Dumpster Diving

Sam Pedroza's Waste Connections

Click Image to Enlarge
One of the Insider's favorite activities remains the nocturnal leap, powered by sinewy legs, as we fly into our town's trash bins while the rest of Claremont sleeps. Our nighttime dumpster dives have sometimes caused us undeserved grief from some of the community's less careful thinkers (you know who you are, Sonia Carvalho), but we just can't help ourselves.

Our latest bit of refuse rummaging was prompted by a Request for Proposal (RFP), issued by Claremont's city staff, who solicited bids from six waste hauling companies to see what they'd charge for providing the city's trash service. Here's all the information on the City's website:

Sanitation Study (Sep 16, 2010)

On August 3, the City of Claremont released a Request for Proposal (RFP) for solid waste collection, recycling, and disposal services. The purpose of the RFP is designed to provide the City with an opportunity to evaluate the cost of providing disposal and recycling services to its residents and businesses. The deadline to submit proposals was September 14, 2010 by 2:00 p.m. The companies that submitted proposals were the City's Sanitation Division, Burrtec Waste Industries, Waste Management Inc., Athens Services, and Republic Services.

Staff will review the proposals and will make recommendations to the Community Services Commission.The Community Services Commission will then forward a recommendation to the City Council. Hard copies of the RFP are still available for review by residents at City Hall as well as at the Community Services City Yard building. In addition, hard copies can be purchased for $25 at either facility. A copy of the RFP is available on the City's website for public viewing. Residents having questions regarding the RFP process may contact Pat Malloy, Interim Community Services Director, at 909-399-5432 or via e-mail at pmalloy@ci.claremont.ca.us.

• View RFP (Adobe Acrobat, 1826KB)
  

City staffers were apparently trying to see if they could get the same service for less money. However, they failed to take into account the irrational love Claremonters have for their municipal trash service. Letters in the Claremont Courier have been uniformly in favor of having our own Community Service workers picking up our garbage and yours. It seems as if everyone in town with the exception of the Claremont Unified School District sees this as a matter of civic pride.

One council member who knows a thing or two about solid waste is Mayor Pro Tem Sam Pedroza, who in his real life works as an environmental planner for the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County. Pedroza came to the attention of the Conscious Claremont blog vis-à-vis a potential conflict of interest regarding Claremont's landfill options:

So, what happens when the city has to choose a landfill & the law prohibits officials from participating in actions that may effect their employer? In 2008, Mr. Pedroza recused himself from said discussion, citing conflict of interest. But, when the same item appeared in Dec, he participated.

Photo, right:
Claremont City Council Member Sam Pedroza, explaining the downhill flow of the sort of waste he's most acquainted with.


The ol' switcheroo on Pedroza's part was undoubtedly familiar to people who supported Claremont's original affordable housing project at Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave. when he first said he was for the project, then said he was against it, all while calculating the ramifications of his choice on his 2007 election campaign.

Conscious Claremont quoted Pedroza as he described some of the private companies and agencies he works with. Among the private waste companies he named were three that received one of the aforementioned RFPs from the City: Waste Management, Athens Services, and Valley Vista Services.

We thought we'd heard of Valley Vista Services before in connection with Pedroza. It turns out that Valley Vista is a part of a City of Industry-based company called Zerep Management. In fact, if you type "zerepmanagement.com" in your browser, you'll get directed to Valley Vista's website.



Zerep sounded kinda strange. What exactly is it? We nosed around and learned that Zerep is a holding company owned by the City of Industry's Perez family. (Get it? Spell Z-E-R-E-P backwards.)

And that's where our man Sam comes in. In his 2007 city council campaign, Pedroza received a $250 donation from Matthew Perez, who listed his occupation as manager of Zerep Management Corp. Here's a part of Pedroza's campaign finance Form 460 filings for the 2007 municipal election:


If you didn't know, the Perez family pretty much runs Industry, where David Perez is the mayor. The Perez family has Industry's commercial waste hauling franchise. Since that city is almost entirely commercial, the commercial waste contract is worth millions every year to the family.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article about the Perez family in October 2009. The piece, written by Rich Connell explained some of the eccentricities of the David Perez's town:

[the commercial waste account] is just one Perez investment thread that runs through town -- a place with fewer than 100 voters, tight-knit City Hall relationships and now a good chance of becoming home to an $800-million stadium complex and Los Angeles' next professional football team.

