Build It and They Will Come

The City of Claremont is moving forward with the expansion of the parking lots for the Claremont Wilderness Park and the Thompson Creek Trail.  There are currently two small lots, one at the north end of Mills Ave. and one at the northeast corner of Mills and Mt. Baldy Rd.  The City intends to expand both lots.

The parking expansion plans are on the agenda for tonight's Community Services meeting.  The meeting begins 7pm in the City Council chambers at 225 W. Second St., across from Saca's Restaurant in the Claremont Village.

The plans call for the Mt. Baldy Rd. lot to be expanded east onto the empty land under the Edison powerlines.  The new lot there will add 178 spaces and will also have an entrance opening onto Mt. Baldy Rd., directly across from the Strasbourg Ct. cul-de-sac.  We've already heard complaints from hikers and residents who worry that traffic speeding along Mt. Baldy Rd. will inevitably lead to more accidents once the new lot is built.

Proposed Parking at Mills Ave. and Mt. Baldy Rd.
(Click to Enlarge)

The City is is expanding the existing north lot at the Wilderness Park trailhead and will add 127 parking spaces.  The expansion area will run south and west from the current lot at the terminus of Mills Ave.

Proposed Parking at North End of Mills Ave.

Whatever the lots' final configuration, one thing is certain.  There won't be enough parking in 10 years.  In 1999, we went through the same thing.  The original 15-space lot at the trailhead wasn't big enough, and parking was spilling over onto Mills.   The City's answer was to triple the number of spots by adding the 45-space Mt. Baldy Rd. lot.  Here we are again needing another parking expansion, taking the total parking to nearly 360 spaces, about three-fourths of the parking in the Packing House parking structure.

Claremont Courier, 2/20/99

At this rate, in 2021, we'll need to build a Wilderness Parking Garage.  Don't worry, though.  It'll be a LEED certified design and use recycled concrete.

Incidentally, the City has completed an initial study with a mitigated negative declaration, saying that the parking lots will have no negative environmental, traffic, biological or cultural impacts.   We had to laugh, reading this because if this had been proposed for the Claremont Village by a private developer, there would  likely be all sorts of language about how the added parking was going to generate additional daily vehicle trips and would therefore be a cause of more pollution.  Which just goes to show that these documents are a lot like the school district's Blattner Report - not much more than a political statement written by a consultant to support position whatever you need propped up with jargon.

Here's the information from the City's website:

Wilderness Park & Thompson Creek Trail Parking Lot Expansion (Nov 7, 2011)

The City will conduct public meetings regarding a proposal to expand the existing parking facilities serving the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park (CHWP) and Thompson Creek Trail (Project File #10-A01).

Currently, parking is located at the CHWP entrance on Mills Avenue, as well as in an overflow parking lot at the northeast corner of Mills Avenue and Mt. Baldy Road that also allows access to the Thompson Creek Trail trailhead. The proposed project would essentially be an expansion of these existing parking facilities. The proposed increase in parking spaces is intended to better serve and accommodate existing parking and use demands.

Two lots are being proposed to provide parking visitors. The north lot is approximately 1.45 acres, and is located at the northerly terminus of Mills Avenue. It will replace the existing lot and provide an additional 127 spaces. The south lot is approximately 3.0-acres and would be located within the area between Mills Avenue, Mt. Baldy Road, and the channelized stream. The expansion area is undeveloped land currently and will provide 178 spaces.

Staff has worked on the development of additional parking for the CWP and TCT because of the increased numbers of visitors to the park and trail that have resulted in overflow parking onto nearby public streets. At the City Council workshop, staff was directed to obtain necessary approvals for such an expansion and on April 12, 2011, the City Council provided staff with additional project direction.

The agreement details with Pomona Valley Protective Association are being worked out for the North Lot and plans are being reviewed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for portions of the South lot. Staff has also been working with Rincon Consultants, Inc. on the necessary CEQA documentation, Phil May Landscape Architect on related landscape plans, Andreasen Engineering, Inc. for civil engineering plans related to the North lot and RKA Engineering for civil engineering plans related to the South lot.

• View Draft Initial Study (Adobe Acrobat, 8718KB)

Election Tomorrow

The polls open at 7am tomorrow, and a select few voters (less than 20% of the eligible registered voters, if the past is any guide) will have the opportunity to vote for two seats on the Claremont Unified School District Board of Education as well as for the Citrus College Board of Trustees District 2 seat.

If you need to know where your polling place is, check the LA County Registrar-Recorder's website and enter your street address and zip code.

There are two candidates for the Citrus College District 2 position:  incumbent Sue Keith and Tracy Rickman.

The three CUSD candidates are, in alphabetical order, Joe Farrell, Hilary LaConte, and Sam Mowbray.   Farrell is the outsider, having been one of the leaders of the No on CL school bond campaign last year.  LaConte is the incumbent, having been board president when the district tried unsuccessfully to pass the $95 million CL bond.  Mowbray is a former CUSD board member and is seeking to return for a fourth term on the school board.

The Daily Bulletin endorsed Farrell and LaConte.  The Claremont Courier, on the other hand, endorsed Mowbray and LaConte.  Judging from candidate lawn signs, campaign supporter lists, and letters to the Courier, the Mowbray-LaConte combo is the Claremont 400's ticket of choice for this election. The Courier and the 400 seem to have given LaConte a pass on the failed bond, which got less than 40% of the vote a year ago.

The Courier and the 400 have also opted to look the other way with regards to LeConte's possible circumvention of the state's Brown Act sunshine law when she was board president in October, 2010 - something that drew criticism from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Bureau of Public Integrity recently.   This last bit we thought particularly odd for the Courier, which in the past has been something of an advocate for open government.

Through its endorsments the Courier has usually been the most accurate barometer of voter sentiment in Claremont, so we'll see if 2010 CL bond vote or the Brown Act inquiry have much of an effect on the voting. We suspect that it neither issue will matter much at all, but the turnout should tell all.   If CUSD voters are really bothered by enough to overcome their usual apathy, then LeConte might be in some trouble.  

