Tonight's Council Meeting

The Claremont City Council meets again tonight, beginning with another one of their closed sessions at 5:15pm at City Hall. Do you get the impression this is where the real business of the people gets done?

The Council reconvenes at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers for its public session. Here's what's on tap tonight:


CLOSED SESSION

In their ultra-secret bunker, the City Council will:

• Meet with their labor negotiators, City Manager Jeff Parker, Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos, and personnel manager Shawna Urban to discuss negotiations with the Claremont Professional Employee's Association.
  
  
• Discuss the Protect Our Neighborhood lawsuit against the City and Claremont McKenna College.
  
  
• Meet with Jerry Tessier regarding price and terms for the Padua Theatre renovation.

REGULAR SESSION

When the Council reconvenes, they'll give a report on their closed session actions, then jump into the regular part of the meeting, beginning with public comment. Among the agenda items are:

• A second reading of the residential parking ordinance.
  
  
• Authorizing City Manager Parker to sign a lease agreement with Tri-City Mental Health to lease that agency the city's Youth and Family Support Center facility.
  
  
• Awarding a $2.2 million contract with Mega Way Enterprises of Pomona to build Phase 1 of the Padua Ave. Park. According to the staff report, Phase 1 will include one unlit soccer field and 52 parking spaces.
  
  Additionally, the staff report says that the City is expecting to receive $850,000 from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy for aspects of habitat restoration and water conservation. The city's agenda report seems to indicate that if the City receives the money, staff wants the council to shift $850,000 of money already budgeted for Phase 1 and go forward with Phase 1A, which is the lit soccer field and 58 more parking spaces.
  
  This money transfer keeps the RMC's hands nominally clean when it comes to taking out the sensitive habitat they are supposed to be saving, but in reality it allows the City to go forward not only with removal of habitat but also with introducing sports field lighting that is not in keeping with the City's Draft Sustainability Plan or the rural area lighting restrictions for Northeast Claremont.
  
  The report says the total for Phases 1 and 1A is $3,667,859. If the City receives the RMC money and goes forward with Phase 1A, it will have to appropriate another $527,000 from the City's General Fund Reserve to build Phase 1A with its lit field.
  
  The RMC was supposed to vote on granting the $800,000 to the city yesterday, and the staff report seems to indicate that the deal was a done one ahead of time, so it's likely that the council will be voting on raiding the General Fund Reserve for that extra $527,000 to go forward with Phase 1A.
  
  The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II had an article on the Padua Park agenda item in today's paper.
  
  
• Considering the Police Commission's recommendation for the Corey Nursery site at 1650 N. Monte Vista as the best location for the proposed new Claremont Police Station. The Council is also being asked to direct staff to seek funding for the station, which is projected to cost between $20-25 million.
  
  
• Considering recommendations from the Architectural and Planning Commissions on streamlining approval of wireless communication towers. Not enough of these in town, and the do generate a steady revenue stream.
  

• An appointment to the Human Services Commission to replace Commission Chair Gwen Carr, who recently resigned her position. Carr was a casualty of former Human Services Chair Valerie Martinez's Preserve Claremonster scheming. No good deed goes unpunished is the lesson here. Maury Feingold will replace Carr on the commission.

Tri-City Recovery

Tri-City Mental Health, the cooperative mental health agency funded by the cities of Claremont, La Verne, and Pomona, apparently has recovered nicely from its bankruptcy and recently received a $10 million contract from LA County to service Medi-Cal patients it the three cities.

According to a blurb in the San Bernardino Sun, Tri-City hosted a reception at the Pomona Fairplex Sheraton to celebrate its recovery. The Sun quoted a couple Tri-City boardmembers:

Pomona Councilwoman and Tri-City board chairwoman Paula Lantz praised a recent reorganization of the governing board in which three members have been added as part of a restructuring process intended to help create a future vision for and re-establish the mission and core values of the 48-year-old organization.

La Verne Mayor Jon Blickenstaff, also a board member, said, "When you think about the hundreds and even thousands of people in this Pomona Valley that are served by Tri-City and the enrichment to their lives that we have provided, (it) makes you realize why everyone in this room and so many others have worked so hard to guarantee that this organization continues to serve in the exemplary manner that it has...."

Jesse Duff, who had served as Claremont's interim City Manager right after Glenn Southard left for Indio in 2005, was hired as Tri-City's interim director in August, 2007, and has overseen the agency as it has been regrouping following the bankruptcy. Duff was hired on a permanent basis in late-June.

Tri-City Mental Health Board Opening

The City of Claremont is looking for applicants to fill its seat on the Tri-City Mental Health Center's governing board.