On top of the commercial refuse franchise, which generated more than $12 million for Perez's disposal operation over the last year, another Perez firm collected nearly $6.8 million from the city for maintaining street medians and parkways, removing graffiti and other services, a Times review has found.

The mayor's business-partner brother serves on the city planning commission. A nephew, who works for the family's management company, is on the board of Industry's redevelopment agency, which provided income last year to yet another family business in which the mayor and his brother are investors.

The Times article went on to say that "nearly a third of the town's registered voters appear to be related to the mayor or residing in homes owned by a family land investment partnership...."
According to the Times, besides having a Perez in the mayor's seat, one council member rents his home from a Perez land investment partnership, and another is a "landowner that the company paid more than $100,000 [in 2008]."

More recently, on September 11, the Times had an article about a $1,500 donation from David Perez to L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley's campaign for California attorney general. The LADA's office is currently looking some of the goings on in Industry, so the donation seemed to present a possible conflict. The Times piece quoted Rene Cota, an Industry businessman who had his own problems with Industry's City Hall:

For about a year, Perez, who is also the mayor of the City of Industry and whose family owns the Valley Vista trash hauling firm, has been the focus of an inquiry by Cooley's office into his private business ties to City Hall. The ongoing probe, apparently examining multimillion-dollar refuse collection and landscaping maintenance contracts, began after Cota filed a complaint.

When the city shut down his bar for alleged code violations, Cota began looking into Industry's close-knit political culture — there are fewer than 100 registered voters, and many are related to one another or working for the city.

"It disheartens me," said the former Anaheim police officer. It is "obviously unethical if he's taking contributions from persons or entities" under scrutiny by Cooley's office, he said. "It definitely shakes my confidence in the legal system."

Cooley's top anti-corruption deputy says there is no connection between campaign money and the district attorney's investigation or prosecution of public officials.

But the donation highlights a tricky choice for an elected prosecutor like Cooley. Where does he draw the line on taking money from people who could figure in an investigation?

Besides the Times coverage, Industry was also the subject of a book called "City of Industry: Genealogies of Power in Southern California" by Victor Valle. The book is written as a kind of ethnography, describing in great detail the web of relationships between Industry politicians and businessmen.

Now, getting back to our Sam, we'd like to think of him as our local tongue-tied goof, like Ted Baxter from the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, not too bright, more ego than substance, but generally pretty harmless. Unfortunately, Sam's got just the wrong combination of ambition, weakness, and insecurity that has caused us so much trouble at every level of government.

It's probably very fortunate for Sam that Valley Vista hasn't submitted a bid for our trash service. He might start squirming and tripping over his tongue if that were to happen. Circumstances may have saved Sam from himself.

We can only hope.

City Attorney Firm Subpoenaed in Bell Investigation - UPDATED

The LA Times reports that the two parallel investigations into the Bell scandal, one by Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley's office and one by state attorney general Jerry Brown, have proceeded with brisk election-year dispatch, an efficiency that will no doubt fade quickly after the first Tuesday in November.

The Times said that an LA grand jury has issued subpoena's in the DA's investigation. The Times also indicated that Brown's office served subpoenas to obtain records and depositions from nine former Bell officials.

The Times article also said that the AG's office served subpoenas on Best, Best & Krieger, the law firm Bell employed for its city attorney services:

The attorney general also said Monday that his probe was expanding to include the city's former law firm, Best, Best and Krieger, which also received subpoenas. The city last week ended its contract with the lawyers. Shortly thereafter, a longtime city attorney, Edward Lee, who worked for Best, Best and Krieger, announced that he was leaving the firm. A spokeswoman for Best, Best and Krieger said the firm had received the subpoena and is "assisting in any way we can."

BB&K contracts with many municipalities to provide city attorneys. Claremont's city attorney, Sonia Carvalho, is a partner at BB&K.


- UPDATED 9:20AM

The city of Maywood, which outsourced nearly all of its services earlier year, was also in the LA Times today. An article in the paper's LA Extra section described how the turmoil in Bell has spilled over into Maywood:

In late June, Maywood fired most of its workers and turned over operations to its neighbor city. But the scandal over eye-popping salaries in Bell has become a "distraction," and Maywood leaders said they would look for someone else to run their affairs.

