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.

Indio Spin Class

Well, it didn't take very long for our prediction from last Thursday to come true.

You might recall that in commenting on the situation in Indio where former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard is getting some extra summer heat for a screw up in the tax collection department, we said that we wouldn't be surprised to see Southard's staff trotting out stats and charts to show how none of this was really Glenn's fault at all.

The problems in Indio stem from the failure of the city's electrical utility, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) to collect the city's five-percent Utility User Tax (UUT) from about 8,000 households and 650 businesses. The missed tax money for the Indio UUT, collected over $4.5 million last year, could easily run into the millions of dollars.

Southard wasted no time dropping the possible litigation threat and hiring MuniFinancial (the same company that handled Claremont's failed Parks and Pasture Assessment District vote) to audit IID and determine how long the money has gone uncollected.

Southard's team also took the Desert Sun newspaper for a quick spin, as a Desert Sun article on the subject indicated. The article, titled "Indio: There Were No Signs Tax Wasn't Collected," noted that some residents were questioning how the city could overlook the missing revenue. Southard's assistant Mark Wasserman, however, argued that there appeared to be no drop off in revenues:

Wasserman said the city has annual revenue audits, and problems with the utility tax did not surface.

“When you look at the population and the UUT revenue they do grow at consistent rates with one another,” he said.

For example, from 1995 to 2000, Indio's population grew by 14 percent, and the utility tax revenue by 14.5 percent, Wasserman said.

From 2000 to 2005 — the height of the city's development boom — population grew 35 percent; the utility tax revenue increased even by 54 percent, Wasserman said.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during budget preparations. Projections for utility tax revenues are based on prior years, he said.

“There were no huge increases, no decreases. Revenues that we received from IID were in line with the growth from the city,” said Susan Mahoney, management services director who oversees finance.

The Desert Sun's article also carried a helpful graphic that showed that UUT revenues since 1994 tracked population growth in the city fairly consistently, just as Indio officials had said:

Chart from The Desert Sun, 8/7/08
(Click to Enlarge)

But should the tax be tracking the population or should it be rising much faster than population growth because of rising energy prices? You can see from the graph that in the last five years the UUT revenues did outpace population growth, but how do we know that curve is what we should really be seeing? Maybe the difference should be much more dramatic.

It seems to us there's a pretty simple way of figuring the correct amount. The Desert Sun reported that Indio has 27,704 households, according to the California Dept. of Finance. Let's say we know that the average household's yearly utility tax payment for 2007 was $100 and 30% of that cames from electrical bills. Then, $30 times 27,704 households would equal the annual UUT revenue the city would have expected to collect from electric bills. In our example, the city should have collected $831,120 from IID electric bills.

But if the Desert Sun is right about 8,000 households not being billed, then the total electric bill portion of the UUT revenue from households would be closer to $591,120 - $30 times 19,704 households. It's a difference of $240,000, and you would think that would jump out at people. An analysis for business UUT revenue would be similar.

And it's not as if Indio doesn't consider these sorts of projections. Below is an image of a fiscal analysis for the 2/19/03 Indio City Council meeting. The analysis shows estimated utility tax revenue for a then-new housing development called Generations at Shadow Hills:

(Click to Enlarge)

Click here to see the actual report. (Sorry, the city of Indio doesn't make this easy. You have to click on the archive link, then click on the "City Clerk" folder and find the agenda packets. Look for February, 2003.)

The table shows what the estimated UUT revenues should be for the project as the homes become occupied. These are the figures, based on an average annual $166 utility tax collection per household:

2003 - 0 homes occupied, $0
2004 - 0 homes occupied, $0
2005 - 11 homes occupied, $1,824 (Uh-oh, the analyst's math may be wrong here; 11 times $166 should equal $1,826)
2006 - 22 homes occupied, $3,648 (Wrong here, too; should be $3,652)
2007 - 32 homes occupied, $5,306 (Wrong; should be $5,312)

So, did Indio really collect the amounts estimated for the housing units studied or did they instead collect some fraction of those numbers - $166 per household per year, minus whatever the electric bill portion of the utility tax was since the IID wasn't billing for that?

Indio was clearly used to figuring what the projected incomes should have been, so what was so hard about checking to see if the real numbers actually measured up to the projections? Southard and his staff were supposed to be auditing the numbers. Now, this was a problem that Southard inherited, but shouldn't a new administrator coming in with fresh eyes and getting paid barrelfuls of money be expected to do a proper audit? We know for sure that almost 8,000 households and 650 businesses weren't being billed. How did Southard overlook that?