Last Saturday's Courier carried letters from two LeConte-Mowbray supporters, Nancy Tresser-Osgood and Dave Nemer.  Both lamented the low turnouts in past elections (Nemer also had a haiku on the same subject in a prior edition of the Courier).  Tresser-Osgood and Nemer are either terribly naive or just plain ignorant, or both, when it comes to local elections.   The 400's candidates traditionally do best in low-turnout elections.   When election turnout goes over 30%, the vote usually goes against the insider (small "I") candidates.

That's why our City Council elections are in March and the CUSD elections are in November of off-years.   If those elections were changed to general election dates, the turnout would swamp the Claremonster candidates.  In past council elections Llewellyn Miller, Peter Yao, Jackie McHenry, and Corey Calaycay all ran as outsider candidates in what were relatively high-turnout municipal elections.

Similarly, because it was a bond measure, the CL vote had to be held during a general election and was soundly defeated.   Conversely, the City's $12.5 million Measure S Johnson's Pasture bond won because its support base was much wider than just the Claremont 400.  Measure S got over 72% of the vote in November, 2006.

We'll have to wait until after the polls close at 8pm tomorrow night to know the answers.  Check back here to see the final results.

CUSD, LaConte: Guilty as Charged

The other candidates in the school board election, Hilary LaConte and Sam Mowbray, do not play political games. They say what they mean, and mean what they say, based on actual facts. We may disagree with some of their positions, but we know they are responsible community leaders who don't resort to tricky campaign strategies driven by political expediency.

- Dave Nemer, letter to Claremont Courier, 9/19/11

J'ACCUSE!

CUSD Board Member
Steven Llanusa

Last Saturday's Claremont Courier had an article by Landus Rigsby, who covers the public schools beat.   The headline, "Board sidetracked by Brown Act violation allegation," implied that CUSD Board Member Steven Llanusa's complaints about open governance violations by the board have distracted the other board members and CUSD Interim Superintendent Gloria Johnston from the more important work of running the school district.

Rigsby's article focused on a complaint Llanusa had made to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office about an alleged Brown Act violation by the CUSD Board and Johnston at their May 19, 2011, meeting.  The Brown Act is a California sunshine law that's supposed to guarantee transparency in government.

In the article, Johnston indicated that the entire complaint was a waste of the district's time and money.  She also claimed that the DA's response "indicated that there was no reason to pursue further action..."  Rigsby quoted Johnston:

"I feel it's very important for me to clear my reputation in terms of being in charge of or violating the Brown Act in closed session," Ms Johnston said.  "I have in front of me both letters that you have submitted to the district attorney's office, Mr. Llanusa, and neither of them indicate that a substantial violation took place."

Additionally, the article quoted Board President Beth Bingham:

[Bingham] agreed with Ms. Johnston's suggestion that the district attorney's response eliminated the need to pursue further action.

Board Vice President Jeff Stark went even further, stopping just short of calling Llanusa a liar:

CUSD Board VP
Jeff Stark

...Jeff Stark described Mr. Llanusa's recollection of the May 19, 2011 meeting as "incorrect."

"You keep saying there was a Brown Act violation, but clearly the letter from the district attorney does not agree with that," Mr. Stark said.  "So again, Steven, maybe it's an misinterpretation of what the district attorney is saying.  Maybe it's a misinterpretation of what happened in closed session.  But my mmory of that session is dramatically different."

So if Rigsby's article is to be believed, Llanusa's Brown Act complaints are baseless, and his accusations about the CUSD board's disregard for open government laws are not much more than a meaningless distraction caused by a whiney incompetent, which is how the four other board members like to portray Llanusa.

The Rigsby article also helps buttress claims by CUSD board supporters like Dave Nemer that the board, other than Llanusa, have achieved a sort of organizational perfection unmarred by things like Brown Act violations.   This is no small matter since one of the issues that's arisen in the current CUSD board election is the board's lack of transparency, at least as it's perceived in some parts of the community.

Long and short, if Rigsby reporting is at all accurate, Llanusa's full of more crap than a Christmas goose as far as his allegations go.


DA TO CUSD: STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT

Now, we've disagreed with Llanusa on many things and certainly haven't supported him in the past.  But in this case, we've found evidence that not only does Llanusa appear to be right about CUSD's contempt for open government law, but that the district attorney's office has in fact warned the CUSD board about their behavior.

A year ago, at the board's October 7, 2010, meeting, the board went into closed session to discuss what was listed on their agenda as a "Superintendent's Evaluation--Update" as well as a labor negotiation conference.  A complaint was filed with the Public Integrity Division of the district attorney's office alleging that the closed session was a ruse under which the board went beyond the claimed labor negotiation discussion and the evaluation of then-Superintendent Terry Nichols.  The complaint alleged that in closed session the board also discussed budgetary matters and district goals - things that by law are supposed to be considered in open, not closed, session.

CUSD Board Agenda for 10/7/10

(Click to Enlarge)

CUSD Board Member
Hilary LaConte

We should also note that the alleged Brown Act violation occurred under the watch of then-Board President Hilary LaConte, who is currently running for reelection to the board.  LaConte, like Jeff Stark, has publicly scoffed at the idea that the CUSD board is lacking in transparency and is completely open and above board.

We would normally be inclined to leave matters at that.  After all, what occurs in closed session stays in closed session.  Even if a violation occurred, who could ever prove it?

Well, now comes a public response from the LADA's Public Integrity Division to the complaint, presumably from Steve Llanusa (the complaintant is unnamed), regarding that 10/7/10 closed session meeting.  The DA's response, dated 9/29/11 and received by the school district on 10/7/11, belies the claims of openness by the board and its supporters and supports Llanusa's accusations completely.

Here is the DA's response (click on the small "S" at the lower left-hand corner of the image to see a larger view):
LADA ltr 9-29-11


Some key points from the letter:

If, as alleged, the discussions included budgetary considerations and prospective goals of the District, then such discussions in closed session violated the law....

[Evidence Supporting the Allegations - .ed]
We obtained written documents that reportedly reflect matters that were considered in closed session. Copies of the documents are attached. They include what appears to be a presentation slide entitled "CUC Strategic Planning", dated October 6, 2010, and a typed memo with a caption of "Needed Support from the Board". These matters exceed the permissible boundaries of a closed session performance evaluation and do not have anything to do with labor negotiations.  The memo makes suggestions about communications between the Superintendent, the Board, and other groups. It addresses board goals, and public support for possible bond funding....