"We're caught in a situation where we need to move forward," said Maywood Councilman Felipe Aguirre. "We don't want to be distracted by things that are not germane to our city."

Aguirre said doesn't want Maywood to "become a laughing stock of a city," a term used to describe Bell by one of its own embarrassed council members.

When it began to look outside the city for its services, Maywood hired Angela Spaccia, who was at the time the assistant city manager in Bell, as its interim city manager. Spaccia's Maywood contract paid her $10,000 a month. Spaccia was also earning $376,288 at her regular job in Bell and received benefits that drove her total compensation up to $845,960. Bell let Spaccia go when it fired its former city manager Robert Rizzo when Times broke the news of Rizzo's exorbitant compensation package.

Maywood's three-month contract with Spaccia ends on Thursday. During her short time in Maywood, Spaccia oversaw the dismantling and outsourcing of the city's various departments, and under her Maywood signed a $50,833 a month contract with Bell to run Maywood's basic operations.

Maywood also retained BB&K's Edward Lee for its city attorney, and Lee resigned from Maywood on August 2.

The photo that accompanied today's Times' Maywood article showed angry residents at last night's Maywood city council meeting. The protesters were upset over Maywood's alliance with Bell, and the photo showed one person waving a sign that said, "BBK and Spaccia Brought Bell to Maywood."

It Tolls for Thee - UPDATED

A TAXING SITUATION

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

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

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

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


ADVICE OF COUNSEL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

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

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

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

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

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


UPDATED, 2:15PM:

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

CLAREMONT ADMINISTRATIVE AND COUNCIL SALARY INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highway Robbery

Yes, as through this world I've wandered

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

Pretty Boy Floyd
- Woody Guthrie

DEAL GONE BAD

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

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

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

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

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

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


NOPE, NO CONFLICT HERE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out these 2007 City Election campaign finance documents:

(Click on images to enlarge)

Pedroza 2007 Campaign Finance Statement

Elderkin 2007 Campaign Finance Statement

POSTSCRIPT

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


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



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

4/1/05 - Before the deal

3/15/06 - Restaurant gone

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

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

6/19/09 - More cars gone

Dreams of the Supremes: The Other Sonia

The scrutiny of Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, begins this week with informal meetings between Sotomayor and some of the senators who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One would think that Sotomayor would have no trouble winning over the committee. She has been twice confirmed by the same committee, once in 1992 after Sotomayor was nominated to a federal judgeship by President George H. W. Bush and again in 1998 after President Bill Clinton nominated her to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District.

Still, the confirmation process, whether for the court or a even a cabinet position, can be fraught with political landmines and posturing on both sides of the aisle - just ask Robert Bork or Zoë Baird. There are rumors, in fact, that Sotomayor was not even President Obama's first choice. Another much less known female Hispanic officer of the court may have been interviewed for the job. Another Sonia, in fact.

That's right, the name of our own Sonia Rubio Carvalho, Claremont's City Attorney, may have surfaced briefly (very briefly) on the President's short list of candidates to the nation's highest court. True, Carvalho doesn't possess the traditional qualities that have marked past Supreme Court nominees. She hasn't served as a judge, for instance, nor has she done much in the way of legal scholarship. Then again, the U.S. Constitution doesn't list any mandatory qualifications for a Supreme Court justice, other than being nominated by the President with the Senate's advice and consent.

And, if you think about, our Sonia has ruled as if she were on the Supreme Court, providing our City Council with the legal rationale for claiming that Claremont's 2001 Measure A was unconstitutional and therefore did not need to be enforced. The anti-conflict of measure ordinance, passed by 54% of the voters, was later ruled to be constitutional and was implemented in Claremont and other cities without any problems. Carvalho is also something of an expert on First Amendment issues, as we found out a couple years ago.

If the rumors are true, Carvalho didn't survive the White House vetting process. Carvalho's uncanny ability to pick the wrong side of a constitutional argument no doubt had something to do with it. But, for a time she was at or near the top of the list, which may explain a photo that surfaced the other day, found like so many secret documents, by the buff and ripped Insider leaping into federal dumpsters in the still of the night.

City Council Meets Tonight

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

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


SPECIAL SESSION

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

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

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

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


REGULAR SESSION

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

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

The Mark* of Excellence

We Must All Do Our Part

The above signature on any City document pretty much assures one that it will be a model of excellent legal writing, clarity, and good public policy.