More importantly, can whatever spin Indio's city management puts on the story trump the facts, as so often happened in Claremont over the various crises of the Southard administration here?

We can probably be sure that whatever audit is done, if the auditor isn't truly independent - loyal to the people of Indio rather than Southard or the Indio Council, then we might never know what happened. A citizen's group might be better off hiring their own auditor to go over the figures.

If that doesn't work, they can always start a blog.

Meanwhile, Down in Indio

News from the desert (since the Desert Sun has apparently lost interest in covering this bit of Indio news):

Crisis and strife seem to follow former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard from place to place. Southard's favorite sport has always been taking pot shots at councilmembers who don't tow the Southardian line and manipulating other councilmembers into granting lavish management pay packages.

As we saw during Southard's 17-year tenure in Claremont, high pay did not equate with high performance. Claremont nearly lost $5 million in the 1990's investing in the Orange County Investment Pool, which failed spectacularly. And the $17.5 million settlement paid out to Palmer Canyon residents for the 2003 Padua Fire was partly due to the failure of Southard's staff to fully implement the city's Vegetation Management Program to control brush in the Claremont Wilderness Park.

Southard's other favorite pastime is playing fast and loose with finding creative revenue sources, something Claremont is dealing with to this day. Currently, Indio's Utility Tax is being questioned. Indio has levied its Utility Tax for over 20 years the tax rate is currently 5 percent and generates about $6.8 million per year, according to a 7/18/08 Desert Sun article.

The Desert Sun reported that the legality of two percent of that Utility Tax is in question and that Indio is having to put the matter to a vote on the November ballot:

A handful of Indio residents gathered outside City Council chambers Wednesday holding large white posters in protest of the city's collection of the utility fee.

Despite the organized opposition, the City Council approved 4-1 a resolution that places a utility tax initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Voters will be asked to ratify 2 percent of the 5 percent Utility Users Tax being levied.

The tax on public utilities generates about $6.8 million a year for the city. If the 2 percent is not approved, the city will lose out on $2.7 million a year.

“It is not going to be passed. The citizens are not behind it,” said resident Richard Arnold, who helped organize the protest.

Councilman Mike Wilson voted against the measure because he wants the city to stop charging the 2 percent tax until it is approved by the voters.

City Manager Glenn Southard said it would have been too cumbersome to ask all the utility companies to remove the tax and then add it back again in November if the measure passed.

If the tax measure fails, then the city at that time will re-examine the budget, he said.

The city first began collecting the tax at 3 percent in 1985 and then in 1992 increased it to 5 percent.

There is also a second part to this story that may have Indio Councilmembers questioning that $318,000 per year they're paying Southard through 2011.

It turns out that Indio's electric company, Imperial Irrigation District Energy (IID), has failed to collect Indio's Utility tax from at least 4,000 businesses and residents (that number may actually be much higher). In Indio it is the duty of the tax administrator (his Southardness) to audit the city's Utility Tax annually. Because of Southard's failure to execute his audit duty, Indio potentially lost out on millions of dollars.

The current Indio council has generally had a 4-1 majority supporting Southard. Much like the situation in Claremont in 2003-05, Southard has butted heads with a councilmember who questions him. In Indio's case it's Councilmember Michael Wilson. Wilson suggested last month that the city suspend that extra two-percent in the Indio Utility Tax until it could be voted on in November. Makes sense - it were illegally implemented, why continue to levy it until voters can have their say? Southard would have none of that and got the Indio council to continue to levy that extra amount, saying it would be too much trouble to ask IID to collect lower amount until November.

Given the Utility Tax fiasco and with a council election coming up, some of Southard's supporters on the Indio City Council may be rethinking their support of their man. We're also hearing rumblings of a mutiny among some of Southard's department heads who appear to have seen through Southard's games.

The Indio City Council, which has August off, has had to convene a special closed session today at 4pm. The agenda lists two items, one anticipated litigation and the other an initiation of litigation. It's quite possible that Southard's job is on the line just as it was during the height of the Irvin Landrum crises here in Claremont.

If Indio brings in Southard's favorite consultant, Dr. Bill Mathis, to mediate, you know Southard's won this one and has once again saved his owned hide by flim-flamming a gullible city council.

Phone Bill Mis-Confusion

A friend of ours recently showed us her phone bill from Verizon. We understand that the important thing on the phone bill is the big number on the front. You are supposed to copy that number onto your check and mail it to them.

But this phone bill goes on for six or seven pages, enumerating and aggregating monthly service basic, local calls, basic service taxes and surcharges, monthly service non-basic, rate adjustments, non-basic service taxes and surcharges, billing for long distance carrier, miscellaneous charges and credits, direct dialed calls, and taxes and fees on services.

