City Council Meeting Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets this evening for their last session before the municipal election on March 8. The next time the council meets, it will be to have the three winning candidates sworn in on Tuesday, March 15.

The council will meet in the council chambers at 225 Second St. across from Saca's Mediterranean restaurant (you're welcome for the free product placement).

As always, you can watch the meeting here.

CLOSED SESSION

Tonight's council action starts with a closed session meeting beginning at 4pm. These closed session meetings typically start at around 5:15, so there may be some longer discussions involved in the three items on the closed session agenda.

The first agenda item involves undisclosed potential litigation. The second has to do with negotiations involving the Peppertree Square shopping center at the southeast corner of Indian Hill Blvd. and Arrow Hwy.

The last closed session item has to do with a lawsuit filed in Pomona Superior Court in June last year. We haven't had a chance to run down to the courthouse to review the suit, but the plaintiff is a dentist named Dan Sizemore. The case is a civil rights suit, and the defendants are the Claremont Police Department and several of its officers, the City of Claremont, and a Glendora marriage and family therapist named Ilissa Banhazi:

Case Number: KC058857
DR. DAN SIZEMORE, D.D.S. VS CITY OF CLAREMONT


Filing Date: 06/02/2010 Case Type: Civil Rights (General Jurisdiction) Status: Pending

Future Hearings

02/22/2011 at 08:30 am in department O at 400 Civic Center Plaza, Pomona, CA 91766 Conference-Case Management (M/STRIKE)

Parties

SIZEMORE D D.S. DR. DAN - Plaintiff
BARUCH JOEL W. ESQ. - Attorney for Plaintiff

CLAREMONT CITY OF - Defendant
CLAREMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF - Defendant
COSTA J. SERGEANT - Defendant
ABARCA C. OFFICER - Defendant
J. TING. OFFICER - Defendant
MEDRANO J. OFFICER - Defendant
GROSSBERG SCOTT J. - Attorney for Defendant

BANHAZI MFT. ILISSA - Defendant
CAUDILL O. BRANDT - Attorney for Defendant

REGULAR SESSION

Tonight's regular session convenes at 6:30pm. You can see the agenda here.

There's one ceremonial matter, recognition of Jerry Tessier of Arteco Partners, developer of the Claremont Packing House and the Padua Hills Theatre; Jonathan Tolkin of The Tolkin Group, developer of the Claremont Village Expansion; and Harry Wu, developer of the Old School House and Griswold's complex.

After public comment, the meeting moves on to the consent calendar, which includes a couple items of interest:

• The Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) for the City of Claremont and the Claremont Redevelopment Agency. This is something of particular interest this year thanks mostly to Governor Jerry Brown, who has proposed eliminating redevelopment agencies.
  
  
• A memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Claremont Management Association, unrepresented employees, and the Claremont Employees Association.
  
  The MOUs lock the city into agreements that the employees will start contributing their share of their CalPERS pension payments (a total of 8% per year). The employees will start contributing 2% each year until they reach 8%. CMA safety employees (police management) will end up contributing a total of 9%, which is supposed to be their contribution.
  
  Currently, the employees pay nothing with the City picking up the employees' share. This proposal came out in the Mayor's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability's recent report and has been a council campaign issue.
  
  Candidate Opanyi Nasiali, who was a dissenting vote on this matter while on the Mayor's committee, believes the employees' contributions shouldn't be graduated because the City can realize an immediate savings of $1.2 million per year if the employees simply switched to paying their entire contributions - something the city's waste management workers agreed to do in their contract last year.
  
  
• Authorizing NBS Corporation to prepare the City's annual Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) engineer's report. Always a point of contention, this. We'll undoubtedly have more on this once the report is released. We'll see if the LLD gets increased this year.
  
  
• Request for council approval of a land acquisition agreement for the 150-acre Cuevas Property, which will be added to the Claremont Wilderness Park. The purchase price, "not to exceed $4,850,000," was negotiated by the Trust for Public Land and will be paid through two grants of $2,425,000 each from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and from the state's Wildlife Conservation Board.
  

As to adminstrative items, the council will also receive and consider the City's Youth Sports Facilities Needs Assessment report, of which we'll try to have more at a later date.

There's also a police department staffing report that will disappoint some of the candidates and the police officers' union with it's assurances that the police department should be able to get along fine at its current staffing level. The police officers and some of their allies in the Claremont 400 have been working hard to put a scare into the public about understaffing as the City prepares to negotiate the CPD officers' contract.

Lastly, there's a recommendation from the Council's Ad Hoc Committee on Commission Appointments (council members Larry Schroeder and Corey Calaycay) to appoint residents Donna Lowe and Glen Hood II to the Community Services Commission.

Council Meets Tonight

One side effect of Claremont's budget problems is that they've used a good chunk of the Great Recession spending their way into a hole that, absent any additional federal stimulus money, will take a few years to recover from. That means no more big budget busting municipal projects (i.e., a new police station or a water company takeover). Fiscal responsibility, like it or not, has been imposed on Claremont.

Another effect (benefit?) of Claremont's financial woes is that City Council meetings are likely to be shorter because fewer big projects mean less time taken up by staff reports and comments, public comment, legal advice from City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, and the councilmembers' questions and opinions.

We'll see if tonight's City Council regular meeting runs under two hours. The council convenes at 5:15pm for a special closed session meeting that covers ongoing negotiations with the Claremont Police Management Association and the Claremont Police Officers Association.

The regular session begins at 6:30pm in the council chambers at 225 2nd St. in downtown Claremont. You can read the agenda here. If you're a glutton for punishment, or if the Lakers are getting walloped, you can subject yourself to a live feed of the meeting here.

On the council's plate tonight are:

• A hike in recreational user fees (to be expected given the tight budget). You'll pay a couple bucks more this year for a ticket to the City's 4th of July fireworks show, and things like swim programs will cost more. See the staff report for the new fee schedule.
  
  
• The annual engineer's report for the Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD). The report recommends an increase of 1.86%, mirroring the year-over-year rise in the consumer price index for Southern California as of March, 2010.
  
