2010 Census Figures

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Some other trivia:

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

Here are the Census figures, new and old:

(Click to Enlarge)
From the 2010 Census

2009 Population Estimate

2000 Census Data

Dept. of Freudian Slips

or
INSIDERS WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES...

We received a number of responses to yesterday's post on the campaign shenanigans of Rudy Mann and Zephyr Tate-Mann. Our minds must have been on the proposed changes in the dog-walking rules at Padua Park when we were composing Friday's bit.

From the mailbag (or dootiebag, as the case may be):

DATE: Fri, February 11, 2011 10:36:00 AM
SUBJECT: Don't be The Courier
TO: Claremont Buzz

Hi Buzz -

You’ll probably want to edit today’s post (or at least clarify what the Manns are actually doing while they walk):

We hear, but haven't been able to confirm, that the Manns and company will be out walking in two sh*ts from 10:30am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 3:30pm, so keep your eyes peeled.

* * * * *

DATE: Fri, February 11, 2011 10:32:53 AM
SUBJECT: Freudian Slip or Precision in Reporting?
TO: Claremont Buzz

For local politics I like the Insider. You usually hit the nail on the head. But I almost spilled my coffee when I read the following quote:

"We hear, but haven't been able to confirm, that the Manns and company will be out walking in two sh*ts from 10:30am to 12:30pm..."

I would like to see that, although I probably would hold my nose. Keep up the good work.

And there were a few more along the same lines.

All we can say is, "Guilty as charged." Forgive the flub and thanks, readers, for pointing out the slip. The Courier, unlike the Insider, is a professional operation, so we strongly doubt that such gross errors (sorry) ever make it to their newsstands.

We at the Insider aren't quite in the same league as Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the English royal printers who were responsible for the so-called Wicked Bible. Ah, but a blogger's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Blogspot for?

* * * * *

I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste, but now the paper is nought, the composers boyes, and the correctors unlearned.

- George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury

Around Town (and Pomona, too)

COUNCIL MEET-AND-GREET


The Claremont City Council will hold another neighborhood forum Tuesday night in the Claremont Public Library. We're not quite sure which two members will represent the council. Since it's the Village, we'll go out on a limb and guess Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza.

Here's the info listed on the City's website:

City Council Neighborhood Forum - Claremont Public Library

6:30 - 8:00 PM
208 Harvard Avenue
Claremont
(909) 399-5460

Council Members are also hosting a series of Neighborhood Forums. Neighborhood Forums give residents from different neighborhoods the opportunity to talk with City Council Members in a relaxed and informal setting. Neighborhoods can discuss issues that are important to them, air concerns, share ideas, ask questions and get the latest information about topics and projects that are specific to each neighborhood. Although forums are scheduled for specific neighborhoods, you do not have to live in that immediate area to attend.

PARKS RULES CHANGES

The Parks and Facilities Committee of the City's Community Services Commission will meet 6:00pm Wednesday, February 15, for a special meeting at the Community Services Department at 1616 N. Monte Vista Ave.

According to the agenda The committee will discuss a recommendation to the Community Services Commission to amend the City's Municipal Code to allow police to enforce park closures and to allow on-lease dog walking on the Padua Park trail.

Let's hope this doesn't lead to the sort of brouhaha at Padua Park that has happened in the past at the Pooch Park off College Ave.


AFTERNOON AT THE OPERA

If you're an opera buff, you can catch Pomona's Repertory Opera Company this afternoon at the First Christian Church at 1751 N. Park Ave., where they are staging a production of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. Admission is $30.

Click here for more information.




POMONA ART WALK TONIGHT

Also, don't forget that it's the second Saturday of the month, which means it's time for the Pomona Art Walk from 6:00pm to 9:00pm in the Pomona Arts Colony.

Weekend Mailbag

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

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

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


Re: Padua park

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

* * * * *

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

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

TO: Claremont Insider

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday News Briefs

COPPER THIEVES NABBED

The Claremont Courier and Daily Bulletin both reported on the arrests of two suspected copper thieves last week. The Claremont Police Department, with help of three other nearby city police agencies, had the thieves under surveillance as they tried to steal copper wire from La Puerta Sports Park. There's been no word on whether or not the two suspects were responsible for the September 22 theft of wire from Padua Park.