Unagendized, closed session discussion of such matters violates the Brown Act....

Even if the matters were only presented and not discussed, such consideration is still illegal.....

Similarly, closed session discussions regarding budget issues, proposed expenditures of stimulus money, the possibility of bond revenues, identification of programs or positions to cut, under the guise of Labor Negotiations or Performance Evaluations are simply impermissible.

[CUSD: Don't Use Closed Session to Duck the Public]

We recognize that the issues faced by legislative bodies like your board are difficult, especially in times of financial uncertainty. Such matters often generate controversy and disagreement that is minimized when the discussions are conducted outside the public's view. However, the Brown Act does not permit closed session consideration of matters simply because they are controversial or difficult; rather, permissible closed session topics are narrowly defined and limited to very specific matters for which the public's interest is best served by closed session consideration, such as the range of acceptable terms for a real estate transaction or labor negotiation that is in the works, or the candid communication between the legislative body and its attorney, or the forthright and frank evaluation of an employee who serves at the pleasure of the legislative body itself.

[Warning to Board:  Watch Yourselves in the Future]

In the absence of any objective evidence such as a recording of the closed session discussions, the scope of discussions that occurred in closed session cannot be conclusively proven. However, the impermissible expansion of closed session discussions to include matters that are not expressly authorized for closed session consideration is troubling. We therefore express to you our deep concern about such conduct, to the extent that it has occurred. We urge you to review the circumstances that are described herein, and demonstrate your commitment to compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the Brown Act, by limiting any closed session consideration to those matters properly agendized, and expressly permitted by law. By so doing, you encourage public confidence in the integrity of your agency, and the decision making process, which is vital.

The DA's letter certainly gives Board Member Llanusa new credibility when it comes to Brown Act complaints against the CUSD board. It also detracts enormously from the credibility of the four non-Llanusan CUSD board members and their supporters with respect to their claims of perfection when it comes to transparency, openness, and integrity. The DA's response of 9/29/11 belies the board members' quotes in Saturday's Courier and is especially troubling considering that the school district received the DA's letter weeks before Landus Rigsby's article.

One would expect the school board, having been caught and reprimanded so recently, would display at least a little contrition. Instead, they go on the attack and act as if they, not Llanusa, were the victims. If the school board were as honorable as they claim, they would admit their errors and work publicly to correct them. But they seem incapable of admitting any wrong, even when confronted with the evidence of their misdeeds. Hilary LaConte, the presiding board member at the time of the 10/7/10 incident takes no responsibility and simply seeks to glide through her reelection campaign as if nothing happened.

And perhaps she's right. If no one says anything and the truth is buried, then nothing really did happened, even if it did. As we've said before, Jeff Stark had it right all along: That's the way things have always been done in Claremont.

Shakedown

[Stracci] had a fleet of freight hauling trucks that made him a fortune primarily because his trucks could travel with a heavy overload and not be stopped and fined by highway weight inspectors. These trucks helped ruin the highways and then his roadbuilding firm, with lucrative state contracts, repaired the damage wrought. It was the kind of operation that would warm any man’s heart, business of itself creating more business.

- Mario Puzo, The Godfather

LOOPY LOGIC

Watching the Claremont Unified School District in action, one can't help but marvel at the kooky logic employed by the CUSD Board of Education. For instance, when the school board needed help with its last superintendent search, they turned to Pivot Learning Partners, the consulting firm that identified Terry Nichols, the district's last superintendent.

You'll also recall that Nichols cut out on us 18 months into his $196,650-a-year contract and left CUSD in bind, in answer to which the school board turned to....Pivot Learning Partners!  Board member Jeff Stark explained the deep thinking behind this move, saying that this is the way we've always done things.  Like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football, we keep going back for more.

To make matters worse, for its interim superintendent the CUSD board hired PLP consultant Gloria Johnston (photo, left), paying her the same amount the district paid Nichols.  We wonder how hard it was for Johnston to tell the board that the results of PLP's exhaustive search was, for the time being, herself.

As we've seen time and again, the CUSD board of education prefers to overpay for work that could easily be done in-house.  For a fraction of the money they paid PLP and Johnston, the board could have had their assistant superintendent fill in for Nichols while they conducted their search.  They could have simply asked PLP or some other firm for a list of names and then interviewed the candidates themselves rather than counting on PLP to winnow the list down to a couple choices.   But, as Jeff Stark likes to say, that's not how we do things in Claremont.

Incidentally, these education consultant gigs must be pretty lucrative.  We've discovered that Interim Superintendent Johnston doesn't limit her consultative work to PLP.   A Fairfield-based company called Total School Solutions lists Johnston as a member of their team. According to the TSS website, Johnston is a TSS Senior Consultant. Here's her bio:

Click to Enlarge

We don't know much about TSS or what exactly Johnston has done there, but we did find a mention of TSS in a 3/2/08 Modesto Bee article about a brouhaha in the Waterford School District:

Modbee.com continuing coverage: School budget crisis

Report rips Waterford spending
Schools chief defends his 'triage, expedient' actions
By ROGER W. HOSKINS
BEE STAFF WRITER

WATERFORD -- While the Waterford Unified School District stares at an upcoming 10 percent budget cut, the board of trustees heard a legal report critical of relaxed financial practices.

The report at a recent meeting covered three main areas of unauthorized or unexpected payments:

Stipends totaling $25,000 paid to two principals over two years, Jose Aldoca and Don Davis

Administrative pay raises of 5.2 percent, including a raise for Superintendent Howard Cohen, that were paid five months before the board approved them

A contract with a Bay Area consulting firm, Total School Solutions, was ratified as a $33,000 agreement to polish the district's master plan but turned out to be an open-ended contract that cost the district $124,000 before it was canceled with the work unfinished.

Maybe, contrary to Jeff Stark's philosophy, this is the way things are done everywhere.  Another pillar of Claremont exceptionalism bites the dust.


BLATTNER BLATHER

If you hadn't noticed, the district (and now Johnston) doesn't limit its use of consultants to headhunting duties.  When the matter of inter-district transfers (IDT's) started becoming a hot-button issue in the current school board election, the school district, needing to help prop up incumbent Hilary LaConte ahead of the November vote, commissioned Bob Blattner and his firm Blattner & Associates to write a report on the impact of IDTs on CUSD. 