  For most single-family residences, this translates to an increase of $2.72, from $147.12 to $149.84. Properties with larger lots pay more. The increase is based on the consumer price index for Southern California.
  
  Those of you who've been around for a while know the history of the LLD. It's what really one of the first things got people thinking about how City Hall manages our finances.
  
  
• An update on the restoration Sycamore Canyon Park, which was damaged in the 2003 Grand Prix Fire. The park has been closed since that time. The City has secured $180,000 in grant funding, and will proceed with restoring the trail and picnic areas. The City will also remove non-native eucalyptus trees and plant sycamores and oaks. Work is expected to commence this coming fall and finish sometime next winter.
  
  
• A report on the traffic signal at Indian Hill Blvd. and 10th St. You'll recall there were several pedestrian accidents there before the City, bowing to pressure from the neighborhood, installed the signal last month.
  
  
• An update on the City's abandoned property ordinance. The staff report by Community Development Director Tony Witt for this item says there are currently 150 Claremont properties in some stage of foreclosure. The City has levied over $120,000 in fines under the ordinance, and around $22,000 has gone uncollected.

City Council Meeting

6:30 PM
225 W. 2nd St. - City Council Chamber
Claremont

Tonight's Council Meeting

The time has rolled around again for another City Council meeting tonight at 6:30pm in the City Council chambers at 225 W. 2nd St.

As always, you can watch the action here.

CLOSED SESSION

The council will meet in closed session at 5:15pm, prior to the regular meeting, to hear a report from City Manager Jeff Parker, acting in his role of Executive Director of the Claremont Redevelopment Agency.

According to the agenda, Parker will fill the council in on negotiations with Mark Bedol, the owner of Bedol's What's Next, the boutique gift store next to 21 Choices in the Village Expansion parking structure.

Bedol must be trying to renegotiate the terms of his lease agreement, which is not an uncommon thing for a business person to do in these times of declining commercial property lease rates.


REGULAR SESSION

You can find the regular agenda here.

The regular session begins with a ceremonial matter. The council will acknowledge Active Claremont's 15th anniversary. This strikes us another sign that Claremont has changed for the better. Time was when the council wouldn't even acknowledge AC's existence, saying it was nothing but a group of malcontents and troublemakers. Having past president Corey Calaycay as the current Mayor of Claremont no doubt helps AC's prospects, and seems to be further proof of positive change in town.

Of course, there are still those who will take this as another sign of the Apocalypse, but they're party poopers anyway.

Some of the items of note on the rest of the regular agenda:

• The council will accept the resignation of Architectural Commissioner Marianne Kunce.
  
  
• The council is being asked to enter into a Historical Property Agreement with John Dominguez, the owner of the property at 615 E. 1st St. The agreement, under the Mills Act, will give Dominguez certain tax credits in exchange for his promise to maintain the home's historical characteristics and, if necessary, restore or rehabilitate the property.
  
  
• City staff is recommending that the council approve a resolution allowing city employees to purchase of additional years of CalPERS retirement credit. The staff report, written by City Finance Manager Adam Pirrie (who will be a CalPERS retiree someday), says there is no cost to the city for this since the employees are the ones who would be purchasing the extra retirement credits. The employees would use pre-tax dollars to fund the extra years of retirement they purchase.
  
  Of course, you know how CalPERS works. They take an average of the employees' highest earning years and figure an annual pension payment based on those. With Claremont, for non-police employees, the payment is 2.5% for every year worked, with the employee eligible at 55 to receive the pension.
  
  Money paid into the account gets invested by CalPERS to fund the pension benefits. The problem is that when the investments are down, as they are now, those accounts may be underfunded. At that point, the agencies holding the accounts are on the hook for the difference.
  
  So, if employees are adding years on to their pensions, the overall pension obligation increases, meaning there will have to be more money in the City's account to pay for those extra years. If the value of the account dips because of an investment loss, the city will have to pay more into the account to make up for that loss.
  
  So, presumably there is a potential financial impact to the City, no matter what Pirrie's report says.
  
  
• The council will consider convening a hearing for Western Christian Schools under the federal Tax Equity and Financial Responsibility Act (TEFRA). Western Christian Schools seeks $12 million in tax-exempt financing under TEFRA. The hearing is required for the organization to be eligible for the tax exemption, and the City bears no financial responsibility in the matter.
  
  Western Christian Schools is applying for financing through the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority. The staff report says the bonds will be used "for purposes of financing and/or refinancing the costs of acquisition, construction, improvement, renovation, remodeling, furnishing and equipping of their facilities in Claremont and Upland."
  
  We don't know if the city of Upland also has to hold a TEFRA hearing for this issue.
  
  The staff report also indicates that in the past the council has held such hearings for Pilgrim Place and Claremont Manor, so the hearing appears to be a pro forma thing.
  
  
• The council, acting as the Claremont Redevelopment Agency, forgot to including some state-required language in its 2008-10 budget. The language relates to the necessity of planning and administrative expenses for low- to moderate-income housing improvements.
  
  The council is now being asked to amend the budget with the proper language.
  
  
• The council is being asked to pick a city flower. This item comes to the council courtesy of the Claremont Community Foundation, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in September. CCF, together with Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens, already has some flowers picked out.
  
  Not much public input on this one, naturally. But, then, that's to be expected from CCF, the organization that helped get the Claremont Trolley for its own use.
  
  
• The council will discuss placing liens on properties with unpaid sanitation utility and sewer service bills.
  
  The staff report for this item has a table that looks like a recession chronicle. The table shows that delinquent accounts have more than doubled in the past three years. The late payments no doubt track foreclosures pretty closely.
  
  
• The council will receive the annual engineer's report for the Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD). No increase this year because inflation has been flat.
  
  
• The council will hear the appeal of a Planning Commission denial of an outdoor use permit request by Michael Talaee, the owner of Tally for Men at 175 N. Indian Hill Blvd. Talaee is asking for a permit for an outdoor clothing rack.
  
  

City Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council has its regular meeting tonight. The council meets at 5:15pm at City Hall for a special closed session, and then will have its regular session at 6:30pm.

The council's regular session takes place in the council chambers at 225 W. Second Street in the Claremont Village. You can watch the meeting streamed live on the City's website.


SPECIAL SESSION

There are two items on the special session agenda. Both have to do with litigated matters.

The first is the lawsuit brought by the neighborhood group Protect Our Neighborhoods. This has to do with the change in the city's leafblower ordinance, which was approved by the City Council last fall without the proper initial study being done as is required under the California Environmental Quality Act. A settlement has been worked out, and the only thing remaining to be done is for the parties to negotiate the amount the City will pay for the plaintiffs' fees and costs.

This one's a flub that falls directly at the feet of City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, who failed to advise the City Council of the need for the CEQA initial study when the council approved the ordinance change. Tell us again, why are we paying Carvalho's monthly retainer fee?

The second special session item has to do with litigation over pollution from rainwater runoff.


REGULAR SESSION

It looks like another full schedule for the city council tonight, says the regular session agenda:

• There's a ceremonial matter starting things off. Claremont Human Services Commissioner Jeff Camacho will honor the recipients of the Youth Award and the Dick Guthrie Award. (Claremont may be the only town we know of that names awards after its consultants. Don't what you have to do to win a Guthrie.)
  
  
• The council will consider exempting non-profits from the $300 annual business and home occupation fee. The council will also discuss refunding fees the City has collected from non-profits since July, 2008.
  
  The fact that the City has been charging non-profits came to light on April 28 when Claremont Finance Manager Adam Pirrie gave a presentation his efforts to increase the City's revenue by applying fees to businesses and organizations that had been overlooked in the past. Pirrie's efforts have increased the amount collected in business fees by $40,000, from $725,000 to $765,000. Looks like we'll be giving some of that back now.
  
  A number of non-profits in town squawked at the fees. In response, the City Council expressed a desire for a non-profit exemption.
  
  
• The council will consider raising its 2009-10 appropriations limit by about $738,000 t0 $29,314,127. The City is required by state law to come up with this limit.
  
  
• The council will receive its annual Landscaping and Lighting District engineer's report and will be asked to keep the LLD at $147.12 per parcel since the Consumer Price Index remained essentially flat from March, 2008, to March, 2009.
  
  
• The council will also debate the elimination of the Claremont Trolley. Chaffey College is interested in taking over the trolley's lease, so that would provide the City with an easy out. However, expect members of the Claremont Community Foundation, including former Claremont mayor Judy Wright, to fight for keeping the trolley. They want it for their own use once or twice a year for fundraisers and don't really mind the fact that they are taking money away from other city transit programs like Dial-A-Ride for their favorite toy.
  
  The CCF's main talking point will be the one you've seen in letters to the Claremont Courier: The trolley just has a routing problem. Change the route, and more people will ride it. We've written in the past why this is a foolish notion.
  
  Expect Sam Pedroza and Linda Elderkin to follow the CCF's lead and vote to keep the trolley but use a different route.
  
  
• City Manager Jeff Parker has a report to the council on the intersection at Indian Hill Blvd. and 10th St. The report also discusses the city-wide crosswalk policy (yes, there is one). Parker tries to point the finger at the Protect Our Neighborhood group for delaying the removal of the 10th St. lighted crosswalk in January because the said any change would require an initial study under CEQA.
  
  This, of course, does not explain the 3-1/2 year delay by the City in changing the crosswalk after the Traffic and Transportation Commission reviewed the matter in October, 2005.
  
  Parker's report also said that with left and right turns at that intersection, the crosswalk is not the only contributing factor in accidents.
  
  
• The council will move forward with site selection for a new police station. Three sites are under consideration: The current site on Bonita Ave., the Corey Nursery site at 1650 N. Monte Vista, and the former affordable housing site at the southeast corner of Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave.
  
  Actual construction on the new station will have to wait until funding becomes available.
  

Oh, Shenandoah, I Love Your Bowers

Claremont, AKA Tree City, has a love-hate relationship with its woody friends. On the one hand, the trees gracing the Claremont Village and the various neighborhoods around town create an urban forest ambiance that makes for nice photos and summer evening strolls.

On the other hand, the city's trees - many non-native species - suck up increasingly costly water and wreck havoc on underground utilities. Citizens who've had a tree root from a city-owned parkway tree break a sewer line can attest to the troubles they have historically had collecting any compensation from the city.

Click to Enlarge

The residents of Claremont's Shenandoah Dr. area that surrounds the Claremont Club recently had to confront both aspects of our tree policies in trying to work with the city to deal with damage done to streets and sidewalks in their neighborhood.

Shenandoah Dr. and the cul-de-sacs that run off it were planted with Calabrian pines when the area was originally built. The trees have matured beautifully, but the pines turned out to be a poor choice for an urban area because many of their root systems have destroyed the curbs, sidewalks, and streets around them.

Shenandoah Dr. and Claremont Blvd. facing west.

Those uplifted sidewalks and streets have created a liability nightmare for the city, making for trip-and-fall hazards throughout the neighborhood. In April, 2005, the city put out to bid a three-phase plan to deal with the Shenandoah trees. Phase I called for the removal of 22 mature pines, the repair of the road, curbs and sidewalks around those trees. and the replacement of the old trees with less problematic species. The total cost of that first phase was $109,803.94. All three phases were expected to take six years to complete.

Phase I of the Shenandoah Tree Mitigation Project, as it was called, went through. However, a number of Shenandoah area residents, however, took exception with the destruction of the existing trees and sought to have the city implement an alternative plan to save the trees and rehabilitate the streets, curbs and sidewalks.

The residents who wanted the trees saved had a couple main arguments:

• They felt the city was looking only at the cost of infrastructure damage and litigation and not considering the value mature trees worth thousands or ten of thousands can add to property. Older, upscale neighborhoods (the San Rafael area of Pasadena, for example) often possess older, fully-grown trees that give those neighborhoods their distinct feel, as opposed to seemingly sterile neighborhoods - urban, industrial areas and newer, suburban ones -that don't have mature trees.
  
  
• Large, mature trees are more cost effective than small trees because they absorb moisture more efficiently, reducing soil run-off. Larger trees also contribute more to reduction of carbon dioxide and also save residents money by cooling neighborhoods with their canopies, leading to lower summertime electric bills.
  
  

The city, the argument went, should include the above savings and benefits in their cost analysis for the tree mitigation.

Shenandoah Dr. and Gettysburg Cir. facing south.

In response, the city came up with three alternative plans (Plans A, B, and C), and those were laid out in a city staff report on July 8th. Plan C was the original plan from 2005 that called for the removal and replacement of 66 trees. Plan B was a plan staff came up in response to Shenandoah area residents who wanted to see the area's trees maintained. It removed the fewest trees but was the most costly because it required narrowing the street and reconfiguring driveways and sidewalks. It also included a proposal to use rubberized pavers around that could be easily removed to inspect tree roots. Estimates for Plan B ran between $365,692 and $511,100, depending on if the pavers were used or not.

Click to Enlarge

In the end, the council unanimously selected Plan A (right), which would allow for most of the remaining trees along Shenandoah to be saved. The plan approved called for the use of the rubberized pavers but did not require any reconfiguration of the street. Plan A also calls for removing portions of the sidewalk and moving them away from the existing trees. Plan A was also endorsed by The Club Homeowners Association, the neighborhood's HOA, which seemed to be very much opposed to the more costly Plan B.

The approved replacement tree for the pines on Shenandoah Dr., according to the staff report, is the California Black Oak. The replacement trees will be in 24-inch boxes, so it will take quite some time for them to fill in. Plan A requires that in the future the city to have an independent certified arborist examine trees deemed candidates for removal to see if the trees can be saved.

Some called the compromise plan a "Band-Aid fix" according to the July 12th Claremont Courier (that article is not available online). The tree damage problem for Shenandoah will be back before the City Council in another 5-10 years, this thinking goes, and that's probably an accurate assessment.

The Courier article, incidentally, was accompanied by a a large photo of a pine that fell onto the street at the southwest corner of Shenandoah and Stanislaus Cir. the day after the City Council approved the tree mitigation plan. The photo may have been a bit misleading, however, because the tree appeared to be on private property. If so, it would have been up to the homeowner, not the city, to maintain that particular tree, which wasn't even listed as a candidate for removal on the approved mitigation plan.

It was still an interesting debate, occurring as it does at a time of municipal belt-tightening. The city had to conduct it's cost-benefit analysis, which was disputed by a number of resident who wanted an alternate plan.

This instance was really the perfect situation for an assessment district, a funding mechanism originally designed to allow neighborhoods who want specific improvements limited to their own specific area to vote to tax themselves to pay for those improvement. With the assessment district costs aren't bourne by an entire city, just by the neighborhood receiving the benefit.

Claremont, however, with its Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) and the failed 2006 Parks and Pasture measure, abused that funding mechanism to the point that they've probably poisoned that well for the near future. And, in any case, the majority of homeowners around Shenandoah do not seem attached enough to their neighborhood trees to approve an assessment on their homes, so that possibility was never considered.

Claremont, the City of Trees and Ph.d's, will no doubt be wrestling with this one for a long time to come.

Shenandoah Dr. and Stanislaus Cir. facing northeast. The tree that fell and was photographed for the July 12th Claremont Courier is the one nearest the street corner on right side of the photo.

A Reader Writes

We received an email response to our post from two days ago. We had wondered if macro-economic problems won't trickle down to the local level and if our city leaders are preparing for that possiblity.

The reader wonders if the city should really be frittering $50,000 to the Friends of the Claremont Library for a collection of local authors:

Dear Insider,

In the "Trickle Down" blog on July 15, you pointed out Claremont City Council's possible reluctance to spend $500,000 to mitigate the tree problems on Shenandoah Drive. Note that at the same meeting on July 8, the council was not reluctant to spend $50,000 from the general fund for cataloguing books, by Claremont authors, at the county public library. Granted, $50,000 is only 10% of $500,000 but given the current dire economic conditions, was this expenditure really necessary on a project that is not really of high priority? Would it not be more prudent for the council to hold off on such expenditures until the economic situation improves? This is the same council that would not use general fund dollars to cover the Lighting and Landscaping District cost increase of about $65,000 this year. Instead, the council passed the cost on to the property owners.

Prioritizing has certainly been a problem for our city government in the past. No telling where they're headed this time, though the reader probably has a opinion or two on that.

City Council Meeting Tonight

We received this email yesterday from a reader questioning a closed session item on tonight's Claremont City Council closed session agenda:

If you check under the second closed session item on tomorrow's (June 10th) city council meeting agenda, you will see real price negotiations for property at 390 Arrow Highway. I believe that is the address of Peppertree Square. Is the city going to but the property? Is the city going to help someone else buy it? Is city hall going to be moved to South Claremont? Will the citizens be told what they are going to do and when? Only the Shadow knows....

We've got no idea what's going on with that one, but we'll keep an ear to the ground. If you watch the streaming video on the city's website, you can hear a report on the closed session at the beginning of the regular meeting at 6:30pm.

Among the items on the regular meeting agenda are:

• The acceptance of the annual Landscaping and Lighting Assessment District engineer's report, which recommends raising the LLD assessment 3.3%, from $142.42 to $147.12 per $100,000 of assessed property value.
  
  
• Allocating $25,000 from the city's General Fund to help underwrite a $7.6 million wetlands project proposed by the Claremont Area League of Women Voters (LWV) for a site near the city's Thompson Creek Trail at Mills Ave. and Mt. Baldy Rd. The LWV has applied for a grant from the San Gabriel River and Mountains Conservancy to fund the project, and the city wants to make a token show of community support.
  
  (In actuality, there may or may not be community-wide support for the project - no one knows because the LWV has never had a public discussion on the topic! Apparently, open public discussion is not in the League of Women Voters' mission statement.)
  
  One interesting point: The pool of funds the LWV is applying to is about $63 million and is supposed to be spread out among all of the cities in the San Gabriel River watershed. So, Claremont's LWV is staking a claim to well over 10% of the total amount. The extent of Claremont's hubris is truly remarkable. As always, it's not their money, so what do they care?
  
  
• Also, the city council will consider separate memoranda of understanding between the city and the Claremont Professional Employees Association, and the city and the San Bernardino Public Employees Association. The memoranda include such things as cost of living increases and increases in the health and fitness benefits paid to employees.
  

Claremont City Council Meeting
Closed Session: 5:15pm
Regular Session: 6:30pm
City Council Chambers
225 W. 2nd St.
Claremont, CA 91711

Tonight's City Council Meeting

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at its usual time, 6:30pm, in the City Council chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. in the heart of the Claremont Village. You can review the meeting agenda here.

Among the items on tonight's council agenda is "wayfinding signage," the proposed signs around town that would direct visitors to the Claremont Village and Village Expansion areas.

Additionally, now that Caltrans has relinquished Base Line Rd. to the City of Claremont, the refurbishing project is finally getting under way, with a request from staff to award a contract for the job to All-American Asphalt of Corona. The contract would be for $1.34 million to resurface Base Line between Monte Vista and Villa Maria, and would also allow for $225,000 for raised medians.

Also on tap is the annual Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) engineer's report. The LLD is a kind of tax assessed on property owners at a current rate of $142.42 per $100,000 of assessed value per parcel. Each year, Claremont reviews the assessment and then hikes it, supposedly to reflect the local inflation rate.

This year, city staff is recommending raising the LLD 3.3% to $147.12 per $100,000.

The LLD has an interesting history, one that perfectly illustrates the way important decisions have been made in Claremont over the years.

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.

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Courier Mail

Saturday's Claremont Courier had another letter from a former member of the city's 1989 Citizens Finance Advisory Committee responding to former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright's letters defending the city's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment, which Claremont instituted in 1990.

Wright's latest missive, in the July 21st edition of the Courier, had again denied any serious discussion of sunsetting the LLD, something that is contradicted by the official record of city minutes from 1989-90.

Wright not only denied most of the sunset talk, in the packet of supporting documents she sent to the Courier, she omitted the minutes of the 1/23/90 meeting where she made the motion to amend the LLD resolution to say: "It is the council's intention not to continue this assessment district beyond June 30, 1995, without first holding a protest hearing." Ms. Wright's motion was approved.

The long and short of it is that in 1989 the city was facing a financial crisis and needed to come up with a revenue source to help make up for the shortfall. The LLD was pushed by then-City Manager Glenn Southard and by Wright and the rest of the Claremont 400. There was considerable opposition to the assessment, including a 7,000-signature petition, and 475 letters to the city against the LLD as opposed to only 60 for it.

The public did not get to vote on the LLD implementation, the City Council simply decided 5-0, after a series of dog-and-pony show public meetings, to implement the LLD. During the discussion, contrary to what Wright had claimed, the idea of sunsetting the LLD came up several times, including a motion by Wright at a January, 1990, council meeting to consider sunset the LLD at a later date.

The LLD, of course, was never sunsetted, and it continues to go up every year. Some of the Claremont 400, like current Councilmember Sam Pedroza, have supported raising the LLD yearly assessment well above the local inflation rate, and it's no coincidence that Wright was a key advisor to Pedroza in his failed 2005 election bid.

Most troubling in this backward look at the LLD is the manipulation used to sell the assessment and the abuse of power it represented. The lack of trust in the public's ability to understand and deal with complex issues is a common theme in the as yet unwritten history of the Claremont 400 - one that continues to this day.

Reader Poetry

We've received a lot of mail lately, and we've been wading through it all. The letter referred to realtor and Claremont 400er Nick Q, whom you may recall reportedly phoned one former member of Claremont's Citizens Finance Advisory Committee to cuss him out for not voting to recommend adopting the Landscaping and Lighting District assessment back in 1990.

The letter caught our eye because of the creative aspect involved:

I am reminded of a letter to the editor in the Claremont Courier written by Nick Q that expressed what many of the Claremont 400 feel about people who disagree with them and speak out about it---if you don't like what we do in Claremont, leave town.

It was written about Dean McHenry [husband of local watchdog and former City Councilmember Jackie McHenry], who I presume had spoken out on some issue, probably the Landrum shooting or some other touchy issue for the 400, and basically told McHenry that if he didn't like what Claremont does he should leave town. I remember seeing this letter and wanting to submit a letter of my own, but I did not. Instead, I wrote a little ditty that amused me but never shared it. I will share it with you and your readers today. I think it speaks , in a humorous way, for many of the 400.

"There once was a realtor named Q
Who didn't like what Dean would do,
So he fussed and he frowned
Said get out of town
And by the way, take your wife, too."

Water Company News

Active Claremont last week hosted a discussion panel on the topic, "Should Claremont Buy Its Water System?"

The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl had a summary of the meeting. Will Bigham at the Bulletin also reported on the discussion.

Bigham's article noted that proponents from the Claremont League of Women voters claimed that the city could end up paying lower rates within 20 years:

Two speakers at Thursday night's panel - the authors of a well-received 2005 League of Women Voters water study - argued that if the city were to purchase the water company, an initial rate increase to pay off bonds will be offset in as soon as 20 years by lower rates and by local control of service and infrastructure.

The problem is, the city already has a credibility gap when it comes to promises in connection with rates. One issue is the fact that the city back in 1998 signed off on the current water pricing structure in exchange for leasing its water rights to Golden State Water (then called Southern California Water). Now it would have to buy back those leased rights in addition to taking on the burden of refurbishing an aging water infrastructure - a cost that has not been established yet, but possibly in the tens of millions.

Tony Krickl's Courier article noted that one suggestion being tossed around is to put the matter to the voters in a simple yes or no referendum.

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The letters section of yesterday's Courier contained a couple letters about former Mayor Judy Wright's dissembling regarding the city's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment.

One of the letters, by a former member of the city's Citizens Finance Advisory Committee, described what it was like back in 1989 when the city was considering implementing the LLD. The letter underscored what we've been arguing all along about the behind-the-scenes manipulations that go on over big issues in town. We thought this comment from the letter was particularly insightful:

It was a very nasty time in Claremont’s history, pitting neighbor against neighbor. During all of this, our committee chairs were reporting back to our City Manager Glenn Southard. This man was always in the shadows and was keeping a pulse on our committee. I remember over hearing “Do whatever you have to do to make this happen.” What haunting words now—little did I know we were being used to justify some creative financing that would never go away.

Words that don't bode well for a citizen vote on the water company purchase or for lower future water rates under a city-managed water company.

Correction

We received another email from the erstwhile Citizens Finance Advisory Committee member who was critical of the city's decision-making process for Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District assessment (a yearly assessment on Claremont property owners that is supposed to pay for maintaining things like city parkways and streetlights).

The former committee member wrote in to correct some information from his earlier note:

Buzz,

I do not know how you handle a correction, but in my letter of a couple of weeks ago, in the second to last paragraph, I mentioned a fellow committee member named Nick P who called and swore at me.

My memory now says that the person was Nick Q. I am proud that you provide accuracy in your blog, I submit my apology, and correction, for the error.

Dave Wishart

We have gone back and made the correction.

Judy Redux

As we observed on Saturday, former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright, who doubles as our self-annointed town historian, seems to be spinning out of control.

Saturday's Claremont Courier featured a letter to the editor from Wright that had a number of obvious errors, omissions, and misrepresentations regarding Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District assessment.

So far, Judy's two-for-two and is leading the league (of Women Voters?) in the foot-in-mouth category.

One last point needs to be mentioned regarding the letter.

Wright and the Claremont 400, including current Councilmember Linda Elderkin love to talk about "process." The criticism in Claremont has been that too often process amounts to not much more than dog-and-pony shows consisting of endless strings of council, commission, committee and sub-committee public meetings featuring beautiful Powerpoint presentations by staff that are filled with carefully massaged statistics that will support the predetermined decision the Claremont 400 has already decided upon at one of their private Friday night dinners.

As a result, the public becomes disillusioned and disaffected because every important decision is a "done deal." The public input has no effect, unless that input belongs to the parade of Claremonsters that the 400 have lined up to get their talking points across. Stand out in the council chamber's foyer during a public hearing over any controversial issue, and you'll see a Diann Ring or a Valerie Martinez coordinating the speakers they want to get out there.

The 400 deny that this sort of manipulation goes on, but take a look at this comment from Wright's Saturday Courier letter:

The early decision-making was done in 1989 before the finance committee met....

Wright is talking about the LLD, which was sent to the city's Citizens Finance Advisory Committee for consideration before it was voted on by the City Council. That council vote occurred in 1990. Yet, here Wright claims that the decision was already made before the Finance Committee ever met and before the Council voted on the LLD.

If Wright's comments are to be believed, all the public meetings of the Finance Committee and the City Council were a waste of the public's time - the votes had already been cast, so to speak. In other words, public participation is a bunch of hooey in the minds of the 400.

No wonder they were able to ignore the 7,000 signatures resident Les Boring and others gathered on a petition against the LLD. Or city staff's observation that of the mail the city received on whether to implement the LLD, 60 supported the assessment and 475 were against it.

Thank you, Judy, for making our point.

Incidentally, a member of that Finance Committee emailed us with his take on the whole sub-committee experience a month ago, and it unsurprisingly confirmed what Wright's letter stated.

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Wright, according to the Courier, sent along 126 pages of documents in support of her claim that she never made a motion to sunset the LLD and also claimed that the council never voted on that non-motion. Yet, the Courier also noted that Wright was careful to omit the minutes of the 1/23/90 Council meeting where Wright in fact made the motion she denies, and where the council, including Diann Ring, approved the motion.

Wright is really telling us, all of us, to abandon all hope of a rational argument ye who enter Claremont. Wright has the great advantage of being able to erase history, including her own, and to be unaccountable for her words and actions. But, then, this is really why this blog is here in the first place - to present those hypocrisies in all their glory.

Thank you once again, Judy.

Corrections: Judy Loses It

The Courier today has an odd letter to the editor from former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright, who just may be losing it.

The letter is in reaction to an exchange that began back in early June over Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District assessment, a controversial municipal revenue source.

Wright's letter in the Courier today is the second one she has submitted recently. On June 12th, she, former Mayor Diann Ring and former Councilmember Bill McCready submitted a letter to the City Council and to the Courier at a time when the Council was voting on how much they should increase the LLD.

That earlier letter by the three former Councilmembers had a number of factual errors, which we pointed out. You can read the text of the Wright-Ring-McCready letter here.

To recap, in our view, the Wright-Ring-McCready letter contained the following inaccuracies and misstatements:

• The letter failed 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 attacked 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 were 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 claimed 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 ignored 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 didn't just ignore public speakers, they ignored 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 rewrote the actual history of events. The writers claimed 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 sunsetting the LLD.
  
  The letter writers claimed no such statements ever occurred. One suspects they would 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.

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Now, in her current letter (she apparently lost her two co-signers from the first missive), Wright digs herself a deeper hole.

Wright begins with the worst sort of propagandist's trick: by purposely misrepresenting her opponents' arguments. Wright claims that "Only once, not repeatedly, (see 11/28, p. 446) did I suggest a sunset [for the LLD] and it was never a motion nor picked up by my colleagues."

In fact, the claim was not about Wright "repeatedly"making a motion for a sunset clause. The actual claim was that Wright repeatedly mentioned sunsetting of the LLD beginning in 1989 and as late as 1993.

The second part of the sentence claiming that Wright's one suggestion for an LLD sunset was never a motion and was never picked up by her colleagues, is untrue, pure and simple, and Wright has apparently been selective in the supporting documentation she sent to the Courier with today's letter. The editor's note to the letter indicates that Wright submitted 126 pages of documentation but omitted the one set of city council minutes from 1/23/90 which noted on page 15:

"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.'"

As Courier noted today, the motion was passed by Ms. Wright and her colleagues, including Diann Ring.