Here's what the CPD website says:

On October 14 2010, two suspects were arrested for copper theft at La Puerta Sports Park during a surveillance by officers at the park. Following recent copper thefts at the park, officers were assigned to conduct surveillance operations. At about 12:30 a.m., two suspects were observed entering the park and going from light pole to light pole removing the copper wire.

Additional officers from the Pomona and La Verne Police Departments responded to the park, along with a helicopter from the Ontario Police Department to assist the Claremont officers in taking the suspects into custody. Upon hearing the helicopter approaching, both suspects fled the park. After a short foot pursuit and fight with officers, one suspect was taken into custody. The second suspect fled into the rear yard of a home in the 2400 block of San Jacinto Ct. where he was taken into custody with the assistance of a Pomona Police K-9.

Arrested: Brian Arnold, 24 yrs old, Ontario resident
Arrested: Ryan Lawrence, 23 yrs old, Transient

NEIGHBORHOOD FORUM TOMORROW

The City of Claremont is hosting another of its neighborhood forums tomorrow. Two council members and city staff will be on hand at the Padua Theatre to talk with North Claremont residents about anything that's on their minds (you don't have to be from the area to attend):

City Council Neighborhood Forum -Padua Hills Theatre

7:00 PM
4467 Via Padova
Claremont
(909) 399-5460

Council Members are also hosting a series of Neighborhood Forums. Neighborhood Forums give residents from different neighborhoods the opportunity to talk with City Council Members in a relaxed and informal setting. Neighborhoods can discuss issues that are important to them, air concerns, share ideas, ask questions and get the latest information about topics and projects that are specific to each neighborhood. Although forums are scheduled for specific neighborhoods, you do not have to live in that immediate area to attend.

VILLAGE VENTURE THIS SATURDAY

Claremont's annual Village Venture happens this Saturday in the Claremont Village:

Village Venture Returns To The Village On October 23

The annual Village Venture craft faire will return to the Claremont Village on Saturday, October 23 from 9:00am to 5:00pm. The event attracts hundreds of craft vendors and thousands of attendees each year. The Claremont Chamber of Commerce hosts the event, which features entertainment, food, and a children's costume parade. For more information on Village Venture, please call the Claremont Chamber of Commerce at (909) 624-1681.

Crime Alert

Padua Park was the scene of a crime last month, though city officials don't seem to want the public to know about it. Apparently, on Wednesday, September 29, when city workers tried to turn on the soccer field lights at the park, they discovered the lights were inoperable because someone had stolen over 130 feet of copper wire from the park's main electrical vault.

The information going around town is that the copper, presumably taken by thieves who turn around and sell the wire to metal recyclers, was worth around $500. Like gold, copper's price has shot up the past few years, and such thefts have become more common. The city of Glendale issued an alert last year because of a rise in just this sort of crime:

Glendale has seen a sudden rise in metal and copper wire theft in the last two years. Customers are urged to contact authorities if they see people lingering near electrical equipment or inactive construction sites. Stealing copper wire is a crime and very costly for the City, but the bigger issue is public safety. Tampering with wires can cause serious harm, bodily injury or death. Power and telephone outages can also result from copper wire theft.

Odd that Claremont officials haven't issued a similar alert. The only way of catching copper thieves in the act is to have more eyeballs on the lookout, and people who reside near likely targets like parks and schools need to be alerted to this fact.

We suppose the City may say this was just a case of vandalism, but this kind of theft requires specialized knowledge. Poking around a high voltage electrical panel can be very dangerous, and from time to time we hear about the occasional copper thief getting electrocuted. The Padua Park incident, however, sure sounds as if it were done by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

City Hall and the Claremont Police are no doubt hesitant to let news of the Padua Park theft get out because one of the complaints before the park was built was that it would lead to a rise in crime. Police Chief Paul Cooper (photo, left), who has worked with Claremont AYSO Region 3 as their Volunteer Protection Advocate, himself may have an interest in keeping a lid on the information, even if means less public awareness about the matter.

Or maybe it's all just a sign of CPD's competence level. They've issued press releases before when there were scams or more serious crimes in our area, even in cases where Claremont wasn't hit. So why not now?

Speaking of crime at Padua Park, we're waiting to hear about an increase in burglaries in the area. The public restroom sits on a rise that a good 20-25 feet higher than it should be, with the result that it offers a great vantage point from which to peer into the backyards and windows of several of the surrounding homes.

When they were planning the park, the City promised to plant a screen of trees around the perimeter to create a natural screen. But you know how it works with Claremont and promises. When the park was finally built, a good part of that natural screen consisted of oak saplings, which are pretty slow growing. Maybe in 15 or 20 years, City Hall will finally make good on its word to area residents. Of course, given the City's record with landscape management, a good number of those trees won't last that long:

Water Wise

Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker's weekly report last Thursday led with a blurb about a turf buyback program offering $3 for every square-foot of yard grass homeowners replace with drought-tolerant landscaping:

TURF BUYBACK PROGRAM NOW AVAILABLE IN CLAREMONT!

Golden State Water Company and Three Valleys Municipal Water District have teamed up to offer cash rebates to Claremont homeowners that remove turf and replace it with water-wise landscaping. The Residential Turf Removal Program rebates $3.00 per square foot for turf removed up to a maximum of $3,000 per residence. Details of the program and an application to participate can be found at:

http://www.socalwatersmart.com/images/PDFs/mwd_rebate_form_turf_removal.pdf .

The City is excited about this program because it should help the community meet its goal of reducing potable water consumed community-wide by 20% by 2012. City Council members have been pushing for a turf buyback program, noting that 70% of water used in Claremont is for outdoor uses and that turf is almost always the most water intensive plant in our yards.

It's great to see the City leading the way when it comes to conservation issues, especially with sustainability having become a civic buzzword. That the City has encouraging residents to be aware of these sorts of environmental issues adds to City Hall's embarrassment over things like leaving the lights burning over unused sports fields.

Claremont's municipal carbon footprint grew a little larger now that it's soccer fields at Padua Park are on line. A reader wrote to say someone forgot to switch off the field lights there last week:

DATE: Sat, September 4, 2010 7:02:01 AM
TO: Claremont Insider
SUBJECT: Re: Claremont Insider

Oh yeah, Friday night you could see the Padua park lights from space. You know the area in north claremont that isn't supposed to have any street lights. They wanted to keep that rural feeling. That is until "they" had yet another plan, uh huh I feel like I'm in the boonies...

We heard separately from another reader that the Padua soccer lights were burning last Thursday night with no one on the fields. How fitting that the project that pushed the city budget millions of dollars into the red, a project touted for its "sustainability," continues to run up a bill for wasted dollars.

We were thinking about those field lights when it occurred to us that the City has added over three acres of turf at Padua Park at precisely the same time they are asking residents to remove the grass in their yards. As City Manager Parker wrote, "City Council members have been pushing for a turf buyback program, noting that 70% of water used in Claremont is for outdoor uses, and turf is almost always the most water intensive plant in our yards."

At around three acres (a conservative estimate), the fields at Padua Park amount to enough grass for 130 homes under the turf buyback program City Manager Parker touted.

The City would argue that the turf planted in Padua Park is a drought-resistant, "water-wise" type, which may be perfectly true. However, several our readers have commented that ever since the park opened, the park's water usage has appeared pretty wasteful, including a substantial leak along one side of the westernmost soccer field. Even on the hottest of days, standing water apparently pooled in the turf there.

We were curious and, nearly five months after the park's opening, we finally dispatched someone to take a look at the situation. There wasn't any standing water, but we did notice some repair work was underway in the spot where the months-old leak was supposed to have been:

Click on Image to Enlarge

Though the turf in problem area had been removed, it looked like the leak hadn't been fixed yet:



Looking around the park, we found other evidence of the City's water management prowess:

Watering Dirt

La Cienega

A River Runs Through It

Mighty Dry Oak

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

  
  
  
  

Claremont Officials Spinning Tangled Webs

PRACTICING TO DECEIVE

Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker and Human Services Director Mercy Santoro did their bureaucratic best to rewrite history in their recent interviews with the Daily Bulletin. Parker and Santoro were quoted in yesterday's Bulletin in an article about the possibility of cuts in city staff and services being connected to the costs of the newly opened Padua Park.

Both Parker and Santoro put their spin on the story. Santoro was quoted in the article, saying that all the funding decisions for the park occurred before the City faced any real budget problems:

"We were not having drastic budget reductions until January 2009," Santoro said. "We were not faced with takeaways until well after. We were well into our project when we were faced with having to look at reducing our workforce."