The so-called Blattner Report is posted on the CUSD website.  It's presented as a sort of cost-benefit analysis and concludes not only that the overall impact of IDT's is positive, but that discontinuing the acceptance of IDT's into the district would be detrimental to CUSD's budget because whatever savings might be achieved by eliminating unneeded teaching positions would be eaten up by the loss of state money the district receives for each student.

Here's the report:
Blattner Report 9-15-11


It's too bad Blattner didn't bother to provide any of the actual data he used in his report.  For all we know, he could be making this stuff up out of whole cloth.   He is, after all, a former Sacramento Bee education writer who is known as much for being a Sacramento lobbyist as he is for his other work with school districts.  Let's face it, the school district had to commission a political document to prove its premise - that we need IDT's. To that end, they didn't need a detailed, rigorous study. They had to get someone whom the district could count on to shape the narrative.

You'll note that CUSD doesn't bother to produce the back-up data either.  For all their talk about being transparent and involving the community in their decision-making, they're still stuck in their top-heavy hierarchy issuing edicts from on high.  If we know one thing about Claremont, it's that you can get a report to say just about anything you want as long as you don't provide the data to back up your claims.  Just say it strongly enough with plenty of authority, and pretty soon the education beat writers will be citing it as if it were fact rather than interpretive art.

This no doubt explains why CUSD slow rolls requests for what should be public information.  Rather than just posting all the raw figures on their website so that the community could assess them and have a rational debate, CUSD had to get Bob Blattner to explain it all to us.  And if you ask for the data, they don't just delay, they change the subject by having their surrogates call you a racist - "You don't want those kids here."

Compare the district's website to the city of Claremont's, where one can watch videos of old City Council meetings or peruse the agenda materials and staff reports at one's leisure.  For all the complaints we have had about City Hall, access to public information is no longer one of them, and that didn't improve until the City Council turned over and the upper management changed.  Before that, the stonewalling public information requests received was every bit as heavy-handed as what one experiences with CUSD today.

CONSULTANT-GO-ROUND

So, to recap: Consultants salivate at the thought of dipping into the CUSD money stream.  Remember Jared Boigon, the consultant the district hired at a cost of $25,000 to conduct the polling the school board used to buttress its arguments for the $95 million Measure CL bond?  Boigon leveraged that contract into a campaign consultant job working for the front men the district roped into running the Yes on CL campaign last year.  For campaign funding, at Boigon's suggestion, the Yes on CL folks then hit up the very consultants and contractors who stood to benefit from the bond and would have undoubtedly sought to recoup their campaign donations by working those costs into their future billing.

Of course, the district assured us that there was no conflict of interest involved in the $150,000-plus the Yes on CL campaign raised from those consultants and contractors.  No problem at all.  If the school board says it, it must be true.

So we weren't terribly surprised when we learned that Gloria Johnston's Total School Solutions employers are partners with Bob Blattner's company. In fact, TSS issued a press release trumpeting the synergy that was about to be loosed on the world when the two consulting firms teamed up:

Click to Enlarge

They promise to deliver their prospective school district clients to efficiency levels undreamt of outside the Jersey road construction business.  We have no problem with that.  It's just that it would have been nice if Gloria Johnston and the school board would have told us before contracting with Bob Blattner for his expert opinion on IDT's. 

As we said, no surprise.  It's Claremont, after all.  It's how we do here.

Been There, Done That

AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE

As we've noted in the past, the Claremont 400's tried and true tactic to pushing some item on their private agenda through to completion (see the Claremont Unified School District's Measure CL) is to create a false sense of urgency, i.e., "if we don't do things this one way, chaos will ensue."

As we saw last November, there was no stoop too low for CUSD's board and their surrogates to take in order to try to get their $95 million bond passed.   The Yes on CL campaign outspent its opponents by more than $154,000 to $5,000, using money mostly raised from contractors who would have benefited from the bond.  And it still lost by a margin of 60.4% to 39.6%.

A rational person would conclude that, given such a decisive loss, there was something wrong with CUSD's claims about the necessity of the bond and that the No on CL campaign's arguments (no real accountability, conflicts of interest, the lack of any specific projects for the money, and the district's mismanagement of the previous bond, to name a few) resonated with voters.

One would have thought that the district's board would have sat down with the No on CL campaign and tried to get them on board to incorporate some of their ideas into managing CUSD's fiscal problems.  But this being Claremont, land of magical thinking, the lesson learned for CUSD was that they just need to wait and continue to let the district's infrastructure degrade so they could come back to voters in a year or two and say, "See, we told you it was bad."

It's a self-created crisis, of course, but CUSD's gang of four - Board President Jeff Stark, Vice-President Beth Bingham, Clerk Mary Caenepeel, and member Hilary LeConte - are committed to the idea that they know best.   So, get ready for the Return of CL.


FOLLOW THE MONEY

The only difference next time will be that, having changed the school board's norms to allow members to speak out on issues, CUSD will take a more active role in shaping the election message.  Exhibit A in our prediction for the bond-to-be-named-later is the fact that the Yes on CL campaign, whose treasurer is former school board member and Claremont 400 stalwart J. Michael Fay, continued to raise money after the election.

Below, courtesy of a reader, we've posted the Yes on CL campaign's 2010 Year-end Form 460 filing, showing post-election contributions and expenditures.   Notice that the campaign reported cash contributions of $182,155.69 and expenditures of $154,768.39, leaving a balance of  $27,387.30.

More significantly, the campaign received two post-election contributions, one small donation of $100 on 11/16/10 from Nancy Osgood, and one $10,000 whopper on11/12/10 from the architectural firm Flewelling & Moody, which advertises itself as "architects for schools."  

In the interests of truth in advertising, Flewelling & Moody should be marketing itself as "architects for school bonds."  The post-election CL campaign donation was F&M's second, bringing the firm's total or 2010 to $20,000.