Whew! Sometimes we think that computers are not wholly a blessing. Nobody would cobble up something this complicated and impenetrable without a computer.

Or would they? Our eyes were darting hopefully for any explanatory text to elucidate the foamy sea of tele-speak and numbers when they landed on the following sentence:

Non-payment of non-basic service charges WILL NOT result in the disconnection of your local telephone service.

We are not making this up. Here's a scan:


Can anyone tell us what this means, or why it takes four (4) negations to say it? Does our friend have to pay those pesky non-basic service charges or not? We got out our copy of Quine on Logic but got lost between "general and subjunctive conditionals" and "alternation and duality".

Elsewhere on the bill we found that Verizon is providing our friend an opportunity to be a Literacy Champion by signing up for a monthly donation to "Verizon Reads".

When they have a box for "Verizon Writes", we might contribute.

Careful readers will note that we don't write any of our own stuff anymore. We steal everything. The title of this post uses a word first brought to us by Xavier Alvarez, quoted here and elsewhere.

Trouble in River City

Not to beat a dead horse, but we received one more email regarding Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment, the revenue generator that the city uses to pay for various maintenance costs.

Because the city revisits the LLD each year to revise and raise the amount it levies each property owner, it continues to generate controversy and represents, to many citizens, an annual reminder of the sort of manipulation the Claremont 400 is famous for around these parts.

The LLD was never put to a property owner vote when it first instituted in 1990 and would likely have failed as the Parks and Pasture Assessment did in 2006 (56% to 44%).

After California's Proposition 215 in 1996 mandated a vote on assessment districts and taxes if they had not submitted to a public vote, Claremont, rather than voting on the LLD separately, combined the LLD with the city's utility tax in a single initiative.

This had the effect of giving Claremont voters a false all-or-nothing choice. If they voted NO, they would have been voting to cripple the city's finances. The city and the Claremont 400 were thus able to argue that eliminating both the LLD and utility tax would result in drastic cuts in city services. The more reasonable decision would have been to separate the two issues and have two different votes, one for each revenue generator. This combining of the two taxes into a single up or down vote was a false choice pushed by then-City Manager Glenn Southard, who almost certainly conceived the strategy in order to ensure that the LLD would survive and so that Southard and the city could say that it had been approved by voters.

In the early 1990's, Claremont, like a lot of cities during those recessionary times, was experiencing extreme financial distress. The LLD was falsely sold as a temporary fix in 1990 until the city could lift itself into the black, and the utility tax came in a few years later. But where did the idea for a utility tax come from in the first place?

According to our reader,

Back in 1992 Claremont was orchestrating the utility tax, though we didn't know it at the time. I attended one of the "town hall" community meetings referred to by Mayor Wright in her first letter. We grouped at large round tables and, with a city staff person as a recorder, compiled lists of funding sources and program cuts on large flip-pads on easels. Towards the end of the meeting, each group presented its results. Not one group presented a utility tax as a solution.

I remember at the very end someone shouting from the back of the room, "What about a utility tax?" and the staff person hurriedly writing that down. I thought it odd at the time, and I don't think I ever knew who shouted it out. It was very similar to "The Music Man" where Robert Preston attends the town meeting and keeps shouting "pool table" and "what about a pool table in your community?", to get the town fired up over the "problem" of a pool table in River City.

Well, friends, ya' got trouble.

When you at the Claremont Insider refer to these meetings as "dog and pony" shows, you are on the money. They are held merely to provide the appearance of public input in a process that is fore-ordained. Judy Wright says so herself when she refers to the LLD in her letter of July 21: "The early decision-making was done in 1989 before the finance committee met..."

In Claremont, we got taxes with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "D" and that stands for Deny, Dissemble and Dis(re)member, the three corners of the Claremont 400's Pyramid of Success.

_______________________________

Wright, Ring & the LLD

One of the frustrations that comes with trying to participate in Claremont politics is the inevitable absurdity that infuses any issue. People want rational systems. If you've coached Little League, you know the best umpire is the consistent umpire. As long as you know that ump's strike zone, you can work with it, but when it's constantly and randomly shifting, there will always be uncertainty and chaos built into the game.

The letter former Claremont Mayors Judy Wright and Diann Ring, along with former Councilmember Bill McCready, submitted to the current City Council and to the Claremont Courier last week in support of the City's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment, was a perfect exercise in dissecting the inanity and irrationality that they and their Claremont 400 friends have imposed on our town.

