Their Fair Share - UPDATED*

 

Last Tuesday, the Claremont City Council voted 3-2 to impose a new, one-year contract on the Claremont Police Officers Association and the Claremont Police Management Association.  The vote came after the City was unable to reach any agreements with the two police organizations in recent contract negotiations.
 
The CPOA, which represents Claremont's rank-and-file public safety workers, was extremely vocal in the days leading up to last week's vote.  As we previously noted, the CPOA's attorney, Dieter Dammeier, deployed his political action committeee, COPFIRE, to issue a threat to Claremont City Councilman Corey Calaycay, warning him that they would target him in future elections if he didn't vote the CPOA's way.

You can review the video of the council meeting here.  The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II also had a write up of the meeting.

The City had been asking for the police to start paying their own retirement contributions with a three-year, phased-in system.  The City also offered a 1.5% cost of living adjustment.  The police associations didn't want to accept the City's terms unless they got a 3% COLA, twice what the City was offering.  The council then proposed imposing the new contract with its requirement that the police start paying two-thirds of their 9% salary contribution to their CalPERS retirement accounts.  (Currently, the City is picking up the entire 9%.)

Of the many arguments made by the CPOA at last Tuesday's council meeting, the one that really caught our interest went like this:  If you don't pay us what we want, your community's safety will suffer.  Underlying this sentiment is the idea that Claremont would lose good police officers to surrounding communities that are willing to pay their police higher salaries and better benefits.  The CPOA's justification for police deserving better compensation than other municipal employees is that police have a more dangerous job.  They put their lives on the line every night.

To this line of thinking, we say our police are already paid higher salaries commensurate with their greater responsibilities.   While we appreciate their good work, we also think they are already adequately compensated.  Further, the danger they place themselves in is relative.  The CPD and their negotiator Dieter Dammeier make it sound as if they're patrolling the streets of Kabul every night.   Let's face it, in terms of threat levels, Claremont is pretty light duty.   The Claremont Courier's Saturday Police Blotter is invariably filled with stories about domestic disputes and drunk-and-disorderly arrests, not gang shootouts.

Let's be honest, folks, Watts we ain't.

The CPOA claims its members would leave for other Dammeier cities, like La Verne or Azusa, because the compensation is better there.  We thought about this and then realized that in his remarks to the City Council, Dieter Dammeier let slip a factor we hadn't thought about before.  Dammeier told the council that he represents all of the police associations within 20 miles of Claremont.  He then said that the contract the council was considering would make it difficult for Claremont to compete for qualified police officer applicants.   This struck us as an admission by Dammeier that he controls what amounts to a labor cartel.  He gets to set prices in the form of salaries and benefits, and there really is no competition as long as Dammeier and his clients get their way.

What Dammeier really fears is a city such as a Claremont going against the grain and breaking Dammeier's hold on the local public safety labor market. That monopoly, though, really could use some busting.   In his remarks to the Claremont City Council last week, Dammeier mentioned Pomona's police, another department Dammeier represents.  The Bulletin covered Pomona's budget problems in an article yesterday, noting that the single biggest annual expense was personnel costs, of which the Pomona PD accounted for the lion's share:

When it comes to expenditures by category the largest was personnel which took up 48 percent of the general fund, followed by the city's fire contract which took up another 28 percent.

If the expenses are broken up by department the highest cost is the Police Department which had about $38 million in expenses and fire costs totaled about $24 million.

It's the sort of financial problems Pomona is contending with that Claremont seeks to avoid.  You'd like to think that CPD officers would want to help with that effort, but getting people to give up something to which they think they're entitled, like having the City pay the employees' share of their retirement contributions, is never easy.  

The Bulletin, by the way, also had an editorial last week that said that the sort of strong-arm tactics Dammeier has used in Claremont are wrong and that Claremont is correct in seeking to get the police employees to fund their own retirements.  The Bulletin pointed out that by all rights, these payments are something our public safety workers should have been making in the first place:

It's called the "employee contribution" for a reason - it's the part each employee is supposed to contribute toward his or her own pension. But back in headier economic days, most government bodies in California started paying not only the employer's contribution but the employee's as well. In some cases it was a matter of courting union political support, in some it came in lieu of a raise or a bigger raise.

Trouble is, the economy has tanked and tax revenues along with it. Cities are finding their pension contributions unsustainable, diverting money that might have gone to employee salaries and services for residents. Hence, prudent city councils are looking for employees to kick in the employee's contribution once again. It doesn't reduce pensions in any way, it just means employees contribute to their own eventual retirement while they're working in good jobs and can afford it.

* * * * *

That 3-2 council vote on the police contract was a peculiar one.  The two fiscal conservatives, Corey Calaycay and Opanyi Nasiali, voted against imposing the contract on the public safety employees, which on the face of it would seem to be a vote in support of Dammeier and the CPOA. 

The other three council members, Mayor Sam Pedroza, Mayor Pro Tem Larry Schroeder, and Joe Lyons, are all left-leaning and are generally supporters of public employee unions but all voted in favor of the imposition of the contract. 

We suppose this could be seen as a validation of Dammeier's intimidation tactic, but Calaycay and Nasiali both said they couldn't support the contract because it included that 1.5% COLA, something they were against. 

*UPDATED, 11/1/11, 7:20PM:  As the Claremont Courier's Beth Hartnett reports in today's paper, Calaycay's and Nasiali's main objection to the one-year police contract was that they felt the 9% CalPERS contribution should have been instituted all at once, rather than phased in.   

Additionally, Hartnett notes that the one of the things the CPD officers object to is having the 6% contribution instituted immediately as opposed to having the 9% phased in over three years, as was done with the City's other employee associations. (At 8%, the City's non-public safety employees' CalPERS contribution is slightly less than the police.)