Parker claimed in the Bulletin article that once the City Council awarded its contract for building Padua Park, the City's hands were tied because the cost of breaking the contract would have been $500,000:

"Theoretically, we could have said, `Gee, the economic downturn will not let us build the park.' And could we have gone back? ... I'm sure they would have said, `Sure. Do you want to pay me a half a million to walk away?' It doesn't make a lot of sense" to change the contract, Parker said.

Santoro also said the City had been planning the park for 19 years and seemed to claim, like Parker, that they could not postpone building the park. Santoro and Parker must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they were interviewed for the story, because none of their claims is supported by the record.


UNEXPLORED OPTIONS

We considered the points the Claremont officials made and then examined the record. Take Parker's claim of having to pay the contractor $500,000 to buy out the contract. We noted that Parker mentioned breaking the contract and ending the project while conveniently omitting other options. Parker himself had mentioned the idea of reworking the contract back in December, 2009, when the $850,000 grant for the park from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy was placed on hold in December, 2009, because the state had stopped selling the bonds needed to fund RMC grants.

The city council could have put the matter on hold until the RMC came through with the money the City was counting on for the park's construction. Parker indicated that the cost would have been less than $100,000. If the City could work out a deal like that in order to wait for the RMC's funds, as Parker seemed to think, they certainly could have worked out something with the contractor to place the matter on temporary hold until the City's deteriorating financial picture improved.


TIMELINE

As to Santoro's claims that the money for the park construction was allocated before the City realized the extent of their financial problems, a look at a timeline of Padua Park funding decisions along with events in the banking and housing crisis shows that there was plenty of time for the City to hold the project in abeyance and use the money for other things - like paying for employees' jobs.

We looked at two of the City's Padua Park funding decision points - the 10/9/07 decision to appropriate $1.6 million from the General Fund for the park's construction and the 9/23/08 decision to award a park construction contract and dip into the City's General Fund reserve to pay for the job. When you set those two dates, almost exactly one year apart, against the backdrop of the housing and banking crises, you can see that there were plenty of red flags warning the City to proceed with caution in its spending.

The housing market, on which the state and the City depend for property tax revenue, peaked in 2005, three years before the Padua Park contract was awarded. In early 2008, housing's decline was well on its way to a far off bottom. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that Parker was correct about being locked into the park construction contract, there was plenty of time before the City Council's 9/23/08 vote to give Mega Way, Inc. the contract to build the project. Here's a graph showing the Case-Shiller housing market index from mid-2006 to mid-2009 (we've overlaid the two Padua Park decision points):

(Click to Enlarge)

Background chart courtesy of Juan Toledo
and paper-money.blogspot.com/

The City had 350 days between the first arrow and the second to put an emergency hold on the project. At the City's 6/12/08 budget workshop, the staff's presentation said the City had a hiring freeze on and was reducing staff through attrition by not replacing employees who decided to leave. Staff also noted a decrease in sales tax revenues and the need to raise sanitation service fees - all signs that the revenues wouldn't cover expenditures.

The City was also having to deal with foreclosures in the spring of 2008. Empty, untended houses prompted the city to adopt an ordinance requiring owners of foreclosed properties (banks mostly) to properly maintain the houses they took over, and unemployment in California reached a 12-year high of 7.3% by July, 2008. Those were additional indicators that should have told us to expect even more mortgage defaults as well as declining sales tax revenue due to more people losing jobs.

Here is a timeline of the Padua Park decisions with some major and minor events in the Great Recession (in red):

• Early 2005 - housing market peaks, then begins its long decline.
  
  
• 10/9/07 - Council authorizes $2.4 million for Padua Park, including $1.6 million from the General Fund. Vote is 4-1 with Councilmember Calaycay voting "No."
  
  
• 4/8/08 - Federal Reserve brokers the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase and underwrites the purchase with a $29 billion loan.
  
  
• 4/30/08 - NYSE suspends trading of PFF Bancorp stock, one of the banks in which the City held its short-term savings accounts.
  
  
• 7/11/08 - Talk of a federal bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported in NY Times.
  
  FDIC takeover of IndyMac Bank.
  
  
• 8/28/08 - PFF announces shareholder meeting to vote on merger deal with Illinois-based FBOC, Inc.
  
  
• 9/8/08 - Government places Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship.
  
  
• 9/13 - 9/14/09 - Fed and US Treasury Dept. allow Lehman Bros. to fail.
  
  
• 9/16/08 - Fed bails out AIG with a $85 billion loan.
  
  
• 9/17/08 - Dow Jones Industrial Avg., already down over 3,000 points from its peak, declines 449.36 points - 4.1%.
  
  
• 9/23/08 - Council votes to award $2.4 million Padua Park construction contract to Mega Ways, Inc., in Pomona. City awaits announcement from RMC on $850,000 grant. Again, 4-1 with Councilmember Calaycay the sole "No" vote.
  
  Council also votes 4-1 to go forward with Padua Park's phase 1A, appropriated an additional $450,000 from the City's General Fund and $527,859 from the General Fund reserve.
  

So, you can see there were plenty of serious red flags ignored by Parker, Santoro, and the Claremont City Council, plenty of opportunities to not spend the $3.4 million or so appropriated for Padua Park's construction on 10/9/07 and 9/23/08. That last meeting occurred a week after the federal government allowed Lehman Bros. to fail and right at the very height of investor anxiety. All of this occurred at the very moment an already down stock market was preparing to take its own dizzying plunge.

City officials knew what was happening with the financial markets and knew those markets were unraveling in September, 2008. Yet, the City proceeded with awarding a contract for a project that could have easily been put on hold. Worse still, the City dipped into it's rainy day General Fund reserve at a time when they would need it most. The decision to go forward with the park's construction that September represented a total of $3.4 million that could have been used to balance the city's budget, which in turn would have allowed the city to avoid the really big cuts in staff and service.

The City certainly has no control over the financial markets or housing and employment figures, but it does have a responsibility for conservative spending in times of crisis. It's just incredibly sad to see the City dig itself into a very avoidable fiscal hole, and it's even sadder to see city officials, elected and paid, refuse to take ownership of their poor decisions.

Invasive Flora, Opportunistic Fauna

Click on images to enlarge

LOCAL TRAVELS

On a recent weekend, the Insider staff decided to get away and enjoy the wonderful spring weather in San Gabriel Mountains. We drove out past Wrightwood on the Angeles Crest Hwy. and found a relatively easy path that joined up with the Pacific Crest Trail near Vincent Gap.

The trail had a pretty good elevation gain up through an oak forest for the first mile or so, then it leveled out and followed a ridgeline dotted with pines. As we walked along, we noticed, nestled in a shaded pine needle bed, a group of what looked like bright red and pink hyacinths without any green leaves. As we got closer, we saw that they were supported by thick candy cane stalks.

We returned home and later consulted the old man of the mountains. We described the fantastical plants to him, and he told us in his gravelly voice, "When we were kids, we called that snow plant."

Snow plant, we've since learned, is a fungus-like parasite called a "mycotrophic wildflower" that gets its nutrients from tree roots.


CLOSER TO HOME

One is never quite sure what one will find when one wanders into the local mountains and foothills. A couple weeks after our mountain adventure, we decided to stick closer to home and explore some of the flatter alluvial areas around northeast Claremont. The undeveloped alluvium is home to the plant and animal community called riversidean alluvial fan sage scrub habitat, or RAFSS.

RAFSS is rapidly dwindling in southern and Baja California. Ten years ago, there was only about 2,000 acres of it left in California. It's disappearing because most of the stuff happens to be located on real estate coveted by developers (that is, until the real estate market tanked).

RAFSS is an odd sort of habitat. It's not at all liked a picturesque English woodland. Instead, if you go during the summer, you're likely to find it brown and sere. That is, in fact, why the city of Claremont had its commissioners trucked to the Padua Park site in July, 2000, to ensure that all they saw was what looked like a weedy lot desperately in need of improvements. About half of the 20-acre main park site consisted of RAFSS.

If the city's commissioners had gone to the same spot three or four months earlier, they would have seen it alive with greenery and flowers. All of which serves to underscore how diligently our town works to manipulate perception to get its projects done.

In any case, when we ventured out to take a look at an area near where the sports park has been installed, we found it teeming with wildflowers. Water percolated up in places from artesian springs (the cienegas that Claremont doyenne Marilee Scaff yearns to build below the dam near the Thompson Creek trail).