The letter, which we ran on 6/15, purported to lay out the history of the LLD, which was enacted in 1990. The letter, addressing an editorial by Courier editor Rebecca JamesCourie that was critical of the LLD, began: "We write to correct erroneous information in your editorial of June 6." Unfortunately, as our explication of the letter has showed in the past few days, the letter was rife with errors, false statistics and outright lies.

To recap, here is an outline of the errors (lies?) we noted:

• The letter fails on its second sentence: "As three members of the city council (the other two are deceased) who passed the Benefit Assessment District in 1990...."
  
  In fact, only one of the other two Councilmembers who voted on the LLD in 1990, Nick Presecan, is dead. The other, Dick Newton, is alive and well and still resides in Claremont. Wright, the historian, surely knows this.
  
  The letter attacks Courier Editor JamesCourie for not researching the background on the LLD. In fact, Wright, Ring and McCready need to take a good long look in the mirror. People in glass houses, you know.
  
  
• The letter writers are selective in the numbers they cite to support their claims of vast community support for both the 1990 LLD and the later Utility Users Tax (UUT). For example, they claim that 32 0f 35 speakers asked for a utility tax at a town meeting at Bridges Auditorium in December, 1992, on the campus of Pomona College.
  
  In fact, the minutes for that 12/12/92 meeting showed only 16 people getting up to speak at public comment. Of those, only three gave clear support for the UUT.
  
  And in their arguments in favor of the LLD, the letter writers ignore the 3/6/1990 mail count report submitted to the City Council. As of that date, the city had received 60 letters supporting the LLD, 475 opposing, and 14 withdrawing opposition.
  
  Additionally, a citizens group headed by a man named Les Boring, collected 7,000 signatures opposing the LLD. No mention of that in the letter.
  
  Wright, Ring, and Claremont 400 die-hards like former Police Commission Chair Helaine Goldwater (who spoke at last Tuesday's Council meeting in favor of increasing the LLD assessment) constantly ramble on about responding to citizens. They cite the number of public meetings held on one issue or another, they manipulate the events to try to steer the discussion towards what they want, then, if the debate doesn't go their way, they ignore the record of those meetings.
  
  
• The letter writers don't just ignore public speakers, they ignore the recommendations of city committees and commissions. Wright, Ring and McCready ignored the fact that the city's Citizen Finance Advisory Committee (CFAC) on 11/28/89 strongly recommended sunseting the LLD, which was imposed because of a budget crisis in the early 1990's.
  
  
• The letter rewrites the actual history of events. The writers claim that there was never any discussion of sunseting the LLD and assert that "We repeatedly and specifically said that we believed that this assessment would be permanent."
  
  Yet, an examination of Claremont City Council minutes from 1989 and 1990 when the LLD debate was going on, showed no such statements. As our analysis on 6/17 showed, the record of those meetings showed statements by both CFAC Chair Dennis Smith and repeatedly by Judy Wright in favor of sunseting the LLD.
  
  Now the letter writers claim no such statements ever occurred. One suspects they will say anything to justify an action, relying on the short memories and apathy of a disaffected, disillusioned electorate to allow their false promises to go unfulfilled.
  

The factual underpinnings cited in the letter are important, not only because they distort the truth beyond all recognition, but because the writers claim an authority that the actual record of events belies. This false claim to authority by Wright, Ring and McCready is all the more troublesome because Judy Wright is also our town historian, the creator of our great mythology.

If this one letter is at all representative of her greater body of work, she has no credibility whatsoever, and by extension, the Claremont 400 house rests on a crumbling foundation, rooted in falsehoods, misstatements, exaggerations and fabrications. Failure is built into the system's structure. This is the "vision" they constantly speak of sharing and maintaining.

The argument here is to hold people accountable for their statements. Go back and compare their words then and now. And don't believe us. Look for yourself. We've provided the links to minutes of city meetings in our posts from the past week. If we are wrong in our analysis, show us.

The larger argument here is that this is simply one more example of a problem that has occurred in Claremont time and again. Whether it's the LLD, the handling of the Landrum shooting, the city's investment of over $5 million in the bankrupt Orange County Investment Pool or the $17 million-plus paid out for the 2003 fire in Palmer Canyon and Padua Hills, the record is one of consistent ineptness fueled by hubris and an intolerance for opposing views.

The record, contrary to what the letter writers would like you the believe, is really an argument for rationality and change.

Did I Say That?

Judy and Diann Employ The Big Lie

Judy Wright and Diann Ring wrote last week that as "members of the city council who passed the Benefit Assessment District [Landscaping and Lighting District, or LLD] in 1990, we specifically did not include a sunset clause. We repeatedly and specifically said that we believed that this assessment would be permanent." [emphasis added]

We challenge Wright and Ring to show us even one example of their alleged "repeated and specific" statement. They won't find any in the Claremont city council minutes 0f 1989-1990. A detailed review of the minutes of 5 months of city council meetings preceding the adoption of the LLD in March 1990 finds NO statement even approaching the one they allege they made.

Instead, we find Judy Wright bringing up the "sunset clause" idea repeatedly.

At the November 28, 1989 meeting, the first where Council met with the Citizens Finance Advisory Committee (CFAC), that committee recommended a "sunset clause" for the LLD. CFAC Chairman Dennis Smith stated that "a long-term extension of the assessment district was not considered appropriate." He went on to say, "a sunset recommendation was included to meet the need to restudy the budget without having the burden of additional expenses."

The minutes then go on to describe Judy Wright's position: "Mrs. Wright said if the decision were to proceed, she would favor a sunset clause."

Two months later, at the council meeting of Jan 23, 1990, where the resolution declaring the intention to order formation of the assessment district was adopted, Judy Wright made the following amendment,

"Mrs. Wright requested the resolution be amended to include, 'It is the city council's intention not to continue this assessment district beyond June 30, 1995, without first holding a protest hearing.'"

Even Dick Newton (now perhaps deceased, depending on the veracity of Wright and Ring) implied strongly that the Council on March 9, 1990 intended the LLD to end:

Mr. Newton agreed with Mr. McCready and suggested staff prepare a memo adopting the intentions for the assessment so that as long as it existed..." [emphasis added]

And nearly three years later, on December 12, 1992, when looking for a carrot to entice the community into the utility tax, Judy Wright said that she "thought a utility tax was fair and should replace the lighting and landscaping district."

On February 9, 1993, Judy Wright said that "she agreed the LLD assessment should be folded into the utility tax." Further down the page, the minutes of that meeting state, "Mrs. Wright would support sunset of the LLD with the implementation of a utility tax because she considered the tax more equitable."

Now Judy Wright and Diann Ring are not stupid people. But they must think the current council and citizens of Claremont are. Why would they lie about this history? Or is it a case of selective memory?

Normally the Insider would applaud this discussion of sunseting an assessment district, but with Wright and Ring, the truth seems to be an adaptable tool, to be shaped by the circumstances at hand, used for tactical advantage, and then discarded for another more convenient truth.

In second grade, there is a phrase for it:

Liar, Liar,
Pants on Fire!

Fun with Numbers

Judy and Diann caught in a Big Fib

Judy Wright and Diann Ring were working late last Monday night trying to get their letter to the editor and city council in shape. Maybe Bill McCready was in the corner flipping tortillas, but he didn’t say much. Dick Newton was deceased that night.

When they got to the third to the last paragraph, they were stumped. They needed a statistic to really bring the point home. They had already used the idea that “the city council held 10-15 well attended neighborhood meetings.” It was way too much work to look up whether it was 10 meetings, or 15, or somewhere in between. Anyway, it was a lot.

They remembered that the City had held a Big Meeting at Bridges Auditorium in December of 1992, and a lot of people spoke. Maybe if they told the mean editor and dumb ol' members of city council that there had been a huge groundswell for the Utility Tax, it would show ‘em just how right Wright and Wring are, and how Wrong everyone else is.

But it would have to be a really big number.

Boy said Judy, I don’t know how many people were there, and I’m too tired looking up history for my book and stuff…I’ll bet there were thirty or forty people who spoke and I’ll bet that nine out of ten of them were on our side.

I know said Diann, let’s tell them that 32 out of 35 speakers requested a utilities user tax be instituted.

And that’s what they did.

[Note: The minutes for the December 12, 1992 public hearing at Bridges Auditorium are here. 16 members of the public spoke. Only 3 of the 16 clearly supported the utility user tax. Most were making comments on tangential issues such as tax fairness, service cuts, alternative financing such as fees, etc. A couple seemed to be leaning pro-utility tax, a couple seemed to be leaning anti-utility tax without being clear about it. There is no meeting or combination of meetings in the late 92-early 93 period, when the Utility User Tax was being considered and adopted, that make the 32 out of 35 statistic citied by Wright and Ring. It is simply incorrect.

A very interesting--some might say compelling--statistic Wright and Ring omit is one associated with the contentious LLD process. Reporting the March 6, 1990 count of mail to council on the LLD. "The city clerk reported receipt of written correspondence received to date on this issue to be: 60 letters of support, 475 opposing, and 14 withdrawing opposition."

That sounds to us like 7 or 8 to 1 against the LLD. But for Wright and Ring, it is an inconvenient truth.]