Here's actual Form 460 (click on the icon to the right of the "S" on bottom of the frame to enlarge):





TO THE BRINK

This business of artificial crisis creation is by no means limited to Claremont.  Brinksmanship allows the extremists in a negotiation in to eliminate the middle ground and get their way. Writer James Suroweicki has a column in the August 1 edition of the New Yorker in which he argues that the current federal debt-ceiling crisis represents nothing more than a cover for politicians unwilling to make the tough decisions that real, constructive fiscal change will require (i.e., higher taxes, cuts in spending and services, or some combination of the two):

...politicians like the debt ceiling: it allows them to rail against borrowing more money (which voters hate) without having to vote to cut any specific programs or raise taxes (which voters also hate).

You might think that there are benefits to putting negotiators under the gun. But, as the Dutch psychologist Carsten de Dreu has shown, time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call “integrative”—taking everyone’s interests and values into account.

In fact, by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism. As the economist Thomas Schelling showed many years ago, “It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself” when it comes to brinksmanship. It doesn’t, in short, help to be President Obama. That may be why all the deals that have been taken seriously this season rely much more heavily on spending cuts than on tax increases: the deals represent Republican priorities, because the Republicans seem to be more willing than the Democrats to let the country default. It’s not pure craziness that’s rewarded—when some congressional Tea Partiers said that they wouldn’t vote to raise the ceiling under any circumstances, they became irrelevant to the conversation, since no compromise would make them happy. But recklessness does equal power: that’s why Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, and John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, have implied that they’re willing to go over the cliff (in part by suggesting that their fellow party members will force them to) but also that they can be persuaded to do the right thing.

That same group psychology is why, in the face their overwhelming Measure CL loss, the CUSD board has refused to be truly inclusive (to use their own term) and has behaved as if members of the public representing alternate viewpoints don't exist.   The CUSD board rules imperially, ignoring its own conventions at times (more on this later), and solemnly issues dicta that have no bases in reality while our district's fiscal problems worsen.

It has been ever thus in our fair city, and so it shall remain.  So sayeth our school board.

2010 Census Figures

The U.S. Census Bureau has some of its 2010 Census data up and available for review. Check out the American Factfinder to look for information about Claremont and just about any other American city.

There's some interesting Claremont data, by the way. For one thing, our population grew more slowly than the Census Bureau had estimated in 2009, when Claremont's population was supposed to be a little over 35,400. Instead, the 2010 Census listed the city of Claremont population as 34,998. That's a gain of only 928 people in 10 years, a number that supports the notion that we're a built out city.

Furthermore, Claremont's graying trend continued, a point we've come back to over the years. In 2000, 7,031 Claremonters - about 21.7% of the population - were under the age of 18. Last year, Claremont's under-18 population had dropped both in total numbers and as a percent of the population, down to 6,459 or 18.5%.

Despite those numbers, Claremont over the past decade has continued to live in a Fantasyland devised by the Claremont 400. In their separate domains, the City and the Claremont Unified School District have both refused to face our demographic reality and continue to devote millions of dollars to things like Padua Sports Park or to maintaining an overabundance of school district facilities and staff rather than allowing for the population trends in their decisions.

The City could have better spent its money on senior programs or more senior facilities, since that is where the greater need seems to be. In the school district's case, as we've argued before, they've done things like propping up enrollment figures by allowing an ever-larger number of interdistrict transfers - now nearly 20% of CUSD's enrollment. The families of that 20%, by the way, do not have to pay for CUSD bonds, and their attendance is underwritten by CUSD taxpayers.

We've learned through years of observation that no amount of hard data can change minds that long ago committed to wrongheaded courses of action. The City's staff may know better, but they're often held hostage by people saying things like, "We just have to have a downtown trolley." We can hope for change, but there's been little evidence to date of much willingness on the part of the Claremonsters to incorporate reality-based thinking into our local policy decisions.

* * * * *

Some other trivia:

• Claremont has become a little more diverse since 2000. The city's Hispanic population now numbers 6,919 or 19.8%, compared to 5,221 and 15.4% in 2000.
  
  
• Similarly, Asians now account for a larger segment of Claremont's population than before. In 2010, Asians numbered 4,564, or 13.1% of the total. In 2000, those number were 3,912 and 11.5%.
  
  
• On the other hand, the numbers of blacks/African-American dropped slightly, from 1,962 in 2000 to 1,951 in 2010.
  
  
• Claremont had an increase in housing units, thanks to the real estate boom that ended around 2008. 10 years ago, the Census listed Claremont as having 11,559 housing units. In 2010, there were 12,156.
  
  
• In a sign of the times, 548 of those housing units were unoccupied in 2010. That's 4.5% of the total, up from 2.4% in 2000.
  

Here are the Census figures, new and old:

(Click to Enlarge)
From the 2010 Census

2009 Population Estimate

2000 Census Data

Gloria Johnston Starts as CUSD Sup: On Holiday

A friend of ours went down to the CUSD offices to greet the new Interim Superintendent, Gloria Johnston on her first day of work in Claremont, Monday February 21, 2011. Remember the opening paragraph of the press release proclaiming Johnston's hire:

The Claremont Unified School District Board of Education voted to appoint Dr. Gloria Johnston as their Interim Superintendent of Schools at their February 17, 2011, Board meeting. Dr. Johnston will begin her service on Monday, February 21, 2011, replacing Dr. Terry Nichols who will become Superintendent in Duarte.

Surprisingly, by our friend's account, the District parking lot was empty except for a lone contractor dribbling what appeared to be some kind of pesticide on the plants in the parking-lot planters. The doors to the offices were locked tight. Returning home in puzzlement, our friend realized that this was Presidents' Day and, according to the CUSD calendar, school is not in session. And there is no administration going on either.

That got us to wondering, and this is small beer, we admit, why did the Board start Johnston's contract on a holiday? Couldn't it just as easily start tomorrow? If she was in the building, according to our friend, she walked or took public transit and broke into the building.

In any event, maybe the ink isn't dry on her contract and this discrepancy, worth $874 to the District, will be adjusted.

By the way, her Facebook page indicates she is well-regarded by 78 people, but backed the wrong horse, Larry Aceves, for State Superintendent of Schools. Tom Torlakson won. That can't be too good when she needs Tom to take a call from her on some Important School Matter.

One curiosity: when you click on her "Contact" information on her FB page, you get the dreaded 403 Forbidden error. Wonder why. http://www.achievementequity.com appears to have some access issues.