The City's response is that because of timing of the imposed contract, splitting the 6% into two 3% increments would have meant that the next 3% increase would have been in nine months when the next fiscal year begins in July, 2012.  Hartnett reports that the City's negotiator, Richard Kreisler, argued that they accelerated the public safety employees' CalPERS phase-in because of the uncertainty the City faces with the CPD employee associations.  

* * * * *

Incidentally, we received an email from another reader who got one of those robocalls from the Claremont Police Officers Association made prior to last Tuesday night's council vote.  Our reader questioned whether or not the CPOA used CPD call data to get phone numbers for their robocalls:

DATE: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:47 PM

TO: Claremont Buzz

SUBJECT: Claremont Police Officers Association robocalls

Hello all,

Like another of your readers, I also got a robocall from the Claremont Police Officers Association. It was a voicemail message left on my cell phone on Monday, two days ago, urging me to show up at Tuesday's city council meeting to support the police department against further budget cuts.

Here's the odd thing: few people have my cell phone number. And it has a 541 area code. So I'm wondering how did the Claremont Police Officers Association get my number?

Could it be because on 14 October 2011, I used my cell phone to call the police department (to report a coyote citing)? And if so, who at the police department is passing on incoming telephone numbers to the Claremont Police Officers Association. And -- if that is what happened -- was it legal?

Best,

x

Claremont CA

Claremont No-Fly Zone Sunday

In a secret U.N. Security Council session on Saturday, a unanimous vote authorized the establishment of a "NO FLY" zone over Claremont to protect the rag-tag forces of Opanyi Nasiali against the superior firepower of the Lyons-Pedroza axis. Although it was expected that Russia and China would abstain as they did in the Libya matter a few weeks ago, they voted enthusiastically in the affirmative. In fact, they wanted to vote "Aye" twice.

Yesterday, Sunday, the first air recon was provided by two military jets, shown over Claremont above. They made four circuits of the community at low altitude (you may have heard them; they sounded like a nearby atomic bomb explosion). According to reports, large tethered gas-bags over the headquarters of Ground Commandant Gerecke were deflated and rendered harmless.

Our spotter can't tell a Jenny from an SR-71, but she thought they might be U.S. Navy F-18 Hornets. She reports the overflying aircraft did appear to have tailhooks which got her all in a lather.

The Mayor's Speech

We were inclined to dismiss the parallels as a little "out there" but then we realized what is in store for us with the heretofore tongue-tied Sam Pedroza very likely tonight ascending to the throne of the Claremont Mayoralty: Samuel the First, by the Grace of God, of the United Cities of South Claremont and Claremont and His other Realms and Territories Mayor, Head of the Redevelopment Agency, Defender of the Four Hundred.

We found ourselves wondering if Mayor Sam has been taking diction lessons, similar to George VI in the current movie, The King's Speech. We've seen his Majesty speak "off the cuff" from prepared text, and even that isn't pretty. If he ascends to the throne, he will have the able help of Opanyi Nasiali and Joseph Lyons. As we say, this all seemed far-fetched until we caught a glimpse, and a picture, of Sam, Opanyi, and Joe preparing for the installation ceremony tonight:

Nasiali, Pedroza, and Lyons before tonight's council meeting.
Click to Enlarge

Certainly council members have the privilege (pardon us, priviledge) of making their marks on City Hall, but it seems a little early for His Grace, Archbishop Joseph, to already install golden chalices, ornaments, and frou-frous in the City Council office.

One of our readers has recently made the connection between the unctuous and oleaginous Joe Lyons, in not only manner but also in physical appearance, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in the movie:

Councilperson-Elect Joe Lyons
From: xxxxx
To: claremongbuzz@yahoo.com
Dear Claremont Buzz:

Just saw The King's Speech at the Claremont Laemmle theatres.

Has anyone else noted the uncanny resemblance --both physical and temperment-- between our councilperson-elect Joe Lyons and the alternately fawning and condescending Archbishop of Canterbury played by Derek Jacobi? The likeness was too perfect to be coincidence. Did Jacobi study Lyons or did Lyons study Jacobi?

Perhaps we should begin referring to the councilperson-elect as "His Grace, the Archbishop of Claremont." Do you think his satire-impaired lackeys will appreciate the irony?

Regards,
Anonymous

Special Council Meeting Thursday Night

The three newly elected Claremont City Council members, incumbent Sam Pedroza and newcomers Joe Lyons and Opanyi Nasiali, will be sworn in Thursday at a special council meeting in the council chambers at 225 W. Second St. in the Claremont Village.

After all the ceremonies are complete, the council will reorganize and chose a new mayor and mayor pro tem. We expect those two positions to go to Sam Pedroza and Larry Schroeder, respectively. The council's regular meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, March 22.

If you can't make tonight's meeting in person, you can watch it streamed live here. The video is also archived for later viewing.

Town Calendar

Now that the city election is over, the Claremont 400 have slunk back to their burrows to lick their wounds and heal up until their next opportunity to make fools of themselves. In the meantime, the rest of us can settle back into our regular lives and enjoy some of the finer things in town:


BILL GATES IS IN THE HOUSE

If your PC crashed recently, taking with it that bloviating blog post you slaved away at all night, you can voice your frustrations directly to the man whose company gave us MS-DOS and Windows. Bill Gates comes to the campuses of Harvey Mudd College and Pomona College today.

Gates will meet with groups of students during the day and will speak at Bridges Auditorium at 5pm. The Pomona College website has all the details:

In "A Conversation with Bill Gates," he will discuss a wide range of subjects with Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, and then take questions from students. This event is co-sponsored by the Harvey Mudd College Annenberg Speakers Series and the Pomona College Distinguished Speakers Series.

Tickets for Pomona College students, faculty and staff (one ticket per ID) are now sold out from Bridges Box Office, which is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Limited general admission tickets may be available to the general public, from the Bridges Auditorium Box Office, as of March 1. There is no cost to attend the event, which will also be streamed live on Pomona’s web.

You can watch the webcast here.


FRIDAY FILMS

Vince Turner over at Claremont Community College has invited the community over to his newest event, Friday Night Flicks in the Claremont Village Expansion:

Date: Wed, March 9, 2011 11:32:49 AM
Subject: Friday Night Flicks
From: Vincent Turner

Friday Night! 7 pm!

Flicks!

We're starting Friday night flicks at The Center!

We are beginning with four interesting video lectures showing advancements in technology and how they will affect film making.

If you like watching cool stuff, this is for you. We'll have the chance to discuss these.

Come enjoy yourselves!

101 North Indian Hill Blvd
Building C2 Suite 203

We don't hand out degrees! Because the learning never stops!

--
Vince Turner
(909) 477-1747

FAREWELLS AND NEW BEGINNINGS

Claremont Mayor Linda Elderkin (photo, right) chose to not run for reelection this year, and the City will bid her a fond farewell Thursday, March 17.

That evening, at 6:30pm in the City Council chambers at 225 W. Second St., Elderkin will step down and the three winning candidates from Tuesday's election - Sam Pedroza, Opanyi Nasiali, and Joseph Lyons - will be sworn in. Expect Pedroza to be named mayor and council member Larry Schroeder to be named mayor pro tem.

Come on out on the 17th and see how you like your new council.


AN EARLY 4TH OF JULY

Plenty of fireworks will be on display Saturday, March 19, when the National Socialist Movement (yes, those guys) arrive in Claremont's Memorial Park for a rally and march of some sort. A counter demonstration is also planned.

Here's what the City's website says:

City Response to March 19 Demonstrations

The City of Claremont is aware of the rally and march being planned by the National Socialist Movement and counter rally at Memorial Park scheduled for March 19, 2011. The Claremont Police Department has prepared a tactical plan and is in contact with the organizers. The Claremont Police Department has scheduled additional officers for the day and will be assisted by neighboring police agencies if necessary.

The City of Claremont is respectful of every organization's right to demonstrate and encourages the peaceful expression of differing viewpoints.

The City has a Committee on Human Relations to address and respond to citizen's concerns on issues of diversity. Citizens wishing to contact the Committee on Human Relations to may call (909) 399-5356.

...And Then, Raw Anarchy

I am informed by credible sources that 911 callers in Claremont this morning were refused government services. Apparently they were told by the dispatcher that officers are no longer available, as Claremont is to be policed by armed citizens from now on, like a "rural Kenyan village."

A sad state of affairs. Why would people not listen while there was still time to save the community?

* * * * *

The above is a guest post by a longtime observer of the Claremont scene. We are so confused by the concepts of truthity and falsity that we have no immediate comment.

The Results Are In

The unofficial results from Claremont's municipal election are in, and the winners are:

SAM PEDROZA - 24.3%, 3,336 votes
OPANYI NASIALI - 19.7%, 2,697
JOSEPH LYONS - 18%, 2,470

Robin Haulman ended up with 2,275 (16.6%) , or 195 votes behind Lyons. Jay Pocock had 1,430 votes (10.4%). You can see the vote totals here.

Haulman's loss was a bit surprising. She was the Claremont 400 candidate of choice, and the turnout was a pretty low 23.9%, which usually favors the 400. Haulman actually outpolled Lyons in most of the precincts' absentee ballot totals. But among yesterday's voters, she lost to Lyons, the 400's backup candidate. So perhaps the combination of missteps by Haulman and her campaign together with Bob Gerecke's dirty tricks changed voters' minds about Haulman by the end of the election.

Incidentally, a glance at today's Claremont Courier informs us that Lynn Savitzky and Cynthia Humes, two of the seven signers of that Bob Gerecke attack ad against Opanyi Nasiali, have disavowed any knowledge of the ad (image, left - click to enlarge).

Apparently, Gerecke and the Claremont Democratic Club, which was circulating the ad at the Claremont Farmers Market last Sunday, used Humes' and Savitsky's names without their permission. As always, Bob is a real class act.

No one's said anything about this, but Sam Pedroza, just as he did in 2007 with Preserve Claremont, enjoyed the benefit of the attack ad without having to take any responsibility for it. He had the full support of the people behind the ad. Gerecke and the Democratic Club endorsed Pedroza, walked precincts for him, and conducted phone banking in support of Sam.

And, just as he did in 2007, back when he had a little more solid backing from the 400, Pedroza ignored the clean campaigning pledge he and the other candidates signed. Another minor commentary on Sam and the worth of his word.

Bob Gerecke Doubles Down on Stupid

Follow-up Smear Email by
Former Claremont Democratic Club President.
Believes Claremont Voters are Morons

Thursday (yesterday) found Bob Gerecke (right) still hyperventilating over the Opanyi Nasiali satire piece done in the Daily Bulletin and Claremont Courier last summer.

He sent a follow-up email to some of his friends in Claremont (OMG, does he have any?) that someone forwarded to us. See below.

Apparently he thinks this is the stick he needs to beat that mad dog Nasiali and clear the way for his city council favored candidates, Joe Lyons and Robin Haulman. Gerecke is almost a one-man mudslinging machine on this subject, getting by with a little help from his friends in the original ad (see list at end of post).

As we indicated yesterday, his is a completely cock-eyed view of Nasiali's piece. In fact, in his email, he can't decide what is serious and what is satire. He ascribes an almost unbelievable cleverness to Nasiali, as if Nasiali were writing in code to some people that most of us couldn't crack. Luckily he is riding to the rescue on his hobby-horse with a decoder ring and emails blazing.

Notice the list of scandalous statements ascribed in the email to Nasiali: this time he extracts them and removes the satiric punchlines, knowing most in his audience won't bother to look at the original for context. Oh, a clever guy, that Bob is. Almost as unbelievably clever as Nasiali

This whole thing is laughable except that it does have one serious point. It shows the extent of desperate action Gerecke will take when he thinks his candidates might not make the grade. It shows his unrestrained willingness to engage in sleazy campaigning.

It's amazing he believes anybody in town will buy what he is selling. He must think the total IQ of the town is somewhere south of room temperature. Gerecke (and his fellow-travelers who signed the original ad--listed below) should be objects of scorn, or pity, or both.

Here is the email:

From: xxxxxxx xxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 7:27 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: FW: RECENT BIZARRE STATEMENTS BY A COUNCIL CANDIDATE

Buzz:
FYI. Another stinkbomb from Bob Gerecke.

------ Forwarded Message
From: Bob Gerecke
Reply-To: Bob Gerecke
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 17:58:38 -0800
To: xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RECENT BIZARRE STATEMENTS BY A COUNCIL CANDIDATE

Hi, [redacted]

This adds information to what was in Wednesday's Courier; it's also written for those who didn't see the Courier.

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CLAREMONT FRIENDS.

As a concerned Claremont citizen, I was shocked to discover startling statements authored by Mr. Opanyi Nasiali, candidate for Claremont City Council, which were published on September 2, 2010 in the Opinion section of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. This article is available online in the newspaper’s archives and was re-printed in full in Wednesday’s Claremont Courier, page 18. Opanyi’s article, titled “Ways to Cut Government Spending,” included strange proposals that defy any definition of a responsible elected official. His proposals included the following, here extracted and quoted verbatim from his article:

· “Eliminate the police and let all citizens arm themselves.”

· “Eliminate public schools so that all children are home-schooled, if not in private schools!”

· “Get rid of Social Security.”

· “No public mass transportation facilities.”

· “Stop government subsidies to small businesses.”

· “Do not spend any money on research.”

· “Do not spend money on space exploration.”

· “Unemployment benefits? They cost too much.”

In two recent candidate forums, Opanyi said that he opposes restoring the cuts to our police department, and he repeated his preference for armed citizen self-policing – after all, it worked in the rural Kenyan village in which he was born! Despite his statement to some voters that he was writing "tongue in cheek", he really sympathizes with the most extreme of the views he expressed.

He wrote the piece quite cleverly, allowing himself to describe it as serious to those who like his proposals and as "tongue in cheek" to those who don't. Some of his points seem to come from the ultra-right agenda, but others appear to parody it. So, was Opanyi serious about some of his proposals but not about others? Or about all? Or about none? Does he himself see a distinction between ideas which are wacky and those which are simply very "small government"?

We can only imagine the chaotic effects on the work of the Claremont City Council, and the impacts on the public good of Claremont, if a person of such bizarre thinking were to be elected. I urge Claremont voters to give attention to the kind of thinking that delivered these proposals, and decide whether there is any place for it in Claremont City government.

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CLAREMONT FRIENDS.

AS VOTERS, THEY HAVE A RIGHT AND A NEED TO KNOW.

THANKS VERY MUCH.

-- Bob Gerecke

* * * * *

Signers of the original ad:

Ann Joslin
Bob Gerecke
Cynthia Humes
Jim Antonich
Lynn Savitzky
Roy Durnal
Sally Alexander

Full Circle

History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as desperation.


HISTORY

In 2003, a group calling itself Residents United for Claremont paid for an election eve, citywide mailer that tried to scare voters into supporting incumbents Sandy Baldonado, Karen Rosenthal, and Al Leiga. The RUC letter warned voters that they would face the loss of vital city services if challengers Jackie McHenry and Peter Yao were elected. McHenry and Yao won, and, contrary to what RUC had predicted, the sun still came up in the morning.

Click on Images to Enlarge

TRAGEDY

In 2005 came Preserve Claremont, about whom we've written much. PC raised nearly as much money as some of the candidates' campaigns. They used the money tattacking Jackie McHenry and Corey Calaycay with innuendo, rumor, and, in at least one case, a blatant lie. The PC experience so tarred the people behind it, that many, including a few leftover from the Residents United Campaign, rejected the group or at least started to display independent thinking.


DESPERATION

The hardcore PCers, though, just went underground and work mostly behind the scenes now. Some of the true believers like J. Michael Fay and Bill Baker, respective treasurers for city council campaigns of Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman, still take active roles when called upon for the their services and PC experience.

Haulman was the original chosen one of the PCers, but some of the antics surrounding her campaign - cheating in a debate or stealing another campaign's fliers - damaged her candidacy to the extent the Claremonsters had to have an insurance policy in Lyons. So, you see people like PC spokesman Butch Henderson donating money to both Lyons and Haulman. And they've hitched the Haulman-Lyons wagon to incumbent Sam Pedroza to get people to vote for the three of them as a slate, the hope being that Pedroza's coattails pull the other two along into office.

Yesterday's Claremont Courier had a full-page ad (purchased at the going rate of a little less than $900), taken out by a group calling itself "Concerned Claremont citizens." (Their civic-minded concern apparently isn't large enough to warrant a capital letter for themselves.)

The CCC ad took what had been a sarcastic letter to the editor from council candidate Opanyi Nasiali and turned it around by interpreting it literally. Nasiali's letter (posted below) appeared in the Daily Bulletin and in the Courier last September.


The ad proclaimed "WE ARE SHOCKED!" and falsely intimated that Nasiali was serious about eliminating the police and public schools. It asked the reader, "Is this someone we want on the Claremont City Council."


What's really shocking is the implied contempt the ad has for voters. They expect readers won't read Nasiali's full text and will just scan the bullet points, helped out by the large arrow pointing the eye neatly past the context-placing introduction.

The ad was signed by eight people, including Ann Joslin, a Claremonster in sheep's clothing along with her life partner in crime Planning Commissioner and aspiring council candidate Bob Tener. Joslin's still sore at Nasiali for opposing the Parks and Pasture assessment district and for his successful backing of the Measure S bond for Johnson's Pasture, both in 2006.

Not coincidentally, also in yesterday's Courier, Joslin and Tener have a letter extolling the virtues of Joseph Lyons. The Joslin-Tener letter, together with another from Architectural Commissioner Susan Schenk singing the praises of Robin Haulman, are designed to work in concert with the "Claremont Concerned citizens" ad. The latter is supposed to drive people away from Nasiali, who has been running ahead of Lyons and Haulman, and the letters are there to attract voters who buy into CCC's attack ad.

Another CCC signer was Bob Gerecke, who has been working for the Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons alliance. Gerecke is a past president of the Claremont Democratic Club, whose repertoire of dirty tricks in this campaign has included appropriating private property for campaign signs. Gerecke's wife Katie, is the past president of another Claremont 400 institution, the League of Women Voters.

Yet another is Sally Alexander, who one reader notes is the 97-year-old mother of Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporter Sandy Hester, making Alexander the oldest frontwoman in Claremont election history.

As we say, none of this is new. The Claremonster playbook only has two or three pages, all of them outlining some aspect of their bullying ways. Expect to see more of the same, possibly including one or two hit pieces paid for by municipal employee unions awaiting new contracts.

As this election winds down, we see all these strands coming together so that the all too familiar design becomes visible. In five days, on March 8, we'll see how it turns out. In Claremont, we've always gotten the government we deserve.

City Election News

COURIER ENDORSES PEDROZA, NASIALI, AND ?

Besides the story of Flyergate, last Saturday's Claremont Courier also carried to Courier's endorsements for the March 8 municipal election.

Like the Daily Bulletin, the Courier endorsed incumbent Sam Pedroza, who looked a little gaunt in his Courier photo, his weight loss apparently the by-product of a bicycling regime of one sort or another. As much as we hate to admit it, we really can't fault either paper for choosing Pedroza as one of its endorsees. We don't usually agree with him, but he gets the nod incumbents usually get absent any scandals or missteps in office.

The Courier also echoed the Bulletin in its endorsement of Opanyi Nasiali, who is running for the third time. The Courier cited Nasiali's volunteer work and his participation as a City commissioner and economic sustainability committee member. The Courier also pointed out that Nasiali worked both on the successful Johnson's Pasture Measure S bond campaign in 2006 and on the campaign against the $95 million Measure CL school bond.

While the first two picks were easy calls, the choice for the third and final seat was a tough one. Claremont 400 candidate Robin Haulman might have been the Courier's pick, but her campaign continually shot itself in the foot, with the final disgrace coming at the February 17 League of Women Voters candidate forum when Haulman's husband Alexander Sweida swiped a bunch of candidate Jay Pocock's fliers and threw them in the trash. So between her actions and her hubby's, Haulman's chances of that coveted Courier endorsement were nil.

Presuming the Courier didn't take Citizen Michael John Keenan, Joseph Armendarez, or Rex Jaime seriously, that left the Bulletin's third choice, Jay Pocock, and former Democratic State Senate candidate Joseph Lyons. The Courier went for Lyons, who because of his lack of past civic involvement has been something of a cipher. Lyons really is the a great Claremont 400 candidate, relying on them for their votes, especially from local retirement communities like Pilgrim Place, and apparently without any of his own opinions or experience in city issues to muck things up for the 400.

We'll see how the Courier and Bulletin endorsements hold up. The last three or four council elections the Courier has been the more accurate of the two newspapers, but a lot can happen between now and March 8. We await the Claremonsters' usual election eve surprise, either through a letter or ad in the Courier the Saturday before the election, or through a last minute mailer landing in the last few days of the campaign. The 400 usually tries to stir up some imagined scandal very late in the game - too late to be rebutted by their target.

As Flyergate, Pasturegate, Signgate, and Shillgate (say, they really are giving new meaning to the term "gated community") have shown in this election, the one thing we can count on is that the Claremonsters will do just about anything to win, and, much like Wile E. Coyote's schemes, their tricks often blow up in their faces.

* * * * *

Speaking of Flyergate, Courier reporter Tony Krickl has the Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" on his Courier City Beat blog. LWV president Ellen Taylor doesn't come off much better than Haulman's husband does in Krickl's post:

Further defending his actions, Sweida said he was just following the League of Women Voter's policy on negative campaign material. He asked Ellen Taylor, president of Claremont's chapter of the League, if he could remove the fliers. Taylor told him to go ahead, even though she didn't inspect the material beforehand to see if it actually contained "negative" information.

This incident is troubling from many perspectives. With his actions, Sweida has certainly embarrassed his wife and may have cost her the election. Dirty tactics like this just don't sit well with voters.

Taylor defended her decision by saying the League is anti-biased in local elections. However by approving this behavior, she showed a clear bias against Pocock. And that reflects poorly on the entire organization.

And what do other League officials think about what happened?

"It would be better to actually look at the material before making a decision on what to do with it," said Jack Mills, Vice President of the League.

Krickl also quotes Mills as saying that he is unaware of any LWV policy against negative campaigning.

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.

Pinocchio Haulman

Robin Haulman Claims "Vigorous" Support
for 2006 Measure S.
However, Did Not Vote
in Measure S Election;
Did Not Join Supporter List.
Statement Questioned

We received a mailer earlier this week from the Friends of the Bernard Biological Field Station. "Friends of what?", we hear you ask. It is true that the Friends have been a bit moribund in recent years. The last updates on their website seem to be from a couple of years ago--well, 2007 to be exact. We guess being a biological friend is a busy demanding time-consuming task.

It seems that what awakened the friendly Friends from stasis is the upcoming city election. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry organization in town sends a questionnaire to candidates, publicizes the candidate responses, and in some cases endorses a candidate or two. Except the Sierra Club. It reflexively endorses Sam Pedroza with no interviews, statements, muss or fuss.

You may see grave and serious candidate statements in the Claremont Heritage Newsletter. Four years ago the crisis du jour was Mining; how often have you heard about that recently? It was just enough of a hook to get Pedrozancrantz and Lindanstern elected--indifferent children of the earth, they. The leader of the mining group, we hear, after inflicting Sam and Linda on the town, sold his $3 million mansion and decamped to Laguna. We should all be so lucky.

But back to the Friends of the Bern. Bio. Fld. Sta. What caught our eye was the candidate statement by Robin Haulman. Now, we could spend a whole post just deconstructing this statement. But read it yourself. Click on the image to enlarge it.

click to enlarge

Really. When we read this to Mrs. Insider, she wondered aloud if it had been ghostwritten by Robert Burns, with the Golden Currant in full yellow bloom, the Sage luminescent, and the snowy white flowers aplenty.

Still, our pleasant pastoral reverie was snapped by a gloomy thought called up by the statement highlighted in the graphic above. We wondered, was there a White Lie in there? Did Robin Haulman really campaign vigorously for the bond measure to purchase Johnson's Pasture? We didn't think so. Couldn't remember her one way or the other. Given her, shall we say, "exotic" looks, how could we have possibly forgotten her?

So, we asked around. Nobody on the steering committee could remember her, and her name does not appear in any of the ads for Measure S. We even dug back into the Insider Archive to check. We reproduce below the ad that appeared in the Courier the week before the Measure S election in 2006. Click on it to enlarge.

click to enlarge

Three council candidates appear on the ad: Opanyi Nasiali, who got slammed by an uninformed dowager in a recent Courier who said he was against Johnson's Pasture; 180 degrees incorrect--Sam Pedroza, who made sure he was on the steering committee but didn't actually do much as we hear it, and Michael Keenan. Notable by their absence are current candidates Robin Haulman and Joe (my middle name is "Sustainability") Lyons. What's that all about? How can you say you campaigned "vigorously" for the measure and your name's not even on the list?

Now Claremont has a history of council candidates making statements that are fibs, tall tales, whoppers, misstatements, prevarications, lies, damned lies, etc., etc., usw., --and excuse us for being all judgmental, but those shadings of the truth seem to come from the Claremont 400 side. The most recent notable example being God's Gift to Claremont Bridget Healy who was caught two years ago lying about her involvement or non-involvement in the acquisition of the Wilderness Park. In that case, the unplanned and unforeseen existence of a deposition was her undoing.

Why do these people, such as Robin Haulman and Bridget Healy, have the urge to take credit for something they have nothing whatsoever to do with? Maybe Haulman, as Healy before her, thought no one would notice. But as we've said before, character is something you have when no one is looking. And statements like this show an astounding lack of character.

If you want to know the truth, Robin Haulman didn't even vote in the November 7, 2006 election where Johnson's Pasture Measure S was decided. We had to go to our political sources in County government to figure that out, and it's a little hard to show in a compact graphic, but it is a fact. You could look it up. Moreover, her voting record in City elections is only recent and is very spotty in school board elections over the past decade. She appears to have first registered to vote in Claremont in February 2003.

Her participation in statewide elections is equally checkered. She voted in the 2004 gubernatorial recall, and the primary and general in 2004, but took a pass on the two primaries in 2008 and the special ballot measure election in May 2009--as well as having passed on the November 2006 general election. She voted absentee in the June 2006 primary election, just before the property owner ballot for the ill-starred "Parks and Pasture" assessment district. Which made us wonder, did she cast a property owner ballot in that election? Claremont election wonks will remember that four years ago vanity candidate Mike Maglio claimed to have voted for the assessment district until confronted with a copy of his ballot indicating a NO vote. [note: Nothing illegal here. Assessment District property owner ballots are not elections under State law; they are not secret; the filled-out and signed ballots are subject to public disclosure.]

Asking around elsewhere, we found out that she did not participate in the property owners ballot for the "Parks and Pasture" Assessment District. There was no ballot cast, YES or NO, for her home at the time in Claraboya. Now, you'd think that someone who purports to "firmly believe that we have narrow windows of opportunity to own our hillsides and open spaces" might also have AT LEAST VOTED in this campaign, and maybe even attached her name to the Parks and Pasture supporter list. Nope. Since she voted absentee just before the 45-day balloting period that ended July 25, 2006, maybe she was out of town, in Europe or some exotic locale, missing in action, for the assessment district.

click to enlarge

We are thinking Robin Haulman's Jiminy Cricket must be having a coronary--or whatever it is that crickets have. Here you have an ostensibly credible city council candidate conveniently misstating her involvement in an issue and measure that took most of 2006 in Claremont, where the method of financing divided the town and took months and two tries to get right. Maybe she ought to get out her granny glasses--or as her campaign literature would state it, her "glamma" glasses) and read a little more carefully from her briefing book or iPad. Or maybe she, like Mr. Dooley's Supreme Court, "follows th' election returns", and wants to be on the right side of the 70 percent plurality of Claremont voters who approved Measure S.

Sorry Robin, they did it without your help.

Haulman's New, More-Truthy Brochure

Yet Another Reader Writes

We're heard talk on the street that two of the three Claremont 400 slate candidates, Joseph Lyons and Robin Haulman (Sam Pedroza is the third), have been struggling of late.

Lyons, who at the Active Claremont candidate forum admitted that he hadn't attended any city council meetings until he decided to run for council, seems lost at times when it comes to understanding the details of the issues (pensions, cuts in services, and economic development, to name a few) that the City is wrestling with. Other than environmental sustainability, which he seems genuinely interested in, Lyons has been limited to mouthing positions laid out for him by his 400 handlers (i.e., Lyons' campaign treasurer J. Michael Fay).

Haulman, as we've noted, can't even be counted on to memorize talking points and has to recite them from a script.

Given these relatively weak candidates, the 400 have resorted to their traditional dirty campaign tactics. Word comes to us from one of the eight campaigns that the 400 have spread a lie about one of the candidates being a child molester. And the 400's false information has found its way into the Claremont Courier's letters to editor:

From the Claremont Courier, 2/16/11 -

No on Opanyi, Pocock

Dear Editor:

The purchase of Johnson’s Pasture was one of the best and smartest things ever accomplished by the city of Claremont. I am very glad to learn Opanyi [Nasiali] did not get his way on that issue. A good reason to vote against Opanyi for council. As I read the literature put out by Opanyi and [Jay] Pocock, it is clear they are against everything I value about our city. I will be voting against both of them.

Dawn Sharp
Claremont

We certainly hope the Dawn Sharp who penned this letter is not the same Dawn Sharp who taught history at Chaffey College, though her rewriting of Claremont history would be in keeping with the revisionist practices of Claremont 400. Note to the ironically named Sharp: Nasiali did get his way.

The information Sharp related about the Johnson's Pasture purchase is completely false. As we've remarked, Nasiali not was not only crucial to Claremont's securing Johnson's Pasture at a quarter of the cost of the assessment district the Claremont 400 had tried to force on us, but he helped build a community-wide consensus that resulted in the open space bond passing with 72% of the vote. Only in Claremont could an individual's positive contribution to the community be turned on its head.

Dawn Sharp's letter to the Courier prompted this response from one of our readers:

DATE: Wed, February 16, 2011 10:28:07 AM
SUBJECT: letter to the editor
TO: Claremont Buzz

Check out the letter to the editor in the Courier today (Wed. the 16th)from Dawn Sharp about Opanyi. I do not know if the lady was referring to the previous letter to the editor about how Opanyi was right about so many things and when referring to his being right about Johnson’s Pasture she interpreted it as his being AGAINST Johnson’s Pasture purchase. How stupid. Opanyi was instrumental in getting the bond passed and helped get the College President’s on board. Can we now expect a letter to the editor from the members of that committee like Lissa Petersen, Jill Benton or Suzanne Thompson correcting this misperception by Mrs. Sharp? It would be nice if they did, but I am not holding my breath. Let the games begin.

We're not waiting around for a correction forthcoming from Petersen, Benton or Thompson, either. They're all either captive or party to the "mean girls" psychology that's held us hostage for the last 30-plus years. Thus does peer pressure make cowards of us all.

Mailbag

We received this note in response to our post from a couple days ago regarding the Claremont Police Officers Association and their preparations for contract negotiations with the City (to be filed under "Prepping the Battlefield"):

DATE: Wed, February 16, 2011 1:26:41 PM
SUBJECT: "crime scenes"
TO: Claremont Buzz

Really smart post -- nice work connecting the dots, and a pleasure to see. I like Dieter Dammeier, and think highly of Claremont cops, and still thought you righteously nailed them to the wall on this one.

Yes, it's unfortunate that the CPD officers give residents the false choice of having to either support their contract demands or else fear for their collective safety. We don't doubt that our police work hard for their money, but let's face it, a Claremont officer doesn't face nearly the same daily challenges as, say, an officer working the LAPD's South Bureau. The CPOA needs to set aside its own selfish interests and start thinking about what sacrifices they can make rather than insisting that everyone else - their fellow non-safety employees, people who count on services provided by the City, and cash-strapped taxpayers - pay for the CPOA's every demand.

Driven by an Inland Empire unemployment rate of 13.9%, public sentiment is lurching away from support for the CPD officers refusal to pay their share of their CalPERS pension plans. Witness the Daily Bulletin's editorial on just this subject. The Bulletin noted that Claremont's Ad Hoc Committee on Economic Sustainability came to the conclusion that the status quo for the City's budget is no longer viable.

That committee report, which was released last week, recommended a 1.5% hike in the City's Utility Users Tax, from the present 5.5% to 7%. The report also called for all city employees, including police officers, to start picking up their share of the costs of their pensions. The Bulletin agreed that the employees need to pay their fair pension shares, but they disagreed with the committee's proposal to increase the utility tax:

We admire the committee's thoroughness, looking at all sorts of possible tax and fee hikes before settling on the utility users tax as the most feasible and effective. But we do not favor raising the tax in this economic climate, nor did the three council candidates we have endorsed - Sam Pedroza, Opanyi Nasiali and Jay Pocock. We doubt that voters would approve the hike.

Nasiali, one of nine members of the economic sustainability committee, was the only one to oppose any utility tax hike. He was one of two who wanted employees to pay their own share of pension costs as quickly as possible, rather than phasing the change in over four years as the majority favored. (The employee share for public safety employees is 9percent of salary, for other employees 8percent.)

Requiring employees to pay their share ASAP - or perhaps, to reduce the discomfort somewhat by requiring them to pay 4percent in 2012-13 and the full amount from the next year on - is a reasonable course of action. (Glendora has imposed such a change on its employees; Claremont sanitation workers have already agreed to pay their own full amount.)

Government agencies started picking up employees' share of pension obligations as well as paying their own employer share when times were good - but times are no longer good and, besides, such largesse never was sustainable in the long term. Better for employees to pay that share than for mounting pension costs to require more and more layoffs and reductions in service over the years.

There are two items worth noting here. First, according to the Bulletin, incumbent Sam Pedroza is opposed to a utility tax hike. So it seems unfair and hypocritical to us that Pedroza supporters, some of whom are working behind the scenes to elect a slate consisting of Pedroza, Robin Haulman, and Joseph Lyons, are lambasting Nasiali and Pocock for being similarly opposed to raising the utility tax. Second, the same Pedroza-Haulman-Lyons supporters are spreading false rumors that Nasiali wants take away employee pensions. As the Bulletin piece stated, Nasiali is simply advocating that employees pick up the eight- or nine-percent that they are supposed to be paying in the first place. And, by the way, the city would continue to pick up its share of the employee pension payments.