We got our most recent dose of this just last week at the City Council meeting when council considered two revisions to the so-called "film ordinance". One of the changes was to update the fee schedule--fair enough--but what we didn't realize until it was pointed out that BOTH changes were revenue measures.

click to enlarge
The second change to the ordinance adds commercial still photography, and most notably commercial still photography for the print media.

The staff report makes explicit the intent to include print media: "Adding still photography to both the resolution and ordinance to explicitly identify that photo shoots for any commercial use, such as print media, requires a film permit. [sic as to grammar, but emphasis added] Still photography would be added to the list of activity subject to the resolution and ordinance."

The money paragraph in the ordinance reads,

"No person shall use any public or private property, facility, or residence for motion picture, television, or still photography without first obtaining a filming permit from and paying a permit issuance fee to the City..."

click image to enlarge

We noticed last week that the above crux paragraph in the ordinance seemed, maybe, a bit broad, but we hadn't carefully read the definitions. This gets a little lawyerly, but the relevant definition says, "Motion picture, television, and still photography" mean all activity attendants [sic; there's Sonia's fine drafting again] to the staging or filming of commercial motion pictures, television programs and advertisements." [emphasis added]

To us, and doubtless to the City, this means what it says: commercial advertisements.

And sure enough, after sorting out some grammatical agreement issues, grammatical parallelism and the like, and especially after hearing Assistant City Manager Ramos describe the intent during the council discussion on Tuesday, the ordinance very clearly applies to still photography for advertisements in the print media.

Again, we humbly admit to not seeing the brilliance of this right off.

We estimate that this will provide the City probably two to three thousand dollars twice a week, every issue of the Claremont Courier, for photographs of real estate and for illustrations in some some other ads. Each location requires a $300 permit.

And this is only half the page; click to enlarge

The whole discussion at Tuesday's council meeting on going after delinquent business licensees shows how serious the City is about wringing every dollar out. That discussion by Treasurer Adam Pirrie makes us more certain we are right in this. Plus, this is easier to enforce than Pirrie's current business license jihad: just clip the Courier ads every issue, compare the photos to permits on file, and send out bills.

We realize that a quarter million dollars annually ($5,000 per week times 52 weeks per year) is not much where the City of Claremont is concerned. Why, City staff can waste that much without breaking a sweat. Heck, the trolley and all the trolley stops probably wasted that much in its short and unlamented life. The City overpaid for Johnsons Pasture by four times that. And we realize the City claims that it doesn't make money with the film permit fees; it only recaptures costs. Ah, yes, but that much money probably allows City Manager Parker to keep a current staff member--or two--where RIF would be the alternative.

We can hardly wait to see the money come rolling in from the real estate agents. Surely it would be churlish of them to complain.

What's $300 on a $3 million house? Click to enlarge

$1500 from this ad alone

Here is the entire agenda report on the changes to the film ordinance.

* * * * *

*We know the difference between "marque" and "mark". Let's not go with that fancy-pantsy Euro stuff.

Council Meeting Tonight

The Claremont City Council meets tonight for its last meeting before the March 3rd municipal election. The council meets in its chambers at 225 W. 2nd St. in the Claremont Village.

The city streams its council meetings live. You can watch here.

The agendas for tonight are fairly light. There's the obligatory closed session meeting at 5:15pm, where the council will here a report on labor negotiations from City Manager Jeff Parker, Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos, and Shawna Urban, the City's Personnel Manager.

The council's regular session begins at 6:30pm with a brief report on the closed session. Among the items being discussed tonight are:

• The second reading and adoption of a council resolution reinstating the city's leaf blower ordinance. This is a messy item, one that we plan on delving into in greater detail in the future. The short version is that the council last year changed its existing leaf blower ordinance without the required environmental review. The city and City Attorney Sonia Carvalho were put on notice at the time by a resident who told the council that an environmental review was required by law to change such an ordinance.
  
  Carvalho and the council ignored the resident's warning. As a result, a neighborhood group filed a legal action. The city, which had no legal leg to stand on, had to reverse its decision and now has to reinstate the leaf blower ordinance. The city is also on the hook for the legal fees to the aggrieved parties.
  
