Candidate Forum Ratings

We received an email report on Monday night's League of Women Voters candidate forum from one of our field correspondents. The writer thought all the candidates were quality people and rated their performances. The correspondent also had some thoughts on the composition of the audience:

DATE: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:39 AM
SUBJECT: Hughes Center - Candidate Forum
FROM: Claremont Buzz

I attended the candidate forum at the Alexander Hughes Center last night and was happy to see many Claremont residents. With no favorite candidate(s), I was there with an open mind to see what they Corey [Calaycay], Bridget [Healy] and Larry [Schroeder] had to say. I was impressed by all of them, and feel we are lucky to have quality people running for the open seats. I felt that Corey came out on top, with Larry 2nd and Bridget 3rd. Nothing really was brought up about So. California Water and their need to continue to pursue hefty increases to the PUC [Public Utilities Commission].

I was also struck by the age of the attendees. Kudos to our senior residents for taking the time and making the effort to get out and hear – they were well represented. Looking around I was wondering if ID’s were checked at the door, since no one under 60 seemed to be in the room (other than the candidates). Seriously, I saw one college aged attendee, a couple of people in their 50’s and an overwhelming majority being in their 70’s and 80’s. Aren’t there Claremont residents that are still working that might be interested in who’s leading the city at this critical economic time?

A Concerned Claremont Citizen

We weren't there, but we imagine the scene was probably pretty much like many a past candidate forum from years gone by, except that the crowd is a little grayer, a little less perambulatory than it was the last time around in 2005.

Claremont is a graying population, after all, as our comments regarding The Claremont View a couple months ago suggested. As new people move in, they don't necessarily participate in the local politics as much as the people they replace. That is one unintended consequence of the Claremont 400's insularity. It tends to drive away people not invested in supporting the in-group. If the last U. S. presidential election taught us anything, it's the value of the politics of addition, something sorely lacking among the clique running our City Hall.

For the same reason, the League of Women Voters itself is a graying group. Their lack of real outreach is hurting them, and it also moves them farther and farther out-of-touch from the younger community at large, the community not represented (or at least underrepresented) by the Ellen Taylors, Helaine Goldwaters, Sharon Hightowers, Judy Wrights, and Barbara Musselmans of the town.

We'd like to see a younger demographic get involved in the issues our community faces, especially since they and their progeny will be paying for a lot of it, but most of our 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings have got things like starting careers to think or raising families to think about. They enjoy the good things in town, like the restaurants and shops, the college-town atmosphere, or the tree-lined streets; and they don't see the bad until they bump up against it when the City wants a freeway offramp dumping traffic onto their street or shoves an accident magnet of a roundabout into their favorite downtown intersection.

Also, there just may not be that many of them in the first place. But, perhaps the drop in housing prices will bring some affordability back to the local real estate market and encourage more young families to move into our town. Revitalization spurred by recession: just another unintended consequence, we suppose. This must be the so-called "creative destruction" we've heard about.

Sign of the Times: Distressed Property

It's been about seven months since we last checked, but foreclosures are up markedly in Claremont. In April, Yahoo's real estate site listed 97 foreclosures in town. Today when we checked, there were 153 listed:

Click to Enlarge

That's a nearly 58% increase in 7 months, for those keeping score at home. As we've discovered since then, the real estate and mortgage problems have spilled over into the financial markets. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) had lost 35% of the value of its real estate investments, down to $6.03 billion from $9.36 billion.

According to the Times article, real estate is a small part of the total CalPERS portfolio, but it's still a significant hit, and the overall picture, at least in the short term for CalPERS, is not good:

The decline in real estate represents a portion of CalPERS losses since the fund hit a high of $247.7 billion on June 30, 2007. It fell to $239.2 billion a year later and since then has plunged a further 23%, to $184.2 billion as of Monday.

CalPERS provides pension benefits for 1.6 million current and former employees of the state and many local governments and school districts. Those employers, which are suffering from strained budgets, could be forced to increase their contributions to the pension fund if CalPERS' investment performance does not turn around in the next couple of years.

"It's certainly frightening for those who look forward to getting their pensions from the California system," said Gary Painter, director of research at the Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC.

One of the big losses was the now-bankrupt 15,000-acre LandSource Community Development tract close to Santa Clarita, in which CalPERS was the majority stake holder with a $970 million investment. The Times reported that a study of CalPERS' real estate investments showed that they may have greatly underestimated their risk exposure:

According to the report produced for CalPERS by Le Plastrier Development Consulting of Irvine, the loss in value was amplified by CalPERS' reliance on loans to ramp up housing investments to a peak of about 20% of its real estate portfolio. The investments were over-concentrated by age, geography and product type and lacked safeguards against a market decline, Le Plastrier said.

Within CalPERS' portfolio, 80% of the properties are in distressed markets in California, Arizona, Florida and Texas. Along with that of other investors, CalPERS' stake in housing "expanded greatly between 2004 and 2006," CalPERS staff said in a briefing for the board's investment committee. The committee is scheduled to meet Monday.

The City of Claremont's employees have their retirements with CalPERS, and the financial impact of those commitments was a subject of discussion at last Saturday's City Council priorities meeting. We'll have more on that in a day or two.

Local Blog News

There are a couple new blogs on the block worth noting.

The Pomona Public Library's Children's Department has started a blog. Thanks to Goddess of Pomona for listing that.

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Also, there's a new real estate blog called the "Route 66 Neighborhoods and Real Estate Blog." The blog, published by Jennifer Castillo, had an interesting post back on January 21st about the absorption rate for the Claremont Unified School District's area:

ABSORPTION RATE is the mathematical representation of the relationship between supply and demand. The total amount of available product is divided by the total amount of product sold in the previous month. The resulting number represents the number of months it would take, at that same pace, to sell the entire inventory of product.

“Normal Market” conditions exist when the Absorption Rate is between 5 and 6 months.
“Sellers Market” conditions exist when the Absorption Rate is lower. (1-4 months)
“Buyers Market” conditions exist when the Absorption Rate is higher. (7+ months)
—Thanks to Rich Schiffer from Active Rain for the above information.

The current absorption rate for the Claremont Unified School District area as of today:

124 “listings” homes, townhomes, condos for sale (information taken from the IMRMLS) 10 homes, townhomes, and condos have sold/closed escrow in the past month 12/21/07 - 01/21/08

What this means is there is 53.91 weeks or 12.4 months of inventory. At this rate, it will take a little over a year to sell the 124 homes we currently have.

All of this might make the CUSD Board of Education rethink its projections for the district's growth, or shrinkage, as the case may be. With four new condo projects (two on Base Line Rd., the one at the old Courier building on College Ave., and Harry Wu's Griswold - Old School House condo project) all on hold, the lack of turnover in housing could also signal flat or shrinking student enrollment figures for the district, whose demographics indicate a graying population.

A new U.S. Census will be coming out in a few years, and we suspect the growth will be slower than Claremont city and school district officials have told us it would be, just as was the case with the 2000 Census. Even if total population rises, if the average household size falls from the 2.56 it was in 2000, that might be further evidence that there are fewer children in town.

All of which should give us pause about how both the Claremont city government and the CUSD Board look to allocate their resources in coming years.