So any talk of a wholesale elimination of the pensions is a lie, and we urge readers to get the name of any campaign volunteer who makes such statements, along with the name of the candidate they're working for. Better yet, ask for them to commit such statements to paper or to a recording, and forward those to us for a future post.

With election day only a few weeks away, the gloves are coming off those Claremont 400 fists, and it's up to the rest of us to hold them accountable for their silly games.

On the Campaign Trail

THE BULLETIN ENDORSES

The Daily Bulletin came out with its endorsements earlier this week, and there was at least one surprise.

As expected, Sam Pedroza made the cut, which we would expect given that he's the incumbent, and the local papers generally defer the such. Also, Sam's brought home plenty of Sacramento pork in the form of three large grants totaling several million dollars from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (more of which in a future post). So Sam's done Claremont's part to both save and destroy the environment while at the same time contributing to California's $25 billion budget deficit.

The Bulletin also endorsed Opanyi Nasiali, which was a mild surprise, seeing that the Claremont 400 have never liked him because he's not their black man. Ever since the Irvin Landrum shooting in 1999, the 400 have been all for supporting African-Americans (have we dropped the hyphen? - we can't keep it straight). Nasiali's both African and self-made American, but that seems to irk the 400 to no end and also, for some reason, the local Democratic Club, who are apparently desperate enough to have their volunteers running around generating complaints while putting up Pedroza and Robin Haulman signs.

Nasiali, by the way, is living proof that no good deed goes unpunished. In 2006, Nasiali argued successfully against the $45 million or so Parks and Pasture Assessment District, saying that it was wasteful and that a more limited general obligation bond would be a better way to go. To prove his point, after the assessment lost 56% to 44%, he turned around and helped lead the successful Measure S campaign, which ended up winning 72% of the vote. Nasiali also convinced the Claremont College presidents to agree to allow the colleges to waive their non-profit status under the bond, which lowered the overall Measure S tax burden to individual property owners. The 400, hypocrites that they are, ignored Nasiali's key contributions in building a true community consensus on the Johnson's Pasture issue and worked actively to defeat him in the 2007 council election.

Lastly, the Bulletin endosed newcomer Jay Pocock, who (with Nasiali) helped lead the No on CL campaign against the Claremont Unified School District's $95 million school bond. That measure lost 60% to 40% and was eerily similar to the Parks and Pasture/Measure S campaigns in that the No side argued, again successfully, that there was a better way help the schools. Sore losers that they are, the CUSD school board and the Claremont 400 are aiming for payback in the city council election. Still, the Bulletin went for Pocock over Haulman, the 400's candidate of choice, for the last of the three seats up for this election.


MORE EVENTS

And word comes to us from another candidate, Citizen Michael John Keenan (image, left), that the Claremont Forum, which also sponsors Claremont's Sunday Farmers Market, will be the site of a Keenan campaign even tonight from 7pm to 9pm, so says CMJK:

Bill McClellan has agreed to play some of the folk like-struggle-getting-to-the top inspirational acoustic music. Some buddies may sit in too! Find Bill at http://www.fairmarketband.com/ or http://www.fairmarketband.com/.

There will be a table of Trader Joes fare and a table of Trader Joes drinks. Definitely a Sangria and an Ale selection. Tea, Coffee and Juices for the ineligible imbibers should they show up.

The Claremont Forum is located at 586 W. First St. in the Claremont Packing House.

* * * * *

Oddly, in this council race the Claremont Democratic Club is not supporting Keenan, who is a registered Democrat, nor are they supporting another Dem, Joseph Armendarez. As we've said, they are actively campaigning for Haulman, Pedroza, and candidate Joseph Lyons, who admitted at last month's Active Claremont forum that he had never attended a City Council meeting before deciding to run in this election and who has never really been involved at all on local issues.

To be fair to the Democratic Club, Joe Armendarez has been similarly disinterested in Claremont issues, at least for the past 10 years or more. Keenan, however, has been very active in nearly every important Claremont issue for at least the last dozen years, and he has probably attended more City Council and city commission meetings than Haulman and Pedroza put together. So the lack of support for him from the local Dems puzzles us, since they claim to not endorse any single candidate and say they're merely trying to support the Democrats running for council. Based on his community involvement, Keenan deserves the club's support as much as Pedroza or Haulman and certainly has earned it more than Lyons, who may be a nice guy but who seems lost when it comes to what's happening locally.

If you want to ask the club or their president, Zephyr Tate-Mann, about this, you can take it up with them this weekend. Our friends within the Democratic Club who aren't happy with the direction the club's taken, have told us the club will be precinct walking tomorrow for Haulman, Pedroza and Lyons. A special Insider shout-out to any reader who forwards a photo of Zephyr or her hubby Rudy on one of their walks! Rudy, who hails from Louisiana, brings his own muddy bayou brand of electioneering to Claremont. Rudy runs every local issue through the narrow prism of his party politics rather than any out of any sense of community interest or fairness.

We hear, but haven't been able to confirm, that the Manns and company will be out walking in two shifts from 10:30am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 3:30pm, so keep your eyes peeled. You can start watching for them at the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW) Local 1428 hall at 705 W. Arrow Hwy., where they'll assemble before their morning and afternoon walks.

We understand that the Manns and the Democratic Club will also be phone banking. (A special Insider award to whomever can forward us a digital recording of one of these calls.) If you like what you see and hear from them, or if you want to complain, you can reach them at the club's phone number, (909) 632-1516, or you can contact Zephyr at (909) 626-2858, which is the contact number listed by the party for her here.

We'd give you the same information for the local Republican club, but they seem to be sitting this one as an organization, apparently because it's supposed to be a non-partisan race.