremont like to pay lip service to the idea that it is a representative democracy. Paul Held--his absence in the public City precincts is unlamented--used to justify his actions that way. But given the composition of this task force, it's much more representative of the ruling clique headed today by Ellen Taylor.

Was the selection of this committee hard for Ellen? Let her explain it in this 40-second clip:

Affordable Housing Task Farce

Affordable housing is back on our radar. Item #12 on tomorrow night's Claremont City Council agenda is the City's Affordable Housing Task Force. An ad hoc committee comprised of Mayor Ellen Taylor and Councilmember Sam Pedroza interviewed 28 applicants and has recommended seven people for the task force.

With Queen Ellen running the show, we predicted that she would load up the committee with her Claremont League of Women Voter (LWV) friends, and we're pleased to say that Ellen did not disappoint. Ellen is nothing if not consistent in her spite.

The following people received the okay from Taylor and Pedroza:

• Sharon Hightower (LWV, former City Planning Commissioner)
• Jim Keith (Husband of Citrus College Trustee and LWV member Sue Keith)
• Bruce Mayclin
• Barbara Musselman (LWV President, City Police Commissioner)
• Kirk Pelser
• John Tullius
• Andrew Winnick (City Human Services Commissioner)

As you may know if you followed the contentious debate over the failed Base Line Rd. affordable housing project, the LWV pushed a poorly conceived project and refused to listen to anyone but people like Helaine Goldwater, Sharon Hightower, and League stalwarts. The project died when it could not qualify for county funding because of concerns about pollution from the 210 Freeway, something project opponents had cited as a problem from the first public meetings on the subject.

So what did Ellen do? Rather than reach out to the opponents of the Base Line Rd. project, she and Pedroza recommended three people most responsible for that debacle: Hightower, Musselman, and Winnick. And they only appointed one person, Mayclin, who had been a critic of the housing on Base Line. Mayclin was appointed as a token gesture so that Taylor could claim she was being fair in her recommendations.

If you go back and look at the minutes of the public meetings on the Base Line site, the crowds were pretty evenly split between proponents and opponents. Taylor, et. al., tried to tar the opponents with the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) brush, which is their favorite tactic.

Rather than engage on the issue, Taylor & Friends seek to discredit the opposition with false labels and whispering campaigns among themselves: You don't like our pet project therefore you hate ALL affordable housing and ALL poor people. Instead of sitting down to try to work with all stakeholders, they try to steamroll ideas by gaming the committee and commission system so that their ideas are unequally weighted to guarantee the outcome they desire.

After the Base Line project failed, those opponents tried to prove good on their word that they wanted to help find a solution to the affordable housing problem in Claremont. But, thanks to Taylor and Pedroza, most of those Base Line opponents were denied positions on the committee, and the result is a group that is hardly representative of the people who debated the Base Line Project.

This, of course, is Taylor and the LWV's modus operandi. Make a colossal goof at an enormous expense in city funds and staff time, get the city riled up and unnecessarily divided, then not only deny responsibility for the mess, but fail to acknowledge that their opponents were right all along. And, to add insult to injury, the Taylor folk shut out anyone who thinks differently and stubbornly refuse to allow those people to contribute to finding solutions to the problem Taylor and the rest created in the first place.

We saw this with the failed 2006 Parks and Pastures Assessment District (pushed by most of the same people as the Base Line Rd. project). In the assessment case, not only did the opponents prevail 56% to 44% when the matter was voted on, but those same opponents kept their word and turned around to help get the Measure S bond measure passed with 72% of the vote four months later. Johnson's Pasture was purchased with those Measure S funds. Taylor and the rest act as if none of that ever occurred. They have tried to erase history.

For all their talk about inclusiveness, this is as exclusive a group of people as you will find anywhere. Not one of us? Then get the hell out of here.

So, you can expect either Hightower, Musselman, or Winnick to be named chair of the task force. Also, expect more contentiousness to emerge from the task force. If the LWV and Taylor have proved anything in the past few years, it's that a bunch of individually intelligent people can be stunningly stupid as a group, mostly as a result of only listening to themselves. It's the Groupthink phenomena again, and more bad ideas along the lines of the Parks and Pasture Assessment and the Base Line Rd. project are sure to be in the offing.