CUSD Appoints Old Hand Interim Superintendent: Litigation Magnet

CUSD announced Thursday night the appointment of Gloria Johnston as Interim Superintendent. She will be paid the same money as Terry Nichols was getting--according to his contract $196,650 per annum. Shockingly, she was a consultant to the headhunter hired by the District to conduct the search.

It's just like President George W. Bush hiring Dick Cheney to find the best-qualified person to be his vice-presidential nominee and Dick Cheney coming up with, well, Dick Cheney.

click to enlarge

The press release is reproduced below (the release is not on the CUSD website as this is written Thursday night).

NEWS RELEASE

The Claremont Unified School District Board of Education voted to appoint Dr. Gloria Johnston as their Interim Superintendent of Schools at their February 17, 2011, Board meeting. Dr. Johnston will begin her service on Monday, February 21, 2011, replacing Dr. Terry Nichols who will become Superintendent in Duarte.

Dr. Johnston has devoted over forty years to a career in education. Her years of service in pre-kindergarten through high school education included roles as a teacher, principal and central office administrator. She retired from public education after serving twelve years as the superintendent of schools for the Banning Unified School District and the West Contra Costa County Unified School District. She subsequently served as Dean of the School of Education at National University, a private, nonprofit institute of higher learning with headquarters in San Diego, California. Dr. Johnston has worked in urban, suburban and rural school districts in Illinois, California and Caracas, Venezuela. As a coach and mentor, Dr. Johnston facilitates meetings, provides professional development for principals, central office administrators, superintendents, and school boards. The current focus of her work is on systemic strategies that lead to improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap.

Throughout her career Gloria has been an invited speaker at state and at national professional conferences, served on state and national educational and research committees, and has been awarded major professional development grants. She is coauthor of three books, Eight at the Top: A View Inside Public Education, a collection of stories about the work of school district superintendents, Effective Superintendent-School board Practices: Strategies for Developing and Maintaining Good Relationships with Your Board, and The Superintendent's Planner: A Monthly Guide and Reflective Journal.

Dr. Johnston earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Illinois at Chicago, her M.S. in Bilingual/Bicultural Education and her B.S. in Humanities (magna cum laude) from Northern Illinois University. She has been living in San Diego, California, close to her two children and three grandchildren; however, Gloria will be relocating to Claremont while serving as the Interim superintendent for Claremont Unified School District.

########

When Johnston was Sup. of the West Contra Costa District, one of her middle school students made national news. He was brutally beaten in a school locker-room by another student and an 18-year-old non-student. There was a video that got national notice, the school district was sued, and two years later settled for the usual--an "undisclosed amount".

* * *

The vote to approve her appointment was 4 to 1, Steven Llanusa dissenting. We guess he's still not satisfied with the Thursday meeting night and would rather have Monday. Maybe she will at least get another book out of this--in addition to the lavish salary. It might contain tips on the handling of difficult board members.

Heading for the Exit

Terry Nichols Resigns as CUSD Superintendent

The Duarte Unified School District website has a crawler welcoming Dr. Terry Nichols, CUSD (lame duck) superintendent as it's new superintendent in 2011.

click image to enlarge

The Courier has this breaking news on its website, here. (link will go stale soon, but paragraph is quoted below; buy the Courier for more news)

From the Courier:

Claremont Unified School District Superintendent Terry Nichols will no longer be with the district come January. After recently submitting his resignation, Dr. Nichols was appointed as the new superintendent of the Duarte Unified School District at a special board meeting on Monday night. Duarte Unified confirmed the appointment to the COURIER on Tuesday afternoon. Dr. Nichols appointed superintendent of CUSD in July 2009 after the resignation of former Superintendent David Cash earlier that year. More news as it develops.

The Contra Costa Times has picked up Wes Woods' story which fleshes out some details. There is a lot about "going home", as if Claremont was not much more than a bad vacation, a rained-out camping trip, or a deployment in Afghanistan.

Lisa Shoemaker, Claremont Unified's assistant superintendent of business services, said she was surprised by Nichols departure.

"I don't think it was something he anticipated," Shoemaker said. "I'm not sure how it went down, but it went down quickly."

We don't know if the Nichols pull-quote in the article contains any subtext below the text. You decide:

"I consider this move as going home and am very pleased," Nichols said. "It is an honor and a privilege to be working closely with the board and the community that continues to focus on student success."

Terry Nichols (standing, fourth from left)
Not feeling at home with the
Claremont Chamber of Commerce Board

Measure CL Goes Down in Flames

UPDATED WITH FINAL RESULTS

Measure CL Fails: 7,977 NO, 5,222 YES

According to the Los Angeles Register-Recorder/County Clerk, as of 12:01am Claremont Unified School District's $95 million Measure CL is certain to go down to defeat (55% needed to pass):

NO - 60.13% (6,949 votes)
Update, Final - 7,977 (60.44%)

YES - 39.87% (4,608 votes)
Update, Final -5,222 (39.56%)

That's with 94% of the Claremont school district precincts reporting and only 2 out of 35 precincts left to report. (Now Final) We won't comment further at this point, other than to say that CUSD will be back with another bond or parcel tax. Let's see if they are willing to include the wider community the next time around, or if they will play the same ol' overreaching Claremont game with consultants like Jared Boigon coordinating things and getting hundreds of thousands from school contractors.

Incidentally, there were five other bond measures on the ballots for other L.A. County school districts yesterday. Four of the five appeared to be winning handily, and the fifth, Lynwood's Measure L, was very close at 53.4% with a little over half the precincts reporting. Claremont's CL was by far the outlier in school bond measure NO votes. (Pomona's Measure SS parcel tax, which needed 67% to pass, was at only 49.84% with a quarter of the precinct results in.)

You can check for updates here. The results probably won't be official for a day or two. Click on "SCHOOLS" and then look for the Claremont CL link. You'll need to refresh the screen for updates - be prepared to get redirected back to the original menu.