  
• Authorization for staff to solicit bids for sidewalk construction on the south side of Foothill Blvd. between Mountain and Berkeley Aves. This is an item that originally came before the council on January 13th. The original plan was for the remval of tall trees on the south side of Foothill in the area in question. Staff wanted to replace those trees with a sidewalk (there is none now).
  
  The council, however, got an earful from resident whose backyards are on the other side of the trees and wall along that section of Foothill. Those residents complained that they need the trees to shield their homes from the lights of the commercial areas on the north side of Foothill. They also said that no one walks along the south side of the street anyway, so who needs a sidewalk there? There really isn't anything to walk to, the residents said.
  
  Staff, however, has got its money courtesy of a state Cal Trans grant, and they want to spend it. So, now, they're asking the council to either approve the original plan or give the okay to one of two alternate sidewalk plans that would preserve some of the existing trees but would narrow Foothill by extending the parkway out either three to four feet under one alternate plan or seven feet under the other.
  
  
• Authorization from the council for staff to hire NBS Corporation to prepare the City's annual Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) report. The LLD has long been a sore point in town, and it comes back for its annual review. It will be interesting to see how much of an increase staff tries to justify. The LLD is not supposed to increase faster than the local inflation rate, and with prices flat, or falling in the case of energy, what rationale will the cash-strapped city and its consultant come up the LLD. What's your guess? Three percent? Four?
  
  
• Approval of a resolution allowing for a weekly Claremont Family Festival on First St., Second St., and Oberlin Ave. in the Claremont Village Expansion. Portions of those streets would be closed every Wednesday between 4pm and 9pm from March through October.
  
  The council is also being asked to approve a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the City and the non-profit Volunteer Network International allowing VNI to run the event with an exclusive special event permit. VNI is willing to invest $40,000 to $50,000 up front to help get the event going.
  
  Staff also wants to the council to waive the special event permit application fee because the event qualifies as a public benefit.
  
  Although they include the disclaimer "Pending City Approval" for the Wednesday night festivals, the folks at VNI do seem to assume that, like most things in town, this is a done deal. The VNI site says: "Plan to be in Claremont, California, area sometime soon? Stop in to experience "Claremont Wednesdays."
  
  It also says that the event will kick off April 29th and tells us that VNI is proudly sponsoring the event in partnership with the Claremont Chamber of Commerce and the City of Claremont. All great stuff, but shouldn't they, the Chamber, and the City show the good graces to wait until this is all discussed publicly before making such official soundig pronouncements?
  
  Much as with the Claremont Trolley, this premature announcement is designed to pressure the council into approving this issue at the risk of looking like Scrooges if they question anything. It may very well be a good deal for everyone involved, but please respect the process rather than paying lip service to it.
  

Click to Enlarge

Claremont, At It Again

We received an email the other day from a resident complaining about the noise of the construction at the Padua Ave. Park worksite. As you may recall, the city, in the face of a $3.5 million budget deficit, has gone forward with spending $2.4 million from its General Fund on the park.

Here's the reader's note:

DATE: Monday, February 16, 2009 7:51 AM
SUBJECT: construction noise
TO: Claremont Buzz

Dear Insider,

I live near Padua Ave. and have been watching the construction of the new park. The noise from the bulldozers clearing the ground is deafening! They push the boulders they collect as they dig up the ground, and then they dump them into trucks to haul the boulders away. They boulders create a huge racket as they get dropped into the metal sided trucks. It's like marbles rolling around in a tin can except the marbles weigh hundreds of pounds.

Do you know if there is anything we can do about the construction noise?

To tell you the truth, we're not sure. The City has all sorts of rules for construction noise with specific decibel levels for property lines. If you can hear the boulder sounds loudly inside your house with the windows closed, the noise probably exceeds the limits set by Claremont's municipal code. As we've seen in the past, mixing Claremont and bulldozers is a guarantee for trouble.

The Environmental Impact Report for Padua Park made a number of representations that the City would abide by the noise restrictions and would implement mitigations to limit the noise. These included the construction of a wall on the park's south border at Chaminade Ct. In addition, if the rock noise exceeds the City's noise limits, there are things the construction company can do to mitigate the sound. This includes things like putting dirt in the loaders to muffle the sound as the rocks are dropped in.

Here a couple pages from the EIR that describe the specific mitigations the city and its contractor were supposed to do during the construction phase:

Click to Enlarge

As far as we know, the City has failed to do several of the mitigations outlined above. They certainly have failed to construct the wall that the EIR said would be done before any grading commenced. And the contractor has apparently failed to use any sound dampening mitigations.

Because of the City's money problems, they may be trying to skirt the mitigations they promised in the EIR. This would be no surprise. The EIR process is mostly there to get projects passed and to create a cash cow for EIR consultants. As environmental protection, EIRs at least in the hands of cities like Claremont, fail miserably. Once construction begins, if the City chooses to not observe the rules in the EIR, then it is up to residents to get a court order stopping construction until the promised mitigations are enforced.

There's also a punitive aspect to the City's behavior here since residents around the park site had opposed the City's original plans for the project. Don't put it past Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor (pictured, left) and Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker to take a "Stick it to them!" approach to the construction phase of the project.

We suggest you do three things. First, check the city's EIR for the project mitigations (they are in Appendix C). You can find it here. Second, check Title 16 of the City's municipal code for the applicable city law (16.154.020). Third, spend a little money to hire someone with a calibrated sound meter (the calibration part is important) to measure the construction sound levels at various property lines throughout the neighborhood.

As near as we can gather from the municipal code, the maximum decibel level allowed anywhere in Claremont at anytime is 85 dB. This is the maximum limit because anything above that can cause permanent hearing damage and is considered dangerous. If you are hearing the sound of the rocks in the trucks with your house windows closed, the exterior sound levels outside are likely maxing out at above 85 dB.

If the sound levels exceed Claremont's municipal code restrictions, and if they have failed to institute any of the other EIR mitigations they promised when they approved the EIR, then contact an attorney to get the construction halted. We're not in the habit of endorsing anyone for these sorts of things, but you might contact Ray Johnson in Temecula. He's the attorney the local Protect Our Neighborhoods group has used, and he's had some success against the City and its City Attorney, Sonia Carvalho of Best, Best & Krieger.

Incidentally, if you prevail, the court will generally grant you your attorney fees. You can find Johnson's contact information here.

One other point. All of this should serve to underscore the fact that the city of Claremont has consistently failed to keep its promises and has taken an attitude that says, "So sue us." It really was this attitude that led to the Wilderness Park bulldozing last year, and it is an attitude that continues to manifest itself from time to time in the City's actions. In our view, it should not take litigation to force the city to keep its word to its citizens, but that is what is happening here.

The Padua Park construction also perfectly illustrates how useless things like EIRs are. The City spent $125,000, plus about the same amount for their attorney fees, for the Padua Park EIR, yet the City has failed to implement most of the EIR provisions for the construction phase of the park. You don't see any of the local environmental groups out monitoring this, and the city's youth sports parents could not possibly care less about the impacts their projects cause.

It's a shame a takes a lawsuit to make them and the City care.

Healy Continuing to Provide Kicks - UPDATED

COURIER COVERS HEALY KICK-OFF

Claremont Courier reporter Tony Krickl had a blog post about Bridget Healy's campaign kick-off event last Sunday. Krickl wrote that a Claremont resident had an interesting question for Healy:

An interesting question came up at Bridget Healy's campaign kickoff party, held in the highly acoustic halls of the Packing House on Sunday.

It came from resident Ken Corhan, whose been following Claremont politics for years.

“There were some tense moments with [city] staff, and you were here for some of that. How would you approach being a council member to avoid those kinds of tensions?” he asked.

Healy responded, “I think the current council has done a really good job of alleviating some of those tensions and working together to improve, and I will continue in that vein. I think it's well prudent when we look at the current council that working together and listening to each other is the key.”

I talked to Corhan after he asked the question. He was referring to the tense political environment after the Landrum shooting in 2001 and what appeared to be an unresponsive city staff to the council's and community's concerns.

He said that he was satisfied with Healy's response to his question. “She seemed to answer the question genuinely,” Corhan said.

Yes, excellent question there Ken. Of course, Krickl missed the fact that Corhan, who is married to former Claremont Human Services Commission Chair Suzanne Hall, has been far more than a mere observer of the local political scene. He and his wife have been intricately wound up in past campaigns for both the City Council and the Claremont Unified School District.

For instance, in 2005, he and Hall donated $200 to the Preserve Claremont campaign, and Hall herself was part of Official Claremont's culture of unresponsiveness as a commission chair at the height of the Glenn Southard regime in Claremont. And, make no mistake about it, Corhan, a graduate of Yale and the Columbia School of Law, is not your average Joe Citizen. In fact, he's counsel to the Lewis Operating Company in Upland, one of the largest real estate companies in Southern California.