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The last two paragraphs in the Wright letter today make us wonder if Judy has really crossed over into non compos mentis territory. One involved a remark that:

No the LLD did not kill Dick Newton, it probably aggravated Alex Hughes’ heart condition and killed him.

As we noted above, in the Wright-Ring-McCready letter from June 12th, the writers claimed that of the five councilmembers who voted to institute the LLD, only three (the letter signers) were still alive. In fact, a fourth, Dick Newton, is very much alive and kicking. So, the Courier noted this, and we made a joke of it, saying they "killed Dick Newton." Judy obviously missed the joke and at the same time admitted Alexander Hughes, who was on the council when the LLD was being studied and debated, was done in by the her precious LLD.

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The last paragraph of Wright's letter today was particularly odd because it had nothing to do with the Courier. It appeared to addressed to us here at the Insider. Wright says:

By the way, I was not present at The El Barrio Park dedication. I was present at the Rosa Torrez Park dedication. That was a wonderful day! Where were you?

Wright seems to be referring to a June 8th Insider post where we incorrectly placed her at the El Barrio Park dedication in May. We apologize to Ms. Wright and have corrected that point. We obviously confused that with the Rosa Torrez park dedication. We stand by the rest of the post.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Claremont has a well-deserved reputation as the "City of Trees and Ph.D's." The Claremont Village really is defined by its tree-lined streets, which give the town the New England feel the town founders sought.

But with trees come hidden costs. There's the cost of maintenance: trimming, watering, pest management; and then there's the cost of the damage done by trees to property, and in some cases lives. We tend to forget that in February, 1998, two students were killed when a eucalyptus tree fell on their SUV at 4th St. and College Ave. The families of the two students settled a lawsuit against Pomona College for $1.6 million, as this March, 2000, article from The Student Life reported.

The article points out that even though the tree was on campus property and was owned by Pomona College, a city of Claremont crew showed up and quickly removed the tree and root ball, which the families considered evidence in their suit. No one could say who called the city in. Another "Town and Gown" cooperative event.

The city of Claremont has its own tree problems, as the FC Blog noted yesterday. The types of trees we have planted in the past can cause homeowners a great deal of damage to sewer and water lines, driveways and walks. Claremont regularly denies claims made by homeowners against the city for those damages, even though the city severely restricts the homeowners' ability to trim city trees and their roots. These damages are often not covered by homeowner insurance, so citizens are stuck with the costs of repairing the damaged lines.

To make matters worse, the city's Landscaping and Lighting District assessment creates the impression that the city has funds dedicated to things like tree maintenance. So, folks naturally get upset when the city tells them they're liable for any damages caused by city tree roots.

And those property damage costs are on the rise, according to an article by Will Bigham in yesterday's Daily Bulletin. The article reported the city estimates that the $230,000 per year it pays to maintain trees now will rise to $625,000 in 10 years as our tree population ages. Since 2005 there have been 202 tree-related claims against the city, and the city ended up paying out $220,000 because of tree damage in 2005 and 2006.

The article also noted that a city staff report placed part of the blame for current tree problems on past City decisions:

"The city is now experiencing the effects of past aggressive planting programs," the city staff report states. "In the past, trees were planted ... at 40-foot intervals. "Although this provided an equally dispersed tree population, no thought was given to the impact that a tree's growth would have on surrounding infrastructure. "The city is now seeing the financial implications of these decisions in the number of tree-related claims submitted," the report said.

Once again, our past, short-sighted decisions have large financial costs in the present, and the people who made those decisions (like two-term Community Services Commission member Sam Pedroza) have moved on and take no responsibility for those costs.

The new tree policy discussed at last Tuesday night's City Council meeting is at least a step towards reining in the costs of damage claims by engaging in preventative actions. Part of the policy includes hiring full-time arborist to manage the city's "urban forest" of 23,000 trees. Another is to plant types of trees that don't cause the damage that the we're now seeing.

The lesson of all of this is a simple one: pay now or pay a lot more later. It's well and good to have a plant a lot of trees, but if it's done without thinking out all of the consequences, there's hell to pay in the future. It's a lesson revisited time and again on Claremont.

Hats off to our current staff. At least they seem willing to try a different, more sensible path.

More Mailbag

We received this letter in response to our coverage of Claremont's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) assessment debate:

The Claremont City Council minutes of June 12th are now available on the city's website as Item #4. On the first page of the minutes, after Peter Yao announces that the owners of Johnson's Pasture have agreed to the 11.5 million price, Ellen Taylor congratulates and thanks Sandy Baldonado for her efforts in securing the Pasture. Huh? Wasn't this the person who did not want the bond and when the assessment failed made uncivil and disparaging remarks about Claremont residents who defeated it? Pray tell ,how did she help acquire the land? More backslapping among the Claremont 400 following in the wake of the other backslapping done by the League of Women (read Democrat) Voters in their award to her. No wonder this local League is losing members. They have lost their credibility even more with this award and I have talked to a few people who are not renewing their membership because of it.

Also ,check out the minutes of the same meeting when the LLD is being discussed and see how Pedroza and Elderkin deny that there was ever any mention of sunsetting the LLD. I guess these two new councilmembers need to attend the Claremont After School Program and let some of the volunteers help them with their homework , as they seem to be deficient in the area of research.

As you at the Buzz have so clearly and FACTUALLY presented your readers with the exact minutes of the meeting where this was discussed, it was clearly the intent of both the Citizens committee and some of the council that it be sunsetted. I think Elderkin and Pedroza need to stop opening their mouths like geese being forced fed and stop swallowing the crapola that they are being fed and do their own research. One wonders what other delicacies of misinformation they will be fed in dealing with more weighty issues like the water company acquisition?

Thank God that you at the Buzz, whoever you people (or person) are, have at least done the research that the local papers should be doing and are another source of information for people other than the misinformation or misremembering by some of the more senior doyens of Claremont who feed this stuff to the newspapers.