Click to Enlarge

Claremont Unified is a "Pay to Play" School District

Big Donor Cash Tops $125,000

Only about 2% Raised Locally

There is more big money pouring into the Yes on Measure CL campaign, even as the local contributions are very weak. Recent filings with LA County elections officials show over $125,000 in contributions from 8 district vendors and a teachers' union. Totals after the October 18th filings are as follows, new money in red:

• $25,000 from Piper Jaffray (investment bank) in Minneapolis

• $25,000 from WLC Architects in Rancho Cucamonga

• $25,000 from Adolph Ziemba, Architects, in Burbank

• $20,000 from Telacu Construction Management in LA

• $10,000 from Vanir Construction Managment in Sacramento

• $10,000 from Flewelling and Moody (architects) in Pasadena. $5,000 previously reported, $5,000 new money.
  

• $5,000 from Northcross Hill Ach (financial advisors) in San Rafael

• $4,000 from Stradling Yocca Carlson (bond attorneys) in Newport Beach

• $1,500 from the California Teachers Assn, Burlingame CA
  

With 98% of the cash received by the Yes on CL side coming from big businesses outside Claremont with a direct financial interest in the outcome, it's pretty clear the CL's supporters and the District leadership have put out the word that CUSD is a Pay to Play district, and a little baksheesh in the form of help on Measure CL is necessary to get business down the line.

What other conclusion is there that is not, well, ridiculous? Certainly no one is buying Yes on CL Treasurer J. Michael Fay's assertion that "There is no quid pro quo." That's an insult to our intelligence.

We post the report for the Period October 1-October 16 below. The earlier report is covered here. Following the first report is a single-page "late contribution" filing detailing $21,500 (included in the above totals) from Ziemba, Flewelling and Moody, and the teachers unions.

One interesting fact is that named contributions from residents of Claremont number only nine and total only $1,100. Even crediting all of the unitemized contributions ($115) to Claremont brings the total Claremont money to a mere $1,215. This is only 1.9% of the total cash reported since October 1 of $63,715.

This is nothing like a grassroots cause, and doesn't appear even to have the financial backing of the President of the Board of Education, Hilary LeConte, nor board supporters Jeff Stark and Beth Bingham. Only board member Mary Caenepeel and her husband kicked in a hundred bucks.

For those whoe worry about big money influencing elections, possible corruption, pay to play, sweetheart deals, bid-rigging, and the like, there is plenty to worry about here.

Yes on Cl Campaign Finance Report Oct 18 2

And here is a report dated October 18, 2010. "Late" reports of contributions exceeding $1,000 are required to be overnighted to the county campaign finance disclosure office.

Form 497

Weekend Mailbag

The mail's been piling up here the last couple weeks, so we thought we'd pass some of our readers' thoughts along.

One soccer parent wrote us because, in addition to copper theft problems, the city of Claremont still has some kinks to work out at Padua Park:

DATE: Sat, October 9, 2010 6:44:50 PM
SUBJECT: [No Subject ]
TO: Claremont Insider


Re: Padua park

FYI - AYSO soccer games today at Padua park were interupted several times because the sprinklers kept coming on. They first came on at about 11:30am and continued in different sections for more than an hour. Why was the city watering in the middle of the day?

* * * * *

Another reader wrote in to say that, rather than floating it's $95 million Measure CL bond on the November 2 ballot, what the Claremont Unified School District should be doing is cutting back on interdistrict transfers--students from outside CUSD's enrollment area, that is.

DATE: Tue, October 12, 2010 4:41:57 PM
SUBJECT: Does Claremont need to tax itself for the benefit of students who have transferred from adjoining districts?

TO: Claremont Insider

I have read someplace, either in these pages or in the Daily Bulletin, that as many as one out of six students in Claremont schools comes from an adjoining district. The "benefit" to our district supposedly is that Claremont schools get the normal state funding for each student. That brings in a little money to the district. (Cui bono?) However, as we have found out repeatedly, state funding is not sufficient to run the Claremont District. Each student in Claremont costs more than what the state provides. Hence, we have been persuaded to pass bond issues from time to time in addition to a parcel tax.

Now, we have been asked to supplement the state funding with a whopping $95 million bond issue. The question is, how much of this money will be used to benefit students other than Claremont students? One would think that if one out of six students is from outside the district than almost $16 million dollars out of the $95 million would be for the direct benefit of other than Claremont students.

Do Claremont citizens really want to take over a tax burden that properly should be borne by adjoining towns? Should the School District not be encouraged cut back on its expenses, for example, by limiting the number of transfers to a more reasonable number so that the bond issues paid by Claremonters actually benefit Claremont students? Maybe the whole District could be downsized to a size adequate for Claremont students. In that case, we might not be confronted by such an outrageous funding request.

The matter of CUSD's interdistrict transfers hasn't really been discussed too much by the local papers. We saw this with the Daily Bulletin editorial endorsing the bond. The editorial simply parroted back the Yes on CL campaign's mailer language without digging into them to see if they were true statements, and they ignored several of the arguments against the Measure CL, including the fact that 17% of CUSD's students have transferred in from outside the district.

Claremont is able to absorb that 17% because they have too much capacity and too many teachers. Yet the school district refuses to consider cutting back on the transfers and won't trim staff or downsize its facilities. CUSD's school board stubbornly clings to the idea that they must keep their enrollment numbers artificially inflated.

[CORRECTION: After we wrote the above-section of this post, we opened up today's Claremont Courier and saw that the interdistrict transfer issue did come up at Thursday night's Active Claremont Measure CL debate. So at least the Courier is trying to delve into all the nuances of the bond campaign. According to Landus Rigsby's article, Yes on CL representative Bill Fox claimed that CUSD would have to shutter its elementary schools, El Roble Intermediate School, and Claremont High. Highly unlikely. Mr. Fox was just being true to his nature.]

Another related issue is the fact that, because all those interdistrict transfers don't live in CUSD's area, their families don't have to pay for any taxes or bonds the district levies. They aren't paying off the $30 million we still owe for the Measure Y bond, and they don't have to pay for CUSD's annual Recreation Assessment District. They won't have to pay a penny of the Measure CL costs either, costs that amount to a total of around $250 million over 40 years.

In essence, the school district has asked property owners within the district's boundaries to subsidize those children from outside the enrollment area.

The involvement of people from outside the district extends to the Measure CL campaign. Besides a Bay Area consultant running the Yes campaign from behind the scenes, there are a good many people listed as Measure CL endorsers don't even live in Claremont. For instance, many of the CUSD teachers and administrators who were listed in the first Measure CL ad in the Claremont Courier reside out of town, including CUSD Superintendent Terry Nichols, who lives in Glendora.