As we walked along, a couple quail that had been foraging in the brush, and they scooted off, chittering alarm calls as they took flight. We wondered about rattlesnakes, but it wasn't terribly hot the day we were out, at least, not hot enough to get the snakes stirred up.

Purples, blues, and lavenders seemed the dominant color that particular day. We saw blue-eyed grass and lupine (photo, right) with their five-lobed leaves. There was showy penstomen (below) as well, sitting in large groupings of blue jets arrayed along long, thin spears.

The generous storms of January and February brought so much water that the plain held an abundance of chamise, buckwheat, and bronze-green castor bean, too. Other flowering plants hadn't quite come into their season yet. White sage and short coastal prickly pear cactus looked as if they would burst into bloom any minute.


INVASIVE EXOTICS: STRANGE FLORA, STRANGER FAUNA

As we got closer to the park site, approaching it from the east, we noticed that the soil was considerably disturbed by the construction equipment. Black mustard and other invasive exotics had taken over those disturbed, more open areas. We could see the strangely out of place weeds mixed in and projecting above the RAFSS:



As we got closer, we saw that they had overrun the area completely:


















And, along with the weeds that choked off the local coastal sage habitat, some even more more opportunistic and parasitic fauna appeared, blindly devastating up entire plant and animal communities from Claremont to Whittier Narrows:



From "Pave to Save," LA Weekly, April 22, 2010:

Shepherded by a group of unwieldy bureaucracies that include two water districts, the San Gabriel & Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountain Conservancy and the County of Los Angeles, the San Gabriel River Discovery Center is designed to replace the aging 2,000-square-foot Whittier Narrows Nature Center, buildings including a garage, and "non-native landscaping" with a 14,000-square-foot museum of interactive exhibits for children that would explain the existing state of the watershed, show what the natural rivers were once like and feature a covered, outdoor classroom.

"You're going to bring awareness of the sense of place where the kids sense that they're part of something much bigger," declares Sam Pedroza as he reels off interconnections between man, river and sea. "Everything that we do from the mountains and the inland cities affects the ocean. It's as small as throwing a wrapper in the street or in the parking lot — that can all end up in the ocean."

Pedroza, a Claremont city councilman, chairs the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority's Stakeholders Committee. "I know that we look like the Goliath here," he tells the Weekly, but "by every definition this is an environmental project that's aimed at protecting the watershed."

Others aren't so sure.

Teresa Young, who studies insects in habitats near the existing nature center, shares Pedroza's concern for the remaining open space. But she does not agree that the construction of a large building and parking lot somehow improves the environment.

Save by destroying, and then put up a commemorative bronze plaque to describe for future generations that which we've plowed under. It's a truly bizarre logic we've become accustomed to in Claremont, the City of Trees.

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.

In and Out of Town

There's lots going on in and out of town this week:

HELP WANTED

The restaurant that's going in next to the Claremont 5 Theatre in the Village Square is hosting a job fair Monday and Wednesday. If you're looking for a job, you might want to check this out:

CASA MORENO JOB FAIR

In December 2009, the City of Claremont awarded Casa Moreno Grill a job creation grant for their proposed new business in the Village Square, across from the City’s Public Plaza. The purpose of the grant was to create six full-time equivalent jobs for low-moderate income persons living within the Claremont area. Casa Moreno’s construction is well underway and they are now looking for qualified applicants to be members of their team. To that end, they are hosting two job fairs in which they will be accepting applications for the positions of hosts, bartenders, busboys, dishwashers,prep cooks, head cook, and line cooks. These job fairs will be located in front of their new restaurant and held on the dates and times below. Casa Moreno’s goal is to be open in early June. For more information regarding the Casa Moreno restaurant job fair,please contact Susan Moreno at (626) 339-9496.

Casa Moreno Restaurant Job Fair:
101 N. Indian Hill Blvd., Suite C2-103
Claremont (adjacent to Hotel Casa 425)
Monday April 19th, 9:00am-12:00 noon
Wednesday April 21st, 9:00am-12:00 noon
(These are the only dates/times Casa Moreno will be accepting applications.)

PARK OPENING

Parents and kids involved with AYSO will want to go to the Padua Park grand opening next Saturday, April 24, beginning at 10am. The turf is in at the park, is the restroom building and the park lights. Looks like a lot of the landscaping and walking paths haven't gone in yet, so the park as it stands doesn't look to offer much in the way of public space for walking or picnicking.
Those other amenities may have to wait until the city's finances are in better shape.

So, for the time being, it's pretty much a one-function park as opposed to a park like the Village's Memorial Park that is more conducive to family outings. Anyway, the city was wanting people interested in attending to call ahead. Here's the flyer for the event (just click on the image to enlarge it):



ROTARY CLUB FUNDRAISER

April 24 is also the day the Claremont Rotary Club hosts its annual Taste of Claremont fundraiser at Taylor Hall from 5pm to 8pm. Tickets are $50, and you can order them from the event's website or you can get them at any of the following Claremont businesses:

Bejeweled
260 West Bonita Ave.

Carkle Sudie
216 West Second St.

Euro Café
Mills & Baseline in the Von’s Center

Prudential Wheeler Steffen Real Estate
500 West Foothill Blvd.

Wolfe’s Market
160 West Foothill Blvd.

Xerxes
319 Yale Ave.

11th Annual Taste of Claremont

Date: April 24, 2010
Time: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Location: Taylor Hall

1775 Indian Hill Boulevard
Claremont, CA 91711

LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

The Times may have done away with its Sunday stand-alone book section, but that hasn't stopped them from hosting their annual Festival of Books at UCLA next Saturday and Sunday.

There's a little branded something for all ages, from the Target Children's Stage to

The festival runs from 10am to 6pm Saturday April 24, and from 10am to 5pm Sunday April 25. General admission is free and parking is $10. Check out the Times website for details (as of 4:30pm today the site was down - never a good sign for a bankrupt media company).


UPCOMING ATH SPEAKERS

As always, Claremont McKenna College's Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum has an interesting slate of speakers lined up for the remainder of their spring speakers series.

M.M.C. Athenaeum
385 E. 8th St.
Claremont, CA 91711-6420
(909) 621-8244
Fax: (909) 621-8579
athenaeum@claremontmckenna.edu

April 19	Gil Hoffman, chief political correspondent and analyst, The Jerusalem Post; "Red States, Blue States and the Jewish State: Jerusalem-D.C. Relations from an Israeli Insider’s Perspective" (12:00 p.m.)
Monday, April 19	Musicians and Dancers from the Department of Dance, Minzu University of China; "Music, Song, and Dance of the Mongols and other Ethnic Nationalities of China"
Tuesday, April 20	George Roberts '66 P'93, founding partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company (KKR); "Lunch with a Leader" (12:00 p.m.)
Wednesday, April 21	Mark Juergensmeyer, professor of sociology and global studies, affiliate professor of religious studies; director, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, U.C. Santa Barbara; author, Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution (2002) and Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (2000); "Religious Rebellion in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Afghanistan" (12:00 p.m.)
Wednesday, April 21	Mark Juergensmeyer, professor of sociology and global studies, affiliate professor of religious studies; director, Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, U.C. Santa Barbara; author, Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution (2002) and Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (2000); "Beyond Religious Violence in South Asia: Conflict and Reconciliation"
Thursday, April 22	Wayne Ferson, Ivadelle and Theodore Johnson Chair of Banking and Finance, Marshall School of Business, USC; co-author, Testing Portfolio Efficiency with Conditioning Information (2009) and Asset Pricing Models with Conditional Alphas and Betas: The Effects of Data Snooping and Spurious Regression (2008); "The Problem of Alpha and Performance Measurement"
Friday, April 23	Michael Armacost, Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow for Political Affairs, Asia-Pacific Research Center; Stanford University; co-author, "New Beginnings" in the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Recommendations to the Obama Administration (2009) and Asian Policy Challenges for the Next President (2008); "President Obama's Foreign Policy: A Preliminary Reckoning After One Year" (1:00 p.m.)
Tuesday, April 27	David Schulman, Renee Lang professor of Humanistic Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; co-author, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India, 1600-1800 (2003) and co-translator, God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati (2005); "Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine"
Monday, May 3	Ken Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and professor of economics, Harvard University; co-author, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (2009) and Foundations of International Microeconomics (1996); "McKenna Lecture on International Trade and Economics"