(UPDATED, 1/15/09, 8:00am: Most significantly, Corhan's esposa Suzanne Hall is one of 30 people who signed Healy's nomination papers for the council.)

Nothing like having batting practice pitches lobbed to you by your friends in the crowd, eh? It's simply more of the old "River City" tactic the Claremont 400 has employed for years.


STRANGE FRUIT, STRANGER BEDFELLOWS

Not to pick too much on Healy, but her own responsiveness as Claremont's Assistant City Manager left much to be desired in the wake of the Irvin Landrum shooting that so concerned Ken Corhan. Landrum was killed on January 11, 1999. Large-scale protests began very quickly in the wake of the shooting.

Click to Enlarge

Two weeks after the shooting, on January 26, 1999, the Clarmeont City Council received an agenda report co-authored by Claremont police lieutenant Paul Cooper (our current chief of police) and Bridget Healy. The report was also vetted by the City Attorney and signed by then-City Manager Glenn Southard. That staff report laid out a proposed code of conduct for people wishing to address the City Council during meetings. It also included, under item M, "Threat Assessment," a provision for having public speakers evaluated by mental health professionals:

At the request of a council member, commissioner, committee member or staff member, mental health professionals will be called in to determine the level of threat an individual may be posing. Appropriate action will be taken based on the assessment findings.

Yes, under the staff proposal, a psychologist or social worker would have been on call for council meetings, and the Council or the City Manager could pick anyone they didn't want to hear and have that person detained and referred to the "mental health professional" for some helpful and timely straitjacketing and/or muzzling.

Incidentally, if there is any question as to authorship, the report was marked "P:/bhealy/Admin Policy - Public Mtg Disturb 1-20-99.doc." It represented nothing more than a heavy-handed, police state method of dealing with dissent, in large part by students from the Claremont Colleges, over the Landrum shooting.

Click to Enlarge

The proposal generated a good deal of controversy and was never enacted, by the way.

That's why it's utterly laughable to see supposed civil libertarians supporting Healy. One of Healy's nominators, for instance, is Scripps College Vice-President and Dean of Faculty Cecilia Conrad. Conrad, along with her husband Llewellyn Miller, were among those most moved to action by the Landrum shooting. You may remember that Miller ended up being the first African-American elected to the Claremont City Council as part of the community's reaction to the shooting. Yet here Conrad is, ten years later, supporting one of the people most responsible for the City's shoddy handling of that crisis.

The apparently infinite capacity of those smart, well-credentialed people who run Official Claremont to support contradictory positions and to bury the past continues to amaze us. It has nothing to do with what's right or just and everything to do with what one's friends tell one to do.

Local politics truly makes the strangest bedfellows.


MORE OF THAT HEALY TREATMENT

Finally, we recall that back in 2000, there used to be a website called ClaremontCA.com. It was a sort of Insider long before there was an Insider and was staffed by real, not digital, people.

In August, 2000, not only was the City having to deal with the aftermath of the Landrum shooting, but they received some bad PR over City Attorney Sonia Carvalho's reported role in helping the city oppose what later became the successful Measure A anti-conflict of interest initiative. The city decided to hold a press conference to clarify what they thought were some misperceptions about Carvalho's role in the matter.

ClaremontCA called the city and asked to attend the press conference. Their website recorded what happened:

Informed that there was to be a news conference Wednesday, ClaremontCA.com called the city manager's office for time and place information. Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, a bureaucrat paid $105,000 per year to represent the city, told ClaremontCA.com that the meeting was "only for the invited press." When cautioned that such an arrangement was improper, Ms. Healy responded, "Whatever". When asked to include ClaremontCA.com in the meeting she refused to assist. "There's nothing more I can do for you". When asked if ClaremontCA.com would be allowed into the meeting Ms. Healy laughed and said "You'll just have to go and find out for yourself". When pressed to extend the invitation to ClaremontCA.com Ms. Healy hung-up the phone in mid-sentence.

Can’t we all just get along, Bridget?

Indeed. Which makes Tony Krickl's closing sentence all the more deliciously ironic:

Her supporters [including Ken Corhan] would say that having Healy on the council is bringing the best from the past into Claremont's future.