[BTW, IS SUPERINTENDENT NICHOLS A LIAR? Maybe not, but he comes perilously close.

In the Courier article today, Superintendent Nichols was quoted as having said the district trimmed Measure CL from its original $160 million to $95 million before submitting it to the voters. Superintendent Nichols casts the district as being frugal, saving property owners tens of millions. The truth is, $95 million is just about at the state's limit of bonded indebtedness for CUSD: 2.5% of the total assessed value of all the properties in Claremont. The district wasn't pinching pennies; CUSD was making a money grab, maxing out their credit card.

Nichols is well aware of the limit to the amount of debt CUSD can take on, and he is behaving no better than a scamming telemarketer. If he could grab $160 million, he and the school board would.]

The faculty members who support the bond and who are working on the Yes on CL campaign don't really care about the long-term consequences of the measure. The teachers, like CUSD's contractors and vendors, will benefit financially if Measure CL passes, and the teachers union agreed to its latest contract in exchange for endorsing and working to pass the bond measure. It's pocketbook issue to some of them -- moving as much as possible from your pocketbook to theirs.

Because so many, including the Daily Bulletin's editorial board, think that we have to pass just about any school bond that comes up, these things will continue to pass, and the cumulative debt in Claremont and all around the state will continue to pile up. These bonds are simply financing schemes that are incredibly wasteful because of all the extra dollars that have to be diverted from actual projects to service debt and to line the pockets of the contractors who underwrite the bond campaigns. One way or another, it's going to have to stop.

On the Money Trail

As you may have heard, Saturday's edition of the Claremont Courier raised a lot of questions about the financing behind CUSD's Measure CL campaign.

Courier reporter Tony Krickl got a Nancy Mintie-style response from Yes on CL treasurer J. Michael Fay as he answered Krickl's questions about the source of the majority of the Yes money. Fay's response seemed to underscore rather than refute bond critics' concerns about the enormous amounts of money pumped into the Yes campaign by out-of-town school contractors:

“These aren’t just outside interests,” said J. Michael Fay, campaign treasurer for Yes on Measure CL. “Most of the companies have already conducted business in the district with Measure Y. So now they’ve volunteered to support the [Measure CL] campaign.”

Fay went on to say that any future school district contracts would have to go out to bid, so there's no quid pro quo involved. Fay, however, overlooks the fact that these bond servicing companies and contractors have a big picture to consider. This could just be thank-you money for past contracts, and dollars given here in Claremont can translate to contracts with other districts.

We got to thinking about this and looked back at the sources of some of the big money for Measure Y, CUSD's last bond measure in the June 2000 election. One of Measure Y's campaign donors was the architectural design firm Flewelling & Moody. On 5/11/00, F & M donated $2,500 to the Yes on Measure Y campaign. On 5/30/00, the week before the election, F & M made a second donation of $2,500.

Did they receive any consideration in return? We can't say for sure, but F & M's website does list Claremont Unified as one of their clients from 2005:

Click on Images to Enlarge

Flewelling & Moody has kicked in $5,000 so far for the current Yes on CL campaign. Judging from the way it went after the last Claremont school bond, if Measure CL passes, there's no telling what sort of contract they might land five years hence after everyone's forgotten about this election.

When one roots around, one starts to find all sorts of things. For instance, F & M, as well as the San Rafael financial advising firm Northcross Hill & Ach (another $5,000 Yes on CL donor) and Rancho Cucamonga-based WLC Architects (a whopping $25,000 to the Yes on CL campaign), are all sponsors of the Claremont Chamber of Commerce. So we shouldn't be surprised that the Chamber's governmental affairs committee voted to endorse CL after meeting with the Yes on CL campaign team and without seeking to hear at all from the No side.

The best CL information on the contract side of things comes from the agenda for the July 22, 2010, CUSD school board meeting. That was the same meeting where the school board approved the resolution to go forward with a bond election. Item 4 on that agenda was the approval of an agreement with Minnesota-based investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. (see page 3 of the full agenda at the end of this post).

Piper Jaffray has so far donated $25,000 to the Yes on CL effort. Getting back to that July 22 meeting, the Claremont school board agreed to employ them as bond underwriters should CL pass. In return, Piper Jaffray would receive the following:

Total compensation for all of the pre-election and post-election services shall not exceed 1.10% of the total principal amount of each individual General Obligation Bond issue.

Hmmmm, let's see....1.10% of $95 million (the maximum amount CUSD could seek under CL)? That's $1,045,000. Not at all a bad return on $25,000 in what amounts to, uh, marketing costs. All CUSD has done is put the big money carrot up front instead of at the end of the campaign.

Bond counsel Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth also stands to make a decent bit off CUSD property owners from a successful Yes on CL campaign - up to 1% of the total bonds issued.

This is precisely where Yes on CL campaign consultants like Jared Boigon and TBWB Strategies could easily act as facilitators, getting contractors to underwrite bond campaigns in some places and then offering introductions between those same contractors and other districts that have successfully passed their bond measures with the aid of these ever-helpful consultants.

It's a great business model, earning Boigon and TBWB $35,000 from the school district for pre-campaign polling services, along with another $10,000 as of September 30 from the Yes on CL campaign. And the money wheel keeps spinning as long as voters are naive enough to believe the misinformation issued forth from the mouths of people like Michael Fay, who manages to remain credible in our community no matter how many times he and his friends play this game.

We can't help but stand in awe at the hypocrisy of those among the Claremont 400 who are pushing this incredibly flawed school bond. One sees this when the League of Women Voters complains about the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opening up the floodgates to corporate election contributions as the local LWV chapter stays silent when companies with financial stakes in a successful bond campaign donate all but $2,000 of the $66,027 (and counting) raised by the Yes on CL campaign.

So, let's get this straight. Investment banks contributing to the campaigns of elected officials in charge of financial reform? Bad. Investment banks contributing to school bond campaigns they stand to earn $1 million from? Good.

Hypocritical? Certainly. But, heck, if you're a Claremont 400 critic, we suppose it's job security.

* * * * *

Here's the business operations agenda for that July 22, 2010, CUSD school board meeting: