The Coming Seasons: Holiday and Election

No matter how hard we try to go gentle into that good night (and believe us, we do try), we're always compelled to start yakking again, usually after the powers-that-be start stirring things up.

Now that the Measure CL school bond has come and gone, Shelob-like they've been in their lairs licking their wounds, but rest assured, you'll see many of the old familiar faces back in action in the next City Council election, which should be hitting high gear in another month or so.

If things follow form, we'll see a number of unforeseen issues come to the fore at the next two City Council meetings. These issues will have been carefully chosen to position the insider (small "i") candidates in their campaigns. In the past we've seen things like false rumors of council members harassing city staff or the imminent threat of gravel mining rise up in the months before the election and then fade as soon as the polls close. As always, they'll use a false sense of urgency to instill fear into people - we need to act NOW or else....

We can't wait to see what surprises the next month will bring. We know this much: there will be at least two new faces on the council come next March. Incumbent Sam Pedroza is running, but Mayor Linda Elderkin is not. Peter Yao, the third council member whose term is up, had to step down after he was appointed to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. Incidentally, Yao was named interim chair at the commission's first meeting yesterday.

The city council candidate pool will these people, all of whom have pulled the necessary papers but haven't filed yet:

• Joseph Armendarez, unknown
  
• Robin Haulman, former Architectural Commission chair
  
• Rex Jaime, unknown
  
• Citizen Michael John Keenan, man about town
• Ed Leavell, former Human Services Commission member
• Joseph Lyons, unknown
  
• Opanyi Nasiali, former Traffic Commission member
• Sam Pedroza, incumbent and America's Got Talent 4th Runner Up
  

We've got some thoughts on these folks, but we'll hold those until the race firms up. We'll be curious to see which one(s) will end up as the straw candidates the Claremonsters encourage run in order to siphon off votes from the people they don't want on the council.

* * * * *

In the meantime, there's plenty going on around town, beginning with the City's tree lighting ceremony this coming Friday beginning at 5pm at the Claremont Depot (from the City's website):

Annual Holiday Promenade & Tree Lighting

The evening will include a variety of entertainment throughout the Village, as well as the following activities:

• Photos with Santa and Mrs. Claus at City Hall
• A Tree Lighting Ceremony at 6 p.m. at the Train Depot
• An arts and crafts fair, hosted by Gypsy Sisters, in the Packing House
• Performances by holiday carolers and the Claremont High School Chamber Singers
• Many shops and restaurants hosting "Holiday Cheer Stops"

You won't want to miss this magical Claremont event. Please join us on Friday, December 3 from 5 - 8 p.m. at the Claremont Village Holiday Promenade and Tree Lighting. Enjoy the festive atmosphere and remember to shop Claremont this holiday season.

For more information, please call (909) 399-5490 or visit us at www.ci.claremont.ca.us.

They'll have a skating rink set up as well, and if you've got any old holiday lights and want to exchange them, you can do that at the tree lighting. Southern California Edison customers can bring in one strand of the old-style lights and exchange them for a strand of LED lights.

* * * * *

It's also the first weekend of the month, which means the City Council will be at the Farmers Market in the Claremont Village on Sunday, December 5, between 8am and 1pm.

Pension Tension

To follow on Friday's post about Bell, CalPERS, and Glenn Southard, we came across a New York Times article by Ron Lieber titled "The Coming Class War Over Public Pensions." (The NYT has toned the title down to "Battle Looms Over Huge Costs of Public Pensions.")

Lieber writes that our labor force is evolving into a two-class system. On the one hand are public employees, who continue to receive generous, taxpayer-funded defined benefit pensions with built-in cost of living increases. On the other are private sector employees, most of whom do not have pensions but who may, if they work at the right place and happen to be savers, have 401(k) or IRA accounts in which they, not taxpayers, bear all of the risk.

According to Lieber, taxpayers will likely be asked to rescue underfunded public pension plans for cities and states when those begin to go underwater. As Claremont city council member Peter Yao said a couple weeks ago, our own employee' CalPERS pension account is underfunded to the tune of up to $50 million, something that the majority of the council (Elderkin, Pedroza, and Schroeder) and the Claremont 400, refuse to admit.

Claremont's pension problems are just one small part of a national problem. How much money are we talking about? Lieber tells us:

At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t,” as in titanic and terrifying.

The figure comes from a study by the Pew Center on the States that came out in February. Pew estimated a $1 trillion gap as of fiscal 2008 between what states had promised workers in the way of retiree pension, health care and other benefits and the money they currently had to pay for it all. And some economists say that Pew is too conservative and the problem is two or three times as large.

So a question of extraordinary financial, political, legal and moral complexity emerges, something that every one of us will be taking into town meetings and voting booths for years to come: Given how wrong past pension projections were, who should pay to fill the 13-figure financing gap?

As Yao could tell Lieber, here in Claremont we won't be having those public meetings until the City is at the verge of bankruptcy. The same is true with nearly every other municipality in the state and nation. As a result, the people Lieber calls "have-nots," private sector workers, will also be the ones asked to bear the burden of maintaining the lifestyles of our current public sector retirees, who for the most part refuse to give any concessions on their benefits.

Our public sector pension costs are compounded by the practice of pension spiking, in which public workers in their final year of employment manipulate the rules to drive up the value of their pensions. CalPERS offers a couple different ways of determining pension payments. Under many, such as in the city of Bell, the amount is determined by the employee's final year of compensation. If employees game the system by working a lot of overtime or by cashing out unused vacation time, their pensions can end up significantly higher than their final base salary.

Those spiked pensions cause additional problems for already underfunded CalPERS plans because the employees end up earning much more than can be covered by the money they and their employers actually paid into the system.

To no one's surprise, former Bell city manager Robert Rizzo has become the poster boy for outrageous public pensions. The Daily Bulletin ran an article Saturday by reporter Sandra Emerson, who explained that as a result of how CalPERS formulates pension payments, the city of Rancho Cucamonga, where Rizzo worked for about eight years, will be on the hook for about $125,000 of Rizzo's estimated $650,000 a year pension, assuming Rizzo survives his tarring and feathering long enough to collect.

As we said Friday, when former Claremont city manager Glenn Southard retired from Indio, his base salary was $300,000 a year. However, Southard also could have earned as much a $30,000 performance bonus, and he cashed out $162,000 in unused vacation and sick time. If Southard's pension is based simply on his final year of earnings, and if any bonus and accured vacation/sick time count towards that amount, he could end up with a pension well in excess of his salary.

Whatever pension Southard gets, because of CalPERS' crazy rules, Claremont will be on the hook for a considerable portion of his pension. Because Southard worked here for 17 years, Claremont will have to pay for those 17 years, but the payout will be based on his final year in Indio. For Claremont's share of his retirement, Glenn will qualify for 2.5% of whatever that final Indio figure was times 17 (each year that he worked here).

The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility (CFFR) has a website that takes public information from CalPERS and CalSTRS (the California State Teachers' Retirement System) and posts the names and annual pension payments for anyone getting more than $100,000 a year.

Southard isn't on there yet because the figures haven't been updated since his retirement earlier this year, but another familiar Claremont personality did have her information posted. Our own Bridget Healy, Southard's right-hand woman in Claremont and Indio, retired in 2008 .

CFFR puts Healy's CalPERS pension at $166,701.84, of which Claremont will pay around $100,000 for Healy's roughly 18 years in Claremont, based on her $220,000 final year's salary in Indio. Healy, who seems to be maneuvering for another run at a Claremont city council seat, never has explained how she would manage her conflict of interest when it comes to pension matters here. However, we're going to guess that Healy's the pull-the-ladder-up-after-me type and probably won't have any qualms when it comes to cutting future employee benefits.

Here from CFFR are the Indio retirees in the six-figure club, soon to be joined by our friend Glenn:


And, in case you were wondering about our fair city, here is our $100,000+ CalPERS club:


We also present the Claremont Unified School District's CalSTRS pension high rollers:



There will be others joining these lists. Former Claremont Human Services Director Dick Guthrie, for instance, isn't on Claremont's CalPERS list, though his pension has to be well over $100,000. Former Claremont Community Services Director Mark Harmon and former Community Facilities Manager Mark Hodnick, too will join the exorbitant pensions club.

We're also struck by the presence of a number of prominent Claremonters on these lists. Council member Larry Schroeder is represented on the city of Lakewood's CalPERS pension rolls. Also, two influential members of the Claremont League of Women Voters own hefty public pensions: Bridget Healy and Anita Hughes, the wife of the late former Claremont mayor and CUSD assistant superintendent Alexander Hughes.

Yet another person, LWV president and Claremont Police Commissioner Barbara Musselman, is a former San Bernardino County Human Resources Director and receives a large San Bernardino County Employees' Retirement Association pension (SBCERA doesn't make its individual pension payouts readily available for the public).

Claremont's unsustainable pension obligations are the number one long term threat to our city's financial security. Yet, no one in any position of power, with the exceptions of Council members Yao and Corey Calaycay, are willing to deal with that threat. Instead, groups like the local League of Women Voters, who remained preoccupied with rehabilitating former Claremont mayor Ellen Taylor's image and helping Healy get elected to the council, are content to allow the City fly into a fiscal abyss.

One would expect people like Musselman or Healy to express a little more empathy and gratitude toward the people who fund their wealthy lifestyles. Instead, we constantly see them pushing this or that costly toy - a trolley, say - that only adds to the burden borne by the working stiffs who have to pay for for Musselman's and Healy's retirements as well as their own.

Lost in all this is the unfairness of forcing the public, the majority of whom do not have the luxury of unearned, spiked pension benefits with automatic cost-of-living increases, to rescue these underfunded public pension systems when they become insolvent. If our local and state elected officials and their supporters continue on their present course, that class war that Ron Lieber wrote of will move very quickly from metaphor to reality.

Golden Eggs

HEADED FOR A FALL

As we said last week, the scandal in the city of Bell will probably end up being a good thing for California municipal governments. Right now, they have to worry about the unusual attention their residents are devoting to cities' financial affairs.

That is, in fact, what's happened in our own town. At the July 27 meeting of the Claremont City Council, Mayor Linda Elderkin went to great lengths to contrast Bell's $100,000 city council annual salaries with Claremont's $4,800 per year for council members. Claremont city staff also made some salaries available online as a show of fiscal transparency.

But in the long run, cities like Claremont will weather the current scrutiny, public attention will fade, the LA Times and other media won't have anywhere near the staff and resources to cover every area of Southern California, and things will revert to the status quo.

Bell represents the far extreme, and their council and city management were caught because they allowed greed to get the better of them. In a town like Claremont, financial losses result from poor decision-making rather than outright fraud or embezzlement, and simply looking at employee and council salaries doesn't begin to capture the full impact of the money flowing out of city coffers.

That kind of financial leakage flourishes on the local level, mostly because, even when citizens are paying attention, elected officials refuse to deal with problems with long time horizons or because city officials refuse to release all of the information needed for a full public accounting.

Consider that July 27 council meeting.

Item number 7 on the consent calendar was a request by staff for the council to adopt a resolution implementing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City and the Claremont Police Management Association. The CPMA agreed to conceding a 1.9% cost of living increase for the current fiscal year and to the implementation of a two-tiered CalPERS pension system. Current safety employees receive a 3% at 50 pension (that is, at the age of 50, 3% of their final year's salary for every year of employment).

In return for those CPMA concessions, the City agreed to continue paying for the employees' 9% CalPERS contribution. You can see the discussion here (at around the 57:40 mark).

Councilmember Peter Yao (photo, right) asked for the MOU to be pulled for discussion. Yao, who has been on top of the City's the unfunded pension liabilities, put that amount in the tens of millions and said that by his personal calculation, it was closer to $50 million. (The Courier and Daily Bulletin later reported the unfunded liabilities as $40 million.)

Yao pointed out that the City doesn't possess $50 million in assets, which Yao said meant that "by definition we're insolvent." Yao's problem with the MOU was that, although it introduces a two-tiered pension system, one for current employees and one for future employees, the MOU defers any actual details of the new pension tier until next year. He added that the new tier wouldn't have any effect on the CalPERS problem for anywhere from 15 to 30 years from now, when new employees would be entering retirement.

We might add, too, that there's a hiring freeze on right now and that could extend for several years if the economy doesn't turn around soon. That means that any savings from the new pension benefits wouldn't apply quite a while.

Yao was also unhappy with council members Elderkin, Sam Pedroza, and Larry Schroeder for their failure to address that 9% employee CalPERS contribution the City continues to cover. Elderkin's and Pedroza's refusal to ask the employees to pick up their own 9% contribution was almost certainly out of self-interest. They, along with Yao, could be campaigning for reelection. Linda and Sam may be figuring there's no sense in angering the employee union gods at this point, even if it imperils the City's solvency.

Schroeder's reluctance to correct the CalPERS problem is more puzzling. Schroeder spent 10 years in banking and 19 years as a finance director for the cities of Lakewood and Glendora. And in the July 27 pension discussion, Schroeder acknowledged that "we do have a pension problem." Should that not be a huge red flag, especially coming from Schroeder?

In the end, Schroeder, perhaps because he himself is a CalPERS pensioner, voted along with Elderkin and Pedroza to implement the MOU. Council member Corey Calaycay voted with Yao against the MOU, citing the City's responsibility to not make promises it cannot keep (an ethical sticking point that has never bothered Elderkin, Pedroza, and the Claremont 400).


THE GOOD LIFE

Today's LA Times had an article in its LA Extra section about concerns that CalPERS authorities failed to notify the California attorney general's office in 2006 when they discovered a 47% increase in Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo's salary while conducting an audit of Bell's .

That increase raised Rizzo's salary to $447,000. According to the Times:

Documents released by CalPERS on Thursday show that the fund was also informed of a 42% raise for the assistant city manager and nearly 38% raise for City Council members. That brought council members' pay to $62,000 by 2005 for part-time jobs that in other small cities pay about $400 per month. The newly released records include Bell's explanation to CalPERS of why its officials were worthy of such salaries.

Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia told CalPERs in writing in October 2006 that the city manager's salary was hiked "to reflect his contributions to the city," which included helping Bell resolve a multimillion-dollar deficit. She said her own pay hike was "provided to reward her for her efforts and new responsibilities" related to a promotion the city had given her.

"It should also be noted that the City Council, also members of the Executive Management classification, were compensated accordingly for their contributions and efforts toward the City's dramatic financial recovery," Spaccia wrote.

The Times said that CalPERS found Bell's documentation sufficient and never did any subsequent audits. CalPERS has already been criticized for using overly optimistic rates of returns in figuring how much local governments and their employees should contribute to their pension accounts. CalPERS has also suffered from a scandal involving a former CalPERS executive and a former board member.

So if you're a public employee, there's no time like the present to retire, if you are eligible. There will be a day of reckoning for California public employee pensions, and chances are that day will arrive sooner rather than later.

One recent retiree familiar to us is former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard. You'll recall that Southard went to Indio for five years following 17 years in Claremont. He retired from Indio earlier this year.

We were curious about Glenn's retirement. It couldn't possibly be near Robert Rizzo's $600,000-plus annual retirement pay. Figuring pensions is guess work, though there is a website called CaliforniaPensionReform.com that does post a searchable database with all of CalPERS' six-figure pensions. Glenn isn't on their yet, but he will be the next time CPR updates its records.

Southard's base salary his last year in Indio was $300,000. That's important because CalPERS uses that last year when figuring retirement payouts. That's why you used to see certain CHP employees putting in a lot of overtime during their last year of work.

We were able to find an estimate on the size of GS's retirement after a reader alerted us to a blog called Inflection Point Diary that had a couple recent posts about Glenn's compensation. IPD carried a thorough breakdown of Southard's Indio contract, which IPD posted along with the analysis.

As IPD notes, most people, including our local papers, only focus on base salaries when they examine public employee compensation. But buried in the details of their contracts are things like bonus agreements that can add a good chunk more to a fellow's pension. IPD reveals that in addition to the $300,000, Indio also agreed to give Southard an annual bonus of up to 10%, or $30,000 for Southard's last year.

The analysis goes on to say that Southard was eligible for a deferred compensation account with an apparent maximum contribution of $16,500 a year, paid entirely by the city of Indio. There's also the matter of unused vacation time, for which Southard also received compensation. In fact, IPD posted a follow-up on Southard that said he cashed out around $80,000 worth of unused vacation during his time in Indio.

IPD also cited a Desert Sun article from February 24 that said in 2008 Indio overpaid by $5,949.52 for 40 hours worth of vacation time he didn't have, an error that wasn't caught until Southard was getting ready to retire.

IPD estimated that Southard's final year's salary could have been closer to $400,000 the the $300,000 base. Upon retirement, the Desert Sun said, Southard was also supposed to get $162,000 for 136 hours of accumulated vacation and sick time. All in all, not a bad payday for a man who left Indio sitting on a $13.5 million budget deficit. Good thing he didn't stick around for his 2010 performance bonus.

It Tolls for Thee - UPDATED

A TAXING SITUATION

The LA Times coverage of municipal salaries in the city of Bell has focused a lot of attention on what had previously been an area examined mainly by gadflies. Local newspapers haven't seemed to care much about such arcana and that lack of scrutiny has allowed city governments, including Claremont's, to dismiss citizen's concerns about such things as city employee and city council compensation.

The excesses in Bell, however, have turned up the heat on city councils everywhere, including our little burg. At Tuesday's meeting of the Claremont City Council, mayor Linda Elderkin felt compelled to point out that Claremont's council members only receive a $400-per-month stipend. Elderkin neglected to mention, however, what she and other council members receive for attending meetings of the Claremont Redevelopment Agency or various regional boards the council members serve on, which is where Bell's council members made the bulk of their nearly $100,000 per year. Still, in Claremont, the total compensation is a fraction of what was seen in Bell, and readers can rest assured that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker doesn't earn anywhere near the $787,000 former Bell City Manager Robert (not to be confused with Ratso "I'm walkin' heeyuh") Rizzo received.

In any case, local cities are now taking steps to distance themselves from Bell, hence Mayor Elderkin's characteristically blissful lack of self-reflection when she declaimed Tuesday night, "We are not in the realm of the Bell councils." As usual, the obtuse Elderkin missed the point entirely. It's not that Claremont's level of veniality can begin to approach that of Bell's. What ever corruption we have here isn't at all of the same sort as Bell. We're not paying exorbitant salaries and benefits for corrupt officials. Rather, here we pay a premium, a stupidity tax, for want of a better term. It's why we four years ago Claremont's ruling class, the Claremont 400, tried to institute a $45 million assessment district to pay for a $12 million parcel of open space.

Our city's mistakes may not be criminal in nature, but they can be costly. Casual observers of our town see what a wonderful place it appears to be, but they don't understand that the same sense of wonder could have been achieved for a fraction of the costs - costs that include untenable employee pension obligations and unneeded or extravagant city services.


ADVICE OF COUNSEL

We also noticed that Bell's city attorney, Robert Lee, didn't escape criticism. The LA Times reported in today's edition that the city of Downey, which also employs Lee, is ending its contract with him and his firm, Best, Best & Krieger, simply because they don't want to risk being associated with the Bell scandal.

As the Times article noted, city attorneys have a tough balancing act. They have to represent the interests of the citizens of the municipalities they work for but only so far as those interests are represented by officials elected by those same citizens - that is, the city council members. So, what happens when a council acts illegally, unethically, or irresponsibly? Should a city attorney speak up publicly, should they resign, or should they be supportive of the council?

The idea that a city attorney doesn't represent citizens directly but rather represents the council majority is one that informs our own city attorney Sonia Carvalho's legal philosophy. Coincidentally, Carvalho also works for Best, Best & Krieger and has also once worked for a city, Colton in her case, that had council members who were subjects of a federal corruption probe about 10 years ago.

Carvalho's legal advice isn't always reserved for the controlling majority of the city council. It sometimes extends to free legal opinions for the Claremont 400, as it did in 2007 when Mayor Elderkin was first running for council. At that time, one of the big issues was the possibility that Vulcan Materials Co. might begin gravel mining operations on land in northeast Claremont. Elderkin had a potential conflict of interest in any city business with Vulcan because her husband Rick is a Pomona College mathematics professor. Pomona College had a small ownership interest in the land Vulcan was interested in.

When that potential conflict became an issue in the 2007 campaign, Elderkin sought and received an opinion from Carvalho that Elderkin faced no conflict of interest. Carvalho, who didn't provide legal consultations to any other 2007 council candidates, did give Elderkin a freebie. Carvalho's legal opinion should at least have been reported as an in-kind campaign contribution, but Elderkin couldn't even be troubled to do that much.

(By the way, state attorney general's office, tell us again why you didn't look into that?)

We believed then, as we do now, that Claremont and every other city in California would be best served finding city attorneys whose philosophies of governance incorporate a greater concern for the actual town citizens, not just the controlling majority of the five elected city officials and the people who in turn control those council members.


BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

One other Bell-related item on the LA Times' LA Now blog was a report that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for cities to post the salaries of top officials online.

On this issue, the Insider was way ahead of the curve. Almost three years ago, we obtained and shared the city of Claremont's payroll information from the city's online document archive. The information was posted in the form of pay stub information.

Our advice to Governor Schwarzenegger on this one: tread lightly. For our having posted that very public information, City Attorney Carvalho contacted Google, which hosts our blog, and threatened to take them to court if they did not remove the pay stub information immediately. Carvalho falsely accused the Insider of having stolen the information. Then, after the theft accusations were shown to be false, she claimed the pay stubs could not be posted because they were protected by copyright laws (also a false legal theory).

The Daily Bulletin ended up posting an image of one of the pay stubs themselves, after redacting all the personal information. The Bulletin, unlike the Insider, did not receive any nasty-grams from Carvalho, who did have a heapin' portion of crow to chew on in the aftermath of Paystubgate.

The Claremont pay stub information, incidentally, showed that our city employees were compensated quite well, especially after one includes things like bonuses and benefits - information that the city has never been willing to release and information that is supposed to be public, according to California law.


UPDATED, 2:15PM:

A reader contacted us and noted that yesterday's weekly report from City Manager Jeff Parker had the news that Claremont had started posting the salaries of top city officials, including Parker and the city council, on the City's website. Here's what Parker's report said:

CLAREMONT ADMINISTRATIVE AND COUNCIL SALARY INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

As the media reports on the City of Bell's salaries for council and administrative staff, residents across the country are discussing the compensation of their own City officials. In accordance with the City of Claremont's open communication philosophy, the City of Claremont makes this information readily available to the public.

Each member of the City Council receives $400 per month compensation and an additional $30 per Redevelopment Agency meeting. The City Council does not receive retirement benefits and during the 2010-12 budget process, medical benefits were eliminated from council's budget. City commissioners are appointed by the City Council and receive no compensation.

As detailed in the budget, the City Manager's annual salary is $211,000 and the Assistant City Manager's annual salary is $165,000. The Police Chief's annual salary is $174,000. These salaries are based on surveys of comparable cities with similar services and populations to Claremont's 37,000 residents. Cities surveyed include Upland, Brea, La Verne, Glendora, Arcadia, Azusa, Covina, Rialto, Montclair, Monrovia, and Chino.

A complete list of salary ranges for each City position is available upon request through the City Clerk's office. For additional information, please call the City Manager's Office at 909-399-5441

Parker fails to inform the public that transparency only goes so far. We still don't get any information on bonuses and benefits, which together constitute a good chunk of total employee compensation.

According to another LA Times article on Bell, the idea of posting the salary information was supposed to be discussed in Sacramento yesterday at a meeting of city managers hosted the League of California Cities. The public disclosure is one action the League thinks will mute the public's ire over the Bell situation. It also shows that the League is more concerned with the plight of city employees than with the concerns of actual citizens.

The Times described the purpose of the meeting as "damage control," which implies the League wants to put its spin on the story rather than considering whether Bell is an extreme example of a wider malaise. The League is an interest group like any other, and its interests lie in preserving as much of the status quo as possible, to the greater detriment of the people who have to actually pay municipal bills.

City Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets tonight at 6:30pm (no special closed session this week). You can watch the meeting online here, or you can go on down to the council chambers at 225 Second St. in the Claremont Village.

This is the last meeting before the council and the town's various commissions take the month of August off. Here's tonight's agenda.

We noticed a few things that grabbed our interest:

• Item 7 on the consent calendar is a recommendation by staff that the council adopt a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Claremont Police Management Association. If approved, it would cover the fiscal year that runs from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011.
  
  The MOU includes the union's concession of a 1.9% cost of living increase for this fiscal year. It also includes the implementation of a two-tiered CalPERS retirement system as a nod to the unsustainability of the present 3% at 55 pension plan for police officers. The MOU gives no specifics on the proposed two-tiered pension, and it only says that the details are subject to negotiation with the CPMA for the MOU for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.
  
  The MOU also continues the City's payment of the each employee's 9% contribution to CalPERS. It also continues the City's annual adjustment of it's portion of each employee's health insurance premiums.
  
  It certainly looks as if the council has done nothing more than push dealing with the employee pension problem out another year, and they've left it open to the CPMA to dictate what new employees would receive for their pensions.
  
  The refusal on the part of the council to make the tough decisions needed to fix the coming pension storm shouldn't be surprising. Three of the council members, Peter Yao, Sam Pedroza, and Linda Elderkin, are up for re-election next March. Pedroza and Elderkin are of the belief that they need to placate city employees, no matter what long-term damage their lack of action causes the City's finances. Neither, after all, are the brightest when it comes to financial issues (see Padua Park, which Pedroza and Elderkin pushed).
  
  You'd think that council member Larry Schroeder, being a retired municipal finance officer, would be able to tell the extent of the pension problems are out there on the city's financial horizon. On the other hand, he does receive a CalPERS pension himself as a former city of Lakewood employee, so perhaps he's willing to let the City take a hit out of some misplaced sense of solidarity..
  
  Pension reform has long been one of Council Member Yao's pet issues, so it will be interesting what, if anything, he has to say on the issue tonight.
  
  
  
• Staff is also asking the council to approve having liens totaling $83,624 placed against 16 abandoned, bank-owned properties. The properties all have delinquent fines that were levied by the City because of the owners' failure to properly maintain the properties.
  
  Among the deadbeat institutions are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and US Bank (which took over PFF Bancorp).
  
  
  
• Items 12 and 13 on the administrative items portion of the agenda have to do with requests by staff for the council to approve Community Development Block Grants to two Claremont Packing House businesses - the Packing House Wine Merchants and Hip Kitty Jazz & Fondue Lounge. The grants are $50,000 each.
  
  The Hip Kitty grant would be used to pay for expansion into the space formerly occupied by the EMW Limited Gallery. Staff justifies the grant by saying it would create two full-time employee jobs.
  
  Jerry Tessier, whose company Arteco Partners restored the Packing House, has told staff that getting the grant would allow Tessier's Linus Partners LLC to obtain $45,000 more in financing to complete the Hip Kitty expansion.
  
  The Wine Merchants grant would be used to expand the business into the space that had formerly housed the Claremont Forum's book store. As with the Hip Kitty money, Jerry Tessier and Linus Partners LLC would use the $50,000 to qualify for $50,000 in additional financing and would use the total to complete the Wine Merchant's expansion.
  
  The funding for Claremont's CDBG program comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. These two grants follow a $150,000 CDBG last December to the new Casa Moreno Grill in the Village Expansion. Since the CDBG money comes from the federal government for job creation, it doesn't cost the City anything. Still, you have to wonder what factors City Hall uses to determine who gets the grants and who does not.
  
  Also, is there any favoritism involved? Because Tessier's fortunes and the City's are so completely intertwined in the Packing House and the Padua Hills Theatre, would they favor him over another equally deserving business?
  
  In the past, the City seemed to favor the Candlelight Pavilion when the council loaned them $175,000 in 2000 and again in 2006 when they had to renegotiate the loan terms after the Pavilion's owners had trouble making their promised payment.
  
  
• Administrative item 14 on tonight's agenda is proposal from staff to allow City Manager Jeff Parker enter into a lease agreement with Three French Hens and its owner Brenda Monahan. The lease is for the space in the Village Expansion parking structure that had been occupied by Bedol What's Next. The City would charge Monahan $1.50 per square-foot, or $1,800 a month for the 1,200 sq.-ft. space.
  
  Staff is also giving Monahan a $300 break on rent in exchange for her functioning as a "City Concierge," a duty that the staff report explains:
  

  Prior to opening staff will work with the tenant on creating the concierge space, which will provide an opportunity for guests to receive and view information on the City's businesses and the services and products they offer. They will also have a calendar with all of the things to do in Claremont on a monthly basis. They will provide in store space for other businesses to advertise its products especially in the food drink and entertainment arenas.
  

  
  Here we have to wonder why we're paying the Claremont Chamber of Commerce $40,000 a year to do much of what the City is asking Monahan to do at $3,600 a year? Do we really need that Chamber visitor's center on Yale Ave? Perhaps the City ought to be thinking about pulling the plug on that Chamber contract.
  
  Three French Hens should certainly benefit from the extra foot traffic generated from being a City Concierge, but, as with the Packing House grants, we wonder how the City decides when they get into the business of choosing economic winners and losers.
  
  
  
• The council will also consider recommendations from their Ad Hoc Commission Selection Committee, composed of council members Larry Schroeder and Corey Calaycay. These are the appointments suggested by the committee:
  

  Architectural Commission
  Mark Schoeman - reappoint to a four-year term
  James Sink - reappoint to a four-year term
  Henry Perera - appoint to a four-year term
  
  Community Services
  Pauline Bourne - appoint to a four-year term
  Antonia Castro - appoint to a three-year term
  
  Human Services Commission
  Robin Gottuso - reappoint to a four-year term
  Robert Miletich reappoint to a four-year term
  
  Planning Commission
  Jeff Hammill - reappoint to a four-year term
  Tom Lamb - reappoint to a four-year term
  
  Police Commission
  Barbara Musselman - reappoint to a four-year term
  Sayeed Shaikh - reappoint to a four-year term
  Laura Fragoso - appoint to a two-year term
  
  Traffic Transportation Commission
  Rob Poy - reappoint to a one-year term

  
  
  
  

Another Blog in Town

A while back, Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen mentioned a relatively new Claremont blog. Unlike other blogs about our fair city, Allen wrote, Conscious Claremont avoids being hectoring in its tone, which is a good thing. The last thing Claremont (and the blogosphere) needs is another whiny blogger.

Here's the anonymous blogger self-description:

About Me

I moved to Claremont in the 3rd grade & went to elementary, junior,& high school here. I went away for college, into the ‘big city’, Los Angeles. I was, like most Claremont kids, eager to leave. But, after 4 yrs. there, I felt city life wasn't for me. I've resided here the past 6 yrs. I have not been active in civic life before & only started to follow city hall in depth since last Aug. I have a b.a. in business economics & accounting. Thank you for reading, & I appreciate your feedback.

The posts cover a variety of Claremont issues, usually with a cost-benefit analysis weaved in. The sampling we read included posts about redevelopment (with a comment on ex-city manager Glenn Southard), changes in Claremont's financial policies, our zany, conflicted city council, and the real cost of the new Padua Park. The new blog also covers other items of interest, such as local architecture and local art events.

The park post had a comment that seemed fairly representative of Conscious Claremont's analyses:

An observer can't help feeling strange at the vast & expensive construction occurring while we experience serious fiscal problems.

While in recent years we've terminated employees & funding, we were able to spend almost 4 million from the general fund to finance this site, including this year's costs of $1.7 million. Even with an $850,000 conservancy grant, projections of city spending are upwards of $4.7 million.

This brings up another point. Why haven't the local papers made the obvious connection between the huge cost of the park to the loss of employees and city programs?

Observations like the one above show why blogs like Conscious Claremont exist in the first place. They fill an informational niche that most newspapers, including the Daily Bulletin or the Claremont Courier can't or won't address because the stories are too complex to fit into 15 or 20 column-inches.

So it takes a Conscious Claremont to put things into their proper context. To take the example of Padua Park, that one project accounts for virtually all of the City's budget deficit over that past two fiscal years. Our town mothers and fathers have bemoaned the loss of staff and services, yet they are the very ones who insisted that the park be completed now, costs be damned. The project could easily have been deferred until the economy and the city finances improved, but people like former mayor Ellen Taylor, current mayor Linda Elderkin, and our mayor pro tem Sam Pedroza, remained inflexible in their refusal to see how their project would end up gutting the city's balance sheet.

Ironically, some of the staff members whose jobs were eliminated because of Claremont's financial problems were the ones most responsible for the park's construction. Those employees were victims of the karma wheel coming full circle, like soon-to-be executed prisoners ordered to dig their own graves.

There are any number of ways a real news story could have been constructed out of the Padua Park project, but the traditional local news sources took the cheap, easy way out and failed to connect the dots. They simply wrote pieces about the park's grand opening without one single mention of the project's destructive fiscal effects.

Readers do notice the lack of context in such stories, contrary to whatever marketing reports editors are studying. As newspaper readership continues its downward death-spiral, we can't help wonder if papers themselves aren't doing more than a little of their own grave digging by not taking the time and energy to report the real news.

Local News

COUNCIL COMINGS AND GOINGS

Well, as we predicted, at their meeting Tuesday night, the Claremont City Council appointed Councilmember Linda Elderkin mayor and named Councilmember Sam Pedroza mayor pro tem. Outgoing mayor Corey Calaycay was honored by a representative of State Senator Bob Huff's office, and Calaycay is off to make a run for the state assembly.

Calaycay hopes to fill the 59th Assembly District seat vacated by Anthony Adams, who, after avoiding being recalled for supporting last year's state budget agreement, decided not to run again.

The Claremont 400 is hoping Calaycay wins the Republican primary in June. Given the gerrymandered nature of our district, winning that race pretty much guarantees a win in the November general election. If Calaycay should win, that would free up the council to appoint a replacement or hold a special election to fill Calaycay's seat. We suspect that they would opt for naming a replacement, and the 400's candidate of choice, former Claremont Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy is waiting in the wings.

Healy couldn't win in last year's council election, so getting a free pass through a council appointment might just be her one chance at finding a seat at the council dais.


THE SCOOP ON JOHNSON'S PASTURE

A reader wrote in to request a public service announcement about Johnson's Pasture. The reader requests that the City install a doggie bag dispenser at the pasture's trailhead. Apparently, dog owners have not been picking up after their pooches, which makes for a mine field experience for walkers and runners.

Come on people, show some class. Pick up after your pets.

City Gets New Mayor Tonight

CITY ORGANIZATIONAL CHART
The Claremont City Council convenes tonight for their regularly scheduled meeting at 6:30pm in the Council Chambers at 225 Second St. in the Claremont Village. There's no closed session tonight. For a change, what you see is what you get. At least, as much as that is possible in our town.

You can preview the council agenda materials on the city's website.

You can also watch the meeting live or later at your leisure here.

Some of tonight's topics are:

• The council's reorganization. This is the annual voting by council members for mayor and mayor pro tem. Those posts are currently filled by councilmembers Corey Calaycay and Linda Elderkin. By convention, the positions are supposed to rotate each year so that each councilmember gets a turn at mayor. (Except when the powers-that-be don't like you.)
  
  Expect our process queen Elderkin to be named mayor, which will make for excruciating long council meetings because Linda loves to go on and on about how much she knows about each and every subject. Infallibility being her strong point, she believes she's right only 100% of the time, so Linda will always have the last word.
  
  Our goofiest councilmember, Sam Pedroza, will be named Mayor Pro Tem. Together, Sam and Linda have been the Claremont 400's most reliable votes. Elderkin is part of the old (and we do mean old) Claremont League of Women Voters ruling class, and Pedroza is former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright's marionette.
  
  A matched set, these two (trust them as you would adders fang'd):
  
  
  Pedrozacrantz and Lindanstern
  
  
  
• After the reorg, the council will settle down to its regular business with Elderkin at the gavel. The first item they'll consider is the second reading of the City's ordinance on water efficient landscaping.
  
  
• The council will also receive and approve the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, which, as usual, paints a rosy picture of the money situations for the City's and the City's Redevelopment Agency. Odd, isn't it, how the report seems to minimize inconvenient things like pension obligations and the likely rise in the city's contribution to the city employee CalPERS pension account.
  
  
• The Claremont Police Department's annual report. Good news, for the most part, violent crime and property crimes were down last year, despite the declining states of the local and national economies.
  
  
• A temporary loan of $825,000 from the Claremont Redevelopment Agency to the Jamboree Housing Corporation for the development at the affordable housing site at 111 S. College Ave. This is in anticipation of the project receiving a $825,000 grant from the L.A. County HOME program. Assuming that money comes in, the CRA will get its $825,000 back, says Housing and Redevelopment Manager Brian Desatnik.
  
  
• A review of the City's investment policy.
  
  
  

Highway Robbery

Yes, as through this world I've wandered

I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Pretty Boy Floyd
- Woody Guthrie

DEAL GONE BAD

Well, if you happened to catch last Tuesday's Claremont City Council meeting, you would have seen the council vote 4-1 to approve terminating the operating covenant that Claremont Toyota and the City agreed to back in September 2005. Mayor Corey Calaycay was the lone "No" vote.

As we discussed in our last post, the property in question is a 1.25-acre parcel that once contained a Chili's Restaurant and a small parking lot. It's located on the west side of Indian Hill Blvd. next to the offramp from the eastbound 10 Freeway. Claremont Toyota owner Roger Hogan had originally wanted that property to expand his existing operation.

Back in 2005, Hogan, who exerts a great deal of influence in town thanks to the fact that his dealership provides the City with about half of its annual sales tax revenue, talked the council into giving him $100,000 to help him acquire the property. The City also agreed to put in $200,000 in street and signage improvements and used its eminent domain powers to threaten the previous owner. The "threat" was a paper one only. It allowed the seller a tax advantage, so the City had to engage in a oddly legal, wink-and-nod IRS tax dodge for the seller's benefit.

The payoff for the city was supposed to millions of dollars in tax revenue over the minimum seven years Hogan agreed to use the Chili's property to expand his Toyota dealership. So, some time soon after the city council agreed to the deal on a 3-1 vote (then-councilmember Jackie McHenry voted against it; Calaycay abstained), Hogan took possession of the property, had the restaurant structure torn down and paved over, and started parking cars on the lot.

Unfortunately, the car market, and the economy as a whole, crashed, which caused Hogan to reconsider his need for the Chili's lot. With three years remaining on his agreement, Hogan wanted out of the deal, so last week city staff urged the council to allow Hogan to back out of the 2005 agreement and payback only half of the $100,000 of the City's investment.

You can see the actual discussion here (scroll down to agenda item 13 and click on that link).


NOPE, NO CONFLICT HERE

Of course, the council agreed to the deal Tuesday, but not without some squirming on the part of an uncharacteristically sober councilmember Sam Pedroza (carousing, at left). Pedroza received $1,000 in campaign contributions from the Hogan family.

How much did the Hogans love Sam in 2007? Well, the maximum allowable contribution for a Claremont City Council campaign is $250 per person. Hogan got around that by having his wife, as well as his adult son and daughter, contribute $250 each to the Pedroza campaign. Roger Hogan, Jr., by the way, for his campaign donation listed his occupation fleet manager of Claremont Toyota.

One other interesting thing about the Hogan donations is that none of them - father, mother, daughter, son - live in Claremont. Roger Sr. and his wife live in Newport Beach. For all the talk about how much Roger Sr. gives back to the community, it certainly seems like he takes an awful lot out, and we have to wonder if there isn't sometimes an implicit threat to take his dealership out of Claremont if Roger doesn't get what Roger wants.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had an article by Tony Krickl (sorry, no link) that quoted Pedroza's rationale for not recusing himself from the vote for his auto dealer patron:

"It just astounds me as we're talking about the challenges to our businesses at this time and people are talking about charging this number one income producer $100,000," Councilmember Sam Pedroza said. "I just think it's the wrong direction."

Mr. Pedroza defended himself at the meeting after Mr. [Dean] McHenry pointed out that some city council members had received campaign contribution money from Mr. Hogan and questioned whether their votes would be swayed due to a conflict of interest.

The other councilmember who received a campaign contribution from Hogan was Mayor Pro Tem Linda Elderkin (pontificating, at right). Elderkin, whom we like to refer to "The Process Queen" for her supposed adherence to rules that enforce orderly, fair government, received $250 from the elder Hogan in her 2007 campaign.

Neither Pedroza nor Elderkin were on the council back in 2005 when the City agreed to operating covenant with Hogan for the Chili's property. But it never hurts to have some allies when a vote is needed, as it was on Tuesday night. Fortunately for the council, it has always reliable city attorney, Sonia Carvalho, standing by. Tuesday, Sonia leaped to the defense of Pedroza and Elderkin. Krickl's article quoted Carvalho:

"Campaign contributions for the purposes of conflicts are not sources of income," City Attorney Sonia Carvalho added. "So you can receive campaign contributions and not have a conflict of interest."

Carvalho also said in her comments that as long as the council can claim a "legitimate public purpose" for any expense, there is no gift of public funds involved.

Thanks for that, Sonia. So, Hogan gets a break, and the city gets back $50,000 of it's $100,000 investment, a 50% loss on the investment. Think of what services that $100,000 might have purchased, or how much interest the city might have earned over the past four years if it had merely invested the money in a long-term bond or CD.

Pedroza was careful to point out that there was no conflict on his part because he hadn't accepted any money from Hogan, et. al., in the last 12 months. It's also good to know that 12 months hence, in his presumptive 2011 campaign, Pedroza will again be cleared to accept even more Hogan money.

Who in 2007 knew the best return on investment might be a Claremont City Council campaign? (Start with $1,250, $50,000 returned = a 4000% gain over about three years.)

Check out these 2007 City Election campaign finance documents:

(Click on images to enlarge)

Pedroza 2007 Campaign Finance Statement

Elderkin 2007 Campaign Finance Statement

POSTSCRIPT

The funniest thought of all occurred to us as we were driving past the Claremont Auto Center last week. What if three years from now Roger Hogan decides to pull up stakes and concentrate on the Orange County car market? Who can guarantee he doesn't anyway? We couldn't help but noticing how his Claremont Toyota ads now say "Claremont/Capistrano." Capistrano is sure a lot closer to Newport Beach than Claremont.


The sight of the Claremont Auto Center last week wasn't exactly a confidence inspiring image. There certainly seemed to be a lot of empty spaces. The Chili's lot appeared empty except for six vehicles:



So, we wonder, how long did Hogan's operation really use the property? The answer is less than three of the agreed upon seven years. As always, Google Earth tells all (the Chili's lot is outlined in red):

4/1/05 - Before the deal

3/15/06 - Restaurant gone

6-17-07 - Cars. Now you see 'em....

6/27/08 - ....Now you don't

6/19/09 - More cars gone

It's All About the $$$

We were a little unsure about what to think about the State budget crisis, what with talk of take-aways and all, so we went back to the League of Cities' website, http://www.saveyourcity.net
to try to buck up our resolve.

At first it was comforting to hear Mayor Corey Calaycay, Mayor Pro Tem Linda Elderkin, Councilmember Peter Yao, and even Councilmember Sam Pedroza plead the case of a small San Gabriel Valley municipality to the giants who stand astride Sacramento.

However, the more we watched these pieces, the more wrong notes jarred our comfort. Being confirmed "McLuhanites" we know that the medium is the message, and so we examined the medium a bit more.

One trivial point jumps out right away. Those experts at the League of Cities don't even know Claremont's Assembly and Senatorial District. They show our Assemblymember as Norma Torres (it's Anthony Adams) and our State Senator as Gloria Negrete McLeod (it's Bob Huff). We've already pointed out that Linda Elderkin's bio makes her "Mayor" and not "Mayor pro tem".

Here are screen-grabs of our council making its case:

Corey says, "We had to make some difficult choices in the city of Claremont."

Linda appreciates "...a most remarkable volunteer community."

Peter says, "You and I both know it takes money to provide these services".

Sam's Message: "State, you take care of your own house."

But who is this "Fifth Councilman"?--Eric Everhart, Vice President for Development for the Olson Company. The Olson Company are developers that do business in many cities. Several years ago they had an option on the "Courier" property just south of the tracks on College, and were going to build a mixed use development, but then lost heart when the economy went south. The City is now entering into a DDA with Jamboree Housing for a housing project on that site.

Eric says, "Give me money, that's what I want."

So, Save Your City is not much more than a media promotion to help those slopping at the public trough to keep what they have, and to get more if possible. Why else would the site include a developer pleading to Sacramento?

By the way, we were curious as to why each screen-grab above shows 530 videos showing. We would think that from time to time it might be 500 videos, or 489 videos or 541 videos. Turns out, that number is hard-wired into the page code and is really just there for aesthetic (or subliminal message) effect: "We've got lots of worthies telling Sacramento to take care of its own house..."

For the propeller heads out there, here is the page code for the Save Your City website that shows where the 530 number comes from:

click to enlarge

If you can't believe the identification of Linda Elderkin, if you can't believe the assembly and senate district identification, if you believe that the VP for Development of the Olson Company is any kind of elected official or "community leader" and if you can't believe the more or less gratuitous tout of videos showing, why believe the substance of the message?

Saving Your City

Click to Enlarge

Claremont Mayor Pro Tem Linda Elderkin unknowingly received a promotion when she did a YouTube spot for a website called SaveYourCity.net. The site listed her as "Mayor Linda Elderkin."

Elderkin and three of her fellow councilmembers - Corey Calaycay (also described on the website as Mayor), Sam Pedroza, and Peter Yao - each taped short messages arguing against Governor Schwarzengger's budget proposal that would take $2 billion from money that is supposed to go to local governments.

You can find all four spots here.

Sam Pedroza's, incidentally, is by far the most watched of the four videos, but for some reason those hits are coming mostly from one residence on Cinderella Dr. in South Claremont.

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.