I, like you, are still waiting for Diann Ring and her cohorts to come up with some incidences of lies by you that she says you spread in your blog. I have not found any yet, and opinion is just that, your opinion. If you have access to some of the newspapers articles from past Couriers or Bulletins (Couriers are available on microfiche in the Public Library) you should see the outrageous opinions she and her buddies have spewed out over the years. Check it out.

Courier Bites Back

The Claremont 400 have a long history of bullying anyone in town who dares to speak out publicly against them. So, naturally when Claremont Courier Editor Rebecca JamesCourie ran an editorial critical of the city's Landscape and Lighting District assessment, those same folk had to put the screws to the Courier in the form of an error-filled letter by former Claremont Mayors Judy Wright and Diann Ring to the paper--a letter made public at the last City Council meeting on 6/12/2007.

The Courier ran the letter in today's issue, along with its response standing by its original comments and pointing out some of the false information Wright and Ring cited in their letter. We noted some of the same problems a couple days ago, and it's greatly refreshing to see them finally get called publicly on such things. Right is right, and Wright and Ring are wrong - AGAIN.

At the least, this is a long-overdue discrediting of the two busybodies, who really ought to remember that they're no longer elected officials and need to let a new generation run things without their constant interference. They had their day, now they should move on. (Current councilmembers Sam Pedroza and Linda Elderkin ought to take note: As one of our readers has noted, at the 6/12/07 meeting, they echoed the some of the same false information about the LLD that Wright and Ring wrote in their letter.)

We hope this emboldens others to point out any such misstatements in the future. Maybe we need a Claremont 400 Fact Watch. Email us whenever you catch them twisting statistics, quotes, the historical record, etc. As long as it can be confirmed independently, preferably with backup in the city's official records, we'll print it.

Reader Mail

We received this reader note yesterday from one of the former members of the city's Citizen's Finance Advisory Committee (CFAC) in response to our posts from the past week regarding the city's Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) and the debate preceding its enaction in 1990.

The letter is a window into the decision-making process in Claremont, which too often resembles a rugby scrum - from the outside, not much going on; from the inside, a lot of kicking and grabbing. You can see from the letter how dissenters are treated, and that it takes a great deal of backbone to stand up and voice alternate opinions.

The reader's letter also refers to the 7,000 petition signatures Claremont resident Les Boring gathered against the LLD. Claremont had a population of around 33,000 in 1990, so the 7,000 signatures is an impressive number. As we noted yesterday, the city acted as if those people did not exist. The city paid the price in 2006 when they tried to enact a second assessment district to pay for the purchase of Johnson's Pasture.

That 2006 assessment lost 56% to 44% and the stubborn foolishness of leaders like Diann Ring, Judy Wright, Ellen Taylor, Sandy Baldonado, Al Leiga (all current or former Councilmembers) and a host of others almost cost the city the open space the greater community wanted to save. The measure lost because it was another LLD to many people, because they rolled things unrelated to open space (city park maintenance costs) into the assessment and because their prior actions and misrepresentations about sunsetting the LLD completely discredited them when they promised sunsetting the 2006 assessment.

Our reader also notes how the Claremont 400 has traditionally loaded up important city committees and commissions with people who will tow the party line. As a result, these groups have rarely reflected the community at-large and have fell farther and farther out-of-step with many citizens.

When groups like the Claremont League of Women Voters (LWV) harp on the need for "consensus" and "civility," they're really saying you shouldn't disagree with the party line. They turn a blind eye to the incivility exercised by the Claremont 400 (as seen in their recent award to former Councilmember Sandy Baldonado--more on that later) and their credibility suffers as a result. So we should not be surprised that their numbers are falling and that they find it hard to attract younger new members.

Without further ado, we give you our reader:

Buzz,

A couple of observations on the early days of the LLD.

I was a member of the Citizen's committee, which had 16 members of the community, all selected by the Council Members*. ( I will get back to that)

The voting for the LLD was 14 in favor, 2 opposed. The sunset clause was requested by Dennis Smith, and a 5 year period was mentioned, as I recall. I was one of the 2 in opposition. At the last meeting held in Taylor Hall, I was asked to submit the "Minority Report". Dr Gerry Juergens was the other member of the minority, and assisted writing the report, which I was supposed to read.

In the opening sentence of my report, I mentioned the 7000 signatures of Mr Les Boring and his helpers. Upon saying his name, The gavel came down and I was told to stop. As I recall, the comment from Mr Smith
was to the effect, " we don't want to hear that stuff, it's not to be reported here." The rest of the minority report was cancelled immediately. Although I submitted a written report, I doubt if it was ever filed or
kept.

The final meeting of the Committee was held in conjunction with the Council at the Claremont School of Theology auditorium. It was well attended, for by this time, there was substantial opposition from the greater community. However, the people who wanted to pass the LLD were vocal, and since most were in the position of authority, they would put down any and all dissenters. They would demonize all who spoke in opposition.

I recall that at that last big meeting, I spoke to the audience, and having been put down at the previous meeting of the committee, I had my thoughts organized. I reviewed the process whereby we members of the "Citizens Committee" were "selected" by the members of the Council. Each and every one of us was discussed prior to selection, as to our probable position on the Assessment. I was known to Nick Presecan to be opposed, and so was Gerry Juergens, though I do not know which councilmember selected him. Another member, unnamed, was on the fence, and kept looking for which side was going to win. Another member did business in Claremont, and at first was strongly opposed, but near the end, suddenly decided to support. A couple of members were in real estate, or had business in Claremont, and could look forward to improvements relative to their interests. They had been "selected" for their support.

Only an idiot would say that these people were randomly found... There was a plan to succeed. The Council had selected people who would support the issue. One member of the Citizens Committee immediately stood up and shouted, "Nobody selected me!" in a loud voice and then went into a rage about my comments about selection. In his thick accent, it was apparent that he didn't catch why he was asked to participate. He went on for a couple of minutes shouting, (and no gavel?)

Later that evening, a member Nick Q. (not Presecan) called me at home and swore at me. calling me names, so I hung up. Hope he felt better.

Mr Smith, who ran the meetings of the committee, never varied from his position in favor. Probably that's why he was asked to be chairman. Hope he feels better too.

David Wishart

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.