The City's website has a job description:

The Board meets on a monthly basis. It is desirable that the Community Member appointed to the Board

- have a willingness to invest the time and energy required to ensure the health and viability of the system of care;
- be committed to participate in ongoing education and training;
- be committed to providing leadership and oversight to the Agency and the mental health system in the three member cities;
- be committed to being an advocate for the patients served by the Agency and the larger system of care;
- live or work in the City;
- have knowledge of mental illness, recovery and self help;
- have knowledge of cultural competency modes and program analysis as it relates to mental health service delivery

If this sounds like something you'd be qualified for, call the City Clerk's office at (909) 399-5460 for more information. You can download an application from Claremont's website.

Applications must be received by the City Clerk no later than 5pm, January 4, 2008, and should be sent to the Claremont City Hall at 207 Harvard Ave., P.O. Box 880, Claremont, CA 91711.

Money to Burn

We've been meaning to get around to a couple other items that have surfaced at recent City Council meetings, but Paystubgate has kept us pretty busy.

One of these other stories is the action pushed by Claremont Mayor Peter Yao at the September 25th City Council meeting to dedicate the anticipated transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue from the new Hotel Casa 425 to funding programs for the homeless.

Tony Krickl in the Claremont Courier reported on the Council's discussion on the topic.

(Check out the article - there's a large photo of a group of Claremont homeless milling about the Casa 425 courtyard illustrating the extent of the problem.)

According to the article, city staff estimated the city's anticipated TOT revenue from the Casa 425 to be around $60,000. Staff also claimed that approximately 10% of the kids in Claremont schools are "without a permanent home." The article quoted Claremont 400 stalwart Sue Likens as saying that "it's shocking to think that nearly 500 of our young people are homeless."

But is that number really accurate? As Councilmember Ellen Taylor pointed out during the council's discussion, the Claremont School District includes kids living with relatives or living out of motels as among those without permanent homes. So, we're not talking about a Dickensian scene of 500 homeless waifs wandering the streets of Claremont.

In any case, there were two really unusual aspects to this issue. First, the money being discussed, $60,000 per year, does not exist. No one knows how much revenue Casa 425 might generate. It could be $60,000, or it could be half that. There is no data on the hotel to be able to predict the city's revenue stream from the hotel.

The other, larger problem is the fact that the city has allocated this money without having a program identified for it. It's just money in search of a problem, which is not the most efficient or wise way for a city to spend.

Rather than having groups propose programs and give a proposed budget for those programs, the city is saying, "We have $60,000 a year. Any takers?" Cities usually take the proposals first, then allocate the money after approving the programs. Here, Mayor Yao has done it backwards.

In the discussion on the issue, Councilmembers Taylor, Linda Elderkin, and Corey Calaycay all expressed concern about setting a precedent with this way of doing business. But in the end, only Calaycay voted against the funding mechanism.

Mayor Yao says he got the idea from a League of California Cities conference he attended recently. However, Mayor Yao did not know if the cities that had done this sort of earmarking of tax revenue had already identified specific programs beforehand or not.

Mayor Yao, and the other councilmembers, were apparently under pressure from Sue Likens and the local Interfaith Coalition to get that money set aside. In a lot of ways, Yao's and the council's reaction to that pressure is a lot like their initial reaction to Paystubgate - act without thinking.

Will the money be well-spent? Well, Mayor Yao himself mentioned that the money was needed because of the state's cutback on funding for Tri-City Mental Health, the joint agency run by Claremont, La Verne, and Pomona.

How well run was Tri-City? It filed for bankruptcy in 2004. The state's reasoning for eliminating its funding for Tri-City was that there are state-funded Los Angeles County programs that do the same thing, so why have redundant agencies?

As several of the councilmembers indicated, this method of funding is bad precedent, and nothing good will come of it, no matter how well-intended the actions were.

What's Happening?

TRI-CITY FUNDING PROBLEMS

Tri-City Mental Health, the cooperative mental health agency run jointly by the cities of Claremont, La Verne and Pomona, has had it's state funding eliminated in the current state budget. You may recall that Tri-City recently emerged from a 2004 bankruptcy.

Will Bigham reports in today's Bulletin on the issue.


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CITY SALARIES

A reader pointed us to a San Jose Mercury News article about city employee salaries that made it into the Bulletin today. As we recall, Claremont has been pretty free with its base salary information but has in the past fought releasing the performance bonus amounts given out to management. The argument against releasing has been that it violates employees privacy rights.