Just to remind you how charming and winning these personalities are, we give you Andy Winnick in his own words, not only arguing for the Base Line Rd. project, but also condemning those who think differently from him (keep in mind this voice of authority was completely and utterly WRONG in the foundations of his arguments and his characterizations of the opposition):

Parsing a Train Wreck

CERTITUDE

As we've remarked previously, observing the debate over the Base Line Rd. affordable housing project one sees these things unfold with the inevitability of a train wreck, gathering a momentum all their own.

Rationally, we'd step back, sit both sides down, and work out a compromise. Claremont, however, is held hostage on this issue and many others by a certain kind of moralizing self-righteousness on the part the people who control things - the Claremont League of Women Voters (LWV), the Claremont 400, and many members of the City Council and city commissions.

The moral certitude with which this power group conducts itself approaches a religious fervor and precludes any reasonable compromise, as we hope to illustrate with this post.


GAMING THE SYSTEM

What generally happens with something like this affordable housing proposal is that an idea gets floated - We need affordable housing. There's a site on Base Line. We're going to build it there! - before any real analysis is done.

Because the LWV and Claremont 400 spend so much time talking to themselves rather than people outside their group, the initial idea quickly becomes set in concrete without any contrary information being allowed into the pre-public decision making. The views of important stakeholders, such as people who actually live near the proposed projects, are overlooked. The thing becomes a done deal, and only then do the public meetings begin.

And in the meetings (that precious "process" the LWV loves so much), the LWV and Claremont 400 work with city staff ahead of time to stack things in their favor. For instance, in the Padua Sports Park environmental impact report (EIR) hiring a person who falsely indicated he had a Ph.D in biology to do the biology section of the report (the Ph.D was in theology and was purchased for $100 from the Universal Life Church). Naturally, the biology report found there would be no significant impacts caused by the project, even though the California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service submitted opinions to the contrary.

Because the League and the 400 control virtually every commission and committee in town, they are able to plant landmines a long time ahead that prevent or preclude certain arguments against projects. For instance, LWV member Sharon Hightower, who is also a former Planning Commissioner, also chaired the City's General Plan Citizen's Advisory Committee. The LWV and the General Plan Committee made sure to plant geographical distribution as one of the goals for affordable housing. This meant that finding a location for affordable housing North Claremont automatically became a requirement. Since there the League was already pushing for the site on Base Line Rd., they could now argue that there were no alternatives to the Base Line Project that met the city's goals - goals written by the LWV.

(Hightower's General Plan committee did a similar thing with Padua Park, recommending rezoning the old Holliday Rock gravel pit at Base Line Rd. and Padua Ave. from open space to a mixed-use designation. They seemed to do this in order to remove the Holliday pit, which is a superior to the Padua site, as an alternative to the the Padua Sports Park project.)

Hightower and the LWV do these sorts of things because they have a much better understanding of the process than the average citizen. They do control it after all, and they use their mastery of the process to their advantage. Councilmember Ellen Taylor did the same thing at the January 8th City Council meeting when she tried to get the council to certify the Base Line Project EIR while also removing from consideration any of the superior alternative sites.

Unfortunately, the League and the 400's gaming of the system also works to greatly increase the average citizen's distrust of the League and the city. Worse, or better depending on your perspective, their actions diminish their own credibility and legitimacy.

FALSE ARGUMENTS

What makes the process even more unfair is that the two sides of the debate are frequently held to two different standards. For the LWV and the Claremont 400, there is one standard in which anything they say is accepted as gospel. For their opponents, on the other hand, no amount of factual information matters. The opponents will always be wrong. They are so wrong, in fact, that we don't have to listen to them at all.

Saturday's Claremont Courier noted a good example of this. Karen Vance, the League's lead person for affordable housing, spoke at the January 8th council meeting. (Vance spoke during the general public comment period at the beginning of the meeting and did not address the actual Environmental Impact Report issues for the project, so she wasn't listed in our catalogue of League-affiliated speakers.)