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BLOG UNLEASHED, BLOGGERS UNMASKED

The Foothill Cities blog has opened up their arena to all comers, and invites you to write to them and post your thoughts as an honorary blogger. If you have a bit of news or item of interest about the San Gabriel Valley, check out the FC and post your views.

And for those of you with prying eyes who absolutely hate anonymity, here's a photo of the FC bloggers, Centinel and Publius, taken at the recent Pasadena bloggers' picnic.

Photo Courtesy of Altadena Above It All

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Lastly, we received a nice note from Jared Cicon, the Claremont amateur ad creator whose Doritos ad we posted the other day.

Cicon asks for your (and our) support for his Heinz ketchup ad

Hello Insider,

------- suggested I check out your Claremont Blog, and when I did I was blown away. I want to thank Joslyn Jane for putting up the link to my Doritos Commercial. Thanks for helping to get the word out about the Heinz contest as well.

I need to ask my fellow Claremont peeps a favor, and hope you guys there at the Claremont Insider could help me do it.

The voting on the HEINZ contest is underway, and I could sure use some votes. The voting process couldn't be simpler.

You go to http://www.topthistv.com/ , hit the 'vote' area and look for my video. It is called 'Respect The Taste II'. Let me be clear, if you see one of the 15 commercials that you feel is your favorite, then give that producer the nod. I am OK with that. The only way I can truly understand what 'America' wants, is to let them vote honestly. I can then take that information and hit closer to the bullseye with my next project. If by chance you like my spot the best, than you can stay in Claremont.

Ha, Ha, Ha.

You can use ANY of your emails to vote EVERYDAY until Sept. 10th.When the votes are all tallied, the winner will win some cold hard cash, AND have his commercial Air during the national broadcast of the EMMY AWARDS on the evening of the 16th. Any support you can throw my way will be appreciated.

Site name: http://www.topthistv.com/Video name: 'Respect The Taste II by Jared Cicon.

Thank you everyone there at Claremont Insider, for taking the time.

Jared Cicon

Mental Health Woes

A Daily Bulletin article by Will Bigham reports today that the Tri-City Mental Health Center's debt repayment plan has been approved by a federal bankruptcy judge.

Tri-City is operated by Claremont, La Verne and Pomona and provides mental health services to people in the three cities. Tri-City Mental Health is unique in Los Angeles County. In all other areas, the county itself provides the services Tri-City is responsible for.

In fact, Tri-City is one of only two city-level mental health agencies in California. The only other one is operated by the City of Berkeley. Everywhere else in the state, counties, with the help of state and federal funding, provide access to mental health services.

Tri-City, according to Bigham's article, got into trouble by expanding too fast and ended up having to cut staff and services and to sell most of its facilities after it declared bankruptcy in early 2004. The agency's debt totaled over $20 million, mostly to the state and to Los Angeles County.

Jesse Duff, who in 2005-06 served as Claremont's interim City Manager, is now interim director for Tri-City. The article states that the three communities are trying to work on community outreach to figure out Tri-City's future.

The state of California's California Performance Review (CPR), however, singled out the Berkeley and Tri-City mental health agencies as being redundant and recommended phasing them out and replacing them with county-level services. According to the state's CPR report:

Tri-City Mental Health Center

The Tri-City Mental Health Center developed in a very different manner [from Berkeley's program]. It was established in the early 1960s by three Los Angeles County cities-Pomona, Claremont and La Verne-as a Municipal Joint Powers Authority. When they established Tri-City, the three cities were isolated geographically from the rest of Los Angeles, and the cities were concerned that the county would not provide an adequate level of mental health service to their residents. Today the Tri-City area is integral to, and contiguous with, the rest of greater Los Angeles. Nonetheless, the Tri-City Mental Health Center has continued to operate separately from the County of Los Angeles, submitting its own claims, cost reports and client data to DMH [the state's Department of Mental Health].

Recently, Tri-City Mental Health Center has had financial difficulties, and in February 2004, it filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 9. The case is now in federal court and Tri-City is developing a plan for continued operation. However, Tri-City owes DMH $12 million in federal funds due to over-claiming for Medi-Cal services, and DMH is listed as its largest creditor. Tri-City continues to receive its full share of realignment funds but has reduced the level of services it provides, prompting the County of Los Angeles to express concern that it will become responsible for services formerly rendered by Tri-City without additional funding. In addition, Tri-City has recently cancelled several service contracts with the county.

Comparison

No other state has been identified that faces a comparable situation under which anomalous city programs continue to operate within a county-based mental health system. Further, the politics of each of the two affected counties are unique to those areas.