Vance in her comments addressed concerns of people whose kids go to Condit Elementary School. The Condit parents are apparently worried that because the kids from the Base Line Rd. project would go to Condit, leading to possible over-crowded class rooms. Because Condit is a higher performing elementary, it's a desirable school for some parents in the Claremont Unified School District. But, the thinking goes, with the affordable housing in place, kids who are currently there on an intra-district transfer might not be allowed in at Condit in the future.

Condit parents are also concerned about class sizes becoming too large if kids from the affordable housing and other proposed Base Line Rd. developments end up at Condit. Vance, however, said last Tuesday that she had met with CUSD Superintendent David Cash and that Mr. Cash had assured her that there were going to be no adverse impacts to Condit from the Base Line Project. The Courier article stated:

Another speaker, Karen Vance, a low-income housing advocate for the League of Women Voters, said she had assurances from Claremont Unified School District Superintendent David Cash that Condit Elementary School had enough space for all the additional children that were brought into the city by the affordable housing project and other housing developments along Baseline Road. She also said no child would be transferred out of Condit Elementary due to the influx of new students.

In her comments, Vance mentioned Cash several times, saying in her opening remarks, "Superintendent Cash understands these fears..." Cash, however, seemed to dispute Vance's characterization of his meeting with her, the Courier said:

“Karen Vance does not represent me or the Claremont Unified School District,” Superintendent Cash said, when reached by phone on Thursday. “We are gladly willing to teach every child living in the district, but there is absolutely no way to guarantee placement of students at any of our schools … We have standard guidelines for doing that.”

If the Courier had not bothered to contact Superintendent Cash, Vance's statements would have stood as fact. Given the way things work in town, they may still stand as truth. But, we now have reason to question Vance's veracity on this point.

Watch the video of Vance's remarks and note the certitude with which she speaks. Further, watch as a clearly emotional Vance frames her opponents as being afraid of facts, as using fear to keep the Base Line Rd. project from going through. She really seems to be calling people opposed to the project bad people. It's not enough that their arguments are incorrect:

Karen Vance speaking at the 1/8/2008 council meeting at the Hughes Center as Citizen Michael John Keenan and others look on.

REAL RISK

We were a bit surprised by Vance's speech last week. Vance has in the past struck us as being fairly level-headed, moderate, and at least willing to listen fairly to opinions other than her own. But given Superintendent Cash's quote, she was far from on solid ground in her comments last week.

Vance, in relating her meeting with the superintendent, invoked the word "reason" several times, and at one point said, "We have just now learned the rational, objective facts." She went on to make a point of telling the council that it was her fear-mongering opponents who were the irrational ones.

Yet, Vance and the League have continued to ignore the rational, objective facts presented in the EIR for the Base Line Rd. Project. Facts like those from the USC School of Medicine's study which, we have noted again and again, are the result of a 10-year, peer-reviewed research study published last year in The Lancet medical journal.

No one made the results of those studies up or mischaracterized them. No affordable housing opponent worked on the study's report. Those findings state that children living within 500 feet of a major highway will have a higher incidence of impaired lung development. Period.

So, it's simply a lie for the League to continue to say that everyone in the Claremont area faces the very same risk. The USC study clearly distinguishes between the risk of a 500-foot or less proximity and living outside that distance from a freeway. Within 500-feet of a freeway equals a much higher risk than farther away. The risks are not equal.

Additionally, the League and other project proponents have a peculiar and flawed notion of the risk involved here. They keep arguing that it is not up to us to decide for the potential project residents whether the risks are tolerable or not. They also say that the risks can be avoided by getting the project residents to sign waivers of liability. However, the risk here is not the future residents' risk.

The risk everyone, including the League, is talking about is the risk of future litigation the city would assume by building this project. And the idea that a waiver would protect the city is false. The risk here is really no different than the risk the city took on when it took ownership of the wilderness park, and we all know what happened there in 2003. $17.5 million is an awful lot to pay for underestimating or ignoring a risk.

In this case, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho knows that in California a parent cannot sign away a child's right to sue. Why she does not correct this misapprehension is a mystery.

And the League's claim that mitigation for the pollution hazard can be provided in the form of air filters has two obvious flaws. First, as USC researcher Ed Avol wrote in a letter to the Courier, there is no guarantee that the filters would be maintained. Second, people living in the units would become virtual prisoners under the League's proposal. They would not be able to go outside or to leave their windows and doors open. They would live in hermetically sealed bubbles (which, come to think of it, is kind of how the League operates).

No, it's time for the Vance and the League to set aside their emotions and to look at alternative proposals, which are the only real, rational choices that can be made. No matter what the League may think of people who have voiced opposition to the project, the environmental concerns raised by the city's own EIR for the project cannot be easily ignored or cast aside.

League Maneuvers

TAYLOR POWER PLAY

As we noted in Wednesday's post, the Claremont City Council ended up certifying the environmental impact report (EIR) for the project. However, they only did so after two votes.

Councilmember Ellen Taylor made the first motion, which would have approved the EIR but which would also have removed from consideration any of the possible alternatives to the project. This was a power play on Taylor's part because if approved there would have been no chance of the project being moved.

Taylor's motion was defeated 3-2 (FOR: Taylor, Yao; AGAINST: Calaycay, Elderkin, Pedroza).

The second motion, which was approved 4-1 (with Calaycay dissenting), kept the alternatives available for future consideration.

Perusing the video for Tuesday night's council meeting, we counted a total of 32 people who spoke during the public comment on the project EIR. Of those, 22 were against the project and 10 for - more than a super-majority against putting the project on Base Line Rd.

What was more interesting than the numbers was the composition of the speakers. The people who spoke against the project were not members of Claremont's elite. They were average citizens. The proponents, on the other hand, were mostly all either connected to the Claremont League of Women Voters or they were city commissioners (or both). Among them were:

• C. Freeman Allen (LWV member)
• Bob Tener (Planning Commissioner, former Architectural Commissioner, City Council aspirant)
• Gwen Carr (LWV member, Human Services Commission Chair)
• Bob Gerecke (LWV member, Claremont Democratic Club President, spouse of Katie Gerecke, former LWV President)
• Andy Winnick (Human Services Commissioner)
• Mary Noonan (LWV member)
• Sharon Hightower (LWV Member, former Planning Commission Chair, chair of the city's General Plan Advisory Committee)
• Helaine Goldwater (LWV member, former Police Commission chair)

Looking at the above names really underscores the main problem with the process for approving these sorts of projects. If you are an average citizen you are really competing on an unequal playing field in trying to have a voice in the process. Your voice is really worth less than half of any of the people listed above. (Odd to see Mary Noonan throwing in with these folks, but such are the times we live in.)

The process is inherently unfair because there are no checks and balances. In these matters, the Claremont 400 and their representatives act as proponents, legislators, and judges. That is why people are compelled to challenge the city in court or in elections (RECALL!, as was shouted out more than once Tuesday night).

Moving the matter to court at least removes the city as final arbiter. Of course, litigation is never easy, but as the Palmer Canyon lawsuit showed, the city can be roundly defeated when the case is strong enough.


THE LEAGUE ON THE ATTACK

What's particularly odd about this case is the ignorance displayed by people like Winnick, Tener, Gerecke, Hightower, Goldwater, and the like. They've tried to take the main significant issue raised by the EIR - the fact that there will be unavoidable hazardous environmental impacts to children growing up on the Base Line site - and frame that as if it were an invalid argument raised by the project opponents.

This is, of course, a lie. The environmental concern about the site was NOT created by the people opposed to the Base Line project. The issue was raised by the city's EIR and by the USC Keck School of Medicine study that found children who lived within 500 feet of major highway had a much higher likelihood of impaired lung development.

When speakers like Mary Noonan get up and say that their children grew up next to the 10 Freeway and that their lungs are just fine, they think they're criticizing the project opponents. However, they are really taking on the USC Keck School work, which was a 10-year, peer-reviewed scientific study involving 11,000 children and published in the British medical journal The Lancet in February, 2007.

To someone watching from the outside, Noonan and the others sound every bit as ignorant as Flat Earthers in their remarks. We seriously doubt that Noonan or Winnick or Goldwater have spent 10 years, as the USC researchers did, compiling data on lung development in their children.

Yet, the League and Claremont 400 proponents of this project seem to be arguing that the USC study was part of a grand conspiracy of Base Line Project opponents to defeat their well-intentioned plan for affordable housing.

Imagine the cunning it took for the USC researchers to plan more than 10 years ago to set about to undermine the Claremont affordable housing project, to apply for grant money for their study, to gather research subjects, to devote 10 years of research time, resources and energy to their devious plan!

The ignorance of Winnick, et. al., extends to other arguments. For instance, they blur the distinction that the USC study made between living within 500 feet of major highway and merely living in the vicinity. To the study authors, there is a very significant difference. That is why some of the study's authors have weighed in on the subject.

And, Winnick and the like say that since we've built such developments in the past, we should continue to, which is really the same logic as saying that since we allowed certain kinds of auto exhaust systems in 1949, we shouldn't have catalytic converters.

The League also falsely argues that the timetable for building the affordable housing project makes the alternatives impossible. They claim that if we were to switch to one of the other possible sites it would take much longer than sticking to the current plan. This is nonsense and quite the opposite of the real situation.

In reality, if the city doesn't go to an alternative plan, one without the environmental concerns of the Base Line Rd. site, they will not qualify for the grants the city is counting on to build the project - that is, after any litigation on the matter has been hashed out. All you have to do is look at the Padua Park project to see where such stupidity leads. Seven years after a similar fight, after litigation finally ended, the park has no outside funding and the city is having to build the project in stages.

So, we have to ask, does the League really believe that changing to an alternative site would take seven years? Of course not! For one thing, an EIR would likely not be needed, and there would likely not be the opposition there is to the current plan. But the path-of-least-resistance strategy is lost on the clueless League, whose members seem to take an almost sadistic pleasure in hammering flawed projects down the throats of the public.

The League and friends also like the Andy Winnick tactic of disparaging members of the public who disagree with him. On Tuesday night, Winnick said he found the arguments opposed to the project (which by extension includes the arguments of the SCAQMD, the USC researchers, LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich's oiffce) reprehensible. What Winnick is really peeved about is that ANYONE would question his assumptions. There is no logic or reason at work here.


THE EXAMPLE OF 2006

In the end, you can count on the League and the Claremont 400 will do as they always do: Turn on the opponents. They aren't just making bad arguments, the League says. They are EVIL.

In the 2006 Parks and Pastures Assessment District vote, they attacked opponents of the assessment saying that the claims of those people that they supported an alternative funding measure to buy Johnson's Pasture were false. The assessment proponents in essence called the opposition liars.

In that assessment campaign, the League, who just as they have done with the affordable housing issue, ran a large newspaper ad in support of the assessment. Further, the assessment proponents argued that the alternative, a bond measure, would never pass and that the assessment opponents would not work to help get a bond passed.

The reality was, after the assessment failed 44% to 56%, that a number of people who had opposed the assessment stepped up and worked with people they had formerly opposed and got a bond passed with a remarkable 72% of the vote in November, 2006. And many of the Claremont 400 people who had worked on the assessment - former mayors Diann Ring, Judy Wright, Al Leiga, Paul Held, and many others - were nowhere to be seen in the bond campaign.

So when the League and others claim that their affordable housing opponents are disingenuous in saying they support affordable housing at any other site but the current one, you have to take that with a grain of salt. There's the clear, recent example of Johnson's Pasture to show that people who've opposed one thing can turn around and work together to get an alternative accomplished.

If anything what that past example showed is the unreliability of the Claremont 400 when it comes to compromising and to working together with the larger community to achieve the consensus the League is always prattling on about.

This is where a community relies on its elected officials for guidance and leadership. The problem is that in the past the Claremont 400 has controlled all of the levers of power so that any compromise was impossible. Whether or not that control is as monolithic as in past years remains to be seen.

COMING UP: The Insider is at work on more video from Tuesday's meeting, including plenty of footage of a sour Andy Winnick so that you can see for yourself just how humorless and angry he can be.